Hopewit

A news analysis recently included an inappropriate metaphor. The “analyzer” wondered if in future we would be able to “shelter under the USA's nuclear umbrella.” The pressure is on to raise Canada's defence capability, to buy jet fighters, submarines, warships and to recruit more young people to join the military, and possibly to have our own “nuclear umbrella” to make us safe?? It's hardly appropriate for us to call President Trump “stupid” when his blinkered megalomania is simply a logical product of our collective lack of intelligent thinking about war and peace, our screwed up "codes to live by."             I live in a multi-unit condo. How can I be sure that one of my fellow residents won't rob me or kill me in my bed? Maybe if I had a gun, I'd be safer from such an eventuality. But if others found out that I had a gun, wouldn't they feel that they ought to have one too? Probably I should then add an assault rifle, just in ...

  Social media resemble picnics. We don’t prefer to eat every meal outside on a blanket, but the blue sky of summer, the birds singing, the sea breeze promise something different, something pleasant, something interesting, and so “I know what let’s do! Let’s go on a picnic!” seems an escape from tedium, a brief reprieve from the cares and stresses of the daily grind. (Forgive me for this crusty choice of a pleasurable “thing to do;” I’m old, and a bit old-fashioned.) And when the blanket is spread and the basket with its egg salad sandwiches, cake and lemonade is opened, it feels like a promise fulfilled. At first, the ants are just small irritants, at least compared to the wasps. Both seem to multiply as you juggle a plate of cake and a lemonade. And at some point, exuberant kids start up a game of frisbee football between you and the ocean ... about the same time as you notice a man with sunglasses leering at your daughter who's showing a bit too much leg, possibly. And if yo...

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...

  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...

  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...

  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 ...