Common Sense Digital Magazine is available on-line on the UseNet's News Group (in the "soc" news category: soc for social issues). It may be retrieved for the sole purpose of being read. The material published in Common Sense Digital Magazine is copyrighted (c) 1993 by Thinkware Publishers in Surrey, B.C., Canada. Letters to the editor, comments, and/or articles for subsequent issues of CSDM are invited and forwarded by e-mail. The publisher and editor reserves the right to decided whether to include them in future editions of CSDM.
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In a treatise addressed "to the inhabitants of America," Thomas Paine wrote in Common Sense, first published in 1776: "I offer nothing more than simple facts, plain arguments, and common sense, and have no other preliminaries to settle with the reader than that he will divest himself of prejudice and prepossession, and suffer his reason and his feelings to determine for themselves; that he will put on, or rather that he will not put off, the true character of a man and generously enlarge his views beyond the present day."
Mr. Paine concludes his slim volume with these thoughts: "Let none other be heard among us then those of a good citizen, an open and resolute friend, and a virtuous supporter of the rights of mankind and of the free and independent states of America."
This editor is rather concerned about the increasing absence of common sense in our society. It appears as if every argument between people and groups of people were based on the dreadful adversarial system that has encroached on us. No longer do we appear able to resolve disputes by applying common sense, i.e. what is a reasonable solution to a particular dispute? Of course this methodology presupposes that we are well informed, first and foremost. It is a truism that decisions, or opinions, or actions, need to be based on knowledge, reason, and the willingness to accommodate our personal points of view to those held by others.
Much easier, of course, than to assume that we have emptied the Holy Grail of sagacity.
Take this example: an abstract work of art, specifically the recent acquisition of one of the late Mark Rothko's paintings by the National Gallery of Canada. The price, yes, appeared excessive. When comment arose, it did so in a vituperative form. The most negative opinions expressed were those held by people who quite obviously had had little or no training in, or exposure to, fine art. Unfortunately, joining this phalanx of ignoramuses was at least one well known Vancouver columnist.
The farce continued apace. In Alberta (!) a number of civic dignitaries and political hacks decided that they, as well, could produce art that rivalled or, heaven forbid, bettered the brushmanship of Mark Rothko. It was a specious and low-brow attempt to discredit nonrepresentational art. As a French cynic said a long time ago: "Chacun a son mauvais go√t." There appears to be a steady supply of mauvais goût on hand right across Canada. Alberta does not have a monopoly.
Mark Rothko is not one of my favourite painters. I personally prefer the German and French expressionists whose social commentaries helped shape my own common sense and hence my own position in society. I thought that, to please my expectations, the National Gallery might have chosen a Georges Rouault, in case they were for sale anywhere. Or several canvases by Joàn Miró. They chose Rothko, and may they live happily ever after with this acquisition. The reason I am so blasé about it is simply this. There is little likelihood that I will travel to Ottawa to visit the National Gallery. But will the a professed Philistine ogle Rothko and go, "tut, tut, tut?"
The most important aspect of this high-priced acquisition was ignored by the ignoramuses: what kind of art should the gallery have acquired instead? The people best suited made the decision. The money had been earmarked for this specific purpose, and to suggest that, instead, emergency food ought to have been bought and sent to Africa obviously misses the point.
Take another example, that of food. We are overfed here in North America; none of us experiences--indeed is not allowed to experience--basic hunger. If you dispute this claim, you ought to get a lesson in reality. Basic hunger is just that: food cannot be obtained either for lack of money or because there is no food. Food in Canada is plentiful, much of it thrown away. It's the distribution of this food that is at fault.
Much of the Third World suffers from malnutrition. For many years I held to the view that sending food and to dispatch well-fed aid workers to Somalia (let's say) was the right thing to do. Then, because I like to learn even at my age, I read an article in Harper's Magazine, in which a former aid worker argued persuasively that sending food and a complement of western-hemisphere-based aid workers was creating a dangerous dependency on food handouts in Somalia, robbing the Somalians of the urge to grow their own food and to become self-sufficient again. So in effect this aid could be regarded as retro-aid, if I may coin this phrase.
It is hard to abandon a previously-held belief even when a good, persuasive argument is presented by someone who is well informed and reasonable as well. But I felt the need to be persuaded and to change my attitude accordingly.
These are only two examples among many.
We don't need any experts to tell us what common sense is.
We have an excellent resource for common sense; it is called vox populi, as long as it is based on solid information. It is an infinitely variegated resource tool. The only caution I would offer is that not every voice we hear follows our basic tenet of "good argument among informed and responsible men (people)." But this tenet does not exclude people with little formal learning. The mysteries of life and human conduct are not learned in a classroom. Only when we are exposed to experience do we gain insight. This is called information. And when this information is shaped into reasonableness we may engage in good argument.
The Impartial Witness
What we need to resurrect, perhaps, is that wonderful notion contained in Robert Heinlein's classic sci-fi novel, Strangers in a Strange Land: that in every dispute the disputants must turn to an impartial witness; someone neither involved nor holding partisan views. Such an impartial witness would be chosen by consensus from an array of people generally acknowledged to have attained vast information and the ability to dispense suggestions or judgments based on pure reason and responsibility.
Let me explain what I mean with that.
Suggestions (synonymous with advice): When we seek advice from our peers or those we consider our betters, we know what to expect from them. Not too often do we heed that advice; not too often do we resolve our conflicts according to advice tendered. Going to experts (medical doctors, psychiatrists and psychologists, lawyers, the clergy, et al.) often is of questionable value. What we really want is for someone to tell us that our perception is correct, that our adversary is a) an idiot, b) plain wrong, and so on.
Should the expert (or peer, or better) offer an contradicting point of view, we stop listening and go our merry cantankerous way into more conflict. Were we only able to offer this comment to one another: Let us agree to disagree and continue along the path of finding mutually acceptable compromises.
Enter the impartial witnesses. By reason of their depth of knowledge, experience, age and commanding presence, our prevarications might just disappear, supposing we allow ourselves to listen to words of wisdom and reason. Such social machinery for conflict resolution needs one major ingredient: we must be willing to render such a Solomonic verdict binding on the two warring factions. Think of that: binding arbitration applied to any human conflict. Bring on those impartial witnesses, I say. Could you agree with this concept?
An Essential Adjunct
But in any apparent solution also lies our problem. Here in Canada we proclaim our individual freedom ad infinitum; that assertion is almost never accompanied by the statement that such individual freedom contains an essential adjunct: that of responsibility toward the commonweal. This raises the question: does our own well being supersede that of society as a whole when the two are in juxtaposition? I think not.
The dangers encroaching on this dual freedom-with-responsibility concept are manifold. Take the current hysteria surrounding political correctness. The basics of PC are, of course, sound. But the PC zealots forget about being reasonable; they stop exercising common sense.
Such excesses, which followed on the heels of such excesses of social revolution (for example the Sixties), sexual permissiveness, and feminism, tend to unravel the very social fabric they intended to maintain and improve. We appear to be surrounded by 110-per-centers.
We favour black-and-white hues in our arguments, not the much more democratic grey shades. Taken to the extreme is this worst-case scenario, a scenario all too common these days: three witnesses see a man shooting another man. They turn the killer over to police. The killer is being read his (or her, to be absolutely politically correct) rights. When charged with murder or manslaughter, the killer proclaims he is innocent, that the three witnesses were mistaken, that he had been non compos mentis during the heinous deed, that God ordered him to do it, and so on. Anything but admitting responsibility for the action.
Underneath this loud proclamation of innocence lies the assumption that as long as we refuse to take responsibility, the courts will be worn down, and a lawyer may well get his killer-client off. Is there time to turn back the clock of extreme reactions to difficult situations?
By applying liberal doses of common sense we may make a tentative first step in the direction of social bliss.
Being a short treatise on the astonishing ascent and moral decline of recreational drugs, Gestalt Therapy, Rolfing, Primal Scream, encounter groups, personal growth seminars, and all those flawed remedies to turn our emotional shortcomings into whoop-de-do reversals.
So here you are. Out of touch with reality, out of synch with life, out to lunch when other human beings come knocking on your emotions. Just a healthy, normal, repressed, emotionally starved, psychically overwrought, all too frequently depressed, migraine-suffering, and angst-ridden person. You are, in effect, a typical byproduct of the Anglo-Saxon society still alive and prevalent in Canada where the stiff upper lip is law and where stone-walling has become policy.
You would like to be a warm person; one in touch with other warm people. Your goal is to be a high achiever without the stress and the alienation. You would like to pull in big bucks, but without the guilt or the hard-nosed, hard-arsed, go-to-hell attitude that marks successful people who are in charge of their wallets and careers.
So you drive yourself hard. You work hard, you play hard (at sex and at tough sports), and you live hard. You get married, or not, you produce 1.5 offspring, or not, you sample all the delights with wild abandon, and sometimes you get AIDS or other unpleasant side effects of extra-marital or extra-relation affairs. You swap mates for a younger model with less flabby skin, you split your assets 50-50 with your former live-in partner, and then you promptly start the vicious circle again. You ain't learned nothing.
You begin again to accumulate the trappings of the good life: a late-model Japanese or European import; the 5,000-square-feet monster house; the sail boat which sits moored for 350 days of the year; the Armani suits and the Salvatore Ferragami shoes--but what the hell, you already know what you want and what more there is to acquire.
So why the hell aren't you smiling more often? Why don't the trappings translate into bliss? Why are you so tense and tight, hard and unforgiving, tough and demanding? Why can't you be soft and open, touchy-feely, warm and cuddly, happy and carefree, displaying, for all to admire, a sun-tanned soul? Why are you not the envy of your compatriots? For an assessment of these burning questions, we must return some thirty years to the past.
Remedy No. 1:
You were so desperately young in the halcyon days of drug-induced, woozy-headed clarity of mind. You cared for the world and about others, or you believed you were after you inhaled and ingested recreational chemicals with total abandon of common sense. You drugged yourself to near oblivion and formed a habit.
This habit was not identical to tobacco or alcohol addiction. This habit was psychological. It felt so good to be stoned out of your bloody mind. So you changed chemicals: from marijuana to hashish to cocaine, to Angel Dust to LSD to PCP to crack and, perhaps, you crossed the line and became a hard-case mainlining drug addict.
Whatever your habit was, you clung to the illusion that you could become, for shorter and shorter periods of time--what if there were physical risks, what the hell, it felt so good--a solidly together person who could see the grass grow and hear the angels copulate.
But the novelty wore off, and you swore off drugs, perhaps with the exception of an occasional toke of pot or an occasional snort of coke, just to be trendy. You realized that your personality, the essence of your soul, was still woefully deficient. You wanted more. You became self-critical. Perhaps someone else could knit the loose strands of your mind together and make your soul whole again, a sweater of comfort and security.
Remedy No. 2:
Go to a psychiatrist? An analyst was for others, not for you. A psychologist? Perhaps. But then you heard, via the grapevine--we are now entering the early Seventies--of Gestalt Therapy and of its primary purveyor, Dr. Fritz. Funny little guy; smoked like a chimney; seduced women; was crude and merciless when he undressed you emotionally and metaphysically and left you in a heap on the floor in front of your fellow victims.
A sad story goes with this Gestalt Therapy. One of its practitioners was a former professor of philosophy. He conducted Gestalt seminars in his home. This writer went there for help, and received none; but that is not the story. Some time later, this practitioner got up early one morning and hung himself at the top of the stairs, there to be found by his family.
What did him in? Were the seeds of his suicide already extant and active when he was still teaching philosophy, or did he turn non compos mentis after he encountered Gestalt Therapy? A well known psychiatrist told this writer later that he accepted many emotional basket cases as patients from some Gestalt Therapy sessions.
The wonder drug Gestalt Therapy was flawed and exited into history.
Remedy No. 3:
Then you heard of Rolfing and combinations with other manipulations. Ah, didn't that feel good lying naked before a group of other victims and be massaged roughly until it hurt? What hurts must be good for you, no? You didn't even mind shelling out some of your tight disposable income for the privilege of being abused. Years ago, this writer attended such a session on an island in northern British Columbia as a media witness. He came away with more than mixed feelings of unease. He, who is a solid believer in common sense, felt a keen absence of common sense during that session. The half-hour radio documentary he produced was not the best he had ever assembled.
Remedies No. 4-17:
If still dissatisfied, or because you were a perennial consumer of group therapy methodology, you went in for the Primal Scream methodology of making you, the perceived broken person, whole again. All that yelling soon subsided. One of the most successful factories where broken people were allegedly reassembled was (perhaps still is) located in northern California in an idyllic spot. Very California; very chic; very expensive; trendy a-gogo.
The beautiful people with all those nasty blemishes on their souls went on a pilgrimage to this institute, shed their clothes as a sign of trust and faith in the process, and engaged in an exercise of massive soul-bearing and body clinching. The new standard of behaviour was to hug, to sob, to slobber, to have sex as a cleansing therapy. Damn the AIDS torpedoes, full steamy sex ahead!
As fads passed and therapies changed, you became conversant with terms such as anal-retentive and other unappetizing terms. One tends to lose count. Just open the leading Lower Mainland fuzzy-wuzzy, touchy-feely, goody-two-shoes New Age magazine's advertisements and feast on the luxurious menus of remedies offered. Judging by the dizzying array of remedies offered, our society, or at least those New Age readers, appear to suffer from a multitude of derangements, but all of them fixable in exchange for hard cash.
Example: colon therapy. Does that mean what it implies?
(Side tip: Here's a sure-fire remedy for clogged colons. Mix six prunes, two-to-three teaspoons of flax seed, and three-to-four teaspoons of wheat bran in a glass of tap water before going to bed. Ingest before breakfast. Have breakfast. Then run to the biffy. Guaranteed colon therapy. Donations by happy defecators gratefully accepted. This maintenance program for regularity costs little and won't harm your intestines.)
Whatever the emotional ailment, there was a designer therapy whose primal dream was for the authors to separate you from as much lolly as the market would allow. And it was a growth market: it attracted anyone who wanted to be someone else; anyone who felt inadequate; anyone who was lonely; anyone who cried big boo-hoo-hoo tears for want of a better social acceptance rate, and anyone who wanted to be somebody in a world populated by nondescript, average, run-of-the-mill people.
All these encounter group therapies were designed to make you feel better, adequate, special, wanted, and accepted by your peers. After having paid hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars to people criminally unqualified and unlicensed for this psychic mass manipulation, you had been handed the reassurance that you were a real person: that you were not a loser, not a failure, not an emotional basket case, not really rotten; that you were just shambling along on an errant path. The encounter therapy group made you whole again.
Did it, though?
One example. Almost twenty years ago, this writer was witness to an encounter group on a barge in False Creek. Encounter groups were the work horses of what was then called the human potential movement. He was not a participant, just a media witness duly accepted by the group participants. He participated, somewhat reluctantly, in some of the most ludicrous exercises designed to evoke trust and--here we go again--touchy-feely sensations. During the seminar, a handsome woman told the writer she hated him and jumped on him, attacked him with fists and legs, shouting obscenities, while the group looked on, nodding with approval.
The writer was baffled. Why was he being singled out as a hate object? He was an innocent ignoramus, was he not? The secret of encounter groups eluded him. After the seminar ended, the same woman came to him and invited him to engage in some serious horizontal activity. Hello? He declined. She was baffled. All this happened, of course, during the days of permissiveness and sexual abandon and before sexual harassment had become part of our vocabulary.
Once the phenomenon of encounter groups had worn off in the 1980s, a short hiatus ensued. What now? There was money to be made by the avaricious purveyors of touchy-feely techniques, but the erstwhile phenomenally successful encounter groups failed to attract the paying masses. Isolated pockets of therapy centres remained open and flush with success, i.e. profit. But the practitioners went out of town to idyllic resorts redesigned for souls in search of psychic manna.
The New Age movement was born. Former hippies became elegantly scruffy New Age apostles.
On the periphery of this temporary hiatus roamed the human sharks, their rapacious motivations intact. They applied the spreadsheet philosophy to the concept of making people whole again, or at least a little more whole. Encounter groups held maybe ten to twelve people; multiply that by $350 per weekend: an income $3,500 or more for a workshop from Friday evening, all day Saturday (bring your own lunch and dinner), and Sunday until noon. Low overhead, maximized profit. Two alternating therapists could work that group, easily, netting them $1,750 or more a pop, minus expenses.
The human sharks rethought the concept. Why not follow the early leads by the inventors of mass manipulation? Why not invite hundreds of people to an auditorium? Why not utilize graph charts and audio-visual aids to drive the message into the sheep's brain that they could be saved if only they listened and did as they were told?
This recipe paid off. Hundreds of desperate seekers of the Holy Grail of Personal Behavioural Wisdom signed up, thus multiplying the profit exponentially. The $1,750 suddenly became $17,500 or much more per weekend seminar.
Human Sharks Attracted
The trend toward personal growth seminars--that's what they are called, generically speaking--soon attracted dozens of human sharks who needed no qualifications except self-confidence and a gigantic shtick. The repressed-depressed participants gather in large halls, often are not allowed to defecate (discipline über alles, mein Herr, jawohl!), and go home all touchy-feely and infused with a sense of being someone again. No longer are they flawed nonentities with interpersonal problems and a cool soul.
The rapaciousness of these human sharks knows no bounds. Attract the masses with fairly affordable initial fees and follow up with higher seminar fees once they are hooked. Get the audience to split into sub groups and order them to meet independently and discuss the message the shark-guru has deigned to leave with them. Then they are called back for reassessment seminars and more fees. Some details may be different for different groups, but in principle the principle holds.
Word-of-mouth advertising does the rest. These personal growth groups are now almost self-sustaining and self-generating. The defective souls who attend these follow-up seminars must part with more of their income so they can become better people. But they are not allowed to feel that they have ever reached the pinnacle of their secret desires for self-fulfillment, for then the shark-gurus would run out of fodder and profit.
Perhaps it is the writer's flawed power of observation, but he has seen some of the participants of such personal growth seminars deteriorate in their emotional stance. He has seen them become hard, tough, cynical, ego-centric by design, unforgiving, cold, hysterical, and the very antithesis of their goals.
Were these not the very undesirable qualities that these very personal growth seminars sought to eradicate and replace with warm, loving, touchy-feely, warm and gushy behaviour? So what? The cheques and credit card slips keep stuffing the bulging coffers of the human-soul engineers, and that is, to repeat the dreary cliché, is the bottom line, is it not? NOT!
Dr. Josef Goebbels was pretty handy with distorting the truth and making people believe that black was Jewish and white was Aryan purity. He kept repeating the message of Aryan superiority ad infinitum and all the repressed hostility of the populace came drifting to the surface. We know the results.
Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodet?
Who is controlling these human sharks? No one. There are no regulations, no agencies to which the victims of such manipulation can turn for help. There is no machinery in situ to avert disaster.
What independent observers are monitoring the message drummed into the receptive minds of paying customers who are attending personal growth seminars? When will the compos mentis line be crossed? We don't know the extent of the effects of such manipulations. The human sharks of the personal-growth industry must devise ever newer and more effective, attractive messages of salvation. Such is the law of the market place.
Have any of you decided that the personal growth seminar you attended was bogus in the extreme, that it did the opposite of what you expected? Write to Common Sense.
[All advertisements are from the October, 1993, issue of Harper's magazine.]
"Penises of the Animal Kingdom." Common Sense says: "Sexual stimulation pursues wondrous paths, eh?"
"Jesus (is) fictional--Incontrovertible proof! $5." Common Sense suggests this ad: "Marx fictional--Incontrovertible proof! Send $10 to Common Sense now!"
"Clint Eastwood look-alike seeks bosomy woman under 30 who wants to explore her mind, soul, and planet." Common Sense says: "Dr. Sigmund Freud look-alike seeks gender-neutral person of any age who wants to explore the future of this planet and has a recipe for spaghetti a la marinara con polpette via e-mail."
"New jobs a virtual reality; 49 different occupations searching for 13 million employees over the next ten years. List just $17.50."Common Sense says: "Let our current prime minister send the money and solve our Canadian job crisis in one swell foop."
"Humour-of-the Month newsletter. Guaranteed to offend everyone! $1 sample issue." Common Sense says: "Get Hansard and laugh thine head off. Guaranteed to offend just about every reader. Free, too."
"Single? Interested in the Bible? Meet others." Common Sense says: "Please don't mix apples and oranges."
"Correspond with women overseas. Free brochure." Common Sense opines: "What is the object? Long-distance romance leading to immigration to the glorious U.S. and A.?"
"Meet angelic singles to avoid AIDS, drugs..." Common Sense says: "Go to Hollywood where 'angelic' is a byproduct of the silver screen. NOT!"
From the Common Sense's Puzzled Department: "Luckless in Las Vegas--SWM (Common Sense asks: '!!!???!!!'), 36, hopes for physically healthy, spiritually aggressive, loving, caring female who is already happy. Must appreciate a good workout and a good diet. If you exist, please write. I'm the same." Common Sense says: "Double your pleasure, double your fun? Does spiritually aggressive mean physically timid? And SWM: please explain this acronym."
"How We Can Live Happily. Sane, rational principles enunciated in dynamic 35-minute audio cassette. $8.50 ppd." Common Sense says with a deep frown: "No fair! Our digital magazine thought it had the market cornered; and now this! Editor seeks volunteer actor to read our magazine into audio cassette."
"Costa Rica. Plantation overlooking lake. Writer's paradise. Pristine." Common Sense editor recalls last time he sought an idyllic refuge on B.C.'s Gulf Islands to write The Great Canadian Novel. Within two days he developed a crushing migraine which disappeared mysteriously when he returned to smog-laden, people-driven society. He says: "A writer doesn't need a physical paradise, for when you write the mind is inner, not outer-directed. Beauty outside the window is irrelevant."
"Bisexual men: Conferences/peer support groups. Serious, educated, responsible men discussing valid emotions (whether acted upon or not). Honest sharing in small (4-5), structured telephone conference-calls with men nationwide. Or regional weekend seminars. Considering historical, cultural roots (Greece/Rome)." Common Sense says: "Too bad there isn't a third arena of sexual promiscuity besides homo and hetero. Those men in dire need might wish to exchange their 'serious' emotions with others on e-mail."
What do you do when you want to do something that is outside the accepted limits of our social ethic? What overriding factors could persuade you to do what you should not do but really would like to do unless, of course, the risks are too great? Use common sense? How in hell do you know what it is?
Why Not Throw Out the Past and Embrace the Future, eh?
Our political ennui has reached gargantuan proportions, yet there is no grassroots movement ready to pounce on our political rascals and give us a cleansed country. Yet in northern Italy there is such an explosion in progress. Will it spread to Canada? Could we become digital rebels?
Herewith a polemic calling for a grassroots movement to eliminate the political parties which have brought us to the edge of the social, economic and political abyss. The author, who is just like you a thoroughly disgruntled observer of life and politics in our Canadian society, is calling for suggestions of an interim name for a cleanup league that would set its sights solely on one goal--to bring down our political system in its entirety. Wipe it out. Bring on ground zero for our superannuated political process which we have come to loathe and fear.
What then, you ask? The remedy sound a little radical? Is the author some kind of retro-commie? Political change by force is not new, of course. Look at what happened during the past 100 years.
In France (Proudhon et al.), Italy (Malatesta et al.), Russia (Bakunin), and Germany (the short-lived Soviet Republic of Bavaria in 1919), a disorganized hit team of philosophical and militant anarchists tried to overturn the status quo in the waning years of the previous century and in the early decades of the twentieth century. The anarchists' methodology was never based on a popular demand for a fundamental cleanup; instead, they chose violence and assassination to accomplish their goal of dismantling the various old régimes. The forces of law and order pounced mercilessly and wrote finis to that scenario.
After two world wars the world was split into two camps: democracy (so-called) was pitted against socialism (so-called). In reality we saw a confrontation between a capitalistic market economy with its attendant old-line pork barrel politics and communism with its repression of dissidents and a state economy which never worked.
Capitalism won, put simply, when the Soviet régime and its satellites collapsed ignominiously. A man called Gorbachev pushed a little and the House of Cards that was communism came tumbling down.
We in the First World contingent of nations were at first jubilant. Then we discovered that while communism was largely gone, ethnic rivalry and regional nationalism erupted into a bad case of relentless ethnic chauvinism, dedicated to settling old scores. In its excesses, this post-communist era brought with it a new word for an old practice, that of selective genocide; now we call it ethnic cleansing.
Adolf Hitler perfected radical genocide. Now it seems that many nations and ethnic enclaves are choosing similar non-solutions to their woes.
Common sense--the notion that we should be able to live together peacefully--is being abandoned on the dung heap of history. That is the status quo.
Canada has so far escaped the more virulent displays of nationalistic fanaticism. Sure, there was the traditional repression of the First Nations by the invaders from Europe, but then, everyone did it; it was considered de rigueur to do so. Sure, there were the tense days in 1970s when Quebec separatists tried to force the issue and forgot to listen to the heartbeat of the nation which was not willing to let Quebec go it alone.
In Canada there is no general trend to subdue immigrants who belong to visible minorities. Ethnic cleansing is nonexistent here. We have other problems, and the most current and persistent are those of widespread voter dissatisfaction with our political parties and the entire pork-barrel system of corruption, favouritism and nepotism.
What Choices?
This is being written several weeks before our nation will vote for a new parliament (Oct. 25, 1993). What choices do we have? The discredited Conservatives under a charming but flawed female leader; the Liberals under a leader who fails to inspire us with confidence; the New Democrats who are suffering from an identity crisis; the fledgling National Party which promises sanity (see next paragraph); in Quebec the Bloc Québecois is dedicated to one thing: to get out of Canada. We also have, primarily in the West, a super-conservative Reform Party, a collection of right-wing zealots many of whom think racism is a five-cent cigar and which is led by a dreadful nonentity. Then there are the fringe groups such as the Christian Heritage Party, the Communist Party (are you still awake, eh?), the Green Party.
Last year one of our leading Canadian nationalists, Mel Hurtig, decided, together with some leading intellectual luminaries, to form the National Party of Canada. It is a dangerous name to have; in Britain the National Party has a skinhead agenda. But as this is written Hurtig's new party has failed to ignite voter curiosity or enthusiasm of sufficient calibre as to insure that the National Party would be regarded as a serious alternative to the existing voter confusion.
Right now, Canada is in a state of potential flux. The time appears ripe to change the political process from the grassroots up. But not a single grassroots neo-Messiah has emerged to kindle our anti-status-quo political passions. We need a blueprint for a new politics.
One such blueprint is being drawn up in the Po Valley, northern Italy's industrial centre. It is called "the Lega Nord, or Northern League, which has become the most potential political force in Italy," according to The San Francisco Chronicle's Frank Viviano, writing in the September/October issue of Mother Jones magazine.
What's that again? The Lega Nord? "Will its gospel of radical separatism dismember the world's sixth-leading industrial nation?"
We in Canada are often fuming about the transfer payments, a system which, roughly speaking, sees the have provinces support the have-not provinces through the federal government's Ottawa sticky-fingered conduit.
In Italy a similar scenario exists, except that it is not an east-west problem but a north-south calamity. The North generates taxes, and the South consumes handouts (read transfer payments, eh?). The national government in Rome is corrupt beyond anyone's wildest expectations (more than 2,600 individuals faced investigations this past summer), and the industrial North has its own share of pork-barrel incidence.
When all this came to light a few years ago, and coincidental with a change in voter apathy, more and more young people--all members of Generation X--shouted basta, enough is enough, according to Viviano. The foreign correspondent quotes one of the leading lights of the Lega Nord.
"We weren't born to politics, and we won't stay in it. We are engineers, lawyers, physicists. This is not a party, with a paid staff of permanent office-seekers and their parasites. It is a group of people who volunteer their time to a cause."
Wind of Change
What a refreshing wind of change. Are there such volunteers available in Canada? Absolutely.
Can we pull off some similar grassroots movement here in Canada? What purpose should it serve? Dismember Canada after having killed off the political process?
Let's hear a little more from one of the leading young women in the Lega Nord: "...it is a question of doing what is necessary to enter the modern world, the twenty-first century. It is a question of getting rid of the past if it slows you down, and embracing the future."
Other signs point to a fundamental change in the way things are being run in Europe. There are the members of the Rainbow faction at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, writes Viviano, "which is led by Lega representatives and includes German neo-liberals, French neo-republicans, and renegade environmentalists."
In Germany, the Green Party promised, in effect, to deliver such a change. But it has long since disintegrated through internecine dissension.
Who are the members of this post-Cold War protest movement in Europe, which Viviano dubs "an explosion in process?" They are self-absorbed, intolerant, and ahistorical. At present only the Italian Lega Nord is spearheading this phenomenon.
What are the consequences of their actions? Says a 27-year-old economist and Lega Nord political strategist: "We trust nobody who belongs to a party or talks about `our country' when he means the place is governed from Rome (read Ottawa, ed.). Italy? Italy means nothing to us."
Canada? Does Canada mean less and less to us? Are we hovering on the brink of such "an explosion in progress?" Is our political climate ripe for the post-Cold War ennui to erupt and sweep us off our collective feet? Are some of us increasingly becoming self-absorbed, intolerant, and ahistorical?
I suggest that some of us are. But I also intuit that there is no "explosion in progress" in Canada. At least, not yet. There is, so far, no focus for our distrust of the political process. We are condemned to vote, hating the results even before we mark the ballot.
There may be a ray of hope. Mel Hurtig and the National Party of Canada, as far as I can gather, is trying to achieve some of the same goals as the Italian movement, but without the obvious right-wing connotations. I distrust vigilante movements if that is a label that can be affixed to the Lega Nord.
One of the difficulties lies in the fact that those among us who see the need for an anti-political revolt have limited resources to a) register our dissent and b) to get together planning a strategy. Our vast distances from coast to coast are inhibiting such underground movement, unlike northern Italy.
But there may yet be a way for Canadian dissenters to meet. We have the technical know-how to plot the overthrow of our past and the restructuring of our future.
One possible solution is a digital interchange net of ideas and the formation of local groups dedicated to doing just that. The computer has become much more than a tool to facilitate typing and number-crunching. Computers, equipped with a modem, give us access to the world, literally. We can tune in to the digital phenomenon of Internet, for example, or we can form our own CanNet, for example.
This would be the forum in which local plotting groups can meet without having to travel. A core group in Vancouver's East End would determine its agenda, for example, then contact other groups right across the country: it's only a matter of digital organization and information flow.
Access Through the Internet?
We can even access Internet discussion partners at the Lega Nord in Milan and ask them for specifics: "What's going on? What are you doing? Tell us, we have a problem too." We can learn of this "explosion in progress" in Europe. We can talk in real-time with the new political whiz kids in Strasbourg and download some of their writings. Digitized knowledge is available nearly cost-free through the Internet connection.
I hear that more and more Generation X people are tapping into that enormous resource called Internet. I believe it may well be a foregone conclusion that--with certain exceptions--this new thrust for change would be spearheaded by members of Generation X, i.e. those under 30 years of age.
As we listen to the Canadian political candidates using has-been rhetoric to bash their opponents to smithereens, we must conclude that we are witnessing a thoroughly irrelevant process.
Foment an Explosion
It's a fascinating thought, to help foment an anti-political explosion. The conventional wisdom holds that any efforts at cleansing our body politic should, of necessity, be based on the concept of violent revolution. Unfortunately, in every case this occurred in history, the actions of the revolutionary government turned out to be a sordid repetition of the turgid past. The French Revolution created bloodshed. The Paris Commune of 1870 ended in repression. The Russian Revolution created the Soviet Bloc. The short-lived Soviet Republic in Bavaria in 1919 was led by frantic idealists and hard-core political revolutionists, a mix that could not survive. In this case the Social Democrats put down the Soviet Republic. And so on. Nothing ever worked the way the revolutionists expected because they used timeworn methods to achieve power, only to allows themselves to deteriorate immediately into endemic decay.
This explosion in progress in northern Italy, should it succeed, will be a anti-revolution that uninvents the political wheel. In Italy the Generation X, i.e. the young Turks of the Lega Nord, use technology to propel their behemoth of explosion in progress.
Many of us have wished for too many years for an alternative way to run countries and administer societies. Our choices were few, and all appeared flawed. Perhaps this Lega Nord has the right ideas, as long as they are tempered by Canadian temperament.
The coming events staged by the Lega Nord in northern Italy bear watching. We can be right there with our digital tentacles, and watch, and listen.
The lofty principle of common sense has been violated too many times for us to accept this status quo any longer. I for one am voting for an explosion. How about you?
The Daring Concept of Consensus: An Inquiry Into a New State of Mind
Let me reach into my bag of memories to present you with a dashing, daring concept, that of consensus. (By the way, don't ever use that contradiction in terms of consensus, namely general consensus. General in this context has come to mean that someone disagreed; hence, there can be no consensus.)
In the spring of 1948 I was working as manager of an officers' bar operated by the United States Air Force in Oberjoch, an idyllic ski and summer resort in the Bavarian Alps. One slow afternoon, in walked two women and ordered drinks, leaving a very thoughtful tip of two cigarettes, the post-war currency in Germany.
They came back. They were voluntary relief workers with the American Friends Service Committee, the Quakers' field organization which operated two distribution centres in hungry Germany. One of them was in Ludwigshafen am Rhein. As we talked, I became more and more interested: they were practising pacifists. They invited me to visit them at work. I did, and promptly asked to join them as a voluntary relief worker in their mission.
In June of 1948 I was accepted and went there, full of hope and idealistic enthusiasm. I was not disappointed. When I attended their first business meeting, a contentious issue arose. After some debate, no consensus could be reached. The 13 mission members (I was number 13) left the subject and went on with the agenda. Later I asked Louis Neumann why.
"Jurgen," this venerable Quaker who had spent the war years as a conscientious objector in the U.S. said, "we believe in consensus, and unless we can reach it, we bring the issue forward to the next meeting. We do not believe in a majority vote, simply because then the minority feels frustrated."
"Doesn't that tend to make for long meetings?"
He smiled. "Well, yes, it does, but we rather like reaching consensus. And it always happens, if not sooner then later."
I have never again encountered such consensus practised as a fundamental policy by any other group. Certainly there are many meetings where voting tends to be unanimous, but let a contentious issue arise and consensus takes a powder.
Now comes the practical application of this story. Our anaemic system of democracy is understood to mean that in every voting procedure there are those who vote against the majority. As long as voting on an issue involves more than a dozen people, consensus will be impossible to achieve, leaving behind a large number of dissatisfied and disgruntled voters.
Obviously we have to limit the concept of consensus to a smaller number of people, say delegates who carry the full trust of the people who have delegated them to a conference.
This system might just possibly be made to work if we reduce every issue to its essentials and hand it to an even dozen people who are then locked in a room and forced to come to a consensus before they are allowed to leave.
We all realize at this point that force is not even a remote option for achieving such consensus. It takes a fundamental change in our attitude before we can even contemplate compromise. For our inability to work toward a compromise solution is at the root of our adversary system.
Let's take a quick look to Europe, where the confrontation between entrepreneurship (whatever the market will bear) and the work force, organized in unions or not (we demand our fair share of the loot), has undergone subtle changes. In Germany after the Second World War, the emerging enterprises were rebuilt on the ruins of previous capitalistic empires. Phoenix rising from the ashes, and all that. The labour force was keen to have a hand in the rebuilding process.
Had the employers in West Germany insisted on squeezing the maximum in labour from their work force in exchange for a minimum of compensation and benefits, the resulting confrontation might well have hindered the ensuing economic miracle which the world watched with great envy.
Instead, the two potential combatants got together and discussed consensus. "We will pay
you well if you do your work well." And, "We will do our work well if you treat us decently." But old adversaries never die, they just fade away. So, because the big industrial unions did not trust the professed good will of the new West German industrial empires, someone came up with a sensible idea.
"Why not delegate one of our trusted shop stewards to the board room?" So the boards, most likely with great reluctance, agreed to let an Arbeitsdirektor sit in as a voting member. Thus the union's delegate (the work director) would be part and parcel of all planning for the future.
Another idea also bore fruition. The workers in an enterprise which was flourishing were offered free shares in the company. Thus the workers became co-owners in principle, if not in fact. This had a beneficial effect on the morale on the shop floor. Hans said to Kurt, "Hey, buddy, you're loafing; get your act together and work. Remember, this is our company!" Or words to that effect.
And despite some obvious shortfalls the system appears to be functioning. Only when times were much more lean did strikes occur. And some of them had to do with an ugly fact of life in Germany, Britain, France, Switzerland and other industrial powers in central and northern Europe: the invitation in the 1960s to poverty-stricken southern Italians, Yugoslavians, Greeks, and Turks to come north as migrant workers to help forge the economic miracle.
When the economies slowed down, these migrant workers were supposed to just fade away and go home, lugging their TV sets and other trappings which they bought in the affluent host countries. They refused, saying they were part of their host communities now. Their children were citizens of the host country; some of them spoke only the language of the host country, and so on. The working climate worsened, and the previous consensus was becoming an endangered species.
However, that does not invalidate that consensus in the work place (live and let live, in the vernacular). That comes under the rubric of trials and tribulations.
But all that happened in Europe, not here in North America, where we cling with class-conscious passion to our convictions that the adversarial system is the only possible way to achieve betterment (pay, benefits, working hours). No one tried to take charge in an attempt to change this vicious circle of unreasonable demands by the unions versus the unreasonable rejections by the employers.
Where were the governments? Need one ask? Asleep at the switch. Where were courageous and far-seeing labour leaders or company presidents? Enmeshed in perennial demands for more pay (labour) and more profits (companies). The climate was never, it seemed, quite ripe for negotiations to achieve consensus in the work place.
And there we sit. Our economies are being assaulted by cheaper labour and more aggressive methods from outside North America. North American companies are taking their production processes outside to maquiladoras in Mexico and elsewhere. In those countries wages are low and the workers don't complain when they are mistreated or underpaid.
Meanwhile consensus is the most abandoned state of mind in North America where we would have the power to change from the adversarial system to one of give-and-take-and-compromise.
Mind you, our prized adversarial system has produced a sub culture that feeds off this monster. Just think of our judicial system: judges, clerks, lawyers, courts, sheriffs, prisons all have a vested interest in perpetuating the status quo rather than praying for consensus.
Is this a cynical view? Judge for yourself and drop an e-mail note.
An Exploration into the Viability of the Global Economic Design
By Ernest Hekkanen
The bombing of the World Trade Centre in New York City on February 26, 1993, is as good a place as any to begin an inquiry into the viability of the global economic design. It's a good place to begin because, as Time Magazine pointed out in a March 8 article called Tower Terror, it's "a landmark target near Wall Street...chosen with a fine sense for the symbols of the late 20th century." That is to say, the WTC's existence was rudely taken exception to because of what it stands for.
In conflict resolution it is necessary to understand the underlying forces that have resulted in the conflict if the conflict is going to be resolved. I feel we must not do that one-sidedly by placing all the emphasis on the terrorists and the forces they represent. We must also investigate the nature of the World Trade Centre to discover whether, indeed, the centre was a passive victim in the assault or a more active participant in its fate.
Before we can begin to understand why the WTC was singled out as a target we must realize that, even though it is an extremely large complex, it is nonetheless a model--a model of grand scale, replete with both visible and invisible infrastructure. When I say the WTC is a model, I am, of course, indulging in the use of metaphor. Let me make clear what I mean with metaphor.
If we credit what dictionaries tell us, a metaphor is a figure of speech in which a word or phrase literally denoting one kind of object or idea is used in place of another to suggest a likeness or analogy between them. The use of metaphor is so prevalent I could not avoid using one in my attempt to state what a metaphor is. Metaphors are all-pervasive in the language. They are so useful to us we employ them in both casual and technical language in an effort to explain what we mean.
As David Bohm and F. David Peat point out in Science, order and Creativity, "The notion of a metaphor can serve to illuminate the nature of our scientific creativity by equating, in a metaphoric sense, a scientific discovery with a poetic metaphor. For in perceiving a new idea in science, the mind is involved in a similar form of creative perception as when it engages in a poetic metaphor. However, in science it is essential to unfold the meaning of the metaphor in even greater and more `literal' detail, while in poetry the metaphor may remain relatively implicit."
That is precisely what I am going to attempt to do with the World Trade Centre in New York City. I'm going to attempt to unfold the meaning of the centre in greater and more literal detail, for, until we understand the metaphor of the WTC, we are not going to understand why it was targeted by terrorists.
Can this be done?
The Form of Metaphor
If we subscribe to the remarks of the physicists Bohm and Peat, we are led to the conclusion that we can, because that is the very nature of inquiry. "It is clear that creative perception in the form of metaphor
can take place not only in poetry and in science but in much broader areas of life. What is essential here is that the act of creative perception in the form of a metaphor is basically similar in all these fields, in that it involves an extremely perceptive state of intense passion and high energy that dissolves the excessively rigidly held assumptions in the tacit infrastructure of commonly accepted knowledge."
What comprises out commonly accepted knowledge of the World Trade Centre? According to the March 8 article in Time, it is "the second tallest building in the world and a magnet for 100,000 workers and visitors each day." This is not an inconsiderable statement; the fact that the trade centre is "the second tallest building in the world" suggests that it is one hefty monument. We build monuments of tremendous stature to impress ourselves with the fact that they "stand for something," to prove to ourselves that they "cast a considerable shadow across the land."
The fact that the actual shadow of the trade centre blends with the shadows of other tall buildings in the same vicinity and consequently gets lost among them, is less important than the metaphoric shadow it casts across the landscape of the business community. Also, the fact that it is a "magnet for 100,000 workers and visitors each day" would suggest that something pretty damn important is going on there, otherwise the faithful would not be showing up in such enormous numbers to pay tribute to the enterprise(s) being carried on in there.
The above, one-line description in Time gives us only a vague idea of what goes on at the WTC. It is assumed that we know what is going on there, that it is of "general knowledge" and needs no further explanation. In effect, the article does not unfold the meaning of the trade centre; it has opted, instead, for a poetic metaphor that allows the meaning to remain relatively implicit. That is, it relies on the reader to bring meaning to the metaphor. For an American, the meaning might be one thing; for an Iranian, or a Latino, or a Russian, quite another.
Obviously, we must figure out what the WTC stands for; we must unfold its meaning so it is no longer implicit but, rather, explicit. On reading what follows, it might often seem as if I am stating the obvious, but too often we Americans, in an effort to further our notion of what is best for the world, refuse to see or acknowledge the obvious.
So let us take a closer look at the trade centre, beginning with promotional material in NYC Access by Richard Saul Wurman. It gives us not only a brief overview but also helps establish the myth of the centre. In it we learn that "the World Trade Centre consists of six buildings--the towers, three low plaza buildings, and the 22-story Vista Hotel--which form a semicircle around a five-acre plaza. All buildings are connected at ground level by the concourse, a vast shopping mall and pedestrian walk-around filled with 60 shops, banks, and the concourse restaurants and gathering places.
"The twin monolithic towers are, at 110 stories, the highest and most prominently sited of any buildings in the city, rising as an architectural gateway to Lower Manhattan. The World Trade Centre offers 9.5 million square feet of office space, and (it) is home to more than 1,200 trading firms and organizations...Almost 2,000 cars can park in the underground garages, and it is a major station for city subway and PATH lines."
More detailed than the Time article, NYC Access helps us understand the centre in terms of the context of New York City. We glimpse it as a tourist might glimpse it, we "see" the shops, banks, and restaurants as they are conjured up for us by words. It is given significance and stature as an "architectural gateway," another metaphor; and even more importantly, it hints at what is going on by mentioning the fact that trading firms are housed in the WTC.
A Major Station
We are also made aware of the fact that it is a "major station for the city subway and PATH lines," indicating that it is of considerable importance to the context in which it finds itself. This is confirmed by a March 1, 1993, article in The New York Times which explains that the WTC "contains 10 per cent of Lower Manhattan's office space and some of its biggest corporate names."
Obvious, yes, but let's pursue the obvious even further. Let's survey what is going on in more detail so we might unfold the meaning in even greater detail and more literal detail. Orla O'Sullivan reports in American Metal Market that "The Commodity Exchange (Comex) and the New York Mercantile Exchange (Nymex) resumed business March 1, 1993, after the February 26 explosion..." Roger Benedict tells us in The Oil Daily that "Future trading will shift to the international Petroleum Exchange in London during repairs." In American Banker Jeanne Iida explains that the explosion "halted many financial institutions' operations. Branches of Citicorp, Chemical Banking Corp., and Republic Bank of New York were evacuated..."
Then, again, in Pensions & Investments, we are told by Terry Williams that "the business activities of many of the institutional investment firms" were affected by the blast. But, to get right down to the nitty gritty of what goes on at the trade centre, let's once again consult the March 1 article in The New York Times: "Besides the commodity exchanges, which set prices on everything from gold to cotton to heating oil, Mr. Tese said other key tenants would also be operating" only three days after the blast.
If this isn't adequate evidence of what is going on at the WTC, Business Insurance reported after the bombing that "Many large companies--including Guy Carpenter and Co. Inc., Ætna Life and Casualty Co., Deloitte and Touche, First Boston Corp., and several Japanese banks--moved thousands of employees to branch offices."
In only a few hundred words, I have been able to encapsulate what is going on at the World Trade Centre. I could, however, go on for pages and pages, detailing what exactly the brokers, financial institutions, law firms, custom house and commodity exchanges accomplish in a single day. But that isn't necessary. All we have to understand is the "commodity exchange" is by far the most important activity taking place at the WTC. All the other activities are handmaidens to that major activity; they exist to support and facilitate what commodity exchanges accomplish.
What do commodity exchanges accomplish? Basically, they match up demand with supply. If in one area of the world we have companies that demand cotton, gold, oil, paper, etc., and in another area of the world we have companies that can supply these items, a match-up (or set of match-ups) is made, selling prices are determined, and the goods are exchanged. All very simple and straightforward, really and, on the surface, innocent enough.
It is my contention that we can learn a lot about the function of an organization by looking at its design and how it fits into the context in which it finds itself. This is nothing new. Scientists have been studying phenomenon in this manner for a long time now. Take, for instance, the science of biology. More often than not, animals that have wings can be counted on to fly; animals that have fins can be counted on to swim. Form and function are very closely related. So let's look at the form, or design, of the WTC and see what we can gather from it.
I would like to look at three aspects of the WTC: 1) its structure, 2) its communication system, and 3) the commodities it deals in, hoping to unfold the metaphor of the centre in greater and more literal detail.
1) The WTC can be seen in terms of a hive within a hive within a hive. The first innermost hive is the WTC. The mass transportation system, located in the subterranean bowels of the hive where the explosion took place, allows the worker-bees optimal entry into the centre. They ascend to the honey-combed structure of the Twin Towers to labour so many hours each day, so many days each year. To accommodate the 50,000 worker-bees, there is inside an elaborate system of shelves, both actual and metaphorical, on which they labour at their various tasks.
A Hive in a Hive in a Hive
But it is important to see that this hive is not a hive onto itself. It is located inside another hive, namely Manhattan, that is, in turn, located inside an even more monstrous hive called the U.S. of A. Also, it is important to see that the worker-bees in the innermost hive do not act like real honey bees who leave the hive to gather nectar and bring it back to the hive the be stored as honey for use during times of scarcity. So what do the worker-bees do? A partial answer to this lies in the communication system.
2) By all accounts, the communication system in the WTC is very up-to-date and sophisticated. But immediately after the bombing, David Deshane, on the 105th floor of the centre, reported to Time that "All the computers shut down, then all the phones shut down." And yet, as Kevin Tanzillo noted in Communication News, even though the blast "knocked out a large portion of the communications systems serving the building, companies were able to recover rapidly by rerouting their voice and data networks."
That would suggest that the communication system is not only sophisticated but terribly vital to what goes on at the centre. In effect, rather than leaving the hive like honey bees to bring back sustenance to the hive, the worker-bees in the WTC conduct metaphorical flights out into the countryside to bring back a kind of "rarefied nectar."
3) When we look at the hive that is the WTC it is obvious that very little actual "honey" is stored on the site. We see some "honey" being stored in the shops and restaurants, but certainly not enough to feed 50,000 worker-bees for very long periods of scarcity. So where is the "honey" being stored? In greater Manhattan? In greater New York City? Yes, some is indeed stored in these outer hives but, don't forget, there are even greater numbers of worker-bees in these outer hives.
The hive that is New York City would not, in fact, to be able to sustain all of its worker-bees for very long on the "honey" stored in the elaborate "honey-combed" structure of the city. In the event of a long, sustained period of scarcity, millions of worker-bees in this hive would simply perish. They would be allowed to die; they might even be "pushed" from the hive to fall to their deaths, which happens in real hives during sustained periods of scarcity.
Consuming Nectar
What we have, in effect, is a man-made hive in which the worker-bees are consuming the nectar brought back to the hive just about as rapidly as it arrives along established lines of transportation. We have created a scenario for disaster, largely because we have created a design for the hive that makes the worker-bees utterly dependent--not independent, as various advertising and promotional schemes would have us believe when we buy a car, drink the latest beverage, or purchase the newest fashion. In the hearts and minds of those working at the WTC at the time of explosion, there was confirmation of this; the worker-bees were suddenly exposed to the fact that they were utterly dependent and, therefore, vulnerable. Otherwise they would have been content to stay in the confines of the hive.
Instead, they fled in great numbers. They were rudely acquainted with how utterly dependent they were on the well regulated, artificial environment of the hive once the communication, electrical, water, and circulated-air systems went out. Everything that sustains life in the Twin Towers could no longer be depended on. The loss of these systems communicated to the worker-bees the inadequacies inherent in the economic design of the innermost hive they so faithfully served. Until then, they hadn't been forced to entertain the artifice of the design. In fear and panic, they tried to escape, thinking the hive might collapse, with them inside.
A Lot of Nothing
If the innermost hive that is the WTC doesn't store actual "honey," then what does it store? One answer, "a whole lot of nothing," would be too flippant. It would be overlooking the obvious. Though the WTC doesn't store actual "honey" or sustenance on the site, it does store a "rarefied honey." One cannot taste or consume this rarefied honey, except perhaps metaphorically. It is stored in the honey-combed structure of the WTC on paper and in the memory banks of computers. This rarefied honey is made up of transactions, receipts, futures, promissory notes, and things of that nature. It stores abstract concepts that represent commodities of every conceivable kind.
The trade centre is, in fact, based on metaphor; it trades in metaphors. It is a sophisticated system that processes metaphors. The metaphors are traded smoothly and quickly, so quickly the trade in metaphors is almost instantaneous, due to a well-developed communication system on the site of the WTC and elsewhere. The commodities "literally denoted" by these metaphors travel much more slowly through space and time to get to their assigned destinations. This is because the actual commodities take up much more volume; they travel along well-developed lines of transportation in vessels that are also voluminous and weighty, vessels that are susceptible to breakdowns, accidents, acts of God and, of course, terrorism.
In effect, the World Trade Centre is engaged in the metaphorical activity of making sure that "honey" flows in a continuous, uninterrupted stream back to the multi-layered hive that is New York City, and the United States of America. It is in constant communication with other centres devoted to similar activities, and usually these centres are located in rather large metropolitan areas in one country or another. The closer one is to the innermost hive, or ground-zero, the more dependent and vulnerable one is, should the lines of communication or transportation fail.
Let me explain.
The innermost hive that is the WTC is the "brain" responsible for the operation of the outer, surrounding hives. The importance of this innermost hive is attested to by the quickness and agility with which it responds when communication was temporarily cut off. The innermost hive that is the brain of the greater system of hives must make certain that rarefied resources are flowing uninterruptedly into it, resources such as electricity, food, water, minerals, information, and more. By being highly elastic it helps assure its survival, its viability.
So when disaster struck, communications with the hive were rerouted. These lines of communication (which are actually rarefied lines of communication) are of tremendous importance to the greater hive of New York City and the United States. In the Journal of Commerce, which originates in the WTC, Doug Harper made this point dramatically clear in his article When Bad Things Happen to Good Computers. The "attack of the WTC has highlighted the need for disaster recovery plans in major business and trading centres. The Association for Computing Machinery suggests that contingency plans should aim for the minimization of business interruptions., the limi-tation of damage and disruption, the establishment of alternate means of operations, the provision of rapid-serve restorations, and the minimization of economic impact. Other considerations include system testing and the development of adequate information backups and security controls (my italics)
Security Controls
Although reserved as a kind of afterthought in the article, security controls are much more pervasive than is perhaps suggested. Security controls exist at every level and in every dimension of the WTC, from elaborate electronic controls conducting surveillance to make sure "healthy" computing systems aren't invaded by viruses, to the security guard at the door. After flexibility and elasticity in the "nerve centre" of the hive, security is the most important feature keeping the lines of communication open and working properly.
As I have already stated, lines of communication are really more ephemeral lines of transportation. What is good for lines of communication, we find, is also good for lines of transportation, which can also be attacked to disrupt the flow of "honey" back to the hive. In our endeavours to keep this from happening, we have established security controls to minimize the economic impact
These security controls consist of our (Mr. Hekkanen is talking about the United States, where he was born, ed.) armies, navies, and air forces, as well as those of lesser nations which act as handmaidens to the United States. If the price of oil is jeopardized by an infidel in Iraq, we send in the armed forces. If our sugar supply is jeopardized in Guatemala or some other tin-pot dictatorship, we sell more arms to the loyal "democratic" forces to keep down the peasants who are responsible for growing and cutting the raw cane but who derive little money, let alone sustenance, from doing so.
Our (i.e. the U.S.'s) covert armed forces serve our economic policies and, in addition to that, by selling arms to those who will serve our interests (for example Venezuela), we make a handsome profit.
If, in Canada the government doesn't make its resources more accessible to us, we simply suggest to the business community up there that we will take our money and run; we will shut down our corporations, move them to Mexico and effectively starve them out of the game, for their beehive economic design is as vulnerable as our own.
How has this absurd situation come about? If we take a look at the economic idea that this fragile and vulnerable model is based on, we can quickly fathom how things have become so ridiculous. In the late 1700s, Adam Smith formulated a theory of supply and demand based on the concept of self-interest or "the desire for betterment." Self-interest, according to Smith, not only determines the flow of commodities from one place to another but also the price of those commodities. The market value of an item is determined by self-interest, what one person is willing to sell it for, and what another person is willing to buy it for.
This, according to Robert L. Heilbroner in The Making of Economic Society, ultimately drives a society to increase its riches. The tendency of a society is "to encourage a steady rise in the productivity of its labour, so that over time, the same number of working people could turn out a steadily larger output." Why" "The answer, according to Smith, was the gain in the productivity that was to be had by achieving an ever-finer division of labour." That is, people become more specialized; they become interchangeable in the capitalist design.
A Neat Answer
But "how...does business expansion result in a higher division of labour?" Heilbroner postulates. "The answer is very neat. The main road to profit consists in equipping workmen with the necessary machinery that Smith mentions in his description of (a) pin factory, for it is this machinery that will increase their productivity. Thus, the path to growth lies in what Smith called accumulation, or in more modern terminology, in the process of capital investment.
It is important to see that the greatest amount of accumulation has taken place in towns, cities, and huge metropolitan areas--the "hives" I have been talking about. Historically, most pin factories and manufacturing firms have been located in densely populated areas; the result has been the creation of transportation routes that result in natural resources such as water, food, minerals, petroleum products, lumber, and electrical power flowing from outlying areas in the countryside into these densely populated areas where human beings proliferate like rats who, in turn, compete for their fair share of goods--due, of course, to self-interest. The "invisible hand" called competition has, according to this system of thought, maximized the wealth of nations through optimal allocations of resources, both human and natural. This design has succeeded so well that metropolitan areas are little more than vast, elaborate systems of shelves on which to put people with more or less specialized, redundant skills. The ultimate expression of this economic design is epitomized by the World Trade Centre. "As capitalists seek money, they invest in machines and equipment. As a result of the machines and equipment, their men can produce more. Because they produce more, society's output grows."
Backyard Gardens
Intentionally or inadvertently, we have designed an economic system that is, to use analogy, attempting to feed the world's population (increasingly located in metropolitan areas) out of backyard gardens in the countryside. So far, by abusing the earth with chemicals, stripping it in a fashion that is not sustainable and enslaving others for our economic gain, we have managed to perform the feat of keeping up with the demand for resources in these densely populated areas.
Self-interest has dictated a gaudy display of consumption beyond what is necessary to sustain each and everyone of us. Obviously, the problem is one of accumulation, whether in the domestic, family economy, or the global economy.
In effect, the economic design I have sketched is grid-locking us in patterns of behaviour that, in the long run, are not healthy for us or the world. The world is wearing out. We have expanded arable land to the max. We are exhausting its resources in an attempt to steadily increase output, and yet we cling stubbornly to the same old economic design, giving it a new PR spin by calling it "global economics."
The difficulty is as follows: Any species that cannot control its population growth. or the subsequent impact it has on the environment, whether personal or extra-personal, will have limitations placed on it by Nature. Nature brings out-of-balance situations back into balance, not out of vindictiveness or retaliation, but simply because Nature is an organism that seeks to keep things in balance. Nature restores its perfect yin-yang balance because Nature, which includes the whole of the Earth, was the original economic design for things on earth. In Nature's Mind, out-of-control populations are unhealthy. To use another metaphor, they are cancerous to the whole of the organism.
The Next Level of Awareness
The obstacle we face is all too human. We are a species that refuses to be enlightened--at least in North America. We prefer to live in ignorance of the situation, keeping our noses to the economic grindstone to get, get, get, and to beget, beget, beget, rather than achieving the next level of awareness which will automatically oblige us to act responsibly by observing restraint in every facet of our self-interested lives.
To survive as a species that is not going to suffer a catastrophe of widespread species extinction, we will have to expand our narrow self-interest to include the self-interest of others, including that of Nature and of every other living species. Our economic design will have to be brought into line with the original economic design on this planet.
Will that occur?
I rather doubt it, because here in the First World we decline to come to terms with our lust, avarice, jealousy, envy, covetousness, aggression, and violence--those things in ourselves that serve our narrow-minded self-interest. Indeed, our financial community promotes all of the above tendencies in us; it insists on us serving those qualities in ourselves to eradicated global debt and increase the gross national product.
The concept of continued growth, promoted primarily in metropolitan areas, is flawed and false. The thrust behind it is all too obvious; it is attempting to make us more dependent--not less dependent--because everything from food to toilet flush can then be sold to us for a profit. We are reduced to being large infants sucking at the teat of the economy. This creates not only dependency but vulnerability, particularly in densely populated areas.
To change the scenario, we will have to deal with exactly those attributes in ourselves which we are now promoting for financial gain. As it stands right now, we are casting ballots for a future catastrophe with each dollar we spend in an effort to get ahead, in an effort to "improve" our standard of living here in North America, where we consume some 40 per cent of the world's resources while subjecting others to degradation by enslaving them economically.
At the beginning I proposed unfolding the metaphor of the World Trade Centre in greater and more literal detail to discover why it was used as a target by terrorists. I wanted to discover whether it was a passive victim in the assault, or a more active participant in its fate.
It is a monument that stands for the degradation of the world and its various populations. When one erects a monument to degradation and injustice, one should not be surprised when others attempt to destroy it. The very act of terrorism on February 26 should warn us that the economic design we are promoting is less than viable.
To verify what I am saying, just open your eyes and take a look at the obvious. Take a look at the metaphors to which you are subscribing on a daily basis.
[Ernest Hekkanen is a prolific author and painter. He became one of the many thousands of American expatriates who sought political asylum in Canada.
There are times when I just have to close my eyes while watching television or movies: times of violence and times of kissing. Both are synonymous. Some of us who have retained a feeling of revulsion when we see Arnold or Sly massacring bad guys while maintaining an imperturbable mien, cannot bear to watch and either turn off the set or switch channels.
Sometimes I close my eyes and open them when the killing (or executing) has stopped..
But why do I close my eyes when people are kissing on screen?
Well, it just isn't kissing anymore. What we see is two actors devouring each other, opening their cavernous orifices and mauling the opposing lips as if this were a conquest of who can mash mouths more mutilatingly.
Oral hygiene doesn't come into play here. One presumes that these days trench mouths are passé; farewell halitosis, good-bye diseased gums, au revoir decaying food. Our collected breaths ought to smell sweetly, like a freshly picked lavender sprig. Actors are likely heavy consumers of parsley, or at least chlorophyll-based chewing gum.
No, it's the suddenness with which this on-screen oral combat erupts, and the violence of the supposedly tender act, that puts me off. The two actors meet, they are attracted to each other, they start masticating lips, and before you can say, "Excuse, what did you say your name was?" they are in bed copulating fiercely, showing off their perfect deltoids and whatnot. All right, all right. The act of love can get pretty vigorous, and why not? But kissing at first sight? Kissing as if there were no tomorrow? Where has all the tenderness gone? The way of all societal propriety since the advent of unrestrained permissiveness, that's what I say.
Now to the violence. A story goes with it, as Damon Runyon used to say in his short stories. I am two generations past our current youthful crop of heavy screen kisser-hitters. Allow me to reminisce about those good old times of screen kissing. Take Humphrey Bogart, for example, when he placed his lips upon those owned by Ingrid Bergman.
By all accounts, that kiss was chaste, although we all know that passion was burning deep in Bogey's heart (you could never tell from his face; that's because of the macho thing), and so it was with Bergman. What led up to that kiss was restrained passion tinged with nostalgia and guilt. When their lips finally met, their mouths remained closed, and then the camera discreetly pulled away.
There is no longer any kissing foreplay; there is no tentative first kiss with lips firmly closed, only to open slowly as passion grows. By the time the new kissers have discovered that this kiss will lead to horizontal activity, the camera ought to have skedaddled. I mean, we all know what happens next.
Does violent kissing have anything to do with love? Is that really passion?
A case in point: those tender, bitter-sweet love-scenes-at-arm's-length between the British housewife and the dashing Adonis in the ten-year-old British-made television series Butterflies. For 24 half hours, the twain never did meet, but their barely-restrained passion was so deep that, at their final parting (induced by the guilt-ridden wife-and-mother), the man shouts after her: "Look at me when I am dying!"
[A slightly shorter version of this article appeared in The Vancouver Sun in September of 1993]
Living alone has become, allegedly, the preferred choice of many people in urban centres in Canada. We can read articles on the advantages of living solo. No more worries with the antics of your mate. More disposable income for singles. It's a hedonistic solution to our jaded perception of what kind of life we want to live.
So. It has become a cult, this living alone. Urban writers tell us that. I charge that it is an erroneous cult based on several wrong premises. First off, the urban writers of the boomer generation have developed terminal tunnel vision. They see only as far as the physical boundaries of their urban environment. They choose the hereditary White Anglo-Saxon minority as their models for the cult of aloneness.
None of them looks beyond these limits. They fail to see the way many of Canada's ethnic minorities choose to live, i.e. as part of a large family. They also fail to realize that, for instance, in Mexico living alone is almost unheard of. Everyone has a family to which he/she belongs. The sense of belonging to a family is, we can assert without fear of contradiction, widespread in the entire Third World.
Only in the industrialized countries of the First World--which is shrinking by the minute as a result of its shrinking birth rate--do some people prefer to shun the idea that living as part of a family, however nuclear it may be, is preferential to living solo.
Is it too outrageous to suggest that many of our problems in society can be referred to the disappearance of the traditional family values? In a country where people prefer to live together without commitment we can expect social breakdowns. In families where both father and mother work flat out for monetary gain exceeding the basic needs the children are the victims. They see hedonism in their parents, and they desire a hedonistic lifestyle themselves.
Next time you talk to someone, listen well. You will hear almost everyone talk about "my house, my car." What happened to "our house, our car?" A salesperson will say, "I can get this for you..." and not, "We can get this for you."
The me generation is supposedly gone forever. It may be safe to suggest that living alone is the ultimate assertion of the me generation.
When the "me" is pitted against the "we," common sense tells us that shared time--to use that dreadful Yuppie phrase--is "quality" time.
What happens when you live alone? Not much. There is television, there are books, there is music, and there is the temporary escape of mingling with other solo people. But the warmth of relationship cannot be overestimated. We need one another to function better as human beings.
We need the laughter, the encounter, the good and the hard times, to grow into adults who accept responsibility without dreading the experience.
"Men of the South: It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees."
Written by the Mexican revolutionist Emiliano Zapata who was assassinated in 1919. He is the editor's choice of a man whose actions were guided by common sense all his life. Although he and his (rather tainted) compère Pancho Villa managed to conquer Mexico City during the Mexican Revolution, Zapata never aspired to the position of president. Power was not part of his political agenda. He was able to leave the presidential palace with his machete-wielding campesinos. What does that tell us? Common Sense thinks that perhaps it takes a simple peasant such as Zapata to ignore power. Ergo: We have no peasants left in Canada; instead, we have people who aspire to power and cling to it as if it were a life preserver. We need a Zapata to lead us, someone who says: "If elected, I will serve for as long as you all think I am doing a good job. There will be a referendum to check out my status with you every year." Dream on, Common Sense digital magazine! Fly into cyberspace and re-enter earth in real-time, virtual-reality mode!
This magazine believes firmly that we are living on our collective knees today. In Canada.
