Differing Abstractions

essaysbysean.blogspot.com

“Canadians all live in igloos”

Some dude in Texas

Regarding their mayor:

“They kept reelecting him because he was grandfatherly and worked hard to help individuals and families who were having trouble. They didn’t care much whether he also set good policies—that was too abstract for them.”

Xenocide, by Orson Scott Card, 1991, p 238

Hello Reader,

Got differing abstractions?

Introduction

I hadn’t planned to continue last week’s theme of middle class guilt. My current blog post, right up until today’s posting, begins:

QUOTE

… I am writing this … under the spell of Audre Lorde, a member of several minority groups: Black, and a woman too, “but a traitor” with a nonBlack partner, raising children, but “without a  family values marriage,” lesbian, and speaker of truth to hands-on-ears fellow feminists… 

UNQUOTE

Differing

Trust us writers to care about the nitty gritty of sentences. So there I was, only three days after posting the above, still under the spell, among about a dozen writers, at a big long table, studying sentences, and I spoke of U.S. Blacks, and—I was corrected and told that now we say Persons of Colour. This was in Canada. You may wonder: Did Canadians genuinely ponder and decide to change names, or is this a case of swift Yankee imperialism? (Because hey, you’ve got to admit such things happen)

You ask: What did I think of being corrected?

I answer: I think it’s time to talk about levels of abstraction. But don’t worry, I’ll get back to Audre and me.

Here’s how I explain two words: I could say, “Gee, I better stop procrastinating.” Or I could say, “Well, I better get to my work.” The former is sentence is more “abstract,” the latter more “concrete.” By concrete I mean you can see it, like cement, and measure it, like with a ruler, and beholders can agree, “Yep, there’s Sean, working at his table saw.” But if you entered my man cave and saw me silent in my easy chair, the eyes of the beholder wouldn’t agree on whether I was procrastinating, or hard at work dreaming up some new poem about the Martian invasion. When it comes to something abstract like labels for people, there can be a whole lot of opinions going on. 

Abstractions have power. Are people “developing” the land or “exploiting” it? Both words are easy to argue about, as both are abstract.

How many races do you count? On the prairies, or great plains, the first nations medicine wheel abstracts four: black, white, yellow, red. 

Black or Person of Colour? Again, abstract. A member of the Mongolian race, or a Person of Colour? A higher abstraction: Here colour means not specifically black, but non-white. When my father was a boy, history text books always started out listing the various races of man. When I myself was a boy, the How and Why Book of Primitive Man began by saying scientists don’t like to say the word race. 

(With race being not so much concretely found in nature as being abstract concept we make up. Hence laymen in Europe, when Dad was a boy, as documented in brown paged books in the campus library, would say that folks on two sides of a river were two different races. I bear no ill-will to 1930-Edmonton scientists or 2010-Saskatchewan indigenous elders. They both abstracted as best they could)

That would have been about the time the term Mongolian was dropped—should I now say East Asian, Oriental, or just what?—and when, for folks with a specific disability, the term Mongoloid, with its racial implication, was replaced, on our side of the pond, with Down Syndrome. 

If people argue about abstract single words, then they can get even more heated about abstract logic chains. I can remember when a Marxist study group, meeting down in the basement, would learn a set of steps to a conclusion for good comrades, but by the time the idealists got up onto the streets, among the rest of us, they would be forgetful about the abstract steps, and go right to the Politically Correct conclusion. It was when the rest of us were puzzling over the half-missing steps that leftists felt the need to be especially strident and shaming by saying, “Trust me, that’s not PC!” Well. Human nature means that we will calmly discuss the value of cement versus concrete, while our fiercest arguments will be over fuzzy abstract things like religion, politics and PC.

Fun with abstract scenarios

If I am at a big long table with a dozen folks—not writers but my buddies who play World of Warcraft—and I want to talk about Yankee imperialism by certain Texas Yankees, then my peers might get their Star Trek shirts in a twist: “What if a U.S. citizen was spying on us from Texas using a super-telescope and heard you calling him a Yankee? He would be offended because the Texans fought on the side of the Confederacy, Rebels against Yanks, for the U.S. civil war, so shame on you, for not being PC.”

Same table: One of my male ice hockey buddies, being a little more realistic, might use a few of those few English words that help us to phrase an imaginary state, words known as the “subjunctive,” words such as were, would or could. He might say, “What if a Texan were in this room and what if he would hear you talking about imperialism… and so you shouldn’t say such things, even if, as I must admit, no Texan is present.” 

Next to speak up is my hockey buddy with a sense of humour: “What if a Yankee—I mean a Texan—was just outside the window on his hands and knees in the shrubbery, so we couldn’t see him, but he heard us, and then stood up and yelled in the window?”

Now, I just have to chuckle, and get into the game too, making things four sided. “Well buddy, suppose I had my own telescope to Texas, and so I called them long distance while they were talking. One of them goes over to the land line and says, “Hey you guys, the call display says Canada… Hello?”

“I just heard you people saying some falsehoods about Canada, some myths, shame on you, for no, we do not all live in igloos! You’re not being PC!” …Somehow, I doubt stereotypical Texans care much about PC, not these days. 

(I remember the scandal when new Texas vehicle license plates came out that said, “The friendly state.” Texas changed that in a hurry! At the time, my roommate from Kansas opined that Texans just like to bug the rest of the union—and I can blab that, because I’m in Canada)

At this point, as we are each getting into our differing private abstractions, if any of my buddies claims to have The Truth and be the centre of world, then I have to gently remind him, “Excuse me, an Ugly American would act that way, too.” (By the way, it was secret agent Matt Helm, settled in Santa Fe, who noted: No self-respecting New Mexican wants to be caught sounding like a Texan—and yes, I know I shouldn’t report that on a Canadian blog)

Obviously, talking about labels and “what if” will always sound a little crazy. My buddy says with a tense jaw: “We label jars not people; you must say ‘a person with a gimpy leg,’ not a gimp; say ‘a person of the Jewish persuasion…’”

More private abstractions

One of my thinking tools is the abstraction of Political Correctness. 

According to PC, —I could be wrong— isn’t there is a PC sound barrier, not to be broken, between us and Yankee-land? And doesn’t PC include the concept that if you talk about others then you are “speaking for” them? We would say of a Canadian woman holding two Ph.D’s in “American Studies”, that if she travels below the 49th parallel, she knows less than a high school drop out, at least about certain things in “real” American life, and so if she travels down to the States then she shouldn’t “speak for” Americans. I guess it logically follows: PC-wise, I can’t rush across the border and vent my spleen at some Texans I hear mentioning igloos, either.

At the same time, in the name of Political Correctness, the Americans have no right to complain as my professor talks, when up here, among us fellow-Canadians, about “those” imperializing Americans, no, not even if she accidentally tells us some myths about Yankees. 

(Of course she would document and footnote and quote U.S. citizens in good faith, like me quoting Matt Helm, of course)

Maybe I feel a blazing social warrior leftist temptation to drive to Montana and shout “Power to the 99 per cent!” … Still, I have to let U.S. citizens seek their own salvation. Or at least, not shout, but talk nicely to those Yankee salt of the earth folks politely, talking with them, not at them. Maybe mail them some footnotes, if asked. 

It was an apologist for communism, self-described “Chinese” writer Han Suyin, who said, “Revolution must be neither exported nor imported.” Yes. My citizenship papers are stamped Canada, not U.S. of A, so I’ll cackle whatever crazy thing I want to “among us chickens, up here, about them eagles, down there.” My latest theory is that the U.S. public enables their Yankee Imperialism by holding on to an ignorant plausible deniability. “What? Us? Imperialize? We’re so innocent!” Yeah, you just go on saying that.

A wide eyed peer might earnestly ask me, “Yes, but what if an eavesdropper was innocently out of sight below the window?” 

(I suppose this is getting away from the abstract into the actual concrete examples)

Easy: If it was me I would stand up, walk around the building and enter through the proper door. I would go to the room by the window and wait to be invited to join in. And then I would not hijack the conversation, but wait until it was appropriate to swing the conversation around to igloos. As a Muslim said to me in London, humbling and politely and without any hijacking, “If you want to know anything about Muslims then you can just ask me, for I’m Muslim.” At the time we were sharing a vegetarian, OK-for-Muslims-and-Jews, pizza.

Fun with peers

I wrote about that Muslim man on the jet back from London, for my last visit, just as this time flying home I wrote about Audre Lorde. It was while I was part way through Audre’s book that I met with a man who had moved across the globe to Oxford to raise his boy because it was a “diverse” city. That man was Derek Sivers; we knew each other through his blog, and he bought me a nice breakfast near Saville Row in London.

You may ask: Does the boy call his father a Caucasian? I don’t know, I never asked.

Does the boy know about the various formal races of man, including, “but not limited to,” Caucasian, as found in old textbooks? I doubt it, the boy is only eight. Does he give himself a label? Sure, one he either made up or hears being used by his child peers: He self identifies as brown.

Historians are only half right: We don’t learn from history, but we do learn from our peer groups—too bad they don’t learn from history. They differ in their ability to abstractly see beyond the here and now, just as they vary in their ability to think in term of time and space. Seriously: Have you ever tried to organized a street protest before the deficit has worsened into a dragon? One snorting cutbacks, and breathing fire against government programs? Have folks declined your request to take to the streets early enough to do some good, even though your peers surely know what horrors we went through last time we finally had to kill the deficit? If so, then surely you were viewed as “a crazy minority of one.” Power to the people.

It would be nice if groups were all equal, but no, they aren’t all the same. And that I like, since my different peers can express different aspects of me. Today I see I have mentioned peer groups from writing, computers, athletics and, if you include a peer group of just one, a Muslim. It seems to me that fighting within any given peer group, over fuzzy abstractions, words and labels, is like fighting over fashion: Even if I am are “right” I am are apt to walk away feeling somehow foolish. 

(Example: Should we dress for Stampede Days like a cowboy, or like a real cowboy? One could argue. Should my businessman’s trench coat be a real trench coat, complete with a wee loop for my pistol lanyard? And yes, on Saville Row they do indeed sell such coats. A young British businessman, sent to work in Italy, found that all his peers wore coats without epaulets, so he felt compelled to go back to his hotel and cut off all the epaulets on his coats. Now, before you would make a face in scorn, I would advise a pause… sometimes we really need our sense of "humour and compassion" for a poor lad craving a peer group) 

Specific words

The most Positively Correct peers for me have been the ones who will like me and buy me a beer.  If they go from properly saying cellular telephones to crudely saying cell phones, then me too. The worst peers share my hot ideals but lack a sense of proportion: No "humour and compassion." For them, as they grate on me, I will reach for the lubricant of humour, and alcohol too.

If you, dear reader, want me to say Person of Colour, then all you have do is say that word around me, like my peers saying “cell phone.” But that begs me to ask the question: Up here in Canada, when would you ever say P of C in real life? It could mean that, in order for you to change my everyday language, then, in your own everyday life, instead of talking about the the weather and such trivia, you would need to speak of what you were doing around racism. Yes, I sympathize; it’s hard to take action, and then it’s hard to share from your heart. But if I keep naturally hearing Person of Colour then I’ll naturally start saying the term too. Like how even bigots have exchanged the horribly stigmatized word homosexual for a nice, pretty, new improved one, gay.

Right now, from dear Audre, I keep hearing the word Black… God bless her.

Sean Crawford

In her majesty’s dominion of Canada,

(although Dominion Day has been replaced by Canada day)

At the foothills of the Rocky Mountains,

In the sweetest home city in the world,

(although our sibling rivals in Edmonton would say otherwise)

March

2020

Update of Thursday March 12, regarding opportunities to say to others, "Person of Colour."
There are two Person of Colur documentaries are showing in Edmonton on March 19 at the Garneau. About the time the Person of Colour Panther headquarters was being shot up, as noted one post back, innocent Persons of Colour women working in hospitals were facing the National Guard in their quest for a decent wage. Link

Meanwhile, today on CBC, writer Kiley Reid was interviewed for her book about the Persons of Colour situation called Such a Fun Age. I tuned in at the part where a middle class white woman felt safe that her husband would have no sexual desire for a domestic worker because she was a Person of Colour. 

Reid, a self described as "light-skinned (I forget if there was another word too)" reminded those of us privileged to live in the developed British Commonwealth, including, "but not limited to," Canada and the United Kingdom, how it had warped her life, diverted her employment choices, to live in the only developed country in the world without national healthcare. 

Footnotes:

~I Met a Muslim in London is archived September 2017

~Guilt and Toronto, with Audre Lorde, is archived last week, in March 2020. You might be interested in the essay for Lorde’s definition of racism.

~In Commenters and My Responsibility archived May 2018, I quoted Derek Sivers, who moved to Oxford, at length in my essay, His words in the footnotes are in yellow; his words about the financial costs of unclear writing are in the main essay, in a slightly larger typeface, with some bolding.  

~Call me an artist, but this post was written in the subjunctive imagined world; while in the real world I lack a table saw, man cave and certain peers.

Amusing (and tragic) difference in abstracting the definition of racist:
While normally I would retro-change the words "Negro" or "Black" to Person of Colour, the humour below doesn't work as well unless I report the "dialogue" accurately.

As our leftist friends know, every man, woman and child in Canada is racist because we soak it up from our culture. As least most of us aren't as bad as the TV bigot Archie Bunker, although he could at least have Persons of Colour, the Jeffersons, over to visit him and Edith, or have his son-in-law's Person of Colour friend Lionel come over. All in the Family was the first post-colour TV show filmed (videotaped) before a live studio audience.

 The "and tragic" part of my amusing memory is how my roommate, who divided his time between Canada and the States, driving a sports car down to California, had a definition of racist that differed from our leftist friends—Actually, I guess he spent more time down south than here, since he thought "minus four degrees centigrade" was cold.

I was renting the upper half of a duplex, while down below lived a Malaysian couple who were soon moving out. So they gifted me with a plastic silver platter covered in food and supplies. I remember one gift was a white container of Johnson's baby powder, only the blue writing was in Malaysian, not English.
 So there I was, coming up the stairs and cackling like a witch. Seriously, I was cackling. My roommate was at the top of stairs. "What I like about me," I laughed "is I'm not a racist. Look at all this cool stuff I just got."
The guy exploded, "Sean, of course you're not a racist! You're living with a Black man!"

Statesman Mrs. Teresa May

essaysbysean.blogspot.com

This week’s essay, like my other blog posts, is intended to be an “evergreen” post: still relevant next winter, and long after Brexit has receded to nothing but a blip on time’s horizon.

Hello Reader,

Got project skills?

Years from now, if you are reading this essay in some dusty digital library, you may be thinking that my peers and I, during these seasons, were correct in judging that Brexit, as in Britain leaving the European Union, (EU) is one of the greatest projects of our time.

The summary so far: The people had a referendum in 2016. It would be, they were told, a “once in a lifetime” referendum, meaning: no second chances, no do-overs, meaning: a result closer to a grave Constitution than to a light bylaw easily changed. Today’s prime minister was an MP back then, and a “remainer”—until the vote was in. Then of course she tried to honour the referendum. Other MPs do not have such honour, and by journalists today they are openly called remainers.

Soon after the referendum there was an election where the people voted into power a minority government, partly because, while a big majority government might strengthen Britain’s hand for negotiating with the EU, few voters imagined a majority government would be critically needed for Brexit. I know I for one, back then, thought Brexit had already been decided.

You, years away, may be calm and objective about it all—but today we sure aren’t! In fact, as I write this, “tens of thousands” are marching for the issue of a second referendum—even though it’s Saturday March 23, 2019, with the exit—until yesterday—lawfully set for this coming Friday. A little late to be marching, eh?

As for the details of what the marchers want, and the details of Brexit: All of this, dear student researcher, you must already know as you “compare and contrast” and “document and footnote” old archives… So let me, today, only give you a single lens, like Grandmother peering through her monocle, for seeing the world. Not to see the important details, but to merely see a few concepts.

Here’s a controversial concept: If this is a great project, then perhaps  Prime Minister Teresa May, now being widely derided and disrespected, is a great statesman. Not like the other MPs. In my recent reading of newspapers, no other MP has said anything great, and a great many have said things that made me groan. 

I am reminded (to paraphrase Swift) of the slogan: “You know a great person by this detail: there is a confederacy of dunces against her…” Maybe there is a reason the rest of the Honourable Members of Parliament are unable to come up with a ghost of a start to a beginning of any agreed-upon plan; maybe they have pointy caps.

I first began to realize this one day in 2018 when Mrs. May was headed off to “the continent” to negotiate the terms of the exit, no doubt praying and firmly grasping her economic papers, while keenly scanning for the umpteenth time what terms she could fight to the bitter end on. May reminded me of that other lady prime minister, the Iron Lady, and the British forces in the Falklands, on a bright and fearful morning, moving off to manoeuvre over “no man’s land” to finally cross the wire and close with the Argentinian forces, each man firmly grasping his rifle—and praying. 

And May’s critics in parliament? On the very day she flew? They were asking what Ms May’s “plan B” was. 

Good lord! When you are down to the wire, whether on a jet plane to Brussels or about to cross a smoky battle field, the final thing to do is not to make a plan B—it’s to synchronize your watches. (Yes, I was a soldier once) Like a civilian plowing a long straight furrow, you don’t distract yourself by “taking your eyes off the prize.” (Nor does an army or corporation broadcast it's plan B "in the clear" to competitors and negotiators)

In fact, any plan B, such as secretly wanting to "remain" back in (the EU) your own trenches, is like a stab in your courage tank, letting out all your air. For a desperate battle, the Holy Bible talks about the folly of having the trumpet give an uncertain sound.

(By spring of 2019, with the drawn-out agony of Brexit, "remain" is no longer a secret but something to want publicly. It is still a secret, but now an open secret, that the calls for a "confirmatory vote" referendum is actually meant to torpedo Brexit)

I knew then, as the prime minister was in the air, that many learned folks in parliament had come to their seats not from managing projects but from desks in law offices. Not the same.

As I said back in January, in my archived essay Billy Bragg and Brexit, all of the prime minister’s critics thought she should take her eye off the ball. Not just in smaller ways such as while she is flying to Brussels, but in bigger ways too. For example, some MPs advised she should stop everything to have a general election. I reply, “Really? I mean, yes it’s exciting to campaign with long days and short sleepless nights… and then get re-elected… and then? …Then time has flowed by while you were too distracted to keep your eye on the Brexit ball.

Projects, like businesses in general, need a laser focus. In business one might, as Avis rent-a-car did, invest in meetings for six months to come up with a concise definition of purpose, so the company can then take steps to avoid distractions. No point in a profitable distraction; that’s why Avis dumped their limousine service. 

I like how May, as a good project leader, keeps her eye on the ball in contrast to other MPs including the head of the opposition party, Jeremy Corbyn. You might think another party leader, greatness-wise, would be in the same ball park as Ms May. Nope, not in this case. 

Corbyn’s advice to everyone reminds me of some Quebec leaders, before their calling for voting on an exit from Canada, telling everyone Quebec could have a “sovereignty association” with Canada, even though there was no clarity as to what the heck that would mean. Corbyn is talking about some sort of unprecedented association between the United Kingdom and the European Union, but I can’t explain it here, because nobody can. No one—certainly no leader in the EU—can say exactly what Corbyn’s unwritten, unprecedented, unlegal plan might be.

What I can say, using Granny’s simple monocle, is that Corbyn is taking his eye off the ball by calling for the UK to be in the same customs union as the EU, without being in the EU. Call it, to paraphrase the Americans, “Customization without representation.” Yet the Brexit ball presumably means freedom from the EU, full sovereignty, not partial freedom.

Right now, through my lens, I see MPs believing the people’s vote doesn’t count until the majority of confused MP’s vote to agree with them. I think of parliament as a ruling mini-democracy, complete with jokers and anarchists: folks in the guise of “remainer” MPs. How queer, because by my monocle the 2016 referendum supersedes the current parliamentary session. As clear headed project managers would say, “A done deal. Move on to the next step.” 

As I see it, the people of a great democracy didn’t say: Brexit only if the EU agrees, or, only if we get a good deal, or, only if we get no deal, also known as a “hard Brexit.”  To the people? “Brexit means Brexit.”  This Teresa May has quoted. I can’t attribute who she got the quote from, since it’s such a wide spread “no brainer.”

Good foundations, or good first decisions, as with an engineer’s postulates and theorems, are the bedrock, the sine qua non (without which not) of every engineering or business project.

Dear future student reader, I am feeling quite at ease, with no emotional need to weigh and balance the latest “six options”… because, although I am not from the future, I am from Canada. I will merely note that creative brainstorming is best for the start of a project, not at the end. 

Below are some creative options, stated this very weekend, by the MPs. My classroom exercise for you, oh learned student, is this:

To look through a monocle at each option in turn to ask: Does this take eyes off the ball?… 

Surely in her clarity of intention, against stormy waves of harsh MPs, Mrs. Teresa May is a rock of Gibraltar. …

God save the Queen.

END NOTE: 

HERE ARE THE OPTIONS  

From the BBC web site, with bolding by me, for Friday 22nd March:

QUOTE

in the coming days, as many as six other options, in addition to Mrs May's deal, could be voted on:

• Revoking Article 50 and cancelling Brexit
• Another referendum
• The PM's deal plus a customs union
• The PM's deal plus both a customs union and single market access
• A Canada-style free trade agreement
• Leaving the EU without a deal

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who wants his alternative plan for a customs union and guarantees on workers rights to be among those voted on, said there was support for a different way forward.

Conservative MP Sir Oliver Letwin, who is spearheading the move with senior Labour MPs including Hilary Benn, said he believed enough MPs would back an amendment to a government motion on Monday to trigger the so-called "indicative" votes later in the week.

But Conservative Brexiteer Marcus Fysh said the idea of giving MPs a menu of options after two years of negotiations was "ludicrous and childish", while ex-minister Steve Baker said it would end in "national humiliation”.

UNQUOTE

Sean Crawford

Under serene prairie Skys,

Alberta, March 24, 2019

***Update, March 27: May has promised that If MPs vote to back her deal with the EU, Then she will resign. (Because they will be voting for Brexit, at last)
***Update, April 3: 
Wow, talk about keeping your eye on the ball: May has put getting a deal for Brexit above party unity. Here is an editorial about her sacrifice. Her fellow conservative-party MPs will be angry, but they couldn't be counted on to vote for Brexit. (They opposed everything, including her negotiated deal with the EU)
***Below is from March 27, I think..

@AlanDuncanMP

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I don’t care what her critics say about my view - I have massive admiration for Theresa May’s fortitude and sense of duty. How has she managed to go through every day taking so much flak from less decent people?

Replying to @AlanDuncanMP

Agreed. She has been bullied by almost everyone in parliament. But she has stood firm and may just about make it out the other side. The fact she is prepared to give her job away in order to respect the referendum result should be applauded and respected. Thankyou PM.

Footnotes: 

~As an evergreen post, archived January 2019, I weaved together MP’s, Politically Correct guys criticizing idealistic folk singer Billy Bragg, and polarized politics in Billy Bragg and Brexit.

~Aw, shucks! The British Business community still ain’t worried enough, as the pound is nearly the strongest ever on a 120-day graph. Fine, but I want to buy cheap pounds!

~Surely frustration causes fantasy: A recurring fantasy, one printed again today, is that if May took her eyes off the ball by resigning, then “somebody,” never named, could somehow lead the MPs to a solution that has somehow eluded them—including those remainers, which implies the same chaps who won’t honour a referendum will somehow honour a new leader. This fantasy I somehow doubt. 

From what I have read from over in Canada I reply: Get real; not even Abraham Lincoln could possibly lead MPs like Corbyn, or those other MPs with their fantasies that are not sustainable unless they keep their eyes off the ball. I suppose even Lincoln confined his leadership to his own cabinet.

Meeting the Locals

essaysbysean.blogspot.com

Here comes the judge! 

seen on a button in the 1960’s.

Being the second half of a speech I gave at Toastmasters, with the first half, Part One, archived in July of 2017. (Yes, you can “judge” me as being “slow” in getting around to posting this, but hey, nobody said they wanted a part two, so there!)

Hello reader,

Like tourism?

Like meeting “the people?”

I’ve heard of tourists who say, “I get off the beaten path, and meet the people.”

In Part One I pointed out that if you want to “meet the locals” when you travel, and strike up a conversation with complete strangers, then it is good to first learn how to do so here at home, before you travel. Incidentally, this is a skill the new recruits for a certain secret service all have to learn, but I don’t think they are explicitly taught: I gather for them it’s “sink or swim.”

Today you’re in luck, no need to drown, because I had think through how to explain this at Toastmasters. Having dealt in Part One with faith (in people and yourself) and the first half of awareness, (of self and others) today we can do the other half of awareness, and then cover willingness.

I try to be aware of my eyes. As in Part One, I like Miranda’s findings that people will talk to you if your eyes are loose and roaming around. I would add that your eyes should ideally be soft and kind. Things are unlikely to work out for you if your eyes are remote or fixed, and you won’t ever strike up a conversation if people see your eyes as dry little coals—too scary!

I suppose there’s a Zen to it: If you are smiling inside and loose inside, then your face will be loose too, and easily prone to smiles, and surely people will respond. It is especially easy for strangers to talk to you if you have excited eyes, thinking: “Wow, I’m a tourist in Britain! Here from exotic Edmonton!” …The question then, for having conversations, is: Are you willing? 

Not if you’re in a hurry… or a snob, or an Ugly American. If American tourists seem crabby about how the “little natives” are not as good and sensible as Americans, well, I think I know the reason. Americans will tend to seem ugly, or at least “not safe and supportive,” when they have a very rigid view of the world. If people are know-it-alls, thinking, “My way or the highway,” then they tend to be threatened by anyone different. Like wearing a Here comes the judge button. Better for them to avoid strangers. They may seem crabby not just abroad, but even in their own hometown. Of course I am using “American” as a metaphor for you and me. As I said in Part One, I have my bad days, but on my good days I try to be willing to listen and talk as I come across new people.

Perhaps willingness is like art or literature. Someone told me the best way to read is to do so without judging, just accept it all as you are reading, then turn on the judgment and reflection after you put the page down: You are less likely to miss out that way. As an old grandmother said: “Live and let live.” A variation: “Accept others, and have self-acceptance.” In a way, strange adults are a bit like children and dogs: They know when you can’t accept them—you reveal yourself when you can’t listen well.

For my toastmasters speech it amused me to wear my Doctor Who T-shirt, and present this scenario: Suppose, on the Royal Mile, I am conversing with a stranger who says, “You Americans, on your TV, you have way too much crazy science fiction.” I could get defensive and say, “I’m Canadian.” I could, if I lacked boundaries, misinterpret that my ego was being attacked, and then counter-attack: “Oh ya? Well, see this T-shirt? Doctor Who is British!” Or maybe I could be accepting, point a friendly thumb at my T-shirt and laugh, “Ya, we keep showing a man who flies through space in a crazy blue box, no bigger than a phone booth…” … or, my final scenario, I could at least wait until I walk away, and only then switch on my judgment, bending forward to mumble with comical resentment. (Fun to act out on stage at Toastmasters) 

Are you willing to be interested in the world? Then the world will be interested in you. Are you bored? Then let’s face it, you are a bore. It never hurts to store up a few lively factoids to share. Earlier I mentioned faith. My belief? People want the same human contact I do. But maybe not factoids. To me, a good life-style choice is: Always leave strangers and acquaintances feeling better for having met me, never worse. And lastly, if I am momentarily feeling too afraid, one day, to act loving towards an innocent stranger, then I may take heart from the New Testament: Perfect love casts out all fear.

There you have it: You may strike up a conversation using your Faith, awareness, willingness, and spiritual faith too. 

Farewell: May the wind always be at your back, may the road go ever onwards, and maybe we’ll meet one day on the Royal Mile.

Sean Crawford

Winter

Alberta

2018

Footnotes:

~The Ugly American civilians, in South Vietnam, nearly all hung around with the urban elite in Saigon. Hence they were so useless at understanding how to converse with the vast majority of Vietnamese, ordinary rice farmers, to “win their hearts and minds” for teaching them to choose democracy over communism. In Iraq the Americans repeated their history by clumping together in the isolated Green Zone, which had the payoff for them: They didn’t have to understand or respect Iraqis. 

As I see it, for success meeting people overseas, before you travel, try to at least practise being less rigid and more respectful at home. As for the fiasco of Iraq: Because of inappropriate screening, which kept out democrats with years of experience nation building in Yugoslavia, many of the Americans working in Iraq were republican-party members who couldn’t even bring themselves to respect democrats, their own fellow Americans.

~Speaking of (Doctor Who T-shirt) boundaries, I’ll be glad when American Muslims go into social work and then teach other Muslims about “boundaries.” And teach them about “victim role” too. Every time I hear “Islam is under attack” I see a flashing neon sign: victim-victim-victim. A healthy democracy, of course, requires citizens to feel a sense of “agency.” 

When Muslims in, say, Pakistan bomb to, as they say, make their country “more unstable” what they mean is to make their fellow Pakistanis feel “less agency” …because then people are less likely to resist a new dictator. History shows us that every dictator, —Nazi, communist, militarist, Islamist—without exception, always turns his country towards having fewer human rights and more fundamentalism. As in, “more Islamist.”Yes, the ignorant Islamist suicide bombers do at least know this much. 

~Of course, sometimes immaturity, such as Sunnis hating Shiites, has a payoff, so we cling to it. At breakfast some of us were telling writer Lois McMaster Bujold how folks from the cities of Edmonton and Calgary, here in Alberta, in their broad inter-city competition, would rather the national Grey Cup was won by “a team from Mars!” than by their fellow Albertan city. Lois burst out, “It sounds like sibling rivalry to me!” 

“(Blushing) Yes, well (cough).”

Mortals Against Digital Dragons

essaysbysean.blogspot.com 

Headnote: the European Union is working on legislation, of 176 pages, for “freedom to be forgotten” where someone can legally instruct Google to remove data about them. It’s due to go into effect in 2018; it will apply to Canadian firms with an office there.

In two dimensions is a physical footprint,

in three dimensions is a digital footprint,

extending out of the past

like a long dragon

to breath fire on the present.

   Sean Crawford

Hello reader,

Got digital ethics?

Ethics, good manners, customary ways of doing things… It takes a while for people to get accustomed to new customs. When the World Wide Web brought in widespread hope and change, no one predicted things like, say, the appearance of trolls. When the trolls first appeared, no one knew instantly what to do about them. Cultures adapt, but it takes time: for individuals, for society overall, and for small virtual-societies of people linking on the Net.

Meanwhile, speaking of trolls, we seem to be developing anti-bodies such as the slogan, “Don’t feed the trolls” and essayists like Paul Graham are analyzing trolls and implying, in my own words, “The troll never sees a troll in the mirror.” Things aren’t hopeless.

On the Net, I have seen changes for electronic-mail etiquette; call it “netiquette.” Again a reason for hope, hope that changes for our digital life can still happen. Today I am hoping that if my young niece is shown on the social web joining the godless communist party then it won’t dam her forever in the eyes of proper church-going society. After all, every year a young radical comes to believe that Islam means peace, every year someone learns American History X.

I’ve been thinking of a man who, according to Wikipedia, was known in later life for being against racial segregation, yet who earlier in his life was in favor of segregation, of black Americans being forcibly kept away from other Americans. Should he have been allowed to change his mind? If he is a serving politician, then should he be allowed to implement measures that are anti-racist, if he used to be racist?

The man I’m thinking of once stood in front of a university door to deny entry by black students during his time as state governor. I’m sure glad Governor Wallace changed. His change was allowed, in part, because the Internet did not yet exist, because the Net did not say he had to stay consistent with his old beliefs, and because the Net did not say he had to be accountable to his distant past.

Can a man be both bad and good in one lifetime? Warden Clinton Duffy, walking in the concrete enclosed prison main yard, among twisted convicts, without any bodyguards, thought so—he was a walking miracle. The people who started Alcoholics Anonymous thought so—millions have since found AA as their way out. The slave trader in a wooden ship who wrote Amazing Grace thought so—and his song of praise is still being sung today, in our time of tiled space shuttles.

In our ancestor’s days of slow sailing ships they surely experienced change, at the level of society and groups, although I guess their society changed slowly compared to our rushing modern life. But change they did. And in their own lifetime they would have seen a few individuals who changed immensely. An old miser might learn a Christmas lesson in just one night. Some individuals might change by living among far away civilizations, or by going on lengthy sea voyages: There was a reason ship’s captains were allowed to conduct marriage ceremonies. If while traveling on the road to Damascus a person of Jewish heritage had a Christian revelation, well, too sad if his earlier words were kept freshly embalmed on YouTube.

Our mortal ancestors found their solution: The statute of limitations. If a man was lost at sea, or went into hiding in the misty wilds of Asia Minor, his wife could re-marry after seven years without losing her self-respect, keeping her membership in her church and community.

As for the ancient Greeks, they who seem like Yoda in certain areas, I don’t know exactly if they had seven-year statutes, but I suspect they did. I do know that after a war if they erected a battlefield victory sign then it was always made of wood, never chiseled in stone. It was intended to decay… The Muslim ideal of tribal feuds lasting decades and generations was not for the Greeks. (Would you believe Arabs still talk about the Crusades? Even far off Muslim-Americans, to them, are from one of the Crusader nations)

For today’s essay I would be suspicious if I thought I had a perfect, precise answer to the question of digital ethics—Of course I don’t offer any such answer: Surely social values take time to grow, starting from people feeling a little hope that their neighbors are reasonably open to change.

Here’s my humble little seed of an idea: Perhaps instead of saying that everything we post should always remain in cyberspace forever and ever, we might consider saying to each other there is an ethic of a seven-year statute… This would spare my niece.

As I see it: The Internet was put in place by people, and people can change their netiquette.

Aren’t library periodicals tossed out after seven years? If Mr. and Mrs. Clinton are applying for jobs with the United Nations, and some villain tries to post a controversial communist poem they once wrote together decades ago, or a poem-video of them reciting at a wild fraternity party, then shouldn’t I feel permission from my peers to figuratively throw out the post? Can’t I avert my eyes, hit a button and mutter something about statutes?

Our ancestors said, “Give a dog a bad name and you might as well hang him.”

Warden Duffy said, “Men are not leopards. Men change their spots every day.”

Sean Crawford

November,

Somewhere on the Web,

2016