Hopewit

  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...