To make Comments write directly to Jim at jimt@quixotic.ca
8
Feb
2017
Daily, the news suggests that human civilization spirals toward chaos. On some parts of the planet, humans wage war with other humans. In other parts, they war with words, firing accusations and denials at each other, engendering hatred and hostility.
Yet evolution teaches that survival is not to the fittest, or the strongest, but to the most cooperative. Physics, astronomy, sociology, psychology – all reinforce the same message. We do not live in a stand-alone universe. We are not independent, but interdependent.
I’ll repeat that word, in case you slid over it – INTERdependent.
Categories: Soft Edges
Tags:
5
A week ago Friday, U.S. President Donald Trump issued an Executive Order restricting immigration from seven Muslim countries where he doesn’t have business ties. He branded them “evil”.
Two days later, a Canadian with far-right sympathies entered a mosque in Quebec City and shot six men in the back as they knelt in prayer. Eight others were injured.
The timing is too close for pure coincidence. If you’re a white supremacist feeling you should take action against people you dislike, what better justification could you ask for than encouragement from the world’s most powerful person?
Trump called Ottawa to offer his condolences. I think he should be charged as an accessory to murder.
Categories: Sharp Edges
Tags: Trump, mosque, killing, Serenity prayer
1
I was asked recently to do a talk about books that had influenced me as a child. Robinson Crusoe, for example. And its imitator, The Swiss Family Robinson. Treasure Island. Ernest Thompson Seton’s books about wood lore. Enid Blyton’s Railway Children.
Perhaps most influential, the Arthur Ransome series, about English kids turned loose for summer holidays in the Lake District – and in later books, around the world – with no adult supervision! In the first book, Swallows and Amazons, the oldest was a boy of twelve, the youngest seven. Unthinkable today. But in the 1930s, that was apparently quite acceptable parenting.
And I realized that all of these books had a common theme -- making do with what you have. Crusoe couldn’t run to the nearest Canadian Tire store for a package of nails. Seton’s boy heroes didn’t have a Mountain Equipment Co-op handy for bows and arrows.