Sunday, October 30, 2011
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
On Solidarity
(and Anger, Fear, Despair, Optimism, Hope, Love, And A Number Of Other Things)
Jack Layton wrote a remarkable letter to Canadians, and the response to his death, likewise, has been remarkable.
Or so everybody has said. At the very least it's the case that people 'remarked' on it fairly steadily from his death two weeks ago and the publication of his letter, until a little bit after the funeral extravaganza the following week. The remarks are petering out, but I would like to share a few of my own.
I have two points to explore. The more interesting one, in my view, is the response to the otherwise arguably uninteresting quotation at the conclusion of Layton's letter. Upon reading it everybody knew it was the quotable. Here it is in case anyone not in Canada is reading:
I saw "Love" and "Hope" on big orange cards stuck on windshields surrounding Roy Thompson Hall on Saturday. I certainly saw the quotation in full and in variations such as "I AM OPTIMISTIC" in the collaborative memorial art project of chalk in Nathan Phillips Square. Apparently it's on t-shirts. I've seen and heard it taken up by hard-core NDPers, relatively anti-government artist types, not-especially-political full-time mothers, Green and Liberal party supporters [although no Conservatives], idealists and self-professed cynics of various ages, and a middle-aged man with an orange sign who happened to be giving directions to the Salvation Army to a passing couple on Canon yesterday. It's been all over Facebook. Apparently they're thinking of engraving it in bronze someplace downtown Toronto.
I've also heard it dismissed as a number of things ranging from trite to narcissistic to negligent - "A recipe for disaster." Personally? I didn't find it very groundbreaking, but my response was to think, "I don't begrudge him that." It is true to his consistent message in life, and is a kind thing to leave behind to rattled readers of his letter. And I liked the last bit - Let us be loving, hopeful, and optimistic. I agree very easily with that - these things are integral components of positive world-changing. But to be honest I was a little iffy on the first part. I passed up some free buttons with "Love>Anger" and "Hope>Fear", although I am a big fan of both hope and love, to put it mildly. I haven't been quite at ease with some of the objections this little platitude invites. This better-than business. The power of the forces he's conjured here, anger, despair, hope, love. I thought, Well, that's not quite air-tight, is it, Jack.
But you know what? I defend what he said. It is not empty, and neither is it a recipe for disaster. Most specifically, I defend hope, which is not an abdication, and I defend that love is powerful. I also defend that I feel anger and fear. I further defend that between anger and love, which I feel both of especially on macroscopic levels but also on interpersonal levels, I do choose love, and this does not disempower me. I don't need anger when I have passion.
All these terms have a lot to say within them, and I'd like to discuss that, and I would like to directly engage with some of the criticism and scoffing leveled at the Layton slogan.
I am not sure whether it is the line itself or just what it triggers, but it seems to me it is more interesting, after all, than I gave it credit for.
I'm going to get into my other point before I go further, though. I do find the "truth", if there is such a thing, about the wisest attitudes towards love and anger and so forth for us to take in this global venture of world-changing, to frankly be more interesting than what this one particular man was up to in speaking his piece. I will return to this discussion. I suppose you can skip ahead if you wish. However, I think it's worth having a look at the phenomenon that is or was this individual, and his death. I think we are missing something nourishing if we dismiss what we've seen in the last week and a half to political posturing and media manipulation. I want to look at what really was said and done.
I think there is an admirable spirit of solidarity to be found in Jack Layton's posthumous message, both in his letter and in the memorial service he co-choreographed. I will take a stand and say that I like the "Rise Up" song; I like the "Come on, People Now, Everybody Get Together, Try To Love One Another Right Now". Should I object to the inclusion of the indigenous ceremony, one man from one group of people apparently if not explicitly representing an enormous and diverse population? I don't, for my part. Perhaps because I didn't interpret that he was speaking universally for indigenous people in Canada - which to be truthful, I was kind of listening for, because that would have been an offensive mistake. But I found what was offered to be beautiful, and thought-provoking, actually. Should I find the French language component try-hard? I don't. Should I find the Qu'ran reading, or the Jewish verses to be token, and therefore offensive? I don't. I think the message is transcendent and I think that message, of solidarity or "togetherness", is a moving thing to come out of the death of a politician. I think it is remarkable, if nothing else, that that has been sent out explicitly from this man and his family and supporters, and then actually echoed and reverberated among so many in turn.
If the letter is a "manifesto for social democracy" as Stephen Lewis stated, I like that too, and to bring it into the ceremony made the ceremony a celebration [among diverse players] of a struggle against the social, environmental and economic policies and behaviours of the bastards now in majority, in my view. And I like that. Good move. I think Christie Blatchford's indictment of the letter as somehow opportunistic is both disgusting and absurd. I don't find it narcissistic. I find it genuine. Is it so very hard to believe that this man, who shared many values with many of us if not all values with all of us, actually did believe that his efforts would make the world a better place? A more "generous" place? Given that he could predict how intimidated and disheartened those who had been inspired by him would be in the shadow of the behemoth opponent of a corporately puppeted majority government, as strong as ever and looming over a decapitated opposition, it is not so hard to believe that in genuine passion and love for the work he believed in, he wished to impart a message: keep working, work hard, and work together. Or maybe it is, but I believe it.
A few additional thoughts: there is a difference among hero worship, role models, and admirable comrades. Yes, it is all too easy to canonise dead people, and I object to that. Layton was not a saint and does not deserve worship. In fact, a little bit of research and one can find a number of issues, particularly in the last ten years, that cry out for explanation, or worse, that cry out their own explanations such as angling, obfuscation, selective disregard to avoid marginalisation - at significant moral cost. Politicking. Nor do I find this a benign practice, rather I find it deeply morally offensive where war especially is concerned. I find it inexcusable. He's not around to answer for his silence or fudging on foreign military operations, on NATO and Afghanistan, on the NDP's complicity in Canada's involvement in the 'removal' of Aristide in Haiti, which isn't really a problem since as I've said, his actions or inactions often speak for themselves. I have no doubt there are other issues of which I am less or not at all aware that grimly spot the Jack Layton record. If he were to have achieved the office of Prime Minister, which he apparently sought since his youth, I am not under the illusion that I would be relieved of feeling disgust, anger and dismay at the conduct of the Canadian government. And yet I manage to be deeply saddened by and sorry for his death, and also moved by and respectful of his life. Not because of hero worship, but not just because he was a fellow human being, either. Why, then? Do I find him to have been a "role model"?
Let's see.
I admire and appreciate his work to implement and improve public housing. I am glad and respect him for speaking out on many occasions with truth and candour, about Harper's despicable abuse of prorogation, for example. I frequently had the urge to give him high fives during federal election debates (I felt the same about Elizabeth May and Gilles Duceppe, two other people with whom I don't share every view.) I consider him to have been an advocate for workers' rights, for respect and services for women, and there is occasion to admire his cojones with respect to globalisation and NAFTA. I think he was a voice for protecting ecosystems. I think these were not cases of pandering or lip service, an ambitious man seeking power or profit and saying shit to galvanise support. I really would defy that interpretation. These causes were dear to his heart, and his efforts were genuine.
His approach to working for his values is not the approach I take or will take in my life, or by far the only approach. I think his approach certainly necessitates compromises that I don't find acceptable. Yet I admire his... look, I admire that he made positive change according to his goals, and he did, and moreover, I admire that he was an inspiration.
It may be said that looking at the chalk mosaic, or witnessing the objectively beautiful ringing of many many bicycle bells in gratitude and respect last Saturday in the street crowded with bikes and people who had painted their toenails orange, is to observe nothing more than a tragic delusion, the Obama syndrome, misplaced emotion better spent, the placation of the victimised and of the idealists, making them feel that their needs and struggles were manifested and mattered when really the starry-eyed population are only harnessed and played, and pacified. If he was a role model, it would be said, he modeled being a tool, or a con artist. We rightly decry attempts to prop him as a saint, but this is pretty easy if our perspective places him in the fieriest pole of demonhood to begin with, because he is not our ideological ideal. Just, fucking wait a second.
So, take many thousands of people who might believe that the world is going not merely direly, but irrevocably to shit. Imagine that for whatever reason, they are given a sense that in fact, first of all, they are not alone in their ideals, in their anger, in their passion. Moreover, they are inspired with a sense that their contribution could mean something if they become a part of a grassroots movement, or if they start an initiative to change something on a local level, or if they decide to go into a helping, teaching or healing profession. Or with any range of result, imagine that they have the opportunity to believe that although they are rightly both angry and afraid, it is not irrevocable. Let's imagine that these people (for some this requires the summoning of compassion, imagination and patience, which are not antithetical to revolution) are not exposed to communities where grassroots and counterculture projects are commonplace, let's imagine that mostly, they are not thinking very far outside the tv-box. An inspiration that comes from out of those speakers, an inspiration that comes from within an accessible context, cannot be dismissed. I understand that if it stops here we are in trouble. But what if that is a simplification? What if people are inspired to believe they have a chance against US Steel - not at some theoretical future point, but now? What if people decide to make changes to accessibility to medical care, or mental health care, or to start non-government organisations and not-for-profits to make changes where they see the need, to inspire other people to work where their passions lie, because they were effectively inspired? Now we are talking about possibility in the grand and unknown and maybe infinite sense. I argue that we don't need ideal people. We need solidarity. And we need inspirations.
All this ranting has got some other people's words rattling around in my brain, so with Google's help I'll quote another imperfect, white, dead, inspiring, male human, if I may:
All right. Let's do what we came here to do.
Speaking of making change, let's revisit this recipe at hand.
I'll start with anger.
This is asking to get a rise out of people because for god's sake, how are we going to change the world if we do not respect our anger? Nothing changes because people get real zen about their anger and let it go like a wispy cloud and choose to make daisy wreaths instead. We need anger. But I don't think the suggestion is to not be angry. I think it's a matter of choosing the optimal fuel. In an effort to change the world, we must have outrage, dismay, even fury. I feel these emotions often. It is a part of the fuel I burn that keeps me going, keeps me resisting, helps me know that I must follow through on my actions for positive change. When I am angry, and that is my primary fuel, there are objects of my anger - I'm angry at something and I want to tear that motherfucker down. In our recipe up there, anger isn't juxtaposed with placidity, it's positioned opposite love. So. Love is also a fuel that keeps me going. It keeps me building and feeling that I need to follow through.
Love is sister to passion - and when I am passionate, there are objects of my passion. I am passionate about or for something, and I want to see it through. Anger is also sister to passion. But anger is at, not for.
Of course there are different subtleties among these words, as I said at the beginning. I'd like to defend, though, that even across subtleties there is something to the idea of feeling anger, but choosing love - which no doubt you also feel. Some have pointed out to me recently that if you really love something you can or you must get angry about it, that it's part of loving something to protect it with rage at whatever threatens it. My response is that while of course I get angry at something that threatens a person or a cause that I love, I deny that I need anger to love. I need passion to love, not anger. When something that I love is threatened, if my responses are fueled by love more than by anger, I believe that what results is something positively, rather than negatively wrought. I believe I am more likely to focus on what I am building than on what I am tearing down. Let the motherfuckers tear themselves down. I wish to have a beautiful, safe, and loving world that I have poured my energies into in the mean time. Let my anger add to the fire under my ass as I build, rather than letting what I love be the thing I yell when I charge into battle to destroy something. I believe this works on both macroscopic and interpersonal levels, and even within the self, if you want to get into that. Don't dismiss or disavow anger. Be loving.
And if there is anything at all to the idea that we must have solidarity with each other although the struggles we are personally pulled to are diverse, if we really want to make change isn't it possible that love IS "better" than anger? Anger has inherent association with destructive urges. I think to deny that might be a little silly. When we are angry, we want to fuck shit up. Excellent! Once again, I am certainly not of the view that anger is a bad thing. There is a lot to be angry about. But when anger is the main energy source we are very hard pressed to avoid being angry at people. Again - fine! I'm angry at Stephen Harper, he sickens me and I experience urges to kick him in the face. I'm still angry at Mike Harris for a number of things. I am angry at corporate CEOs. I am very angry at some individuals in less global spheres. But more constructively, I am angry about the power that corporations have to monopolise the natural resources in this country and the world. I am angry at the state of the public school system, the entire education system for that matter (speaking of corporations.) I am angry about structural violence towards - well, I was going to name a few groups, but why? I am angry about structural violence towards many groups of people and the structural privilege of a few. I argue that if I so choose, rather than negatively identifying with my anger at these objects, while still doing justice to my anger I can identify instead with the love for what matters to me that has me defensively feeling anger in the first place, and that is the most constructive thing I can do.
And if I am across a table from an opponent, and I am motivated not by my love but by my anger, my focus is on destruction, my energy is not being routed through love and building alternatives and protecting what matters, it is becoming hate.
Hate isn't in Layton's recipe, but I'm going to have to spend a few moments on it anyway.
I can spend a long time on this, because it's only what I might argue to be the cause of conflict and violence everywhere in the world. But I'll try not to. Hate is easy. Hate simplifies. Hate provides a pole to the thing that is good, that you love, it's what happens when you need an object for your anger, as well as your fear. Hate dehumanises. And as such, hate allows for violence. We don't know how to be violent against something without "othering" it, deciding that it's part of what we are angry AT, it's part of what we hate. This is not a price I am willing to pay. If I am across a table from an opponent, to get my passions all confused with anger is to invite simplifying them into hate, so that the object of my anger truly gets objectified. And then what? Given how much I love what their corporation or whatever is threatening, it is much easier to be alienated from him and running on anger than to be constantly and with great effort dealing with the much less simplified reality that across from me is a fellow human being, possibly an idiot, possibly an asshole, and my job is to build something. I don't get to blow them up because they and their family are still people in my mind.
Another flawed, dead, male but in this case Middle-Eastern human said something, I think, about loving your enemy. It doesn't mean not being angry. It just means choosing to identify with love. I do not understand how it is possible to build a safe, equal, peaceful, generous world if we do not feel our anger, even be guided by our anger, but ultimately, be guided by and identify with love. Believe in common causes, be more interested in solidarity than enemies, harness anger at problems instead of focusing it on people, in turn harness passion for issues and solutions and priorities - and even people - that we love, instead of focusing it against things, be motivated by a love for human potential and yes, I think he's right, that's how we change the world.
It might be said that I am not being fair to anger - that what is meant by anger is the creative use of rage. Well then we mean the same thing - the creative use of rage is what I am calling passion. I am all about the creative use of rage. But if you don't mean anger, don't call it anger. Anger IS inherently related to destruction, to the picking of enemies and targets, to alienation, to violence. Feel (out)rage, please do, we need that. Don't let anyone tell you not to be angry. But what if you choose to focus on love. That's the more powerful recipe, I think.
Now I'm going to talk about hope.
Fair warning, I can talk a lot about hope. Well at this point anyone still reading will be aware I can talk a lot period, but really now - I have many marks on my body but have chosen to permanently ink the letters of only one word: "hope". The tattoo's meaning is that life is not merely served by but is actually reliant on hope. No, reliant doesn't work. Contingent, in the way that my body is contingent on my cells. To be alive IS hope. No hope? Dead. This is my view. Perhaps I should have worked up to that, but it seems like fair warning to state up front that that's where I'm at. Quite some time ago, I concluded that life depends on hope. So I chose to believe in hope. Then I tattooed it on myself as a message in a bottle that I am still grateful for. Thanks, past self. Some things you don't fuck up.
I know a lot of people that think hope is pretty much the worst thing. That hope is passive, that to hope will cut off the balls of agitation and lead to waiting for a better world to come. No, that isn't what hope is at all. Hope is knowing about possibility. Hope is, things could be different. Hope is, we don't know what happens next. Hope is, very little is inevitable, maybe nothing. Hope is, very little is a catastrophe, maybe nothing.
When you don't have hope, no light is getting in, nothing is possible. Everything is going to shit. What is unfolding or what has unfolded is irrevocable.
Hope is not the assumption that through no intervention of my own, things will work out and fix themselves and everything will be great. Not at all. That's called ... stupid. Well, or denial, or living in la-la-land, or not taking responsibility. Again: hope is possibility.
In dismissing hope I often hear, "Hope alone changes nothing!"
I agree. Absolutely. But hope isn't worthless. Hope isn't the end product, it isn't even really the tool that you build it with. Hope is like breakfast, you just need it first.
The difference between hope and not-hope is very very small, and very very significant.
You don't have to have a plan, for hope. You don't have to know how it's going to be okay, or that it's going to be okay, you don't even have to believe that it's going to be okay. You just have to know that it's possible. And that, folks, is the difference between being dead and alive. You can fit the whole universe in that crack of light, and you can fit nothing in its absence.
Hope is a huge relief. Hope is reason to wake up and think of ideas and try a long shot. Hope is a reason to try trusting others, hope is a reason to try love, to try creating something that doesn't exist, rather than anger, and destroying something because maybe if we destroy everything, we'll let light in. Hope is believing in a moment of despair that your own perspective might change. That your own experience might change. Hope is delighting in the fact that the future is unwritten and we really have no idea what happens now except that it has never happened before.
I'm really big on hope.
And I think hope is "better than" fear in pretty much exactly the same way that love is better than anger.
Fear, like anger, is important, useful, okay, and something I refuse to surrender. Don't tell me not to be afraid. You have to be an idiot not to be afraid. And if I am not afraid I am missing out on a) discovering that it doesn't demolish me to apprehend that I am afraid, and b) coming up with all the ways that I and what I defend will be protected in the face of what I fear.
Fueled by fear we can solve problems, anticipate danger, save ourselves and others, and avoid being casual with things that matter. Like anger, it is crucial. And like anger, if it is the main source of energy, it can try and simplify its unfocused energy in ways that fuck with us - we flee, we attack, we very likely narrow things down and decide that in fact, we're not just threatened and afraid, we are totally, totally fucked. Enter hope.
Feel fear, choose hope. It is one of the most powerful things to experience when the motivation of fear and the sense of possibility in hope are held together in view - yes, it really is terrifying, yes, we really aren't necessarily fucked, yes, we really are going to take this on. In fact, knowing that it's possible, however narrowly, we can't in good conscience not take this on. Now, innovate. And persist. This is why choosing hope, like choosing love, is actually harder than the alternative. It is much easier to react to being totally fucked.
Very big on hope.
Now. Optimism and despair.
When I think of optimism, I confess, I often think: naïveté, Pollyanna, denial. Dumb. Also, I have Monty Python's "Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life" in my head as of beginning this paragraph. Because of these associations I don't like to think of myself as an optimistic person. I have an easier time identifying myself as cynical - I narrow my eyes at the world and call bullshit where I see it. And for pity's sake, nobody is going to pipe up in defense of despair as a means to change the world, except perhaps for very hope-ful values for "despair". Foul, Jack. What happened to your attractive juxtapositions of things I have strong opinions about? But for experiment's sake, I analyse according to the same structure. Feel despair. Choose optimism.
Actually, it works. It's all the same point.
I have so far had the fortune to experience despair not many times and not for very long, relatively, in my life - mostly because of demanding of myself that I identify with hope rather than simplifying fear into despair. I do think this part of the quote falls short of the other two, because as I have said, despair rarely motivates. But... people do feel despair, and might defend that despair with vehemence, something that they need in order to be in reality, in all its harshness, and thus something that they need to stand a chance to change the world: People despair of other people. People go through days tensed for the revealed ill-will of those around them. Held breath in every interaction. People despair that anyone else is trying to make things better - or that those efforts really count. People despair that true connection or solidarity are possible. I'm inclined to think that it's hope that prevents me from this state - that it's the fact that I refuse to simplify, and inhabit instead the possibility (I just need the possibility) that other people have positive intentions, loving hearts, compassion and a desire to grow and help our species grow. But it's more specific than just hope. I think, to my chagrin, I am something of an optimist. And optimism, if you think about it, is useful for solidarity. Also for love, and also for the creative use of rage.
Maybe it isn't enough to just make room for the crack of hope, even if that's where one has to start. Maybe, in creating change, in acting fiercely and joyfully and passionately in the directions we are inspired by our fear and our anger and aimed by our hope and love to act, it is worth it to be optimistic, rather than despairing, of people. That doesn't mean hoping for the best- it's seeing the best, working with the best, digging out and engaging with the best, rather than what is once again much easier - writing them off. We have a pretty big world to change in pretty big ways. Even if you are a person that believes you disagree with 90% of that world's population, what if you can still be optimistic about people? Don't make shit up, be realistic - that is, engage with what's really there. Seek out the common cause. Find it. Engage with that. Again and again. Exhaustively. Concurrent with everything else in the recipe. Be creative. Be impassioned. Build. Well, Mr. Layton, in a world where it is often hard to figure out how we really can change things without resorting to violence and hate, that is an interesting idea after all.
I'd like to refer to a specific reaction to Layton's words that was posted on a friend's Faecebook wall. That was a typo and it's hilarious so I will leave it.
The guy who wrote that Layton was cueing up disaster had this to say:
Oh, my goodness no. First of all, being loving, hopeful and optimistic will not make the corporate scum worse. Being docile, passive and deluded would make them more powerful, perhaps, but so would disconnecting from love and hope and even optimism. Being despairing, hate-driven, fear-driven, anger-driven, these things arise from being dismissive of these possibility-infused perspectives. And these things destroy, and alienate, and splinter, they are the language and religion of violence, they are as disconnected from what really matters - our ecosystems, our potential as human beings, our healing and connection and brave and creative rebuilding from our bloody, hate-filled and unequal history and present, the grueling work of the decades to come - as the scum are.
As for the author's replacement philosophy. Well. Anger better than fear? No. Both are important in the recipe, and must be part of the fuel, not the fuel. Solidarity? Naturally, but what happened to love? You gonna try to invoke solidarity without love? Jack Layton isn't a saint, and neither are we. We know we are privileged, we are our world's own oppressors, there are very few bad guys in this world in black hats who we can safely blow up. This is going to be harder than that.
One interesting thing that's been said about solidarity, such as what was felt among the crowd getting urged by Layton from beyond the grave to love one another, is that it blurs the existence of class war. I guess what I wonder is how it could be a good thing to isolate solidarity within strata of privilege. I don't care that Layton's Canada would not have been the perfect country. I don't care that the funeral was in fact all about Canada and the country, such that one person actually yelled out from the back of the crowd "And the world!!" at one or two important junctures in the speeches about what must be done. I don't care that some people at the funeral, to my mystification [or frustration and distaste, more accurately, since it's not so mystifying when you think about it] found the state funeral, and specifically the costume parade of soldiers and guns, to be lovely and honouring and inspiring, when in my view it was archaic and glorifying of deeply objectionable things at best, and arguably the harnessing of the Layton funeral for political defense and gain on the part of Mr. Harper, at worst. Whatever opinions and emotions I have about these things, in the spirit of solidarity at least I don't care because I believe I have crucial common ground with everyone who was present that day. More and less ground, for sure. More and less likelihood of choosing to work together where possible, definitely. But I do not believe in alienating myself from them or them from me. Fuck Harper. Fuck his politics. Fuck what he's done. Fuck Canada. Fuck what it's done. Fuck humanity. Fuck what it's done. I am so angry and I am afraid. But I am not despairing, and I find myself with limited difficulty to be in love with humanity, and I absolutely am hopeful. Anyone who can find it in them (or me) to connect with me in solidarity, thank you, excellent, there is so much possibility. Do your thing and let's share perspectives and challenge this damaging present. Anyone fighting for that, hasta la victoria siempre, comrades.
I have said, I don't care especially for the man so much as what we can learn from the remarkable things that have arisen in the last two weeks. I am also appreciative of the inspiration that Jack Layton exemplified. He actually is additionally an inspiration in the phenomenon of inspiration, so to speak - he rose to where he did in his struggles soaking up other inspiration, (an important duty in my opinion,) including these words from one last flawed voice remaining of a flawed man:
Or so everybody has said. At the very least it's the case that people 'remarked' on it fairly steadily from his death two weeks ago and the publication of his letter, until a little bit after the funeral extravaganza the following week. The remarks are petering out, but I would like to share a few of my own.
I have two points to explore. The more interesting one, in my view, is the response to the otherwise arguably uninteresting quotation at the conclusion of Layton's letter. Upon reading it everybody knew it was the quotable. Here it is in case anyone not in Canada is reading:
"My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful, and optimistic. And we'll change the world.
All my very best,
Jack Layton."
I saw "Love" and "Hope" on big orange cards stuck on windshields surrounding Roy Thompson Hall on Saturday. I certainly saw the quotation in full and in variations such as "I AM OPTIMISTIC" in the collaborative memorial art project of chalk in Nathan Phillips Square. Apparently it's on t-shirts. I've seen and heard it taken up by hard-core NDPers, relatively anti-government artist types, not-especially-political full-time mothers, Green and Liberal party supporters [although no Conservatives], idealists and self-professed cynics of various ages, and a middle-aged man with an orange sign who happened to be giving directions to the Salvation Army to a passing couple on Canon yesterday. It's been all over Facebook. Apparently they're thinking of engraving it in bronze someplace downtown Toronto.
I've also heard it dismissed as a number of things ranging from trite to narcissistic to negligent - "A recipe for disaster." Personally? I didn't find it very groundbreaking, but my response was to think, "I don't begrudge him that." It is true to his consistent message in life, and is a kind thing to leave behind to rattled readers of his letter. And I liked the last bit - Let us be loving, hopeful, and optimistic. I agree very easily with that - these things are integral components of positive world-changing. But to be honest I was a little iffy on the first part. I passed up some free buttons with "Love>Anger" and "Hope>Fear", although I am a big fan of both hope and love, to put it mildly. I haven't been quite at ease with some of the objections this little platitude invites. This better-than business. The power of the forces he's conjured here, anger, despair, hope, love. I thought, Well, that's not quite air-tight, is it, Jack.
But you know what? I defend what he said. It is not empty, and neither is it a recipe for disaster. Most specifically, I defend hope, which is not an abdication, and I defend that love is powerful. I also defend that I feel anger and fear. I further defend that between anger and love, which I feel both of especially on macroscopic levels but also on interpersonal levels, I do choose love, and this does not disempower me. I don't need anger when I have passion.
All these terms have a lot to say within them, and I'd like to discuss that, and I would like to directly engage with some of the criticism and scoffing leveled at the Layton slogan.
I am not sure whether it is the line itself or just what it triggers, but it seems to me it is more interesting, after all, than I gave it credit for.
I'm going to get into my other point before I go further, though. I do find the "truth", if there is such a thing, about the wisest attitudes towards love and anger and so forth for us to take in this global venture of world-changing, to frankly be more interesting than what this one particular man was up to in speaking his piece. I will return to this discussion. I suppose you can skip ahead if you wish. However, I think it's worth having a look at the phenomenon that is or was this individual, and his death. I think we are missing something nourishing if we dismiss what we've seen in the last week and a half to political posturing and media manipulation. I want to look at what really was said and done.
I think there is an admirable spirit of solidarity to be found in Jack Layton's posthumous message, both in his letter and in the memorial service he co-choreographed. I will take a stand and say that I like the "Rise Up" song; I like the "Come on, People Now, Everybody Get Together, Try To Love One Another Right Now". Should I object to the inclusion of the indigenous ceremony, one man from one group of people apparently if not explicitly representing an enormous and diverse population? I don't, for my part. Perhaps because I didn't interpret that he was speaking universally for indigenous people in Canada - which to be truthful, I was kind of listening for, because that would have been an offensive mistake. But I found what was offered to be beautiful, and thought-provoking, actually. Should I find the French language component try-hard? I don't. Should I find the Qu'ran reading, or the Jewish verses to be token, and therefore offensive? I don't. I think the message is transcendent and I think that message, of solidarity or "togetherness", is a moving thing to come out of the death of a politician. I think it is remarkable, if nothing else, that that has been sent out explicitly from this man and his family and supporters, and then actually echoed and reverberated among so many in turn.
If the letter is a "manifesto for social democracy" as Stephen Lewis stated, I like that too, and to bring it into the ceremony made the ceremony a celebration [among diverse players] of a struggle against the social, environmental and economic policies and behaviours of the bastards now in majority, in my view. And I like that. Good move. I think Christie Blatchford's indictment of the letter as somehow opportunistic is both disgusting and absurd. I don't find it narcissistic. I find it genuine. Is it so very hard to believe that this man, who shared many values with many of us if not all values with all of us, actually did believe that his efforts would make the world a better place? A more "generous" place? Given that he could predict how intimidated and disheartened those who had been inspired by him would be in the shadow of the behemoth opponent of a corporately puppeted majority government, as strong as ever and looming over a decapitated opposition, it is not so hard to believe that in genuine passion and love for the work he believed in, he wished to impart a message: keep working, work hard, and work together. Or maybe it is, but I believe it.
A few additional thoughts: there is a difference among hero worship, role models, and admirable comrades. Yes, it is all too easy to canonise dead people, and I object to that. Layton was not a saint and does not deserve worship. In fact, a little bit of research and one can find a number of issues, particularly in the last ten years, that cry out for explanation, or worse, that cry out their own explanations such as angling, obfuscation, selective disregard to avoid marginalisation - at significant moral cost. Politicking. Nor do I find this a benign practice, rather I find it deeply morally offensive where war especially is concerned. I find it inexcusable. He's not around to answer for his silence or fudging on foreign military operations, on NATO and Afghanistan, on the NDP's complicity in Canada's involvement in the 'removal' of Aristide in Haiti, which isn't really a problem since as I've said, his actions or inactions often speak for themselves. I have no doubt there are other issues of which I am less or not at all aware that grimly spot the Jack Layton record. If he were to have achieved the office of Prime Minister, which he apparently sought since his youth, I am not under the illusion that I would be relieved of feeling disgust, anger and dismay at the conduct of the Canadian government. And yet I manage to be deeply saddened by and sorry for his death, and also moved by and respectful of his life. Not because of hero worship, but not just because he was a fellow human being, either. Why, then? Do I find him to have been a "role model"?
Let's see.
I admire and appreciate his work to implement and improve public housing. I am glad and respect him for speaking out on many occasions with truth and candour, about Harper's despicable abuse of prorogation, for example. I frequently had the urge to give him high fives during federal election debates (I felt the same about Elizabeth May and Gilles Duceppe, two other people with whom I don't share every view.) I consider him to have been an advocate for workers' rights, for respect and services for women, and there is occasion to admire his cojones with respect to globalisation and NAFTA. I think he was a voice for protecting ecosystems. I think these were not cases of pandering or lip service, an ambitious man seeking power or profit and saying shit to galvanise support. I really would defy that interpretation. These causes were dear to his heart, and his efforts were genuine.
His approach to working for his values is not the approach I take or will take in my life, or by far the only approach. I think his approach certainly necessitates compromises that I don't find acceptable. Yet I admire his... look, I admire that he made positive change according to his goals, and he did, and moreover, I admire that he was an inspiration.
It may be said that looking at the chalk mosaic, or witnessing the objectively beautiful ringing of many many bicycle bells in gratitude and respect last Saturday in the street crowded with bikes and people who had painted their toenails orange, is to observe nothing more than a tragic delusion, the Obama syndrome, misplaced emotion better spent, the placation of the victimised and of the idealists, making them feel that their needs and struggles were manifested and mattered when really the starry-eyed population are only harnessed and played, and pacified. If he was a role model, it would be said, he modeled being a tool, or a con artist. We rightly decry attempts to prop him as a saint, but this is pretty easy if our perspective places him in the fieriest pole of demonhood to begin with, because he is not our ideological ideal. Just, fucking wait a second.
So, take many thousands of people who might believe that the world is going not merely direly, but irrevocably to shit. Imagine that for whatever reason, they are given a sense that in fact, first of all, they are not alone in their ideals, in their anger, in their passion. Moreover, they are inspired with a sense that their contribution could mean something if they become a part of a grassroots movement, or if they start an initiative to change something on a local level, or if they decide to go into a helping, teaching or healing profession. Or with any range of result, imagine that they have the opportunity to believe that although they are rightly both angry and afraid, it is not irrevocable. Let's imagine that these people (for some this requires the summoning of compassion, imagination and patience, which are not antithetical to revolution) are not exposed to communities where grassroots and counterculture projects are commonplace, let's imagine that mostly, they are not thinking very far outside the tv-box. An inspiration that comes from out of those speakers, an inspiration that comes from within an accessible context, cannot be dismissed. I understand that if it stops here we are in trouble. But what if that is a simplification? What if people are inspired to believe they have a chance against US Steel - not at some theoretical future point, but now? What if people decide to make changes to accessibility to medical care, or mental health care, or to start non-government organisations and not-for-profits to make changes where they see the need, to inspire other people to work where their passions lie, because they were effectively inspired? Now we are talking about possibility in the grand and unknown and maybe infinite sense. I argue that we don't need ideal people. We need solidarity. And we need inspirations.
All this ranting has got some other people's words rattling around in my brain, so with Google's help I'll quote another imperfect, white, dead, inspiring, male human, if I may:
"It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."It is, of course, not only by ripples that history changes. I believe in making waves. But the author of the catchy line about hope and love was, if not a role model, in my view a comrade. Making and inspiring ripples. I believe he would view me and my causes in solidarity, although our approaches, and perhaps even some of our morals, differ. Of course they do. Probably, they differ within one range or another with nearly everyone who is reading this, if indeed anyone is ... we will not make change if difference is an obstacle to solidarity, to say nothing of learning from one another. So yes, I am moved by this individual, I am interested in his legacy, and I have paused to consider the loss of a comrade.
All right. Let's do what we came here to do.
Speaking of making change, let's revisit this recipe at hand.
"My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful, and optimistic. And we'll change the world."The only way that the words have any interesting meaning at all, to me, is if they really are a prescription for "changing the world" in the optimal way. I can't defensibly claim to know a deeper intended meaning behind them, maybe the meaning was nonspecific inspiration. But I think there happens to be something worth paying attention to, here. Let's look at the elements.
I'll start with anger.
This is asking to get a rise out of people because for god's sake, how are we going to change the world if we do not respect our anger? Nothing changes because people get real zen about their anger and let it go like a wispy cloud and choose to make daisy wreaths instead. We need anger. But I don't think the suggestion is to not be angry. I think it's a matter of choosing the optimal fuel. In an effort to change the world, we must have outrage, dismay, even fury. I feel these emotions often. It is a part of the fuel I burn that keeps me going, keeps me resisting, helps me know that I must follow through on my actions for positive change. When I am angry, and that is my primary fuel, there are objects of my anger - I'm angry at something and I want to tear that motherfucker down. In our recipe up there, anger isn't juxtaposed with placidity, it's positioned opposite love. So. Love is also a fuel that keeps me going. It keeps me building and feeling that I need to follow through.
Love is sister to passion - and when I am passionate, there are objects of my passion. I am passionate about or for something, and I want to see it through. Anger is also sister to passion. But anger is at, not for.
Of course there are different subtleties among these words, as I said at the beginning. I'd like to defend, though, that even across subtleties there is something to the idea of feeling anger, but choosing love - which no doubt you also feel. Some have pointed out to me recently that if you really love something you can or you must get angry about it, that it's part of loving something to protect it with rage at whatever threatens it. My response is that while of course I get angry at something that threatens a person or a cause that I love, I deny that I need anger to love. I need passion to love, not anger. When something that I love is threatened, if my responses are fueled by love more than by anger, I believe that what results is something positively, rather than negatively wrought. I believe I am more likely to focus on what I am building than on what I am tearing down. Let the motherfuckers tear themselves down. I wish to have a beautiful, safe, and loving world that I have poured my energies into in the mean time. Let my anger add to the fire under my ass as I build, rather than letting what I love be the thing I yell when I charge into battle to destroy something. I believe this works on both macroscopic and interpersonal levels, and even within the self, if you want to get into that. Don't dismiss or disavow anger. Be loving.
And if there is anything at all to the idea that we must have solidarity with each other although the struggles we are personally pulled to are diverse, if we really want to make change isn't it possible that love IS "better" than anger? Anger has inherent association with destructive urges. I think to deny that might be a little silly. When we are angry, we want to fuck shit up. Excellent! Once again, I am certainly not of the view that anger is a bad thing. There is a lot to be angry about. But when anger is the main energy source we are very hard pressed to avoid being angry at people. Again - fine! I'm angry at Stephen Harper, he sickens me and I experience urges to kick him in the face. I'm still angry at Mike Harris for a number of things. I am angry at corporate CEOs. I am very angry at some individuals in less global spheres. But more constructively, I am angry about the power that corporations have to monopolise the natural resources in this country and the world. I am angry at the state of the public school system, the entire education system for that matter (speaking of corporations.) I am angry about structural violence towards - well, I was going to name a few groups, but why? I am angry about structural violence towards many groups of people and the structural privilege of a few. I argue that if I so choose, rather than negatively identifying with my anger at these objects, while still doing justice to my anger I can identify instead with the love for what matters to me that has me defensively feeling anger in the first place, and that is the most constructive thing I can do.
And if I am across a table from an opponent, and I am motivated not by my love but by my anger, my focus is on destruction, my energy is not being routed through love and building alternatives and protecting what matters, it is becoming hate.
Hate isn't in Layton's recipe, but I'm going to have to spend a few moments on it anyway.
I can spend a long time on this, because it's only what I might argue to be the cause of conflict and violence everywhere in the world. But I'll try not to. Hate is easy. Hate simplifies. Hate provides a pole to the thing that is good, that you love, it's what happens when you need an object for your anger, as well as your fear. Hate dehumanises. And as such, hate allows for violence. We don't know how to be violent against something without "othering" it, deciding that it's part of what we are angry AT, it's part of what we hate. This is not a price I am willing to pay. If I am across a table from an opponent, to get my passions all confused with anger is to invite simplifying them into hate, so that the object of my anger truly gets objectified. And then what? Given how much I love what their corporation or whatever is threatening, it is much easier to be alienated from him and running on anger than to be constantly and with great effort dealing with the much less simplified reality that across from me is a fellow human being, possibly an idiot, possibly an asshole, and my job is to build something. I don't get to blow them up because they and their family are still people in my mind.
Another flawed, dead, male but in this case Middle-Eastern human said something, I think, about loving your enemy. It doesn't mean not being angry. It just means choosing to identify with love. I do not understand how it is possible to build a safe, equal, peaceful, generous world if we do not feel our anger, even be guided by our anger, but ultimately, be guided by and identify with love. Believe in common causes, be more interested in solidarity than enemies, harness anger at problems instead of focusing it on people, in turn harness passion for issues and solutions and priorities - and even people - that we love, instead of focusing it against things, be motivated by a love for human potential and yes, I think he's right, that's how we change the world.
It might be said that I am not being fair to anger - that what is meant by anger is the creative use of rage. Well then we mean the same thing - the creative use of rage is what I am calling passion. I am all about the creative use of rage. But if you don't mean anger, don't call it anger. Anger IS inherently related to destruction, to the picking of enemies and targets, to alienation, to violence. Feel (out)rage, please do, we need that. Don't let anyone tell you not to be angry. But what if you choose to focus on love. That's the more powerful recipe, I think.
Now I'm going to talk about hope.
Fair warning, I can talk a lot about hope. Well at this point anyone still reading will be aware I can talk a lot period, but really now - I have many marks on my body but have chosen to permanently ink the letters of only one word: "hope". The tattoo's meaning is that life is not merely served by but is actually reliant on hope. No, reliant doesn't work. Contingent, in the way that my body is contingent on my cells. To be alive IS hope. No hope? Dead. This is my view. Perhaps I should have worked up to that, but it seems like fair warning to state up front that that's where I'm at. Quite some time ago, I concluded that life depends on hope. So I chose to believe in hope. Then I tattooed it on myself as a message in a bottle that I am still grateful for. Thanks, past self. Some things you don't fuck up.
I know a lot of people that think hope is pretty much the worst thing. That hope is passive, that to hope will cut off the balls of agitation and lead to waiting for a better world to come. No, that isn't what hope is at all. Hope is knowing about possibility. Hope is, things could be different. Hope is, we don't know what happens next. Hope is, very little is inevitable, maybe nothing. Hope is, very little is a catastrophe, maybe nothing.
When you don't have hope, no light is getting in, nothing is possible. Everything is going to shit. What is unfolding or what has unfolded is irrevocable.
Hope is not the assumption that through no intervention of my own, things will work out and fix themselves and everything will be great. Not at all. That's called ... stupid. Well, or denial, or living in la-la-land, or not taking responsibility. Again: hope is possibility.
In dismissing hope I often hear, "Hope alone changes nothing!"
I agree. Absolutely. But hope isn't worthless. Hope isn't the end product, it isn't even really the tool that you build it with. Hope is like breakfast, you just need it first.
The difference between hope and not-hope is very very small, and very very significant.
You don't have to have a plan, for hope. You don't have to know how it's going to be okay, or that it's going to be okay, you don't even have to believe that it's going to be okay. You just have to know that it's possible. And that, folks, is the difference between being dead and alive. You can fit the whole universe in that crack of light, and you can fit nothing in its absence.
Hope is a huge relief. Hope is reason to wake up and think of ideas and try a long shot. Hope is a reason to try trusting others, hope is a reason to try love, to try creating something that doesn't exist, rather than anger, and destroying something because maybe if we destroy everything, we'll let light in. Hope is believing in a moment of despair that your own perspective might change. That your own experience might change. Hope is delighting in the fact that the future is unwritten and we really have no idea what happens now except that it has never happened before.
I'm really big on hope.
And I think hope is "better than" fear in pretty much exactly the same way that love is better than anger.
Fear, like anger, is important, useful, okay, and something I refuse to surrender. Don't tell me not to be afraid. You have to be an idiot not to be afraid. And if I am not afraid I am missing out on a) discovering that it doesn't demolish me to apprehend that I am afraid, and b) coming up with all the ways that I and what I defend will be protected in the face of what I fear.
Fueled by fear we can solve problems, anticipate danger, save ourselves and others, and avoid being casual with things that matter. Like anger, it is crucial. And like anger, if it is the main source of energy, it can try and simplify its unfocused energy in ways that fuck with us - we flee, we attack, we very likely narrow things down and decide that in fact, we're not just threatened and afraid, we are totally, totally fucked. Enter hope.
Feel fear, choose hope. It is one of the most powerful things to experience when the motivation of fear and the sense of possibility in hope are held together in view - yes, it really is terrifying, yes, we really aren't necessarily fucked, yes, we really are going to take this on. In fact, knowing that it's possible, however narrowly, we can't in good conscience not take this on. Now, innovate. And persist. This is why choosing hope, like choosing love, is actually harder than the alternative. It is much easier to react to being totally fucked.
Very big on hope.
Now. Optimism and despair.
When I think of optimism, I confess, I often think: naïveté, Pollyanna, denial. Dumb. Also, I have Monty Python's "Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life" in my head as of beginning this paragraph. Because of these associations I don't like to think of myself as an optimistic person. I have an easier time identifying myself as cynical - I narrow my eyes at the world and call bullshit where I see it. And for pity's sake, nobody is going to pipe up in defense of despair as a means to change the world, except perhaps for very hope-ful values for "despair". Foul, Jack. What happened to your attractive juxtapositions of things I have strong opinions about? But for experiment's sake, I analyse according to the same structure. Feel despair. Choose optimism.
Actually, it works. It's all the same point.
I have so far had the fortune to experience despair not many times and not for very long, relatively, in my life - mostly because of demanding of myself that I identify with hope rather than simplifying fear into despair. I do think this part of the quote falls short of the other two, because as I have said, despair rarely motivates. But... people do feel despair, and might defend that despair with vehemence, something that they need in order to be in reality, in all its harshness, and thus something that they need to stand a chance to change the world: People despair of other people. People go through days tensed for the revealed ill-will of those around them. Held breath in every interaction. People despair that anyone else is trying to make things better - or that those efforts really count. People despair that true connection or solidarity are possible. I'm inclined to think that it's hope that prevents me from this state - that it's the fact that I refuse to simplify, and inhabit instead the possibility (I just need the possibility) that other people have positive intentions, loving hearts, compassion and a desire to grow and help our species grow. But it's more specific than just hope. I think, to my chagrin, I am something of an optimist. And optimism, if you think about it, is useful for solidarity. Also for love, and also for the creative use of rage.
Maybe it isn't enough to just make room for the crack of hope, even if that's where one has to start. Maybe, in creating change, in acting fiercely and joyfully and passionately in the directions we are inspired by our fear and our anger and aimed by our hope and love to act, it is worth it to be optimistic, rather than despairing, of people. That doesn't mean hoping for the best- it's seeing the best, working with the best, digging out and engaging with the best, rather than what is once again much easier - writing them off. We have a pretty big world to change in pretty big ways. Even if you are a person that believes you disagree with 90% of that world's population, what if you can still be optimistic about people? Don't make shit up, be realistic - that is, engage with what's really there. Seek out the common cause. Find it. Engage with that. Again and again. Exhaustively. Concurrent with everything else in the recipe. Be creative. Be impassioned. Build. Well, Mr. Layton, in a world where it is often hard to figure out how we really can change things without resorting to violence and hate, that is an interesting idea after all.
I'd like to refer to a specific reaction to Layton's words that was posted on a friend's Faecebook wall. That was a typo and it's hilarious so I will leave it.
The guy who wrote that Layton was cueing up disaster had this to say:
"Being loving and hopeful and optimistic won’t go very far with corporate scum like Harper. It will just make them worse.
Force only understands force.
My friends,
Anger is better than fear
Solidarity is better than despair
So let us be angry and hopeful in solidarity
Against our oppressors
And together we can change the world."
Oh, my goodness no. First of all, being loving, hopeful and optimistic will not make the corporate scum worse. Being docile, passive and deluded would make them more powerful, perhaps, but so would disconnecting from love and hope and even optimism. Being despairing, hate-driven, fear-driven, anger-driven, these things arise from being dismissive of these possibility-infused perspectives. And these things destroy, and alienate, and splinter, they are the language and religion of violence, they are as disconnected from what really matters - our ecosystems, our potential as human beings, our healing and connection and brave and creative rebuilding from our bloody, hate-filled and unequal history and present, the grueling work of the decades to come - as the scum are.
As for the author's replacement philosophy. Well. Anger better than fear? No. Both are important in the recipe, and must be part of the fuel, not the fuel. Solidarity? Naturally, but what happened to love? You gonna try to invoke solidarity without love? Jack Layton isn't a saint, and neither are we. We know we are privileged, we are our world's own oppressors, there are very few bad guys in this world in black hats who we can safely blow up. This is going to be harder than that.
One interesting thing that's been said about solidarity, such as what was felt among the crowd getting urged by Layton from beyond the grave to love one another, is that it blurs the existence of class war. I guess what I wonder is how it could be a good thing to isolate solidarity within strata of privilege. I don't care that Layton's Canada would not have been the perfect country. I don't care that the funeral was in fact all about Canada and the country, such that one person actually yelled out from the back of the crowd "And the world!!" at one or two important junctures in the speeches about what must be done. I don't care that some people at the funeral, to my mystification [or frustration and distaste, more accurately, since it's not so mystifying when you think about it] found the state funeral, and specifically the costume parade of soldiers and guns, to be lovely and honouring and inspiring, when in my view it was archaic and glorifying of deeply objectionable things at best, and arguably the harnessing of the Layton funeral for political defense and gain on the part of Mr. Harper, at worst. Whatever opinions and emotions I have about these things, in the spirit of solidarity at least I don't care because I believe I have crucial common ground with everyone who was present that day. More and less ground, for sure. More and less likelihood of choosing to work together where possible, definitely. But I do not believe in alienating myself from them or them from me. Fuck Harper. Fuck his politics. Fuck what he's done. Fuck Canada. Fuck what it's done. Fuck humanity. Fuck what it's done. I am so angry and I am afraid. But I am not despairing, and I find myself with limited difficulty to be in love with humanity, and I absolutely am hopeful. Anyone who can find it in them (or me) to connect with me in solidarity, thank you, excellent, there is so much possibility. Do your thing and let's share perspectives and challenge this damaging present. Anyone fighting for that, hasta la victoria siempre, comrades.
I have said, I don't care especially for the man so much as what we can learn from the remarkable things that have arisen in the last two weeks. I am also appreciative of the inspiration that Jack Layton exemplified. He actually is additionally an inspiration in the phenomenon of inspiration, so to speak - he rose to where he did in his struggles soaking up other inspiration, (an important duty in my opinion,) including these words from one last flawed voice remaining of a flawed man:
Courage, my friends. It is not to late to build a better world.
Please check out some of the resources that I did, in organising my thoughts for this extended search for my opinion:
Layton's "Letter to Canadians":
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2011/08/22/pol-layton-last-letter.html
"Jack's final message a recipe for disaster":
http://canadiandimension.com/articles/4112/
I recommend this detailed and damning article on the NDP's complacency.
"How the NDP facilitates imperialist war." http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/aug2011/cndp-a25.shtml
An interesting piece of history on its own. I don't think I'd ever read this speech in full. Robert Kennedy's speech including the "ripple of hope":
http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Ready-Reference/RFK-Speeches/Day-of-Affirmation-Address-news-release-text-version.aspx
An overview in the Huffington Post of the historic May election. (Nothing new here, but informative in the event anyone isn't familiar with it.)
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/michael-berkowitz/ndp-merger_b_881302.html
Interesting and informative read with some sharp criticisms of the NDP and Jack Layton - both in the sense of accurate and biting - and an analysis with which I ultimately disagree. Still worth reading and reflecting on.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/aug2011/layt-a30.shtml
An interesting interview with Layton from 2003, worth reading, including among other things his proud self-identification as a socialist (in spite of later decisions.) http://canadiandimension.com/articles/4108/
Whoa, check out this video including Chomsky, Layton and Nader, about NAFTA:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MdmaNpwG90 (oh, Jack. The hockey comment, really? Well. See? Flawed. Anyway the video is informative. And biting and troubling.)
and finally, you're missing out if you don't watch this ... informative video, featuring the late Mr. Layton.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ok_hTUyP1sQ&feature=related
Sunday, January 9, 2011
I try again.
Three months ago I posted about creativity and making things and I confess this: I drifted from the heart of what i was trying to say.
Engaged to defend my apparent defence of art against a "paucity" in the response that I quoted, I think I dissipate my point. My latter entry, though I come around to some conclusions that respect my aim, can't help but be an attempt to redress a straw man. And so, for clarity: I don't believe that the trouble with the world today is the dearth of the genius works of art that I would coax out of stifled artists for the good of all mankind. The focus is off. I do believe that art and creativity can save the world, and I stand by what I am trying to describe in the two posts below, but let me try to put it better:
When I say "thank you for etching on the earth" [in the ramblings below - i'm talking about thanking you, or anyone, for the poems you make. for whatever it is that you do and are; for "making things"] it's not unlike when I say to my friends, "thank you for telling somebody. I'm glad you did," it's not unlike when I say to my friends, "thank you for nourishing yourself because I can't do it for you and I'm desperate for you to be okay." Or if I were to say to my friends, "thank you for blowing out the candle before going to sleep because it is not ok that you could be lost to or damaged in a fire."
Yes, it's also "thank you for this masterpiece; thank you for writing this song; thank you for designing this idea." But the violence I'm talking about stifles whole people, not just the poems I romantically want to rescue. The reason it's easy to get on a tangent about peace from here is that the work of unstifling individuals must be a lens in the setting of sights on peace building.
This link is to a talk by a woman by the name of Edith Ackermann discussing creativity, learning and play. It is fantastic and I highly recommend it. I discovered it in the middle of some night, probably while feeling depressed about how difficult it is to learn about what I want to learn about by following some route of academic accreditation. (I learn about it myself in the middle of the night on the Internet.)
In it, she quotes the research her mentor, the well-known developmental theorist Jean Piaget: if you want children to internalise, that is, to learn from their actions, to become good thinkers, you must let them externalise what they think.
"If you project out," she says, "if you build, or re-enact something based on ideas that you have, you enter into a dialogue with your own expressions and enactments, and it allows you to progress."
This dialogue is what I am speaking of. Not only is it the product, it is the means to a product. If we do want inspiration, if we want human beings with a sense of self-efficacy and of imagination so that we can evolve in the beautiful ways whose promise or possibility moves us, even makes it bearable, for some of us, to apprehend the pain and injustice of people, then we need to nurture this. Not only in children but in everyone.
Art, these "poems" of which I speak, are these dialogues. They are creative connections which, as Ackermann says, are what allow us to progress! My entreaty isn't just for the poems - am I making sense yet? It's that the creation of poems is an antidote. Individual and exceptional.
Closing with another poem.
If I had my way it would be examined and understood in classes where people are trying to understand (and/or teach) the point of poetry.. It's not about the fucking prestige of the poet. Really, I'm on the same rant I've been trying to tease apart all year long. Can we not see the value in collective wonder at the human experience and expression of it; the experience of expression?
I found this in a café and have copied it as accurately as I can. If we like, we can assume its author launched herself off of a Green Day lyric. Oh fucking well. Is it an excellent poem? This is where I resent my tangent in my latter blog. It's not about some objective measure of quality. I don't buy that. There is value in what it does. It is an excellent poem.
Do you have the time
to dust me off and fix my rhyme
cuz this stanzic manic tetramic
is makin my brain itch
the venue is closin soon
they're dusting flippin chairs n
workin the broom
he won't drink
when I tell him to
he wont drink
its gettin late
he's gotta piss
I'm drinkin fast
Its not too late
I hope I last
the accordion rings
Softly, I wish I could sing
thinkin too hard I guess
parents never taught me
only accepting behaviour that lasts.
So what, so now, it's done, he's finished
his glass, I'm done being a conditioned
punk-ass, so fuck u all, now that its through
fuck it all, it's only me and u.
I love this poem. This has practically leapt out of this person. Emotion desperate. And can't you feel it? Am I communicating something here? Does the inherent value in this make sense to anyone?
The title of this blog, for those who can't find the buried revelations in my loquations, refers to the imperative, not just the "things".
The things are almost less interesting - or at least, there's no guarantee I'll be interested in any given content; but the dialogue and the possibility offered for growth is what it's all fucking about.
Imagine if you never ever talked about any of your shit?
Or maybe you don't: Don't you feel it rattling around inside you like some intractable caged reality?
How is that not violent? Again, I am working with a definition (which has satisfied and inspired me) of violence as being that which stifles potential... the opposite of nurturing. Nurturing, which is always nurturing potential, is what peace is. This is why I'm so obsessed with possibility.
This is what I am trying to say.
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