Thank you, thank you, Warren Buffet, our go-to guy when we need sane comment from the super-rich. It hadn't escaped my attention that sacrifice and belt-tightening are words governments direct only at the lower income classes.
Sure, the rich will be able to afford bigger compounds and better weapons when it all goes sideways for good, but I can't believe they're any happier than the rest of us at where things are going. 

It's rough out there, but don't turn away

I made my way through the grim headlines flooding in from all sources this week, feeling anxious at the sheer abundance of bad news. The unanswered questions leaped out in every direction - no shortage of column fodder. But could I really bear to know more about any of it?

It’s a big question. There are days when it would be so appealing to just shut the door on trying to understand anything about anything.

Why the Air France pilots didn’t hear the “stall” alarm. What it means that the U.S. is falling apart. Why London is beset by violent riots. Why people are starving to death, struggling, hurting each other.

There are cheerier things to think about, so why wouldn’t we? But then I get to thinking about what would happen if we genuinely quit concerning ourselves with the problems of our world.

A lot of people seem to find that an appealing option. I just read about a mega-wealthy U.S. woman noted for the staggering amounts of fans she has attracted with her blog about cowboy life on her mega-ranch, with a spouse she calls the Marlboro Man.

She sells a fantasy, not this gritty, messy and unpredictable thing we call reality. She’s all country living, home-schooling and good food for your man. You won’t find any images of cadaverous Somali toddlers on a blog like that.

Over here in Reality Land, things aren’t so sunny. We live in a fast-flowing tide of world events, fed to us in real time through all the electronic gadgetry that now connects us to the events of this stressed-out, troubled world.

And with all that news comes a feeling: Wouldn’t my life be better if I didn’t know about all of this?

No wonder people check out. I regularly talk to friends who I once considered informed, but who now don’t have a clue about what’s going on outside of their immediate circles. They’re not paying attention at any level unless it directly involves them or their family.

Like I say, I can see the draw of that sometimes. Ignorance really can be bliss, at least until disaster strikes.

But what will happen if too many of us turn away from the pressing issues of the day? Who will be left to solve the problems?

Consider the case of the Air France jet crash, for instance. The inquiry going on right now into that fatal crash in 2009 has the feel of one of those distant stories from a land far away - a tragic event with little relevance to most of our lives.

Except that vast numbers of us rely on jet travel all the time. We put our lives directly into the hands of men just like those poor befuddled souls in the cockpit of Flight AF447. Whatever happened in the cockpit that day, every air traveller in the world has a personal stake in understanding it.

Good-news proponents would point to all the flights that never crashed that day as a better story. And they’ve got a point. Most planes don’t crash.

But this one did. And because the world’s information gatherers jumped on the inquiry as a story, we know much more about what went wrong - with how the pilots were prepared for the unthinkable, the way the stall alarm sounded, the confusion around communications and decision-making in those frightening final moments.

It’s an anxiety-inducing story. You can’t fault any frequent flyer for thinking that news about planeloads of relaxed passengers landing uneventfully would be preferable.

Unfortunately, focusing on what’s going right doesn’t change what’s going wrong. Bad news might be a downer, but it’s how we identify and address problems.  

There’s definitely such a thing as too much bad news, mind you.

Crime has been on the decline for years in Canada, particularly among youth. But one-off stories of individual crimes around the world still dominate the news.

The result: We waste our time electing governments that pander to our fears with promises of getting “tough on crime.” Not surprisingly, that just gets us more jails - and none of the social programs of 15 and 20 years ago that actually brought about the current drop in crime.

If you need a break from the gloom, by all means take one. Even cowgirls get the blues.

But please come back when you’re feeling better. The world needs you.

Here's a strongly worded comment piece from the Guardian on the London riots. It will really be quite a tragedy if government genuinely can't see the role that spending cuts and social policy played on creating the perfect climate for these riots.
Are they so married to their dogma that they'd rather see the riots as a random outburst of criminality among their young citizens - which truly would be a frightening development - instead of the highly predictable, preventable outcome of poverty, disenfranchisement and the absence of hope that it actually was? Now that's sad. 

Could willpower be the missing link in why some succeed and others don't? Check out this intriguing read on the subject. And wouldn't you know it - it's all about those preschool years, and how your genetics combines with your upbringing. But all is not lost if that period of your life wasn't so great, as they've done an experiment briefly detailed here that shows that a couple weeks of brushing your teeth with the wrong hand can kick-start a little willpower.
My partner's singing "Lady Willpower" now due to reading over my shoulder. Alas, that song's just about Gary Puckett and the Union Gap's seeming obsession with songs about trying to guilt young women into making out with him/them. 

The long wait for an easier death

“No consensus can be found in favour of the decriminalization of assisted suicide. To the extent that there is a consensus, it is that human life must be respected.”

With those words, Supreme Court Justice John Sopinka ended any hope Sue Rodriguez had of using her own death to change Canadian laws around assisted suicide. She got the word on Sept. 29, 1993, and less than five months later ended her life the old-fashioned way - illegally, helped along by a doctor who has never been publicly identified.

And for the most part, that has been that. A few criminal cases alleging assisted suicide pop up in the media from time to time, but little has changed. Imagine what the courageous Rodriguez might have to say if she’d lived long enough to see that we’d still be paralyzed over assisted suicide 18 years later.

But suddenly the issue is back in the news, with two different proponents now preparing to push challenges through Canada’s court system.

Lawyer Joe Arvay, acting on behalf of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, is representing Gloria Taylor. Like Rodriguez, the B.C. woman has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and wants the right to have someone assist her with her death when the time comes.

 Meanwhile, the Farewell Foundation for the Right to Die - a New Westminster group headed by a veteran of the right-to-die movement - is using its failed attempt to become a non-profit as reason for a constitutional challenge.

Foundation director and B.C. criminologist Russel Ogden has been in the media off and on for years as an advocate of assisted suicide, pursuing the issue with such intensity that it sometimes lands him in trouble with his college and university bosses. He’s got a clip on YouTube demonstrating how to kill yourself with helium.

He and Arvay both contend that much has changed since Rodriguez’s case, and that a legal challenge will have more traction this time around.

I’m not so sure.  Canadians still haven’t had a real conversation about the right to die.

Yes, more countries have changed their laws in the years since Rodriguez’s court fight. Their experiences have demonstrated that legalizing assisted suicide need not tear a society apart.  Oregon legalized assisted suicide the same year Rodriguez died, and in almost two decades only a scant 400 Oregonians - mostly older people with cancer - have chosen that option.

But if the incredibly affecting Rodriguez wasn’t enough to galvanize a country, I don’t know what the odds are for a challenge built around non-profit status. Perhaps Arvay will have more luck, although his goal of seeing Taylor’s challenge settled by November seems out of reach.

The Farewell Foundation was denied non-profit status in March by the B.C. Registrar of Companies, which noted in its decision that no organization whose purpose is criminal - in this case, assisting people to die - can be incorporated under the Society Act.

The foundation is leveraging that rejection into a larger fight about the constitutionality of the assisted-suicide laws. Its case in a nutshell: The activities of the Farewell Foundation are in fact lawful because the laws related to assisted suicide are themselves “unlawful.” 

(And if that doesn’t work, the foundation also filed a civil suit against the Attorney General of Canada challenging the constitutionality of the assisted-suicide prohibition.)

I watched old CBC footage of Rodriguez this week in news clips from the months before her death. I’d forgotten what an amazing advocate she was - so open and well-spoken, lighting up the screen with her big smile even in the late stages of a disease that was slowly taking away her every function.

If charisma had anything to do with whether justice prevailed, Rodriguez would have won her case hands down. The Farewell Foundation is taking things in a different direction, with an approach that will be a tougher sell with a public that still hasn’t sorted out its feelings around the right to die.

It could be that the concept of dying with dignity will find more traction this time around. The politically powerful baby boomer generation was perhaps too young during Rodriguez’s time to care much about the issues she was raising. That’s no longer the case.

A 2010 poll confirmed what other polls over the years have repeatedly found: That a majority of Canadians want assisted suicide legalized. But the missed opportunity of 1993 still hangs over us, and it seems we never quite want it enough.