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The Golden Rule

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Guernica - Pablo Picasso Truth is seldom complicated. A simple admonition like the Golden Rule, when obeyed, is arguably all anyone needs by way of a moral code governing relationships. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus clearly sets out examples of what such relationships look like, but the underlying principle is easily missed: individual well-being is reliant upon community health, but community health rests on individual behaviour; life is a circle, not a straight line. In a way, this principle is evident in an evolutionary view of life on earth. Lions as a species grow strong feeding on the weakest of the buffalo herd. The overall health of both species is favoured; individuals are sacrificed to the process of “natural selection.” The strongest reproduce and the weak … don’t. But what makes applying this principle to humanity treacherous is that unlike lions and buffalo, we have been granted consciousness. Consciousness both releases us from being instinct-dependent and grant...
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Xenophobia and the political Refugee

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  Xenophobia: fear of foreigners or foreign things. (Merriam-Webster) A man from Uganda, say, expresses objections to the actions of a cruel, dictatorial regime and is marked for death by the state police. As he feels the danger coming ever closer, he makes a run for the border and is in Kenya ... illegally, of course. He ends up in a UN supported refugee camp where conditions are appalling, and the future looks bleak. Tortured by the possibility that his family in Uganda will be punished for his escape, he lies awake at night and considers going back and turning himself in. It’s possible that there’s no better way to share the earth equitably than to divide it into nations with borders and to create laws surrounding the crossing of those borders. But at the same time, it makes difficult the necessary accommodation for natural disasters—and the natural world generally—which knows no borders. Tragically, it provides handy justification for racism, religious xenophobia and the es...
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The Two-edged Sword

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  I'd like to focus on the word,  free , for a moment.  Suppose a deer gets caught in a barbed wire fence and can’t get away. And suppose some good people who happen to have wire cutters with them cut the deer loose, and the deer runs off wherever it likes. (This is a very popular motif on Facebook.) The deer is freed , and therefore free . Or is he? Suppose then that the hunting season opens and men with rifles are roaming the woods and meadows. The deer has good reason to be afraid and nervous until the season ends and frees the deer from the anxiety of the hunt. He feels free (well except for the coming of a winter of hunger, cold, disease, wolves and coyotes, perhaps).   Freedom from fear is the principal thing most refugees are seeking. And then there’s freedom of choice (“order whatever you like, son”) and there’s freedom of movement , which we deny transgressors as punishment by jailing them. And there are other freedoms , like freedom from discrimina...
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Suffer Fools Gladly?

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  You gladly put up with fools since you are so wise! (II Corinthians 11:19, NIV) Dirk Willems rescues his naive pursuer. This saying from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians is rendered in such a variety of ways in translations and paraphrases that it’s hard to know whether he’s for or against putting up with “fools.” Or likely, whether any current interpretation does his comment justice. Certainly, politicians who use it to denigrate opponents should stop, read the verse in context and consult Bible scholars before saying, “I don’t suffer fools gladly.” Perhaps Paul (who was skillful in exercising soft persuasion, even humour in his preaching and writing) was employing political skill to endear himself and his cause to the Corinthian audience. Corinth, a Greek city, was a centre of learning in Paul’s time, comparable to a university city like Oxford, UK in ours.   We mustn’t forget that Paul also wrote, “but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to ...
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I'm not, I'm not, I'm not a clown

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  Prelude Like you, I’m appalled beyond words at stories of child neglect, abuse and particularly trafficking. How can any man or woman risk their very soul by gratifying their physical lusts and greed at the expense of a child?? What justification could there ever be?                I decided to try expressing my disgust in a poem; the rhyme and metre would imitate children’s rope-skipping chants. ( Ap ples, peach es, pears , and plums / Tell me when your birth day comes .) To make its reading most effective, I envision ten-year-olds, a girl and a boy, twirling a rope and reciting in rhythm while another ten-rear-old girl in a red dress skips. A voice would be added at each verse making a chorus of protest. A film maybe?                I would value your reaction, criticism, advice. It’s a first draft.   I’M NOT, I’M NOT, I’M ...
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Stories We Live By

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  David Brooks, writer, philosopher and journalist, said in a recent speech to the Aspen Ideas gathering that the current divisive, belligerent mood among the people of earth can’t be attributed to our real-life situations. We have space, food, water, shelter, healthcare enough for everyone, and more. We don’t fight because we need to, he said, but because we carry stories in our heads to which we respond. It's clear that he doesn’t mean story in the same way I meant it when I published a collection of short stories , but there’s something to be gained in connecting the two, particularly when behaviour is guided by, for instance, The Holy Bible , or the Quran , each telling a story by which adherents understand life and by which their actions are governed. Scientists, as a rule, act according to a very different story of life, their exploration guided very much by the saga of evolving nature and the incontrovertible principles that govern all things. Our stories —I think Broo...
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Democracy or bust

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  Politics . You can tell how people relate to this word by the way they use it. “I’m not much interested in politics,” for instance, equates it with the day-to-day news about our current government, elections, party dynamics, etc. A narrow definition.                By whatever word we use, it’s clear that the setting and enforcing of the principles under which we form community—and function as community—existed before the word was coined. In families, in schools, in workplaces, on the roads, in the economy, the making and respecting of agreed-to behavioural expectations in a community is the necessary defense against chaos.                How behavioural expectations come to be, how they are altered, how they are enforced … and most importantly by whose authority … is fundamental. The “benevolent dictator” model has a long history: give...
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