Drugs
March 3, 2006
Godspeed to the Victoria Crystal Meth Society, and to any other community group trying to do their part to shake us awake before things get any worse. We need it.
But I do sometimes fear that yet again, we risk losing the opportunity to talk about addiction overall by getting distracted by the latest “most terrible” drug. As awful as crystal meth may be, we’ll never get around to tackling the larger problems of a truly terrible health disaster if we keep up this flavour-of-the-month approach.
Those of you who are old enough to remember the 1960s film Reefer Madness will know what I mean. After that came LSD as the worst drug ever, and later PCP. Crack cocaine had a good run throughout the 1990s. These days, it’s crystal meth.
If only it really was as simple as wiping out a certain drug. Put some really heavy enforcement into something like that and it might even be possible to squelch a particular drug right out of existence.
But for someone who was addicted, it would make no difference whatsoever. They’d just find something else to use. The problem isn’t the drug, it’s addiction.
Putting all our efforts into eradicating a specific drug unfortunately doesn’t get us any further toward dealing with the beast that is addiction. One drug less? A dozen more in waiting.
Or, as happened in Iowa recently when that state cracked down very successfully on sales of ingredients for crystal meth, a new way emerges of finding the drug in question. In that case, the meth started coming up from Mexico, at a higher cost. The result: Meth-related crime rates in Iowa went up.
There’s a poem by Portia Nelson, Autobiography in 5 Short Chapters, that beautifully explains the five stages human beings go through when making change in their life. The process starts at the point where you don’t even know you have to change - that’s stage one. As Nelson so nicely puts it:
“I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in.
I am lost...I am helpless.
It isn’t my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.”
As the poet slowly makes her way down the same potholed street while the stages of change unfold, she eventually starts walking around the hole, and then down another street entirely. The change is complete.
It’s a process that’s particularly apt for people with addictions, and for the people trying to develop services to suit the various stages. But it strikes me that B.C. overall - and really, all of Canada - is stuck in Stage 1 of the progression, failing to see that deep hole in the sidewalk and tripping time and again into one more fruitless crusade against some drug of the moment.
The issue is not drugs; virtually all of us use drugs. The issue is that terrible confluence of genetics, environment and life circumstance that sets a person up for addiction. The studies I’ve seen have put the magic figure at around 13 to 15 per cent of all drug users. Of course, they have no idea on the way in how very hard it’s going to be to get out, or that many will die without ever making it.
If addiction was being seen for what it is - a mental and physical health problem of heartbreaking proportion - then maybe something would have happened by this point. Maybe there wouldn’t be a terrified young Victoria woman holed up with her family in Chilliwack right now wondering how she’s going to keep her addiction at bay for almost three more months while she waits for a publicly funded treatment bed somewhere in B.C.
Instead, we just keep falling into that hole on the street, and looking around for some new drug to blame it on. The truth of it is that we’re barely doing anything about addiction, and certainly nothing that looks like a long-term strategy. Thousands of British Columbians are mired in a miserable, stigmatized existence because there are simply no services for them.
Inhumane, yes. But it’s also costing us dearly in terms of emergency-health spending, court costs, policing and deteriorating community standards. Sick people with no help and little hope don’t always make the best of parents, either, and their children - and theirs in turn - are at risk of becoming the next generation of lost souls.
From all accounts I’ve heard, crystal meth is indeed a terrible drug, most particularly because you don’t have to use it for very long before you’re addicted. But it’s just the latest symptom of a disease that we’ve been refusing to do anything about for nigh on 60 years now, when the first B.C. studies started popping up urging action.
We’ve been falling in this same old hole for long enough. It’s our fault, and we really do need to find a better road.
Wednesday, July 05, 2006
Children in care
Feb. 23, 2006
Few things focus a government’s attention better than the death of a child in its care, so it’s not surprising that Finance Minister Carole Taylor this week described the coming year’s budget as being about “the little ones.” The tragic circumstances of two-year-old Sherry Charlie’s death have been almost as exhaustively chronicled as those of Matthew Vaudreuil, the little boy whose killing 14 years sparked similar angst in the government of the day
Taylor came bearing gifts for the Ministry of Children and Family Development in Tuesday’s budget. More social workers, more money for supporting families. That’s along the lines of what the New Democrats promised back in 1995, not long after the unbearably sad inquiry into Matthew’s death, suffocated at age five by his abusive mother. Ten years earlier, the Socreds made similar promises after three-year-old Michael Jack was killed by his father.
All three children were deeply enmeshed in the child-welfare system at the time of their death. But in each case, good intentions went badly awry. The sequence of events in each of the deaths unfolds in eerily similar fashion, each disaster more or less a carbon copy of the previous one.
The media coverage starts out small: Another sad story of a child killed by a raging, mentally ill or otherwise dysfunctional caregiver. But then the official inquiry starts a year or two later, the horrific details of which always seem to come down to a lack of resources, uncertainty, and a fatal underestimation of the amount of danger a child is actually facing.
Months of public outcry and soul-searching follow as we cast around for an explanation - and someone to blame - for yet another dead child.
One death every 10 years or so is perhaps not such a bad record for government, but the death of a child in care always seems to have greater resonance. And that’s how it should be: We want a child-protection system where deaths are so rare that each one of them catches us by surprise.
But at the same time, we do need to recognize a pattern in these three deaths. Each death begets an inquiry, which in turn begets rueful promises by all involved to do better next time. Money flows freely for a guilty couple of years, and a few areas see considerable improvement. Governments and voters alike tend to lose interest within four or five years, though, and the layoffs and budget cuts follow. Next thing you know, there’s another dead baby, and we’re doing it all over again.
“People are overworked, under-resourced, and cannot comply to doing the quality work they are committed to doing,” former B.C. Government Employees and Services Union president John Shields said 11 years ago as Matthew Vaudreuil’s inquiry got underway.
Shields blamed the previous Socred government for deciding to lay off 600 social workers, which the four-year-old New Democrat government had not yet gotten around to replacing. That all changed after the Matthew Vaudreuil inquiry.
But time marched on, and another government with a different public mandate came to power. Layoffs and budget cuts ensued. And then this, Sherry Charlie - more sad evidence, right on schedule, that we have not yet got it right.
That this week’s budget is one for the “little ones” is good news, then, because the restoration of social services to B.C.’s children and families is desperately needed. Saving children’s lives isn’t all about more money, but more money would definitely go a long way toward addressing many of the problems. Social workers need to have small enough caseloads that they can get to know the families they’re working with, and the supports needed for families to raise their children to feel safe and loved. Hiring more social workers is an excellent move.
What’s equally vital, however, is consistency of vision. B.C.’s child-welfare policies should transcend the lines of party politics and be firmed up into a set of standards and practices that functions outside of the whims of elected government. Shifting political winds should not be able to influence the way we manage our child-protection functions. Certain things ought to be beyond politics.
We’ve established that in theory. No political ideology in the Western world would dare to argue that children should just be left to sink or swim no matter what might be going on within their family.
So now we just have to commit the resources that we know are needed for the task at hand, and go forward. If our child-welfare policies were guided by the realities of the work rather than wishful thinking, we might have settled on the answers two decades ago rather than still be stumbling into the same old problems time and again.
Mistakes happen. But the deaths of Michael, Matthew and Sherry were so much more than that. We can do better.
Feb. 23, 2006
Few things focus a government’s attention better than the death of a child in its care, so it’s not surprising that Finance Minister Carole Taylor this week described the coming year’s budget as being about “the little ones.” The tragic circumstances of two-year-old Sherry Charlie’s death have been almost as exhaustively chronicled as those of Matthew Vaudreuil, the little boy whose killing 14 years sparked similar angst in the government of the day
Taylor came bearing gifts for the Ministry of Children and Family Development in Tuesday’s budget. More social workers, more money for supporting families. That’s along the lines of what the New Democrats promised back in 1995, not long after the unbearably sad inquiry into Matthew’s death, suffocated at age five by his abusive mother. Ten years earlier, the Socreds made similar promises after three-year-old Michael Jack was killed by his father.
All three children were deeply enmeshed in the child-welfare system at the time of their death. But in each case, good intentions went badly awry. The sequence of events in each of the deaths unfolds in eerily similar fashion, each disaster more or less a carbon copy of the previous one.
The media coverage starts out small: Another sad story of a child killed by a raging, mentally ill or otherwise dysfunctional caregiver. But then the official inquiry starts a year or two later, the horrific details of which always seem to come down to a lack of resources, uncertainty, and a fatal underestimation of the amount of danger a child is actually facing.
Months of public outcry and soul-searching follow as we cast around for an explanation - and someone to blame - for yet another dead child.
One death every 10 years or so is perhaps not such a bad record for government, but the death of a child in care always seems to have greater resonance. And that’s how it should be: We want a child-protection system where deaths are so rare that each one of them catches us by surprise.
But at the same time, we do need to recognize a pattern in these three deaths. Each death begets an inquiry, which in turn begets rueful promises by all involved to do better next time. Money flows freely for a guilty couple of years, and a few areas see considerable improvement. Governments and voters alike tend to lose interest within four or five years, though, and the layoffs and budget cuts follow. Next thing you know, there’s another dead baby, and we’re doing it all over again.
“People are overworked, under-resourced, and cannot comply to doing the quality work they are committed to doing,” former B.C. Government Employees and Services Union president John Shields said 11 years ago as Matthew Vaudreuil’s inquiry got underway.
Shields blamed the previous Socred government for deciding to lay off 600 social workers, which the four-year-old New Democrat government had not yet gotten around to replacing. That all changed after the Matthew Vaudreuil inquiry.
But time marched on, and another government with a different public mandate came to power. Layoffs and budget cuts ensued. And then this, Sherry Charlie - more sad evidence, right on schedule, that we have not yet got it right.
That this week’s budget is one for the “little ones” is good news, then, because the restoration of social services to B.C.’s children and families is desperately needed. Saving children’s lives isn’t all about more money, but more money would definitely go a long way toward addressing many of the problems. Social workers need to have small enough caseloads that they can get to know the families they’re working with, and the supports needed for families to raise their children to feel safe and loved. Hiring more social workers is an excellent move.
What’s equally vital, however, is consistency of vision. B.C.’s child-welfare policies should transcend the lines of party politics and be firmed up into a set of standards and practices that functions outside of the whims of elected government. Shifting political winds should not be able to influence the way we manage our child-protection functions. Certain things ought to be beyond politics.
We’ve established that in theory. No political ideology in the Western world would dare to argue that children should just be left to sink or swim no matter what might be going on within their family.
So now we just have to commit the resources that we know are needed for the task at hand, and go forward. If our child-welfare policies were guided by the realities of the work rather than wishful thinking, we might have settled on the answers two decades ago rather than still be stumbling into the same old problems time and again.
Mistakes happen. But the deaths of Michael, Matthew and Sherry were so much more than that. We can do better.
David Emerson
Feb. 17, 2006
The funny thing is, I’m feeling a bit sorry for David Emerson.
Not that I wouldn’t be spitting furious at the man had I been a Liberal voter in his Vancouver riding. But his genuinely shell-shocked response in the days since he crossed the floor to become a Conservative cabinet minister has nonetheless been painful to watch.
Sometimes, political parties are so similar in their platforms that a defection from one to the other is be news.
But there are significant differences between Canada’s Liberal and Conservative parties these days. If you voted for the guy whose party was supportive of gay marriage and social programs and then watched him morph into exactly the political rep you didn’t want - if you heard him promise to be “Stephen Harper’s worst nightmare” if elected - you’d have every right to be apoplectic right about now, especially with it all playing out just two weeks after you voted for the guy. And imagine how angry Conservative voters must be.
Still, you have to feel just a little for a guy who clearly never even saw it coming. Emerson appears to have had no idea that people were going to be outraged at his transforming into a Tory mere days after they voted him in as a Liberal. He was, as my elderly ex-pat Scots uncle might say, gob-smacked.
It’s no defence, of course. But Emerson being gob-smacked by the public reaction to his defection is the really interesting part of the story. How could a smart guy like him not know what would happen to a man who was elected on a platform of hating Conservatives, only to become one himself two weeks later?
It would all be quite unbelievable, were it not for the fact that Emerson barely has a whit of actual political experience. His background is in the background - as a deputy minister, and then a well-regarded businessman. The possibility of being voted off the island isn’t something he’s had to consider.
And so Emerson fell on his face, and in grand fashion. He may function well in his own world, but that wasn’t where he was operating. So when Prime Minister Stephen Harper asked him to dump his newfound Liberal friends and be a Conservative cabinet minister instead, Emerson appears to have given nary a thought to the tremendous political price he would pay for his indifferent betrayal of voters.
Finding the middle ground between running the business of Canada while still respecting a democratic process isn’t easy. Governments have a great deal to learn from people whose skills lie outside of politics, and a guy like Emerson is an obvious choice for cabinet if you’re looking for someone who knows how to run things.
But Canada isn’t the corner office. The voter ultimately chooses.
In this case, they did choose Emerson, but as a Liberal. Did he think the political principles he was espousing during the election campaign were nothing more than words from his mouth? In a way, both parties perhaps encouraged that in him, because first one and then the other recruited him with little concern for whether his political beliefs - and really, what ARE his political beliefs? - were genuinely aligned with theirs.
And now here we are, probably heading into a Vancouver byelection if the momentum keeps building. Emerson is sweating it out every day in the headlines, each new story citing somebody else who’s really, really mad at him. He’ll certainly never underestimate the power of political displeasure again.
No one wants to see democracy threatened by political parties too arrogant to play by the rules. But at the same time, it’s unfortunate that our political system leaves us to be governed by whoever wins the popularity contest, because we sure could use some business smarts in the way we run our country. Running this business of Canada requires vision, wisdom and heart, and that may come down to being able to bring in fresh talent like Emerson without having to ensure he also passes muster politically.
But if Emerson’s skills are needed at the federal cabinet table, that’s a problem to be solved by Canadians addressing it directly. A tweak here, a tweak there - we’d be able to figure out how to do things differently. Bring it on.
Disenfranchising thousands of voters, on the other hand, is exactly how not to do it.
And that is what will linger about the defection. Whatever his intention, Emerson’s astounding inability to consider the wrath of his voters - and Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s disregard for his party faithful - speaks to the great gulf that has developed between the government and Canadians.
The leaders of our country went ahead with their carefully laid plans as if Canadians’ opinions on any of it mattered not at all. Surely they have to know why we might be mad about that.
Feb. 17, 2006
The funny thing is, I’m feeling a bit sorry for David Emerson.
Not that I wouldn’t be spitting furious at the man had I been a Liberal voter in his Vancouver riding. But his genuinely shell-shocked response in the days since he crossed the floor to become a Conservative cabinet minister has nonetheless been painful to watch.
Sometimes, political parties are so similar in their platforms that a defection from one to the other is be news.
But there are significant differences between Canada’s Liberal and Conservative parties these days. If you voted for the guy whose party was supportive of gay marriage and social programs and then watched him morph into exactly the political rep you didn’t want - if you heard him promise to be “Stephen Harper’s worst nightmare” if elected - you’d have every right to be apoplectic right about now, especially with it all playing out just two weeks after you voted for the guy. And imagine how angry Conservative voters must be.
Still, you have to feel just a little for a guy who clearly never even saw it coming. Emerson appears to have had no idea that people were going to be outraged at his transforming into a Tory mere days after they voted him in as a Liberal. He was, as my elderly ex-pat Scots uncle might say, gob-smacked.
It’s no defence, of course. But Emerson being gob-smacked by the public reaction to his defection is the really interesting part of the story. How could a smart guy like him not know what would happen to a man who was elected on a platform of hating Conservatives, only to become one himself two weeks later?
It would all be quite unbelievable, were it not for the fact that Emerson barely has a whit of actual political experience. His background is in the background - as a deputy minister, and then a well-regarded businessman. The possibility of being voted off the island isn’t something he’s had to consider.
And so Emerson fell on his face, and in grand fashion. He may function well in his own world, but that wasn’t where he was operating. So when Prime Minister Stephen Harper asked him to dump his newfound Liberal friends and be a Conservative cabinet minister instead, Emerson appears to have given nary a thought to the tremendous political price he would pay for his indifferent betrayal of voters.
Finding the middle ground between running the business of Canada while still respecting a democratic process isn’t easy. Governments have a great deal to learn from people whose skills lie outside of politics, and a guy like Emerson is an obvious choice for cabinet if you’re looking for someone who knows how to run things.
But Canada isn’t the corner office. The voter ultimately chooses.
In this case, they did choose Emerson, but as a Liberal. Did he think the political principles he was espousing during the election campaign were nothing more than words from his mouth? In a way, both parties perhaps encouraged that in him, because first one and then the other recruited him with little concern for whether his political beliefs - and really, what ARE his political beliefs? - were genuinely aligned with theirs.
And now here we are, probably heading into a Vancouver byelection if the momentum keeps building. Emerson is sweating it out every day in the headlines, each new story citing somebody else who’s really, really mad at him. He’ll certainly never underestimate the power of political displeasure again.
No one wants to see democracy threatened by political parties too arrogant to play by the rules. But at the same time, it’s unfortunate that our political system leaves us to be governed by whoever wins the popularity contest, because we sure could use some business smarts in the way we run our country. Running this business of Canada requires vision, wisdom and heart, and that may come down to being able to bring in fresh talent like Emerson without having to ensure he also passes muster politically.
But if Emerson’s skills are needed at the federal cabinet table, that’s a problem to be solved by Canadians addressing it directly. A tweak here, a tweak there - we’d be able to figure out how to do things differently. Bring it on.
Disenfranchising thousands of voters, on the other hand, is exactly how not to do it.
And that is what will linger about the defection. Whatever his intention, Emerson’s astounding inability to consider the wrath of his voters - and Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s disregard for his party faithful - speaks to the great gulf that has developed between the government and Canadians.
The leaders of our country went ahead with their carefully laid plans as if Canadians’ opinions on any of it mattered not at all. Surely they have to know why we might be mad about that.
Offensive cartoons
Feb. 9, 2006
Nobody deserves to die over an editorial cartoon. However disturbing a cartoon may be, the fallout should never include riots, police killings and self-immolation.
Still, it’s just as outrageous to categorize the disastrous turn of events this month unleashed by a Danish newspaper as being about freedom of expression.
Such an important right requires an equal measure of responsibility. Any newspaper that thinks it’s OK in this day and age to run a spread of humiliating editorial cartoons about the Muslim prophet Muhammad has clearly forgotten how to strike the balance.
There’s the finest of lines separating freedom of expression from hatred, and a civil society ought to always be paying mind to it. Restrict freedom of expression and a country loses its ability to challenge its own systems and values. Loosen the reins completely and some really offensive stuff gets through under the guise of free speech.
My partner and I have agreed to disagree on this point, because he believes in virtually absolute freedom of expression. You’ll know that argument by the loathsome nature of the cases that set precedent - they always seem to be about unpleasant subjects like yesterday’s war criminals, or people trying to get Nazism going again. Or pornography. For freedom-of-expression diehards, it’s all or nothing.
Me, I view the issue a little differently. Yes, a civil society ought to grant all of us the right to speak out about what’s on our mind. But that’s not to say that the speaker is excused from having to act responsibly. With world temperaments being what they are at the moment, it’s just plain irresponsible to set out to mock the Muslim prophet. Freedom of expression is no defence.
Muhammad was portrayed in one of the Danish cartoon series as having a bomb in his turban, and in another as humorously panicking over the shortage of virgins given the rush of suicide bombers making their way toward a blissful afterlife.
Is that fair comment? Or is it hateful?
We’re not exactly the protester type here in Canada, so I won’t for a minute speculate as to whether any editorial cartoon could ever rouse us to burst from our houses in vast numbers to protest. But I think that’s partly because we’ve already put some voluntary restrictions around freedom of expression in Canada.
Try, for instance, to conjure up any editorial cartoon in your lifetime mocking Jesus in some really mean and humiliating way. Could be that it proves nothing at all, of course, other than Jesus not being a popular cartooning subject. Or maybe a contemptuous collection of Jesus cartoons is an example of the outer limit - the place where it’s not OK for a newspaper to go.
Consider this cartoon scenario if you will: Jesus, provocatively leading a boy up the stairs. His cartoon face is turned to humorously catch the eye of a new priest witnessing the scene. “Remember your vow of chastity!” the cutline might read.
Accompanying the cartoon, 11 more of similar flavour. And all of them in a newspaper with a history already for mixing it up with Christians.
I could see cartoons like that turning people upside down, just like the Muhammad ones are doing now in Muslim nations. I can’t think of a Canadian newspaper of any repute that would even consider publishing such cartoons on their editorial pages. Yes, they’ve got the right to do it if they want to, but they choose not to - which is exactly how it should be in a society that accepts both the rights and responsibilities of something as powerful as freedom of expression.
The hateful writings of the late Doug Collins, a North Vancouver columnist, were always being seized upon by “freedom” groups arguing the importance of freedom of expression. The columns were nasty, spiteful little diatribes against Jews, ethnic minorities, women and gays, and Collins slowly poisoned the well for years with them.
My own opinions aside, you can’t ban a writer like Collins, because the right to say ugly things really is important. But that still leaves newspapers free to choose whether to run those columns, or to give a guy like Collins a forum for his bitter musings. Just because a person’s got something to say doesn’t mean it’s worth listening to.
True, the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten couldn’t have known quite how crazy things would go, or that 20 newspapers around the world would feed the fire by republishing the same cartoons. Still, here we are, caught up in a truly global predicament because a right-of-centre newspaper has fed the world hatred masquerading as free speech.
“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it,” said French philosopher Voltaire.
Most definitely. But best to keep one eye on that very thin line.
Feb. 9, 2006
Nobody deserves to die over an editorial cartoon. However disturbing a cartoon may be, the fallout should never include riots, police killings and self-immolation.
Still, it’s just as outrageous to categorize the disastrous turn of events this month unleashed by a Danish newspaper as being about freedom of expression.
Such an important right requires an equal measure of responsibility. Any newspaper that thinks it’s OK in this day and age to run a spread of humiliating editorial cartoons about the Muslim prophet Muhammad has clearly forgotten how to strike the balance.
There’s the finest of lines separating freedom of expression from hatred, and a civil society ought to always be paying mind to it. Restrict freedom of expression and a country loses its ability to challenge its own systems and values. Loosen the reins completely and some really offensive stuff gets through under the guise of free speech.
My partner and I have agreed to disagree on this point, because he believes in virtually absolute freedom of expression. You’ll know that argument by the loathsome nature of the cases that set precedent - they always seem to be about unpleasant subjects like yesterday’s war criminals, or people trying to get Nazism going again. Or pornography. For freedom-of-expression diehards, it’s all or nothing.
Me, I view the issue a little differently. Yes, a civil society ought to grant all of us the right to speak out about what’s on our mind. But that’s not to say that the speaker is excused from having to act responsibly. With world temperaments being what they are at the moment, it’s just plain irresponsible to set out to mock the Muslim prophet. Freedom of expression is no defence.
Muhammad was portrayed in one of the Danish cartoon series as having a bomb in his turban, and in another as humorously panicking over the shortage of virgins given the rush of suicide bombers making their way toward a blissful afterlife.
Is that fair comment? Or is it hateful?
We’re not exactly the protester type here in Canada, so I won’t for a minute speculate as to whether any editorial cartoon could ever rouse us to burst from our houses in vast numbers to protest. But I think that’s partly because we’ve already put some voluntary restrictions around freedom of expression in Canada.
Try, for instance, to conjure up any editorial cartoon in your lifetime mocking Jesus in some really mean and humiliating way. Could be that it proves nothing at all, of course, other than Jesus not being a popular cartooning subject. Or maybe a contemptuous collection of Jesus cartoons is an example of the outer limit - the place where it’s not OK for a newspaper to go.
Consider this cartoon scenario if you will: Jesus, provocatively leading a boy up the stairs. His cartoon face is turned to humorously catch the eye of a new priest witnessing the scene. “Remember your vow of chastity!” the cutline might read.
Accompanying the cartoon, 11 more of similar flavour. And all of them in a newspaper with a history already for mixing it up with Christians.
I could see cartoons like that turning people upside down, just like the Muhammad ones are doing now in Muslim nations. I can’t think of a Canadian newspaper of any repute that would even consider publishing such cartoons on their editorial pages. Yes, they’ve got the right to do it if they want to, but they choose not to - which is exactly how it should be in a society that accepts both the rights and responsibilities of something as powerful as freedom of expression.
The hateful writings of the late Doug Collins, a North Vancouver columnist, were always being seized upon by “freedom” groups arguing the importance of freedom of expression. The columns were nasty, spiteful little diatribes against Jews, ethnic minorities, women and gays, and Collins slowly poisoned the well for years with them.
My own opinions aside, you can’t ban a writer like Collins, because the right to say ugly things really is important. But that still leaves newspapers free to choose whether to run those columns, or to give a guy like Collins a forum for his bitter musings. Just because a person’s got something to say doesn’t mean it’s worth listening to.
True, the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten couldn’t have known quite how crazy things would go, or that 20 newspapers around the world would feed the fire by republishing the same cartoons. Still, here we are, caught up in a truly global predicament because a right-of-centre newspaper has fed the world hatred masquerading as free speech.
“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it,” said French philosopher Voltaire.
Most definitely. But best to keep one eye on that very thin line.
Inaction
Jan. 28, 2006
It would take much more than a mere 800 words to muse on what causes a person to look at the world a certain way, while another looks at it completely differently. Wars are fought over just such a thing, and human history is littered with the debris of the various solitudes bashing into one another.
But it’s certainly the great tragedy of the human condition. Our differences are always getting in the way. Whatever size the stage - a neighbourhood zoning dispute, a global crisis - each of us sees the world so differently as to find it inexplicable that others might see it otherwise.
Even when we agree long enough to actually solve problems, we seek reasons to disagree over the answers. Case in point: the news this week that British Columbians’ measurable health is the best in Canada, even while many of us believe that our health system is serving us poorly. Is the problem a disconnect between those who set health-care policy and their subjects? Or is it merely just more evidence of the contrarianism that defines our species?
The trouble is, the indecision is making a real hash of things. Not surprisingly, a fractious bunch of people with disparate views and short attention spans don’t do so well at the hard and painstaking work of building nations. So world events unfold as if fated, when in fact they’re merely the result of sloppy planning and a lack of consensus.
It’s the reason we’re still talking about whether people should be given the right to manage their own deaths - 20 years after Sue Rodriguez gave the last years of her life to an ultimately fruitless attempt to move the cause forward. And it’s why women in our own communities still have to work outside in the dark, where they can continue to be killed and beaten at breathtaking pace.
It’s why people are piling up on our streets despite more than two decades of talking about the need to act, and why most of the health reforms of the late 1980s targeting the region’s seniors fell apart a few years later. In a system where governments move in and out on waves of political favour and entrenched world views, no effort on any front can be sustained long enough for genuine systemic change.
As we learned during the federal election, even vital rights reforms like gay marriage can be shelved at any time in a country like ours. We congratulate ourselves for one step forward, but the possibility of two steps back is always close at hand.
Standing on such shifting sands makes me fear the futility of trying to make the world a better place, because there’s nothing saying that any of it will survive past a few years of earnest but unsustainable effort. On the other hand, to stop believing that dramatic reform is forever is too unsettling to contemplate.
I continue to wait for the revolution, and am discouraged that it seems to be nowhere in sight. I used to think women were going to be the ones to lead the charge, but the wind went out of that sail pretty fast, for reasons probably having to do with a generation of good feminists growing older, getting happy, and just not having the mojo anymore for a fight that the larger women’s community never showed much interest in.
Disparate views divide women as well, of course. We’re no better than men at reaching long-term consensus. We take up positions as rigidly as any man, and fight just as bitterly to stop those who don’t share our views. Even if we’d figured out by now how to rule the world, I suspect we’d still be hampered in our efforts by the collision of a number of strongly held female viewpoints out there as to how things ought to be done.
What’s a country to do? To begin with, acknowledge it. People think differently, even in a country as relatively cohesive as Canada. The reason the guy down the street drives you crazy is exactly the same reason why you drive him crazy: You disagree. He sees black and you see white, and each of you are baffled by the other.
We lose too much time to that bafflement. That and futile attempts to convince others to share our beliefs eat up years that would be much better spent in solving whatever problem has us worried.
We can wring our hands about Iran’s nuclear capability, or we can find our way to a new global agreement that recognizes how much every one of us has at stake on this issue. We can entrench ourselves a little deeper over the roots of homelessness, or we can get over it and start working on thoughtful, long-term policies that might actually address the problem.
Maybe we’ll never agree. But for the sake of the world, we do have to act.
Jan. 28, 2006
It would take much more than a mere 800 words to muse on what causes a person to look at the world a certain way, while another looks at it completely differently. Wars are fought over just such a thing, and human history is littered with the debris of the various solitudes bashing into one another.
But it’s certainly the great tragedy of the human condition. Our differences are always getting in the way. Whatever size the stage - a neighbourhood zoning dispute, a global crisis - each of us sees the world so differently as to find it inexplicable that others might see it otherwise.
Even when we agree long enough to actually solve problems, we seek reasons to disagree over the answers. Case in point: the news this week that British Columbians’ measurable health is the best in Canada, even while many of us believe that our health system is serving us poorly. Is the problem a disconnect between those who set health-care policy and their subjects? Or is it merely just more evidence of the contrarianism that defines our species?
The trouble is, the indecision is making a real hash of things. Not surprisingly, a fractious bunch of people with disparate views and short attention spans don’t do so well at the hard and painstaking work of building nations. So world events unfold as if fated, when in fact they’re merely the result of sloppy planning and a lack of consensus.
It’s the reason we’re still talking about whether people should be given the right to manage their own deaths - 20 years after Sue Rodriguez gave the last years of her life to an ultimately fruitless attempt to move the cause forward. And it’s why women in our own communities still have to work outside in the dark, where they can continue to be killed and beaten at breathtaking pace.
It’s why people are piling up on our streets despite more than two decades of talking about the need to act, and why most of the health reforms of the late 1980s targeting the region’s seniors fell apart a few years later. In a system where governments move in and out on waves of political favour and entrenched world views, no effort on any front can be sustained long enough for genuine systemic change.
As we learned during the federal election, even vital rights reforms like gay marriage can be shelved at any time in a country like ours. We congratulate ourselves for one step forward, but the possibility of two steps back is always close at hand.
Standing on such shifting sands makes me fear the futility of trying to make the world a better place, because there’s nothing saying that any of it will survive past a few years of earnest but unsustainable effort. On the other hand, to stop believing that dramatic reform is forever is too unsettling to contemplate.
I continue to wait for the revolution, and am discouraged that it seems to be nowhere in sight. I used to think women were going to be the ones to lead the charge, but the wind went out of that sail pretty fast, for reasons probably having to do with a generation of good feminists growing older, getting happy, and just not having the mojo anymore for a fight that the larger women’s community never showed much interest in.
Disparate views divide women as well, of course. We’re no better than men at reaching long-term consensus. We take up positions as rigidly as any man, and fight just as bitterly to stop those who don’t share our views. Even if we’d figured out by now how to rule the world, I suspect we’d still be hampered in our efforts by the collision of a number of strongly held female viewpoints out there as to how things ought to be done.
What’s a country to do? To begin with, acknowledge it. People think differently, even in a country as relatively cohesive as Canada. The reason the guy down the street drives you crazy is exactly the same reason why you drive him crazy: You disagree. He sees black and you see white, and each of you are baffled by the other.
We lose too much time to that bafflement. That and futile attempts to convince others to share our beliefs eat up years that would be much better spent in solving whatever problem has us worried.
We can wring our hands about Iran’s nuclear capability, or we can find our way to a new global agreement that recognizes how much every one of us has at stake on this issue. We can entrench ourselves a little deeper over the roots of homelessness, or we can get over it and start working on thoughtful, long-term policies that might actually address the problem.
Maybe we’ll never agree. But for the sake of the world, we do have to act.
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