Tag: social comment

St. Andrew’s Day

Today is St. Andrew’s Day.  For those of you who suffer under the handicap of not being Scottish this is Scotland’s national day.  Basically, it’s St. Patrick’s Day with more booze and less brag.  The Scots are a hardy northern people known for thrift and ingenuity.  Whereas it can be said that the Irish built America, it’s not as widely known that the Scots already owned the place when Paddy and Liam got off the boat.  That’s the gist of it, really.  Although the Scots basically shaped our modern world, they don’t get much credit for it – simply because they are who they are.  So just who are these Scottish people?

The Scots obviously come from Scotland, a windy, cold, rainy pile of rocks, stuck out in the North Sea.  Since nothing grows in that harsh environment, the economy, from the dawn of time, has been based on theft.  Any agriculture that ever did exist is an odd combination of barley, oats, sheep and large stones.  The barley was grown for whiskey, a number one Scottish priority.  The oats was for porridge, which in Scotland, even today, is eaten with a knife and fork.  The sheep were raised for wool, woven into the Scottish national dress (which actually is one) and the stones were provided by God to throw at the English.  That’s about it for agriculture except for Scottish cattle — which are strange, squat, hairy and orange.

Geographically, Scotland is divided into the Highlands and the Lowlands.  The only noticeable difference between the two is the Lowlands have less wind and the Highlands have more rocks.

Politically, the Scots, since the time of the Picts, have separated themselves into clans.  In other words, they are a clannish people, wary and suspicious.  For most of Scotland’s history, individual clans fought each other in ruthless battles for possession of their worthless stony soil.  However, on occasion, the clans would forget their petty squabbling, join together and rise as one man to get beaten up by the English.  This happened with such frequency that finally in 1603, the Scottish King James VI reluctantly agreed to be England’s king, as well — probably just to keep peace on the island.

For recreation, the Scots enjoy all sports that allow time for smoking and drinking.  These include golf (a good walk spoiled) curling, darts and snooker.  However, when pressed, the Scots play rugby, a primitive form of American football where the object of the game seems to be murder.  They also play soccer, that dull game that yuppies watch every four years, and something called hurling (which is nothing like it sounds.)  The strangest of the Scottish sports, however, is the caber toss, which can only be described as bulky men throwing telephone poles at each other.  Curiously enough, this game has nothing to do with Alexander Graham Bell, the Scotsman who invented the telephone.

Over the years, the Scots have made major contributions to the evolution of Western society.  In prêt a porter fashion, they’ve given us plaid — a severe, regimented, itchy woollen, best suited to private girls’ school uniforms and ugly sofas.  In the world of cuisine, they are the masters of the haggis, a sheep’s stomach stuffed with oats and an assortment of other evil ingredients that normal people throw away.  This mess is boiled until everybody loses interest, securely stored until it rots, and served on high holidays.  Musically, their instrument of choice is the bagpipes (which have been called the missing link between sound and noise.)  The pipes, as they are affectionately called, are normally played outside because their cacophony can fill an auditorium and people have been known to leave just to make room for them.  Unfortunately, in the realm of the arts, Scotland’s greatest poet, Robbie Burns, has never been translated into English.  Even his best known work, Auld Lang Syne, is only trotted out on New Year’s Eve because nobody has a clue what it means.  Of course, the Scots’ greatest contribution to the modern world is Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations.  This long-winded dissertation is said to be the first modern work of tedious prose.  Although it is referred to with stunning regularity, no living human being has read it cover to cover, and most contemporary economists would just as soon read the Glasgow phone book.  In essence, Smith’s message can be summed up in two heavily accented sentences (Try it!) “It’s every man for himself, pal.  You’re on your own.”

These days, the Scots are easily overlooked in the family of nations because they speak a language only they understand.  Linguistically, it is related to English, Scots Gaelic and gibberish and has a close sliding scale connect with Scotch whiskey: more whiskey, less English.  As contemporary philosopher, Robin Williams observed, the Scots are the only people in the world who answer questions with the intonation of another question.

Despite all these disadvantages, the Scots have a lot to be proud of.  This is embodied in their national symbol, the thistle, a tenacious prickly weed that can survive anywhere on the planet.  And there is no place on this planet where Scotsmen and women haven’t gone.  They left their country in droves.  Who wouldn’t?

So today, St Andrew’s Day, as you go about your business (just like you didn’t on St. Patrick’s Day) remember the Scots have a day, too, and a fine tradition.  It stretches across time from James Watt, James Chalmers and James Dewar, to John Shepard Barron, Billy Connolly and Craig Ferguson.  And above all else, remember: Sean Connery, a Scotsman, is still the best James Bond.

Oh! And, by the way, I’m first generation Scots.  You can knock your own gang!

Merely the Facts are Missing

It’s now blatantly obvious that the majority of contemporary North American were raised by wolves.  I have nothing against wolves per se or their interspecies parenting skills (they did a decent job with Romulus and Remus) but their grasp of the complex social, economic and political structures of the 21st century is limited.  As cultural teachers, Canus lupus is not your ideal choice — unless you’re another wolf.  I’m not saying that everybody is walking around Darwin Award stupid, but there is now a noticeable understanding gap in our society, and like the financial equity gap, it’s widening.  Here are a couple of examples.

As the protest season comes to a halt, right on schedule, due to inclement weather, and the Occupy Whatever! Movement goes into hibernation until the sunny summer returns, there are still people around who believe those donuts were a positive force for change.  They’ve been favourably compared to Nelson Mandela and Mohandas Gandhi.  As the risk of sugar coating it, that’s crap.  The Occupy Whatever! Movement hasn’t done a thing but prove that our society is so wealthy we can afford to have some people make a career out of being a pain in the ass.  Their only achievement was to inconvenience the very people they claimed to represent.  Their only accomplishment was to force our cities to spend a lot of extra dollars that should have been used someplace else.  And their only legacy is that money is gone.  However, there’s a ton of rhetoric out there that says the exact opposite.  The apologists maintain the Occupiers were noble crusaders, keeping the beacons of freedom burning in a time of darkness.  Go figure!  The only thing I see changed is a lot of trampled grass and an extra couple of tons of garbage headed to the landfill.

Meanwhile, in another part of the crisis, our collective debt is climbing.  We owe so much money even King Midas is worried.  Yet, as our ability to pay for our wastrel ways steadily declines, a whole segment of our society wants to borrow even more money.  I’m not an economist, but it strikes me that when you’ve just gotten the foreclosure notice from Standard and Poor, the last thing you want to do is buy recreational property on the No Money Down plan.  It’s a good thing the American government doesn’t know there’s a number after trillion, or they’d be funding billion dollar programs to find out what it is.

Apparently, a whole pile of people have never had a household budget.  They seem to think that money, although it doesn’t grow on trees, comes from a magical pot of gold at the end of the rainbow or something.  They simply don’t understand that debt works the same for everybody: you have to pay it back!  Nobody — not you, nor I, nor the US government, nor even Sauron’s evil land of Mordor can borrow itself out of debt.  It’s fiscally impossible but there are still people around recommending it.

These are just two examples of how people simply don’t understand how the world works.  There are hundreds more.  And the real problem is this isn’t a distortion of the facts; it’s a dismissal of them.  We have now traveled beyond the realm of spin doctors shaping the facts to suit their argument.  These days, facts don’t even matter.  People are jumping on the bandwagon of outrageous nonsense and acting as though it deserves serious consideration.  Then, when confronted with overwhelming evidence to the contrary, they simply disagree.

It’s absurd, but it’s true.

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.