bad things happen . . .

There was a short piece on the radio this morning about white collar crime. They interviewed a woman who had been defrauded, and (particularly after just learning that the latest ponzi scheme perpetrator was someone from my hometown) I really felt bad for her. She obviously felt betrayed and wounded by a person who she’d trusted. But then she said something that made me pause – she said “I always told my kids that if you are a good person, good things will happen to you, and if you’re a bad person, bad things will happen to you, but that’s not the case here.”

And I thought . . . wait a minute, why would you ever tell your children that? Because that was never the deal. Whatever justice may mean on a human or more divine scale, history has not given us any indication that good things happen to good people, and vice versa. Jesus got crucified, Martin Luther King Jr. got shot, and Nelson Mandela spent an awfully long time in prison. Kanye West is a superstar with legions of fans.

It seems to me that having a worldview based on good and bad being doled out on a quid pro quo basis is dangerous. Because what happens when something bad happens to you? There are two possibilities: either a) something bad has happened to you because you are actually a bad person; or b) your worldview was wrong, and even though you are a good person, this will not protect you from bad things happening. Either way, why bother continuing to do good?

So, I don’t know what you should tell your children (maybe I should add moral philosophy to my fun fall reading list, along with feminist theology and development theory ... ), but it seems that if you build your moral framework around the idea that good things happen to good people, you’re going to be ill-equipped to deal with the tragedies and betrayals that are part of life.

election malaise

I try to care about politics – we’re talking about the leadership of my country, after all. I watch the leaders’ debate before every election, and try to be informed of every party’s platform and vote based on what they are promoting, rather than on a knee-jerk reaction based on general party ideology.

But, as the Globe and Mail and the CBC start to talk election, my gut reaction is “I’m so bored!” I am so tired of elections and, just like the one at this time last year, I can’t see that this one is necessary. The polls suggest we are still in a conservative-minority holding pattern, and neither the Conservatives nor the Liberals are talking about any big ideas that would change business as usual.

When this election gets called, I will see what they each have to say, and I will go and vote, because I believe that it’s part of my responsibility as a citizen in a democratic country. But I’m not happy about it.

look up

The annual Gatineau hot air balloon festival took place over the Labour Day weekend. What this means is that, if you happened to be biking to foreign affairs at about 7:15 each morning, there were dozens of silent splashes of colour drifting by or bobbing in and out of view between the buildings, depending on which way the wind is blowing.

Hot air balloons are magical – they sneak up on you from behind the trees and make you look up. I’ve been wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase every day, working long hours (I was biking to the office at 7:15 am every day during the Labour Day weekend . . .) and I haven’t had much time to reflect on anything beyond my work. My morning ride along the river, against a backdrop of splashes of colour behind the half-finished apartment buildings, has kept me looking up. And looking up makes me breathe a bit deeper, and keeps me grounded in a world that is bigger than the four corners of the daily grind.

revenue and relevance

I have passed by a few Gatineau busses recently that have a very interesting poster on their side. No, it’s not the “God probably doesn’t exist so stop worrying and enjoy your life” ad that has caused such a stir (I know that Ottawa has refused to run those ads on OCTranspo – I don’t know if STO was ever approached with a French version). What’s caught my attention is an ad from the Catholic diocese of the Outaouais, which says “Money doesn’t fall from the sky: your Church needs you.”

Maybe Catholicism is sufficiently different from Protestantism that this is an effective strategy, but these ads really surprised me: from my experience, it can be a big enough challenge to get people who actually attend a church to support it financially – and this campaign appears to be aimed at those members of the Catholic church who aren’t actually there on Sunday morning. So, my first thought was that this was basically an ineffective campaign, and unlikely to pay off in more returns than it will cost to run the ads. But, as I said, I’m not Catholic – so maybe there are enough people who have a cultural/historical connection to the church that they will contribute, even if they don’t attend regularly.

But it also makes me wonder if they’re missing the point – the church shouldn’t exist just to self-perpetuate . . . it is only of value if it is serving the spiritual needs of a community. The shrinking church attendance in the past two generations suggests that churches are not meeting the needs of the community. And the fact that the diocese is running these ads suggests that there are not enough people involved in the community who are meeting the financial needs of the church. So, maybe the church needs to shut some buildings down and let go of the expensive bricks and mortar that are probably a large portion of its operating budget. Or maybe it needs to think about reaching out to whoever the target audience of the ads are, and finding out why they aren’t coming to the church (and subsequently not giving), rather than guilting them into paying a system that they appear to not be getting anything out of. I guess what I’m saying that these ads seem to address the symptom of a lack of revenue, rather than the root cause: the lack of relevance of the Church in today’s society.

consumed

While in Vancouver, we went to the flea market – most notable among the piles of over-priced plastic crap was the sign indicating that I was looking at “vintage” Star Wars figures . . . from 1995. Earlier this week, we wandered into a furniture store that was having a clearance “event.” Facial soap followed by cream is a “system.” It seems like every purchase has to be an experience . . . . and we drive from big-box store to big-box store, looking for . . . what? Belonging? Excitement? Glamour? Whatever it is, you probably can’t buy it at Canadian Tire and put it together with an allen key.

consume: [kuh n-soom] –verb (used with object) 1. to destroy or expend by use; use up.

a hollow victory

For those of you who have not had the pleasure of visiting the left coast, the jewel of Vancouver is Stanley Park, an amazing park on the edge of downtown with beaches, big forests, and a great aquarium, among other things. Since the 1880s, one of the attractions has been the hollow tree – a massive hollowed out stump, so big that you could back your Model T into it for a photo op. A few years ago, though, a big storm took out several of the trees in the park, and the hollow tree has been leaning at a dangerous angle ever since. The Park board decided that it was at danger of falling on tourists, and approved its removal. It’s sad, but that’s nature, and an inevitable part of our interaction with nature. We build roads so that we can easily access the hollow tree, the root structure is weakened as the soil is changed, and eventually the tree is at risk of falling onto the very road we built so that we could get to it – a victim of its own stardom. And so the landscape changes, as landscapes do, both because of and despite our interaction with them.

But wait. Enter the Stanley Park Hollow Tree Conservation Society. Wanting to ensure that “future generations of Vancouver residents and visitors alike [can] enjoy [the tree] with the same sense of wonderment, awe, and humbling perspective” as previous generations, the society has raised millions of dollars to brace the hollow tree. Nature will not have its way, so that we can continue to be awed by . . . the power of nature. I can understand the urge to preserve the tree – it’s an icon in the Vancouver landscape. However, the big old stump being propped up by metal poles is one of the saddest things I have ever seen. It stands not as a testament to the wonder of nature, but to our misguided attempts to control and tame nature to suit our own ends.

manufactured emotion

My generation, and the ones that follow even more so, have been numbed by media bombardment. We are constantly fed images of “happenings” around the world, and we desperately want to be part of one. The problem, though, is that half of the events we have the opportunity to participate in have been designed as events, so that someone somewhere else can see the images and wish they were there, being part of the action. The whole point of Woodstock was that it was spontaneous. Woodstock II was a manufactured simulacrum of the original, designed to sell t-shirts and CDs. None of this analysis is new, but I’ve been thinking about it in light of Michael Jackson’s death and the separation of Jon and Kate Gosselin.

The immediate reaction of so many people to MJ’s death seemed to be a sense of personal grief and loss, and I don’t get it. Yes, he was a very talented singer and dancer. And his life and death were tragic. But he was, from the age of 5, a product of our celebrity-obsessed culture. In some ways, his entire life was manufactured as a “happening”, and it seems like his death will just be one more.

Likewise, the Gosselins, who I had never heard of before their marital troubles landed their faces in the super-market aisle, have turned their entire lives into a media event. Lo and behold – raising 8 children under a constant spotlight is stressful, and they recently announced their divorce on the show. What astounded me was their position (since shut down by the network) that the show would go on – the public wants to see their children grow up, and the public must get what it wants.

I guess what I’m trying to get at is that we dull our real senses when we let the media dictate what we should care about – what we should celebrate, who we should mourn. People are crying for the loss of a musician who hasn’t put out a new album in a decade or longer. Meanwhile, a couple whose celebrity has destroyed their marriage are continuing to seek the limelight – it’s like their entire lives are Woodstock II – a shiny media event staged for the fans at home. And we’re soaking it all up, while real people are unsung musical geniuses, real children are growing up, real friends are experiencing the joys and tragedies of marriages good and bad, and the backyard barbecue of the century may be just a few phone calls away. But we miss it, because it doesn’t have the shiny gloss of celebrity. But this is the stuff of life, and it’s happening right under our noses.