How You Learn

essaysbysean.blogspot.com 

Have you seen JoJo Rabbit, the current Oscar-nominated movie about the boy in the Hitler Youth? Two men I knew separately here in town were in the Youth, and so was my favorite business writer—luckily he left Germany before the war broke out.

Hello Reader,

Got an idea how you learn?

Prologue 

As faithful readers know: Of course I like being self-indulgent by writing a post about me or my blog, but only after I have filled up a full page of 25 weekly essay titles. Well, today marks another 25.

How You Learn

So, how are you managing your life? Are you becoming ever better, ever learning more about yourself and your business or hobby? Let’s not expect too much. My old telephone answering machine went, “If you know what you are doing, leave a message. If not, join the club.” Every caller, laughing, was already in the club.

Originally, the word “managing” meant “coping.” If today the meaning has shifted, if today we instinctively put the word “business” in front of “management” then it’s because my favorite business writer of all time quit his job during the middle of the Great Depression. There he was, a successful Wall Street analyst, when he asked himself: “Do I want to be the richest man in the cemetery?” In other words, was he living his values? That man was Peter Drucker. 

He went on to make the “practise of management” something that could be learned and taught, and caused universities to start up a faculty of Commerce, (business) because his observations and writings fell between the domains of Economics and Sociology—a new faculty was needed. Drucker’s first book was The End of Economic Man, with a forward by a German friend who wanted to “burn his bridges” against the Nazis. Drucker’s first famous book was The Concept of the Corporation where he interpreted General Motors, with it’s separate divisions, as being unlike historical companies such as, say, Ford. (Apparently Henry Ford didn’t want maximum independence and leadership in his managers, instead seeing them as his helpers) 

I have read everything by Drucker I can get my hands on, including his memoirs. 

(Wherein I found a smoking gun from his compatriot Henry Kissinger documenting that the U.S. government was secretly causing inflation)

We can’t all be a Peter Drucker, but just as he did, each of us can live, look and learn.

If for today’s post I write about styles of learning then it’s not for my ego, but because I have something interesting things to say… and because, according to Drucker, I am learning the way Sir Winston Churchill did—I’ll get back to Churchill.

But first: Right now the local bookstore is carrying On Managing Yourself, as part of a Harvard Business School series of books, each book with ten top articles on a given topic. Unsurprisingly, the first article in the book was by Drucker, called—such a classic title—“Managing Oneself.” Everybody knows that a manager or Chief Executive Officer has to be—to quote a cliche—“a lifelong learner.” Where Drucker surprised me was when he said that many people “don’t know how they learn.”  But they should.

President John F. Kennedy learned by reading. He would have his agents prepare written reports for him: Think of the brilliant writers in Camelot, and of John Kenneth Galbraith writing letters (now published) back from foreign embassies to educate JFK. 

President Harry S Truman learned by hearing: Think of his cronies playing poker in the White House as part of his “kitchen cabinet.” 

Drucker reports about a CEO who “… was in the habit of calling his entire senior staff into his office once a week and then talking at them for two or three hours…he simply needed an audience to hear himself talk. That’s how he learned.” A successful CEO, I might add.

Reading Drucker, years ago, I wondered: Am I a reader or a listener? I only found out when I was middle aged at university. Around that time, my company Vice President told me I was an “oral learner.” One day in class it was my turn, for my small group, to teach us a seminar:  There I was, just talking away about Thomas Paine, when suddenly a lady burst out: “(I just realized) You’re an oral learner! My LD kids talk like you!” (Learning Disability) A useful mirror, since I can’t see myself. 

No wonder I would study in the student bar by "talking" to myself, pretending I was explaining something. I guess I’m like Drucker’s CEO. And of course my speeches for Toastmasters are composed not at a desk but while walking along talking. (silently) As I explained in my essay about Hacking Together a Speech, archived November 2018.

As for essays and speeches, Paul Graham, like me, enjoys doing both. Unlike me, he is a famous web essayist and keynote speaker. Graham believes a grown up’s essay, unlike the ones schoolboys write, does NOT start out with a topic sentence to be proved, but as something flowing along where you don’t know everything yet. You write the essay to find out something new.

I don’t know whether Winston Churchill composed his speeches by just flowing along the way I do. What I do know blows me away: According to Drucker, during his schoolboy days Winston got poor marks, as did others who shared his learning trait: Churchill learned in a way not recognized by the education system—not by reading, and not by listening in class. He learned by writing. And today? The boy who did so poorly in school now has his writing studied by students of composition. (I have yet to write as well as he)

Knowing this about Churchill sheds new light on some of my blog essays. For example, for my essay comparing Trust and Ugly Americans. (Archived September 2019) I didn’t realize how being an Ugly Americans meant not trusting the natives, (Such as Iraqis) nor truly understand the individual I wrote about, (even though I had worked with him) not until after I had left the job and then wrote my essay. How strange.

Epilogue: 

I see I have managed to work this essay around to me and my blog. How sweet.

During the next 25 weeks I’ll listen and read as always. And, if I truly want to learn, then I’ll also speak and write. At long last, after another 25 titles, I may be self indulgent by writing about me and my blog, reporting on what I’ve learned during those precious weeks.

Sean Crawford

Central London

February

2010

Note: 

My last meta-blog essay (following 25 posts) was Summer Blog Reflections, archived August 2019.

Reference:

On Managing Yourself, Harvard Business Review Press, Boston Massachusetts

The About the Contributors list has a line:

Peter Drucker was a professor of social science and management at Claremont Graduate University in California.

To my fellow writers: 

As a self-respecting adult, today I couldn’t bear to use a typical schoolboy “in conclusion” ending.

As for my seminar research about Thomas Paine, I repackaged it and sold it as a feature article to Falstaff's Table: We writers re-use everything we can. 

Paul Graham’s long list of essays includes three about writing essays.

The one I reference is Age of the Essay (link)

 (The other two are The list of n Things; Persuade xor Discover; plus one on Writing, briefly) 

For President Kennedy, his middle initial has a period because it stands for Fitzgerald.

For President Truman, his middle initial has no period because it doesn’t stand for anything.

I have copied a part of Churchill’s composition word for word, like an art student copying a master. Alas, I’m still a journeyman.

To my fellow readers:

I am so pleased to have collected various big volumes by Churchill from various antique stores. Not abridged! 

One of Churchill’s chapters is about his days among daring young men and their flying machines. Mechanical problems were common, forcing you to land at another aerodrome and motor your way back to the one where your young peers are wining and dining after their own harrowing flights. The best aviator of them all, one evening, wasn’t there. But there had been no reports of a crash on land. They waited, candles burned down, and at last they realized the truth… The abridged paperback ends: “He flew forever beyond mortal ken.”

Young Fascist Idealists

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“I know something about Brexit because for a long time, every single day, before checking the exchange rate for pound sterling, I would click on British politics.”

Sean Crawford

Hello Reader,

Got rosy cheeked fascists?

Young fascists in Britain

Old bullies in parliament

Two philosophies

Young fascists in Britain

I was reading a news story out of Britain, that land of frequent rain, good skin and rosy cheeks, when I was struck by the fascism of the young and innocent.

No, I’m not thinking about the leader of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon, who despite losing a referendum on independence a few years ago (Fall of 2014) is talking about reviving the idea, of independence through a referendum, using “Brexit” as an excuse. (Britain exiting the European Union)

Historical note: Of course, once you say referendums don’t count, are NOT to be grave and respected like the Charter, but instead, for Brexit and Scottish independence, can be re-done, can be taken as lightly as a changeable set of by-laws, then: (besides making referendum voters cynical) What’s to keep politicians from having a referendum every few years, until they get their sought-for result, and then having a “one-way valve” where no referendum on reversing independence is allowed? In Canada, certain Quebecers were all set to pull such a trick, while in the US, to make the full nation gravely respected, the pledge of allegiance says the republic is “indivisible.”

End of note.

Rather, I am thinking about something First Minister Sturgeon said, in relation to her ideas. She referred to what Abraham Lincoln said: “Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed.” What Lincoln said next, less often quoted, was, “Whoever molds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes, or pronounces judicial decisions.”

It was to mold public opinion that Greenpeace, over here in Canada, unfurled banners down the parliament buildings. (In December of 2009, according to Google)

As for sentiment, I know what President Roosevelt would say. Because he said it—not to Greenpeace, of course—to people of an earlier generation who went to see him during the Great Depression, advocating for some legislation. “OK, you’ve convinced me. Now go out there and bring pressure on me.” 

I have an idea as to why Roosevelt said that: While big business saw him as a communist, a marxist, a bolshevik, and a “red” devil with horns, and while the president could live with their hateful opinion, as he was enacting his New Deal to help the public… he had no desire for that same public to see him as a fascist, a dictator, a king, doing something that he, and only he, sincerely thought was right. (Here are (link) some cartoons about him)

Historical note: Fascism was invented in Italy by Benito Mussolini, although by WWII—according to the writings of George Orwell in London during the blitz—just like some word out of the double-speak of  Nineteen Eighty-Four, “fascism” merely meant something “bad.”  … Even today, with our higher rates of education and our World Wide Web, most people, even idealistic Greenpeace-types, still cannot define fascism beyond “bad.” (I have trouble myself, although the word is in the dictionary)

End of note. 

In the British Isles, recently, idealistic youth were having school walkouts against climate change. I find that charming, since my long haired generation did the same thing, the year Greenpeace was first invented: We, and Greenpeace, protested the atomic testing over in Alaska. In Surrey Canada, as I recall, about half our student body skipped school one day, and of those, half went down a trail to a culvert, while half went off to formally protest. Back then, as in ancient Rome, we students were less like responsible citizens and more like the classic illiterate mob. For the mob to mobilize, issues must be presented as very simple, and action-to-be-taken must be very simple as well. No complexity, no nuance and absolutely no requirement for reading.

What I find less charming, more fascist, is when the young people seem to think they need to go demonstrate to change the minds of parliament. I think I know what Roosevelt and Lincoln would say: Why aren’t these young fascists trying to change the public sentiment?

If I was in conversation with a few young students, then, knowing how they like Star Wars and Star Trek, I would refer to one of the episodes of the original Star Trek. You may recall the Enterprise transporting a tired old man, secretly Kodos the Executioner, hiding among a traveling troupe of players. A player quotes the bard: “The play’s the thing, wherein I’ll catch, The conscience of the king.” (episode title) I wish here on earth, Sol III, those rosy cheeked children wouldn’t treat parliament as being a bunch of kings; instead, I wish they’d  try to catch the conscience of the public. But that would take time and effort, two things kids have trouble with, as we all know. But still. 

Couldn’t the kids aim at both parliament and the democratic masses? In fact, I think an effort for marketing, for interpreting to the public, would develop, for the students, excellent “project skills.”(Hint to teachers)

As for my Canadians readers, can you recall why those Greenpeace grownups unfurled banners down the roof of parliament; or remember whether they followed up with more education for us? No? Then I guess, public-wise, their project failed.

So Many Fascists are bullies, aren’t they?

Old bullies in Parliament

Or

With MPs like this,  we sure do need citizen involvement

As you may recall, the Brexit agreement-deal with the European Union was last year. It was this year that, among the many groan-worthy things that many Members of Parliament have said, it was an MP from Northern Ireland who announced the prime minister should go back and “renegotiate, hard.” I groan, because, well, call me a typical North American capitalist, but I will surely tell you this: If someone tries to renegotiate with me after a deal is done, then the HARD negotiation will be from my side, “serving the deal-breaker right.” Of course, as you know, the 27 other members of the EU have already said the deal is not to be re-written, not after taking so long in such good faith to accomplish it.

For many weeks the bullies, with hateful intensity, have demanded that Mrs Teresa May step down as prime minister. So this week she has resigned as leader of her party (her PM role to follow). For my part, I am as egotistical as the next man, but for this? No, no, no, I must humbly confess, I myself could not have done any better than Mrs May. (news story with video speech)

The bullying seems so strange, since May is the only one who has kept her eye on the ball all this time. Stranger still is the MPs believing that if someone else were leader, then that someone would somehow be able to speak better than Mrs May, listen better than her and persuade other MPs better. 

Not to mention persuade the EU to re-negotiate, starting from scratch, expecting 27 EU leaders to pretend they hadn’t already thought long and hard about the issue of Brexit.  And furthermore, the MPs believe a new leader would come up with new ideas that no other MP has during the years since the Brexit referendum in the summer of 2016. I disagree with them, myself; I am merely repeating what so many MP’s have said, time and again. The MPs wouldn’t allow Mrs May any middle way, AND they even formally voted (non binding) against allowing a no-deal Brexit, tying her hands even though such a black-and-white resolution matches the referendum ideal that “Brexit means Brexit.”

I groan. But hey, what do I know, living way over here, on this topping day, simply top hat, on the far side of the ocean on the further side of the American continent, eh wot?—Oh I say, there’s a ripping bridge on the closer side of America. I would surely tell those MPs something: “Pip pip! If you believe what you say you believe, then I own a bridge in Brooklyn, which I am willing to sell to you, real cheap.”

Two Philosophies

Philosophy of Brexit failure: I see on the Canadian evening news that Mrs May has “failed,” and that her predecessor David Cameron had “failed” around Brexit too. Both resigned. 

Memory pops in: I am reminded of something business guru Peter Drucker said in regards to the failure of two top executives in a row. Drucker wrote of great commercial clipper ships: If a ship failed (had accidents) twice then, rather than try a third captain, the ship was labeled a “widow maker” and broken up into pieces.

Similarly, Drucker wrote: (link)

Whenever a job defeats two people in a row, who in their earlier assignments had performed well, a company has a widow maker on its hands. When this happens, a responsible executive should not ask the head-hunter for a universal genius. Instead abolish the job. Any job that ordinarily competent people cannot perform is a job that cannot be staffed. Unless changed, it will predictably defeat the third incumbent the way it defeated the first two.

I dare say history will judge Mrs May was in a widow maker job.

Philosophy 101: The above mentioned Star Trek episode, The Conscience of the King, was a perfect example of  the philosophies of Emanuel Kant versus John Stuart Mill. 

In a recent writer’s circle at the Alexandra Writers Centre, local science fiction author Ron Friedman contrasted Kant and Mill. As best I understand it: Kant believed that if something was wrong, such as killing, then it was always wrong, for one should always do right without sacrificing ones values. 

In contrast, Mill believed in practical utilitarianism, that results are what counts, for one should judge by the greatest good for the greatest number. In this camp would be Kodos the Executioner, long wanted for crimes against humanity, after his thousands of executions on Tarsus IV had saved so many lives from famine, so long ago.

Sean Crawford

May,

Calgary,

2019

Footnote on Brexit: I’ve just updated my March essay on Teresa May to explain: Part of the problem, after the referendum was supposed to be a “done deal” is that a desire to act on “remaining” has changed to be no longer a secret vice, but instead, during the agony of a drawn-out Brexit, something to openly declare, although at least until this very month they still wouldn’t openly say that a “confirmatory second referendum” is secretly intended to torpedo Brexit. 

To me all this is is too much like fearfully advancing in a line over “no man’s land” while many of the lads at your shoulders are saying they want to “remain” back in the trenches. Advancing to Brexit would already be very hard, even without the unbelievable folly of "the trumpet giving an uncertain call. " (Corinthians, in the Holy Bible)

Sarah, Surveillance and Racism

Sarah, Surveillance and Racism

“Let justice roll down like waters,

And righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”

Amos 5:24

Hello Reader,

Got genre reflecting life?

Continuing from earlier in August, I want to say that another genre that reflects life is science fiction.

This month I am going through a sci-fi TV series from a more innocent time, a time of almost a decade ago. In The Sarah Connor Chronicles from 2008 we see people using modern cellular telephones while still holding to their innocent beliefs.

Today we know better, maybe. Sadly, many Americans will have seen that movie Snowden by Oliver Stone where the staff of the NSA watch the six o’clock news and see their boss lying to Congress about whether the NSA staff are spying on loyal Americans. This while it could be said of those staff, as the prophet Jeremiah said, “Not one is righteous, no, not one” Not one regular staffer blows a whistle. 

People keep writing Edward Snowden was a “contractor,” with a disturbing implication: That only a “contractor,” would or should reveal the NSA’s dirty tricks against the republic. What rubbish! This is like saying “only” a “reservist” should blow the whistle if the regular army massacres a village or runs a prison torture system. Again, rubbish! Every man and woman in service to their country, whether contractor, regular or reserve, should know in their bones that “only following orders” is not a legal excuse. (And know that it’s not legal to lie to Congress) That’s why the allies hung people at Nuremberg, right? Just as they hung war criminals in Japan.

Have tempers cooled since the war? To use a scientist’s thought experiment: Should a bleeding heart conservative, who owns a time machine, go back and rescue those German war criminals? No. Granted, it might pluck at our heartstrings down the decades to see war criminals who are bent, limping, senior citizens being hunted down like animals and dragged off for trial—but no. For such cruelty, a noted Nazi hunter had a reply, saying in effect: “The war criminals of tomorrow are already living among us as children today. They need to see there will be consequences…” There is no statute of limitations for murder.

Which brings me back to clear-eyed Sarah Connor and her son John. Sarah knows that if she fails to stop SkyNet, then the consequence will be a rain of blinding fire and bleached skulls. Her resulting sensibility is grim: Maybe it is from her grimness that she doesn’t show the expected horror that would be the normal reaction, back in 2008, to seeing a whole town secretly under surveillance. This by capitalists like Google, not by the government. Today, needless to say, we are mostly ignoring “technocreep” in our lives—by our own electronic devices! We of today have something in common with that 2008 town where the people have been hoodwinked. Maybe not against their will, but without their consent… 

Surely the greatest weapon of any tyranny, (as a Robert Heinlein character noted) be it a Muslim theocracy or a communist People’s Republic, is secrecy. Censorship. In the case of that town, secrecy includes self-censorship. Sarah attends a town funeral where even after 35 workers have suddenly died… people still say they don’t want to know what the company was doing. 

A tearful widow talks to Sarah, saying she “never knew” her husband. Sarah stays silent, although that same husband, a week ago, tried to murder her. 

The metaphor? Besides surveillance? It’s like any town, from any time-space location within “1970-U.S.A.,” where the white women “don’t know” what their menfolk are doing… turning their heads away from jail beatings by cops, and planted evidence… ignoring their husband’s dirty excuses to keep a trial from being “removed” from racist state courts to the federal courts. This even though the “law of removal” was explicitly passed to prevent racism in courtrooms against civil rights workers. The town stood for any little county or city where police beatings and killings are performed at the direction of “the establishment,” the culture, and therefore won’t be stopped, not until the white culture is stopped. But can culture be stopped? Today? As it happens, today liberals are making “culture” a sacred cow. In Canada, for instance, the liberal party believes Government must not say that barbaric practises of another culture, such as honor killings and female genital mutilation, are “barbaric practises, “ and Government mustn’t teach this judgement to new immigrants.

(Note: the values of the enlightenment, from the 1700s, are not picked up by immigrants by magic. Not automatically. In Finland this week it was an asylum seeker, after two years of living in freedom, who went on a terror spree. Here’s a link in English to a proud Finn)

In Sarah’s town the widows and orphans are as clear as light bulbs: They say they don’t want to know, they don’t want to change.

We of today, less innocent, don’t want to know, perhaps, why the U.S. Congress, while claiming there is nothing to fear from surveillance, would not therefore pardon Edward Snowden… meanwhile is also claiming to be be afraid of the surveillance of Hillary Clinton. (by the Russians) Disciples of Big Brother have a word for that: double-think. 

Back in 1970, I must admit, when we said, “If you’re not part of the solution you’re part of the problem,” back when I myself was walking the earth and wondering about God, I was NOT trying to educate racists in the United States. Just as today U.S. Muslims are NOT trying to educate people over in Arabia that “Islam means peace.” Partly because, let’s admit it, many Americans,  not just Muslims, can’t spell “war effort.” (War on Terror) To be fair, some of those same Muslims DID once help educate the South Africans that “apartheid is wrong.” 

A 1970 level of white racism is something I would not be acclimated to. These days, like science fiction writer John Scalzi, I could happily live in a small town in Ohio where “everybody and their dog” voted for President Donald Trump, but no, I could not now live in a 1970 southern U.S. town like Omelas.  I’d have to walk away.  

In a 1970 town, according to a 1976 book I’m reading by John Perkins, Let Justice Roll Down the worst racists are in the white Christian churches. Yes, I know that’s sounds crazy, yet Perkins, a Christian who was bruised for other’s iniquities, reasons out his belief about whites quite carefully. Meanwhile, in our own century, in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, (T:TSCC) a spiritual Black man, who attends Bible studies, teaches a chained up artificial intelligence to know right from wrong. He explains to the machine that killing is wrong “Because we are all God’s children.”

Perhaps I shouldn’t expect my white neighbors, if they have known only respect, dignity and easy lives, to care about right and wrong the way I do.

The childhood of Sarah’s son John is, for me, a special metaphor. I don’t relate to the adult version of John, in a space-time where he is the very confident leader of the resistance, but I can sure relate him as a growing boy living in a state of hiding. Because as John would say, I too grew up knowing “You are never safe!” 

John could not be protected by twenty F.B.I. agents in the episode What He Beheld, and I could not be protected by two parents. Nor protected from them. The good news is that I’ve grown up into a person who cares about Blacks and my clients, into a functional citizen, caring enough to try to understand the world. I would agree with Sarah Connor: As Sarah knows in her bones, knows when stress knifes into her so badly she attends a Sleep Institute because she can’t sleep at night… Never give up!

…as genre reflects life…

Sean Crawford

Under the big sky of Alberta

August 

2017

SIDEBAR

Edward Snowden, to his credit, used a “check and balance” by going to solid citizens with “journalist ethics” and then letting them decide whether to publish. 

~Journalists (at least in the British Commonwealth, and presumably also in the U.S.A.) will never turn traitor just for a “scoop.” The gentlemen of the press to whom Snowden confided obviously did not think Snowden was a traitor. Furthermore, ethical reporters won’t print a fact if they cannot either attribute it to a source or at least know themselves that it is utterly true. (For example, they won’t attribute that Paris is the capital of France, but they will attribute how much cargo flows into the Paris docks “according to the Minister of Transport”) 

As newspaper editors know, for a news reporter, a factual error is as rare as a soldier dropping his rifle on parade. Yes I know, magazine editors use “fact checkers,” (a practice some folks such as Peter Drucker disagree with) but remember, sometimes their periodical writers are not like honorable samurai, not like self-respecting reporters “riding for the brand” of journalism ethics, but sometimes are like dishonored ronin, merely “hired guns.”

(A sidebar for stupid trolls has been deleted)  

Footnotes: 

~I pondered the culture of wholesome clean cut Americans, without involving their wives, allowing themselves to believe in surveillance in my essay Reflections on Surveillance archived October 2013

~I wrote of Sarah Connor in my essay Sarah, Terminators and Feminists archived July 2011

~In the context of innocent John Connor, I wrote of the morality of mainstream Hollywood in my essay Morality, Boys and Hollywood archived July 2013.

~While I’m forever astonished at the cancelation of the show Firefly, (link to my buddy Blair’s review) I am merely frustrated that T:TSCC was canceled from the Fox network. A nerd on the Internet said the show was too philosophical for those expecting a bang-bang action show.

Note to self: Never try to place your TV series on Fox.

One China and Wishful Thinking

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“Geopolitical realists like Henry Kissinger warned at the time that this set of circumstances could not last, that international competition was embedded in human nature and would return.”

Kagan, page 11, as below

Hello reader,

Got wishful thinking?

All my life, I have felt both fortunate and lonely. Unlike most of my generation, I was lucky: I raised myself on old high school history textbooks from when my parents were in school, back in the 1930’s. Fascinating books. Thereby I knew my world. When my fellow longhaired students, during social studies, wishfully said “violence never solves anything” and “this is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius,” well, I knew better. And that was lonely.

What the “establishment” writers of high school textbooks, born in the 19^th century, took for granted, are certain grim truths, as surely as air fills a vacuum, enduring through the past two millennia: If a state can conquer militarily, then it will. If it can expand power over other states economically, then it will. Yes Virginia, the Yankees imperialize. This does not, of course, apply to the gracious, humbler, gentleman states with little power: Of course they would resist the tendency to be corrupted into wanting more.

In East Asia today, the largest state is China. How much resistance to corruption would there be in the “workers paradise”? In theory, as in their magazine, China Reconstructs, the Chinese workers call each other comrade, never using feudal titles, while feeling solidarity with all the workers of the world. But some theories are disproven over time.

You might think, in this enlightened age, all nations should be equal. Yes, but the grandiose Chinese Communist Party leaders would add that China should be “more equal than others.” Special. With national glory, and special respect from their Asian neighbors. A belief straight out of the nineteenth century.

Before me is a news article, datelined Beijing, (Saturday Feb 11, 2017) headlined Trump reaffirms ‘One China’ policy. The story:

QUOTE “…The (U.S.) policy in place since 1979 requires Washington to maintain only unofficial ties with Taiwan, which China clams as its own territory.

China views any hint of official U.S. recognition of the island as an anathema to China’s revival as a great Asian power…. Trump agreed to honor the ‘one China’ policy, the White House said.” UNQUOTE —The Associated press

It seems President Trump has backed off on the idea of two states of Chinese people. The People’s Republic of China says the democratic Republic of Taiwan, on the island of Formosa, should belong to them, because it did in the past, before people fled there from communism. In a way, this is like how Argentinian children were taught to believe the barren Falkland Islands belonged to Argentina.

But Taiwan is not a barren rock supporting only sheep farmers; it supports 24 million people, more than lived in Canada at the time of our hundredth birthday in 1967. No, Beijing reasons more like the way Arab Iraq thought Arab Kuwait should be the thirteenth province of Iraq—at least, they did right up until Operation Desert Storm. I can understand that, because I understand that human nature doesn’t change as fast as a wall tumbles down, even if we wish it would.

When it comes to people, it’s so easy to fool ourselves. Take peaceful international trade, for example. Business guru Peter Drucker once wrote that the world was learning that tariffs did more harm than good: like wearing a sling to “support” your arm, it only end up making you weaker after you take it off. Drucker said the globe was moving towards sensible, practical “free trade,” a movement that stopped, he said, in the face of Japan (then the world’s second largest economy) practicing “adversarial trade,” for which the imperfect remedy was trading blocks.

Did he have wishful thinking? I wonder if the blocks are in fact a part of alliances from love-of-power. Because if he was right, then why is Japan a part of the proposed Pacific Trade Partnership? And why would there be some talk of the European Union angrily not trading equally with Britain once Britain exits the EU? You might call such behavior by the EU “cutting off your nose to spite your face.” I would call it, “the human factor.”

We see such human nature even in peaceful everyday life, right here in Canada.

Here the federal government might politely reduce its funding to the provinces, but never its power. This might be morally wrong, perhaps, because when Canada was formed in 1867, the number of cities was only two. Our “founding parental units” didn’t foresee that many cities would one day have gargantuan responsibilities. Result? Out of our individual wallets, none of our sales tax or income tax goes directly to the cities or municipalities, even today. (The cities are stuck with funding solely from property tax) You can bet the other levels of government are not about to say, “Oops, that was an 1867 oversight, let us fix it.”

No, the snobs say the city leaders, unlike the snobs themselves, can’t be trusted with reliable funding. Instead, cities have to keep applying for grants. Cynics say it would be easier to legislate brand new taxes for the cities, taking still more from my wallet, than to expect those powerful leaders to redistribute my taxes now flowing to the provinces and the feds. Ouch, my poor wallet!

Traditional human nature is why, in the middle of Southeast Asia, if the kingdom of Siam (Thailand) was never a European colony, if it remained independent, then this was only because the other colonizers saw Siam as a neutral zone between them. Try telling that to one of my idealistic peers in social studies, who would wishfully cry, “But that’s ancient history! People aren’t like that anymore!” Really? Can you spell Tibet? “But that’s only because of communism!”

When I was a boy, when China invaded Tibet, that country was too isolated to be militarily supplied, too far away for us to care to fight to save it. Now there is a railroad up to the Tibetan capital from China, like a fire hose relentlessly flooding Tibet with settlement by “real” Han Chinese. I am told that Chinese imperialism includes massive timber exploitation with resulting soil erosion, but I don’t know. And Taiwan? Their only hope for keeping their independence is that instead of being surrounded by remote mountains on the roof of the world, they are totally surrounded by sea. Accessible by the U.S. Navy. Still, if you were the nephew of President Trump, would you risk your life for Taiwan?

During the Age of Enlightenment, which occurred in the “space-time” of “Europe-1700’s,” folks came to believe the middle class was just as important as the ruling class—a truly revolutionary thought. And that science was at least as important as superstition. Such an exciting age!

In Europe, music changed from complex baroque era music, featuring music hard to play, and not for singing, to classical era music, which finally featured melodies the common man could relate to, and could sing. And this new music did not have a “national” characteristic. This equality and internationalism was something new under the European sun. 

In America, Thomas Paine galvanized the colonies to believe in revolution, with his pamphlet Common Sense (still in print here today—I wonder if they read it in Taiwan?) He explained the practical economics of independence, including the Common Sense fact that his countrymen could forge enough steel nails, and cut enough timber, to create a navy great enough to safeguard their independence.

It’s as if Paine believed not just in ideals, but also in having the power to violently protect those ideals. That proposed navy, of course, within a century, would be why the European powers, during the American civil war, didn’t dare break the northern blockade to buy southern cotton and sell food to the starving rebels—lest the U.S. Navy retaliate once the war was over.

As for human nature and the civil war, many of the horrors of the First World War were foreshadowed by that war, for example trenches with barb wire, (as in the movie Cold Mountain) and awful “total war.” (as in “marching through Georgia”) Yet, due to the weakness of grandiose European snobbery, the American experience was ignored: The reality of stinking trenches came as a complete surprise to the Europeans. Call it the human factor.

We of the here-and-now are just as bad. Living under our gracious Queen Elizabeth II, we believe the Muslim world should have freedom of thought just like us, and not murder people for what they say out loud. We forget their reality: Arabs, with hundreds of princes in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia alone, have not yet entered the 1700’s, they are still at the stage of Queen Elizabeth I. (And they still don’t politically separate mosque and state) Such is our snobbery, or, at least, our wishful thinking. The rest of the world is not magically tied to us with a piece of string, advancing as we advance.

We can only wish they were attached. After the Berlin Wall came tumbling down, many world leaders and experts in Europe and the U.S. thought nineteenth century power politics was over. Nobody, in their wildest dreams, thought that forcibly replacing the Ukraine’s nuclear weapons with a promise of U.S. defense, would lead to Russia annexing the Crimea. We thought the word “annexing” was in history’s rubbish bin.

“In a globalized economy, most believed, nations had no choice but to liberalize, first economically, then politically, if they wanted to compete and survive.” Partly because “… growing middle classes would demand legal and political power, which rulers would have to grant if they wanted their nations to prosper.” Page 5.

This was wishful thinking. We know now they were wrong, just as they were wrong after 9/11 when they would say terrorism “comes from poverty and despair.” (The attackers of 9/11 were rich middle class; Osama Bin Laden was filthy rich)

The page 5 quote is from a lovely Vintage Press book (2008) of only 100 pages, plus notes, The Return of History and the end of dreams by Robert Kagan. On page 96 is a quote regarding quarreling nations having the temptation to close crucial sea-lanes:

“If this hasn’t happened in recent decades, it is not because the nations of the world have learned, evolved and adapted new norms of international behavior. It is because the American navy dominates the oceans.”

Well. Maybe “Yankees imperialism,” or at least the U.S. Navy, is a Good Thing. (Despite those ignorant youth, in our longhaired days, saying the armed forces should all be disbanded. Remember?)  

My heritage is the enlightenment; my culture is North American. During World War II, we Americans believed that people who originally came here as children from the axis countries of Germany, Italy and Japan, people who were raised here to be assimilated, would fight fiercely against those fascist states when war broke out… Years after the war, when nations such as South Africa believed in lesser rights for “guest workers,” well, our belief was that the children of such workers, born and raised in the only land they’ve ever known, deserved to vote as free and equal citizens. “One person, one vote” we told the South Africans.

As children back home in Vancouver, and in your hometown too, I’m sure, we had a code in our schoolyard. Remember? If we saw a smaller boy being bullied by a bigger boy, then if the small kid were trying to punch back, we would go and join his fight. Years later some of those schoolboy fighters, as adults of British, Japanese and Chinese heritage, would be jolly sailors together in the navy. Today our navy would include young men of Chinese and Taiwanese heritage.

Taiwan? It’s obvious. People who fled “mainland China” (red China) as toddlers would be senior citizens now. Angrily shaking their canes against communism. Everybody younger would have grown up assimilated, knowing only democracy, loving the green hills of Taiwan, proud of their flag and their armed forces.  Calling themselves Taiwanese.

As surely as North Americans love freedom, if China invades Taiwan, and if the Taiwanese are willing to throw their first punch, then we will fight alongside them.

Sean Crawford

February

Calgary

2017

Footnotes:

~For Peter Drucker’s writings I am going by my memory, I forget where he published.

~Everything I know about how “music mirrors culture” is from Professor Robert Greenberg through his course How to Listen to and Understand Great Music, through The Teaching Company, distributed by The Great Courses. He said the music of the enlightenment came to be called classical because it embodied the principles of beauty expressed by the classical democracies of Greece and Rome.

~ “only two cities,” and the messed up tax funding, comes from Canadian visionary Jane Jacobs, best known for her The Death and Life of Great American Cities, as reported in her last book, Dark Ages Ahead.

~Of course terrorism does NOT come from “poverty and despair,” not according to science. See my essay John Kerry likes Terrorists, archived march of 2016

~ “red China” was a cold war term, to separate the two Chinas, later superseded by “mainland China.” Taiwan did not merely become a new home for a few politicians and the palace guard, but for a vast army and vast numbers of refugees.

Was there ever a red Russia? No, because the white Russians ended up driving cabs in Paris, cooking short orders in New York City, existing in rotting tenements in Shanghai.

At the end of WWI, parts of the Canadian army, and others, instead of going straight back home to Canada, went to Russia to help the white Russians defeat the revolution. (like in Animal Farm) The reds won, the whites lost—and the unfortunate whites had no island to retreat to.  

~I could have guessed: (Page 30) “For the first time in centuries, China thinks of itself as a sea power.” As for propaganda: (Page 110) “The Chinese are now taught to think “of sea as territory… and to understand that their ‘sovereignty’ includes three million square miles of ocean and seas.””

~Unlike American Muslims during Vietnam and apartheid, U.S. Muslims today are not visibly seen as trying to educate folks overseas that Islam means peace. Such a pity.

But if they did so, using their credibility of being fellow-Muslims, born overseas from Arabia, then I wonder what would be the effect, both in Muslim countries and over here? In America it surely couldn’t increase fear of Muslim terror, and it might well decrease the fear.