Weekend Literary Supplement: "Digging Your Own Well", Part Thirteen

Sitting and Forgetting, or, Mind Fasting

One of the things I learned when I was at a Daoist retreat centre was a form of meditation called “just sitting”. And that's all they taught. You sat on a cushion and all the teacher did was walk around correcting your posture if you were slouching. You weren't expected to sit in a lotus posture or anything, you just sat as comfortably as possible. Nor were you supposed to sit for any specified length of time. If you found it too difficult to sit any longer, you were supposed to stop.

What was that all about?
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Sir Motley of Southurb sat leaning against his low table. He looked up to heaven and exhaled slowly. Disembodied, he seemed bereft of soul. Sir Wanderer of Countenance Complete, who stood in attendance before him, asked, “How can we explain this? Can the body really be made to become like withered wood? Can the mind really be made to become like dead ashes? The one who is leaning against the table now is not the one who was formerly leaning against the table.”

Zhuangzi, “On the Equality of Things”, Mair trans. "I'm making progress," said Yen Hui.

"What do you mean?" asked Confucius.
"I have forgotten rites and music."
"Not bad, but you still haven't got it."
Yen Hui saw Confucius again on another day and said, "I'm making progress."
"What do you mean?"
"I have forgotten humaneness and righteousness."
"Not bad, but you still haven't got it."
Yen Hui saw Confucius again on another day and said, "I'm making progress."
"What do you mean?"
"I sit and forget."
"What do you mean, 'sit and forget'?" Confucius asked with surprise.
"I slough off my limbs and trunk," said Yen Hui, "dim my intelligence, depart from my form, leave knowledge behind, and become identical with the Transformational Thoroughfare. This is what I mean by 'sit and forget'."

"If you are identical," said Confucius, "then you have no preferences. If you are transformed, then you have no more constants. It's you who is really the worthy one! Please permit me to follow after you."

Zhuangzi, “The Great Ancestral Teacher”, Mair trans.

What these two posts are talking about is Zuowang, or “sitting and forgetting”. A respected scholar of Daoism, Livia Kohn, describes this as: "a state of deep trance or intense absorption, during which no trace of ego-identity is felt and only the underlying cosmic current of the Dao is perceived as real" (from the Wikipedia.) Zhuangzi is describing the ultimate goal of “just sitting”, which is “sitting and forgetting”. What is it that people are supposed to be forgetting? I'd suggest that they are the delusions that cloud our minds and cut us off from the world as it really is.

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The thing about formal meditation practices is that no matter what you do, you are really only doing one particular thing, and, when you do it, you are prey to one particular problem. The thing you are doing is learning about your thinking. And the problem you face is that the act of thinking about thinking gets in the way of observing and learning about thinking.

When you are sitting on the mats meditating, you will notice that there are a lot of thoughts that rattle through your mind. “My legs hurt.” “What will I have for supper?” “Is my wife OK?”---and so on. If you stick with the practice over a long period of time, people generally start to find that their minds quiet down. Usually this involves some practice like taking deep breaths and counting them. “One, two, three, four, five,”---and so on. You will notice that you get distracted “That jerk at work so annoyed me today! Oh, yeah. I'm supposed to be meditating. One, two, three, four, five. Damn the boss! He shouldn't allow that jerk to get away with---. Oh yeah, meditation. One, two, three, four, Who does he think he is anyway! One, two, three, four---”. Oh crap. I forgot to meditate. I'm never going---. Whoops! One, two, three, four, five---”.

The thing about meditation is to observe this rattling, chattering, distracting “monkey mind” that intrudes on your existence. If you calm yourself and pay attention to it, the noise will begin to slowly drift away. You will gradually find that you can sit and count up to ten or twenty for longer and longer periods without being distracted by your thoughts. Other distractions will begin to present themselves, however. You will probably start falling asleep. But if you stick to the practice, day after day, and this too will pass. Many people then start to hallucinate. In my case, for example, one time I was sitting in meditation and suddenly I found myself downhill skiing at very high velocity.

These phenomenon are different from person to person, but predictable percentages of the population will manifest them in any given group. In fact, they are so predictable that the meditation master who taught me had a volunteer who's job it was to stand by with towels in case someone started to cry uncontrollably. I've seen this happen. A woman started to weep so much that she was given a towel to dry herself off. Later, I also went through a long period when I wept so much while meditating that each time I got off the cushion so many tears had flowed into my lap that I looked like I had peed my pants.

The great thing about this predictability is that it allows people to teach these methods with a fair degree of confidence that if someone sticks to the practice they will eventually gain the ability to quiet down and experience moments of clarity and peace with greater and greater regularity. And this new experience isn't just relegated to time spent on the cushions. In your day-to-day life you will also find that you are more peaceful, centred, and, have greater insight into how your own mind works. This will bleed over into having a better understanding about how other people's minds work, and, what subtle rules govern the world around you.

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As I said earlier, however, there is also a universal problem with meditation.

Early on I suggested that meditation is about dispelling delusions. These come in many sizes and shapes. Of course, what I've called the “monkey mind” is the source of many of them. They can be things like “I'm no good”, “I'm too fat”, and so on. Others are more subtle like “I simple cannot do that!” For example, I once saw a historical movie about King Charles the 2nd of England. His father had been deposed by revolutionaries and executed, and the son was living in exile with his mother. The scene showed her complaining bitterly because she had to eat off china plates that had been used before, washed and used again (ie: just like everyone else.) She felt that this was disgusting. Her son was appalled at this delusional thinking, but was forced to humour her in order to keep harmony in the family.

Outside of royal households delusions also reign supreme. People buy expensive homes that they cannot afford. People pursue careers that kill them with stress and over work. People piss away money that their families desperately need. People refuse to admit that people with different skin colour are human beings just like them. People complain bitterly about any attempt to build a sustainable society and deny the reality of climate change. A moment's thought will provide lots of examples. Sitting and forgetting is a wonderful corrective to delusional thinking because once you learn to quiet down the monkey mind, you gain the clarity to see your own personal delusions for what they are.

This is a general truth with, however, ONE ENORMOUS CAVEAT!!!!!!!!! In the New Testament Jesus talks about people looking to remove a speck of dust from another person's eye while walking around with a huge wooden beam in their own. The human mind is a very subtle and inventive thing, when we drive away the delusions we can see, invisible ones will try to move in and replace them. Some of the delusions that come from meditation are:

• an excessive love of peace and quiet, to the point of no longer being able to function around ordinary people
• an unwillingness to engage in society, to the point of refusing to work together for political issues, do charitable work, or, be a useful member of the community
• a belief in the ultimate metaphysical importance of “spiritual things”: for example, believing that simply meditating for long periods of time makes the world a better place all by itself
• becoming obsessed with teaching what you have learned through meditation to other people, whether or not they are capable of, or even interested in, learning it
• becoming addicted to altered states of consciousness and losing the ability to function in the world of ordinary people
  

Some of these delusions can grow into full-blown manias. A very small percentage of people will even develop real psychiatric problems and require treatment. Unfortunately, many people teaching meditation techniques tend to be people holding onto one of the more subtle delusions (ie: that meditation is a universal panacea that will solve all problems) which keeps them from understanding how it can lead to its own delusions and be outright dangerous for some.

A Daoist teaching book expresses the danger of excessive meditation through a story about an initiate who finds himself living a life of contemplation in a cave. One day he meets someone who teaches him a lesson.

---Hao T'ai-ku walked out of his cave to enjoy the peace and quiet of the surroundings. He noticed a man sitting under one of the arches of the bridge. The man was polishing a stone. Occasionally he would take the polished stone and look at it for a while, then he would resume polishing. He would polish a single stone until it becames so thin that it disintegrated; then he would pick up another stone and begin the process all over again. Hao T'ai-ku thought this behaviour strange and decided to ask the man the purpose of his activity. He said, “Sir, it appears that you are polishing stones for nothing. Your activity does not seem to lead to any accomplishment. What are you trying to do? Maybe I can help.” The man replied, “I am trying to make a mirror by polishing the stone.” Hao T'ai-ku said, “People make mirrors by polishing bronze, not stones. If you keep on polishing stones, you will never get what you want.” The man laughed and said, “You are telling me that if I stubbornly sit here and polish my stones, I shall never make a mirror! What about you? Do you think that by sitting here stubbornly in the cave you can become an immortal?” Hao T'tai-ku realized what the man was trying to teach him by his actions. But as he was about to ask this strange man for more instructions, the man suddenly disappeared. Hao T'ai-ku said to himself, “The sage was right. Stubbornly sitting here all the time is 'dead sitting.'” He went back into the cave, collected his belongings, and left the area.

Seven Taoist Masters: a Folk Novel of China, chapt 16
translated by Eva Wong. Shambhala, first published 1990, (ISBN: O-87773-544-1)

Sitting and forgetting is a wonderful practice to help people live better lives. But if it becomes an end in itself or reinforces a delusional belief system, it becomes yet another way of estranging yourself from the world around you.

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Moreover I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!

The Tyranny of Merit: Part Three, "Why Good Enough" is Good Enough

Michael Sandel

I started off this series talking about "Operation Varsity Blue", which was a scandal that involved wealthy individuals pulling strings in order to get their children into a small number of prestigious American universities. I then introduced a Harvard philosopher, Michael Sandel, who wrote a book titled The Tyranny of Merit. It suggests that our belief in and support for a meritocratic economy has severely damaged the sense of social solidarity in many nations. 

In the first part of my review, I discussed the poorly thought-out ideas that underlie our beliefs about whether or not someone "deserves" whatever the economy chooses to give them. In the second instalment, I talked about how this emphasis on a goofy understanding of "merit" results in masses of people defined as "losers" developing "ressentiment" towards the people that they've been told are "their betters". The suggestion is that this has fuelled a wave of destructive right-wing populism all over the world.  

In this final part, I'd like to spend some effort explaining how this belief system also creates misery for the people "of merit" who we think "deserve" the finer things in life. I also want to suggest one simple concept that could impart a great deal of sanity in our lives---if we took it to heart and used it to modify our economic model. 

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Making people more qualified for a specific job doesn't increase the number of positions---it just increases the competition for those jobs that already do exist.  You can't educate a population out of unemployment. Similarly, you can't educate a population out wealth stratification either. 

Education does work as an individual strategy, for a short period of time. Some people who are the first individuals that go the extra mile can get ahead of others that don't do that. But the problem is that everyone else quickly figures out what is going on, and copies the strategy. At that point, it ceases to be "the extra bit" and instead gets added onto "the bare minimum". 

I think that this should be pretty much self-evident, but certain elements of our political environment are so ideologically "welded" to the idea of merit and solving employment issues through education that I'm going to cite some evidence to support this point. For example, I found an interesting article titled Massification of higher education, graduate employment and social mobility in the Greater China region, by Ka Ho Mok which was published in 2016 by the British Journal of Sociology of Education, (37:1, 51-71, DOI: 10.1080/01425692.2015.1111751).

As we all know, there was a massive expansion of institutes of higher education in the US and Canada after WWII. (The University of Guelph is an example of this expansion.) This was predicated on the idea that for a nation to prosper in the modern world, it needs an educated workforce that can out-compete other nations. But, as we found out, no matter how "high tech" a country becomes, there is never going to be a need for more than a relatively few people who's expertise requires a university degree. That's why we have now Phds driving cabs. (And why I once walked into my basement to hear a couple tradesmen I'd hired arguing over Immanuel Kant.)

As Mok Ka Ho found out when he investigated the education statistics of Asia, and the People's Republic of China in particular, exactly the same thing seems to be happening there. China recently went through a period of dramatically expanding its higher education infrastructure and now finds itself facing the same over-supply of graduates that we already have in North America and Europe. Here are some graphs from his paper.

First, the rapid growth in Chinese government university capacity compared to the mature Asian economies (remember to add Hong Kong to China).

Next the increase in private (ie: "Minban") colleges in China.

And now we have un- and under-employed graduates from schools of higher education. 

As the author states in his conclusions, just creating more university graduates just makes it harder and harder for people to get one of the jobs that they expected to have. 

"In this case, not all youth completing higher education will get a good job. However, any youth who wants to have a better job must first obtain a higher education degree. Put differently, if everyone stands on tiptoe, nobody gets a better view; but if you do not stand on tiptoe, you have no chance of seeing." (Mok, p-10)

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I sweated and fussed over this article for a long time. It's not like regular, "legacy journalism", but I still think it raises issues that need to be mentioned. If you agree and you can afford it, why not subscribe? Pay Pal and Patreon make it easy to do.

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And of course, the competition that forces young people to "stand on tiptoe" doesn't end with higher education. According to a 2014 Gallup poll, in the USA 50% of salaried workers (ie: the people who are "winners") work over 50 hours a week---with 25% working over 60. 

And lets not forget that commuting times add to the work week. In 2021 the United States Census Bureau states that the average one way commute is now 27.6 minutes, which adds up to 4.6 hours a week. So add that to the numbers I cited above. (No wonder working from home is so popular!)

The nasty workload that is imposed on "winners" dramatically lowers any sense of sympathy that might have been felt towards losers in days past. The sense of "noblesse oblige" disappears when you feel that you have had to work far too hard to get and keep your position of "privilege". But there is another side to this that needs to be pointed out. 

Robert D. Putnam, Twitter

People who have precious little time for themselves also have precious little time for the community too. And this can be a real problem. In 1995, the sociologist Robert D. Putnam wrote a paper titled Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital. (He later expanded it into a best-selling book for both academics and the general public.) In it he argued that in addition to the all the various other types of capital that influence the productivity of a society (financial, human, infrastructure, etc), there is also the complex interactions between people in formal groups---"social capital"--- that build a sense of solidarity and allow for informal reciprocity that is important to the full functioning of the society. 

He argued that in the United States its institutions are based upon an assumption of very high levels of social capital but that this has been in steep decline since the 1970s. This erosion is undermining the democratic institutions that has sustained it since the revolution. Putnam cites a lot of examples, but here's one paragraph that will give you the flavour of the statistics he mentions.

"Similar reductions are apparent in the numbers of volunteers for mainline civic organizations, such as the Boy Scouts (off by 26 percent since 1970) and the Red Cross (off by 61 percent since 1970). But what about the possibility that volunteers have simply switched their loyalties to other organizations? Evidence on "regular" (as opposed to occasional or "drop-by") volunteering is available from the Labor Department's Current Population Surveys of 1974 and 1989. These estimates suggest that serious volunteering declined by roughly one-sixth over these 15 years, from 24 percent of adults in 1974 to 20 percent in 1989. The multitudes of Red Cross aides and Boy Scout troop leaders now
missing in action have apparently not been offset by equal numbers of new recruits elsewhere."

(Putnam, p-227, Journal of Democracy 6 (1),1995)

He deals with the potential objection that new, "more relevant" social capital organizations may have grown up to replace things like the Boy Scouts and Red Cross by saying that they are important, but aren't remotely the same. The groups that are withering away require regular face-to-face interactions between people who live in the same geographic community. In contrast, groups like the American Association of Retired People (AARP) and the Sierra Club generally involve not much more than cutting a cheque once in a while. 

"These new mass-membership organizations are plainly of great political importance. From the point of view of social connectedness, however, they are sufficiently different from classic "secondary associations" that we need to invent a new label-perhaps "tertiary associations." For the vast majority of their members, the only act of membership consists in writing a check for dues or perhaps occasionally reading a newsletter. Few ever attend any meetings of such organizations, and most are unlikely ever (knowingly) to encounter any other member. The bond between any two members of the Sierra Club is less like the bond between any two members of a gardening club and more like the bond between any two Red Sox fans (or perhaps any two devoted Honda owners): they root for the same team and they share some of the same interests, but they are unaware of each other's existence. Their ties, in short, are to common symbols, common leaders, and perhaps common ideals, but not to one another."

 (Putnam, p-228)

As for the causes of this decline, he suggests several different possible causes:

• entry of women into the workforce
• increased mobility as people move to follow jobs
• the Technological Transformation of Leisure, by which he means television and then the Internet (which includes things like reading this blog and gaming)

I can add a few more, such as the rise of tourism. To cite a personal example, when I started being involved with a woman from another country I began travelling to visit her during my vacations. This dramatically cut the amount of time I had to devote things like politics and other forms of activism. (Especially as I worked evening shifts and couldn't make any meetings outside of vacation time.)

And, I'd like to add, the increased competition needed to get and keep a good job is probably also a factor. No matter how committed someone might be to the ideals of scouting or the Red Cross, someone who is working over 60 hours plus five more commuting every week is not going to have the time or energy to devote to any sort of community organization.   

It might seem to the casual reader that it's no big deal that increasing numbers of salaried employees can no longer get involved in volunteer organizations. But if think about it, these people have specialized skills and access to an entire world that working stiffs like me often know nothing about. Cutting these people out of the social capital matrix is bound to have an out-sized implication. 

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So what exactly could be done to deal with the problems of meritocracy? Sandel ends The Tyranny of Merit with a suggestion for the problem that started off this series. He suggests that the small number of elite universities should award positions based on a lottery. This has a variety of benefits. First, it allows everyone who wants to get into those schools a chance to relax the intense competition. In Mok's language, it would allow them to get off "their tiptoes". Second, it would mean that not being a graduate of an elite school is evidence of being unlucky, not being somehow "substandard".

One thing that I noticed while reading this part of Sandel's book was what he didn't say. It's obvious that even with a lottery, there would have to be some sort of "standard" that individuals would have to pass in order to qualify for a ticket in the first place. That means that in effect, these elite schools would cease looking for "the absolute best" and instead would only want a random selection of those who are "good enough". 

Changing our society from one that seeks out "the best and brightest" to one that is looking for "good enough" would be absolutely game changing. 

I know one thing that I'd be looking forward to, is an end to complaints that people are getting hired to good jobs that they aren't "the best" at. For example, I've heard time and time again in my life about women and people of colour being hired just because of the placement of their reproductive organs or pigment in their skin. Generally, this comes from a white male who thinks that he would have had the job if it was awarded "fairly". (This is an example of the ressentiment that I discussed in my second article on Sandel's book.)

This isn't to say that I agree with the assessment that said individuals weren't "the best", but there are so many intangibles involved in a good hire that cannot be quantified. For example, there has to be a benefit to having police officers that look like people in the community they are supposed to "protect and serve"---instead of the old days when cops were all big white men. Once we accept that the objective basic qualifications for a job are defined, then hiring committees can then think about what other things they want in a recruit---without having to justify their decision to every single person who thinks that they would have been better candidates.

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The big point of using the term "good enough" for hires, though, is to drive a stake through the heart of the idea that the well off and the poor both deserve their lots in life. This does, however, leave open the question of how we are going to divide the economy's spoils. 

I see this as a key part of the utility of getting rid of the meritocratic ideal. If we accept that there just aren't enough good jobs for everyone and that there are usually lots more qualified people than positions, we will be able to have a serious conversation about what we are going to do for the majority of people. That's because it puts us back in the same place where we were before the Industrial Revolution. At that time people were poor simply because they weren't born into the aristocratic class and no one beat themselves up because the weren't deserving of anything better. Similarly, aristocrats who had any self-awareness realized that the only way they could justify their wealth and position would be to live a life of public service (that's where noblesse oblige comes from). 

The big difference is that we are now living in what economists call a "post-scarcity economy". By that, I mean a situation where there is more than enough goods like food, shelter, etc, for everyone to live a decent life. Moreover, due to automation, full employment is no longer necessary to achieve this abundance. This means that any poverty we see around us is a problem of distribution failure instead of absolute dearth.  

So why do we still have poverty? It's just because of the way we think. We believe, for a variety of reasons, that some people deserve to be rich and others deserve to be poor. As the Buddhists would say, our society is suffering from a collective delusion. That's why Sandel says the meritocracy ideal is a Tyranny---it is keeping us from creating a much better egalitarian world. 

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This is where the idea of a Guaranteed Annual Income enters the scene. If we decide to bring back the sort of taxation regime that existed in the 1950s, the government would be able to fund a basic income that will ensure that no one lives in poverty. And once that was in place, the issue of why some people are poor or not ceases to be an issue of metaphysics, theology, or, crowd psychology, and instead becomes simply irrelevant.

Here's an neat video that explains how seriously "out of whack" people's notions about wealth distribution are in the USA. (Canada is in a much better place, but we are evolving towards the American situation---as is most of the rest of the world. Wealth stratification is a universal problem.)

If this sounds depressing, just remember that there is no objective reality behind this problem---it's simply an issue of what ordinary voters believe. If enough of us wake up to the real situation we find ourselves in, we can toss overboard old ideas about how society operates and experiment until we find a system that works better for us all. 

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That's enough about the Tyranny of Merit. Make sure you are vaccinated, still wear a mask and social distance when it makes sense to do so. Just remember that if you have had the shot, you can still get the bug which means you can give it to someone else. You probably won't get very sick, but if you give it to someone else it might end up with someone who will. Have fun as the restrictions ease off, but just remember that we are still a long way from the pandemic being over!

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Moreover I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!

Weekend Literary Supplement: "Digging Your Own Well", Part Twelve

Hard Versus Soft, or, Keeping Your Spirit “Whole”

At one point in my taijiquan training I was taught how to take a punch. What I had to do was stand in a particular stance and another student hit me as hard as he could on the chest. If I flinched or tightened up the result was a horrible bruise that would last for weeks. But I learned that if I kept totally relaxed the force of the punch would flow through my rib cage, into my spine, and through my legs and feet into the floor. This isn't a metaphor. I could feel the force flow like an electric current through my body---leaving me totally unharmed.

The soft overcame the hard.

This wasn't the result of some occult power. It was just that the inherent resilience of my bodily structure is enough to avoid injury as long as I don't “freeze” it by tensing my muscles. It's exactly the same principle that a high school chemistry teacher shows when he dips a rubber ball in liquid nitrogen and the shatters it like glass when he tries to bounce it off the floor.

..........

Zhuangzi relates that Confucius was once watching a huge cataract: “No tortoise, alligator, fish or turtle could swim there.” Yet he was surprised to see an old man swimming in the middle of the rapids. Thinking that he had fallen in, Confucius sent his disciples out along the river to try to save him. After a while, this fellow came out of the water on his own, which amazed the sage.

Confucious followed after the man and inquired of him, saying, “I thought you were a ghost, but when I looked more closely I saw that you are a man. May I ask if you have a special way for treading the water?
“No, I have no special way. I began with what was innate, grew up with my nature, and completed my destiny. I enter the very centre of the whirlpools and emerge as a companion of the torrent. I follow along with the way of the water and do not impose myself on it. That's how I do my treading.”
“What do you mean by 'began with what was innate, grew up with your nature, and completed your destiny'?” asked Confucious.
“I was born among these hills and feel secure among them---that's what's innate. I grew up in the water and feel secure in it---that's my nature. I do not know why I am like this, yet that's how I am---that's my destiny.”

(Zhuangzi, “Outer Chapters”, “Understanding Life”, Section Eight, Victor Mair trans.)

Instead of fighting against the current, the old man flowed with it. When the current pushed him away from his destination, he let himself go with it. When it pushed him towards it, he added a few strokes. Before long, he arrived where he wanted to go.

Being soft is not the same thing as being weak. Instead, it about being “non-resisting”.

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And non-resisting is not about just deciding to be non-resistant. Tensing up before the fist hits you is not a voluntary response---it is instinctive. So being “soft” requires more than just a conscious decision, it requires a revolution in your being. Zhuangzi talks about this at length. He has Liezi (a master of the Dao) ask another sage (Director Yin) about what is required.

“The ultimate man can walk under water without drowning, can tread upon fire without feeling hot, and can soar above the myriad things without fear. May I ask how he achieves this?”
“It's because he guards the purity of his vital breath,” said Director Yin, “it's not a demonstration of his expertise or daring.

He goes on to give a revealing example.

“If a drunk falls from a carriage, even if it is going very fast, he will not die. His bones and joints are the same as those of other people, but the injuries he receives are different. It's because his spirit is whole. He was not aware of getting into the carriage, nor was he aware of falling out of it. Life and death, alarm and fear do not enter his breast. Therefore, he confronts things without apprehension. If someone who has gotten his wholeness from wine is like this, how much more so would one be who gets his wholeness from heaven! The sage hides within his heavenly qualities, thus nothing can harm him...”

(Zhuangzi, “Understanding Life”, Part Two, Mair trans)

...........

Yet another example comes from a boatman.

Yen Yűan inquired of Confucius,saying,”When I was crossing the gulf of Goblet Deep, the ferryman handled the boat like a spirit. I asked him about it, saying, 'Can handling a boat be learned?' 'Yes', said he, 'good swimmers can learn quickly. As for divers, they can handle a boat right away without ever having seen one.' I asked him why this was so, but he didn't tell me. I venture to ask what you think he meant.”

“A good swimmer can learn quickly because he forgets about the water,” said Confucius. “As for a diver being able to handle a boat right away without ever having seen one, it's because he regards the watery depths as if they were a mound and the capsizing of a boat as if it were the rolling back of a carriage. Capsizing and rolling back could unfold a myriad times before him without affecting his heart, so he is relaxed wherever he goes.”

Confucius then goes on and gives another example that stresses the importance of keeping your “spirit whole”

“He who competes for a piece of tile displays all of his skill; he who competes for a belt buckle gets nervous; he who competes for gold gets flustered. His skill is still the same, but there is something that distracts him and causes him to focus on externals. Whoever focuses on externals will be clumsy inside.”

(Zhuangzi, “Understanding Life”, Part Three, Mair trans)

The archer who is competing for a prize is not afraid of drowning or getting nasty bruises. But his mind is distracted from the act of shooting his bow by considering what he would do with his prize. This is the point of the following apocryphal story:

A martial arts student went to his teacher and said earnestly, “I am devoted to studying your martial system. How long will it take me to master it.”
The teacher’s reply was casual, “Ten years.” Impatiently, the student answered, “But I want to master it faster than that. I will work very hard. I will practice everyday, ten or more hours a day if I have to. How long will it take then?”
The teacher thought for a moment, “20 years.”

...........

Being “soft” instead of “hard” is a relatively easy concept to understand. But how one becomes truly “soft” is not. “Hardness” involves separating yourself from the universe (or Dao) around you. That punching exercise that I introduced this section was not called “taking a punch” in my school, but rather “exchanging energy”. It was not considered a skill that was to be developed to protect you in a fight, but a way of helping one another to develop a deeper understanding of the Dao.

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Moreover I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!

Party Politics: Part 2-A, Running for Office with Aisha Jahangir

Aisha Jahangir, Facebook

In my last article on this topic, I interviewed Michelle Bowman to talk about the process of seeking the nomination to run during a general election. For this one I had a conversation with Aisha Jahangir to help readers get a feel for what it's like to run as a candidate. For those of you who don't remember, she ran for the NDP in the last federal election. (She recently was acclaimed as the candidate in the next one too.) 

Cloudwalking Owl · Who Is Aisha Jhangir

The first part of our conversation illustrates two things about Aisha that I want to emphasize. First, she's really got a "fire in her belly" for health issues. That's important, because there's a lot of work involved in running for office and the odds are pretty heavily stacked against her winning. And unless you are totally committed to the cause, the effort of running for election will burn someone out very fast. Secondly, we had a hard time finding a time to talk. That's hardly surprising, because she is a mother and a healthcare professional in the middle of a pandemic. I think that this is an important point, because it shows that she has the energy and drive to survive in the political sphere. And as the saying goes "If you want something done, ask a busy woman".

Cloudwalking Owl · Why Run For The NDP

Because Ms. Jahangir is so motivated by concern about the health system, I decided to "fact check" her. 

First, I tried to find out the percentages of full versus part-time work for Canadian nurses, but they were hard to find. The best I could get was a 2019 study by the Canadian Institute for Health Information that included numbers in it's break down by province---but they didn't have a nation-wide number. Here's the info for Ontario:

 

As you can see, only 67.5% of Registered Nurses and 55.6% of Licensed Practical Nurses are full time---the rest may be working 40 or more hours a week, but that would either involve working at several institutions at the same time, or, getting more hours but still being paid with a lower rate of pay plus no benefits (ie: payment into a pension plan). And, as we learned with our Long Term Care facilities, it is a really bad idea to have people working part time at different institutions during a pandemic. 

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I put a lot of work into doing interviews, editing them, fact-checking what I'm told, and, writing down the results. I also incur expenses for things like publishing the sound files on line, and, subscribe to a news rating service, an on-line library, and, several news sources. If you like what I write and you can afford it, why not subscribe? It's easy to do through Patreon and Pay Pal.

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As for the cost of drugs, comparing them across countries is really complex. Luckily I found a Rand Corporation study from 2021 that tried to do this by comparing US wholesale drug prices with those of several other nations---including Canada. Here are three graphs that show their findings.

 

The first thing to understand about these graphs is that the numbers for each country are a percentage of the US cost for a basket of drugs. That means if a drug costs $100 in America and the graph lists it at 200% of what the same thing costs in Canada, that means that it costs $50 here. That means, paradoxically, the higher the number is on the top of the individual country's bar, the less it costs in real terms.

The three graphs split the market into generics, patented brand names, and, the two types of drugs averaged out. In the US, copyright drugs are significantly higher priced than in any other country. But at the same time, generics seem to be cheaper there than in any other "developed" country. (I wouldn't be surprised, for example, if India produces cheaper generics.) The additional prices for patented drugs outweighs the savings on generics, though. Which means the total average drug costs in the US are more than anywhere else. 

Also, please note that these numbers are based on wholesale prices, not retail. That means that there may actually be a difference based on what sort of mark-ups are done in the actual pharmacy.

Once you understand the above points, you see that our prices in Canada are higher than France, Italy, and, the UK for all three aggregated groups of drugs. Moreover, Canada also pays more on average than the entire list of 33 nations that the Rand study used to base their study on. (The average of the entire list is the last bar labelled "All Countries".) It appears that drug prices are yet another example where we look great compared to our neighbours South of the border, but not so when compared to Europe. 

And, of course, we all know that Canada doesn't have a universal socialized prescribed medicine system. There are, however, several complicated "work-arounds" that exist to offer drug coverage to different segments of the population based on need. Rather than try to explain this, I'll just insert the following YouTube video produced by the Oncology Drug Access Navigators of Ontario (ODAN). This appears to me to be a non-profit that helps people with cancer navigate the complex bureaucracy which gives financial assistance to those who need it. (Of course, you have to wonder about how useful a government assistance program really is, if a non-profit comes into existence just to help people take advantage of the program. Couldn't the bureaucracy do a better job of helping people access the program?)

The above information brings together the two halves of a public health system. First, prices have to be controlled---which is where the "single-payer" side of our medical services comes into play. That is the process where the federal government tells medical providers what they are and are not allowed to charge for any given procedure. This prevents the doctors and hospitals from bankrupting OHIP. Canada is failing on that front because drug companies are charging more here than they do in other countries with single-payer prescription drug systems.

The second part is the government program that pays the costs of patients. A national drug policy would be able to bring in the cost savings of the single payer system, which would then allow the government to cover everyone through a universal system---instead of the current fragmented system where some folks have drugs covered by company benefits, others get it through a means-tested, or, age-based system, and, the folks who pay out of their own pockets. Without a government payment system, there are people who don't have either a private or government insurance program and find they cannot afford to buy the medicine that a doctor prescribes.

All of this is just to say that Ms. Jahangir's experience as a nurse seems to be pretty much spot-on with regard to nursing and drugs. 

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I've gotten into this in some detail because I think it's really important to understand people's motivation when they get into politics. At one time I thought that it was important for an MP to have as wide-ranging a view of issues as possible. That's because the government of Canada has look out for the interests of everyone on every issue. That invariably means that conflicts will arise between people's particular concerns. 

In my case, in the past I've been skeptical of the NDP because I suspected that when push comes to shove they were more interested in issues like healthcare than the environment---and would always trade concern over climate change off in order to get something like a national drug plan. And that's why I have a history of supporting the Green Party. (That's no secret if you know anything about me.)

But as I've gotten older, I have come to the conclusion that we all have different life experiences and it's asking too much to expect people to become dispassionate, logic-slingers like Data or Spock from Star Trek. Instead, I think it's a good thing for candidates to have their own passions and to let them out for everyone to see. Then voters will have a good idea about who they are voting for, and why. When the people who win end up in caucus and Parliament-as-a-whole, then they are going to have to "fight it out" to see what ends up being a priority.

I'm still concerned because people have a very strong bias towards what they've personally experienced in their lives. But if someone's passion is something I have lots of sympathy towards, like socialized medicine, I'll just have to hope that he or she will still have some room to support other issues too. Indeed, without broad and deep support for environmental issues, there's little sense in electing people who focus on the environment because the other parties and the general public will just sabotage all efforts at getting something done. Big issues require broad consensus to solve---.   

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This article has run on and I still have lots more to write about Aisha's experiences as a candidate, so I'll save it for the next instalment. Until then, get your shot, keep your distance, and, wear a mask. The virus is still out there and you can still get it and spread it even if you are fully vaccinated (everything is a question of percentages). Take care, things can still fall apart---look at the UK and Holland, if you want to see how badly.

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Moreover I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with.

Weekend Literary Supplement: "Digging Your Own Well", Part Eleven

Male Versus Female

People associate Daoism with the Yin Yang symbol. The idea is that there are two elements in life that balance each other. One way of applying this dualism is to see the world as being divided into male and female. Balance comes from accepting both equally. Even though Daoism accepts the necessity of both elements embodied in the Yin Yang, it suggests that we should have a preference for the feminine over the masculine. In contrast, Western society is profoundly sexist and anti-feminine. It has been this way for so for so long and so deeply that it can be very hard to recognize this as bias. Instead, it just seems “obviously true”.

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Men are supposedly more courageous than women. They are also more “stoic” and able to suffer pain. That's why only men have traditionally been soldiers. But if that is the case, consider this old European saying: “Women fight their battles on the birthing chair”. Even today giving birth is tremendously painful and still sometimes dangerous. Before modern medicine---and especially during the early industrial revolution---it was often fatal. Health issues aside, being a single mother is often a sentence to a lifetime of brutal poverty. Yet how often has anyone heard a woman say that they are too afraid to have a child? Men who fight in battles have to conquer their fears, but so do women when they get pregnant.

..........

Since 9/11 fire fighting has become our definition of a heroic job. Firemen run into burning buildings to save lives, which is something most of us would hesitate to do. But I'd like to offer another example that should be put alongside these men: nurses. If COVID, SARS, Ebola, or, Malberg virus hits you, there is probably going to be a woman wearing protective gear who is going to take your blood, and, wipe up your vomit and diarrhea, and maybe even hold your hand. She knows that no matter what precautions she takes, she might still get sick, and maybe even die. Yet, she still does it. Nurses are just as much heroes as firefighters! They can be soft, wear perfume, etc, but they sometimes have to be really brave to do their jobs.

..........

Men are big and strong. They work in construction and use big heavy tools, carry bags of concrete, throw around cement blocks and so on. Women just aren't strong enough to do that sort of thing. Well, elephants can carry weights that would crush a man. In the grand scheme of things, the average man is only slightly stronger than the average woman. A strong man can pick up an eighty pound bag of concrete to load a cement mixer---but he can't pick up a one hundred and eighty pound bag. So what if the average strong woman can only pick up a forty pound bag? She will just have to move two bags instead of one. The problem isn't that women are inherently the “weaker sex”, it's rather that the tools and materials of jobs like construction are designed around a specific, masculine idea of what a person can or cannot lift. Change the design criteria, and most women could work in male-dominated fields, like the trades.

...........

There is nothing at all wrong with being a man. But we live in a profoundly sexist culture. And in the process of putting women down, we have also created a stereotypical description of what it means to be a human being. We do this by putting down those particular attributes that we associate with femininity. Women are supposed to be subtle, nurturing, concerned about feelings, and, supportive. Men are supposed to be dynamic, creative, analytical, and, competitive. There is nothing inherently wrong with any of these ideals. But if any of them become over-emphasized, they can damage individuals and society.

If we favour action to the point of discouraging attention to subtleties we start doing things by brute force which is both destructive and wasteful. If we favour creating the new to the point of becoming indifferent to what we already have, we will eliminate many important and useful things---often before we even understand their value. If we reduce every decision to a simple rationalist calculus and ignore the concerns of people who cannot express themselves in that framework, we run the risk of making catastrophic mistakes simply because we refused to see the problem from a different perspective. And, if we reduce all human interaction to a competition, we will lose the opportunity to gain the advantages that accrue from co-operation.

Daoists emphasize feminine qualities because in a profoundly sexist society it is the only way to reassert balance.

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Moreover I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!

The Tyranny of Merit: Part Two, the Politics of Ressentiment

Michael Sandel (photo c/o Harvard U.)

In the first instalment of this series, I introduced the ideas of professor Michael J. Sandel as revealed in his book The Tyranny of Merit. As I pointed out in that article, he sees one of the key flaws of our present economic system is the poorly-thought-out idea that some people "deserve" to be rich or at least well-off, while others "deserve" to be poor. In this article I want to show how this situation has created a politics of misplaced emotional reaction towards the tyranny of merit. 

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In order to understand what follows, I first want to examine two different words that mean similar---but significantly different things. The first is resentment which is an ordinary English word that means "Indignation or ill will stemming from a feeling of having been wronged or offended" according to Wordnik. There's another word, ressentiment, that I want to introduce (I don't remember Sandel mentioning it in his book), which is a French word that was adopted by the philosophers Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche. As the Wikipedia defines it:

...ressentiment is a sense of hostility directed toward an object that one identifies as the cause of one's frustration, that is, an assignment of blame for one's frustration. The sense of weakness or inferiority complex and perhaps even jealousy in the face of the "cause" generates a rejecting/justifying value system, or morality, which attacks or denies the perceived source of one's frustration. This value system is then used as a means of justifying one's own weaknesses by identifying the source of envy as objectively inferior, serving as a defence mechanism that prevents the resentful individual from addressing and overcoming their insecurities and flaws. The ego creates an enemy in order to insulate itself from culpability.

Wikipedia

The difference between ordinary resentment and philosophical ressentiment is subtle, but I think important. The key distinction is that with regard to resentment, the person feeling it has no doubts about his own value. She knows that what is being done to her has no valid justification, so she is angry about it. In an aristocratic society the peasants might be angry about the fact that the local lord is rich and they are poor, but the emotion is simple and never self-directed. These people just want to get rid of the parasitical aristocrats who feed off the work of the peasantry.

In contrast, people feeling ressentiment seem to generally have no problem with the idea of a meritocratic hierarchy, just those people who have gotten ahead because of what they consider "gaming the system". Unfortunately, a significant number of people believe that these lowlifes have effectively taken over and they use the government to abuse what Richard Nixon used to call "the silent majority".

What I mean by "gaming the system" is a very specific type of behaviour. Their hero, Donald Trump, isn't doing that when he avoids paying taxes---because, as he says "everyone does it" and "it's just the smart thing to do". Instead, the populist hordes are seething with ressentiment against the "elite" (the "swamp" that populists in the US say that they want to drain, and, in Canada the "Laurentian elite") who control their lives through liberal politicians , the bureaucracy, legacy news media, and, academics. The problem with these folks is that they increasingly dominate the world but support policies that are fundamentally incomprehensible to people who lack higher education.

So many things are like that---climate change, Covid-19, systemic racism, the legal system, zoning laws, etc, are all issues of tremendous public importance but are incomprehensible unless you have a university degree in a specific field. Indeed, it must seem to many of the people I'm talking about that an alien race has invaded the world and is now running it according to some incomprehensible agenda. This is why they repeat paranoid slogans like "Make America Great Again!", "The Jews will not replace us!", and, "Stop the white genocide!" It also explains the outlandish conspiracy theories that speak of Jewish lizard space people taking over, the secret pedophile elite that fuel the Democratic party with the blood of tortured children, and so on.

And yet, the paradox that lies underneath the hostility seems to be an unconscious sense of self-loathing. That's because populist supporters really do believe in the meritocracy. These are the people who believe in the importance of being quiet, working hard, and, waiting your turn---that's why they get so enraged at the idea of using quotas to allow women and minorities into good schools and good jobs. That's also why they get so angry at the idea of people getting food stamps, health care, and, welfare. Moreover, on some level even the wildest reactionaries have to admit that scientists and academics aren't all fools locked in an ivory tower. The fruits of their labours enrich us all. Higher education is undeniably the goose lays gold eggs. And yet, these people who never did get the credentials that would allow them to become part of the elite resent the fact that even though they value hard work and competition more than anyone else---in the race of life, they suspect that they have come dead last.   

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If you like to read the "Guelph-Back-Grounder"---and you can afford it---why not subscribe? It's easy to do using Pay Pal and Patreon.

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I would argue that any society that purports to be a total Meritocracy will inevitably foster ressentiment among it's citizenry. That's because it fosters a double-sided myth that tells people who "succeed" that they are totally the authors of that success. Similarly, those that "fail" have no one to blame for their position but themselves. If you buy into this fairy tale (and almost all of us do to some extent), it weakens the social cohesion that used to exist when people really believed "there but for the grace of God goeth I". 

Farther down I've cued up a YouTube clip from the amazing movie Monster that illustrates this chasm between "winners" and "losers". But first, I'm going to share a personal story.   

When I started out in my work life I had a great many skills and a strong work ethic. That's what happens when you grow up on a farm---especially if your father dies when you are young, and, you and your brother have to run it from an early age. But I had absolutely no social skills because I had spent pretty much all my non-school time working the farm. (For example, most summers I never met anyone my own age from the last day of school in May to the first day in October.) And because I never had the opportunity to get an "after school job", I had no idea at all about how one goes about finding work. 

The day arrived when I had to find a job. I'd heard about having to have good clothes, so I found something I thought was presentable. On tv I'd seen people go to employment agencies, so I looked in the yellow pages and found one in Guelph. I didn't book an appointment and just thought I'd show up in person and book one with the receptionist. 

Well, no one "just shows up", and the receptionist was surprised when I walked through a group of people waiting and asked to talk to the guy who ran the business. Instead of booking an appointment, she just called her boss and he told her to see me in. I walked into his office---about as clueless as if I'd fallen off a turnip truck, which in fact I pretty much had. 

The man behind the desk was puzzled, but quickly figured out what was going on. He took a few moments to give me some good advice and then sent me on my way without diminishing my sense of self-worth. In retrospect, he was a very classy guy. 

Contrast that with the following movie clip. For those who don't know the story, the character sitting across the desk is modeled on a real person, Aileen Wuornos. She had been horribly abused both by her family, then people in her community, and, finally by her clients as a prostitute. Just like me, in this scene she is trying to claw her way out of that situation, and, just like me, she was totally oblivious to all the subtle elements of life that she didn't understand. The difference was that I had a LOT more opportunities in my life than she did, and, I was treated with a lot more kindness and empathy when I made a similar "job search" faux pas. 

It's true that the woman storms out angry about the fact that the fellow interviewing her is making assumptions about her intrinsic worth without having a clue about all the problems she's had to face from an early age. But it's important to listen to the man too. He's being a class-A dick, but he is also venting his own personal frustration about the huge amounts of effort he's had to put into get his job. (Perhaps he wanted to spend some time having fun on Daytona Beach too.)

If memory serves, the character based on Wuornos falls into despair after this attempt to drag herself into mainstream life. And since despair is the mother of all other sins, she ends up killing several truck drivers for their money. (Maybe---unlike movies, real life rarely fills in all the details.) She may not know exactly why she is trapped in a Hellish existence, but on some level I have to believe that she thinks she is the author of her own problems. That's what the world around us tells us to think, and, it requires a great deal of knowledge and self-confidence to push back against this narrative. (That is partially why I'm writing this series of articles.) Most people simply can't see the big picture, so they internalize and blame themselves.

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Here's an animated short produced by the Royal Society of the Arts and narrated by Sandel. It's pretty dense, so I would suggest that readers look at it several times to tease out all the different issues mentioned. 

One of the more puzzling things that I have noticed listening to people who support populists of the Donald Trump ilk are two things: first, that they are really, really angry, and, second, that they can't really articulate what they are so angry about---so they just latch onto whatever stupid thing they've recently heard or read on line. 

I think that's why---as a general rule---no matter how much evidence people put in front of them to dispel whatever kooky thing they are saying, it generally has no effect whatsoever. Indeed, the one response that I hear over and over again is anger about "not being heard", or, about those who disagree with them being "arrogant". This makes no sense at all if I assume that what they are feeling is resentment about some sort of objective and easily identified wrong. But it does compute if what they are feeling is a welling-up of inarticulate ressentiment against a world where they feel that they are losers---even though (actually, especially because) they pretty much agree with the system that's holding them down. 

That's the nub of the problem. 

Most working people who support right-wing populism don't resent their economic reality. Indeed, they've internalized its values to the point where they actually believe that if they work hard they are guaranteed to get ahead. They believe that they have merit, that they "deserve". If you believe this, it is tremendously galling to fail. But they simply cannot chalk up their problems to "CAPITALISM". That's what "lefties" like yours truly think---and they have nothing but contempt for people like me.

Without any critical analysis to guide them, the only thing they have left are patently goofy conspiracy theories. George Soros, Q-Anon, White Genocide, Bill Gates, the stolen election---all of these things are explanations about how the "elites" have biased the competition and let people who aren't as hard-working as them "jump the queue" and push them to the back of the line. It's all nonsense, but they won't hear a word of evidence against it, because they are true believers in both Capitalism and the meritocratic myth.

I came to this conclusion because I find that these are the people---above all others---who complain whenever anyone is given something that they didn't "deserve". These folks oppose welfare, food stamps, universal medical coverage, housing for the homeless, support for the addicted, etc. They are also the ones who are the most angry to see people that they didn't think "measure up" being given what they think is "preferential treatment". That includes quotas to hire women fire fighters and police officers, special rules that help refugees who "illegally" cross the border, and so on. 

I can't imagine a more bitter pill to swallow than believing in "FREEDOM"---defined as being the right to win or lose according to your own drive and ability---and finding out that when all is said and done, no matter how you strive, you are still counted as one of the "losers". But if at the same time you believe that others are being given a special pass to cut to the "head of the line" in front of you, it will be even worse. If my read is right, this must be the source of much of the right-wing rage I've come across in my life. 

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This is enough for one week. Next post on this subject will suggest some solutions. In the interim, get your vaccination but don't relax your guard. Those pesky mutations are still out there!

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Moreover I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with.

Weekend Literary Supplement: "Digging Your Own Well", Part Ten

Yet another key concept from Daoism is introduced!

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Transformations and Kungfu

Chinese folk culture believes that creatures can transform themselves from one thing to another. The famous Chinese novel Journey to the West is filled with these beings. Indeed, the very first part of the most popular version of this book, A Taoist Interpretation of Journey to the West, begins with this poem: 

Before Chaos was divided, Heaven and Earth were one;
All was a shapeless blur, and no men had appeared.
Once Pan Gu destroyed the Enormous Vagueness
The separation of clear and impure began.

Living things have always tended towards humanity;
From their creation all beings improve.
If you want to know about Creation and Time,
Read difficulties resolved on the Journey to the West.

Journey to the West, W. J. F. Jenner translator,
Foreign Languages Press, 1993, (ISBN: 978-7-119-01663-4)

In this book the lead character, Monkey, is born of a stone. One of the “villains” is a goldfish from the goddess Guan Yin's pond that becomes a mighty dragon. Laozi's ox becomes another monster. Monkey's right-hand-whatever is Pigsy, who was a heavenly general that was reincarnated as a man-pig hi-bred monster that was converted into a protector through the intervention of the Bodhisattva Guanyin.

Even less fanciful books take the idea of transformation for granted. In The Three Kingdoms when Cao Cao decides to build a new palace he needs a large beam for it. The only tree large enough is an immense and ancient pear tree. When woodsmen set to chop it down, it bleeds from their axe cuts and screams in agony! Even a very realistic novel like The Dream of the Red Chamber starts with the premise that a stone transforms itself into sentience and sets out to be incarnated as a human being to see what that type of life is like.

These are literary devices, of course, but they are very different from the sort of thing one finds in European literature. I cannot think of any example in English, French, German, Russian, etc, literature where animals or plants work themselves into some semblance of humanity. The most one can think of are things like witches' “familiar spirits”---which are totally different because they are actually demons masquerading as animals, not animals becoming humans.

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What is at work here is a key Daoist concept: kung fu. Everyone has heard of this term through Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan movies. But while martial arts are examples of kung fu, just about any activity can be a kung fu. That's because kung fu just means “excellence through diligent training”. Kung fu can be done through just about any activity---you can achieve kung fu in art, the skilled trades, or even something as lowly as being a janitor. The important issue isn't what you are doing, but rather what attitude you bring to it.

Someone who practices kung fu isn't focused on results but rather the process. And “process” is meant in a different way from how most people would understand the term. For someone practicing kung fu, there is a constant self-evaluation going on. This includes things like awareness of the posture, muscle tension, how one breathes and so on. It also involves thinking about the mental state. Are you distracted? Thinking about the fight you had with your spouse last night? It also involves thinking about the “big picture”. Why exactly am I doing this task anyway? People who don't understand the ideal of kung fu will admit that people who pursue it can often achieve amazing results. But that isn't the point. Kung fu is a spiritual discipline aimed at squeezing every last iota of self-awareness from the experience of being alive. In the process of doing so, one gains a deeper insight into the subtle processes that govern how our minds and body work, how the universe we inhabit operates, and, how we interact with it.

The process of doing one kung fu---for example the martial arts---will inevitably bleed into the rest of your life. If you spend a lot of time really thinking deeply about how your body and mind operates while training in a studio, you will inevitably carry the same attitude into the rest of your life. What this means is that kung fu inevitably becomes the practice of holding onto the One: the process of reminding yourself to look for the subtle individual daos, and, the single over-arching Dao, that govern our experiences as human beings. Carry this discipline throughout your life and eventually you will become something of a “realized man”. That is the ideal of Daoism, the person who has---through careful observation of both self and the world around her---realized the basic principles that govern everything and in the process transformed themselves into something quite remarkable.

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Moreover I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!

Party Politics: Part One, Seeking the nomination

This week I'm starting another series of interviews and articles about the "mechanics" of party politics. I'm doing this because I'm concerned about what seems to be a very low level of understanding among the general population about what it means to be in a political party and participate in the democratic process. 

I saw a lot of this while I was in the Green Party---both by non-members and members alike. I think that this fuels a lot of the angry complaints that I hear from people who say "politicians are all crooks", "all they care about are their pensions", etc. I don't think that anyone should be surprised by this state of affairs. As of 2001, only two percent of Canadians are actually members of political parties. (See p-52 of Activating the Citizen: Dilemmas of Participation in Europe and Canada.) And remember, many (if the not the majority) of these people only join to vote for a particular candidate in a leadership campaign.  And if most people aren't active party members, don't expect the legacy media to give citizens any idea about how political parties work! 

Among other things, I think this collective ignorance also fuels the dangerous tendencies of people to seek out a demagogue who will arrive on his white horse to save the membership from all the tedious work of having to build the party and then educate the public through door-knocking, public meetings, and, events like summer barbecues. Of course I'm talking about Donald Trump. But Doug Ford and Elizabeth May are also examples of people who parachuted into a party and took it over without wasting any time actually getting to know much about it first.

I really don't like this tendency. That's because a great many of the checks and balances which preserve our democracy come from its leaders being "known quantities" who can be trusted with power. Even with the best of intentions, outsiders simply cannot possibly know enough to be good at the complex task of running a political party---let alone a government. 

My hope is that if I can publish a series of articles showing just how important a political party can be, and how much work goes into making it a functional part of society, I will encourage at least a few people to join a party themselves. And even better, I hope that some people will be hesitant to support an "outsider" who doesn't have any ties to an existing party structure. 

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My first conversation introduces a woman by the name of Dr. Michelle Bowman, who is seeking the nomination for the Guelph Electoral District Association for the Green Party of Canada. I thought it would be important for people to realize that a huge part of being a politician involves getting elected. Moreover, this is a far from trivial task---even getting the nomination can be a lot of work. 

Michelle Bowman, photo provided by her and cropped by Bill Hulet.

I say this, because running for office is a very difficult, time consuming, and, expensive job. Moreover, unless you are in one of a small number of "safe" ridings, getting elected to a large extent is based on luck. And if you are in one of those, the nomination race can be just as gruelling as a full-blown election campaign. As such, I thought that nominations would be a good start. 

Having offered that intro, here's Michelle to speak for herself.

Cloudwalking Owl · Michelle Bowman Tells Us Something About Herself

Some explanation: the "Mountain Parks" that Bowman says she worked at are the Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks which are registered as a World Heritage Site through the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). If readers are interested in learning more about Focus on Nature, there's a nice website to check out. And here's link to the official website for Last Child in the Woods. 

Bowman's answer makes some pretty important points that readers should understand. First of all, she has credentials and has worked in complex, extended institutions---so she's proved that she is intelligent and has the organizational ability to do the job. Secondly, she is someone who has people skills so she can relate to ordinary folks at the front door. Finally, she has personal connections within the community that will help understand local issues and tap into a pool of supporters. These are important qualities that a successful politician needs to have.

Cloudwalking Owl · Michelle Bowman Why Seek The Nomination

Why someone wants to run is extremely important. That's because the enormous workload required to do the job well, plus the extreme forbearance one needs to represent and deal with a wide variety of often extremely emotional people, requires a huge personal commitment to "the big picture". This isn't to say that all politicians or elected officials are saints, but to do a decent job instead of a terrible one requires some pretty above-average qualities. And you simply cannot make the effort if it's about "me" instead of "we".

Bowman mentions Steven Harper's attempt to deal with environmental issues by stifling scientists. This was a very big problem from about 2008 to 2015 where the Conservatives seemed bound and determined to destroy the capacity of federal environmental research. It was also aimed at shutting down the ability of government scientists to share their findings with the general public. 

This was such a concern for civil servants that their union commissioned an Environics study to objectively measure the level of concern among government researchers. The report seems to have been taken off the union website, but luckily I found a copy on the Wayback Machine. Reading it, you can see exactly what Ms. Bowman is talking about. For example:

Environment Canada, for example, has seen its science budget cut by $125 million (17.5%); the National Research Council of Canada, $129 million (17.2%); Fisheries and Oceans, $28 million (10.2%). Similarly, some but not all departmental cuts have included the elimination of FTE [Full Time Equivalent---ie: a full time job] science positions: e.g., National Research Council of Canada (798 FTEs), Environment Canada (159 FTEs), Fisheries and Oceans (73 FTEs).

It also mentions those libraries that Bowman talked about:

They include the loss of storehouses of scientific knowledge and information, including the closure of seven libraries at DFO [Department of Fisheries and Oceans], six at NRCan [Natural Resources Canada] and the consolidation of five Parks Canada libraries into one at Environment Canada.

This had a terrible impact on the moral of government scientists, as was found by Environics polling:

Over 9 out of 10 scientists (94%) surveyed feel recent cuts have had a negative impact on overall science capacity in the federal government. Nearly 6 out of 10 (59%) believe the impact is major. In addition, over three-quarters of federal scientists (78%) report cuts to capacity in their own workplace. In the words of one scientist: “In 31 years on the job, never have I witnessed such systematic destruction of the scientific capability of the federal public service.” In the words of another: “Science has been cut to the bone; there is no way to reduce further without just stopping.”

Not only was research cut that would provide evidence at odds with Conservative ideology, the scientists left were put under the control of government "minders" whose job it was to ensure that they never said anything that contradicted "Harper-speak". This ranged from onerous bureaucratic control of communications with other scientists,

Not only have more restrictive policies compromised the ability of federal scientists to collaborate with international colleagues (73% are concerned that new departmental policies on intellectual property, permission to publish, and collaboration will compromise their ability to collaborate with international colleagues), but cuts to science and so-called red tape have limited scientists’ ability to attend conferences, courses and other events directly related to their work. According to the survey, only 36% of scientists are approved to go to such conferences, courses and events, and less than one quarter (24%) of scientists feel that the approval process for conferences, courses and other events is fair, transparent and performed on a timely basis.

to having Soviet-style minders listening in on scientists while having phone conversations with journalists. (This is mentioned in the YouTube video below). 

This was such an important moment in the evolution of Canadian environmental policy-making that I think that readers who might not be fully aware of what was going on might benefit from watching the following round-table that Steve Paikin at TV Ontario (TVO) chaired on the subject in 2013. (It's one of more interesting ones that I've seen.)

Strictly from a political point of view, I think it is important that candidates have a serious reason for running for public office. It is just too much work for too small a chance of success for anyone to get involved in the process unless they have a deep-seated reason for running. Of course, I'm not suggesting that candidates all have to have the same motivation for throwing their hat in the ring. But to run and run well, my personal belief is that they should see it as a "vocation" rather than a job or something to pad a resume.

Perhaps even more importantly, I think it is really important for elected officials to have some deep, burning reason for running because if they don't the tendency will be to too readily "trade off" policy in order to win office. The whole raison d’être for Greens is to stop treating environmental issues as just another special interest that can be traded off against something else in order to win an election. If idealists won't run, we leave the door open for opportunists---and that can be a disaster.

Unfortunately, we've recently seen some elected officials run and win big who seem to have gotten involved for spurious reasons. For example, it appears that Donald Trump never expected or even originally wanted to get elected president. Instead, the game plan was to use the campaign to build up his brand and fan base so after he lost to Clinton he could launch a new right-wing media empire. Similarly, Doug Ford inherited a political machine from both his father and brother that he used to launch his leadership bid. Beyond that, his motivation seemed to primarily be aimed at tearing-down the Liberals and Toronto City Hall---who he probably thinks never treated him with the respect he deserves. Honestly, I simply don't see either as being adequate reasons to get involved in politics.

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Cloudwalking Owl · Nomination Procedure Michelle Bowman

It's important to understand that running for a nomination is an institutional process. Michelle mentions that she had to be vetted by the Green Party of Canada bureaucracy to ensure that she doesn't have any skeletons in her closet and is considered a "good fit" for the party. By law, the ultimate decision about whether or not a person is good enough for the party is made by the leader---who has to sign the nomination papers to get someone onto the ballot. Some people believe that this gives the party leader too much power (for example, Michael Chong). But even if this power rested in the local Electoral District Association, I think it is still a good thing to put candidates under a microscope to ensure that something very surprising doesn't pop up in the campaign.

Just to suggest two examples of why this is a good idea, I suspect that many people in the Conservative Party of Ontario wish they'd done a better job vetting Randy Hillier when he first ran. Then they wouldn't have had to kick him out of the caucus. Similarly, I suspect that many federal Conservatives believe that their party dodged a bullet when Max Bernier failed in his bid to lead the federal Tories. 

Cloudwalking Owl · Michelle Bowman Talks About GPC And Leadership Issues

It's important for a candidate to have some feel for the greater party structure. That's because running a campaign is much, much more than just writing down a bunch of policy ideas and registering to get onto the ballot. There has to be a national presence too, and that can only come from a "head office" that can co-ordinate campaigns, build a profile with the national media, and so on. It is also useful to get a feel for the leader of the party. 

So check off a couple more boxes for Bowman.

Cloudwalking Owl · Michelle Bowman Do You Have Many Volunteers For Your Nomination Race

Building your nomination team is a very good "dry run" for seeing how well you can do in the general election. Bowman is identifying a small number of people who can fill key positions and making sure that they get the training necessary to "hit the ground running". She's also building a list of folks who can fill important non-leadership jobs. These people can be tapped when the time is right. But she is also being careful not to "burn out" these volunteers by asking too much of them too early in the process. She knows that the formal nomination race won't come until August and that the general election will then come at the discretion of the Prime Minister. 

So it pays for the candidate to "keep her powder dry". She doesn't want to peak too early in the race.

Cloudwalking Owl · Michelle Bowman Final Words

And the final comments show an interest in a broad range of issues that show that Bowman sees the value of creating a "big tent" while at the same time staking out a position for the candidate. Green Party candidates have tended to have more messaging leeway than other parties---probably because of the lack of centralized infrastructure as much as trying to do politics in a new way. As a result, past Guelph Greens have sometimes shown an almost small "c" conservative emphasis on market-based solutions and support for small businesses. As a new generation of voters have come of age, I suspect that this messaging won't be as effective. Instead, I think young people are interested in dealing with inequality of various forms and less likely see the market-based solutions as being the answer. 

My gut instinct is that politicians willing to suggest innovative experiments in government policy instead of neo-liberal ideology will do well. So again, Bowman seems to be setting her campaign sails to harness prevailing winds---an essential part of any winning electoral strategy.

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Moreover I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!