The term All Politics is local goes back quite a while, and has served a lot of pundits and quip-artists well.
Now, as I was sitting on the couch and engaging in one of my unconscious internal debates I came to toy with the idea that All religion is local too. Now, before I explain I should spell out what I mean by local. “Place” can be understood not just as a geographic position, but rather the space that we occupy at any given time; subject to all of our interactions and identities. Our “location” then is environment created by our place and the surrounding community. For example, a black person and white person living in the same building in Harlem could be said to live in the same spot, but both are living in entirely different places, and therefore their locality is different.
Ok, needlessly hermeneutic digression aside, lets talk about religion. As I was engaged in my running internal monologue I got to thinking about the various iterations of Islam, and the various misrepresentations of it. A Pashtun man will practice Islam entirely differently than Lebanese man, or a Morrocan one for example. Wahhabism is heavily influenced by the Arab tribalism of the people that originally adopted Islam, just as Persian cultural has influenced the practice of Islam in Iran. (more…)
Here’s a seemingly innocuous question: what makes a creature intelligent? I ask as I read this AP story, which describes Chimpanzees fashioning primitive spears and possibly hunting with them.
Researchers report witnessing a chimpanzee skewering a tree creature for supper with a spear-like tool, a rare observation of a long-studied primate in the wild.
“It’s not uncommon to have chimps use tools. But to use them in the context of hunting” is nearly unheard of, said Jill Pruetz, an anthropology professor from Iowa State University who led the research team.
If these little guys discover fire, we’re boned.
I’ve been following Venezuela for a few years now, with great interest… not because I believe in socialism (although I do, to a degree), but because I know that it couldn’t possibly work there. Now, it would appear that I am being vindicated.
Faced with an accelerating inflation rate and shortages of basic foods like beef, chicken and milk, President Hugo Chávez has threatened to jail grocery store owners and nationalize their businesses if they violate the country’s expanding price controls.
Food producers and economists say the measures announced late Thursday night, which include removing three zeroes from the denomination of Venezuela’s currency, are likely to backfire and generate even more acute shortages and higher prices for consumers. Inflation climbed to an annual rate of 18.4 percent a year in January, the highest in Latin America and far above the official target of 10 to 12 percent.
Socialism is a system of wealth redistribution; and in principle there is nothing wrong with redistributing wealth, as long as the mechanism for doing so is arrived at democratically. That being said, there are several things that socialism does not do, or at the very least does not to well… and creating wealth is one of them. Socialism does not generate economic activity, and more critically (as Venezuela proves), socialism is destabilized when wealth is added. (more…)
We all care about the environment, to varying degrees. But at what point does are “caring” become insufficient? Right about here I’d say. Andrew Potter calls this out and I can’t say I disagree with him.
I have no objection to spirituality or people trying to rediscover something, whether it be their roots, their place the in the world, cotton briefs… whatever. But at a certain point our “caring” stops being about doing the right thing and becomes more of an exercise of being a part of the right thing; and when that “caring” becomes culturalized its meaning becomes totally lost… Potter calls this Authenticity (or a lack thereof.) He’s right. People don’t wear a Che t-shirt because they believe in the values of socialism (and if they do they’d be wise to look closer at his history), they do it because they want to be a part of a social “trend” that started with a message and ended with fridge-magnet.
If someone out there decides to save the environment by going with a “natural” flooring alternative more power to them. But they should ask themselves why they’re really doing it… because if they care more about their own message/growth/exploration/etc. than the actual impact of their actions, then they risk falling into this authenticity trap; and undermining whatever message it was that initially appealed to them.
Before I sat down to write this post, I spent about fifteen minutes looking for a short story I read at least six years ago from Robert Heinlein. I can’t remember the name, the plot, or any major details from this story except for one major theme. The story is set in a world where the government has decided that technology has run it’s course, and it would be safer to revert to a more religious/spiritual way of life. If anyone can remember the name of this story, please let me know; I know I have a copy somewhere, but between the two dozen novels, ten novellas and fifteen anthologies there’s just too much for me to scan in my diminished mental state right now.
Anyways, in the course of my ‘research’ I came across an introduction the man wrote, which speaks of a Pandora’s Box. Now we all have at least a vague appreciation of what Pandora’s Box is, but the most salient point is often forgotten. After Pandora opened said box (or jar if you want to get all literal on me) evil and torment flew out, to forever haunt the world. But the last thing that remained in pandora’s box was hope. (more…)
You know, there is so much news out there that it is often hard to know where exactly to start. I can look at the paper, talk to my friends, and browse my usual online ’sources,’ and find fifteen to twenty stories that pique my interest in politics. There’s the ongoing almost-war in Iraq, the Manifest-Persia thing across the Middle East, Newsday’s latest effort in scuttling the conventional press, the Gomery Inquiry, the latest mud-slinging in Parliament, the encroaching decrepitude of Toronto, etc. The list goes on. And of course for every different story there are at least two different takes.
None of this is new of course (except perhaps for the accessibility of sources.) What is new is our reliance on these sources (more…)
I came across this post over at the Half an Hour blog, and being the sort of delayed adolescence student type it immediately appealed to me. This last statement in particular got my attention, Walls - like most other things - are ethically neutral. Neither good nor bad.
Stephen writes that:
It’s what we do with them that matters, and what other people do with them to us. If the walls increase both our security and our freedom, then (all else being equal) they are good. If they reduce our security and freedom, they are not so good.
As a liberal, that is being someone strongly concerned with liberty, this argument is very compelling. That being said, I can’t bring myself to agree with it. (more…)
I originally wrote this on Jan. 30th. 2005, back when Canada’s Debate was a forum instead of a blog. I’ve been in a nostalgiac mood these last few days and this column never loses its relevance.
Normally I don’t like to follow-up something I’ve written earlier, but today I really want to expand on some of the things I had to say about liberalism and conservatism last week. In fact, I have so much to say that I won’t be able to get it all down tonight. While the discussion was centred around the question of Same-Sex marriage, what it really explored was our shared values as Canadians. In that discussion I made several statements; some bold and some a bit more subdued. I’m sure that some of you would take issue with my definitions of “liberal” and “conservative values, (more…)