I learned today, (in this remarkable book), that the words economy, ecology and ecumenical all share the same Greek root, the word for ‘home’.

I find this fascinating.  Globally, it is clear that in many ways we have a fractured and broken economic system, a fragile ecology that is facing many challenges, and likewise a fracture ecumenism.

These are all related.  Economics is the way we choose to structure and order the world that we all share.  Ecology  is our effort to understand our shared environment: every life form, every eco-system, and the complex and beautiful relationships between them.  And ecumenism is our attempts to figure out how we as broken and divided members of the family of faith can live together, bless one another, and celebrate our diversity rather than cling to our divisions.

I  am convinced that as a society one of our biggest failings is our failure of imagination.  As we think about economics, the only question we seem capable of asking is ‘how can we make more stuff?‘   This is, after all, the definition of a growing economy.  The financial press is full of charts showing rates of GDP, and worrying about output and productivity and interest rates and bond defaults.   What if, instead, we chose to ask ourselves ‘how can we build a healthy and sustainable world, with freedom, peace and opportunity for all?’

Then we’d really have to start looking at our ecology, our economy, and our ecumenism.  Because we all share this oikos, this house, this world.

I listened this evening to part of CBC’s story about the $18 billion dollar judgement for pollution in Ecuador that Chevron is still fighting.

As a representative of the indigenous Ecuadorans discussed the lack of environmental controls in place at the time, and the huge legal challenges that they had had to go through to even get the case heard, it struck me that perhaps one of our problems is that we forget that corporations are people.

Not in the sense of Corporate Personhood, but that every enterprise, organisation, business or corporation is made up of individual human beings.  ‘Chevron’ may be refusing to take responsibility for the ecological disaster it has created, but this is merely the aggregate behavior of a group of individual employees.  Forty years ago real, living, breathing people decided that an Ecuador drilling operation didn’t need the same environmental safeguards that would be required in North America.  Today, real, living, breathing human beings will get up, eat breakfast, and then go to work on drafting legal arguments explaining why no further effort needs to be made to clean up the mess created by the dumping of 18 billion gallons of oil-contaminated water.

The ‘limited liability’ nature of the modern corporation may well legally protect shareholders and executives from unlimited prosecution, but it cannot protect them morally from culpability for their actions.

Rather than just talk about Chevron, or any number of other ethically-challenged corporations, perhaps we should talk about the real human beings who made and are still making the decision to treat the lives and livelihoods of those around them with contempt.

Utterly fascinating article:

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/04/peak-intel-how-so-called-strategic-intelligence-actually-makes-us-dumber/255413/

Now this is fascinating.

Thanks to wikileaks, it is now possible to compare versions of some U.S. government documents that have been released under Freedom of Information Act requests, but in redacted form, with the actual raw documents themselves.  Thus we can have an insight not only into the material the documents cover, but also what topics the government censors feel must be withheld.

http://www.aclu.org/wikileaks-diplomatic-cables-foia-documents

In software development, one of the most frequently used tools is something we call diff.   A diff tool compares two versions of a text file, typically a design document or a the source code for a program, and highlights the changes between them.  For the programmer, this is a useful tool to see what has changed between versions, to see if any errors have crept into the source, to see what modifications other team members may have made to the file, and to see how the code has evolved over time.

I have a feeling that in the future this technology will become more prevalent in the legal and governmental world.   It will be possible to track all the changes on a government bill as it proceeds through the legislative process.  Any attempt by a politician to make significant changes shortly before the bill is passed will become very obvious.  In fact I hope that with the rise of this kind of tool, along with collaborative websites along the lines of Wikipedia, the Canadian population can become much more involved in understanding, reviewing and  contributing to the legislative process.

This evening I had the privilege of attending a General Assembly for Occupy Barrie.

Much of the media attention for the Occupy movement has focused on public protests and the aggressive way that some jurisdictions have responded.

However to me the most interesting aspect of this movement is its decision making process, which centres on the idea of consensus.  For someone used to board rooms, or company meetings, or parliamentary votes, this process must appear slow, unfocused and repetitive.  There is no ‘show of hands’, no chairman, no binding rulings.  Any individual can speak, and everyone is listened too.  A few basic mechanisms exist to ensure order, and a set of hand singles are used to indicate points of order, agreement or disagreement, and speakers running over their allotted time.

It became very clear this evening that ‘efficiency’ and ‘consensus’ are two very different goals.  This is not the way to quickly and decisively take action.  But I suspect that that is not the point.  I have a feeling that if the Occupy movement has any lasting legacy, it may well be that it introduces an entire generation to this alternative method for making group decisions.

Nearly all the problems we face as a society today are problems of abundance.

Over the millennia, as a species we have become very skilled at dealing with scarcity.  Our ancestors often lived on the edge of survival.  They were one long winter, or one disease outbreak, or one failed harvest away from devastation.

And we have responded to these challenges by producing more.  We grow more crops, we mine more coal, we extract more oil, we build more cars.  But very soon our society will have to answer the question: how much is enough?

Unemployment is seen as an under-supply of jobs.  But an equally valid way of looking at it is as an over-supply of labour.  A society with unemployed members is a society that, as a whole, feels that it is using sufficient labour, and has no need for the efforts of some of its members.

Obesity, heart disease, diabetes and some cancers are also problems of abundance. A hunter gatherer society expends nearly every calorie it ingests in search of the next one.  But now we’ve figured out how to mass-produce calories.   Many of the health threats facing the developed and developing world are not due to lack of food, but to an over-abundance sugars, alcohol and tobacco.

Pollution, likewise is a by product of the increased ability of our society to make stuff.  Everything that we dig out of the ground, or make in our factories, has to one day find its way to the landfill or other resting place.

So how much is enough?  Is it possible for a society to say “we have enough, we do not need to increase production?”  Is it possible for an individual to say “I have enough, I do not need to acquire more?”  Can a society see its over-supply of labour as an opportunity, not a problem?

I don’t have the answers to these questions yet.

The title of today’s question may be a bit of a mouthful, perhaps that reflects my lack of answers on this one.

The lead headline on BBC news today was Mahmoud Abbas presenting Palestine’s bid for statehood to the U.N.

The ongoing Israeli-Palestine conflict is obviously one of the defining long term geo-political issues of this age.  In an attempt to understand today’s U.N. address, I spent some time reading up on the last few decades of the history of Palestine.  If we are to understand today Abbas’ call to recognize a state with pre-1967 borders, we need to understand the Six Day War of 1967.  To understand the events that led to war we need to understand the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and so on.

I can’t claim that I’ve even begun to understand the complexities of the religious, ethnic and political tensions in the area, but I do realize one thing.  Many people feel that they or their ancestors have been wronged, and that justice requires redress for these past wrongs.  In this particular case, the PLO wants the return of territory lost during the Six Day War.

If we accepted as a principal that territory seized by one country from another should be returned, then how universally could we apply this?  And for how long?  Should Karelia be returned to Finland from Russia?  Should Libya be returned to Turkey?  Or possibly to Italy?  Should Quebec be returned to France?  Should Ontario be returned to the Iroquois?  Or maybe to the Algonquin?

Ultimately, when faced with such questions we realise that huge swathes of the Earth have been fought over, won, lost, occupied, colonialised, and traded.  And there are probably few people groups that cannot lay claim to some past injustice.

So should we try to redress these past wrongs?  Or should we abandon all striving for justice?  Or is there another way, perhaps that acknowledges what has happened in the past and at the same time works hopefully towards a better future for all?

image courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/gideon/

Another tricky one today.  One time when I entered Canada I was asked whether I had ‘ever been affiliated with an organization that used violence to achieve political goals.’

I was very tempted to say ‘yes, I’m a British Citizen.’

I doubt that an immigration desk is the right place to have a detailed philosophical discussion about if and when it is acceptable to use violence to further political aims.  A border agent probably isn’t that interested in debating Just War theory, or pacifism, or the culpability of the citizen for the actions of the state, or Weber’s idea’s of the Monopoly on Violence.

However, this blog is exactly the right place to have that discussion.

So, when is it justifiable for one group to kill people for political reasons?  Karl van Clausewitz said that “War is the continuation of policy by other means”, and then spent 10 (surprisingly readable) volumes discussing the best ways of conducting war.  But he only considered the actions of nation-states.  In today’s world we have national armies, but also private security outfits, militant groups, and indeed lone individuals, all of whom have both political goals and the ability and motivation to harm others in order to achieve them.

Even categorizing these groups presents difficulties.  In Iraq, anti-government forces tend to be known as ‘insurgents.’  In Libya, anti-government forces are referred to as ‘rebels.’  Members of the African National Congress, such as Nelson Mandela, were referred to variously as revolutionaries, militants, freedom fighters and terrorists.  Even the language that we use carries a heavy weight of implied judgement, making it hard to objectively consider when and where violence may be justifiable.

So, is it acceptable for one nation to invade another to acquire resources, or perhaps in pre-emptive defence?  Is it OK to bomb or shoot a corrupt dictator?  If so, must the killer be part of an organized national army, or a distinct political group, or does the rightness of the cause permit a lone actor to take matters into their own hands?  What about the use of violence against citizens, or ideological groups, or criminals?

And if we can answer these questions, can we then mold them into a cohesive theory that applies both to the actions of the state but also to the responsibilities of the individual?

Today I will go to work, and some of the tax I pay on my income will be directed towards the Canadian armed forces.  As a direct result of my labors, bombs have been built, guns have been loaded, and ultimately, on the other side of the world, people I’ve never met have been killed.

How do we respond to this?  Is it possible, as a society, to agree on the place and limitations of political aggression?   And can we do so in a way that acknowledges and cherishes the fundamental value of each human life?

I was listening in the car today to a CBC phone-in discussing the election.  One caller made the following point, which I found very telling:

“I took the CBC Political compass, and came up as Green. I like the Green platform, I agree with the Green party’s policies.  But I could never vote for them because it I can’t take the risk of voting for a third party and letting the Conservatives win.”

This represents to me one of the big misunderstandings of our political process.   We need to remind ourselves that we do not vote for parties, we vote for people. We are not electing a prime minister, or a party, but a LOCAL representative.

Driving through the city I see lots of boards with peoples names on it. So I know that Patrick Brown is ‘blue’, Colin Wilson is ‘red’, Myrna Clark  is ‘orange’ and so on, and I find myself wondering whether a person’s character can really be summed up by a an HTML colour code.   Is Patrick Brown more interesting than #00008B Dark Blue? Surely Colin’s family knows that he has more depth of character than #FF0000 Red?

We elect people, not parties. As I’ve said before, and will say again, what matters is the competence and integrity of the individual. I don’t know how I’ll vote yet on may 2nd, but I do know that I’ll make my decision based on my best assessment of the character and abilities of the candidates, not the color of their signs. Anything less is to ignore the humanity of both the candidates and the people they represent.

The first, and so far only, election flyer that I’ve received is from Colin Wilson.  It highlights Liberal values, such as “investing in programs that continue to reduce the crime rate, rather than building new prisons”, which I found a welcome contrast to Brown’s ‘tough on crime‘ stance.  It also included an invitation to “drop by the office to have a chat with Collin”, so that’s exactly what I did.

My impression?  So far, top marks for Colin and his team.  Despite having to prepare for a debate this evening, Colin graciously took the time to meet me and answer some of my questions.   As I’ve said repeatedly, competence and integrity are two values that are critical for any political candidate.  Colin mentioned to me both his 12 years of experience managing project teams in the private sector and his 10 years working in government.   He can certainly reasonably claim the experience and competence to be an effective MP.

Colin also has a desire to bring high-tech and green jobs to Barrie.  The city certainly needs a concerted effort in this area, and it will be interesting to see what definitive proposals are developed to help the city continue it’s transition from an industrial to a knowledge-based economy.

As the Barrie Examiner pointed out last week, running an election campaign can be an expensive  process, but so far it seems that it’s a challenge that Colin and his team are tackling with gusto.

If you want a chance to hear and meet the candidates, the next debate is on the 14th at Barrie City Hall.  Democracy only works if the electorate engages actively, so come and let your voice be heard.