DOGMA AND PREJUDICE

These are very interesting times.

I just read an article in the online media that those with socially conservative views are disproportionately (though not always) less intelligent than others that do not hold these views. I would assume this group would also fall under the same types of people that believe everything candidates like Stephen Harper feed to them about how tax cuts create jobs, and how we have to keep bowing to the corporate gods, or we will be hit with financial disaster. I didn't buy it then, nor do I buy it now, but then again, I have a higher level of tested intelligence than average.

The actual article raised a level of consternation in the many communities I published it in today, likely for good reason. People who swallow the corporate line, or buy into Christian fundamentalism, don't like to be told they are stupid. They are not stupid, in my view, but the issue of integrative complexity was well known even when I was in university many years ago. At that time, many published studies found a higher level of integrative complexity among those who did not hold extreme views, both on the left or the right, as well as those that were able to acquire critical thinking.

It is unfortunate that most of the politicians elected these days do not appear to have a high level of either integrative complexity or critical thinking skills, especially if the believe the bile they spew out at the voters during elections. It is either that, or they know the largest common denominator of the general public is less educated and they can hire media spin artists to make people believe what they want them to believe. I have a business education, as well as other disciplines, and in one of my year one courses, the professor told us that corporate tax cuts do not lead to more jobs. This professor was an economist, specializing in behavioural economics and fiscal policy. He taught me both micro-economics and macro-economics, as well as a course in how economics impacts on public policy.

I also don't believe anything the fundamentalists try to shove down our throats either, where they want to mix their own personal religious and moral beliefs with the policies of those governing us. We seen what happened when the Women's Christian Temperance Union pushed for and successfully passed prohibition during the 20's and 30's. All this did was create a very large underground and mob-financed network of booze cans and other illicit gathering places for alcohol consumption. One can argue that the main reasons for its success was because they also supported the women's suffragette movement, also supported by other groups.

To me, these people are the same individuals who believe that somehow testing applicants for welfare for drug use is an effective tool to prevent fraud. While many places have implemented this policy, it was found to be an expensive, cumbersome program that yielded few positive results. These people are stingy when it comes to giving people enough to live on and remain healthy, but will spend unknown millions on tests that might result in the denial of benefits to less than 2% of those tested, while at the same time feeding into more misguided public hysteria that the amount of welfare fraud is actually much more than it really is. My suggestion is to test the politicians first, then test everybody else. In fact that was a proposed amendment to another state's provisions to do just that, and bingo, the bill was withdrawn.

Many of these politicians, many of them with limited critical thinking skills, and many born and raised with a silver spoon in their mouth, understand very little about how their laws will impact people on the ground. They talk so much about getting "government" out of the face of the population, yet this right seems to exclude a portion of it: the poor. I tend to be a follower of the categorical imperative, in place by theorists like John Rawls and Immanuel Kant. The categorical imperative, in short, means that if you are going to make a rule, it must have universal application upon both the ruled and those making the rules. Rawls would argue that one making the rules should, in preference, not be aware of their social position or level of power, once the rule was made and passed. The person would not know if they were a king, a peasant, a merchant or a working class person, and as such, would ensure that such a rule would be fair, as it could very well apply to them too. It was the universality of a rule that would place lawmakers at a vulnerable position they only wished to impose on "outsiders", that caused them to withdraw that legislation. The issue here is most social conservative rulers tend to believe these issues do not count for themselves, as they see themselves as being morally superior to others.

At the same time, persons such as myself, neither a ruler or a naive person, can get very irritated and despise getting lied to. During the election campaign, I pretty well let one of the representatives of one of the mainstream parties "have it" when they parroted a clause in their campaign book that if their party got elected to power, they would allow the higher earner of a family to write off up to $50,000 of their income to the lower earning partner, to reduce the total family tax bill. Not only is this an expensive proposition, but it also assumes those that will listen even HAVE $50,000 or more in annual income. I discussed this with people on a Tim Horton trek, which is defined as meeting people at coffee shops, cafes and other low budget eateries to ask them what they thought of this concept. Almost all of them said they did not even earn a total HOUSEHOLD income of $50,000 and they questioned who will actually benefit from a measure like this? According to economist, David McDonald, those individuals earning $100,000 a year or more would benefit the most. My questions upon reading reports on this particular proposal was, where are the $100,000 jobs? Most of the jobs around here pay next to nothing.

The same people proposing this income splitting exercise also push the idea of one parent, usually the women with this particular Christian sect, to stay home and raise the kids, while the man works and brings home the money. Even in situations where a husband actually earns that much, it still isn't right for the woman, as her marriage to him is not guaranteed, his health and his future employment may not be guaranteed and who is to say what will happen if he got hit by a Mack truck the next day? How will she continue to financially keep her family together? Not only is that type of set up scarce as hen's teeth, but it is certainly bad for the female half of the family, should disaster strike. One might argue against divorce, that it is against Biblical principals and so forth, but to me, so what? How does that decrease the divorce rate? How does that decrease spousal and domestic abuse? How does that decrease the chances that the sole earner becomes disabled or absent from the family due to reasons outside of his control?

The problem with Christian fundamentalism is that it is not practical, not realistic and if it were policy, it would be very expensive, if not difficult to enforce. Those espousing these philosophies do not see any difficulty enforcing it, or even want to consider the costs of the same, even as they might consider themselves "fiscal conservatives" as well. To me, this is just hypocrisy at its best, and its precepts only benefit the most powerful people of society.

This is the same about the question of abortion. Many people reading this are horrified by the idea of abortion. They listen to the "right to life" and evangelical types carry on about how women should not be permitted to have an abortion, yet their own precepts if you believe Thomas Aquinas that stated that a fetus was not a "person" until it was ensouled, which meant that life in Aquinas' vision started at some point well after conception. Certainly, the Catholics and other fundamentalist Christians felt abortion was always wrong and sinful, but they certainly disagreed fundamentally as to when life actually began. On a practical basis, the pro-lifers do not have an answer as to how they will physically prevent women from acquiring abortions they feel they need anyways. One wonders if these same people, who believe so highly in the right to life, and for the welfare of the women involved, would recommend we return to the days of back street abortionists that ply their trade with coat hangers and Coca cola douches.

I once had a discussion with my mother who is devoutly religious in the Jehovah's Witness faith. She complained about the increasing numbers of people in our country who came from abroad and have learned different customs, practices and ideas, and want to continue to practice them here. She is one of those people who think if you come to Canada, you do everything the rest of us do. Unfortunately, if this was taken literally, we would not allow Muslims to practice their faith, wear their head coverings, or take part in their Friday prayers. Doing this is "not Canadian". So, is it okay for somebody like my own family members to tell somebody else who feels and believes as much in their own religion and culture as she does hers, that they should not be able to practice it once they cross our borders? The shoe can easily be on the other foot, and she as a Jehovah's Witness is familiar with the history of persecution against her own religion. These acts took place in Canada, and in other countries, they were even more extreme, and sometimes people of this faith were put to death. In the Holocaust, they were also a group of people targeted for round up for the death camps. Of course, this is NOT okay ... so why is it okay to attack people of OTHER religious faiths? As we speak, there is a growing animus in North America and Great Britain against Muslims, both within and outside their faith. This is no more right than the prior attacks on persons of Jehovah's Witness faith.

As a non religious person, I sometimes feel under attack because some religious people, particularly those of more fundamental sects, believe it is wrong not to be a believer. I would not call myself an Atheist either, but I just don't have the strong "black and white" narrow integrative concepts of right and wrong. Atheists and other non believers are seen somehow as morally inept, approving of all sorts of sins and iniquities. This is certainly far from true, as most non believers are very highly moral and ethical. We just don't get fed our moral and ethical concepts at church, only to do the opposite at home.

There are other people who push for "freedom of speech" which is just a disguise for a push for their right to express, provoke and promote hateful and discriminatory behaviour towards others. They want to remove the right of human rights commissions to find certain persons guilty of promoting hateful speech, or printing it. While there are some issues with how hateful speech and expression is defined in the Canadian Human Rights Act, it needs to be revised, not repealed. Freedom of speech is a fine thing, but there are limits. One cannot print or say something damaging about another person the writer or speaker knows to be untrue. One cannot cry "fire" at the back of a crowded movie theatre. One cannot also willfully promote the hatred against any particular group. However, these people try to argue they are only saying things, not doing anything. The evidence shows that hate speech hurts.

There were a few nut bars in the 1980s, for example, that went around telling everybody, including teaching children at schools, that the Holocaust during the second world war did not happen. Along with these statements were very disparaging statements about the Jewish community itself. Does free speech include something like this, which would certainly spark very negative behaviour by some persons against members of the targeted group? Evidence of this is well known in Great Britain since persons with disabilities were removed from society's idea of being a protected class, and the number of hate crimes against persons with disabilities has been growing, along with policy makers more willing to deny benefits for them and force them into deeper poverty and deprivation. Writer Katharine Quarmby has tracked the history of hate crimes, how they evolved from words, attitudes and prejudices and then into actions against individuals with disabilities. Almost 300,000 persons with disabilities were exterminated in Nazi Germany as being "life unworthy of life", and well before Hitler's campaign against the Jews began. The public attitude towards doing this was softened through a massive propaganda campaign, not unlike what we hear about today, about how persons with disabilities aren't "contributing" to society, and how wasteful it was to allow them to have and raise children. In Great Britain, these spiteful attitudes have made it to policy makers and disability allowances have been largely discontinued for a significant portion of the population of persons with disabilities. Very few of them are moving into jobs, as policy makers had hoped, but instead are committing suicide, getting involved with other crimes and losing their housing. Many advocates in Ontario are fearing the same attitudes might be imported here.

Personally I do not like most of the conservative candidates of today, because most like to outdo one another as to how much they want to trash the poor, attack racial and religious minorities, and so forth with proposed policies. In the United States, a good watch of the Republican primaries and the debates between each of the candidates to lead the next election against the current President Barack Obama should be instructive for people who are concerned about our future. Many want creationism to be replace teaching about evolution in our schools. They want to run the country on "Christian principles" (or more accurately, THEIR own Christian principles). They want to continuously lower taxes on the wealthy and on profitable corporations, thinking somehow this will spur an economic recovery. (Newsflash - corporate and personal taxes have been declining for the past twenty years, and it doesn't look like the US is in any kind of recovery yet). Listen to their arguments with an open mind. While you may believe some of their moral principles, ask yourself whether forcing the same on a diverse population is really the best thing to do. If I were in the US, I would probably have to vote for Obama, not because I necessarily like his record, but because I want to keep something more horrible out of my life.

Unfortunately, much of the Republican type dogma has come to Canada and into Ontario, where corporate taxes have been cut without consideration of their impact on the increase of the size of our deficit over the years. Only recently we got a report that states that corporations are not using their gains to hire new people or increase investments. It's not that they ever did, as my economics professor taught me when I first started my business courses in the 80's. In fact, many of them, including Electro Motive Diesel Company, or EMD (now under Caterpillar) have locked out their workers and are taking the companies back to their headquarters. In the case of EMD, this is Indiana. EMD took a billion dollar tax cut before all of this happened, now it just wants to shed its 500 workers and move on.

There are lots of connections between prejudices, low education and a lack of forethought. I do believe if EVERYBODY sought to educate themselves about these issues, and questioned their political representatives about them, and make them answer these questions truthfully, we might just start to see more accountability and less lies being fed to us.

Your thoughts?

IS RELIGION THE OPIATE OF THE MASSES?

I am not a fan of Karl Marx, as there are many viewpoints -- some of which I shared on here -- and others I have yet to share -- that reflect my preference for a market-based economy, as opposed to a socialist one.

That does not mean I do not support viable programs of government intervention or support where the market fails to deliver or cannot meaningfully deliver in the public interest; it simply means I support people's freedoms and have a preference for promoting positive choices for themselves.

However, that being said, Marx did say something interesting about religion. Religion was thought to be the tool of the power elites to convince the masses to placate themselves about the state of being they are forced to live in. The thought of a higher power and a 'better place' is supposed to promote the so-called proletariat to consider their misery on this Earth as temporary and that after they die, they will be in a 'better place' and blessed by God.

I don't buy religion. It is not that I am against it. I just don't have a religious belief or faith to call my own. This doesn't mean that if you are being harassed or attacked because of your own religious beliefs, my firm will not fight its damnedest to ensure you maintain your right to uphold and practise your faith. I have defended various people, ranging from Muslims to Hindus to Rastafrarians to even a Jehovah's Witness. Many times, certain tenets of a person's faith gets them into trouble with their employment, their housing or even in the community. To me, we cannot have real freedoms in our society if we do not have the right to practise and express our faith.

However, that being said, I also support the separation of church and state. In countries where religion and faith dictate the law, there is no such freedom of religion. You must adhere to the state's religion or be subject to harassment and in some cases, even torture and imprisonment. To me, that is wrong. I am related to some members of the Jehovah's Witnesses, and while I am not engaged in this faith, I see the happiness this faith brings to its adherents. There are countries of the world where people of this faith were at best barred from practising and ministering this faith; many were put in prison and tortured. I read about cases where small groups of Jehovah's Witnesses would meet in people's basements to sneak in their Bible study and prayer ... and have to hide themselves from authorities that did not allow this form of religion from being practised.

I prefer a country where people can openly practise whatever religion they choose and minister to others in their community and express their faith openly. Jehovah's Witnesses have specific tenets for example in their religion that they feel strongly about. One is blood transfusions. We have heard stories in the media where members of this faith had lost custody of a child to the state where the child was then forced to endure blood transfusions, usually for treatment of some disorder or injury. These stories are often followed up by people who condemn the religion for its belief and query loudly as to why a loving parent may deny their child a "life saving" treatment. The Jehovah's Witnesses feel very strongly about this issue and in fact, have advanced medical research to the extent that would make blood transfusions in most cases unnecessary, if alternatives were explored.

In this situation, how do I feel about it? To me, to force somebody to act against their faith by forcing them to take a blood transfusion when they have made an informed decision not to is equivalent to rape. People have the right to their faith to that extent and I would back them 100% on it. This also applies to other religions as well, as many religions have dietary issues, clothing issues, as well as sacred Holy days. Fridays are the Holy Day for those of the Muslim faith. Adherents to this faith pray five times a day and this needs to be accommodated in situations of employment and study.

However, strong adherents to any religion tend to believe members of other religions are foolish or hoodwinked into having their beliefs. To me, these are beliefs. Just because I may not share these beliefs does not make them less legitimate for those that do have them. For many adherents, these beliefs are more important than other vital issues in our lives, such as having enough money or keeping certain friendships. Because there are people of many faiths in our country, we have to be tolerant and develop a barrier-free society for folks that choose to practice their religion (as long as the practice is not harming other people).

Only in a free society can people be provided with the opportunity to explore, study and make informed decisions as to what faith (or any faith) they will choose. Many faiths provide "open houses" to their religious services at certain times of the year to give members of the public an opportunity to learn about what they believe. I am fortunate that in my profession, I encounter people of a variety of faiths and many are quite pleased to share with me their customs and ideas. I learned a lot about many different faiths and hold no prejudice against any of them; in fact, there is probably more in common between the different faiths than there are differences.

However, to me it is important that faith not be part of any political or legal processes. Once this becomes the case, freedom of to have and to practise one's own religion becomes restricted and accurate information about unsupported faiths (e.g. faiths the government does not include in its political or legal processes) is difficult to find. In cases where a state religion is present, it may be next to impossible to even practice a different faith. If you find this hard to believe, try being a Christian and ministering the Bible in an Islamic country, or try to bring the Qu'aran to a strictly Jewish state and impose this view. State religions force people to hate those that are different. In some countries -- even today -- even the defence of freedom of religion is barred.

I read a very depressing article in today's Toronto Star about how China wants to present itself as a state that adheres to the "rule of law" and independence of the legal profession. In countries like our own (Canada, Great Britain and the U.S.), the legal profession is independent and the "rule of law" is intact. That means that in Canada, Great Britain, the U.S., and several other countries as well, its legal profession can challenge the laws that are passed, fight for minority interests against the state and use the legislative/judicial system to force the state to do things it might not otherwise choose to do. With an independent legal profession and judiciary, legal advocates can oppose the state on many matters and not suffer any personal harm or consequences for this act alone. An independent profession can defend the rights of a minority -- even somebody whose practises are offensive to the state -- to allow that person to engage in their practises and beliefs.

In China, there is not an independent bar. Legal professionals are trained and licensed in China, but they are expected to respect and support the practises of the Communist government. Their executive, legislative and judiciary are not independent of one another, but are fused with the interests of the state. If a lawyer in China goes on the limb on human rights cases, they can be abducted, imprisoned, tortured and disbarred -- simply for taking on the state and challenging its interests. In Canada and other western democracies, I think we take this for granted at times ... we laugh at people filing human rights complaints against the RCMP, for example, so they can be allowed to wear a turban or think an employer is playing favourites if they permit an employee to take Sundays off to participate in their Christian faith.

In places like China, this type of dialogue is not allowed. The state knows best. Minority religions, such as those of Tibet and the Falun Gong are prohibited and its practitioners are barred from practising their religion. If they choose to challenge the state by hiring a lawyer, for example, and taking the government to court - their lawyer is doing this at great personal risk to themselves. Therefore, most members of the profession would not engage in anything as controversial as pushing for such freedoms or human rights of the minority. In Pakistan, when its leader recently declared its state of emergency, it suspended the rule of law and put the Chief Justice under house arrest. The first participants to challenge this leader were members of the legal profession. When "rule of law" is suspended, so are our freedoms. So is just about every human right you take for granted and enjoy today ...

While I am not particularly a person of faith, I can understand the need for it. One of the reasons I don't get too involved in religion is because each religion presents a world view that its adherents are expected to believe. I don't believe in anything just on faith ... I have to see and understand things for myself, sometimes choosing ideas from different religions, sometimes ideas strictly from science and nature. This collage of a belief system to me is just as important as having as any particular formal belief system. Further, I have trouble with many religions as they predict some type of 'doomsday' that is supposed to come around "soon" because we all sinned and we evolved from Adam and Eve, or their equivalents in other faiths. This doomsday is the 'storming of the Bastille' so to speak, the condemnation of the money changers from the temple at a larger scale ... we are all going to go through it, so by high waters -- join whatever faith that is describing your doom to be and you will be 'saved'.

At the same time as predicting doom and gloom and thereafter, a very positive future for everybody that sustains themselves through this predicted turbulence, these same faiths prefer their adherents not to become involved politically, as some say this is attaching oneself too closely to the ways of the world and others, being more gentle, simply feel that any forward action by individuals or groups is either going to move us more quickly toward doomsday or not make a difference in our fate whatsoever. This kind of thinking has its origins, although its reasoning and promises have changed over time. During the days of the feudal state, its serfs were discouraged from uprising against the system because to change the order of things could only lead to disaster. Some of this was thought to be an extreme version of thinking from Edmund Burke on the French Revolution, but even Burke can be saved as he did not promote passive acceptance - he promoted gradual and consensual change of the order. To have the serfs rise up would not necessarily destroy the 'order' of things but would simply challenge the role of the lords and the monarchy.

Religious beliefs at the time were that people who were in the monarchy were somehow deserving of their status and were more worthy than the serfdom. The idea that a serf or a group of serfs can replace them in status and value was feared and not spoken of. Religion provided a world view for the wealthy classes that preserved a sense of order, while religion for the serfs preserved a sense of the deserving afterlife. Sure, this life sucks -- but after you are gone, things would be so much Holier for you. All religion is rooted in some form of order and the preservation of this order. It is not that order is not important to me; it is just that with the type of order this originates from, there can be no freedom.

I question everything. To me, that is only a natural thing to do. And yes, sometimes it is best that there be some form of preservation of order in place to ensure some protection and confidence of society. For example, I tend to be conservative in some of my views, which drives some people around me crazy. They can't understand how I support a regulated environment and "rule of law" with the supremacy of authority arising from competing forces of the executive, judiciary and legislature. The key word for me here is 'competing'. As each of these forces and centres of power evolve and 'dialogue' as one might mildly say, progress is initiated. We become concerned about the environment, but somehow don't want to pay the price of gas ... so somebody invents biofuels. Then we don't want to face the ultimate food crisis this may lead to, so somebody else is researching other alternatives ... so that perhaps, one day we may not be dependent on any fossil fuel for example but have a choice from a number of alternatives that through a strange form of market competition, can both keep their prices in check and protect the interests of the environment at the same time.

I look to evolution of technology and the constant conflict arising from Karl Popper's analysis of how scientific questions are asked and answered and how the answer may not necessarily be the same one next year as it is this year. All progress in this direction is based on the hypothesis, testing and replication of experimentation and keen skills of observation. I don't believe in doomsday. I believe that since the origin of human kind, there was always a crisis in the making, whether that crisis be the invention of fire (and the subsequent struggle and final success in learning how to control it), hunting and gathering of animals in the wild (and the very risk that we ourselves can become prey just the same), the discovery and conquering of many diseases (and subsequent discovery and elimination or amelioration of the same by vaccine or other means), the destruction of our environment (and the growing technology that is becoming more based on renewable resources), as well as other incidents -- which have always been unintended consequences of earlier discoveries and "cures". As humankind is imperfect, it is always going to struggle. Our struggles will only be different at one point of time to the next, where for awhile there may appear to be no solution other then pending apocalypse for the faithful (until some genius finds a new trick that will deal with the pending disaster).

However, some religious folks don't like the idea of there always being a crisis. They fear a crisis because a crisis represents the very dissolution of order that they try so hard to maintain. In the 1930's, nobody could ever imagine, for example, how almost every home in the western world is inhabited by at least one PC. Nobody really knew what a PC was or could even imagine what power and authority it could represent. Some religious folks point to the huge generation of knowledge and how it has geometrically grown in the past hundred or so years ... but these folks are only thinking from our generation. They did not think the way people did in 4 BC, for example, and try to imagine what life would be like in 1400 AD (where in fact knowledge has also geometrically increased) The invention of the printing press has opened a brand new world that never existed before that. We hear of people talk about the horrible and evil things lurking in our society and how much they claim this has not been the case before ... the fact is, it always was the case. Because time moved on from a very primitive sphere where knowledge about the outside world was very limited to a time where knowledge expanded exponentially, we become more aware of these horrible things ... and in turn, because of the increased access to communication and media devices, people with these horrible ideas are in a greater position to communicate them to others.

Even if we went back to Biblical times, there were very horrible people living back then. What about King Herod who issued a decree to kill all babies under two in the country? How about the one of two references given to birthdays in the Bible where the head of John the Baptist was offered on a plate? How about the burning of Sodom and Gomorrah? How about the folks that dared pollute the church with the engagement of the money changers? Further, Jesus was said at the time to be surrounded by prostitutes, thieves and other criminals - all living among those at the time who were more saintly. Times haven't changed much; our way of communicating information or receiving information about these issues has. I don't think human kind is going to figure out how to become less sinful and greedy; however, societal problems will all eventually be dealt with through the efforts of individuals or groups of individuals that can develop better technology or ideas. An example of this is the "discovery" and present status of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). When it was first discovered, it appeared in a cluster of gay men in a particular community and later spread to other communities, even across continents. The causes or transmission of AIDS was soon discovered and while it started out as almost always deadly and fatal within a few years at most, it has now been developed into a chronic disease that is treatable. We are on the way to finding a vaccine where it may be possible to even eliminate AIDS. Yes, new diseases will appear ... but we've been afflicted that way throughout all of history ... the Black Plague, Yellow Fever, Tuberculous, Small Pox, Polio ... all busted.

It is perhaps my own system of beliefs that keep me actively interested. I also believe that we have to be active politically to ensure there is progress in the structures we consider important in our society. If we decide not to vote, for example, or just avoid politics (because nothing will ever change), we will fulfil that prediction by not acting and for sure, nothing changes. We did not always have the "rule of law". Remember such historical events as the Crusades, the Holocaust, various wars over the ages ... and the fact that slavery of Blacks was once considered an acceptable part of Christian society in the U.S. and parts of Canada ... and only half a century ago, it was okay to annihilate whole populations of people on the basis that they were "life unworthy of life". These ideas were put forth and accepted by the world religions, not opposed. To me, we have to ask questions and keep right on asking them and take NOTHING on faith ... because I know where faith can sometimes lead.

We all know what road was paved with good intentions. My good intention however is to keep right on asking.