Don's Diablogue

Shifting or Shuffling

2009-04-23T12:38:00.000-07:00

The following is one of a series of reviews simultaneously posted to the Ottawa International Writers Festival http://www.writersfestival.org/

Carbon Shift: How the Twin Crises of Oil Depletion and Climate Change Will Define the Future ed. by Thomas Homer-Dixon. Random House Canada; Toronto, Ontario, 2009.

Reviewed by Donald Officer
The problem is as starkly simple as it is enormously complex. We could play it out in the media as ongoing installments of a world-wide reality show. To a significant extent we are doing just that with all the documentaries, commentaries and public service announcements now coming at us. This problem will only go away if we do and maybe not even then. The central issue behind the flurry is therefore not mere entertainment, but the biggest dilemma of our times.

What we’re talking about is the ominously impending future that increasingly inaccessible carbon based resources in conjunction with global warming presents our civilization. Taken separately, each horn of the dilemma offers complicated choices sufficient to absorb all the time and effort of those competent enough to address them. However, if there is one note that rings loud and clear throughout Carbon Shift, it is that we must solve both halves of the problem at once. Kicking the carbon habit will require optimum use of all our resources – including energy – in time to avert the downward spiral of rising temperatures.

Although he always gives full credit to his research team, Thomas Homer-Dixon’s earlier books were single author efforts. This time he and his publishers realized the daunting dimensions of the subject would be better handled by many authors representing a range of expertise and opinions. The Waterloo University Chair of Global Systems is supported in this effort by environmental communications authority Nick Garrison; distinguished international geo-engineer, David Keith; senior geoscientist and research manager, J. David Hughs; much honoured academic and policy researcher, Mark Jaccard; internationally respected economist and strategist, Jeff Rubin; award winning investigative journalist, William Marsden and Globe and Mail national columnist Jeffrey Simpson who closely follows the politics of energy and climate change, the subject of his last book.

Among the largest of the big questions discussed is the distraction of being forced to find alternatives to peak oil which are as big or bigger thermal pollutants. Meanwhile the dangerous confusion caused by the presence of large carbon reserves which demand far too many energy resources to recover continues to cloud the urgency of finding solutions to otherwise inevitable shortages – mainly of oil. Other contributors see a bleak but less catastrophic future for the energy mix. The economy of pricing, production and technology will force adjustments we will just have to swallow. Unfortunately, this scenario also brings a blind side. Many of today’s economizing measures initiated by sophisticated carbon consumers are more than offset by the profligacy forced by populist pressures in producing nations. People sitting on large oil, gas or coal fields believe in an inalienable right to squander them at bargain basement prices. This might explain phenomena like the apparently irrational Iranian obsession with nuclear power that persists even as the country sits on world class oil reserves.

Emerging economies have likewise concluded a rapid growth rate unburdened by restraint of consumption or concern for the planet is a gamble worth taking. A fast expanding GDP allays the immediate threat of social unrest among restive populations. Before Canadians start shaking their heads, they should consider the case of the Alberta tar sands. As appalling as they are impressive, these huge western digs make hypocrites of all Canadians illustrating the ultimate idiocy of using clean energy employing a costly polluting process for foreign markets at prices that suit them more than us. Our policies, or absence of them, reflect our terminal indecisiveness. Over the past two decades this nation has lost irrecoverable time and much international respect setting environmental targets we probably could not meet nor ever attempted to reach for.

If you are getting the impression from this review that despite the magnitude of the technical problem, the much bigger headache is mankind’s collective will to follow through on hard decisions, you would be correct. That is the overriding message of this book. We will be unable to stand still, let alone progress without enormous inputs of energy. Somehow we must use those inputs to conserve and transform the way we consume. Moreover there are sickening lags before better habits kick in. Our ancestors killed off the mammoths and despoiled the forests before being forced to take on hard scrabble agriculture and fight amongst themselves for survival. Economics can force whole generations to change directions on a dime, but will its power force us to change quickly enough or head us in the right direction.

To find this and similar reviews, you might also try InSite Reviews http://www3.sympatico.ca/cypher/InSite.htm

Democracy versus Human Rights (versus Freedom?)

2009-04-21T11:47:00.001-07:00

The following is one of a series of reviews simultaneously posted to the Ottawa International Writers Festival http://www.writersfestival.org/

Shakedown: How Our Government is Undermining Democracy in the Name of Human Rights by Ezra Levant. McClelland & Stewart Ltd.; Toronto, Ontario, 2009.

Nice people with reasonable attitudes and conciliatory middle of the road opinions generally don't need protection from either the establishment or the oft polled masses. As Mark Steyne observes in the "Foreword" to Shakedown, "It's offensive speech that requires legal protection." In Levant's book, both Steyne and Levant take that declarative position as a given requiring no further justification. I would be inclined to agree with them, but a surprising number of our citizens no longer take free speech at face value. Have today's readers become too sophisticated to recognize their own basic interests?

Unintended results flow from that cultural dissonance which follows the irresistible force of socioeconomic imperative meeting the immovable object of basic self interest. In plain English, we resist change. We share a sense of being overwhelmed by the consequences and counter consequences of society's response to the way people cope with shifting demographics, altering status symbols, new money or the new look of the body politic etc. To head off the anxiety, intercessionary institutions like human rights commissions are set up to referee the rougher interfaces. As even Levant acknowledges, these bodies have done good work in facilitating the evolution of a more just society.

However, the sometimes unhappy authoritarian oversteps of the commissions and quasilegal bodies created to oversee the transition to social equality should not come as a surprise. True, it is ironic that the scolding comes in the name of democracy and freedom. In his "Introduction" to Shakedown Levant describes his being hauled before the Alberta Human Rights Commission and asked to explain his intent in publishing the infamous Danish cartoons caricaturing the prophet, Mohammed in the Western Standard. Probably that reprinting was an unwise, somewhat insensitive decision. Yet consider the chilling significance of the hearing. Like a pupil being humiliated before the principal Levant was being asked to provide motives for exercising free speech. That none of this is surprising harkens to faintly recalled echoes of everyone's childhood and the way adults routinely suppress the youthful spirits in their charge with typically priggish self righteous satisfaction.

Almost 30 years ago Alice Miller wrote For Your Own Good, a penetrating expose of child rearing in the "civilized" world. Children, she points out, being more or less helpless to resist, internalize harsh object lessons of cruelty and manipulation masquerading as discipline. Sadly, their parents and pedagogues believe authoritarian tactics are justified having been subject themselves to the same treatment without any serious consequences, right? As Miller and others have shown, toxic child-rearing is not only universally demonstrable, but universally denied. Most of us must repress memories of the treatment we suffered when we were young because our self-confidence depends on believing we were well and honestly treated by the caregivers we trusted from birth. Whether it is in the home or the world, we take huge risks when we give any authority the right to regulate our behaviour for our own good.

As with the family so also with society at large. Discrimination is manifestly unfair and offensive whether it occurs in the workplace, parades itself in public or is found embedded in the culture. Children likewise behave inappropriately, exhibit damaging selfishness or plain meanness from time to time. Where do you draw the line in responding? Even where something should obviously be done, punishment is often wrong-headed or misdirected as well as excessive.

Often the most effective solution, the best response to words that cross some significant line is simply social consequences. Arbitrary official intervention where circumstances do not merit such ham handed intrusion tends to backfire. This applies much more to adults with an expectation that they will be protected under the law against restraint of expression. Some latitude should also apply to the individual exercising judgment in the interests of safety or making a reasonable well-intentioned effort to be a good citizen.

In Shakedown Ezra Levant presents examples that include an employee of middle Eastern descent who made eyebrow-raising trips to New York City circa 9/11. This individual had previously expressed interest in flying airplanes and delivered a few choice, strongly worded anti-American monologues. When a colleague telephoned the police and expressed concern about a possible security risk, her action would eventually lead to an anti discriminatory defence on behalf of the individual with the disturbing profile being undertaken by the BCHR Commission against the employing company and the suspicious caller. Apparently, despite obvious evidence of questionable activity and no evidence of any workplace prejudice or retaliation, it was his fellow employee who would be put through the ringer for making the call.

If this is indeed what happened, imagine the net effect of this kind of intervention on all parties. Likewise the author cites an ex-McDonald's employee with a chronic skin condition who successfully won a wrongful dismissal claim through commission intervention when she complained that the chain's mandatory hand washing policy was too painful to comply with regardless of any need for hygiene. An accommodation might have been possible, but public health should also be accommodated. We need to know more about these cases.

Levant's point in describing these and many other situations including the "politically correct" attempts at muzzling writers like Maclean's Mark Steyn who wrote vigorously of an "Islamic threat" seems to be that the HRC's and their ilk have too much time on their hands and a mandate that ends by encroaching on everyone's freedoms - albeit "for our own good". This book provokes thought and presents plausible accounts of skewed over zealous procedures we need to ponder.

The author does wander and repeat himself in the blogging tradition, although he is lucid and generally pertinent. At times he appears to be lashing out in a very broad manner. He has a reputation in the blogosphere and among the chattering classes for outrageous, tendentious opinion, but shows forbearance here. If his facts are correct and his contexts can be defended, attention should be paid. Reading this book at least underscores the dangers of paternalism and bureaucracy. People like Levant may be perceived as annoying windbags, but they also let in some essential fresh air.

To find this and similar reviews, you might also try InSite Reviews http://www3.sympatico.ca/cypher/InSite.htm

Power and pretense in Canada today

2009-04-16T22:13:00.000-07:00

Shakedown: How Our Government is Undermining Democracy in the Name of Human Rights by Ezra Levant. McClelland & Stewart Ltd.; Toronto, Ontario, 2009.

Nice people with reasonable attitudes and conciliatory middle of the road opinions generally don't need protection from either the establishment or the oft polled masses. As Mark Steyne observes in the "Foreword" to Shakedown, "It's offensive speech that requires legal protection." In Levant's book, both Steyne and Levant take that declarative position as a given requiring no further justification. I would be inclined to agree with them, but a surprising number of our citizens no longer take free speech at face value. Have today's readers become too sophisticated to recognize their own basic interests?

Unintended results flow from that cultural dissonance which follows the irresistible force of socioeconomic imperative meeting the immovable object of basic self interest. In plain English, we resist change. We share a sense of being overwhelmed by the consequences and counter consequences of society's response to the way people cope with shifting demographics, altering status symbols, new money or the new look of the body politic etc. To head off the anxiety, intercessionary institutions like human rights commissions are set up to referee the rougher interfaces. As even Levant acknowledges, these bodies have done good work in facilitating the evolution of a more just society.

However, the sometimes unhappy authoritarian oversteps of the commissions and quasilegal bodies created to oversee the transition to social equality should not come as a surprise. True, it is ironic that the scolding comes in the name of democracy and freedom. In his "Introduction" to Shakedown Levant describes his being hauled before the Alberta Human Rights Commission and asked to explain his intent in publishing the infamous Danish cartoons caricaturing the prophet, Mohammed in the Western Standard. Probably that reprinting was an unwise, somewhat insensitive decision. Yet consider the chilling significance of the hearing. Like a pupil being humiliated before the principal Levant was being asked to provide motives for exercising free speech. That none of this is surprising harkens to faintly recalled echoes of everyone's childhood and the way adults routinely suppress the youthful spirits in their charge with typically priggish self righteous satisfaction.

Often the most effective solution, the best response to words that cross some significant line is simply social consequences. Arbitrary official intervention where circumstances do not merit such ham handed intrusion tends to backfire. This applies much more to adults with an expectation that they will be protected under the law against restraint of expression. Some latitude should also apply to the individual exercising judgment in the interests of safety or making a reasonable well-intentioned effort to be a good citizen.

Almost 30 years ago Alice Miller wrote For Your Own Good, a penetrating expose of child rearing in the "civilized" world. Children, she points out, being more or less helpless to resist, internalize harsh object lessons of cruelty and manipulation masquerading as discipline. Sadly, their parents and pedagogues believe their authoritarian tactics are justified having been subject themselves to the same treatment without any serious consequences, right? As Miller and others have shown, toxic child-rearing is not only universally demonstrable, but universally denied. Most of us must represss memories of the treatment we suffered when we were young because our self-confidence depends on believing we were well and honestly treated by the caregivers we trusted from birth.

Whether it is in the home or the world, we take huge risks when we give any authority the right to regulate our behaviour for our own good. As with the family so also with society at large. Discrimination is manifestly unfair and offensive whether it occurs in the workplace, parades itself in public or is found embedded in the culture. Children likewise behave inappropiately, exhibit damaging selfishness or plain meanness from time to time. Where do you draw the line in responding? Punishment is very often wrong headed or misdirected as well as excessive.

Often the most effective solution is the result of consequences. Arbitrary intervention where circumstances do not merit the intrusion tends to backfire. This applies even more to adults with an expectation that they will be protected under the law against restraint of expression, exercise of judgement in the interests of safety or reasonable well-intentioned efforts to be good citizens
In Shakedown Ezra Levant presents examples that include an employee of middle Eastern descent who made eyebrow-raising trips to New York City circa 9/11. This individual had previously expressed interest in flying airplanes and delivered a few choice, strongly worded anti-American monologues. When a colleague telephoned the police and expressed concern about a possible security risk, her action would eventually lead to an anti discriminatory defence on behalf of the individual with the disturbing profile being undertaken by the BCHR Commission against the employing company and the suspicious caller. Apparently, despite obvious evidence of questionable activity and no evidence of any workplace prejudice or retaliation, it was his fellow employee who would be put through the ringer for making the call.
If this is indeed what happened, imagine the net effect of this kind of intervention on all parties.

Likewise the author cites an ex-McDonald's employee with a chronic skin condition who successfully won a wrongful dismissal claim through commission intervention when she complained that the chain's mandatory hand washing policy was too painful to comply with regardless of any need for hygiene. An accommodation might have been possible, but public health should also be accommodated. We need to know more about these cases.
Levant's point in describing these and many other situations including the "politically correct" attempts at muzzling writers like Maclean's Mark Steyn who wrote vigorously of an "Islamic threat" seems to be that the HRC's and their ilk have too much time on their hands and a mandate that ends by encroaching on everyone's freedoms - albeit "for our own good". This book provokes thought and presents plausible accounts of skewed over zealous procedures we need to ponder.

The author does wander and repeat himself in the blogging tradition, although he is lucid and generally pertinent. At times he appears to be lashing out in a very broad manner. He has a reputation in the blogosphere and among the chattering classes for outrageous, tendentious opinion, but shows forbearance here. If his facts are correct and his contexts can be defended, attention should be paid. Reading this book at least underscores the dangers of paternalism and bureaucracy. People like Levant may be perceived as annoying windbags, but they also let in some essential fresh air.

To find this and similar reviews, you might also try InSite Reviews http://www3.sympatico.ca/cypher/InSite.htm To find this and similar reviews, you might also try InSite Reviews http://www3.sympatico.ca/cypher/InSite.htm

April Fool's Day - Auspicious timing?

2009-04-01T22:05:00.000-07:00

For the next month, this page will be more or less devoted to my volunteer role as review editor for the Ottawa International Writer's Festival (OIWF) and my rapidly emerging consultancy in strategic thinking. Both these tracks need further explanation. At the very least, I imagine I'll benefit from articulating them.

The Festival has been a going concern on Ottawa's cultural horizon attracting both national and international as well as local writers for over a decade. Crucial to the success of the twice yearly event are the attendees, who, quite naturally, are largely readers as well. We decided a year ago to go online with an open discussion board to complement by adding value to the sessions. From the start, the board was wonderful for the volunteers participating in the reviews and posts, frequently appealed to the authors as useful feedback and seemed to help the core Festival team focus on their goals as well.

During the Spring and Fall editions, we proved the concept works. That is, we mounted repectable posts and reviews achieved what I mentioned above and drew respectable daily traffic. What we have yet to do is engage the participation of our online readers in a way that qualifies as a conversation. The research tells us this takes time. One consultant told me that even highly publicized boards seldom bring in many comments or queries for many long months.

We need to change that early dynamic to assure ourselves that we actually have something to say that somebody wants to read and keep on reading. We need in short, what is usually called an engagement strategy. That phrase serves as a pretty good transition to strategic thinking as a blog focus - my second theme in these pages. I'll have more to say about what strategic thinking is in future posts, but when you think of the challenge of an online engagement strategy, of finding ways to get readers to comment willingly, eagerly and authentically without inhibition I believe you start to gain an appreciation of what the value (as well as the definition) of strategic thinking might be.

By now you may want to check out the link to the OIWF website: http://www.writersfestival.org/
and likewise also see what I'm up to this spring on the strategic thinking front: http://www.odnoo.org/template.php?global=4&primaryID=4&secondaryID=20&tertiaryID=23&quaternaryID=0 and http://gctraining.ca/Workshops/GC-17-15.php

A new year and sense of purpose

2009-01-01T16:20:00.000-08:00

Much water has passed under the bridge since my last and only previous post. The blog is an ideal vehicle for rumination so there is some irony in play when I haven't even posted my thoughts on what this blog is for. The truth is I'm a private person and I don't care to speak out until I'm sure I have something to say. I also have set the rather ridiculous standard that whatever I say will also be something I should stick by for some time to come. No flip-flopping on the web. My motives for that position went unexamined for a long time. Recently, however, I decided it was time to introspect a little. Why? You're reading the reason. The penny dropped when I realized first, that there's little growth if you never change your mind and second, that no one really cares what another person writes unless it is offensive, influential or both!

Very well, I've developed some confidence or something and decided to post at least once more. The plan is actually part of a New Year's resolution to start publishing on line whatever the probability that anyone else will read what I've written. At the same time this is not "reality" blogging, some form of virtual fear factor or whatever. I have a purpose in writing here. These first tentative paragraphs may amount to nothing, but one day you might be able to say - I read it on the Diablogue in one of those early posts before everyone was clamoring to be part of the discussion. Now my purpose in keeping the blog going is simple in one sense. I have begun to seriously research the subject of strategy.

Simple in one sense, but very complex (careening towards chaos) in another. It is cusomary at this time of year, as Charles Dickens might say, for people to rethink the past twelve months. Usually they will reflect in passing on all the resolutions and expectations that did not come to pass. That would be most of them. Yet people are as plucky as they are unrealistic. They will hatch another handful of goals and intentions most of which will regurgitate the spirit and often the letter of the last batch. In that observation, which we have all made at some time or other, lies the most intriguing question I've decided to confront in the past twelve months. Optimism is apparently good for us, for our health, our prospects and our relationships. Is there not also a serious down side in being a naive, mindless and cockeyed optimist? Is there not a greater value in really learning from our mistakes?

The brain it seems is wired to be hopeful. Sad sacks are shunned because they don't seem to realize this and also weaken the mirror response in our neurological makeup that gets people on side when challenges need to be faced or victories celebrated. In this important sense, no pain means more gain. So here is my New Year's challenge to my readers: How do we stay both optimistic and unreservedly with the program while still learning the hard and painful lessons that real change demands?

Happy New Year!

Arbitrary Beginnings

2008-10-02T07:52:00.000-07:00

If I had started this blog a half dozen or more years ago I could have prided myself in taking on a ground breaking role in the development of a dynamic new interpersonal communications vehicle. Instead I must accept the humbling reality as a relatively late comer to a very moveable feast that this has to start by being just one of millions of blogs. Furthermore, I have only scant knowledge even of the names of the many new tools available to virtually (so to speak) everyone. So I again ask myself the question I considered earlier this year when I first drafted my site profile: Why blog? The question continues to be complicated by both practical and philosophical factors.

A bunch of you will probably stop reading right now. Your question might be why read a particular blog, possibly a particularly (worse yet typically) navel gazing type of blog at that. Please don't give up yet if only because watching me work this process through could help you with your own blog writing and reading. Beyond that, the blog, I now see, is rather like a letter - the way people used to write them to friends, relatives and posterity not the way the business world still uses them to forge a kind of involuntary contract for impersonal commercial purposes.

I am really quite good at writing business letters, also articles and advertising copy. I can be brief when needs be. The point is the difference is very striking. I realize many blogs are extensions of main stream journalism and others are simply another form of huckstering. And why not? Who says a computer is just an accounting, or writing tool? Most computers are probably just email factories and warehouses - but that too is permissable if limited.

I believe that for me the difference between the old fashioned personal letter and the blog is partly that the blog is for a public while the letter is crafted for one or a handful of readers. Handwriting has to be legible and penmanship assumes a personal, courteous elegance at its best. I recall reading how that kind of attentiveness is civilizing. Ironically, when you read the correspondence of civil war veterans writing home between sessions of mass butchery, you also realize polite style does not guarantee the writer is anything but bloody minded when he isn't dashing off his reflections on whatever for mom and dad.

Nevertheless, I hope my blog will convey the civility without too much of the self indulgence of the personal letter. To answer the question I began with, I blog to both clear my own head and to see if anyone else would like to jump into the conversation for their own specific reasons or just to build up good karma. I hope my blog will gradually become a series of linked essays, more accessible than a journal, in short an essay "with benefits" metaphorically at lest in the modern urban sense of the term.

Appropriately, Michel de Montaigne, inventor of the essay is one of my heroes. He deserves a place in the bloggers hall of fame for setting so high a standard, so persistent a commitment to an unknown but reflexively respected readership. I invite your participation in this text as I believe Montaigne would have loved to had it been possible in the sixteenth century - seriously.