Human Parasites

Last week I was robbed of $60 by a confidence trickster. 

I was out for my daily "COVID Walk" downtown and as I was coming down Wellington out in front of the Wendy's fast food joint. Just in front of me, a South Asian guy in a late model van turned in front of me, rolled down his window and gestured me over. I assumed he wanted directions. 

Instead, he started into a frantic patter about being from out of town, not knowing anyone here, that his vehicle was almost out of gas, that his wife and family were in the back, that his credit card had been refused. Moreover, he mumbled something about COVID-19 and said he was frantic to fill his tank so he could get home. 

Being the sort of guy I am, I thought "well, it could be a scam, but what the heck, there's the outside chance it isn't---in which case I could understand his situation". I reached into my pocket and was going to give the guy a twenty. But he clicked into over-drive, saying he didn't want my charity. He said "look at my car---I'm a rich guy", he said he would give me a gold ring from his finger in exchange for $60. 

At this point a car behind him (he was blocking the entrance to Wendy's) started honking and the driver rolled his window down and yelled at me about this guy blocking the entrance. The guy pulled forward five feet, stopped and went on about being in trouble and that the ring was worth a lot more than $60. 

Thinking that I was probably been ripped off, but willing to accept that there was an odd chance that I wasn't, I peeled off $60 from my bill fold and gave it to him. A couple days later I went to a pawn shop and took out the ring and said "The oddest thing happened to me the other day----". The owner finished what I was saying "this guy stopped you and was desperate for gas to get home---right?" He looked at the ring and told me it was worthless costume jewellery. 

I've spent a fair amount of time thinking about what happened, talking to friends, and, thought I might share some of the ideas that came to mind. 

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The first thing that came to mind was a feeling that I never want to be the sort of person who is too cynical to actually help strangers. This got me thinking about E. O. Wilson and his assertion that human beings are "eusocial" animals---just like ants and bees. 

The idea is that one of our core evolutionary adaptations is that we help each other. We use culture in addition to genetics to create super-organisms called "tribes", "cities", and, "nations" of individuals who help each other survive and flourish. The instinct that drove me to give money to the confidence trickster in the van is similar to the one that got me to start various community development projects, run as a candidate during elections, and, write this news blog.

We live in eusocial colonies---just like bees and ants---and our ability to do so comes from natural selection through both genetics and culture. That is to say, most of us have an instinct to help each other, and, the cultures that didn't create mythologies and institutions that augmented these instincts were out-competed by others that were more supportive. 

If this sounds far-fetched, consider two hypothetical civilizations. One of them, the Groovoid Empire exists next to Republic of Familystan. The myths, philosophy, religion, and, literature of the Groovoid Empire places a huge emphasis on people's responsibility to everyone else in their community. In contrast, Familystan defines helping your family as the most important ideal. When an outside force---say the Banzai Autarky---attacks both cultures they have to defend themselves. The Groovoid army's leaders have totally committed themselves to defending the entire population. In contrast, the leaders of the Familystan army are people who are constantly thinking about how to help their family members. Groovoid aristocrats would rather watch their families be tortured to death than betray the empire. In contrast, the Familystan rulers can be easily "turned" simply by threatening their wives and kids. 

Which culture has a better chance of winning the war against the Banzai Autarchy? (Incidentally, if you think my hypothetical example is far-fetched, I'd point out that for both Canada and the USA our official stance is to never negotiate with kidnappers. Ask yourself whether this is a Groovoid or Familystan policy.)

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Readers might ask the obvious question: "well, why did the guy who took your money do this if we all have the same instinct?" The problem is assuming that all individuals are the same. When scientists say "the members of such-and-such species are like this", they are making an over-generalization. What they should really be saying is "the majority of individuals within a species are like this". That's because there exist sub-populations with many creatures. 

Bluegill sunfish (what gender do you think it is?), photo by Scott Harden c/o Wiki Media Commons.

 

Consider the bluegill sunfish. Scientists have discovered that it has four different genders. 

Table from the website Gender-Inclusive Biology.

As you can see from the above chart, there are significant differences in the colouring, internal anatomy, and, lifespan of all four genders. 

In addition, there is a significant difference between how they relate to each other for reproduction. To understand this point, it's important to know how bluegills reproduce. The eggs are laid in a spawning bed, fertilized, and, protected by adult males. The simplified version would say that the males fertilize and protect the eggs. But that is an over-generalization. 

It turns out that 85% of the spawning beds have one female laying eggs and one large male fertilizing them. But detailed observation shows that 11% have one female with one large and (usually) one medium male. A further 4% have two females and one male (the article doesn't identify which type). 

A further complication comes from the fact that large males only make up 15% of the spawning male population---even though they end up doing most of the spawning. (Remember, 85% of the beds only have one large male plus one female.)

The ratios of the different types of males and the reproductive pairings are important to understand. It only makes sense to have medium and small males if there are large ones. That's because medium males fertilize some of the eggs that large males guard because they seem to help the large males in some way that doesn't seem obvious to researchers. In contrast, small males charge in and dump sperm when the large male and the females are mating in the hope of fertilizing some of the eggs before they get chased off. The large males try to chase off the small ones, but there are more of them which means it is inevitable that some of the eggs get fertilized by the smaller males doing their "drive-bys". 

The important point to remember is that the large males end up doing almost all the work protecting eggs from predators because the smaller males don't get involved (and are too small to be of much use anyway). This means that if the smaller males completely "overwhelmed" the large ones and wiped them out of the gene pool, the reproductive success rate of the species would go down---which would benefit none of the different subsets. That suggests that there is a statistical "sweet spot" where the minority of large males protect almost all the eggs, while the majority of smaller males get to reproduce while "free-riding" with regard to protecting the young. 

I've gone into some detail to explain the intricacies of bluegill reproduction only to point out that our general understanding of what a species is, what reproduction strategies are, "instincts", etc, are generally very simplified in public school science classes in order to explain basic principles. Things are a lot more complex in the real world.

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Just like with bluegills, it's important to realize that there are sub-populations that exist within the larger context of human society and pursue an alternative reproductive strategy that depends on the existence of the larger one. (And please remember, unlike bluegills, human beings/human society reproduce both through genetics and culture.)

This gets me back to the guy in the van. His genetic and cultural inheritance probably told him that contrary to my worldview---which says that people should help one another---the world is a constant struggle where there are two types of people: "wiseguys" and "suckers". I am a sucker, which is why I could be "taken". 

Wiseguys are part of a sub-culture in Guelph, Canadian, and, human society that promotes it's own description of reality, code of conduct, and, teaches various technologies to it's members. After the fact, I recognized one of the technologies confidence tricksters use to separate a sucker like me from my money. 

In martial arts we are taught that there is a "tempo" to a fight. That is, there is a inherent rhythm to a conflict and the wise fighter can use it to his advantage. The simplest example of this is where someone learns to press an advantage so hard that the opponent never gets a chance to "catch up" once they get caught on their "back foot". The best example I could find this comes from one of the hugely popular Ip Man movies that star Donny Yen.  Consider the following clip.

This comes from Ip Man Two where the plot revolves around a racist British heavy-weight boxer who uses his training plus his enormous punching power to beat all the Kung Fu masters in Hong Kong except for Ip Man. Ip beats the Brit by closing the distance and using "chain punches" that keep the Western boxer on his back feet so he can't use raw punching power to overwhelm him. Instead, the boxer is reduced to protecting face his face with the odd attempt to land a "hay-maker" which Ip can avoid relatively easily. 

I raise this example because it illustrates what the confidence trickster did to me in order to get past my rational defences. The fast patter he did and the stressful environment he was playing in (did I mention that there was another car behind him with a driver yelling at us to stop blocking the traffic?) acted like Wing Chun "chain punches" to overwhelm my ability to think through what I was happening to me. Indeed, a couple times I tried to tell him to go to a pawnshop downtown to sell his ring, but he never let me finish my sentence because he would just jump in and repeat his patter about how he needed my help right then and there. 

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I mentioned this to a friend who has travelled a great deal and she reinforced the idea that of the technology comes down to this flurry of language that keeps people on their back feet so they can't think straight. She pointed out another part of the technology with an incident from her life. 

She was walking down a street in Turkey with her son and she noticed a shoe salesman ahead of her who had a brush fall out of his box of tools. Without a moment's though, she sped up, grabbed the brush and took after him to give it back. She handed it back to him, at which point he started following her and offered to do all sorts of things for her---at a modest fee. 

What had happened was the boot black was actually "trolling" for tourist suckers. The idea is that anyone who grabbed the brush and ran up to give it to him was---almost by definition---someone who had a very strong eusocial instinct, which made them vulnerable to being "played". I did exactly the same thing when I made eye-contact with the guy in the van and came over when he rolled down his window. If I'd just ignored him, he would have rolled the window back up and probably gone back out the back of the business to go somewhere else and start trolling again. (Incidentally, this is why most city people walking down a busy sidewalk won't give eye-contact to beggars---on an instinctual level they know it will inevitably make them the focus of unwanted attention. This ability to selectively "tune out" parts of your surroundings separates them from rubes like me.)

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My wife told me that I am extremely vulnerable to this sort of thing because I grew up outside a small farming village and the largest city I've ever lived in is Guelph. This means that I have an extremely well-developed sense of community and I am constantly thinking about how I can help other people. This makes sense, as in the area where I grew up, Norwich, people really did look out for each other. If someone needed help they rarely needed to ask---people would just show up and offer. My old-order Amish neighbours still had barn-raising "bees". And when the local hockey arena was condemned, the community got together to donate materials and build the new one---tout suite. As a result of this childhood, I have something like a flashing neon sign over my head that alerts wiseguys that I am a sucker.

My significant other, in contrast, grew up in the city and can see wiseguys a mile off. This is an important survival skill for her, because as a smoker she often ends up standing outside of bus and train stations while travelling. And this is absolutely primo geography for small-scale hustlers like the guy who nailed me last week. She says she doesn't hold any of this against me, as she too never wants to be the sort of person who would never offer a helping hand to a stranger simply because she's afraid of getting hustled.    

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A couple more points need making and they both came from my friend who dealt with the boot black in Turkey. 

She mentioned someone that she thinks currently might be hustling her to give him a significant amount of money for a reason I won't go into. She told me that while her "spider sense" is tingling over this, she doesn't really hold it against him. That's because she knows enough about this fellow's life that she knows he's had an extremely hard time of it---a really abusive childhood, bad health, not much luck in work, etc. As she see it, he's had to learn to be the way he is in order to survive. In cases like his, it's possible to say that he's the result of our entire society letting him down. 

I can relate to that. 

The second point she wanted me to consider was that there are all sorts of wiseguys in the world. My experience last week was with one at the absolute bottom of the food chain. There are also ones that inhabit the middle and top rungs of the ladder.

Who am I talking about? Well, one group are the politicians who put their own personal ambitions ahead of the good of the community. I recently heard a commentator on the CBC podcast West of Centre who suggested that the reason why Jason Kenney's United Conservative Party government can't come up with a strategy for protecting the population from COVID-19 is because when the Progressive Conservative and Wild Rose parties merged nothing was said about what the new party would actually be for. Instead, everything was about how to win power from the NDP. Faced with the fact that any policy that would actually help Albertans would undermine their support among their base, party leaders---like Jason Kenney---have always opted for keeping in power rather than "do the right thing". This makes them totally unprepared both---psychologically and institutionally---to deal with an acute healthcare crisis.

Another group of mid-level wiseguys are the dozen or so people who own web-based businesses that make money off selling vaccine disinformation through social media. But they only stay in power because top level wiseguys---like Fox News, Facebook, Youtube, etc, are happy to make lots of money off the torrent of misinformation and anger that is created by various trolls like Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, Alex Jones, Maxime Bernier, etc. These businesses and institutions have taken the technology of scammers to even greater heights of abuse. Moreover, they do it by taking advantage of several (what they see as) "weaknesses" that sustain our modern democratic society: freedom of speech, assuming people are innocent until proven guilty, respecting people's right to dissent, freedom of religion, etc. 

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That's enough for this week. Be nice to each other, keep up with the distancing, wear a mask, remember to carry around your vaccination info---and maybe next year all of this COVID stuff will be a nasty memory.

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

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

Masters

A lot of people make a big deal about so-and-so being a “Master” or even a “Grand Master”. At best, this is based on allegiance to a specific school or teaching. At worst it manifests itself in the silly school-yard mentality of “my master can whip your master”. Most of this can be ultimately traced to the human predisposition towards tribalism. It's also a manifestation of the idea that “Old Tymey” things are better than “New Fangled”, and that “secret hidden teachings” have been handed down through generations of mystic teachers. Some of this is understandable as people need to have some respect for the experience of their teachers and also have to take some stuff “on faith” before they gain enough personal experience to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff. Unfortunately, far too many people take this impulse way too far and as a result folks---both teachers and students---fall into the trap of “guru worship”.

Guru worship is a really bad idea. For students, it dramatically diminishes their ability to think for themselves. As a result, they stop being critical not only about what the actions of their teacher, but also of what they are learning. Beyond all the unhealthy interpersonal dynamics, this dramatically reduces one's ability to learn. Just think about how well the average high school student could learn something like math or chemistry if they lost the ability to critically evaluate what they were doing. They'd be fine at copying the work that the teacher wrote on the blackboard, but they'd be useless at applying the theory to a particular new example.

That's because they need to look at a novel application of general theory by looking at it from different points of view. “What if I?---No, that won't work because---.” The ability to think critically is like a muscle. If you stop using it in one part of your life, it atrophies in all the others. Perhaps this is why in any given class the very best students tend to be smart asses, whereas the “goody two-shoes” are usually mediocre. This is because as a student you don't really know enough to be able to tell the difference between what you think the “Master” wants you to learn and what she may actually want you to learn. The only way to tell the difference is to critically evaluate what you think you were taught and if you find a problem, take that back to her. And this process not only looks like you are questioning the value of a teaching, it always holds the possibility that that's exactly what's going on. This is a scary prospect for someone who is worshipping a guru.

Teachers who assume the rank of “worshipped guru” also suffer. This happens because almost inevitably they end up “believing their own advertising”. No matter how much you try to remind yourself that you really aren't the enlighted, groovy, saint that your students think you are, inevitably you start taking their adulation for granted. At best this means that you will stop learning from your own mistakes and the insights of others. At worst you exploit your followers and start collecting Rolls Royces and “cute young things”. So truth be told, not only should students run from teachers who call themselves “Masters”, but teachers should run from students who call them that too.

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“The man makes the art, the art doesn't make the man,” sums up one part of the problem pretty well. Daoism is not about creating a specific type of person that is an immediately recognizable “known quantity”---like army basic training. Instead, it is about engaging with an alternative viewpoint of life in order to develop your best qualities as an individual. This creates a problem with people who have an idealized vision of “Mastery” because it actually encourages them to totally submerge their individuality to the absolute, grooviness of the guru they worship. That's pretty much the exact opposite of what Daoism is all about.

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Sometimes people come up with lineage charts (like the pedigree charts that animal breeders use) that link teachers who were taught by other teachers, who were taught by other teachers back to the totally, ultimately grooviest teachers. For example, I have a copy of one of these things that links the guys who initiated me into a temple all the way back to Laozi and Gautama Buddha. Of course, this is total poppy-cock. Historians have pointed out that these sorts of transmission chains fall apart when you look at them in detail. There are always gaps in “transmission” from one person to another. The role they serve, in actual fact, is to raise the credibility of the guy in front of you and to stop you from thinking for yourself. After all, “what I am saying comes all the way from Laozi and the Buddha---who are you to question me?”

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The only way in which being called a “Master” makes sense is the same way it is used with regard to the skilled trades or university degrees. Traditionally, a “Master” craftsman was the culmination of a process that started with an apprentice and moved through journeyman. The journeyman was someone who has passed their apprenticeship and was therefore qualified to work on a jobsite without any supervision. But they weren't qualified to teach apprentices or run their own shop. The difference comes down to how deep one's theoretical understanding of the craft had become. Part of the process involved having to create a “master work” that showed that a person understood their craft so well that they could design and craft something spectacular that is very different from anything else that had been done before. This theoretical understanding was necessary for the Master's ability to articulate and explain the craft to customers and future generations of apprentices alike.

In a similar manner, the “Master's” and “Doctorate” degrees at university were originally designated to identify people who were qualified to teach at the university level. Originally, the Master's degree was supposed to be for people who specialized in teaching and the Doctorate for those who were more research oriented. More recently, the former has become a stepping stone towards the latter---although you will still find people teaching at universities with just a Masters degree and people in Phd programs without a Master's. Again, the difference between post-graduate and baccalaureate degrees comes down to the ability of a person to produce a “Master work” (ie a thesis) and the ability to teach future generations.

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To become a Master electrician or to get a Master's degree from a university there is a formal process that results in a piece of paper that has a certain value all over the world. For example, I have a Master's degree from the University of Guelph. Since Canadian public universities are considered quite good by the community of scholars, this degree is recognized all over the world. In the same way, a Master's electrician license has a certain objective value.

No similar ranking system exists for “Daoist Masters”. There is a system in China for ranking people at Daoist Temples, but the fact of the matter is that very high ranking officials are appointed by the government, and they appoint the others---which means that the Communist Party of China has the ultimate say in who is who in official Daoist circles. This situation has pretty much always been the case, as the big Temples like White Cloud or Wudang Shan were important cultural treasures and as such of importance to the government---be it Mongol, Ming, Manchu, or, Communist. Moreover, the Daoist world was split into different sects: Quanzhen, Zhengyi Dao, Maoshan, and many others.1 “Credentials” issued at one school had about as much value as a theology degree from Bob Jones University has at the Vatican.

Ultimately, the people who identify someone as a Daoist “Master” are the people who are willing to call him one. That's why some folks go to great lengths to promote themselves as “Masters”. They invent lineage charts, talk about mysterious groovy guys that have taught them and handed down mysterious “secret teachings”, wear outlandish clothing, etc. This is really campaigning for students to vote for their ascention to the position of groovy Master. Once you get a certain degree of support you can get your already existing supporters to do some or all of the campaigning for you, which makes the promotion a little less obvious. If you really hit the jackpot, you can create an entire institution with paid staff and buildings who can continue the promotion even after you are dead and gone. That's how a Temple gets built.

But for anyone who is interested in learning Daoism it all boils down to “yah pays your money, yah makes your choices.” People who like being groovy Masters don't like to admit this fact, but that is really what it's all about.
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1At this point in time the Communist government has forced all different types of religious Daoists to register either as Quanzhen or Zhengyi styles. This is more than a little bit of a “procrustean bed”.

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

The New Normal in Canadian Politics?

The latest Canadian election is over and I was listening to the Front Burner  podcast autopsy. The CBC's Aaron Wherry made an interesting comment that really resonated with me. What he did was ask whether it is now almost impossible for Canadian political parties to form majority governments. It strikes me that this might be the key lesson to draw from what happened yesterday.  

The legacy media traditionally went to great lengths to hide the fact that what they call a "majority government" was almost always the result of a minority of the popular vote going to a party plus a great deal of vote-splitting resulting in "wasted votes". That's why they traditionally didn't post the popular vote and tended to exclude what they called the "minor parties" from coverage. The result was a majority of citizens having their wishes ignored by Parliament. 

This effect was magnified by the tendency of politicians to pursue a sort of "brinkmanship" that involved daring the average voter to support another party more in tune with their viewpoint because this would result in a party that they have nothing in common with winning. The best example of this is Liberals telling voters "if you vote for the NDP or Greens you're just going to ensure that the Conservatives win". Perhaps the lesson we need to learn from this election is that dog doesn't hunt anymore. And that's a very big deal. 

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The fact of the matter is that Canadians tend to be a lot more left-of-centre than our governments would suggest they are. Add up the MPs elected yesterday and you see the following: 

1. Liberals: 32.3% or 158 seats
2. Conservatives: 34.0% or 119 seats
3. Bloc Québécois: 07.8% or 34 seats
4. New Democrats: 17.7% or 25 seats
5. Greens: 2.3% or 2 seats
6. People's Party: 5% and zero seats
   

If you add up the left-of-centre parties (Liberals, Bloc, NDP, and, Greens) you get 60% of the total popular vote. Add together the seats, and you 219 or 65% of a 338 seat Parliament. That's 60 and 65% that campaigned on dealing with the Climate Emergency, affordable day care, etc, and only 38% that want to continue the fossil fuel fiesta and keep women in the kitchen.

Looking at the above numbers, it's hard to understand exactly how we ever got Stephen Harper as Prime Minister and why anyone could believe that Erin O'Toole had a hope. But if you look at elections where Harper did end up winning, he never got more than 39.6% of the vote. And to form minority governments, the lowest he received was 36.3%. 

If you look at the above and think about it, it's easy to realize that what people routinely call a "majority government" is actually "vote wasting ensuring that people who aren't supporters of conventional wisdom don't get any say about how the country is run".  

I came across a political cartoon during this election that showed Erin O'Toole and Maxime Bernier yanking on each arm of a obviously disturbed person with a tinfoil hat. All three of them were standing on a pillar of earth that was crumbling away beneath their feet. It summed up nicely the dilemma that the right-wing parties faced in this last election. 

Cartoon by Bruce MacKinnon in the Sept 15/2021 edition of Saltwire. Thanks for the info, Hilary.

The only way they could win the election would be if they managed to hold onto every single vote by anyone who might possibly vote for them. That was why they refused to say "No!" to a single crazy person in the country. For example, O'Toole dodged and deflected about whether or not he would outlaw assault rifles---even though the majority of Canadians want the Liberal ban continued. It's also why he danced around the idea of vaccine passports and mandates, while refusing to support them. And it's why he has steadily churned out contradictory and confusing policy about carbon pricing. It's because he couldn't afford to appeal to the majority (most of whom would never vote for him) if it meant that he alienated even the tiniest fraction of "his" minority (ie: everyone who might possibly vote Conservative in its present incarnation). 

If you ever wonder why, think about the numbers I posted above. Something like 60% of Canadians will probably never vote Conservative the way it is presently constituted. That means they have to to get every single one of the other votes in order to get that between 36.3 and 39.6% that Stephen Harper used to control Parliament. The upshot is that current Conservative leaders simply cannot write off the tinfoil hat crowd and still become Prime Minister. Looking at the numbers that O'Toole got (34%) and the People's Party of Canada received (5%), you can see that they add up to 39%---the sweet spot that allowed Steven Harper to become Prime Minister. 

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It's interesting sometimes to compare the US and Canada. When we do, however, it's important to make distinctions between where the two countries are similar, and where they are different. We share many elements of culture, but we are very different in the mechanisms we use to govern ourselves. IMHO, we are similar in having a significant "tinfoil hat crowd" but different in the way our political system deals with them. 

The biggest difference is that the US political establishment moves heaven-and-earth to prevent the rise of more than two political parties. I won't go into the details, but it's a lot harder for a third party to get onto the ballot, get onto the stages of political debates, and, build a war chest in America. This has profound impact on the strategies the political parties follow to deal with demographic shifts. 

In Canada new points of view tend to manifest themselves in the form of new political parties. Are the mainstream parties too cosy with big business? Form the Co-Operative Commonwealth Federation (the CCF)---which became the NDP. Are the other parties not treating environmental issues with the seriousness they deserve? Form the Green Party. Are the other national parties not being strenuous enough in defending the rights of Quebecers? Form the Bloc Québécois. Are the Conservatives being forced into talking about the Climate Emergency (even if they don't really want to do anything about it) and listening to doctor's advice about COVID-19 (even if they will only do so when the body count gets to the point where it cannot be ignored)? Enter the People's Party of Canada.

In the USA---because it's so much more difficult to form an even moderately successful third party---people who don't like the status quo have a tendency to form a faction within one of the existing parties. That's how the Republicans ended up with the Tea Party and Trumpers; and; how the Democrats got the Blue Dogs and Bernie Bros. 

In both Canada and the US, the idea of forming these "ginger parties" or US "caucuses" has had the effect of changing the policies of the more traditional parties. I have no doubt at all that both the Liberals and the NDP have felt the need to deepen their support for environmental policies for fear of the Greens stealing enough votes to lose them seats. And as I said above, the People's Party of Canada probably forced Erin O'Toole to dance around the whole vaccine mandate/passport issue in a way that made him especially vulnerable when Jason Kenney finally had to admit his pandemic mistakes.

This influence is significant, but it's nothing like the effect that Donald Trump has had on the American Republican party. How come? I would suggest that it's because of the other significant difference between the American and Canadian electoral systems. 

Canada has an independent body that sets up the boundaries of electoral districts. In contrast, the USA lets each state decide them based on their own ideas. This means that in many of them, whatever party is in power after the last election gets to define the boundaries. The result is Gerrymandering, which allows politicians to choose who gets to vote for or against them. This means that there are a great many seats in the US congress where one party (usually Republican) almost always wins. 

Moreover, while Canada still requires that the people who choose a nominee actually has to be an actual member of the party, the US has a system where non-members get to choose the nominee in "primary elections". Since a lot fewer people vote in primaries than do full elections, a well-motivated minority (ie: Donald Trump supporters) can often decide who does or doesn't get the nomination---even in places where one party almost has a "lock" on the seat.

One more thing that makes this system possible in the US is the fact that they have pretty much given up on trying to control the amount of private money that gets put into elections. In Canada we have very strong election financing laws that put real limits on how much individuals, unions, or, businesses can donate to politicians. In addition, we have regulations that allow parties to raise significant amounts of money by having non-wealthy individuals donate small amounts of money which are largely reimbursed by the government through their taxes. Moreover, we also have very strong rules that limit "third parties" from donating to political causes. Finally, we also have very strong rules about charities being allowed to meddle in politics. The Canadian rules tend to suck the "oxygen" out of  the "jiggery-pokery" that Americans take for granted.

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No doubt about it, both Canada and the US need significant electoral reform. Canada needs to inject some amount of proportionality into the way it counts votes. And the US needs to deal with Gerrymandering, voter suppression, and, the influence of big money on elections. I believe both countries need to change the way parties choose their leaders and candidates---to ensure that the people voting actually are people committed to the long-term good of the party instead of just being a flash-mob conjured up by social media.

Having said that, I do not believe that it is possible to create an electoral system that totally removes the human element. Politicians and voters can adapt to any system---to either force it to respond to the needs of the nations, or, to fight tooth and nail against them. 

Trudeau suggested two elections ago that he wanted to reform the system, but ended up only putting the option of ranked ballot voting on the table. The other parties freaked because they thought that this would mean that the Liberals would never lose another election. (Presumably, whomever inhabited the mushy middle of Canadian politics would be the second choice of voters to both the right and left.) I think this was short-term thinking. 

Changing the system will change the calculus that parties use to craft their platforms. Right now the Conservatives believe that they can only win if they go hard-right and get every last tinfoil-hat wearing, pick-up truck driving, refugee claimant hating, voter out to the polls so they can win the vote-split like Steven Harper. If this option was permanently removed through even a mildly proportional system like ranked-ballot voting, they would be forced to stop courting the fringe and come up with policies that appeal to more voters.

Similarly, without the threat of the big-bad Conservatives to scare progressive voters, the Liberals might find their support melting away like chocolate MPs on a hot summer day. They might find that if they constantly over-promise and under-deliver they would end up becoming the second and even third choices of so many voters that they would have to change the way they do business. 

And if it turns out that both the Conservatives and Liberals become more responsive to a wide variety of points of view and the need for "ginger parties" declines, perhaps there would be fewer parties arguing for people's votes. Perhaps they could still exist on the fringes, but only as a warning for the mainstream that they cannot ignore significant issues without them eventually paying a price.

Would any of these be a bad thing?

I'm not holding my breath, however. Entrenched politicians are like everyone else---they absolutely loathe change. This is especially so when it involves the way they've organized their entire careers. As a result, I think voters are going to have to accept the work-around that they are currently using. That is, they have decided to call the Liberal bluff and force them to govern in minority Parliaments where they are forced to negotiate in at least a fake version of good faith with the other progressive parties. (As Francois de La Rochefoucauld said "Hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue".) 

I'm not too upset about the result of our last election. After all, an enormous amount of good legislation came out of the Lester Pearson minority governments that ran from 1963 to 1968. These included: 

• universal healthcare
• the Canadian pension plan
• Canada student loans
• the maple leaf flag
• federal minimum wage
• the 40 hour work week
• the minimum two week vacation
• signed the auto-pact
• refused to join the Vietnam war
• started the Royal Commission on the Status of Women
• and the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism
• instituted the first non-racial immigration system 

Let's hope that Justin Trudeau and Jagmeet Singh can work as well together as Lester Pearson and Tommy Douglas did. Stranger things have been known to happen---. 

&&&&

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

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

Religious Daoism

 

I started out this book by emphasizing that what I am describing is Daoism as a practical philosophy. At this point I should mention that this is in opposition to Daoism as a religion. Most Westerners don't even know that there is such a thing. Oddly enough, I've found that people really have a hard time recognizing something that they don't expect. For example, I used to identify myself as a “Daoist” and tried to live something like a religious Daoist and found that even friends simply couldn't wrap their heads around this idea. One fellow got it into his head that I was a Muslim and I could never get him to understand that I am not. Another called me a Buddhist for much the same reason. A Benedictine nun friend had the idea that I had just made up all this Daoism stuff. Well, I didn't. In China and amongst the Chinese diaspora there are temples, and, “priests” (daoshi) of a religion known as “Daoism”.

........

 

I'm not an expert, but from my reading on the subject it seems the religion came from a lot of different sources. As I mentioned above, there appears to have been an oral tradition that created foundational texts such as the Nei-Yeh and the Dao De Jing. This tradition also created meditation techniques like sitting and forgetting, holding onto the One, and, internal alchemy.

 

In addition, there was another stream called “Chinese folk religion”. This is a part of the cultural inheritance of ordinary Chinese society. It includes things like a pantheon of various gods and immortals such as the Jade Emperor, the Queen Mother of the West, the Ghost King, General Kwan, the God of Longevity, and so on. (When you go into a Chinese-owned business in the West you will often see an altar to one or several of these folk gods.)

 

In addition, there are shamanist traditions that involve things like the “sand oracle”. This involves a specialist who is “possessed” by one of the gods and who answers questions put to the her by writing with a chopstick on a pan of sand. (I was told that the fellow who travelled from Hong Kong to Canada to set up the Fung Loy Kok temple and who initiated me, immigrated on the advice of a sand oracle.)

 

Yet another element in the creation of the Daoist religion was a rebellion by the exploited lower classes of Chinese society. This was the “yellow turban rebellion” which started in the year 184 and lasted until the year 205 CE. It was organized by the “Five Pecks of Rice Daoists”, led by the “Celestial Master”. (The “five pecks of rice” refers to a tax that members were expected to pay into a communal bank and which was used to help the poor and support collective undertakings.) After the rebellion was quashed by the armies of Imperial China (part of the campaign is described in the Chinese classic novel Three Kingdoms) the movement became more religiously focused and lives on today as one of the two major daoist sects: Zheng Yi Dào, or, “the Way of Orthodox Unity”. Orthodox Daoism tends to be based on a priesthood that minister to local communities of followers. They hold public rituals, organize charitable activity, perform exorcisms and healing ceremonies, and, generally act something like pastors in rural protestant Christian communities.

.........

 

The other major sect of Daoism, the Quanzhen or “the Way of Completeness and Truth”, was founded about a thousand years after Orthodox Daoism by Wang Chongyang. The legend is that Wang met three Daoist immortals in a tavern and they taught him secret meditation techniques, which he went on to perfect while living many years of intense practice, first in a tomb and then in a hut. After this period, he adopted seven followers (who became famous as the “Seven Daoist Masters” of Chinese folklore), who then went on to found seven major Daoist sects. The most famous of these disciples, Changchun zi, caught the ear of the Mongol Emperor Genghis Khan, who granted him land in the Imperial Capital of Beijing, which eventually became one of the greatest sites in Daoism, the White Cloud Temple.

 

The Quanzhen school grew in something of a tension with Buddhism, which had come from India after the creation of Orthodox Daoism. Chinese culture was generally opposed to celibacy and monasticism, which is reflected in the teachings of the Celestial Master, who encouraged his followers to marry and integrate themselves into the community. In contrast, Buddhism has always encouraged its followers to isolate themselves from mainstream society. By the time of Wang Chongyang Buddhism had become very popular in China, and the obvious conclusion would be that it influenced the development of Quanzhen Daoism---which favours monasticism, just like Buddhism.

........

 

In addition, I understand that in the 19^th century there were popular spiritual movements amongst the lower classes which taught the unity of all religions and the importance of charity and mutual aid. Unfortunately, the Communist Party of China saw these groups as competitors and ruthlessly suppressed them in mainland China. The temple that I was initiated into, the Fung Loy Kok, was an offshoot of a Hong Kong organization, the Yuen Yuen Institute, that embodied these ideals. This adds yet another element “to the mix”.

...........

 

I suspect that the majority of people who read this book will consider all religions to be not much more than superstitious nonsense. To a certain extent I do too, but I have to offer one caveate. To understand it, I think people have to realize that while all people may be created equal, they are not created the same.

 

One of the “basic operating assumptions” that all human beings work with is the idea that each of us has a similar way of experiencing the world. When I see a rose, I assume that someone else sees much the same thing. But in point of fact, it is very difficult to know if this is actually true. I can point at what I see and tell someone else that it is a “rose”, which will lead to her using the same word whenever she sees the same thing again. But I have no real way of telling if she sees a soft, red, nest of petals. For all I know, she might be seeing what I would experience as a hard, blue, pile of crystals.

 

If this sounds absurd, consider the fact that a certain percentage of the population suffers from an affliction known as colour blindness. I went to school with a guy who simply could not tell the difference between green and red because both looked the same to him. This caused a problem for him on his family's farm because it meant that he couldn't tell the difference in ripeness for some types of fruit. His experience of a rose is significantly different than mine.

 

Now lets push this issue even further. There is also a very small percentage of people who have something called “synethesia”, which means that they experience one type of sense in ways that most people associate with another sense altogether. A sound, for example, may have a colour. This is so alien to me that I simply cannot understand what it would be like. In my experience, only visual objects have colour. Yet we don't see sound, we only hear it---so how could it have a colour?

 

Let's go totally wild. There are cases of individuals who have been profoundly blind since birth yet they have learned how to live much like normal people by developing the ability to echo locate like bats. One example I saw on YouTube has developed this ability to the point where he is able to ride a bicycle and shoot hoops with a basketball. He does it just like a bat---he makes clicking noises and uses the echos he hears to create a mental three dimensional image that allows him to navigate the world around him.

 

There are other examples. People who become chess masters often show off by playing multiple games of chess in their heads. This isn't a “fluke”, but rather a by-product of developing the ability to recognize the patterns in play that define a master instead of an ordinary player. Another example is a random pattern autostereogram (look it up on Wikipedia.) These are pictures that look like nothing at all until a person's brain learns the “trick” of decoding the information---but once you do, a full-fledged, three-dimensional picture “jumps” up at you off the page. The point I am trying to make is that contrary to naive assumptions, people do not all experience the world in the same way. And for some people religion is all total “bosh”, whereas others experience something incredibly important.

 

Part of this is a question of emotion. People aren't just thinking beings, but also feeling ones. And for many people, religion is about feeling deeply about a specific God. I've never been able to understand the strong feeling that some Christians have about their Gods (Jesus, the Father, the Saints), but then again my childhood experiences were not conducive to feeling deeply about other family members. (Union meetings where people talk about “brothers” and “sisters” also leave me cold.)

 

What I do have more sympathy towards are people who claim to have had religious experiences.

When God came into my teenage or college bedroom in that way, unasked and unmistakable, the next morning I would wake up changed. I’d go out into the world and give away everything I could. Wouldn’t drive past a broken-down car without stopping to help, was kind and grateful even with my parents, couldn’t stop singing, built houses for poor people, gave secret gifts to my friends, things like that. Sometimes it lasted for weeks; once, when I was in my early twenties, it lasted for nearly a year. It is called being on fire for God. It’s like you’ve glimpsed the world’s best secret: that love need not be scarce.

“Letter from Williamsburg”, by Kristin Dombek,

The Paris Review, Summer 2013 No. 205

I've had experiences like the ones Dombek describes, which is why I have some sympathy for them. I've also had them associated with numinous dreams where I met with figures from Daoist mythology---the Goddess of Mercy and the Ghost King.

 

People who've never had this sort of experience say that they simply cannot understand what people are talking about. (I suspect that a fraction of this population have actually had something like this happen to them, but it scared them so much that they refuse to admit it.) But I have to take most of them on their word. After all can we really know what it's like to be in someone else's skin?

 

Of course, some folks will probably just dismiss this as something akin to a manic episode and chalk all religious experiences to low grade psychiatric illness. As someone with more than my fair share of exposure to people with obvious psychiatric disorders, my humble opinion is that this is a facile response. The line between madness and sanity is far more ambiguous than that point of view would suggest. We create a socially-sanctioned definition and discard many important elements of ordinary consciousness in creating the “received version” of what it means to be a human being. My opinion is in line with that of Temple Grandin (the famous autistic professor of animal science.) I once heard her interviewed on the CBC where she suggested that human consciousness exists on a continuum and both autism and bipolar disorder are extremes of very useful human tendencies. Remove all autism from the human population and you will have removed all the scientists, mathematicians and engineers too. And take away bipolar disorder, and there would be no more artists. I won't hazard a guess about what is involved in religious experiences, but perhaps if we removed the ability to love God we would also remove the ability to love anything or anyone.

...........

 

Another thing to remember about organized religion is that it is a way of unifying a population of people around a central theme or set of ideals. When people see a ritual they are not arguing amongst themselves in a search for some sort of clear and precise truth. Instead, they are doing one or many of several different things. They might be enjoying music and art, or, they might be feeling good about being part of a community experience, or, they may be feeling nostalgic about past experiences of a similar sort, or, they might be having a profoundly emotional experience triggered by feelings associated with specific symbols. The feeling and ideas aroused by the experience may vary from person to person, indeed, they might be totally contradictory. But because the ideas and emotions raised remain on the theoretical level instead of being explicitly articulated, there is no opportunity for people to realize this fact, so the event brings them together instead of pushing them apart. For example, a given ritual might be attended by an artist who appreciates the beautiful caligraphy on the altar; an old woman who is reminded about the village festivals of her youth; a young mother who is happy to be surrounded by her extended family; children who are happy for all the noise, gaudy clothes, and, good food; and, a young intellectual who views the public worship of the Gods as a way of connecting to the long history of the nation. All the same things can be said about a Roman Catholic mass.

 

Contrast this with what happens when a philosopher tries to get people to clearly articulate their beliefs about a contentious subject. People who thought that they were in agreement usually find out that they believe very different things. Tempers often flare up. And the community divides. Ritual unites a community---discursive reasoning divides it. This is why ancient Athens put Socrates to death and why I can seem to be a total jerk at a party. But the great value of discursive reasoning is that it deflates superstition, expands human knowledge, and, separates fact from opinion. It offers progress in place of comfort. I understand the appeal of religion, but ultimately I know that I am more of a philosopher than a believer. This is why I ultimately rejected religious Daoism and am writing this book. But it doesn't mean that I cannot understand the appeal. I would hope that all those rationalists who read this book will at least try to understand this point too.

 

&&&&

 

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

The Estonian Zero Bureaucracy Project!

I've voted already and am pretty much burnt out on the election. I listened to a large chunk of the local all candidates "debate" hosted by the Guelph Chamber of Commerce and local Real Estate organization. 

I also listened to about half of the national leader's English "debate" on the CBC. (Sorry guys, I just gagged on the last half of this stinking mess of contrived conflict designed to create "sound bites" of "click bait".) 

As near as I can tell from watching both of them, the key issues seem to boil down to complaints that Trudeau Liberals didn't work fast enough to:

• get safe drinking water into First Nation's communities
• end discrimination against women
• cut fossil fuel emissions
• bring in pharma-care
• raise standards in extended care facilities
• bring in more childcare
• cut housing costs
• get Afghan translators and their families into Canada
• find the children's graves on old residential school locations
• etc, etc, etc

Of course, it's easy to complain about stuff not getting done when you are on the outside of government. Opposition parties don't have to make sure to not spend too much money, don't have to work within the rule of law, can ignore existing contractual obligations, don't have to consider the federal/provincial division of powers, and, can just wave their hands at the existing bureaucracy. I dare say that if the Conservatives, NDP, or, Greens were in power they'd find that it is a lot more difficult to get things done than they seem to think it is now. (And, of course, the Bloc Québécois couldn't form a government under any scenario---no matter how far-fetched.)

As a result of the pernicious influence that comes from understanding how governance actually works, I generally see campaign promises as being not much more than aspirational. What the parties mean when they say "if elected we will---" is actually "if elected, we'd like to---, but whether we can or not is often pretty much beyond our control". That's pretty frustrating for most voters to understand, so they just refuse to admit it. And because of that, if any party ever tried to actually say the truth out loud, they'd get severely punished.

In fact, one party leader did say exactly this thing during a national campaign---and she was severely punished. Prime Minister Kim Campbell was the successor to Brian Mulroney as leader of the Conservative party and she said:

Image c/o Wiki Commons

 

The election is not a time to discuss serious issues.

There were a lot of reasons for the collapse of the old Progressive Conservatives in that election, but the result was they ended up electing only two MPs and the above statement has hung around Kim Campbell's neck like an albatross ever since. The fact of the matter, however, is that if we judge politicians by what they do instead of what they say, the inescapable conclusion is that they almost all agree with her. 

I've decided that this blog post will be an attempt to thumb my nose at the above truism and make a suggestion about something that actually is a serious issue. It won't fit into a soundbite and it certainly isn't "click-bait", but if the government ever decided to act on it, I think it just might speed up the adoption of new policy and save money at the same time. 

&&&&

One of the key problems facing governments is the sheer complexity of modern society. Every time we come up with a new problem, we find that the solutions invariably involve creating a new set of regulations needed to deal with them. And, of course, those new regulations in turn add another layer of complexity---which yet again slows down the speed at which the government deals with issues.

For example, consider how much confusion the current pandemic has created for various companies and government agencies simply because of the need to create special vaccine passports. The federal government needs to show other countries which of our citizens have been vaccinated. In addition, the provinces also need to show businesses like bars and barbershops who has had their jabs and who has not. Wouldn't it be nice if there was some already existing, easy way to do this?  

Even before the current pandemic, there has been a proliferation of government and private sector initiatives that allow people to do things on line. Unfortunately, these have all tended to sprout up like weeds without any standardized regulation to protect people's digital identity and privacy. Moreover, they can be really irritating as once you get used to the way one system works, you will invariably find another that doesn't work that way, and it can be profoundly frustrating to figure out the subtle difference that is screwing-up your ability to use it. Each of these programs will also want you to come up with a unique password---that you are then expected to remember along with the scores of other ones you have for other systems. (I know, digital wallets in web browsers exist to store your passwords, but there are a surprising number of systems that will not allow you to use one---I'm looking at you, Federal Government.) 

Beyond this immediate example, let me illustrate the point I'm trying to raise with a bunch of examples from my mundane private life.

I've filed out my taxes for several years using a private, on-line system that's accredited by the government. I liked the company which had a "pay what you want" system---much like this news blog. The software worked pretty good, and I gave them about $40 through Pay Pal every time I used them. 

This year it looks like this business was sold to a larger corporation. The change required some more hoops to jump through and included a pretty hard-sell attempt to get me to sign up for a complete "wealth-management" program. I was irritated by this "up-sell" attempt, which means that I will probably have to find a new way of e-filing my taxes next year.

As part of my project of sponsoring my wife to become a permanent resident, I found myself accessing the federal government's website access portal. I found it to be a complete and utter kludge. To fill out some forms I needed to use Adobe Acrobat---which is proprietary software that has not been adapted to work on Linux. That means I simply could not fill out those forms on line using my home computer. 

Moreover, the actual forms on the website are a complex nest that is obviously the result of years of incremental change without any attempt to prune away the dead wood. The result is that if you simply do a Google search for a form, you run the risk of accessing an old version that the government won't accept (this happened to me---and resulted in a big time delay in processing), the wrong one for your particular situation, information that is no longer correct, etc. Even if you get to where you should be, some of the interactive forms will work with a modern browser, but others are only accessible if you use the obsolete Internet Explorer browser instead of the new Microsoft Edge or one of the other popular ones, like Fire Fox (this happened to me too).

Provincially, I've used web-based systems to get my fishing license, my new Health and ID cards, pay my property taxes, and so on. But each of them comes from a different system with their own idiosyncrasies. Moreover, many of them are managed by private, for-profit companies (my wife's driver's license, for example). The thing to remember is that private corporations generally don't have the same sort of privacy controls that governments operate under.

In any case, the result of all of this is an expanding number of independent plastic cards jammed into my wallet. Each of them requires a separate set of forms to fill out and which all come with their own idiosyncratic ways in which things can go wrong.

I could go on and on. But my experience has been that if you talk to anyone about how difficult it is to connect with Canadian bureaucracies, you will hear lots and lots of examples that other people have had to deal with. And I'm relatively lucky. I've never had to deal with welfare, had to deal with a complicated illness, ran a small business, had much to do with the legal system, don't have any children, etc. I think that I am on safe ground saying that complex red tape has become an anchor that drags down individual people's productivity, costs a lot of money, dramatically reduces government's ability to tailor policy to people's needs, and, costs the economy significant growth potential every year.

The question is, however, is whether or not this is just an inescapable part of the times we live in or the result of dumb choices made (or, we've been oblivious about) over the past few decades.

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I work hard on these articles. If you can afford it, why not subscribe? You get to decide how much you pay, and Pay Pal and Patreon make it easy to do.

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Consider the following item:

Estonian digital ID card. C/o Wikimedia Commons

This is an electronic ID card from the tiny Baltic republic of Estonia. This government decided decades ago to build it's "brand" around getting rid of as much unnecessary bureaucratic red tape as possible by using modern computer technology. I'm not an expert on this subject in any way, but I think that the average Canadian has no idea that what Estonia has done is even possible---let alone that there are already nations in the world who have actually created working demonstration models of how much better things could be.

&&&&

The first thing to understand is the operating principle of not forcing people to submit a given piece of information more than once. We take it for granted that each and every time we fill out a form we have to input our name, date of birth, where we live, etc. But what if we had a "super Social Insurance Number" that governed absolutely everything in our lives? No separate health card number, no separate driver's licence number, no separate fishing license number, no separate property tax roll, student ID number, etc?

The secret to unifying everything into one card is what they call the "X-Road Data Exchange Platform". The idea is that there needs to be a centralized, safe gateway on the bureaucratic Web where someone can use their E-ID to to access a variety of different services. This means that the government can compartmentalize the different types of information each individual has, such as medical history, criminal records, tax payments, educational attainments, property ownership, etc, into secure server farms while at the same time allowing individuals the opportunity to use a single access point to interact with each different system. 

This means that a doctor can access a person's health records without being able to look at her criminal history. Similarly, using the same card, the police can look up whether or not there are unpaid traffic tickets on her record without knowing that she may be under treatment for an illness. The secret to the system is the creation of a standardized architecture for both the information collected and the way it gets manipulated by the program. 

This system not only applies to core government institutions like taxes, healthcare, or, criminal justice---but also to various private, non-profit, and, public companies such as parking lots, Credit Unions, and, passenger rail services. Any enterprise that deals with the public can join the X-Exchange by agreeing to to adhere to it's rules and regulations. This ensures standardization and allows the central authority to create and enforce rules against things like selling off a customer's data to advertising companies. 

&&&&

Of course, at this point someone will say "Yes, I can see the increase in efficiency. But if we place all the information into the hands of computer geeks and the people who sign their cheques, what's to stop the government (or some hidden cabal) from stealing from the public or persecuting opponents with a click of the keyboard?" 

Aside from the obvious rebuttal of "Well, what's there to stop government, private businesses, or, some fraction of them from doing this right now?", I would point towards the Estonian strategy of using a Blockchain system to protect the citizenry. 

I'm far from the right person to explain what a Blockchain is, but here's my best attempt. I'd be surprised if I don't get a lot wrong in what follows, but I hope some interested readers will pursue the link to the Wikipedia article I put into this paragraph. Beyond that, I'd suggest that most of us will simply have to accept what the experts tell us about the systems and see it as one more "black box" (like the computer I'm using to write this article) that we just have to trust simply because we lack the ability/time/energy/interest to learn how it works.

Here I go---.

As I understand it, Blockchains use the novel ability of computers and the Web to copy and publish documents, and, check them for their accuracy with almost zero cost. Traditionally, bureaucratic systems---like banks---record data on paper ledgers. Whomever controlled the ledger controlled the data. That person had the ability to alter or destroy the paper ledger, which altered or destroyed the data. 

Computers and the Web allow people to create and publish electronic ledgers and send them all over the place. This means that no individual has exclusive control over the ledger anymore. Everyone who wants can get a copy of the ledger sent to her machine any time she wants. All the copies have a date-stamp on them, which gives a "snapshot" of what the ledger said at any particular date and time. This means that even if the central accountant tried to change the ledger to say erase a payment into my account, everyone on the Blockchain would still have old, dated copies of the ledger that would say that I had a certain amount of money in my account which wasn't listed in the latest version. 

Moreover, a program in their computer would do a checksum test to see if any changes or errors had crept into the old parts of the ledgers in the Blockchain. (I do this whenever I download a new operating system for a computer.) If an error was found, the idea is that the community of computer types who have made it their business to know about all these things would then look into what's going on, and if they found any hanky-panky they'd raise an unholy ruckus. (As they routinely do about any number of things---ever heard of Anonymous?)

Frankly, can you think of a better group to protect your information from the government and big business than the hacker community?

"But wait a minute!!!!" I can hear people saying, "I don't want a bunch of hacker types having access to all my information!!!" In response, I'd like readers consider a key few issues.

First of all, the privacy horse left the barn a long, long time ago. Every time you use a credit or debit card, answer a "fun survey" or fill out a petition on social media, buy something on line, click on an advertisement, watch something on You Tube or Netflix, use your cell phone, etc, a machine is gathering intelligence on you. Most of that info doesn't go to the government, but rather big business. The only difference is that democratic governments have a set of regulations to protect your privacy, and most businesses don't. Moreover, if a rogue arm of the government wants to jerk you around, they can either buy the info from a willing business or have it sent to them by a intelligence agency in a willing foreign country. (Ever heard of the "Five Eyes"?) 

The second issue to consider is what role does privacy actually play in our society? If someone wants to know how much money and real estate I have, it's pretty much a public record. That's because I'm a small fish. But if I was a super wealthy or powerful person, well that's a different story. I could (and probably would) hide my wealth through things like numbered companies and offshore bank accounts. The fact is that a great deal of our current fixation on privacy protects the rich and powerful from being accountable to the public good far more than it protects the vast majority of individuals from the power of the state or giant corporations. This means that the more gyrations our society goes through to preserve theoretical privacy for everyone, the more it protects the wealthy and powerful from being accountable for their actions. Do you really place a higher value on keeping your "secrets" from others than on forcing large corporations and wealthy individuals from amassing more and more of the country's power and wealth?

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The last question I suspect people will ask is "What if there's a computer melt-down and we lose all this information stored on computers?"

Estonia has gotten around this issue by creating a "digital embassy". This is a server farm in a secret location in another country (Luxembourg) that has the same sort of protections as a traditional embassy (ie: it's considered part of another nation and no one from the host country can get into it without permission). Huge amounts of the Estonian digital bureaucracy saves it's data there so they could quickly reboot their government if the existing structure was destroyed during a disaster. 

This isn't a hypothetical concern. Estonia happens to be on the front lines of the current cold war between NATO and Russia. It suffered a massive cyber attack in 2007 and could actually end up in a shooting war because Russia tends to see it as being traditionally part of its territory. Putin would probably dearly love to see it annexed or at least reduced to puppet status.

As other nations adopt the Estonian bureaucratic model, they are similarly creating digital embassies to protect their data. No doubt Estonia will create others to add a new layers of redundancy to their government records.

&&&&

I could probably write a lot more on this subject, but the point of this article isn't to be exhaustive but rather to expose readers to something they probably haven't heard about. I'll finish off by offering one bigger, "meta issue". 

Our society is going through a lot of turmoil because it is facing a lot of stresses that will require significant changes in the ways people live their lives. 

• Moving towards a zero-carbon economy is going to totally upturn how people live their lives. 
• Marginalized groups---non-whites, women, gays, etc---are no longer willing to sit on the sidelines while rich, old, white men call the shots.
• Our housing system has totally failed to produce affordable housing for most people.
• Modern technology is increasingly incomprehensible to a slice of the population.
• Society is splitting into an upper class that is sucking up more and more of the collective wealth while everyone else is finding their income degrading as dependable, full-time jobs are replaced by the "gig economy".
• The COVID plague has stressed-out the small businesses and service sector jobs that the precariat depend on to survive. At the same time, it has forced a lot of people who are extremely suspicious of any technology they don't understand to simply take things like vaccines and mask mandates on "trust".
  

I suspect that my vision of what's going on is extremely rare. In a lot of ways I should be someone who is upset about new technology. I grew up in a very old-fashioned community on a family farm. We grew almost all of our own food. When I was out ploughing field with a tractor, my neighbours (old order Amish) would sometimes be doing the same thing with horses. I still preserve some of my own food and have been told that I sometimes dress like someone from the 19th century. 

I also had a blue collar, unionized job for most of my life. I recently retired but my employer didn't fill my job with a permanent replacement, but instead made the job part-time, casual, and, dramatically cut the pay and benefits. I own my own home, but am concerned about whether I will be able to buy a comparable replacement without having to leave Guelph if I have to sell it.

At the same time, however, I am very well educated. I have tried to keep up on various issues. I can and do things like change the software on my computer. I recently purchased a bleeding-edge "open source" cell phone and have taught myself how to change the operating system on it. I am not afraid of technology and try to learn as much as I can about it.

But I understand that the vast majority of people in my age bracket and with similar backgrounds aren't like me. They are afraid of the new world ahead of us. All this new stuff makes them feel powerless and disenfranchised. They want the world to stop changing.  

The problem is that it can't. There are more and more people in Canada every year. They have to have some place to live. The climate is changing and we have to stop using fossil fuels. More and more people who are "different" are gaining influence in society, and they are not going to go back into the closet, the kitchen, the ghetto, the reserve, or wherever society used to hide them away. Rich people will continue to get richer unless society starts to redistribute wealth in some significant way. And COVID-19 is here to stay whether we trust big pharma or not. 

All I can personally do is try to expose people to new ways of looking at the world and plead with them to make the effort to try to learn a little more about it. And once you do that, I would suggest that you try to force yourself to push the boundaries of your "comfort zone" to expand them a bit wider. Our lives are going to continue to change as the years go by. If people continue to fight tooth and nail against it, we are going to make more bad choices and end up with a worse future than need be. If, instead, we make the effort to educate ourselves we might be able to get to a better place. I think that Estonia may very well have found one. I think it's time we took a good look at their example to see what we can learn.

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Well, I'm exhausted from writing this pig. I hope you aren't similarly exhausted from reading it. Be nice to each other and try to learn something new every day.

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