Category: Social Media

Open Your Eyes Before You Open Your Mouth

I grow weary of constantly being told how screwed up my world is.  I realize it’s a long way from this place to Nirvana, but by the same token, this isn’t the worst of all possible venues west of Lucifer’s back porch.  In all truth, we live in a kind of run-down suburb of Disneyland, where most of life’s rougher edges are smoothed over.  I had a friend once who said, “If you want reality, go to Biafra.”  Biafra isn’t in the headlines anymore; the updated version is Somalia.  That’s where the real world lives.  What you see out your front window is a man made amusement park, put there for your comfort and entertainment.  Personally, I don’t mind people complaining, but there is a limit.  There’s a lot of stuff around here that I like, and I don’t appreciate every jerk with an attitude calling it down.  I’m not talking about the sentimental slobber promoted by nitwits and Playmates of the Month – rainbows, hugs, hoarfrost on kittens.  I’m talking about the stuff that says my world is made of sterner material than what reality has to offer; the stuff that’s always out there but nobody mentions; the things I like about the world as I know it.

I like libraries.  I think they’re cool.  I can walk in, take a book (any book) off the shelf, sit in a warm, semi-comfortable chair and read it.  And if that isn’t good enough for me, I can take that book home.  All the library wants is my word that I’ll bring it back.  I don’t even have to leave a deposit.  They trust me.  The only requirement is — I want to.  And it’s free.  It’s part of what I get just because I live here.

I like buses, too.  In my city, for $2.50, I get a vehicle and a driver, who will take me within two or three blocks of anywhere I want to go, anytime I want to go there.  I don’t have to ask or even show up on time.  Those buses regularly travel around my town just on the off chance that I might want to go somewhere — and that’s 365 days a year.

I like grocery stores, too — big ones, small ones, all around the town ones.  I’m never more than a kilometre away from food.   It’s not just any food either; it’s all kinds of food.  It’s food from all over the world in what looks like nearly infinite varieties.  If I want to, I can buy vegetables with names I can’t even pronounce.  I can buy food that other people have already cooked for me.  In some places, I can buy fish so fresh it’s still alive when I buy it.  I’ve never been to a grocery store that doesn’t have some kinda crap you don’t even need like pickles and parsley.  They’re a garnish, for God’s sake, and we still have tons of it.  And here’s what I like the most about grocery stores – they never run out.

I like the cops.  Yeah, yeah, yeah, they’re always showing up after the fact, and there are quite a few nasty ones out there, but so what?  I like being a mere three digits away from specially trained people whose sole purpose on earth is to keep me from getting my ass kicked or run over by a drunk.  I might not see a cop from one week to the next — or until I blow through some red light — but they’re around.  They’re like spare tires; you never have to think of them until you need one.  Yet, it’s their very presence that guarantees I don’t have to worry that much about involuntarily donating money to every crack addict with a kitchen knife – in my backyard.

I like space.  One of the neatest things my world has to offer is space.  I’m not talking about the great outdoor wilderness somewhere north of Rubberboot, Alberta.  I’m talking about urban space that makes certain I’m not haunch to paunch with my fellow citizens every minute of every day.  On some of the busiest streets in my city, there are benches; places to stop, sit down, take three deep ones and look at the world.   As long as I don’t bother anybody I can sit there as long as I like.  Or if I don’t like traffic, I have parks – lots of them — green spaces where somebody else cuts the lawn, trims the bushes and plants the flowers — just so I can look at them.

But the best thing I like about my world is, it’s not every man for himself.  I’m not on my own against the world.  I literally have armies of people who want to help me — all the way from the kid under the information sign, who gives me directions to the surgeon who could perform open heart surgery to save my life — if I need it.  It might take a while; it might be so frustrating I could scream, and I might not get the exact result I sincerely hoped for, but at the end of the day, if I’ve got a problem, my world is willing to help me.  All I have to do is ask and meet it halfway.  If this is a dog eat dog existence, my world is one dog short.

There are a lot of things wrong with the world we live in, a lot of inequities, a lot of solvable problems, but there is definitely an upper end to what we have to complain about.  We need to complain, long and loud.  It seems to be the only way we can get things done anymore.  I’m just saying, we need to open our eyes a little bit wider before we do it.

Earl Beatty Has No Balls

(Sorry for the title.  I know it’s cheap but I couldn’t resist.)

For the 6,994,000,000 or so people in the world who are blissfully unaware that Toronto, Canada is the centre of the universe, a public school there, one Earl Beatty Junior and Senior, has banned balls.  You can read about it here.  This has caused some controversy and an immediate reaction from conservative parents in the district.  At a time when there is increasing pressure from activist groups to derail progressive policies, we need to set the record straight with a few facts.

First of all, the school did not ban all balls.  They merely directed parents to be aware that all “hard” balls (up to and including but not limited to) footballs, soccer balls, baseballs, basketballs, volleyballs and probably bowling balls would be confiscated if students brought them to school.    Balls made out of sponge, or nerf material would still be perfectly acceptable and students would be encouraged to enjoy them during supervised recreation.

Secondly, although an outright ban on balls might seem heavy-headed, the school’s reaction was the direct result of a ball-related injury which required hospitalization.  Luckily, it was a parent coming to pick up her child who was injured, not a student.  However, in light of this single event, the school immediately took a proactive approach to prevent any innocent child from getting a noggin floggin’ in the future.

Thirdly, we need to remember that a ball in the hands (or feet) of a child can lead to a potentially dangerous situation.  They may kick or throw it!  Young people have not yet developed the cognitive, judgemental or motor skills to properly handle a ball.  Make no mistake: without the proper skills, balls are missiles, capable of causing great harm – a quick review of America’s Funniest Home Videos is documented proof of this.

Fourthly, overwhelming medical evidence proves a direct link between the use of balls by children and injury.  A study conducted by the American Academy of Pediatrics in 1994 (this is real, by the way) found that between 2 and 8% of all children who play Little League Baseball suffer some kind of injury.  Although there are no hard statistics to show the severity of these injuries, or whether or not they occurred as an immediate result of contact with a ball, they all happened in a ball environment.  We cannot dismiss these findings as natural or “part of growing up.”  It’s obvious that if these children had not been playing Little League Baseball, they would not have come to grievous bodily harm.

Let’s be clear: the banning of balls at Earl Beatty Junior and Senior is a progressive step which could lead to a number of positive outcomes.   It’s a known fact that children left unattended with a ball will attempt to play a game.  Group games, as we know, are detrimental to a child’s emotional growth.  They create “winners” and “losers” a concept which can irreparably damage a child’s self esteem.  It is far better to engage young people in activities that focus on individual skill development and provide positive reinforcement than rank their performance on an artificial scale.

Furthermore, we know that most games played with a ball in North America are Eurocentric (soccer, baseball, basketball etc.) forced on the rest of the world during the colonial and neocolonial periods.   By eliminating the symbol of oppression, the ball, we allow our children to experience the true diversity of our society at the most primal level — play.  Our children are free to explore, without being constrained by a narrow European model.  In our changing society, stressing our diversity is very important.

In a much wider sense, the Earl Beatty ban on balls — if viewed in an open, unbiased manner — could result in a district-wide ban, or even a city-wide ban.  This would encourage our entire nation to open a dialogue on the role of balls in our society.  Perhaps, this could eventually lead to a national “hard” ball registry.  We could then control the indiscriminate use of balls and limit their impact to those who would play with them responsibly.

The future is bright, my friends.  We can change our world and make it a safer place for our children.

However, there are some in our society who don’t want change.  They wish to turn the clock back to a darker time when balls created fear in the youngest and most vulnerable among us.  Against those people, we must stand firm.  We must send a strong message that hope is better than fear.  We must tell them that when any child is put at risk, that is not acceptable.  When it is within our power to spare any child needless pain and suffering, we are morally obligated to do it.  Children are our future.  They are our most precious natural resource.

You Don’t Have Any “Rights”

There’s been a lot of talk recently about rights.  Just who has rights?  What are they?  Why are some people being physically restrained from exercising their rights while others seem to have the right to rob us at every corner?   It doesn’t matter which side of the heated discussion you’re on; you probably see the other folks claiming rights they aren’t entitled to while simultaneously trampling all over yours.  This is a natural phenomenon when you deal in “them” and “us.”  However, let me let you in on a big secret. You’d better sit down because this is going to blow your bonnet off.  You have no rights.  None, zip, bupkis — and I’m not just playing with semantics here.  It’s an absolute, etched in stone, shout-it-from-the-rooftops fact.  And while we’re at it, you don’t have any privileges either; that’s just a word people use when they’re pissed off at dissidents.   As in: “Freedom of speech is not a right; it’s a privilege.”  Load-a-crap is what it is.  The only reason we can say what we like about Barack Obama (or anybody else for that matter) is that our society has a bunch of heavily armed young people who say we can.  But before you think you’ve landed in Hyperbole Heaven and gear up to take a run at the appalling “police state” tyranny we supposedly suffer under, that’s not what I’m talking about.  In fact, the quote/unquote police state everyone is so fond of invoking is one of the institutions that allows us to practice those things we mistakenly call rights.

Here’s the truth; like it or not.  Those things we call rights are nothing more than an ad hoc collection of laws that haven’t even been agreed on yet.  They are not inalienable, and they are certainly not universal.  How do I know this?  It’s quite simple.  In our society, two hundred years ago, I had the “right” to wander down to the local slave market and buy another human being to help me do the dishes.  I owned that person: they were my property.  Not only that but a hundred years ago, not one female in North America had the “right” to vote.  Actually, in my country, it wasn’t until 1929 that women were even considered “persons” under the law.  Historically speaking, there are tons of examples just exactly like this — temporary habits mistaken for universal rights and privileges.  Yes, those were “a relic of days more barbarous than ours”* but so is every moment of history before this morning.  Nobody is going to convince me that, in a mere 5,000 years or so of written history, we have reached the pinnacle of human achievement and awareness.  Nor, that in 2011, we finally understand the human condition so thoroughly that we can now pronounce what our rights should and always will be.  That’s just 21st century arrogance.  Honestly, if this is the peak, we are in trouble!  So all those rights everybody keeps yipping about are simply temporary accommodations that may (or may not) change, depending on the circumstances.

These days, we’re spending so much time demanding our nonexistent rights that we’re forgetting how we got them in the first place.  Our society is based on a very few generally accepted principles, guaranteed by the generosity of a whole lot of strangers.  For example, we, as a group, believe you, as an individual, have the “right” to worship your neighbour’s cat if you so choose.  We are willing to make contributions (in fact or in kind) not to you directly, but to the group as a whole in support of that “right.”  Also, we are willing — on occasion — to forego some of our own freedoms to ensure you have that “right.”  This is because it doesn’t belong to you; it belongs to all of us.

However, this guaranteeing generosity is not an infinite commodity, nor is it eternal.  It breaks down quite easily and with surprising regularity.  In times of crisis, it disappears entirely.  And as we have seen throughout history, once it’s gone, it’s very difficult to get back.  Depending on the kindness of strangers only
works as long as the strangers are kind: just ask Blanche Dubois.  Therefore, the only way we can maintain a continuity of liberty to think, speak and act as we please is to maintain the society which nurtures that liberty.

Without the institutions to back them up, our much heralded rights are just an illusion.  Until we understand that, all we’re doing is jacking our jaw or playing
around discussing how many rights can dance on the head of a pin.

*British Privy Council October 18th, 1929