Stay Poor Anne!

 I've never done this before but if you want to watch the video to which I will immediately refer, go to almost the end of this post. 

If the guy who seems to have trouble looking at Anna Bocca can be believed... Mate, look at her! She's young but not airhead, non-contributing, dependent-type young, she's hot but not Chekhovian cheat-on-your-husband-but-don't-divorce-him, predatory hot, she's brainy, and oh yeah, by the way, English accent? No? I'd be looking at her. Anyhoo, if the guy who has been researching wealth inequality for 15 years knows what he's talking about... and good for Anna! This is why her vids are so informative I guess and why I have learned a lot from them, trust her, and have put her on this blog before: she is brilliant at finding answers. Not data, not biased opinion, but the unvarnished truth. It's hard to get from people with political, social, or professional associations that would cause them to "varnish" the truth, so find a broke-ass intellectual who has the money to survive (maybe student loans or parental support?) and the non-affiliation to be objective. That's how this dude strikes me: he's a starving student. Maybe he's not looking at Anna cuz he doesn't have the dough to take her round to the pub. Maybe he's got a mid-term exam tomorrow and even this interview is going to necessitate an all-night cram session. But I could be wrong. What do I know? Maybe he works for GE, but I think he'd look more in his element wearing his little toque aboard the Rainbow Warrior saving whales than in a business suit and that's why Anna rode her bike over to visit him. Rode her bike. Man I love this girl!

At any rate, if this guy knows his stuff, things were unequal, then there was a short period of what seemed to be experimentation during which the royalty, robber barons, elite, less-than-one-percent, puppet masters, call them what you will, allowed a middle class to form and the gap between the few Haves and the unwashed masses of Have-nots to close a little bit. In my previous post I speculated that gratitude might have played a part in this experimentation since it happened on the heels of two world wars in which those unwashed masses saved their owners' businesses and countries in which and with which to do their businesses, but that's just me humanizing their patrician indifference to help myself try to relate to the money sickness a little better. In reality it might have just been coincidence. 

They pinpoint the start of these "golden years of capitalism" to the Bretton Woods Conference from July 1st (hey, Canada Day) to July 22nd in 1944. Much like golf rules and Bill 66 (see previous post) a LOT of things were decided for (not by) the people of the world and they were blissfully ignorant of how (disastrously) they would be affected by these new RULES. To the victor go the spoils and you can bet the American influence on victory in WWII played no small role in all these new rules heavily favouring the U.S. In fact it'd be a safe bet that a lot of this stuff was negotiated BEFORE the US entered WWII. Just look at the economic conditions that allowed the US to fight. World war is expensive. War bonds were issued, prices were controlled, and things were rationed. Regular folks made sacrifices. The Fed set interest rates low, like 3/8 of a percent, and, as mentioned by our expert, top rates of tax on the rich were up to 90 or 95%. Then after winning the war the US brought the gold standard to the world linking all money to the dollar, they thrust the IMF and the World Bank (and, if I'm not mistaken, this is what coaxed the rest of the allied countries into the central banking systems they all currently have), and true Keynesian economics were employed. What do you know? The Golden Years! 1945-1973.

People could buy a house with 2 years' salary! Labour unions were strong (and less corrupt). The economic system, banks, investments, the stock market, corporations, these were all tightly regulated by government (which was less corrupt) and the IMF/World Bank (which was less corrupt). So what happened in 1973? In a word, corruption. In two words, Reagan and Thatcher. 

It didn't JUST happen like that of course. Greed didn't just disappear for 25 years. Things were happening in the US like the Vietnam War, less competitive prices, and the soap opera saga of world oil supplies that disrupted the US gold standard and blew up the Bretton Woods economic bliss. Interest rates went up, taxes on the rich went down, unions were demonized, and along with oil, absolutely everything got much more expensive. Yeah... just like today, they had (carefully manufactured in my opinion) massive inflation. Since unemployment went up and wages stagnated, it wasn't just inflation, it was STAGflation.

Now, here's where we want to start asking about the RULES again. Where do they come from, who makes them, and, as they ask in the vid, why do we even play this game? Why do we put up with unpaid overtime (again see last post), rising costs, shittier jobs featuring more work for less pay? How did we get sucked into playing this game and who sucked us in? Meanwhile, businesses have had sustained record profits since the early 70's while us regular folks have been losing at this game. In short, there's more money out there and we're getting less of it. Are we just not working hard enough? Are we just not smart enough? Are we getting outwitted, outlasted, outplayed? Nope, we're getting fucked. 

If you're now thinking, "There he is again, conspiracy theorist Dave," it's because you've been carefully and expensively socialized into thinking that. The "game" to which I'm referring is Capitalism if you haven't worked that out yet. We have known that this game or system does not work for quite some time. The utter failure of the system exhibited itself in the Great Depression that gripped most of the world in the 1930's and partially led to WWII. We have known of a way to win this game for quite some time too: socialism. But, as its name might suggest, that is only good for society, which is not good enough for the rich, and since they are the ones making the rules, we have to play by them if we want to play their game. Why oh why we would want to I just don't know but here we are. 

Lest we forget, FDR implemented programs like unemployment insurance, social security, labour protections, market and bank regulation (or RE-regulation), and other such socialist policies to save America from capitalism just before WWII. I.e., the government, not the "free market" or the private sector, had pulled America's asses out of the Depression. As America goes, so go most other allied countries, so really THAT'S when we all started playing the people's game, and it was a fun 40-year long game for the people until the early 70's when the rich flipped the table and said, "We're not playing this game any more. Even though we're having fun and we like the game, we have a better game." Better only for them as it turned out.

So... how did the rich convince us to go back to playing their game? They flat out lied to us. We just covered how it was government that saved the people from the Great Depression. Then government regulation carried the people through the best years of their lives. People trusted, even LOVED the government! FDR got elected 4 times! But the Reagan and Thatcher administrations had the job of painting government as "the problem, not the solution." That, as you might expect, took some doing. 

This is when a bloody well organized propaganda campaign to bring back capitalism and funnel the money that had leaked into the public back to the top where it belonged began and the wealth gap re-widened with it. Not surprisingly, Big Oil were leading the campaign with J. Howard Pew characterizing the New Deal as a Trojan Horse for socialism, which it totally was, and that would be a BAD thing once "socialism" became a scare word. Newspapers became unsourced propaganda filled rags poisoning the minds of the electorate against the government that had given them the best years of their lives and in favour of the corporations that had led them into the Depression. How did they do it?

Rugged individualism, competition, anti-communist thought, scapegoating, blacklisting, oh yeah, it got UGLY! It wasn't just the newspapers, it got into the movies too. The message that regulating the "free market" was absolutely unconstitutional and unamerican was at the heart of most of the rhetoric. The result was socialism and/or communism and both were evil. The very American prosperity gospel replaced the Biblical idea that chasing money is NOT a virtue. It is fascinating how THAT scam was perpetrated on the American people! Anna does a great video on that too called The Big Church Grift. "If you want to be perfect sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor." Matthew 20:21. Jesus said that. Christ. I guess the verse the prosperity gospel considers to trump that is, "Nobody's perfect." Fakeziah 6:66. (The use of the word "trump" is no coincidence there. heh heh)

Corrupting religion to make Jesus into an entrepreneurial spirit rather than a loving one was bad. You might even say it was evil. But I think what was done to corrupt education was probably worse. Maybe it's my natural progression in life through religion to education that makes me feel this way, maybe it's faith vs. fact, I dunno, but it just seems diabolical to me. You see, much like pastors were paid to link money to virtue and God, academics were paid to write false studies and coerced into fudging textbooks and corrupting general education along those same lines. Howard Zinn's A People's History of the US contains the Haymarket Affair and the heroic efforts of Americans in America to oppose industry and demand human rights. There's even a song! This is why it isn't used much in American classrooms. They have been controlled for over a century by the powerful corporate lobby that fondly reflects on the days when kids could work in factories for long hours with no overtime pay, no benefits, no minimum wage, and no safety regulations as soon as they were tall enough to reach the machine controls. Educating the public on the heroism of citizens who opposed such conditions and fought for human dignity just didn't fit into the aspirations of the ruling class. So they changed education. Just changed it.

You may wonder, "Well, how the hell could they just do that? Knowledge is knowledge, no?" Unbelievably, the corporate lobbyists and think tanks of the day just took people who had spent lifetimes proving that capitalism has inherent problems - like it doesn't fucking work! Markets don't correct themselves and businessmen just connive to take as much money from the poor as they can. They took guys like John Maynard Keynes and Adam Smith and just lied about them! I'm not making this up! Anna Bocca is an economics student and I know several more who rant and rave about how Keynes and Smith are purposely misrepresented. People sympathetic to the cause of corporate (bullshit) economics were hired to teach and fund major university economics programs despite their academic WRONGNESS. This happened only because the lobby had the money to make it happen. Like politics, education had been watered down by money. Anna's video about this is very long but very informative. Check it out. 

One of the major bought and paid for quasi-economists was a name that might be more well known: Milton Friedman. Capitalism and Freedom was his highly biased pulp fiction on economics. 

So by buying people, schools, media, churches, and (Reagan/Thatcher) government, the rich ended their experiment with surrendering a little bit of money to the other 99 point whatever percent of the world and decided to take it back. If you want to learn about the aggressive expansion of the American Chamber of Commerce and the loads of cash they poured into buying politics in the early 70's, here's the link to the video I referenced at the very beginning. 

Sorry about the ads within but I think they're worth it. Not the ones from YouTube but Anne's sponsors. 

So there you have it. This is how we got sucked into playing the game of the (less than) 1%. In the end it boils down to money. Money made it happen and to truly understand how bad it is, you need to not have very much of it. To understand how those with money always end up being the ones in control boggles many a great mind. 

"The most improper job of any man, even saints, is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity." J.R.R. Tolkien

It seems to me that a guy could do worse than adopting the philosophy that the amount of trust you should put into a person is directly disproportionate to the amount of money that person has. So going back to the beginning, I truly hope that the guy Anne consulted was as poor as he looked and I hope Anne does well enough with her sponsors to keep producing such informative videos... but just barely well enough. Stay strong and stay poor Anne!

It Is NOT What It Is

 "It is what it is." I've mentioned this defeatist mantra and how much I hate it in these blathering bloggages before. I've had conversations about it too trying unsuccessfully to clearly convey exactly why I despise this philosophy and the battered and bullied generations that have been forced to adopt it. "Hate" might be too strong a word for how I feel about the pathetic downtrodden population that has been securely yoked and whipped by the ruling class into trading their lives to keep the wealthy in haute couture and bon-bons. But I don't like them and I'm one of them. What exactly is it that keeps us from doing what we all want to do?

"It is what it is." It's much like "A rule is a rule." It is no coincidence that after Bryson Dechambeau was penalized two strokes for accidentally improving his lie yesterday in The Open he said, "It is what it is." I don't want to get too deep into this but listen, as long as you don't move your ball, you are not improving your lie. Dechambeau walked into tall grass, stood behind his ball to see where he needed to hit it, then hit it. Well, MUCH later it was ruled by the stuffed shirts that comprise whatever governing body is in charge at The Open that stomping down the high grass behind his ball made his backswing easier and therefore "improved his lie." No. Just no. It improved his backswing and did nothing to affect his lie. You cannot argue that logically so you need to revert to, "A rule is a rule." "It is what it is." I can't tell you how many times I have rearranged foliage on golf courses to improve my backswing and watched my fellow golf partners do the same. It never occurred to any of us that we were cheating because we weren't. Improving your backswing doesn't amount to cheating in the minds of golfers worldwide. But evidently it's a rule.

Here's another: You are not allowed to ground a club in a bunker. Why not? It's about preserving the sand in the bunker and maintaining the hazard. It's much like raking the trap after you mess it up. They don't want folks practicing swings 3 or 4 times blasting sand out of the bunker and onto the grass. Understandable. So when someone grazes the sand accidentally while preparing to hit their shot, it shouldn't be a penalty, right? Logically that's right. But logic and justice so often take back seats to The Rule! Probably the worst injustice ever was Dustin Johnson in the 2010 PGA Championship who took a practice swing beside his ball that had come to rest in a strip of bare dirt with no grass growing in it. Well here come those stuffed shirts again with their crotches bulging at the prospect of being OBEYED by a celebrity golf professional. "That was a bunker!" they screamed.

This, my friends, this little patch of dirt in the picture above is not a bunker, it's groundskeeper neglect. Almost everyone, golfer or not, can agree on that but, well, a rule is a rule. It is what it is. 

You might be thinking, "Oh Dave you conspiracy theorist, they're just trying to stop golfers from cheating." Nope. I'll give you another rule that proves the rule-makers are not just punishing cheaters, they're also just punishing for the fun of it. If you make a mistake on your scorecard there are two things that can happen: 1. You can be disqualified if you write a score lower than the one you got. 2. You will be forced to keep the higher score if you (or your golfing partner keeping your score) writes down a larger score than the one you got. In the 1968 Master's Roberto De Vicenzo's playing partner Tommy Aaron gave him a 4 when he actually got a 3. This cost him a chance at a playoff to win the tournament. Obviously there was no attempt to cheat. So why the punishment? Nothing justifies it. So we have to try to mitigate the injustice with a brainless non-justification, "Well, them's the rules." "It is what it is." De Vicenzo had his own way of phrasing it, "What a stupid I am!" 

Why does nobody have the balls to change the fucking rules? Whether you think Dechambeau was breaking the rule or not, it's a fucking stupid rule. How can you avoid stomping down grass near your ball? You have to get close to your ball to shoot it! The rule should be that as long as you don't touch or move your ball, doing ANYthing to improve your backswing is NOT improving your lie. Kudos to Dechambeau for being one of the VERY few with the courage to fight stupid rules in our world. It can be done but few of us stand up to The Man.

Since returning to Canada I've noticed an outrageously gross societal wave toward this blind acceptance and obedience, almost worship of rules, no matter how stupid. If Canada were a sport, it might be golf. Here's a rule that has already cost me two jobs: If somebody is outside of Canada for 5 years, driving or not, his/her license expires and he/she completely forgets (inexplicably exactly at the 5 year point) how to drive necessitating more than just driver's license renewal, they must make their ways through the graduated driving programs of the provinces in which they reside as if they had never held a license or driven before. I settled in Sarnia hoping to get work with a friend who has a vending machine business. This requires driving around town and stocking vending machines with snacks and drinks. Pretty simple. Unfortunately, even with my clean driver's abstract and proof of 25 years with no accidents or insurance claims against me in hand, when I went to the appropriate keepers of the rules to plead for an exception all I got was, "A rule is a rule. No exceptions. It is what it is."

Here's another one: Despite our culture that is consciously forcing Canadians to own vehicles and drive, did you know there is excise tax on fuel? Excise taxes are for luxuries and dirty pleasures and they are designed to limit consumption of such products and services as alcohol, tobacco, gambling, marijuana, certain luxury vehicles, etc. You find me a Canadian who thinks gas isn't essential to their lives and I'll show you... me. I don't drive so I don't use gas. This tax does not affect me, right? WRONG. I take the bus and taxis and Ubers. I eat food that is delivered by truck. I buy all kinds of things that have gone up in price (and with Trump's bullshit war with Iran will go up in price much more) that involve oil in manufacturing, delivery, or somewhere along the supply chain. ALL Canadians are dependent upon oil and since the early days of recognizing its potential when a super rich asshole like William Knox D'Arcy could go to a poor country like Persia (Iran) and buy 30 years of land and oil drilling rights for some paltry sum like 20,000 pounds, Big Oil has been manufacturing oil addiction into cultures like Canada. If you've ever wondered why Canada sells its oil cheaply to the US then buys back the refined product more expensively, it ain't because we don't have the ability to refine it here. It's the same assholery that made William Knox D'Arcy pretend he was helping the Persians, not fleecing them. Here we add to "It is what it is," and "A rule is a rule," another euphemism that has proven quite functional in the creation of our oligarchic world, "It's just business." I could spend a long time on this but will instead refer you to this well-researched video:

The rich control our lives and how we live them. There was a short period of time after the poor fought a couple of world wars and saved the businesses (and arses) of every last one of what George Carlin calls "our owners" and they allowed the peasants to enjoy a little bit more of the wealth. Taxes on the rich were in the 70 percent area. Ordinary folks could live very well on one salary. People could send their kids to college, buy their homes outright, AND retire! We had those wonder years not just because of the greatest generation fighting in the wars, but also because they fought for workers' rights. 

Anybody know what holiday is celebrated on May 1st? If you're Canadian or American you probably don't, yet it's a big deal in over 160 countries around the world. It commemorates the Haymarket Affair during which people were wounded and killed after a peaceful protest erupted into violence. It eventually led to the adoption of the 8-hour day worldwide and where did it happen? Chicago! Ask anybody in the US - hell ask anybody in CHICAGO what the Haymarket Affair was or even what is celebrated on May 1st or the first Sunday in may in most countries and they won't know. The rich don't want them to know and, yes, after 25 years in the industry you can take it from me, the rich are even trying to control what we know. Why wouldn't they want us to know about the heroes who fought for labour rights to which we are now entitled? 

The obvious projected logic is that maybe the captains of industry and those who make the rules (which ARE the rules) might not want us to know about those rules and our rights enshrined within them because they are trying to slowly erode them, and this includes the 8-hour day. Let me give you one example from my new life in Canada. I just signed contracts to work security again and I will probably start training by the end of this week or if not, most likely this upcoming weekend. Amongst the various papers and documents I was hastily given to sign was the expected averaging agreement. I had one of these in the last security job I worked in Trail. THERE I was asked if I would sign it and agreed simply because I wasn't getting any weeks when I worked enough hours to get overtime. I don't think I ever did there. But if I HAD, I wouldn't have agreed to the averaging agreement. Here in Ontario these things were not legal until just 7 years ago when Doug Ford signed the (need I even say "euphemistic" when it comes to politics?) Restoring Ontario's Competitiveness Act or Bill 66 which allowed employers to bypass government regulation in this respect. 

You see, if a person works more than 44 hours in a week, that person is entitled to overtime pay which is paid at 1.5 times the worker's wage. People fought and DIED for this right ffs! With the Labour Standards Act it was expected that employers consult the Ministry of Labour and get approval for these "agreements." The approval required a bona fide reason for the averaging agreement. Here's what they are: If a worker works, say, 4 12-hour shifts in a week, that's 48 hours and that worker is entitled to 4 hours at the rate of 1.5 times their usual pay. However, if they have an averaging agreement the scheduler can give them only 3 shifts in the next week (36 hours) making the average weekly number of hours 42 for that pay period, and since a 42-hour week doesn't qualify for overtime pay, the company pretends like you didn't work overtime and asks you to play along with their gag and pretend they don't have to pay it... which they DO but be a good bitch and quiet down now. 

Now, you might be saying, "What an evil thing to do! Especially to a security guard who's only making minimum wage!" You're right! But the Ministry of Labour said, "Now hang on here, if the business has a good reason for it, we'll allow it." I can't imagine any legitimate reason for one of these averaging agreements and the employers usually couldn't think anything up, so they generally were assumed to be doing it to save money by denying workers' overtime pay to which they were entitled. This did not qualify as a legitimate reason, it qualified as greedy employers trying to squeeze the last drop of dignity and servitude out of their cattle - uh I mean chattel - uh I mean employees. Well now that Ontario has the new legislation called the Make Ontario Competitive Again Act, that now IS a legitimate reason and it sets a HORRIFIC precedent for more assholery to come. A rule is a rule. A law is a law. It is what it is. It's just business. 

You see how these things happen? This is not legitimate, honest, natural, evolutionary, or anything like that. These things happen when greedy rich people arrange things so that they can steal more from the poor.

We have to stop acquiescing to Draconian, Machiavellian, Gordon Gecko, Greed is Good rules, laws, and customs. We're already reverting and if we don't watch ourselves we'll be back to the era when kids could work 18-hour days in the fucking coal mines! 

It ISN'T just business; A rule is NOT a rule; and it is NOT what it is! Thank God for people who question these 1984isms like Bryson Dechambeau and others like him. If we were all like that we'd have a far better world. Leastaways, that's what I reckon.

Have You Seen This Man?

 All but one of the courses in my abandoned master's studies featured group projects. There were good things about them, but they were generally more bad than good for the simple reason that probably should/could have been anticipated: people are far less accountable while they are wearing their online personas. The progressive ed ideas of collaboration, problem solving, critical thinking, are often encouraged in group projects. Sometimes they actually happen - even in online group projects. But, while it was interesting to interact with fellow students from all over the world, the projects more often than not took the form of aggressively dominant students bullying others into control of the projects to assure that no dummies negatively affected their GPA's. And without a doubt the project bullies only got away with that because they didn't have to be the type A dickheads face-to-face and field the push-back of the other group members in person. Kudos to the university for trying, but I think they're pulling back on this educational strategy and I think an online conversation thread I had with a member of the university administration describing what I just typed may have even played a part in my final class (11 of 12) NOT having a group project. 

Nevertheless, while doing these projects I was in contact with many of my fellow students and occasionally we got off topic in our communication. The topics unrelated to our projects were what you might expect - where we were located; what inspired us to get MEds; what age and subjects we taught; what time it was; and the like. But another popular topic was the school. More specifically its legitimacy. They advertise as tuition-free but we all paid money for our courses. That was surprising to a lot of students. One of the other surprising things was the accreditation. Most of us read all the claims of accreditation in the school and course descriptions not knowing that REGIONAL accreditation was the big one and they didn't have it, although they DO now. They got regionally accredited somewhere around my 9th or 10th course. By the same accrediting body as Berkeley and Stanford don't you know! So I guess that would be good... if you finish the degree.

On THAT note, there was a hugely popular topic that we discussed and I was not aware of until late in my studies, like about 10 courses in. I had mentioned the thesis course, or what the school calls the "capstone" course to several people and we discussed what we were planning to write our theses on. I had all but settled on Paulo Freire early in the course (like probably before I was done my second course) when I first heard of this guy who should be a household name all over the world, but isn't. He was a popular choice but since his educational niche was adult linguistics - and so was mine - the choice seemed an especially suitable one for me. None of the students I talked with ever mentioned the fact that this course was NOT a thesis course. Absolutely nothing in what any of us had read about the course prepared us for the final two courses, which was when we all found out, and which consisted of preparing and writing one of those boring, statistical, almost mathematical, scientific educational studies in which we try to quantify something unquantifiable. In the upcoming video, Bruno della Chiesa provides us with the word "quantophrenia," which is the obsession in social sciences with treating numerical data as the only valid form of knowledge. I have needed that word countless times in this blog and probably in about 50% of my research papers during my M.Ed. studies! Thank you Bruno! 

Anyway, believe it or not, the school actually provides a list of the topics they want us to study. On that list are things that have been researched to death and anyone who has taught for 5 minutes, hell, even non-educators already knows. They NEED to be things that are well researched already because NOW it has to be SECONDARY research meaning that we have to somehow (and as explained in a previous blog post, the university and its professors haven't quite figured out the details of HOW) read lots of previous papers on our topic and relate them to our research???, personal opinion???, fake research??? or whatever, on the same topic. 

I even knew a guy in Gongju, where I did the first few courses in the degree, who was on his 11th course and he didn't tell me this very important, game changing information. I think he might have caught things early on when the project was still PRIMARY research and was able to use HIS class as research subjects. I didn't keep in touch and don't know if he ever finished. In fact the only time I talked to him was at a noisy pub in Gongju and neither of us was interested in talking shop at the time. I think it would have made a difference. Shoulda, coulda, woulda...

What I believe happened, (and this is based on communication with the administrator) was the university was running into problems with students not having classes to use for their research, (My 11th class fell during the summer semester during which students were on summer vacation and if I remember correctly, this was why I initiated the dialog with the administrator) as well as liability issues in which master's students had to get permission from parents, teachers, students, and it became too difficult. So I was assured that I wouldn't need to worry about it, the course was changing from PRIMARY to SECONDARY research. And, thankfully, the 11th course was without a group project. I say thankfully but I am now thinking that if we HAD a group project, maybe we could have ironed out exactly how the hell we were supposed to DO this primary study using secondary research. It is literally impossible and I tried until I was unable to try anymore. I explain the details better here.

I have since been contacted by the university and asked why I abandoned my course right at the finish line and told them that they need to fix it before I can finish it. And if they had allowed me to write a "No, you're wrong and here's why" thesis, the very kind Noam Chomsky describes as the type they expect MIT students to write, thereby qualifying that institution as progressive, why, I would have my M.Ed. today. However, my institution, while training me in all kinds of educational progressivism, was like most and refused to practice what they preached. 

Aye, there's the rub! Why can't universities practice the kind of education their education departments educate about? This brings up the topic to which Freire devoted his singularly out-fucking-standing life and career, and the topic on which I would have written my thesis if I hadn't mistakenly assumed my uni was going to be forthcoming about the course format from the beginning. Schools, and maybe most particularly American schools need to choose between education and industry and despite what Howard Gardner calls at least 300 years internationally and at least 100 years in America of articulate critique of this view, the choice of industrial education remains dominant. 

I have watched, re-watched, and re-re-watched this video in which Gardner says they'll come back to that, but they don't come back to that! However, some fascinating points are brought up about the elite protectionism and its not-so-well-known but enduring presence in the constitution, government, and culture of America since it was established. I love the point about Ralph Waldo Emerson saying that if the poor are educated too much, they'll come for our (ruling class) throats. One of the framers of the Constitution, James Madison, said virtually the same thing at the Constitutional Convention when he argued for the protection of the minority of the opulent against the majority (of the peasants). But, unlike Freire, they don't really state unequivocally that the solution, as I think every educator knows from all the critique Gardner mentioned, is the pedagogy of the oppressed. We must educate the poor, not oppress them. But the ruling class considers this a threat to their positions of power so they call it radical and revolutionary. It's still valid, probably more relevant than ever, and people are still being oppressed as much as ever. We just need educators with the balls to challenge the oppressors and implement proper education.

I think here we need a little background on THE MAN. When you talk about education, you might think Dewey or even Chomsky is the main man, but I have no doubt they'd both defer to Freire. In fact Chomsky talks of attending a Deweyan school when he was young that had the very Freirean dialogical, formative - not summative assessment style. He says he skipped a grade but had no idea he was a good student cuz the school was not obsessively comparing him with other students. Bruno mentions the PISA standardized tests that are probably the best example of this educational evil that is LITERALLY (and I don't use that word in its modern watered down form) killing 14 and 15 year old students and the careers of teachers the world over because we MUST have these evaluations. Why? Higher evaluations = more money. It's as simple as that. It's nothing like this:

Trust me! GOOD teachers have been teaching to the tests and prioritizing the comparative, competitive curriculum at the expense of real education because they could lose their jobs if they don't. Students have been climbing to school rooftops, holding hands, and jumping to their deaths because of failing their families, schools, and countries through mediocre PISA scores. We all know the horrors of the industrial education methods, every Ed. degree course including even Harvard Graduate School of Education, teaches of their evils, we are consistently taught that each student's personal progression is what is most important, and then the prof says, "This will be on Tuesday's test which is worth 30% of your final grade. Those who fail will stand a good chance of having to repeat the class. Check the rubric in the group chat for what will be covered on the test." Victor Weisskopf's "It doesn't matter what we will cover, it matters what YOU will DIScover," is just a wonderfully pithy quote, but it happens only in educational La La Land, am I right? Well not entirely. It happened in Brazil in the early 1960's because one man had the cajones to do what so many teachers are scared to do. He got put in jail, kicked out of his country, and effectively cancelled from a lot of educational cultures because of it, but boy did he get results!

That man was this man, Paulo Freire. 

Don't recognize him, do you? He took his native Brazil from having a literate population that, as near as makes little to no difference, excluded the poor (and oppressed) to almost total literacy by teaching peasants to read. He did this by getting to know his students intimately, teaching them words that were particularly relevant to their daily lives, (generative vocabulary) studying syllables and forming new words with them, analyzing pictures of everyday scenes and discussing them, and prioritizing (almost weaponizing) dialogic, interactive, highly political, and emotionally bonding conversation. He was teaching illiterate adults who were highly affected by their political surroundings but, because of their illiteracy, were not allowed to vote. So, if we allow the students' trust in political power, or at least some form of increased personal agency being attached to the Brazilian vote, these were highly motivated students and statistics illustrated their success. It is said that many were taught to read (Portuguese) in as little as 30 hours! 

Things were going swimmingly and by 1963 Paulo Freire was appointed to director of the Brazilian National Literacy Program due to his phenomenal successes in regional programs in his area. The government wanted all of Brazil to be literate I guess. THAT government needed to go it was determined, perhaps BECAUSE of that, by the heads of the military coup (incidentally they were backed by the US in case you believe their war on education was strictly domestic) who overthrew the Brazilian government in 1964. They blatantly declared Freire's empowering education a form of subversive, revolutionary, and radical action and imprisoned him for 70 days after which he was exiled for 15 years. Well, if you watch the video, at least he wasn't murdered like the Jesuit teachers and their daughters and housekeepers in El Salvador. So he had THAT goin' for him...

Freire developed his educational and consciousness raising philosophies while in exile in Bolivia, Switzerland and primarily Chile. He even taught at Harvard for a while in '69/'70. It was during his exile from Brazil that he wrote the sadly inaccurately titled Pedagogy of the Oppressed. It should have been called the Andragogy of the Oppressed since he wasn't teaching little kids, but never mind.

When I first learned about Freire, read his book and learned his educational philosophies I immediately found in him more than just agreement but, although I will never suffer like he did for education, a kind of brother... a FRERE if you will. That means "brother" in French. 

Before I ever heard of him I formulated my own opinions and philosophies on the marginalization/oppression of the poor in almost every country and the duty of those of us who have experienced this injustice, and are in positions to educate young minds and old about it, to do so. I always preferred active, participatory learning to the passive vessel "banking" model Freire criticized in so much of our "traditional" education. Teamwork, problem-solving, and, indeed, group projects were always integral parts of my curricula. Though I experienced failure with them online during the Covid 19 epidemic. Becoming critically conscious, thinking deeply about it (praxis), and dialoging about it were strongly encouraged in my classroom. 

I was much like Bruno who hadn't heard of Freire but who found that he had been exposed indirectly to a lot of his ideas and educational philosophy. Learning about Freire for me was like learning that word quantophrenia from the video. "WHERE have you been all my life?" I immediately asked and thought of all the times I could have used that knowledge.

I suppose the reason I wanted to write my thesis on Freire, and maybe even one of the reasons why I am writing this today, is so that I can give one or two other people that overwhelming feeling of support. Freire and many of the other educational giants who I read about in my master's studies, gave me a kind of attaboy from the grave and made me more confident that I wasn't the only one clinging to the hopeless hope of proper education in this world.

A hope I have almost given up on. I'm still volunteering a couple hours a week educating for free but I think my final job on this earth is destined to be in security. A great waste of a good teacher to be sure, but at least I'm not as likely to be assassinated by American anti-intellectual militants working as an industrial security guard in Sarnia.

So I got that goin' for me. Which is nice...

Old Too Soon, Smart Too Late

 I guess it's true what they say: You learn something new every day. This morning I received a call from a local medical study that I had signed up for. They're studying diabetics and I figured any way I can help... So they say to me, "Are you taking any meds for your diabetes?" I say, "Insulin and some other pills..." Immediately I get removed from the study. She says, "We're not studying diabetics who use insulin." Suddenly my mind goes back to a time in Calgary when I tried to give blood. I called in advance and asked if diabetics could give blood and they said it would be fine. As I got to the clinic my phone rang and the person on the line asked me, "Are you taking insulin?" I thought that the majority of us diabetics ARE taking insulin so rather than assume we're just recreational diabetics, or beginners, the assumption should be that we've committed to this disease and are taking advantage of Banting and Best's fine work. But it seemed the opposite. Here again it seemed like they were assuming they'd get volunteers who have lazy pancreii, not, like me, pancreases that have attained superfluous organ statii/statuses. So I look it up. Evidently only 30-35% of us take insulin. ALL type 1 diabetics do, but they're only about 5-10% of diabetics. The majority are, like me, type 2ers. However, UNlike me, many rely on lifestyle changes or oral medication and only eventually (I guess when they get old) transition to insulin usage. 

I visited my new diabetes doc just a couple days ago. All my Doukhobor friends who read this would get a charge outta his name - Dr. Pandu Shetty. He's quite a character actually. 77 years old and looks like he could still pull the plough. He asked me how long I've had diabetes and I couldn't even give him a guess. I only found out by accident really and the first time I measured my blood sugar (after sum gyup sal with the Fam about 5 years ago in Korea) it was off the charts! I called up a hospital and asked if I could see a doc about it and they said they only admit patients with private medical insurance, predominantly foreign professionals and US military. The person I had reached asked if I knew my blood sugar level and I said, "Yeah, it's 545." She said, "Come in immediately!" The doctor I ended up seeing started me on insulin and some other drugs immediately so I didn't get to experience the "transition" to insulin that type 2ers are supposed to. 

I often think about situations I was in before I found out I had diabetes like having to take a leak so bad I went in Seoul traffic or a Beijing subway garbage can; any of the times a friend told me something I had done (while drinking) the night before of which I had no recollection;  or even times when I was thirstier than an Irish roofer in Kuwait. I have never passed out or had a seizure - to my knowledge, but I bet the diabetes "augmented" my life long before I knew I had it. I wonder how many stupid life choices, or how much of my erratic behaviour could be partially or even fully blamed on it. How many Facebook friends have unfriended me while I was so high on sugar I didn't know what I was typing? How many have I unfriended under those conditions? I have to admit, I wasn't eating jujubes or swigging fruit juice to get my sugar up. In almost every case it was booze that caused me to sugar-ramble in talk or text so I can't claim absolute innocence, but I wonder what the levels are here. I mean at what point do I start blacking out. Maybe I oughta do my own diabetic study and carefully keep track of what sugar levels are when diabetics start saying stupid stuff and doing things they'll be embarrassed the next day about. I will allow patients who ARE taking insulin, I won't snub them. 

So I guess we can all agree here to one thing: anything stupid/insulting/awkward/nasty I have said or done to any of you, that was the diabetes talking/typing/acting. Okay?

Okay, now that THAT'S settled, back to this study. While punishing the study-conductors by eating a big bowl of sugary Honey-nut Cheerios I checked online and found that (forget the 545 - that was the Korean scale. It's about 30 on the scale I'm using now) typical target range for diabetics is between 4 and 7. I liken that to a dentist telling you to brush 3 times a day. They know twice is enough but they ask for 3 hoping you will end up on 2. I try to keep my blood sugar between 7 and 10. Like brushing twice a day, it's enough. I find that I can still have most of the foods (and drinks) I like best that way. I have to control diet and exercise somewhat, but I manage to do it. ***Don't tell Dr. Shetty on me.

If only we knew earlier in life the things we find out later! Who knows how much better my life could have been if I'd known about my diabetes and controlled my blood sugar levels better? I am finding the same about other things of which my younger self was ignorant as well. For instance, politics. I remember wanting to be a lawyer and actually giving thought to participating in Canadian government in some form. It's a good thing I didn't get the chance! I worked closely with an MP from the Rainy River riding while living in Ignace as a high school student. He saw in me the intelligence and work ethic needed for political success... for a short time. Then he DIDN'T see in me an all too important aspect of politics, or, I hope, several. I didn't have the sleazy, self-important, opportunistic, ambition or the ethic-sapping lust for money and power so integral in the field. Again, not knowing then what I know now, it was probably the same deficiencies that sabotaged any law career I could have had. 

Story 15 of The Rose Garden includes a "vezier" which is a high-ranking political advisor, who took up with a circle of dervishes (which are members of a branch of Islam who take vows of poverty and austerity seeking divine truth through ascetic practices. Yes they sometimes whirl too.) after he was removed from his political post. The king asked the vezier to resume his post when he was back in political favour but the vezier had become so much like the dervishes he refused saying, "Retirement is better than occupation." The king pleaded saying, "We are in need of a man with sufficient intelligence to carry on the administration of government." His reply was classic! "It is a sign of sufficient intelligence not to engage in such matters." 

A recurring theme in the stories of Saadi is the fickle and paranoid nature of the ruling class that is caused by riches and power, and how often they can turn on those loyal to them. The vezier preferred the freedom that allowed the dervishes to be honest and just: the freedom that comes from poverty and powerlessness. 

Now I'm not a politician in the court of Stalin or Trump, but lately I have abandoned my profession in all but its voluntary form for (in large part) precisely the same reason. I have spent too much time with the dervishes to trust education administrators, or political administrators. It's all just a ruse. We've all seen this right?:

If there existed a politician in any country that legitimately offered this as his/her platform and actually DID something about it, that person would win every election in his/her assassination-shortened lifetime. Not just rent but the cost of living. This is the gist of what the majority of the world wants and it is the jobs of politicians of the world to deflect from this and pretend to busy themselves debating minor issues while delivering what their bosses (the rich) tell them to deliver: high rent and low wages. 

I love Henry David Thoreau's take on government! He says "The government that governs best governs least" is not far enough. How about "The government that governs best governs not at all?" But, says HDT, the people must have some complicated machinery or other, and hear its DIN to satisfy the idea of government they have been given. Yet the government of itself never furthered any enterprise but by the alacrity with which it got out of its way.

Maybe he's right. I used to think we WERE ready to govern ourselves without the sounding brass and tinkling cymbals government provides. But then I see stories like this: Marilyn Gladu says she "crossed the floor" and joined the Liberal party to get more funding for the local riding here in Sarnia. I would think that no matter what party you support, this might be something that locals liked. It means more money for our area. More road construction, maybe a mall, some more jobs, ploughing service to your neighbourhood in winter, who knows? But it's pretty easy to take a walk around Sarnia and see a dozen "Marilyn Resign" signs on people's lawns. Indeed the head of the family with which I live commented just recently that she is a traitor and has to go. 

I'm not going to sit here and type that Marilyn Gladu was a GOOD politician right after basically saying none of them can be trusted. Look at that picture of her and PM Carney and tell me if YOU think butter would melt in either of those mouths. You can bet there were ulterior motives. But the two party system, which is designed specifically to perpetuate the tribalistic, we're-right-they're-wrong, black-or-white thinking that makes multi-faceted issues like cost of living and wages sound so complicated is just one of many political self-preservation efforts that intelligent voters should be able to see through. But it appears that either we can't, or we're not that intelligent. Until one or both of those things changes, on the con will stumble and bumble until ONE person has ALL the fucking money and power and the rest of us have nothing. 

Watch this: 

Can you tell me wtf the "genius" reason was for putting the hamburger in the glove? I can tell you what it was. So you'd watch the video. That's it. The more people that watch, the more money this video makes. Hell I'M even helping them by posting it here! This is not genius and it certainly doesn't "deliver exactly what it promises!" It's a trick to get you to watch the video. 

This is politics. Thousands of phonies promising something, looking like they might be trying to deliver it, but really all they want is for you to watch them with some hope in your heart that they're legitimate. Maybe even hope enough to vote for one of them.

Tell me something... After watching that video did you try to justify the hand-shaped burger? Did you say or think something like, "Well, I COULD make this on Halloween," or something like that? If you did, you might watch another video like this. Maybe not right away, but in 4 years you'll be ready to give one another chance. 

I heard one of my favourite comedians Mark Normand say that if politics were handled like the World Cup of soccer maybe we could all get along. He also said that maybe we could get the whole world to stop calling it "football" and call it soccer instead. See how soon the cracks form in political logic? You could instantly form the Grand Old Football party and the Progressive Soccer party and have them disagree on exactly everything so that soccer fans believe they are necessary. Then he went so far as to compliment the Japanese on cleaning the stands after games and say that they are definitely the master race! Yeesh! Mark Normand had better stay out of politics or he'll form a fascist party or a "reich" if you will that would be so successful it almost takes over the world. He'd call it the Japanese Soccer Party It's only downfall would be that Normand got too paranoid about protecting his riches and power as the J.S.P. grew. Members of the GOF would infiltrate his party headquarters and assassinate him. It would be easy after he culled several of his most trusted officers and left the JSP without effective sub-leadership. The new world power, the Grand Old Football party would promise international rules that are equitable to all countries that participated in the allied resistance against the JSP. This would alienate Canada and the US who secretly still call football soccer and they would eventually rise to rival the GOF party. This North American Soccer party would rise so fast and become so strong that they would almost take over the world. But its leader Megan Rapinoe would get paranoid due to all her power and money and she'd need to be assassinated. And so on and so forth...

We should force a dervish to run the world. What do you reckon... 

... should we give it a whirl?

My Mission is Fishin'

 So what can a guy do when he's broke and bored here in Ontariariario? Well, it rained here the other day and I found a few worms trying to escape their flooding holes. I had 4 of them. I figured that would be enough for a fish or two. I knew a place where a couple of kids were fishing and using just bare can hooks and worms with floats they were pulling in catfish like nothing. I'm not a cat fisher and they rank way down my list of most delish fish, but it's been a while since I had the joy of not getting skunked at the fishing hole. Thanks to the Peet/Spiwaks I had the chance to get tight line rush just two summers ago. But that's too long between fish dog gone it! So me and my worms went to Twin Lakes here to try our luck.

Twin Lakes is where one of my all time heroes Dick Proeneke built his cabin and lived off the land in Alaska. So I imagined myself doing the same and in the back of my brain (I hope) I was even narrating my trip like old Dick might have done. "The mosquitos were extra affectionate today. But I was working too hard hiking with my full pack to Twin Lakes to notice. I set out at first light so's I could fish for my supper. It was gonna be a full day and I'd packed myself a lunch of peanuts n' fish jerky." (really it was peanuts and pepperoni) Also it was only a couple of hours. I heard it was supposed to rain around 3 o'clock so I got there about 2:30 to get the feeding frenzy just before the rain. I've found in my fishing experience that before or after (sometime during too) rain is often lucky for fishing.

I had bought a few cheapo lures at the Dollar Store and I gave them a try at first. They weren't attracting the fish at all. Some weren't even spinning the way they should have. I guess you get what you pay for sometimes. But I really hadn't had any luck with the spinners yet this year. A couple bites and followers was all I got last visit to Twin Lakes. Yes, I got skunked on my first attempt. So I wasn't interested in another day of cast and retrieve practice. It wasn't long before I switched to float, can hook and worm bait. And it wasn't long before I caught this beauty!

It just might have been 6 inches but that's not a bad size for a bluegill. Just look at those colours! All the bluegills I was catching were like that! But that wasn't all I caught.

I also caught me a bass! And it was the best fight of the day even though those bluegills are scrappy fish! If it were 9 days later I could have kept this fish, but it's not bass season yet here so, like all my fish on the day, I chucked it back. I told it to get bigger so I could catch it again during bass season.

I also caught

I think this is a rock bass but it has a small bluegill mouth. It's not as colourful as a bluegill so I thought it might be a crappie. Anyway, it was pretty small. Fun fight though. A couple of nice jumps even! If you know for sure what this is, please comment.

Then I got this one:

I KNOW what this is! It's a perch. And at the very TOP of my most delish fish is the Walleye, which is a perch. Perch are also delicious but usually so small they're not worth the effort filleting. This guy was puny! Miniscule! But where there are perch there are sometimes walleye so that'll keep me coming back to fish this lake. 

You can see how tiny this perch was by the size of the swivel in comparison. Just a little nug. 

Here's another of the bluegills 

Look at the colours! 

Anyhoo, I got nine fish and not one of them was a catfish. I didn't even get to the lake where I saw those kids pulling catfish out left and right. By the time the rain started I was getting fish almost every cast and hits every single cast! It was so much fun I wanted to stay. My spot was well covered with trees so the rain didn't bother me a bit and there were absolutely no mosquitos. I had bug dope even if there had been. 

But, at about 5 I ran outta worms and packed 'er in. I didn't realize how hard the rain was coming down until I left the fishing hole and got out into the open. I had to wait for the 20 bus about 20 minutes and I got pretty wet while doing so. Did I care? Not even a bit!

The other night I had one of my 4:30 AM wake-ups so I wrote a country song. Well? What do YOU do when you can't sleep? lol "What the hell's a fella to do when it does no good to daydream, hope, or wish? If you got a pole and a honey hole it makes a life worth livin' if you fish. I'm too old to love, too young to die, but I ain't too busy to tie a fly and go fishin'. I used to be a helluva guy, now I'm just an ornery coot with a vision. Life is hard and times are tough, I'd call the Police but they're jammin' my transmission. (HEY don't stand so close to me!) I don't have much hope for the Lord and the Pope so now my mission is fishin'."

As I always say, I write my best stuff at 4 in the morning. It's a great time to go fishin' too! I think I'll fish as much as I can until I get working more here.

On THAT note, I did a full day of work today but hours are coming seldom. Even the volunteer work has yet to start. I finally got my Ontario security guard license (to go with the dozen other licenses and/or qualifications I've gotten since landing here in the province of my birth so I don't think it'll be long till I am a guard again). In fact I got news today that I've reached the second cut of hopefuls for a position as an Ontario prison/jail guard. This week sometime I'll be doing yet another test for that. Then it'll be a month before they determine whether I pass or not. Who knows how many more stages there'll be or how long it'll take to actually get work? That's how I constantly feel here. But in the mean time... my mission is fishin'!

Trapped By Trumpery

 Though they are few, there are some who truly know me and I would expect that they are aware of what I am about to try to explain. But like the beginning of the Tao Tae Ching explains, or doesn't explain, if it is the true Tao, it cannot be explained. This may sound like the perfect way to keep your mysticism mystical, and by golly it IS, but I think it might also be what makes this world so durned interesting. At least one of the things...

As last post is witness, I am a bit of a pantheist in nature. Ar ar, get it? In nature? Wild roses are currently in bloom stinking up the trails around here in quite a lovely way that puts one, (or at least me - this particular blog-blathering one) in mind of a collection of poetry and wisdom called Golistan/Gulistan. I've seen both spellings used. It means the rose place and the book was written in Persia (modern day Iran) by a dude named Saadi who had just returned from travel (the most intense educational experience) around Turkey, India, Syria, Egypt, Iraq, and other areas due to the Mongolian invasions of Iran (Persia) in the early and mid 1200's. 

One of the stories is particularly relevant to me at this time and you will probably understand why, as I convey its message or at least its details. A wise man was asked which tree was the best in nature or the most high of God. The answer was that none are called "azad," which means free, but the cypruss tree which bears no fruit. Most trees have periods in which they are blooming and then bear fruit and seasons in which they are dry and withered while the cupruss is always flourishing. "How is this wise?" you may inquire. "Is it better to not bear fruit?" you might also ask. You may even be a wise guy and say, "Hey man, the bald cypruss tree has fruit!" The wise man, perhaps having visited lands in which they know that nothing that can be revealed is the true Tao, said, "Set your mind not on that which is transitory for the Dijlah (Tigris River) will flow through Baghdad long after the caliphs are extinct."

Okay... so what does THAT mean? Well caliphs were political and spiritual leaders during the Arab, Turkish, and Persian empires... which were transitional. Here is a cypruss tree in Iran:

You might even recognize it. It's the Cypruss of Abarkuh. It's believed to be around 4000 years old. 

I believe Sting, a former teacher of literature, might have been familiar with Saadi's Rose Garden. He wrote, 

Teachers told us the Romans built this place
They built a wall and a temple
And an edge of the empire garrison town
They lived and they died
They prayed to their gods
But the stone gods did not make a sound
And their empire crumbled till all that was left
Were the stones the workmen found

All this time
The river flowed

Such a great song! You may also remember a Bible verse from that same song. 

Blessed are the poor
For they shall inherit the earth
Better to be poor
Than be a fat man in the eye of a needle
As these words were spoken, I swear
I hear the old man laughing
What good is a used up world
And how could it be worth having?

All this time
The river flowed
Endlessly like a silent tear

Great song! Great song! But let's swing around to Henry David Thoreau here so I can better approach my point. I remember long ago reading HDT and loving his take on the blessed are the poor thing being something like wisdom and impartial observation of human life requires voluntary poverty, but I was confused when he wrote about philanthropy being a greatly overrated virtue and when he stated that it is human selfishness that makes it so. There is a part in Walden where Thoreau echoes the wit of some of the stories of Saadi and talks about a man approaching his house with the conscious design of doing him good. He writes that under those circumstances he would run for his life as if from the African simoom, a dry, parching wind that fills the mouth, nose, ears, and eyes with dust until you have suffocated.

Indeed, in the very story of the wise man and the cypruss tree the wise man DOES say that if you are a date tree you should give generously of your fruit. The Sting lyric about the fat man and the eye of a needle is also in reference to the Bible when it is said that it is easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the kingdom of Heaven. Now there are those who will say that the Eye of the Needle referred to is a hole in the Wailing Wall through which possibly a small camel might squeeze, but that seems doubtful to me. And, oh yeah, btw Sting, a guy doesn't have to be rich to be fat. 

So let's put this into modern-day super- hyperbolic perspective: Elon Musk is now a trillionaire. I have no perspective on what even a billionaire means, but he's a trillionaire. That's a stack of 100-dollar bills 700 miles high for fuck's sake! Even 700 miles is difficult for me to wrap my head around, but wafer-thin $100 bills piled THAT high? Inconceivable! Let's try again. Its weight would be over 22 million pounds. That's like 5000 of the largest blue whales on one scale. Nope. Still can't imagine that. Okay, if you were to count continuously for 31,546 years with no sleeping or eating, once a second, then I still can't understand it. Spend a million bucks a day, which wouldn't be nearly as easy as it sounds, and it would STILL take you 2,740 years! So you would have had to start before Christ, before dollars even existed, at a pre-inflation period in which a million bucks might actually be impossible to spend in a day because literally NOTHING cost that much. Okay maybe not, but, next! One million seconds ago was two weeks ago. One billion seconds ago was 1994. One trillion seconds ago was 32,000 years ago. Sigh, next! Elon Musk has more wealth than the bottom 46% of people on the planet. More dough than 3.8 billion people. 

Okay. That I understand. And I understand that it is a fucked up world in which one person could ever have that much of the world's wealth. On this we can agree, right? I'm not saying he doesn't need it, I'm saying he shouldn't have that much money and that there shouldn't be any way for any one person to have acquired that much. Can we agree on that? No. That is the best illustration of my point. Not just Musk, who has easily perceivable brain damage, but there are other people who would say that it's okay for one person to have half the world's wealth. No, he doesn't have half the world's wealth yet but he will by - what? - next Wednesday? Some people think this is okay and that's what Sting, Saadi, HDT, and I believe to be a fundamental mental infirmity that remains largely undiagnosed and untreated on the planet. I think it's approaching epidemic proportions and that Musk wouldn't have attained his trillion if it weren't. 

I believe that there is a simple mental health test of basic humanity and if you can say that there is nothing wrong with 

why, you have failed the basic test for signs of humanity. 

Free and free. They mean different things. Or do they? Free in the sense of costing no money or worth no money, and free in the sense of having the ability to do what you want. Are they more indelibly linked than we think? I have heard gambling addicts say that there was a feeling of freedom attached to losing everything. Norm Macdonald called it "cleansing" when he lost all of his money. Twice.

And if you think there's nothing to that, then why does it seem so hard for the super rich like Elon Musk to part with riches that are increasingly of no use to them? At what point do words like "earn" or "need" no longer apply? I'm going to tell you, although I may not be able to fully convey to you, that nobody but the voluntarily poor can objectively answer that question and this is why the world must conduct its various societies in accordance with their teachings. Think of all the people you consider wise. Many would say that prophets are the best sources of wisdom. Would you sooner heed the word of Elijah, a prophet who ate locusts and wild honey, or one of those Christian ministers who don't know the difference between prophet and profit? WHY?

Wealth simply has a way of skewing objectivity and honesty and by extension it affects just about every moral or ethical decision one needs to make in life. So now comes the easily-written-off-as-sour-grapes part. For most of us, even Elon Musk who lost hundreds of billions of dollars when he bought Twitter, and his Tesla stock plummeted shortly before he became a senior advisor to president Donald Trump, good times and bad times are transitional like the fruit-bearing and withering of most trees. Our so-called civilized society shows a distinct pattern during those times and it is succinctly described by Eric Clapton. 

Because nobody knows you
When you're down and out
In your pocket, not one penny
And as for friends, you don't have any

When you get back on your feet again
Everybody wants to be your long-lost friend
I said it's mighty strange, without any doubt
Nobody knows you when you're down and out

Tell me you can't relate. Thoreau describes what Norm Macdonald earlier called a "clarity" as a "dead set." He wrote that man is at a dead set when he has squirmed through a gateway or knot hole (like The Eye of The Needle?) through which his sledge load of trumpery cannot follow him. He believed that we are butterflies entangled in spiders' webs by our cumbersome belongings. The more trumpery you have, the further detached from reality and honesty you become, and your treatment by other people becomes. Which very obviously begs the question, "Why are all of our leaders rich?"

Maybe the Way (Tao/Dao) of life is to become like the cypruss tree and just abide. Don't be entrapped by the ups and downs of acquisitive society. While I can't claim to have followed this philosophy from birth, nobody could accuse me of having an ambitious bone in my body except possibly my coccyx (tailbone) which is agreed by medical professionals to be the least used of all 206. Thoreau, a man who shares my Woo Wei (effortless action) mentality, reckoned (and provided exhaustive calculations) we need only work 6 weeks of every year to acquire all of what we need. I am ALL ABOUT that! Maybe I'd put in an extra week or two for some of the creature comforts. Working two months out of twelve seems a helluva lot more civilized to me than the ass-busting that has become accepted as a natural way of life in both of our countries. And you know what? I can almost guarantee an exponentially less stressful existence as part of that package. I hate to seem shallow but just think of the pale, plastic surgery-resistant Nosferatu look you might have if you were consumed with not only making more money with your trillion, but ensuring and protecting it from your competitors for it - i.e.: everybody. Now take a look at Elon Musk.

Now as far as avoiding charity or philanthropy, I think it's the same as avoiding the cyclical, fruit-bearing/withering life cycle that benefactors participate and will try to pull you into as payment for their acts of "kindness." Thoreau's theory was if you want to be kind to me, don't try to change me. He expressed it brilliantly thus: "There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil, to one who is striking at the root, and it may be that he who bestows the largest amount of time and money on the needy is doing the most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he tries in vain to relieve." I certainly don't need to draw your attention to the root of evil and what he might mean it is. 

I want you to watch this video of modern-day philanthropy. Pay close attention to the benefactor Just Knate trying to avoid (unsuccessfully) the appearance of superiority or even suggestions of change as repayment for his "free" gift. Also note the reluctance of the homeless dude (or I guess the modern term is "unhoused") and his difficulty in trying to express his freedom (cyprussy azad) without seeming ungrateful. 

Please don't get me wrong. I don't want to be homeless and I'm not knocking Just Knate. I think he's doing some great work. And by all means, if you want to give me money, clothes, food, or take me out to Dave and Buster's for the day, I'm not too proud. But I really DO relate to the feeling those who have experienced true poverty have of being trapped by trumpery. I sometimes wish I had more stuff, but, as I have stated before time and time again here in this blog, it is my life's goal to learn to be content with what I have and even derive joy from my suffering. I find in the Taoist thinking, the Persian poetry and stories, the wisdom of HDT, and the lessons of Nature the ability to try a little harder to accomplish my mission. 

Wouldn't you know it, one of the most famous nuggets of wisdom in the Rose Garden is the one about not complaining about having no shoes. Some folks don't have feet. I walk 6000 steps almost every day and bitch about my knee and my feet. Without good shoes I can't imagine it let alone without feet. I have much to learn. Maybe I need more travel...

Sarnia Spring

 Okay, now for some GOOD stuff about Canada:

I've been walking a lot since getting here to Sarnia. The spring is always a good time to walk. It's still cool but you can see flowers and wildlife. Even now that May is over it's still spring around here. We've had some warm days and I have a pretty good sunburn from a long day of fishing last weekend but the nights are cool. I really missed that about Canada! So I'm just gonna dump some photos here from my walks.

I dunno how to get photos in the blank spaces though.

It's a shame really to waste all this space.

Nice eh?