Wednesday, September 9, 2009 - What You Get For Three Dollars
I always get suspicious when I hear a single phrase repeated excessively in the media. Lately, the suspect phrase is "nobody wants an election".
Our creepy Conservative Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, has been intoning this phrase since the possibility of overturning his government appeared on the horizon. But the opposition Liberals also used it to avoid a confrontation they did not feel ready to win. In fact, the Liberals wasted their big opportunity, with typical cowardice, and Harper probably thinks he can win if the cards are flopped now. But the assertions of politicians don't concern me. They are not reliable.
What concerns me is the chorus of agreement that echoed through the media. It is now accepted as universal wisdom that an election is a terrible ordeal that the Canadian public should resent enduring. This bizarre notion is almost invariably accompanied by the assertion that elections are "expensive".
Now, of course, every politician in power would naturally prefer to not be accountable to the people. Stephen Harper, in particular, would love to be declared Prime Minister For Life. In his heart of hearts, he envies and admires the gerontocratic gangsters of the Communist Party in China. Nothing else is to be expected from the kind of creatures who worm their way into our Parliament. But it is extremely frightening to me, if it comes to be believed by the Canadian people that elections are an agonizing, traumatic ordeal that should be avoided at all costs. It's profoundly irresponsible of the media to propagandize this view.
Exactly what is the reasoning behind this claim that nobody wants (with the unspoken implication that nobody should want) to hold an election? What exactly is the unpleasant thing that people are supposed to fear? The opportunity to hold their politicians accountable? Nobody is obliged to go to the polls, if they don't want to. The holding of an election does not impinge on anyone's private life in any annoying way, places no unwanted obligation, nor does it require any greater effort than taking a paid hour off of work to mark a few x's on a piece of paper. Why is every journalist convinced that we dread this? Is it because they believe that we, the people, are so stupid that we can't bear to be forced to think about public policies and make decisions? Poor, poor, stupid us...We should be protected from having to make decisions, because we're so dumb, it would hurt our poor little heads to have to mark a ballot.... Decisions are best left to those natural geniuses, professional politicians and the media.
The media harp on the lamest of supporting arguments for this theory: the idea that elections are "expensive". In the last few months, I've noticed that almost every time that "nobody wants an election" is trotted out, it is accompanied by some allusion to the expense of holding elections.
I calculate that every Canadian is called upon to spend three dollars per annum to defray the cost of holding federal elections. Three dollars a year! This does not strike me as being an outrageous price to pay to live in freedom, when one considers that some of us have risked, and sometimes sacrificed, their lives to secure it. The cost of a single federal election is insignificant compared to any of the Conservative government's pork-barrel give-aways, not to mention the billions of dollars of budget surplus that they pissed away just before a recession. Yet journalists insist that we must bitterly resent spending three dollars apiece for democracy. I, on the other hand, rashly propose that we spend a little more.
There's no reason why we shouldn't have federal elections every year. Our parliamentary system could easily accommodate the change. The ability to overturn a government by a vote of no confidence would remain the same. The limit of five years for an unchallenged administration would simply be reduced to one year, and elections would become a routine event, with the normal ones held on a regular and convenient date. Polling stations would become more familiar and permanent, but the procedure would remain the same.
What would change would be that elections would cease to be an idiotic circus of infantile name-calling and button-pushing. The "crisis" atmosphere generated by the media would not be as convincing. We would have to focus more on what matters: what should public policy be and are those in power doing their jobs properly? Frequent elections would pose no threat to those members of parliament who are honest and competent. It is the brainless party hacks, the corrupt, and the incompetent ninnies who would fear losing their seats. A party in majority power, no longer ensured a carte blanche to do whatever it wants for years, would have to face the possibility of seeing its majority evaporate over short periods of time. Minority governments would have to prove their credibility day to day. Opposition parties, with a shake-up from the people always in the immediate future, would not have to engage in arcane calculations of exactly when it is most advantageous to challenge the government. The built-in advantage of incumbents would be weakened. No party could afford to stuff parliament with brainless toadies and yes-men. The arrogant, anti-democratic "leadership" cult of someone like Stephen Harper would be much more difficult to maintain. Power would tend to shift back to the floor of Parliament, reversing its sinister, dangerous and profoundly un-Canadian shift to the Prime Minister's office.
A parliamentary government should be an executive board that we, the shareholders of the nation, employ to carry out public policy — policy that we determine, not them. They should be subject to annual review, and we should have the power to fire them whenever we want. That's what democracy is for. We should not settle on a half-baked, half-assed, half-democracy when we can have the real thing.
At the moment, under the current system, we will probably end up stuck with the Conservatives for another three or four years. Harper is adept at manipulating the fear of elections in the opposition, and the contempt for them among the media. He called a snap election when he needed one. When the recession (a product of crackpot economic theories that Harper professes) started to hit us hard, the opposition had an opportunity to turn him out, but they dithered and panicked. Now that opportunity is probably passed. This is a tragedy for Canada, because Harper's government is profoundly anti-democratic, contemptuous of the people, fiscally incompetent, and morally corrupt. If people grasped that holding frequent elections is their best defense against bad politicians and bad parties, we wouldn't be in this mess.
FOR MUCH MORE, VISIT MY WEBSITE AT WWW.PHILPAINE.COM
Saturday, September 12, 2009
On Relaxation
Wednesday, August 19, 2009 - On Relaxation
I spend most of the day on my feet, walking and carrying things. When I come home, I often put in further hours sitting upright at a computer. So when I finally relax, I want to be horizontal. When I had a standard couch in the apartment, I often found myself drifting to the floor, where I could "gap and stretch", and feel some freedom.
The couch is no more, chucked into the trash. I now have a futon that is never folded up in sofa position. Instead, it's unfolded in the "bed" position, permanently. My idea of living in a living room takes its cue from classical antiquity. The ancient Greeks had it right: relaxing, entertaining, and socializing are best done horizontally. That position keeps my proprioceptors happy. I don't really need to have slaves plucking grapes and dropping them into my open mouth, but I do want my alone time to be sensuous, self-indulgent, and free of stiff-necked discipline. The Epicurians had it right. None of that Stoic nonsense for me, and go tell the Spartans they're a bunch of goofs.
I'll never be one of those strange creatures who fills every minute with useful labour, and sacrifices pleasure for ambition. I have no more ambition than a daisy does. A little bit of sunshine in a meadow suits me more than standing on a podium and accepting an award (something I now doubt will ever happen). Competition leaves me cold. If I do something, I usually don't care if someone else does it worse or better. I enjoy my own knowledge and abilities, but don't see any point in finding out where they rank in comparison to other people's knowledge and abilities. School bored me to tears, marks meant nothing to me except irritation. Knowledge, from the moment I began to look and read, seemed to me strictly for my own private pleasure. Some nosy boob "evaluating" my knowledge, or urging me to compete with some random bunch of other people for marks or little tinfoil stars just struck me as idiotic. This view was firmly in my mind by at least the first grade. So was the belief that relaxation, the splendid art of doing little or nothing in the most enjoyable way, is a noble pursuit. Cats, nature's greatest masters of relaxation, should be our guides in this. When cats relax, their bodies dissolving into a semi-liquid state, they purr. Humans can, and should purr. Once a friend remarked that I was the only person she had ever met who really purred. I took this as the most pleasing compliment I have ever received.
Relaxation comes in two main categories: with friends, and alone. Relaxing with friends is subtler, because it needs a special art to maintain its purity and innocence. But I only wish to meditate, right now, on relaxing alone.
I've just finished a nice little bit of relaxation, and while my writing about it presupposes that I'm not actually doing it, I'll write about it in the present tense to evoke its texture:
On this particular occasion, all the elements of fine solitary relaxation have lined up like the planets in grand conjunction. The preceding day was exhausting, with a lot of hustle and bustle done in hot, humid weather. But now, I'm basking in air conditioned bliss. Let those who despise technology contemplate the world before air conditioning. (There's nothing more amusing to look upon than a profusely sweating luddite.) I'm freshly showered, freed of tormenting shoes and clothes, and gratefully sprawled on the futon. No pilgrim to Lourdes, throwing away his crutches, ever felt the gratefulness that I feel for that futon. If someone were to run into the room screaming that I've won the Nobel Prize, I would tell them "If I have to get up to get it, I don't want it."
Everything in my apartment, by slow evolutionary increments, has come to be in its most convenient place. Things I want practically leap into my hands unbidden. Even the pillows seem to want to fluff themselves. Later, perhaps, I'll watch an old science fiction film, or perhaps a harmless sitcom that a more serious person would sneer at. But at the moment, I'll let music wash over me like an incoming tide, and read something. First, Ralph Vaughan Williams' third symphony, the fine "pastoral" one. Then some old BBC Essential Mix from the golden era of 1993. Then some Ali Farka Touré.
Supper is already made and eaten. It was effortless: a lamb kebab pan fried with tandoori paste and tossed onto some couscous and peas.
The animals have tired of chasing each other back and forth, and have come to join me. The larger cat has curled up on the pillow to the left of my head. The smaller cat and the rabbit are stretched out beside each other next to my right lower leg. The bong and the stash are empty, and there's no alcohol in the house, but I'm in the mood for reading with a clear mind. Another time, a toke or a shot of scotch would hit the spot, but this time, a home-made malted milkshake it more to my liking.
Now, a situation like this needs the right book to make it perfect. I'm not in the mood for fiction, and definitely not in the mood for anything related to the article I'm writing. Fortunately, I have the perfect thing at hand, found in a small town bookshop: Aubrey Burl's Prehistoric Avebury. This allows me slip into a gentle reverie.
I'm very fond of Avebury, that most delightful of all prehistoric monuments. I've been there twice, but on neither occasion had the time or money to take it in properly. For Averbury is the focus of one of my best relaxation fantasies. If I could swing it, I would spend a week there. Every day, I would take my breakfasts in the bay window of the Red Lion Pub, which sits right in the middle of the great circle of sarcen stones. That's the special charm of Avebury. There's an English village right on top of it, mingling with the stones and avenues and the circular trench and embankment. Oh, it's all very fine for Stonehenge to loom mysteriously on the empty stage-set of Salisbury Plain, looking all spooky and oozing mystical oompah-pah. The hippies love it. But Avebury's magic is subtler, and appeals to me more. The domestic setting, with cottages, a pub, high street shops, and a church superimposed on the five-thousand year old megalithic monument, like an accidentally double-exposed film negative, makes for a powerful evocation of the depths of time. Perhaps human sacrifices were performed at the post office, and who knows what orgiastic, Pan-like rites were performed where now the Anglican communion is held. The wonderment is, like the Purloined Letter, hidden in plain sight, and all the more wondrous for that.
After each daily breakfast, I would amble casually to some of the archaeological items that lie scattered within a mile or two of the village. They are quite varied, and most of them are rarely visited by anyone but local farmers and archaeologists. Without background knowledge to give them meaning, most have little appeal to the day trippers and New Age innocents who are drawn to the big stones. Anyway, I would probably do this in the off-season. I'm Canadian ― I don't mind a little chilly weather, and don't enjoy crowds. When the sun goes down, I'll retreat to the pub for a pint of best bitter, and enjoy the pleasant talk of an English country pub.
Come to think of it, such a week of relaxation would be all the sweeter if I came to Avebury, not by bus (like the last time) or hitch-hiking (like the first time), but by walking the full length of the Ridgeway. This is the oldest known "road" in England. Actually, it's a humble foot-path that winds for 85 miles (137 km) from Ivinghoe Beacon in Buckinghamshire, through the Chiltern and Berkshire hills, past the Iron Age fort at Uffington and the Vale of Whitehorse, and ends just to the south of Avebury, near Silbury Hill, the most mysterious of all British prehistoric monuments. Such a distance is nothing, for me, especially with regular opportunities for a ploughman's lunch along the way.
That little fantasy is in the spirit of some of my finest moments of relaxation. I have some real-life ones under my belt that equal it.
One I especially cherish in memory occurred in the desert and mesa country of northern Arizona. There was a hidden box canyon, well off any well-trodden trail, where was hid, at least for a brief season, a pool of crystal clear water under the shade of a red-rock cliff. Not orangy-brown, not sandstone red, but blood red, the cliff was. I spent two carefree days there, nursing a sprain and a broken toe. The splendid setting made the pain seem trivial. I did absolutely nothing except take dips in the cool water, tend the fire, and look at the stars. No wasted time was ever less of a waste. The solitude ended only when two Navaho shepherd boys arrived. This occured at the precise moment when it seemed right to break the spell of solitude. Since I was a trained shepherd myself, there was a commonality to ease acquaintance. I followed them out of the canyon, and up the mesa. But that starts another, irrelevant story.
Forests and mountains figure prominently in my catalog of Great Relaxations. One can be as snug and comfortable out of doors as in the cosiest of apartments, if the conditions are right. One British Columbia mountain meadow, with a breathtaking view of rainforest, glaciers, mist and sea, was so esthetically overwhelming that it often pops up in my dreams. The climb to it was exhausting, and I don't take well to thin air. Rest was a necessity, so perhaps I shouldn't count it as "relaxation". But I lingered past the strict necessity of recuperation.
Among fine acts of relaxation, I would definitely include pauses on journeys on the Canadian Shield. These have been too numerous to keep track of. They all contained the same elements: a lake, or a swimable river; precambrian rocks scattered about for furniture; a crackling fire cooking fresh trout; blueberries and raspberries handy for the picking; a well-made teepee; some ragged paperback books stained with sweat and crushed mosquitos; loons calling; whiskeyjacks singing; and a soft breeze to keep the blackflies at bay. What does civilization have that can compete with it?
Well, there is one form of relaxing that requires quite a bit of civilization to support it, and is hardly ever celebrated by writers and philosophers. I don't think Thoreau would approve of it. It's too mundane to attract the poets. But it's just as "spiritual" in its own way. I don't own a car, and it's been a long time since I have, but this is what I most miss about having one. It's extremely relaxing to drive your car aimlessly along country roads, with no timetable, no destination, no place where you have to be. Just driving for no reason, following a road because you like the look of it, playing roller-coaster on the badly graded hills and dips, kicking dust and pebbles behind you. That's when a car feels like a home, not a mere transportation machine. Better yet is to drive for hours, late, late at night, on a nearly empty highway, listening to obscure radio stations emerge from static, play some half-forgotten tune from another era, then ebb and fade back into the static sea. This is wasteful of gas, but fulfilling of the spirit. It works best in Canada, where empty highways snake mournfully across shadowy moonlit landscapes, and every Tim Horton's donut shop is an alabaster oasis in the ebon night.
FOR MUCH MORE, VISIT MY WEBSITE AT WWW.PHILPAINE.COM
I spend most of the day on my feet, walking and carrying things. When I come home, I often put in further hours sitting upright at a computer. So when I finally relax, I want to be horizontal. When I had a standard couch in the apartment, I often found myself drifting to the floor, where I could "gap and stretch", and feel some freedom.
The couch is no more, chucked into the trash. I now have a futon that is never folded up in sofa position. Instead, it's unfolded in the "bed" position, permanently. My idea of living in a living room takes its cue from classical antiquity. The ancient Greeks had it right: relaxing, entertaining, and socializing are best done horizontally. That position keeps my proprioceptors happy. I don't really need to have slaves plucking grapes and dropping them into my open mouth, but I do want my alone time to be sensuous, self-indulgent, and free of stiff-necked discipline. The Epicurians had it right. None of that Stoic nonsense for me, and go tell the Spartans they're a bunch of goofs.
I'll never be one of those strange creatures who fills every minute with useful labour, and sacrifices pleasure for ambition. I have no more ambition than a daisy does. A little bit of sunshine in a meadow suits me more than standing on a podium and accepting an award (something I now doubt will ever happen). Competition leaves me cold. If I do something, I usually don't care if someone else does it worse or better. I enjoy my own knowledge and abilities, but don't see any point in finding out where they rank in comparison to other people's knowledge and abilities. School bored me to tears, marks meant nothing to me except irritation. Knowledge, from the moment I began to look and read, seemed to me strictly for my own private pleasure. Some nosy boob "evaluating" my knowledge, or urging me to compete with some random bunch of other people for marks or little tinfoil stars just struck me as idiotic. This view was firmly in my mind by at least the first grade. So was the belief that relaxation, the splendid art of doing little or nothing in the most enjoyable way, is a noble pursuit. Cats, nature's greatest masters of relaxation, should be our guides in this. When cats relax, their bodies dissolving into a semi-liquid state, they purr. Humans can, and should purr. Once a friend remarked that I was the only person she had ever met who really purred. I took this as the most pleasing compliment I have ever received.
Relaxation comes in two main categories: with friends, and alone. Relaxing with friends is subtler, because it needs a special art to maintain its purity and innocence. But I only wish to meditate, right now, on relaxing alone.
I've just finished a nice little bit of relaxation, and while my writing about it presupposes that I'm not actually doing it, I'll write about it in the present tense to evoke its texture:
On this particular occasion, all the elements of fine solitary relaxation have lined up like the planets in grand conjunction. The preceding day was exhausting, with a lot of hustle and bustle done in hot, humid weather. But now, I'm basking in air conditioned bliss. Let those who despise technology contemplate the world before air conditioning. (There's nothing more amusing to look upon than a profusely sweating luddite.) I'm freshly showered, freed of tormenting shoes and clothes, and gratefully sprawled on the futon. No pilgrim to Lourdes, throwing away his crutches, ever felt the gratefulness that I feel for that futon. If someone were to run into the room screaming that I've won the Nobel Prize, I would tell them "If I have to get up to get it, I don't want it."
Everything in my apartment, by slow evolutionary increments, has come to be in its most convenient place. Things I want practically leap into my hands unbidden. Even the pillows seem to want to fluff themselves. Later, perhaps, I'll watch an old science fiction film, or perhaps a harmless sitcom that a more serious person would sneer at. But at the moment, I'll let music wash over me like an incoming tide, and read something. First, Ralph Vaughan Williams' third symphony, the fine "pastoral" one. Then some old BBC Essential Mix from the golden era of 1993. Then some Ali Farka Touré.
Supper is already made and eaten. It was effortless: a lamb kebab pan fried with tandoori paste and tossed onto some couscous and peas.
The animals have tired of chasing each other back and forth, and have come to join me. The larger cat has curled up on the pillow to the left of my head. The smaller cat and the rabbit are stretched out beside each other next to my right lower leg. The bong and the stash are empty, and there's no alcohol in the house, but I'm in the mood for reading with a clear mind. Another time, a toke or a shot of scotch would hit the spot, but this time, a home-made malted milkshake it more to my liking.
Now, a situation like this needs the right book to make it perfect. I'm not in the mood for fiction, and definitely not in the mood for anything related to the article I'm writing. Fortunately, I have the perfect thing at hand, found in a small town bookshop: Aubrey Burl's Prehistoric Avebury. This allows me slip into a gentle reverie.
I'm very fond of Avebury, that most delightful of all prehistoric monuments. I've been there twice, but on neither occasion had the time or money to take it in properly. For Averbury is the focus of one of my best relaxation fantasies. If I could swing it, I would spend a week there. Every day, I would take my breakfasts in the bay window of the Red Lion Pub, which sits right in the middle of the great circle of sarcen stones. That's the special charm of Avebury. There's an English village right on top of it, mingling with the stones and avenues and the circular trench and embankment. Oh, it's all very fine for Stonehenge to loom mysteriously on the empty stage-set of Salisbury Plain, looking all spooky and oozing mystical oompah-pah. The hippies love it. But Avebury's magic is subtler, and appeals to me more. The domestic setting, with cottages, a pub, high street shops, and a church superimposed on the five-thousand year old megalithic monument, like an accidentally double-exposed film negative, makes for a powerful evocation of the depths of time. Perhaps human sacrifices were performed at the post office, and who knows what orgiastic, Pan-like rites were performed where now the Anglican communion is held. The wonderment is, like the Purloined Letter, hidden in plain sight, and all the more wondrous for that.
After each daily breakfast, I would amble casually to some of the archaeological items that lie scattered within a mile or two of the village. They are quite varied, and most of them are rarely visited by anyone but local farmers and archaeologists. Without background knowledge to give them meaning, most have little appeal to the day trippers and New Age innocents who are drawn to the big stones. Anyway, I would probably do this in the off-season. I'm Canadian ― I don't mind a little chilly weather, and don't enjoy crowds. When the sun goes down, I'll retreat to the pub for a pint of best bitter, and enjoy the pleasant talk of an English country pub.
Come to think of it, such a week of relaxation would be all the sweeter if I came to Avebury, not by bus (like the last time) or hitch-hiking (like the first time), but by walking the full length of the Ridgeway. This is the oldest known "road" in England. Actually, it's a humble foot-path that winds for 85 miles (137 km) from Ivinghoe Beacon in Buckinghamshire, through the Chiltern and Berkshire hills, past the Iron Age fort at Uffington and the Vale of Whitehorse, and ends just to the south of Avebury, near Silbury Hill, the most mysterious of all British prehistoric monuments. Such a distance is nothing, for me, especially with regular opportunities for a ploughman's lunch along the way.
That little fantasy is in the spirit of some of my finest moments of relaxation. I have some real-life ones under my belt that equal it.
One I especially cherish in memory occurred in the desert and mesa country of northern Arizona. There was a hidden box canyon, well off any well-trodden trail, where was hid, at least for a brief season, a pool of crystal clear water under the shade of a red-rock cliff. Not orangy-brown, not sandstone red, but blood red, the cliff was. I spent two carefree days there, nursing a sprain and a broken toe. The splendid setting made the pain seem trivial. I did absolutely nothing except take dips in the cool water, tend the fire, and look at the stars. No wasted time was ever less of a waste. The solitude ended only when two Navaho shepherd boys arrived. This occured at the precise moment when it seemed right to break the spell of solitude. Since I was a trained shepherd myself, there was a commonality to ease acquaintance. I followed them out of the canyon, and up the mesa. But that starts another, irrelevant story.
Forests and mountains figure prominently in my catalog of Great Relaxations. One can be as snug and comfortable out of doors as in the cosiest of apartments, if the conditions are right. One British Columbia mountain meadow, with a breathtaking view of rainforest, glaciers, mist and sea, was so esthetically overwhelming that it often pops up in my dreams. The climb to it was exhausting, and I don't take well to thin air. Rest was a necessity, so perhaps I shouldn't count it as "relaxation". But I lingered past the strict necessity of recuperation.
Among fine acts of relaxation, I would definitely include pauses on journeys on the Canadian Shield. These have been too numerous to keep track of. They all contained the same elements: a lake, or a swimable river; precambrian rocks scattered about for furniture; a crackling fire cooking fresh trout; blueberries and raspberries handy for the picking; a well-made teepee; some ragged paperback books stained with sweat and crushed mosquitos; loons calling; whiskeyjacks singing; and a soft breeze to keep the blackflies at bay. What does civilization have that can compete with it?
Well, there is one form of relaxing that requires quite a bit of civilization to support it, and is hardly ever celebrated by writers and philosophers. I don't think Thoreau would approve of it. It's too mundane to attract the poets. But it's just as "spiritual" in its own way. I don't own a car, and it's been a long time since I have, but this is what I most miss about having one. It's extremely relaxing to drive your car aimlessly along country roads, with no timetable, no destination, no place where you have to be. Just driving for no reason, following a road because you like the look of it, playing roller-coaster on the badly graded hills and dips, kicking dust and pebbles behind you. That's when a car feels like a home, not a mere transportation machine. Better yet is to drive for hours, late, late at night, on a nearly empty highway, listening to obscure radio stations emerge from static, play some half-forgotten tune from another era, then ebb and fade back into the static sea. This is wasteful of gas, but fulfilling of the spirit. It works best in Canada, where empty highways snake mournfully across shadowy moonlit landscapes, and every Tim Horton's donut shop is an alabaster oasis in the ebon night.
FOR MUCH MORE, VISIT MY WEBSITE AT WWW.PHILPAINE.COM
Monday, April 23, 2007
Monday, April 23, 2007 - Chaos
It's chaos here. I finished the Autism assignment early in the morning, but the client's university server is down, and I don't know if it has been successfully delivered. Hopefully I can receive payment before I leave on Wednesday. In the meantime, there are suddenly a thousand things to do before leaving. An aggressive and disobedient rabbit is wrecking my apartment... everything needed for the next month has to be squeezed into a backpack... currency has to be exchanged... tons of laundry to do. Various friends have to be seen in a short period (I am going to buy a day-pass for the subway tomorrow, and do a bunch of things in one swoop). And i need a haircut.
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