The Fatal Disease Called "Nostalgia"

Johnny Harris, Twitter.

Like a lot of people, I've been watching a bit too much news lately. This included a back-grounder video by Johnny Harris that explained that the reason why Vladimir Putin is so obsessed with Ukraine is because of a genuine nostalgic attempt to bring back the "good old days" of the Soviet Union and Imperial Russian Empire. 

I also watched an excellent CBC Fifth Estate documentary about the Ottawa occupation titled The Convoy and the Questions. It does a good job of identifying the organizers of the occupation and pointing out their particular motivations. It appeared to me that these people were also hearkening back to the "good old days" of Canada---where white men were in charge and people still believed that God spoke to them in their day-to-day lives. 

This took me back to thinking about Donald Trump's slogan that he was going to "Make America Great Again" (or MAGA) and the BREXIT supporter's love of "little England". 

If you look at all the major players in these and similar populist revolts, I think I can see the same broad under-current. They are based on a nostalgic rebellion against modernity. 

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The Marriam-Webster Dictionary defines nostalgia as follows:

1: a wistful or excessively sentimental yearning for return to or of some past period or irrecoverable condition also : something that evokes nostalgia

2: the state of being homesick : homesickness

Most people don't realize it now, but when the terms were first coined, both nostalgia and homesickness were considered potentially dangerous illnesses. But in modern times they have morphed into something like a romantic affectation---in much the same way depression has become associated with the music known as "the blues". Unfortunately, I think we are suffering through a period when nostalgia has morphed into a populist political ideology---and it's about time people wake up to why it was originally described as a dangerous illness. 

It's dangerous because in the grip of it people become fixated on a past that is generally an historically illiterate fiction---a past that never really did exist. Without an accurate grounding in the past, they seek to restore dangerous absurdities and create chaos in the process.

In 2002 a movie came out titled Far From Heaven that turned an absolutely gimlet-eyed gaze on "the good old days" of 1950s USA. I saw it at the Bookshelf cinema without knowing anything at all about the film, but left absolutely gobsmacked by it's ability to show the personal, emotional cost of both racism and homophobia. 

For those of you who haven't seen the film, it describes the lives of a couple who seem to "have it all". Cathy and Frank Whitaker are a good-looking, middle-class white couple. They live in a beautiful home and Frank has a good job. But he has a secret---he is a closeted gay man who is losing his marbles trying to keep up the pretense of their marriage. When Cathy finds this out, she has no one to confide in except a black man named Raymond Deagan. They fall in love, but social pressures push them apart. Frank finds a male lover and leaves Cathy, while Deagan moves to another city to escape the racism unleashed when people see him and Cathy together. At the end of the film, Cathy Whitaker is totally alone and ostracized from her community. Weren't the 1950s a grand time---.

I mention the movie because it's absolutely crucial that people understand that society has not changed over the past centuries "just because". Women have more autonomy, gays have come out of the closet, and, people of colour have been increasing integrated into society because they suffered horribly in "the good old days". Moreover, these changes didn't come about from the good will of naive liberals---instead, oppressed people had to organize and fight tooth and nail against the status quo for every single improvement in their lives. 

Similarly, the old Russia of the Czars and Commissars was not "good". Ask any Ukrainian about the Holodomor, or "death hunger" that happened when the Russian government accidentally (or on purpose) destroyed the breadbasket of Europe and left the peasantry to starve. 

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I spent a lot of hours these last few days fighting with my computer to get it working again after an upgrade in my old operating system shut down the sound. Now I have something that is mostly working---although today I found out that I have lost my ability to do some of the video editing work I am used to. (Back to the workshop for me!) I'm not whining, but I just want to point out that there's a lot of "behind the scenes" work that goes into putting out these articles. If you like the result, and you can afford it, why not subscribe? PayPal and Patreon make it easy to do.

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One of the things that really bothers me is the casual, indirect brutality that I hear from people my age here in Guelph. I'll talk a bit more about this in a future article, but it fits so well in this op-ed that I don't feel I can avoid mentioning it. 

Poverty is nasty and brutal. I'm not talking about being frugal; I'm talking about not having enough to eat, wearing shoes that make your feet really hurt because you can't afford ones that fit, having to walk everywhere because you can't afford bus fare, missing opportunities that everyone else takes for granted because you are too poor to "show up"----all those sorts of things. 

Now let's talk about one of the key causes of poverty. I'm not talking about "capitalism" or "man's inhumanity to man", or anything like that. Instead I mean the simple, "nuts and bolts" issue of housing eating up every penny you can lay your hands on. And the simple fact of the matter is that "the rent's too dam high" simply because there isn't enough housing being built. And the honest truth is that the overwhelming majority of middle-class people in Guelph who already own their own homes don't want developers---neither greedy nor non-profit---to put up high or even medium density housing in their neighbourhoods. 

This opposition isn't fueled by a self-conscious hatred of the poor. Indeed, some of the most vocal opposition to new housing I've heard comes from people who will tell you that they are "progressive" people who would never oppose helping the less well off. But the fact of the matter is unless we build enough housing stock to house everyone, the poor will always end up putting every penny they get from work or welfare into housing---which will leave them nothing else.

But if you ask the people who are opposing new development they will almost all tell you that they just want to "preserve the community". They want to keep Guelph the way it is now---if not take it back to the way it used to be. They are being nostalgic.

Here's the thing people need to understand about good and bad behaviour. There are almost no self-consciously "evil" people. Instead, most bad things come about because folks believe that they are actually good and refuse to objectively look at either their own motivations or the impact of their behaviour on people they can't see. The traditional way of describing this according to Eastern philosophy is to say they are suffering from delusional thinking.  

When Putin invades Ukraine to go back to the "good old days" of the Soviet Union, he is suffering from a delusion. And in the grips of that delusion, he doesn't really think about the hurt he is inflicting on it's citizens. Similarly, when the people camped out on streets of Ottawa babbled on about how they "loved" the people of Canada, they were deluded about how refusing to get vaccinated was hurting other people in our society---like the immunocompromised and hospital staff. And, when people in Guelph fight tooth and nail against any type of intensification in our housing, they are being oblivious to the harsh lives they are inflicting on the poor. 

This is why our fore-fathers believed that nostalgia was a dangerous illness---it is the source of a great deal of delusional thinking. I happen to agree.

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

Cult Smashers: Part Thirteen

The Telegram discussion list that Stephen Jeffries joined wasn’t just about Incels. It had a lot of interesting posts on it, on a wide range of subjects.

One of the articles that really interested him was by an Israeli anti-terrorism expert. It explained that most of the measures that governments put into effect weren’t really about making people safe from terrorism, instead they were about making people feel safe. He gave the example of the extreme screening measures that US Homeland Security instituted at airports. He pointed out that even if the minimum-wage nobodies that were screening people’s luggage were able to stop bombs from getting on board an airplane, the point of terrorism isn’t to bomb airplanes, it’s to terrorize travellers. That means that a bomb does just as much good blowing up the long lines of people waiting to get their luggage checked as it does blowing up an airplane in mid air.

It also pointed out that one man with an semi-auto pistol in a shopping mall during the Christmas rush would create just as much mayhem as a bomb in an airport. And there is no way all the shopping malls in the nation could have anywhere near the security as the airports.

Another post described a website where Stephen found out that he could download a copy of The Anarchist’s Cookbook. When Jeffries looked at it, he found recipes for making bombs, cooking up your own nitroglycerine, cyanide gas, home-made napalm, etc. Moreover, he found another post that suggested it might be interesting to get a hold of old chemistry textbooks from the 19^th century---they would have lots of instructions about how to make all sorts of destructive chemicals using fairly simple methodology. He’d actually enjoyed his chemistry classes at high school and got good marks. He realized that he’d probably have no problem at all following the simple instructions he found in these old books.

The guys who wrote the old Nordic Sagas were right! A life of purpose aimed at gaining glory was so much better than one wasted on pursuit of safety and money. Stephen knew that he wasn’t just a Incel beta anymore---he was a warrior setting out on the path to becoming a Saint!

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

Book Review: The Ark of the Oven Mitt

Like many other people, local musician (and City Council member) James Gordon has been trying to figure out to keep his business going during this plague time. Unable to actually do any touring, he's written a book/album about the decline of the bar band circuit. In the process, he's attempted to come up with something of a prescription for a new world. 

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The book starts out by introducing a folkie band by the name of "Miles Gerber and the Shit Disturbers". This group consists of the main singer/song writer/guitarist Miles Gerber, bass and fiddle player Dougie, the Drummer, the van they travel in (Nelly-Belle), and, a young woman they literally picked-up off the side of the road who goes by the letters "MG". The plot progresses by illustrating how much the bar circuit has declined since the "good old days". 

Haunting this depressing state of affairs is Mile's decline---both professionally and personally---after the other half of his original, semi-successful band "Miles and Myles", left him under mysterious circumstance. His wife and the band's lead singer, Maddie Myles, unexpectedly left him one day never to be seen again. He never got over the loss, and it left him in a tailspin. 

Once MG arrives, however, things take a bit of an upswing. First off, MG announces that her initials stand for "Merchandise Girl" and shows how the Shit Disturbers can augment their meager income by selling t-shirts and downloading songs off the Web. Eventually, she takes over the role of agent---which she proves very good at, even to the point of organizing a show at a major bar in downtown Toronto---which is live-streamed. 

The artistic basis of this mini-renaissance is Miles' connection to a member of his audience who shares with him the story of the decline and fall of his family's sheep ranch. This leads him to write a song about this personal tragedy, which he promises to sing at the next venue. When the band gets there to set up, they find that the ex-rancher is in the audience and pleased as punch that he has been heard. 

This leads to other stories from audience members, which leads to other songs, which eventually results in a caravan of folks following the Shit Disturbers across the Prairies and eventually to Manitoulin Island where an impromptu "Woodstock" coalesces into the "Ark of the Oven Mitt", which you'll have to read the book to understand. ;-)

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The book has it's moments, but the real appeal is the music. When you open it you are confronted with a QR code which you can scan with your phone or tablet. It takes you to a BandCamp page that allows you to stream or download the songs.

James Gordon has a real knack for writing songs that encapsulate someone else's emotional point of view. Consider, if you will, the following example. Here're the lyrics from one of them.   

James Gordon, looking mysterious

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Angus Maclean

On that awful day, they took my license away

Might as well have taken me out back and shot me

Bit by bit they steal, everything that makes me feel

Like a man, time has tracked me down and caught me.

 

Well the auctioneer, he's on his way here

To take everything except my pain

What am I bid, how much to get rid

Of one old man named Angus Maclean

Their gonna take me away, to that old folk's place

Put me in a hog pen to die in

And when they try to say, Angus it'll be OK

I still got enough upstairs to know they're lying

Well the auctioneer, he's on his way here

To take everything except my pain

What am I bid, how much to get rid

Of one old man named Angus Maclean

You can't separate the land, from an old farmin' man

We're made of the same damn dirt

Might as well auction me, then maybe we'd 

Know what an antique like me was worth

One more trip into town, on this old David Brown,

Don't need no license for that 

Then we'll sit in the barn, till they auction off this farm

And we're sold off together for scrap

And here's the performed song as a YouTube clip.

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The way to understand this book is to recognize that James Gordon is an old-fashioned balladeer. By this I mean that he writes small, emotional songs that explain a specific human situation. 

This is an old tradition that goes back long ago. In the British tradition, balladeers were people who wrote songs and travelled from town to town sharing them with people who were gathered in pubs or markets. When cheap printing and increased literacy came along, songs were often printed on "chap books" so they could be shared more widely than a individual balladeer could travel.

In a world without newspapers---or any other formal source of information---the ballads a person would hear in a tavern would often be their only source of information about significant or just plain interesting news from the wider world outside the village. 

For example, here's a ballad from 1759 about the death of General Wolfe during The Battle of the Plains of Abraham. 

First the lyrics:

Bold General Wolfe

On Monday evening as we set sail
The wind did blow a most pleasant gale
For to fight the French it was our intent
Through smoke and fire, Through smoke and fire
And it was a dark and a gloomy night 

Now the French was landed on the mountains high
And we poor hearts in the valley lie
Never mind my lads, General Wolfe did say
Brave lads of honour, brave lads of honour
Old England shall win the day

The very first broadside we gave to them
We killed seven hundred and fifty men
Well done my lads, General Wolfe did say
Brave lads of honour, brave lads of honour
Old England shall win the day

The very first broadside they gave to us
They wounded our general in his right breast
Then out of his breast living blood did flow
Like any fountain, like any fountain
Till all us men were filled with woe

Here's a hundred guineas all in bright gold
Take it and part it, for my blood runs cold
And use your soldiers as you did before
Your soldiers own, your soldiers own
And they will fight for evermore

And when to England you do return
Tell my friends that I am dead and gone
Pray tell my tender old mother dear
That I am dead O, that I am dead O
And I shall never see her no more

And now the performance:

Gordon's ballad Angus Maclean is much the same thing, only it isn't about the conquest of French Quebec by the British Army, but rather the decline of the family farm. That's what The Ark of the Oven Mitt is about, the personal impact that our changing world is having on individual people. If Gordon lived at the time of the enclosures, he'd be singing about people being kicked off their village lands. At the time of the potato famine, he'd have been singing about starving while shiploads of Irish wheat were being shipped to England. And if he currently lived in Ukraine, he'd be singing about training as a guerrilla to defend his home while Russian troops concentrate at the boarder. 

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As a matter of fact, James has written another ballad recently which has become something of a hit (ie: downloads alas, not sold recordings). Ironically, it's about a different sort of convoy than the one described in The Oven Mitt. It's not composed of people who lost their livelihoods because of the new economy, but rather fools who threw away their employment because they were gulled into thinking that a life-saving vaccine is a plot by reptiles from outer space/Bill Gates/blood-drinking American politicians/whatever.

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

 

Cult Smashers: Part Twelve

Sally called Nate and told him that the next day they’d be going on a road trip to meet some people. She said to dress like usual and be ready by 7:00 am at the front of the dorm where he slept with the other live-in staff. She showed up right on time, and in a late model Jaguar. Nate was amazed at her ride. When he got in, he asked about it.

“It’s just part of the image. The Elders helped a guy with a luxury car business a while back. He lets us borrow his cars when useful. Today, I’m just getting a little used to the Jag so I can look like it’s my “daily driver” in the future.”

“More James Bond stuff?”, Nate was increasingly aware that Sally was whomever Sally wanted to be, when she wanted to be.

“More likely, I’ll be James Bond’s chauffeur. Either way, it’s the details that allow you to paint a picture so well that the mark doesn’t question anything.”

“So what’s on today?” Nate was getting more comfortable with the idea that Sally was a spymaster for the Old Ones. It was kinda cool, once he got over the surprise that they were into stuff like this---and that Sally was one of the experts they relied upon to do it.

“I’m trying to help you relax a bit about this by letting you tag along. We’ll be visiting a tailor. More importantly, I want to introduce you to something that we want you to do. While we’re getting there, I’ll introduce you to some of the theory. First of all, I want you to listen to a recorded message that I got off the Web a few days ago. Luckily, the sound system is so good on this car that I think you can get something of the feel that this would have on a person at home with a good stereo or ear-buds to listen.”

It started with some spacey electronic music and a subtle, yet obvious, recording of a heart-beat behind it. Then there was a voice over: “Sit back, relax, close your eyes and take deep breaths. Still your mind, and let what follows flow over you.” This instruction repeated several times, then stopped---leaving the music and heart beat.

Moments later, another voice came on. It was calm and eased slowly into a rhythm.

“I started into this with an experience that is probably pretty common. I had an intuition that what we are told is ‘normal’ and ‘real’ just isn’t that at all. ‘Normal’---as I’d been offered it---wasn’t quite right-- and, ‘life’----as I’d been offered it---wasn’t quite right, and, ‘reality’---as I’d been offered it---wasn’t quite right. I intuited that that there is a ‘wrongness’ in the world and as a result I was reluctant to participate in the world.”

“Different people express that reluctance in different ways. Some by lashing out and acting up. Some through depression and with-drawl. Some through self-sabotage---or it could be laziness and procrastination. Getting drunk, getting fucked-up on drugs. Different ways of diverting some of your life energy away from ‘The Program’---let’s call it ‘The Quest’.”

“The Quest” is learning what is wrong with the world, why we feel alienated. It’s the intuition that niggles away at the base of your being and leaves your life---as we’ve been offered it---as not being just quite enough.”

At that point Sally shut off the recording. “That’s enough of that nonsense.” Then she asked Nate what he thought about what he’d just heard.

“I don’t know. Somebody who doesn’t understand what life is about and is honestly searching for the truth?”

Sally sighed. “Yeah, that’s what it’s supposed to sound like. But think about this. He sounds like he doesn’t understand what life is about, but if so, why is he broadcasting on the Web? Don’t seekers seek?”

“Well, it is just an intro and you shut off the recording before he could have gone on to say that he’d found some big thing that he was going to share with us.”

“Good. You are still skeptical of my narrative. Let’s let that question hang in mid air. We’ll get back to it---but not right now.”

She paused as she changed lanes, merged into the collector, and, then made the transition from the 401 to the street that would get them where they were going in Toronto.

“Let’s get back to the clip I shared with you. Think about the intro and the words that he uses: ‘experience’, ‘intuition’, and the repetition of that phrase ‘as I’d been offered it---wasn’t quite right’. He’s being intentionally vague so the listener can ‘fill in the gaps’ with his or her own words. That’s similar to how a stage magician conducts a ‘cold reading’. Do you know what that is?”

“Not really. I don’t think I’ve ever heard the term before.”

“We’ll get into this in more depth some time in the future, but a cold reading is something like that game ‘20 Questions’. You ask vague, open-ended questions, one after another, and invite a person to fill in the blanks. After a while, a skilled practitioner can hone-in on information that the subject has given him, repackage it in a new way, and it looks like he’s just read their mind.”

“If you are too specific in your language, you cannot cast your net very wide because it gives listeners an opportunity to say to themselves ‘Oh that doesn’t apply to me. My experience is different’. That’s why this fellow uses vague, open-ended terms so much---such as ‘intuition’ and ‘wrongness’”.

“Beyond the content of the words, think about the form. Do you notice all the repetition? This isn’t a standard talk about a factual subject. Instead, it’s more akin to a magical incantation. Or the patter of a hypnotist who is suggesting to a subject that it’s OK to feel, believe, or, do something that they would never ordinarily do because they think it might be foolish. Think back to the introduction: ‘---relax, close your eyes and take deep breaths. Still your mind, and let what follows flow over you---’. Isn’t that ultimately nothing more than a suggestion to turn off your critical faculties?”

“One last thing. Think about those last words where the Voice is suggesting that people ‘act up’, or get depressed, drink too much, are depressed, or procrastinate, etc. What exactly is going on here? It sounds to me like he’s trying to appeal directly to people who have significant problems and who might be particularly vulnerable and susceptible to someone who wants to gain some control over them.”

Nate was kinda freaked by what Sally was suggesting. “Why would you say that about this talk? What you say could be true, I supposed, but that’s a pretty negative spin to put on something that just sounds like an intro to harmless, New Age crud.”

“Well, I’d agree with you except I happen to know the ‘back-story’ to the fellow you hear blabbing. He’s a pretty prominent on-line influencer who’s been pretty instrumental in convincing a lot of people that the US government has been taken over by a conspiracy from outer space. He’s convinced a lot of people that vaccination against childhood disease is a conspiracy by Bill Gates to control the birth rate. This has led to a significant number of children dying of things like mumps, measles, lockjaw, etc. Oh, and in the process, he’s made a very good living off leading various ‘spiritual workshops’, selling books, recordings of lectures, etc. He also makes a ton off advertising on his podcasts. It’s true that this is empty, New Age crud. But I’d hardly say it’s harmless.”

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

Housing Revisited, Part Two: the Housing Crisis---Branch and Root

Four years ago I started a five-part series about housing affordability in Guelph with an article about the rental housing situation. It was pretty popular with readers, so I have been tempted to come back to the problem. But while I've seen evidence that the "powers that be" have become more aware of the issue (it was an issue in the last federal election), I've yet to see much evidence of anyone wanting to deal with the underlying causes---which I tried to document in those articles. But last week the Ontario provincial government finally published a paper that does seem to "get it". Because of that, I've done some rummaging through various other reports and thought I'd do a few posts about it as a way of refreshing my readers about what is really at the root of our present crisis before I talk about this new report.

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Henry David Thoreau, c/o Wiki Media

To quote Henry David Thoreau:

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.

As I see it, I have heard a lot about the branches, leaves, and, stem of our housing crisis from the news, politicians, and, my friends. These would be things like:

• landlords converting units to Air BNB
• offshore investors using real estate as a safe place to park capital
  
• greedy landlords that charge whatever they can get away with
  
• crime bosses laundering ill-gotten gains
• real estate speculators "flipping" houses
• real estate agents that use "blind bidding" to start bidding wars
  

I have no doubt at all that all of the above have some impact on housing costs, but to my way of thinking these aren't causes of high housing prices, they are instead symptoms. As such they are the leaves, branches, and, stem of our housing crisis---but not the roots of it.

If there was a glut of housing in Canada, landlords would have to compete for good tenants---which means they wouldn't rent out units as "party Air BNB"s because that would drive away other hard-to-replace tenants. Nor would offshore investors or the mob be buying housing, because it wouldn't be such a safe investment. Moreover, house flipping wouldn't make any sense because speculators wouldn't be able to count on properties always increasing in value. Finally, with a lot of houses on the market and buyers looking for a deal---instead of just anything they can afford---no one would deal with Real Estate agents who tried to start bidding wars.

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The above are just distractions. The real problem with housing is really simple: there just isn't enough of it being built to service the demand. If there were, then prices wouldn't be exploding all over the country.

I have talked to several city Councillors about this and the answer I get from them was that there's nothing they can do. They all said the only solution would be if the Federal and Provincial governments would shower cities with money to build more social housing. 

Pardon my cynical ears, but I don't believe that's true. I got my first whiff of this when I interviewed a provincial cabinet minister who said that cities could build a lot more housing, but they don't want to because most municipal voters don't want intensification in their neighbourhoods. And, most city Councillors don't want to alienate voters, because they fear that they won't get re-elected. As a result, they refuse to allow developers to build higher density housing in existing suburban sprawl. Excuses get thrown around, but the fact is that if the voters don't want an apartment building in their neighbourhood, politicians won't force them to take it. Since most of the land in our cities---including Guelph---is full of single family, fully-detached homes, this means nowhere near enough housing has been built for decades.  

The result of this endemic political cowardice has been the creation of what are called "yellow belts" (does the colour refer to the cowardice of municipal politicians?) in cities all over North America. If you've never heard of this, take a look at this nifty video from TVO.

 

The Yellow Belt is important to understand. Unfortunately, most people haven't  because they are deep in denial about an issue that was first articulated in my youth: the limits to growth. 

It's a simple idea, really. The human population keeps growing but the earth does not. Of course Canada has a lot of land, but as we all know, most of it is rock, swamp, and, tundra. That means when we do find good land to grow food, it is a really good idea that we don't pave it over to build subdivisions. That's why we have The Green Belt and The Places to Grow Act to limit sprawl. 

Under these two guiding pieces of legislation, the job of Ontario city Councils was clear: they needed to encourage intensification of housing to deal with population increases. Unfortunately, most elected officials and voters responded to this legislation by having a temper tantrum every time someone suggested that they should actually allow an apartment building in an existing subdivision. This meant that the only places any developer could build tended to be in a small number of sacrifice zones (like downtown or along Gordon St. in Guelph), where they would build towers. Even there, developers found so much opposition that they never could build big enough to have the economies of scale necessary to actually push down the price of individual units. 

Developers weren't allowed to build enough housing to actually approach demand, which means that they only build for the well-off who can afford to pay big prices. (After all, if you are only allowed to make and sell ten watches, what are you going to produce, Timex or Rolex?) This leaves lots of demand on the table, which resulted in existing run-down homes being bought and fixed-up by people (like me) who couldn't afford a ridiculously over-priced condo (even if it comes with a granite countertop and stainless steel fridge). This refusal to fix bad zoning resulted not only in no new housing being built for working and middle-class people---it also resulted in old, run-down, cheaper rental housing being taken off the market too. (This is called "gentrification".) That left the poor with fewer and fewer housing options. Gentrification means that the only option left for the poor is the social housing that the province and feds are supposed to provide, but chronically under-fund. (Which is probably why I've had Councillors believe more money from the feds is the only "viable solution" to the housing crisis.)

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I'm really annoyed about the way our society has created this stupid housing mess. If you agree---and you can afford it---why not subscribe? You won't hear this sort of analysis from the mainstream press and if people of good will won't support "alternative" voices, they won't get heard. Patreon and Paypal make it easy to support with small monthly payments.

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When I'm given the time to argue the above case to friends, I often get the response that they don't want Guelph to get any bigger, so why doesn't Council just stop people from moving here? I generally see this as an evasion, simply because I hope that everyone realizes that Council lacks the authority to set up armed check points to keep people out. But it is important to deal with this issue in some detail because the Home Builder's Association has identified this as an important reason why housing has become so expensive. 

Escalating prices always have two causes, supply and demand. The decision of city Councils all over North America to cut supply through idiotic planning has been made much worse because of the dramatic increase in demand that came about because of immigration to Southern Ontario. A report published in 2021 by the Smart Prosperity Institute and titled Baby Needs a New Home: Projecting Ontario's Growing Number of Families and Their Housing Needs points out that

Ontario’s population grew by nearly one million people in the five years between July 1, 2016, and June 30, 2021, after growing by just over 600,000 persons in the previous five years. This dramatically increased the demand for housing, while the rate at which new homes were built stayed virtually unchanged. This increased demand, from young Ontarians that have started to, or would like to start, a family with no change in supply, contributed to rising home prices and a shortage of family-friendly housing across Southern Ontario before the pandemic.

We estimate that 413,753 households should have been formed, but only 349,039 new housing units, of all types, were built over those five years. This difference, of 64,714 households, can be thought of as the supply gap of housing over the period. 

Page iii of Baby Needs a New Home

The impact of population growth came home to me personally last summer. For reasons I won't go into, it appears that in the next few years I am going to have to sell my present home and purchase a new one. Looking at the cost of housing in Guelph, it seems clear  to me that I cannot afford as nice a place as I presently have---let alone one a little bit bigger. (My wife is now living with me and we both agree a little more room would be nice.)

With the above in mind, last summer we were looking at communities in Ontario where we could afford to live. We had a couple design criteria in mind---namely we want some place where we can live without a car, so public transit and a Via Rail station are mandatory. What we found that seemed to be within our means were Windsor, Brockville, and, Cornwall. 

I suspected that the reason why these cities/towns seemed relatively affordable was because they are too far from Toronto to commute and are not doing too well economically---so most people don't want move there. I had these ideas confirmed by Baby Needs a New Home because it gives a population break-down for just about every community in Ontario. Here're the stats from Baby plus the most recent census data from 2021. (I couldn't find 2021 data for Brockville, so I left it out.)

• City:  Population by 2001: & 2021: Percentage of change
  
• Cornwall:   47,462 & 47,845 increase of .8%
• Windsor: 218,222 & 229,660 increase of 5%
• Guelph: 110,819 & 143,740 increase of 30%

(Gee, I wonder why housing prices have gone berzerk in Guelph?)

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This raises the question of just exactly who are these people who want to move here? Look at the following bar graph. 

From Baby Needs A New Home, by the Smart Prosperity Institute

As you can see, there has been a substantial acceleration in Ontario's population growth starting in 2016. The blue parts of the graph could show internal factors---births and people moving here from other provinces. There is an increase, but not huge. There also seems to be a similarly small increase in immigration, as the orange parts of the bar. What really stands out, however, are the beige parts that are described as "non-permanent residents".

The report suggests that most of these people are foreign students who have been allowed to stay a bit longer in Canada to continue work because of some relatively new legislation. These people also need places to live, so they too are competing with other people for living space. 

Baby Needs a New Home  identifies the Post-Graduation Work Permit Program (PGWPP) as the main culprit behind the increase in demand. (I'm not entirely sure if this makes sense, but since this is peripheral to the issue of this article, I'll just take it at face value.) In a nutshell, it is a program that allows students who are taking full time study at a Canadian educational institution the option of working after graduation in order to gain in-Canada experience while they are applying to get a work permit in Canada. 

Let's give a hypothetical example. Someone from another country gets into a Canadian graduate program in engineering. This is good news for universities, because he gets money from a corporation that wants him to research something for them---and the university gets bucks from the grant to fund their labs. While working here, this guy decides that he likes the place, so he applies to immigrate or at least work here for a while. Unfortunately, it's hard for immigrants looking for a job to get credit for experience outside of Canada, though. So this program allows people who've already applied for residency, and who've just graduated from a Canadian school, to work immediately after graduation so they can get Canadian work experience. This means that no one will "make strange" at their credentials and work experience and companies can get the really skilled, top-notch employees they need to be successful.

The federal government considers this a "win" for the country, because the Canadian economy benefits from the skilled workers it can poach from other nations. The only problem is, however, that this new slug of immigrants need to have housing, and the province and municipalities didn't take this influx of new people into account when planning new housing developments. As a result, they've dramatically under-estimated the growth in need---when they were already failing to provide enough for the existing sources of growth. The result is "another fine mess" that we have gotten ourselves into!

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Speaking of "fine messes", as I was writing today, I heard that the Prime Minister is going to invoke the Emergency Measures legislation. This effectively puts the nation under martial law and allows him to order whatever he needs to do to end this pandemic of blockades and occupations. From what I can see, it needs to be done. I have to admit that I'm more than a little freaked-out by the level of support that these anti-vaxx yahoos are getting. But it does seem to me that the vast majority of Canadians are against them, and will support our elected officials if they have to get tough. 

Maybe when the dust clears and we have a better idea of what is really going on, I'll write an article on the subject. Until then, try not to get too upset about what is going on. I recommend a good comedy---.

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

Cult Smashers: Part Eleven

Chapter Four

Stephen Jeffries had never been very successful in his love-life and never could understand why. At least until now. He’d finally found out the truth on a discussion board he found on MeWe. Most of the posters seemed to be having all the same problems he did. But instead of blaming themselves for what was happening, they pointed out the real reasons why girls didn’t want anything to do with him. It was because of the way women are genetically programmed to be attracted to a fairly rare specific type of man---the spectacularly good-looking “Chads”.

This didn’t use to be a problem until the feminists---”femoids”---took over and changed the rules. Ordinary women---”Beckies”---used to “settle” for guys like him---”betas”---because they needed a man to support them and their children. And betas like Stephen were happy to settle with Beckies because it allowed them to have a stable sex life. But once single women were able to get jobs and support themselves and their children, all this got screwed up. Even if a woman wasn’t really all that attractive (those types of women were called “Stacies”---they only mated with Chads), the Beckies knew that once in a while the odd, over-sexed Chad would have sex with them. Then they could get pregnant and potentially raise much better “quality” children and never have to waste any attention on betas---like Stephan. It wasn’t especially difficult to figure out, it was simply Darwinian sexual selection in operation.

That left guys like Jeffries in the cold. He still had a really strong sex drive---but a beta like him could never have sex with a Stacie, which was OK. But since women’s lib, he had to admit that now he also had about zero chance finding a Becky to live with. He was doomed to be an involuntary celibate or an “Incel”. He was nothing more than a second-rate by-product of evolution. All he could ever expect from life was to be a left-over, a worker drone; not much good for anything except toiling away at a crappy job until he died---frustrated, angry, and, irrelevant.

It had been hard to take. That’s why they called learning this "being black pilled”. But it was still better than constantly banging your head against the brick wall of biology. And now, for the first time in his life, he felt part of a community of like-minded people: guys who really understood what it was like to be Stephen Jeffries.

Then he’d been really excited when he got a private message inviting him to the special Telegram group for people “who really get it”. That’s where he found out that he could be just as successful as any Chad---if he just redefined what it means to be “successful”. That’s where he heard about the idea of becoming a “Saint”. This involved orienting your life from one of “fitting in” and having a “normal life” to going beyond all that and adopting the heroic creed of the Vikings. They said that all life really should be about is being remembered.

The first time he’d heard that poem from the Icelandic Sagas, it had struck like a bolt out of the blue. He immediately made the point of memorizing it and it became the mantra that gave meaning to his life.

Cattle die,

friends die,

and the same with you;

but I know of something that never dies

and that's a dead person's deeds.

Stephen realized then that while he could never be a Chad, he could be a Saint---or “Supreme Gentlemen”---like Alek Menassian or Elliot Rodger.

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

Cult Smashers Part Ten

The next day when Nate was in Kelly’s martial arts class, Sally was back to being grumpy and frumpy. She acted like she didn’t even know him.

****

Later on, when he had some spare time, he powered up his laptop and checked his email. She had sent him some materials. They consisted of a list of links to a YouTube channel titled Instant Charisma. It had titles like:

• How to Talk to a Total Stranger

• How to Get Someone to Like You in One Conversation

• The Instagram Rule

• The Zen Method

And many more besides. All of them were about how to alter your own behaviour to make yourself more appealing to others.

Nate looked at the videos and spent some time in contemplation. It deeply disturbed him to think that a person could consciously control their appearance and behaviour through a calculated move to influence another. It didn’t seem “natural” or “authentic”, and it made him question the way he’d understood his interactions with other people in a really disconcerting way.

He decided he’d ask Barb about it, so he set up a time to meet her in her official capacity as the staff’s “Spiritual Director”. She’d probably have something useful to say about it---she usually did.

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She had time for him that afternoon.

“I’ll be honest, I was expecting you. Kelly said that you’d probably be contacting me because of some new personalized training he had you starting. He said it is a secret project, but to tell you not to worry because I have clearance to discuss everything.”

“That’s convenient”, Nate was only slightly snarky. It really was helpful.

“Yes. It is.” Barb was sitting behind a desk and Nate was in a comfy chair. “Why don’t you just tell me what you want to talk about?”

“Sally had a one-on-one meeting with me and started me on a training program that kinda freaked me out. It’s about learning how to manipulate other people through strategic use of body language and the way you talk to them. It’s kinda made me rethink what it means to be a human being.”

“Can you give me a specific example?”

“Well, there’s this one that supposedly tells you how to get someone to like you with one conversation. It comes down to tactically presenting a conversation based on a few principles that can be generalized as working for most people. It just gives me the creeps to think that getting someone to like you can be planned out and learned, and then used in order to get your own way. Part of me thinks I could never do that, and, another part thinks that I don’t ever want to be the sort of person who could do that.”

Barb leaned back in her chair and put her fingers together. “Tell me about what your life was like when you were young. Did you have a lot of friends and spend a lot of time with other people your age?”

Nate scowled a bit. “No, I grew up on an isolated farm and I literally never saw anyone my own age outside of school. All summer long---from May to October---was spent mostly working by myself from about 12 or so. I never did anything extra-curricular or even rode a school bus---my mom drove me to school to maximize the time spent doing chores.”

Barb leaned back with a snap and crossed her arms. “Well that explains a great deal.”

She took a moment to think, leaned forward onto her hands, and, started to explain. “Ever see someone in a crowded place baby-sitting a puppy with one of those ‘service dog in training’ bibs on it? What is happening is called ‘socialization’. It’s an important part of a dog’s life. It teaches them to not be anxious around people. Puppies only have a short period of time to go through this. And if it doesn’t happen, the adult dog will always be anxious around groups of people---which makes them worthless as service dogs.”

“I suspect that you missed most of your socialization in your childhood and as a result are pretty clueless about how people interact with each other. You’re like a puppy that never got socialized, so every time you are in a group of strangers, you get a bit anxious. And anything that stretches you a little makes you even more anxious.”

“But it’s more than that. When they are young most people develop all sorts of informal, subtle behavioural tactics to get along with each other. At first, they usually aren’t very good at it, which is why teens do such goofy things---like boys slathering themselves with obnoxious ‘body sprays’ or wearing their trousers with the seat sagging down. Girls do the same thing when they put on way too much make-up and totter around on high heels.”

“The thing is, we are genetically programmed to form groups and eventually pair up. And the way humans do this is through the type of subtle socialization that you are ‘creeped out’ by in these videos.”

“If I have such a hard time with this, why would I be chosen for this job by Kelly and the Elders?”

“I suspect that it’s specifically because you aren’t properly socialized. By your age, most folks just do things on instinct and follow whatever has worked for them in the past. In your case, you have only the barest of experiences and feel that not much has ever worked for you. That makes everything excruciatingly obvious. In effect, you are a ‘blank slate’ that they can work with.”

This wasn’t terribly flattering. He thought about protesting, but realized that Barb probably knew a lot more about him than he did himself---so he’d just look like a fool if he did. He didn’t interrupt.

Barb leaned over her desk, rested her right elbow on it, and laid her cheek in the palm of that hand. Looked at him sideways. Decided he wasn’t going to argue the point, smiled and then sat back on her chair.

“The other thing you have to understand comes from the mission we might be sending you on. The problem the Old Ones want to deal with is the explosion of ‘influencers’ in our world. Many of them are leading ‘lost souls’ astray so they can use them. These type of influencers amass their power almost exclusively through their use of charisma. And they feel the need to do so mostly because---just like you---they weren’t socialized properly. They haven’t learned how to properly interact with people based on mutual respect, so they’ve developed techniques that dominate, control, and, exploit.”

“Because you lack most unconscious instincts for getting along, these techniques will be more obvious to you when you try to use them. Another way to say this is to point out that you are something of a ‘blank slate’ that we can imprint our own mechanisms upon. We hope that this will allow you to eventually ‘out influence’ these malefactors and short-circuit some of the devious things that they doing to undermine democracy around the world.”

Nate stiffened on his chair. With anyone else and any other group, he would have already stormed out of Barb’s office and be hitching a ride back to civilization. But he trusted both her and the Elders so completely that his discomfort was held in check. “Why didn’t Kelly or Sally tell me about this?”

Barb let loose one of her tired-looking smiles. “They wouldn’t have been as good as me in articulating what you are going through. Spiritual/psychological stuff fits into my bailiwick. Moreover, we planned on telling you when you asked. You asked, I answered. You know the Old Ones never ask someone to do something without first coming up with a very clear and reasonable justification. That’s because we never do anything that isn’t in the general interest and doesn’t make sense.”

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

Housing Revisited: Part One, Do We Need Citizen Barracks/Dorms?

I'm in the middle of another "deep dig" about housing, but I thought I'd toss out an idea that my significant other has mentioned several times and which I think has a great deal of merit. My wife (Misha) is a veteran who served in the First Gulf War as a member of an activated National Guard unit from Missouri. Like me, she is a firm supporter of the idea of a Guaranteed Annual Income. But she takes the idea one step further and suggests that we should also have "Guaranteed Personal Housing" (GPH). 

As she describes it, it would be like the barracks she lived in after getting out of Basic Training. This is an important distinction, because most people's vision of barracks life comes from old WWII movies---which was something like what she experienced in basic training. 

Public Domain image of Australian Air Force barracks in Edmonton Alberta during WWII. (Think British Commonwealth Air Training Plan, BCATP.)

Once you move beyond that into the modern day, things start looking an awful lot like the dorm room I had in my second semester at the U. of Guelph. Here's a picture of a modern US Air Force/Navy dorm\. 

From a page by the Wiley|Wilson architectural firm.

The salient features are that the housing is basic, some has shared bedrooms and some doesn't (again like a university dorm). The expectation is that most eating happens in a mess hall/cafeteria. Beyond that, there are shared facilities---eg a tv lounge and a computer pool. Probably most importantly, there is a regular inspection to ensure that a minimum standard of cleanliness is maintained and there no damage done to the structure. This happened at the U. of Guelph too, only it consisted of house-keeping coming in to vacuum once a week. (There were some residences where this didn't happen. But from my days working in the campus carpentry shop I can attest that sometimes the messes we found after move-out were colossal---truck loads of beer bottles, holes cut through walls---which just shows how important regular inspections can be.)

Misha's idea is that something like this should be available from the government whenever the wheels fall off your life and you find yourself with no place to live. Please note, this isn't supposed to replace things like group homes, rent-geared to income housing, etc. That's because there are a lot of people who simply wouldn't fit into this sort of thing. Sad to say, some folks need "minders" to keep them from destroying any housing they find themselves. This can be because they have psychological issues, substance abuse problems, etc. Also, it shouldn't be seen as appropriate for people with families or many types of disabilities.  

What it would be good for would be young people who are having a problem "launching" after leaving school and simply cannot live with their parents. It could also be useful for singles or couples without children who've hit "rock bottom" after after a bankruptcy, job loss, divorce, etc. It would also be valuable for people who simply need some time to 'find themselves' when they want to move into another part of their life---entrepreneurs, artists, people going through minor life crises, etc.

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My major concern about the need for something like this is because if the government were to extend our current Guaranteed Annual Income systems to the people older than eighteen and younger than 65, I'm afraid that it wouldn't help anyone because all the increased income would be siphoned off by landlords who would just ratchet-up rents in lockstep. 

I suppose it shouldn't be necessary to point this out, but the current cost of housing in Guelph is loopy and seems to be totally disconnected from people's ability to pay. I get regular real estate reports sent to me from Bullpen Consulting and the latest one, Nov 2021, had the following information:

Guelph finished ninth on the list of 35 cities for average monthly rent in October for a one-bedroom home at $1,766 and for average monthly rent for a two-bedroom at $2,115. 

Year over year, average rent in Guelph in October was up 11.3 per cent for a one-bedroom and 10.2 per cent for a two-bedroom. Month over month, average rent in Guelph in October was up 3.5 per cent and up 5.3 per cent for a two-bedroom.

With rents this high and rising so fast, it's obvious that a key part of what is impoverishing people is the outrageous cost of housing. And the only way to get the cost of housing down and still ensure an adequate supply is to build new housing. As I see it, one relatively cheap way of doing this is to create barracks or dorm-style housing for that fraction of the population which is single or couples without children who would find this sort of low-cost housing an improvement over their present situation. 

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If you think this blog adds value to your life---and you can afford it---why not buy a subscription? Patreon and Paypal make it easy to do.

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I suppose some readers might take issue with this suggestion, but if so, I'd like you to think about it this way. A great many people are already living in rooming houses or shared accommodation. The problem is that with the average two-bedroom apartment going for $2,115 this means that each person has to pony up over $1000/month. And if someone is working at a minimum wage job of $15/hour, for forty hours a week, with four weeks in a month, that gives them only $2400 before taxes. That means that whatever else someone has to pay for---car, cell phone, food, dental, utilities, etc---leaves precious little for someone to build up the savings needed to get out of the "poverty trap".

The benefit of the citizen barracks idea is that they are a type of housing that the government could build for a lot less than the sorts of social housing it is already creating---and which is pretty much not available to most singles and childless couples anyway because the demand has so wildly out-stripped the supply.

There's also a multiplier effect. One of the advantages of a Guaranteed Annual Income (GAI) is that it eliminates the "reserve army of labour" that keeps wages low and allows employers to abuse employees. The idea is that if companies can always find someone who is so desperate for money that they will work for them, they can pay as little as possible and treat employees like dirt because there will always be someone to replace them. This is why wages stagnate or fall when their is a labour surplus. And in a situation where automation is replacing human labour and unions aren't all that strong (ie: like the last few decades) people make less and less money.

If we had a good GAI system in Canada every time someone tried to hire someone with crappy pay and/or awful working conditions the potential employee could say "No. I don't think so. I'd rather live on the GAI until something better comes along." This would force the economy to stop being reliant on exploiting labour and instead invest more in improving productivity through smart management and intelligent use of automation. It probably will be the case that automation will force more people out of work, but those days are coming anyway. And a GAI would give people the time to educate themselves and develop new "side hustles" that would keep them occupied doing the sorts of things (like writing this blog) that are useful for human flourishing, but don't seem to be sustained by the market place.

The same problem faces housing. If there is so little housing available that people have no other option than going onto the streets, landlords can charge as much as people can bear---which leaves them almost nothing else. Indeed, that's why food banks are so popular now. People have to choose between rent and food. 

If the government could provide a cheap dorm or barracks room---for people who have a modicum of self-discipline---it would keep those folks off the streets. It would also lower pressure on social housing and shelters because they would be reserved for people who couldn't live in a barracks. It would also push down the cost of housing for lower income people because it would strengthen their bargaining power with landlords because the "last resort" wouldn't be freezing on the street, but rather living in a barracks until something better comes along. And building barracks for a subsection of the population who would find it suitable would be a lot cheaper than building apartments for every single member of the population who's having a hard time finding a place to live.

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I want to make a couple things clear. 

First of all, this isn't a universal panacea. It's something that I think could be of value for a specific fraction of the population. There are lots of people who have "issues" who would very quickly destroy a barracks through things like vandalism or just plain unwillingness to clean up their messes. There would have to be some sort of regular inspections for people. If they fail to meet a minimum standard, they will have to be evicted. 

That's why there will still need to be specific housing geared towards people who---for one reason or another---simply cannot be trusted to live in a citizen's barracks. These already exist, and they would still be needed. 

Secondly, this could be a very good idea---or it could be an absolutely dreadful one, depending on how it is executed. If people manage them under the impression that the people living in these places are "failures" who need to be "punished" in order to force them to get back to being productive members of our great capitalist utopia, they will fail miserably. Similarly, if people try to make them into schools for building a new model citizenry, they will also fail. People are people, and they should be allowed to get about their lives as best they can if they find themselves living in these new barracks.

Some folks will only see them as a temporary way station on their way to being a middle or upper class "respectable person". But I could see other people living in them for long periods of time. We already have lots of elderly, working poor, disabled, students, and, at-loose-ends folks living in rooming houses already. The difference between them and the barracks is that what I'm proposing could be a lot cheaper and more comfortable. And if society provided this type of housing, a lot more of the disability, pension, student grant, and, welfare money the government gives out would stay in people's hands---instead of going to landlords.    
So what do you think? Should we add Guaranteed Minimum Housing---in the form of citizen's barracks---to the idea of a Guaranteed Annual Income?

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