Makes me feel lucky to be where I am. But for some reason I always feel uncomfortable about feeling lucky to be where I am here in Canada.
Here I sit sipping a coffee that I made from boiling clean tap water, bangin' away at my computer that has internet, sitting in my large room beside my large bed underneath a roof, (or in my case a floor), that keeps the snow off, heated by the heater and making fists with my toes in the carpet that separates my feet from the cold, cement floor. Just before making my coffee I woke up, checked my mail and messages on my smartphone, arranged a time to meet my bro and sis-in-law for dinner tonight and played my Simpsons game all while under my soft flannel sheets. And I haven't worked in almost two months. In fact I arranged my immigration physical for a week from today on April 4th. I will have the results 3-4 days after that and then I'm looking for a flight. Chances are I'll be flying to Malaysia around the middle of the month. That'll be about two and a half months without working. Nice little break. There are few people who could take that long a break. I sure am lucky!
And I have some sense of how lucky I am. Maybe because of my exposure to the less fortunate in Canada during my upbringing or exposure to the REALLY less fortunate overseas during my travels. I'm not sure. I think it's a combination. Living a year with my grandparents on Hamilton Mountain where everybody had to buy water by the truckload, bathing in two inches of already used bath water, flushing not necessarily every time I used the toilet, watering the plants with the dish water, frothing at the mouth for half a glass of the carefully rationed refrigerated water... to this day it just drives me bananas seeing people wasting water! Yesterday my brother Jeff was shaving with the bathroom sink tap running full blast for at least half an hour. It was while I was on my computer and I could not concentrate on what I was typing. I wanted so badly to barge in and turn the tap off. But I knew it was not worth the conflict that would result.
Another time he was just running the hot water in the kitchen sink for no reason. I turned it off and he turned it back on. Then wandered around not really doing anything. I turned it off AGAIN and got in his face. "What the fuck," I believe was my eloquent challenge of his behaviour. He turned it back on and yelled something like, "I do this every morning for my sinuses. It's my process." I wanted to ground and pound him. Seriously! With a shaky voice I said, "Get a bowl and fill it up and stick your face in it with a towel over the back of your head." He said nothing, the hot water continued to run and I continued to seethe. I have lived in more than one country where every drop of water I drank was bought by the bottle. But I'm not living there now. And I realize the utter insignificance of one person running water for that long in Canada. Jeff and I don't pay for water here hot OR cold so what's the big deal? In the summer there are entire streets, (or more likely entire SIDES of streets), all over Canada with sprinklers flooding lawns all day long. Married men sneaking outside, or maybe having been ordered outside, hose in one hand, beer in the other watering flowers, grass, cement, concrete, house, roof, car for hours. So why would it bother me that Jeff had a tap turned on for a mere half hour? Enough to almost come to blows with him. Enough to eat my liver out every time it happens. No explanation, it just DOES.
That's not all either! There are lights that have been left on in this house since we arrived here. We don't pay the electric bill so screw it, leave the light on! They are JEFF'S lights, of course, not mine. Little night lights but they still use electricity. And the T.V. He almost never turns that off either. My reason for conservation is more global than Jeff's seems to be. His reason is just cost to self. If we were paying for water and electric he might be different. I would not.
I'll stop picking on Jeff now. But another example of pure waste that drives me insane is food waste. Everywhere I go, everyone I see. I was at my friend Brent's place not so long ago. It was just before he went to Cancun for a week and I took care of his dog for him. He treated me to a mighty good lasagna and Caesar salad dinner. With garlic buttered baguette. MAN it was good! For some reason I was a bit gassy that night and couldn't eat very much. As Brent wrapped up half a baguette of garlic toast and half the salad in the baguette tinfoil and proceeded to chuck it directly into the garbage I wanted to just dive in there and gorge myself even though I was chock-a-block full. I felt at fault for not eating my fair share of the food. I see food waste all the time! Especially with kids. There are kids in Canada who have probably never finished everything on their plates. NEVER! Again, both upbringing and foreign exposure probably have something to do with why this absolutely rots my socks off. I have been at the houses of family and friends who have kids, saw half finished Sponge Bob or Disney plates of food that are destined for the trash and surreptitiously polished them off during clean up. But I have SEEN with my own eyes, (and heart), kids who are so disadvantaged that they would have considered themselves fortunate to have done the same. I was never starving while growing up but we never had food left on our plates and almost never had food left over. And when we did it wasn't scraped into the garbage, it was scraped into Tupperware to be mixed into future meals. Well, todays parents, who have Foodsafe certificates, would tell you how many dangerous kinds of bacteria build up on that food as it sits in the Tupperware overnight.
Ask a kid. Or a teen. Maybe even like a 30-year-old. "Do you know what 'goulash' is?" They might not. But most of my generation, and similar economic class, had our versions of goulash. That's when Mom can't get rid of the leftover beans, corn, mashed potatoes, squash, maybe some other veggies, (it's always the veggies :)), mixes them ALL with a pound of hamburger, (sorry, ground beef), and, voila, goulash. Well that's a veritable petri dish of germs and bacteria to today's knowledgeable parents. Those germs were like vitamins to me when I was a kid! MMM MMM GOOD!
Where am I going with this? Not sure yet but I think I just have to keep typing and it'll work its way out. I think because of the way my life has gone, the fact that I saw Canada back in the 80's and 90's and then didn't really see it again through the zeroes and early tens, it saved me from the frog in the pot syndrome and allowed me an outsider's perspective on how much my country has changed over those years. You know what I mean by the frog in the pot syndrome? When you put a frog in a pot of cold water and gradually heat it the frog doesn't notice the water getting hot, because it's gradual, and you can boil it alive. I've never tried this so I don't know if it's true, but I liken a lot of Canadians to frogs like this. They have remained in Canada and things have so gradually changed, for the worse, that they haven't noticed and now don't think much of them. Not just water, food and electricity. These are some fairly innocuous examples. Things like culture, social attitudes, politics, education, business, THESE are the boiling water that will cook Canadians if things continue to gradually heat up here. In my humble opinion.
It hurts but it's gotta be said: Canada is becoming more selfish. Think of the three examples already given. All qualify as selfish. There are so many examples of ways we are encouraged in Canada to be selfish! In my opinion Canadians now see each other more as competitors than countrimen. It's been a gradual process. When I was young EVERYBODY knew their neighbours and talked to strangers. People hitchhiked, let their kids play unsupervised, trusted people they had never met. We believed even politicians were telling the truth, (well maybe that's a stretch); we were not absolutely positive that everything we bought was a total rip-off; we thought we were taxed fairly fairly; we trusted in the purity of our sports and entertainment heroes; we were just a whole lot less cynical. As an expert on cynicism, ahem, I believe it's just another kind of selfishness because cynics point out not just negativity, but more how things are negatively affecting ME. I believe the boiling water that has lead to this is capitalism. Not just individuals being socialized into believing that the pursuit of money is more and more important, but the evolution of our country into a greed-based, giant corporation as well.
My cable wasn't working yesterday. It was not dead, just had a few little problems. This is cable that I signed a three-year agreement to pay. Not only did some websites not work on my PC, my favourite game on my cellphone, (which I signed a multi-year contract for also), wasn't working. Not only that but I got the cable bill and for this downgrade in service we got an UPgrade in pay. It's 10 bucks more this month with no explanation. And there is absolutely nothing we can do about it. This sort of business practice has slowly sneaked up on us and could also be compared to the frog in the pot. Get people locked in for a lengthy period of time and relax with the quality and service. When did this type of scam become allowable in this country? I don't know for sure but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that if there were a vote to make this crap illegal in Canada 99% would love the idea. Ask yourself what other things in our lives we "buy" like this and you will see why this kind of corrupt business is NOT illegal. In a very real way we "buy" our politicians like this. They're in for their terms and their service just goes to shit as soon as we're locked in. What about our jobs? We are usually promised at contract time, more than is delivered by our employers aren't we? And as employees we build ourselves up, sometimes even LIE on the application, and not long after we get comfortable in the job and just walk it in, right? Hell even social relationships are like that! Act all nicety nice before they're locked into a marriage contract and then relax afterwards. Look at gyms. Most of them sell, in fact OVERsell, ONLY long-term contracts like this EXPECTING many people to quit before their contracts are up. LONG before. If they didn't the gym would not be able to accommodate all the members.
Being locked into long term, frog-in-a-pot contracts is a corrupt business policy that was perpetrated on the world by greedy, selfish people, GRADUALLY. And it has become so much a part of our culture in Canada over time that we don't really notice it. Unemployment insurance. Remember when you could actually quit a job for a good reason and GET this? My last employer promised me that I'd be transferred to another position and I'd get casual hours in the mean time. Every time I checked up on the progress for almost a month I got another excuse as to why I had not even an hour of work. Then I was told that they didn't even know I wanted them to look for hours for me. I told this to the U.I. people but still have received no money and have my doubts that my claim will get the go ahead. U.I. was not unfair like this before! It's mandatory and because of that the standards have relaxed. We're locked in. It is astounding what employers can get away with because their employees know that even though they SHOULD, they may not get the unemployment insurance benefits if they quit.
Yesterday and for almost a week before finally booking my doctor's appointment, I had to struggle through the endless telephone gymnastics, requisite 15-30 minute hold periods, unnecessary private information disclosure, bureaucracy, paperwork and crap like that in order to GET that doctor's appointment. Customer service is something of a generosity in business. If our product is highly sought after, or mandatory, we don't have to be nice to customers. But it's just plain selfish not to. Ditto for general courtesy and manners. These are more examples of the increasing selfishness I perceive here in Canada. I know I'm not alone in thinking common courtesy is a lot less common.
How about C.P.P.? Also mandatory. Also getting worse and worse. In fact, if I get ANY pension I'll divide it up between all you readers okay? I have very little hope that I will live to see a pension. Yet we all have to pay into it. We're locked in.
You could even say on a larger scale that our very citizenship, something else we are locked into, has deteriorated over time, but like frogs in pots, Canadians don't notice it. In fact I think they TRY not to notice it. I admit I can be the Angel of Death sometimes and a real downer talking doom and gloom, but I have noticed a marked increase in people in this country who are desperately positive and will not abide even the hint of negativity in their lives. People who certainly would not reach this point in this blog entry before exiting to soothingoceansounds.com or whatever. Coincidence? I think not.
Okay I think I am starting to get a direction here. I think it may be the same on a global scale. I can't speak for all the privileged countries of the world but I have seen what I call hyper-positivity all over the place. I was looking for something to watch on Netflix the other day and saw a film called "The Secret." It sounded intriguing. There is a secret that a lot of famous people in the world knew. Da Vinci, Shakespeare, Einstein, Napoleon, names like these were mentioned. I started watching only to realize that it was nothing but a cult-like, believe and receive, indoctrination film passing off false knowledge as a life changing secret. It REALLY pissed me off. Again, my upbringing and my travels. Can I imagine walking the slums of Manila, the farms of rural Cambodia or any of the poor places I've been and talking to people about this "secret?" Um, no. "Hey, get all negativity out of your lives! Don't concentrate on being hungry, just believe you will get rich and you will attract money! Moreover, you ARE hungry and dirt poor because you just think too negatively!" The people would beat the shit out of me, take my wallet, shoes, jewelry and anything of value I have and walk away saying, "Hey that guy is RIGHT! I'm already richer after hearing that bullshit!"
It's because this philosophy is essentially greed itself. Feeling good about wealth is not bad. Feeling good about success is okay too. But this is feeling good about obscenely unfair wealth. Which translates into feeling good about creating obscenely UNfair poverty. That is the root of practically every problem in our world and it is capitalism defined.
I believe this world has more than enough wealth and resources for every single person to be rich, and feel proud of their wealth. I really do! But go back to the graphic graphic at the top again. Not really happening in the world is it? And even though we in Canada have lots of electricity, water, food, money, I really hate the way we waste our privilege. That goes for the other resources too. And I wish people could realize how hot the water is in the Canadian pot we're in and start changing it. Not only are the changes possible, they're simple. Make our country's businessmen stop with the oil and develop the massive, and I believe even more profitable potential for cleaner energy we have in this country. Stop screwing our own citizens and truly reform government. Fair prices. Fair pay. Fair business and cultural policies. Back to proper education, not expensive training. More old fashioned respect for apprenticeship rather than diploma and certificate buying in the workplace. We could really be world leaders and maybe other countries would copy us. But we continue on in the path that is messing up Canada and the world. Whistling a nervous tune all the while trying to force false happiness upon ourselves when the real thing is well within our reach.
I think the wheels have fallen off my metaphor of the frog in the pot. The idea of being locked in like a lid on the frog pot kind of ruins it because the frog can't escape. The whole wonder of the analogy is that the frog could jump out of the pot but doesn't. I guess I will need to work on this some more... But I'll continue flogging a flawed metaphor. I think because I got out of the water when it was relatively cool, spent some time overseas broadening my horizons, then hopped back into the water in the Canadian pot now that it's much hotter, that, in a tightly stretched analogy, is why I have noticed the temperature where many of my fellow, (no offence to French Canada), Canadian frogs haven't, and also why I am hopping the hell back out of this water.
Now, I am not expecting Indonesia to be without corruption or greed or any of the above. But at least I'll have a good job there. And a good lifestyle. And I might even be able to enjoy my success knowing from whence it will come.
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