Archive for the Blog Category

I had planned to write on a completely different topic this month. It was reasonably current, and in the context of the day when it first crossed my mind, seemed arguably important. I will probably come back to it next month, or maybe the month after, and by then it might be a little less topical, but I suspect it will seem more important than it would today. There can be no doubt that the senseless slaughter of 49 people and the life-altering wounding of 53 others is the worst kind of elephant in the room.

Less than 72 hours after the tragic events in Orlando, the narrative is already shifting moment by moment as both heartfelt advocates and political opportunists try to claim the massacre as the cri du coeur for their particular cause. Like virtually every other mass shooting, the motivations and contributing factors in this incident have enough ambiguity to support the demonization of almost any modern social or cultural failing. Islamic terrorism? The shooter made 9-1-1 calls suggesting that he was acting in the name of ISIS. But then again, only a few years earlier, he had informed co-workers of his allegiance to both Shia-led Hezbollah and its sworn Sunni enemy ISIS. If he was truly Jihad inspired, he was at best a poorly-informed adherent. Mental health system failures? His first wife alludes to bipolar disorder. Homophobia? It would be impossible to believe that the location for the rampage was selected randomly. But even here, the easy trope initially provided by his father of a derangement prompted when the shooter and his young son witnessed two men kissing is being insidiously displaced as evidence emerges of a history of frequenting Pulse Nightclub beyond what one would expect of one casing the club for an attack. Gun control failings? The AK-15 used in the attack is a weapon that no one can make a reasonable argument has any relevance to use for personal protection, sport or hunting, and can be acquired in Florida from any gun dealer without any waiting period.

With all of this available fodder, the debate will now swirl around WHICH cause can rightfully claim this tragedy. Would tighter gun control laws have prevented or at least reduced the body count resulting from this tragedy? Critics will point out the availability of kettle bombs and other homemade instruments of mass slaughter that could have been employed by one so inclined. Are the staunchly heterosexual normative views of Islam (and Catholicism and most fundamental branches of Christianity, for that matter) really the issue here if the attack was borne more of self-loathing than of a culturally-supported xenophobia? Would obligatory reporting and treatment of individuals exhibiting symptoms of mental health issues make us safer, or drive affected individuals to distance themselves from others who could possible lead them to voluntary treatment? Do tighter immigration policies to exclude immigration from Islamic nations have any real relevance to a crime committed by a US-born son of immigrant parents?

There will never be agreement on how this or any other attack like this could have been prevented, and it is probably true that we will never rid the world of these unthinkable tragedies. However, it is a second order failure of our humanity if we fail to acknowledge the following truths that are so apparent in the context of the Orlando carnage:

1. That our families, faith groups and broader communities must redouble our efforts to eradicate any stigma around the LGBTQ community lest we provide even a hint of social license for the acts of those inclined by malice or illness toward either antipathy to such groups or a catastrophic self-loathing;
2. That our society must remove any stigma to those seeking help with mental health challenges; and
3. That the right of private citizens to bear arms must not extend to weapons that have a disproportionate suitability to offensive applications than to any personal protection, hunting or sporting requirements.

The world will never be without troubled minds, and some of those troubled minds will inevitably be inclined toward violence. The best we can do and the least we must do is to provide no easy targets or readily accessible means of inflicting mass harm.

For our earliest ancestors, the world had to have been a bewildering and dangerous place.  Of all of the awe- and fear-inspiring phenomenon that they witnessed, there must have been few that exceeded the fiery maelstrom that followed a lightning strike upon a tinder dry African savannah.  The majesty of the seemingly random violence of this natural force would have been both frightening and exhilarating to our primitive forbearers.

As we know, our ancestors’ natural awe and fear were in time overcome by ingenuity, and flints replaced lightning in fire pits lined with rock to contain this seemingly magical force.  The transformation of the arc of our species was dramatic.  A broad range of foods were rendered palatable and digestible through cooking with fire.  Tools of industry and weapons of conquest were forged in flame from iron and later steel.  Through fire, water was turned to steam to power locomotion before further refinement of the technology gave way to the internal combustion engine and ultimately to the power of flight.  The first and most important mastery of nature that lifted homo sapiens above its fellow species was unquestionably that of fire.

Of course, the ability to harness the heat of fire was also instrumental to expanding the extent of settlement by our ancestors.  Areas with minimum temperatures too low to support the naked ape became accessible with the heat of the hearth.  And so we came upon the boreal pine forest.  Once again, our ancestors were both witnesses to and threatened by the natural phenomenon of wildfire.  However, by that time, our understanding of the phenomenon was more nuanced.  We had learned that these fires were random in timing and location, but not in purpose.  In fact, the seeds of new life for the pine forest were contained in the cones produced by the Jack pine that flourish there, which can only be freed from their entombment and seated into the soil by fire.

Periodic wildfire, we realized, was the critical factor in natural forest renewal, but an existential threat to frontier settlement.  Our mastery of fire included mastery of fire suppression, and the frequent necessary small fires that created new growth forests and natural firebreaks were sacrificed to the security of settlement and development.  Once again, the advancement of the species prevailed in the taming of nature.

On October 3, 2003, Roy Horn of the animal act duo Siegfried & Roy was bitten on the neck by a 7-year old tiger named Montecore.  Horn had placed his head inside of Montecore’s jaws many times before, as he had with many more tigers in his by-then 36 year career in Las Vegas.  Miraculously and fortunately, Horn was not killed but was severely injured.  Like Roy Horn, Fort McMurray, Alberta, long situate in the jaws of the tiger, was this week tragically reminded that the beast is never completely tamed.

We hear an awful lot about xenophobia these days.  It is on the rise, they say; a natural but unwelcome by-product of industrialization, globalization and growing inequality.  Unmoored from the security of local, more symbiotic communities, our natural disposition to empathy and tolerance has been supplanted by an attenuated “we-them’ view of every aspect of human interaction.  Or so the story goes.

I was pondering this depressing reality as I was shovelling off my dock at the cottage a few weeks back.  (I leave my dock in with a “bubbler” that keeps the water from freezing, but the snow must be periodically cleared from the dock to keep the dock high enough in the water to remain free of the ice).  Between the monotony of the task and the pain in my aging back, it is always best to have a pressing social issue to ponder for distraction.

It did not take much pondering/shovelling before the pain in my back necessitated a change in approach.  I am right-handed, and accordingly hold the shovel with my right hand at the top of the shovel and my left halfway down, with which I lift the load before twisting to my left to toss it aside.  It is the left side “load and twist” motion, initiated in the course of my left shot hockey and golf activities as well as shovelling, that is the culprit behind the back pain.

The solution was simple enough: shift over to shovel left handed.   And it worked; the pain eased instantly, but it was slower, more awkward and it just didn’t feel…right; which of course it wasn’t because it was…left.  As I struggled along with this “not right” solution, my pondering shifted from the perils of our increasingly xenophobic world to the interesting double meaning of the word “right”.

I had the benefit of a high school education that even in the 70s maintained a commitment to the Classics, so I have enough Latin under my belt to know the Latin words for “right” and “left” – “dextro” and “sinistra”.  As the roots of the English words “dextrous” and “sinister”, it was clear to see that Anglo-Saxons weren’t the first to associate admirable traits with the 87-92 % of the population that is right-handed and negative traits with left-handedness.  And I was also aware of the French “droite” and “gauche”, which enter English, as “adroit” and “gauche”.  Even to the French, to be right-handed was to be skillful and adept, while southpaws were unsophisticated and socially awkward.  A little independent research revealed the Old English roots of right and left:  “riht” meaning just, good, fair, proper, fitting and straight and “lyft” meaning weak and useless.

So where did my back breaking reflections take me on this?  Xenophobia is no modern invention.  Even entirely local and ethnically homogenous communities found excuses to marginalize “otherness”.  It is a tradition as old as the spoken word, and we have continued it to the present day (witness the labelling of undocumented foreigners as “aliens”, so “othered” that even the common bond of species is not conceded).  Christian-Pagan, Catholic-Protestant, Muslim- Christian, Gay-Straight, Sunni-Shia; there is no theme more recurrent in the history of social and political conflict than xenophobia.

Happily, longstanding may not mean inevitable.  The schisms that breed suspicion and enmity today are just as likely to be dismissed as laughable distinctions in the future as persecution of the left-handed would be today.  We may be naturally xenophobic, but we have an uncanny ability to replace superstition with wisdom through our lifelong capacity to learn.

Now if only I could master this “shovelling right” thing.