Lessons Learned, Lessons Forgotten

H/t Catherin Bradbury

'God save thee, ancient Mariner!
From the fiends, that plague thee thus!—
Why look'st thou so?'—With my cross-bow
I shot the ALBATROSS.

-excerpted from The Rime of The Ancient Mariner, by Samuel Coleridge

In what may seem like a very long time ago but is, by historical standards, really but a blink of the eye, our forebears had a quite healthy respect for nature. They knew of its power and its fury, its capacity both to give and to take, and the rhythms of the seasons imposed their own kind of discipline on people. Whether setting off on a sea voyage or planting crops, there was an innate understanding of humanity's place in the scheme of things. We were not the masters and mistresses of our own fates. Although we were bold and took many chances, propelled by our curiosity about the world around us, we still recognized our limitations.

Sadly, that wisdom has been forgotten.

When I was in the classroom, one of the works I delighted in teaching was Coleridge's The Rime of The Ancient Mariner. For me, the poem has always stood as a parable of humanity's willfulness; very briefly, it is the story of the humbling and horrible lesson a mariner must learn. The hubris informed by his own ego tells him that he is the pinnacle of creation and thus entitled to do as he pleases, with disastrous results.

In the early part of the poem, the Albatross is associated with good fortune, leading the sailors out of a dire predicament. After the crisis has passed, however, for reasons never directly explained, the Mariner, who is essentially the captain of the vessel, kills the albatross, an act that ultimately results in the death of his entire crew and the complete isolation, both physical and spiritual, of the Mariner. As I used to suggest to my students, he likely killed the Albatross simply because he could; in other words, it is one of those many heedless acts that seem to reflect so much of our human nature.

By the poem's end, the Mariner has learned his lesson, but at a horrible price. Unfortunately, in our time we seem, as a species, incapable of gaining such insights, the evidence of our willfulness so plentiful I will not insult you by pointing it out.

Every so often, even in our cossetted 'first-world' experience, we are reminded of our folly. In Southern Ontario, where I reside, yesterday's ice storm left parts of my community, including our house, without power for six hours, a minuscule inconvenience compared to the over 250,000 still without power in the Toronto area as I write this; some may even remain in the dark until at least Christmas Day.

Yet the storm, emblematic of a much more profound disturbance in the environment, will, as other countless disasters in recent years, go largely unremarked by the population at large and, of course, by those we entrust to lead us. Climate change amelioration? Carbon pricing? Valuing capital? Forget it. Adaptation? Maybe. But more likely our 'masters' will continue to say and do things that people want to hear: everything is fine, the economy is rebounding, and global warming is but a contentious 'theory'.

The Ancient Mariner learned a hard lesson that drastically altered the course of his life. It seems to be our fate as a short-sighted species never to learn ours.

Tory Policy-Making: The Dangers Of Simplistic Thinking

Fallacies of reasoning are easy traps to fall into. Whether it is absolutist thinking, straw man arguments or any number of other errors of thought, we are all prone to them, and I am sure that I am no exception. Our best defense against such faulty thinking is to try to cultivate our critical faculties as much as we can; one of the best ways of doing so is to read widely and deeply. There is no alternative, unless wants to make a virtue of simplistic and lazy cognition.

The latter, of course, is what the Harper regime has excelled at since it was first elected. Most issues have been reduced to an either/or option; perhaps the most infamous was the facile and inflammatory statement Vic Toews made over those who opposed his failed Internet surveillance bill, namely that people “can either stand with us or with the child pornographers.”

The Tory propensity for reducing issues to their simplest forms has done a grave disservice to the people of Canada, who have essentially been told time and again that they need not think deeply and engage vigorously with issues of public policy, but rather let an autocratic majority government decide instead what is best for them. People increasingly seem more and more passive when told, for example, that now is not the time to improve the CPP, OAS must be delayed to age 67, or home mail delivery must end, all due to cost constraints.

And yet, with critical thinking, there is always room for alternative approaches to public policy. One such instance can be found in Canada Post. Although a crown corporation with an ostensible degree of independence from government influence, the recent decision to end home mail delivery and raise stamps to $1 each has all the earmarks of a government bent on the erosion and ultimate dismantling of public programs and institutions. No compromises were seriously entertained, for example moving to three-day a week delivery to cut costs. It is a classically absolutist policy decision that will ultimately see the end of Canada Post.

In his column in Saturday's Star, Thomas Walkom introduces a notion that could, in fact, make Canada Post very profitable and facilitate the retention of delivery services: a postal savings bank, an idea that has been advocated by the Canadian Union of Postal Workers.

Arguing that Canada Post has the technology and infrastructure to make such a venture both possible and highly profitable, Walkom points to New Zealand, France, Italy and Britain as successful examples of the concept:

New Zealand’s postal banking system, which was re-invigorated just eight years ago, now accounts for 70 per cent of the profit earned by that country’s post office. The comparable figure for Italy is 67 per cent.

France’s postal savings bank accounts for 36 per cent of its postal service’s pre-tax earnings. Britain is privatizing mail delivery. But it is not privatizing its system of post offices and postal savings banks. They’re too lucrative.

Indeed, as Walkom points out, former Canada Post CEO Moya Greene, who was hired away by Britain's Royal Mail, was an advocate of postal banking:

Speaking to a Senate committee three months before taking up her Royal Mail job, Greene said Canada Post was seriously considering the idea of offering full financial services.

“We . . . need to diversify the revenue stream and be in wholly different businesses than we are today,” she told the committee. “I note, for example, that many postal administrations have made a success of banking.”

Another compelling and potentially gratifying reason to offer such service resides in the conservative nature of our chartered banks which, many feel, should be shaken up a bit by competition. It is their conservative nature that is partly responsible for the fact that upwards of 15 per cent of Canadians are estimated to have no bank accounts at all, making them easy prey to the payday loan operations whose rates in Ontario can exceed 540 per cent.

So again, some reflection, analysis and good policy-making could solve two problems: the end of home delivery and the usurious interest rates that the poor without bank accounts must contend with.

But the Harper cabal is one that cares neither for nuance nor cerebration. After all, the solutions to problems are simple, reflected in just these mantras: privatization good, public ownership bad, and long live the 'free' market.

Another Timely Reminder From Canada Post

Perhaps the new levels of geriatric fitness to be achieved by ending home service will save government so much in health care costs that they can someday restore service? Just askin'

H/t The Toronto Star

Is Nothing Sacred?

My, my, my. These Santas were giving out something few would want to receive:

Canada Post Has Our Best Interests At Heart

Of course it does.



H/t The Globe and Mail

The Affluenza Judge Seems To Have A Double Standard

Now why does this not surprise me?

Were This The Best Of All Possible Worlds...

Were I of Dr. Pangloss' rosy outlook and believed that this is the best of all possible worlds, I might have some sympathy for people like Industry Minister James Moore who, as most will probably have heard, recently opined that it is not his job to feed his neighbour's child, an inapt remark for which he subsequently apologized.

He did add, at the time of his original offending remarks, that "We’ve neven been wealthier as a country than we are right now. Never been wealthier,” and boasted of his government's job-creation program.

And therein lies the problem. Mr. Moore and his ilk (i.e., the Harper regime and the neoliberal agenda) seem to reside in a parallel universe, one where there are jobs just for the asking, and anyone who finds him/herself in straightened circumstances is there largely due to personal fecklessness. In his column yesterday, The Star's Thomas Walkom neatly summed up this mindset, tracing it back to nineteenth-century liberalism:

This belief holds that individuals are responsible for their own destinies, that markets distribute income fairly and that (with limited exceptions) governments should get out of the way to let people live their lives.

That means allowing individuals to marry whomever they will. It also means relying on parents to care for their children as best they can.

Walkom also suggests that this worldview explains the federal government's refusal to consider the much-touted idea of pension reform:

The real reason for axing CPP reform, I suspect, has more to do with belief. The Canada Pension Plan is a form of forced saving. It requires workers to put aside money whether they wish to or not.

To the 19th century liberals of Harper’s government, this is anathema. Under their view, individuals should be free to save or spend as they please.

At retirement, the very poorest will be cared for by government at starkly minimal levels. The wealthiest can fall back on their inheritances.

So I might have some sympathy for the notion that people have to live within their means, save for their retirement, and essentially be as self-sufficient as possible IF we actually inhabited the world of Mr. Moore's imagination. However, the economic realities of the times, which sees an ever-growing precariat, a dearth of good-paying jobs, the erosion of company pension plans, and a massive proliferation of low-paying service jobs demand government compassion and involvement in the lives of people, something the Harper regime seems incapable of.

Let us hope 2015 sees the election of a party that has a better grasp of the economic realities of far too many Canadians than Harper's Conservatives do.