Update: A Christmas Message

As a retired teacher, I am well familiar with the works of Charles Dickens. Although his literary legacy is one of predominantly lengthy works, he is probably best remembered for his shortest one, A Christmas Carol, the story of Ebeneezer Scrooge, a nasty man consumed by the cost of everything but unable to recognize the value of anything. His redemption comes when he realizes the perversion of his life perspective.

Yesterday we went to Niagara on the Lake for a reading of the tale by some Shaw Festival actors who graciously invited my daughter, who has been very involved for several years in local theatre in the Hamilton-Toronto area, to be one of the narrators.

Listening to this very professional rendition, I was struck by both the simplicity and depth of Dickens' theme, one which our contemporary world seems to go to great pains to encourage us to forget. The promotion of rampant consumerism and the consequent impoverishment of both our environment and our spirit is one that cannot be sustained much longer, yet it seems to be the nature of the corporate agenda which, sadly, so many of us have become infused with, never to look beyond the next quarterly profit statement, no matter what the larger cost may be. At the same time, of course, the gulf between the haves and the have-nots widens, the underlying causes ignored while we apply only band-aid solutions like food banks and shelters, which ultimately only enable the status quo to remain intact.

In A Christmas Carol, Ebeneezer Scrooge learns before it is too late that the things of real value have little to do with things material. Would that we could learn, and take to heart, the same lesson.

UPDATE: I just got a chance to sit down with today's Star. A letter by Joy Taylor of Scarborough, along Dow Marmur's column, seem particularly appropriate reading at this time of year.

What Fools These Mortals Be

The title of this post, taken from Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream, hardly qualifies as a startling insight. Nonetheless, after reading two columns in this morning's Star, I couldn't help but reflect on the mass of contradictions that we are. It has likely always been thus, but stands in especially sharp relief in today's broken world.

My very wise friend Dom pointed out something to me recently. "Lorne," he said, "the genius of the corporate world has been to get us addicted to cheap stuff from China, even though that cheap stuff comes at a very high cost: the loss of good-paying manufacturing jobs, as well as the spread of retail positions (think Walmart) that refuse to pay a living wage."

On some level, I suspect we are aware of this truth, but choose not to ponder it as our search for bargains encompasses an increasingly wide swath. In her column today, Heather Mallick confronts the issue head-on in a meditation prompted by Wall Street's reaction to Apple Tim Cook's recent announcement about bringing a small amount of Apple jobs back from China. What should have been a cause for celebration in the depressed American job market turned out to be anything but:

Wall Street’s instant response was to drop the stock several percentage points. Apple is the biggest company in U.S. history. But despite its might and inventiveness, the market judged it solely on its merits as a behemoth built mainly on cheap Chinese labour.

But it seems that it is not just the stock market that takes a dim view of such a move:

Ten years ago I paid $250 for a coffeemaker. Today I pay $80. Would I pay even $60 more to restore Canadian jobs?

Yes, I say. But am I being truthful? I buy books from Amazon.ca because they offer me 37- to 50-per-cent discounts and free shipping. But I could buy them locally at full price if I were of a mind. I am not.

So yes, we would like to see a return to good-paying jobs, but not if we have to pay more for our goods as a result. While I realize this may be an over-generalization, Mallick really does speak an unpleasant truth about our contradictory natures.

On a separate topic, Dow Marmur writes about the irony of how our best impulses, our philanthropic ones, may have undesirable and unintended consequences. Echoing a concern I recently voiced here, Marmur opines that private efforts to relieve hunger in fact make it easier for governments to ignore the problem of growing and intractable poverty.

He writes about Mazon, a Jewish group whose aim is to feed those in need irrespective of background and affiliation. So far it has allocated more than $7 million to food banks and related projects across Canada.

Its founding chairman, Rabbi Arthur Bielfeld, recently

... challenged the government to render it and all organizations of its kind obsolete. In reality, however, the need continues to increase multifold. A quarter of a century ago there were 94 food banks in Canada; today there are more than 630.

Citing recent data, Rabbi Bielfeld said that some 900,000 Canadians use food banks every month. Last year more than 150 million pounds of food were distributed to families in need; 38 per cent of recipients were children. This year many will have to make do with less because of growing demand and diminishing resources.

Marmur observes the irony of it and many other organizations committed to the reduction of poverty:

... as essential as it is to help those in need, ironically, the relative success of such efforts helps governments to get off the hook. At times it even seems that charities find themselves inadvertently colluding with the inaction of politicians.

And so we have it. Two very good writers making some very relevant observations about the contradictions that define our humanity. On the one hand we want to be oblivious to the economic and social consequences of our propensity for bargain-hunting; on the other hand, even when we allow our better angels to come to the fore, the results are anything but an unalloyed good.

I guess, as always, the answer to this conundrum ultimately does lie in our own hands.