Techne-City II

Students were debating. Whether our over-extending, self-powered, not remotely controlled yet increasingly networked tools might someday start sending us medium-independent messages. Start blinking their lights like they’re looking right back at us. Not whether they’ll get out of hand, declare independence, take us in whatever passes for their hands and stomp us out. That particular debate never stops. Just whether, someday, our tools might have feelings. Desires. Goals.

Heated up fast, the debating. “Of course,” insisted half the students. While the other half remained completely adamant: “No way.”

“How would we even know?” I asked them. “Do animals have feelings? Do other people?”

“No, animals don’t really have feelings,” insisted some students. "Not real feelings." At which point the debating got out of control.

“Hold on,” I said. “Let me tell you a story.” And they let me.

I started out like any other kid. Torturing bugs, frogs and pretty much anything that moved. Anything that didn’t move too fast for me to cripple. Because the way things moved when missing wings, legs or whatever assorted body parts was such great fun.

“Hey, I used to do that,” said a student.

“Me too,” said another and enthused a third, fourth and fifth.

Most of them were nodding affirmative. Almost all the males and half the females.

“I still do that!” exclaimed one last.

“What?” chorused a bunch of students and I, pretty much in unison –- “What do you mean?”

“Yeah,” he said. All smug. Proud. Eyes gleaming with excitement. “My friends and I went blowing up frogs last summer.” Then his voice turned very matter-of-fact. “We’re getting hunting rifles next year.”

Silence. Except for me banging my head against the blackboard a few times. To get the images out of my mind. The images and the memories.

“Guess I’ll get back to the story,” I said. Totally ignoring the hunter in our midst and what I felt like doing to him.

My grandfather, who had pilgrimed to the Soviet Union in order to help build communism, who had wound up fettered in a Soviet chain gang and had managed escaping and surviving his cross-countries wartime return, used to kill everything I maimed. Annoyed the hell out of my three-year-old self. Wrecking my fun like that. Tromping his feet on my miniature disability parades.

One bright morning I snuck up to and cornered a sleeping cat. Guess I was maybe five by then -– no rifle yet, but moving up to bigger game anyhow. And it was really great. Best fun ever. Made terrific hissing sounds. I had this two-fisted grip on its tail and was thinking hard how to tie some tin cans to it. A friend had said how tying tin cans to tails caused cats to flee till they died of exhaustion. Anyway. One moment it was just incredible fun and games. Next, that cat turned and laid my arm open from elbow to wrist.

I ran for my grandfather. Squealing like a slashed human. Screaming all the way what the cat had done to me.

When more or less done bandaging, my grandfather asked what set the cat off.

“Cat’s crazy,” I said. “What if it goes after some little kid? We got’ta find that cat and kill it.”

“No,” replied my grandfather. “What were you doing when the cat turned on you?”

“What was I doing? What do you think I was doing? I was playing with it.”

“Ahhh,” exhaled my grandfather. “Of course you were. Well, the cat was playing with you too.”

I fell silent. Previously, I’d screamed and shouted. Now, I began to cry. “You mean.. the way I felt when it hurt me is how they feel when I play with them?”

“That’s right,” replied my grandfather. And gentle as his voice was, his face was far wearier than I’d ever perceived. Decades later I’d begin understanding why. But not then; for at that moment my world just only began tilting. That moment I understood how hurting wasn’t right when done unto others -– and wrong only when done unto self. When I understood how always wrong it was instigating hurting. When I first understood, beyond any shadow of doubting, what it meant to be a person. The day one cat taught one human to be a person too.

“Nice story -– but what does it mean?” asked a student. Puzzled.

All of them seemed puzzled. So I told them what I thought the story meant. That even should someday our tools have thoughts and feelings, we’d not likely recognize the fact. Due to how readily fooled we are into believing ought which mimics us to be intelligent. How persistently we avoid recognizing any intelligence not entirely oriented and prejudiced as our own. How insulated and engulfed by our own technecity we’ve become. How, since bursting our food chains, we’ve accelerated gnawing the trees of living unto death. How our separation from the natural and our terminally self-involved convenience means such oblivion as to entail utter ecological obliteration.

We speak so highly of self-awareness. Not so when it comes to awareness other than of our own selves. Takes our greatest sages even to suggest we ought not do unto others as we wouldn’t have them do unto us. Never mind understanding the meaning of what others do. Never mind awareness other than of self. That’s asking too much. There’s no telling when, or even if any one of us should become so aware as to appreciate thoughts and feelings other than our own –- i.e., the thoughts we can’t help thinking and the feelings we can’t help feeling.

“I’ve been lucky enough to get taught something very basic about being a person. That cat taught me good. Not everyone’s so lucky,” I said.

Students had seemed to appreciate the action in my story. The meaning I attributed to the story, though -– not so much. Why should they -- having been so bombarded by messages of impending ecological catastrophe? Trouble with the most fatally inconvenient truths is how ubiquitously cheap they get spouted nowadays.

“But what can we do about it?” asked one student.

“Can’t say I know,” I replied. “Maybe we’ll explore that some more -– though it’s rather peripheral to what we’re supposed to be talking about.”

Anyway. It’s true. I’ve got no clue what we can do about it. Probably no one does. Not really. And not only I must feel, nowadays, much as my grandfather used to when mercy-killing the creatures I maimed. But some things have become far too obvious not to know. Ecological catastrophe extends far beyond our failing to recognize being other than our own. Yet, however persistently re-enforced, our separation from the natural is largely by oblivion. However unstoppable, it begins with submergence of our natural selves in cultures of technecity.

We can’t expect rescue from our governments. Not by regulation, legislation or completely inadequate accords like Kyoto. Our governments can reflect only us -– our terminally convenient self-involvements -- and we can get nothing better from governance than we deserve. Nor can we expect corporate bailouts. Corporations can do nothing but serve our consumptions. Nothing but supply our endlessly accelerating demanding. Any hope whatsoever of finding David Brin’s fourth way must emerge, if at all, from grass-roots.

Most likely it’s far too hopelessly late. Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try, of course. We should. We must. It’s likely too late only due to overwhelming odds against us even trying. For if we maintain our oblivion when it comes to the natural, the sole ecological recourse shall remain only as seen at Chernobyl.

Even just honestly trying isn’t easy. We’re too psychologically, socially, economically and infrastructurally against it. Never mind what a derelict I must seem when I try negotiating with the natural. Over the years, I’ve mostly gotten over my utter social failure relative to single-minded consumers. I can't seem to keep up with them Joneses. I can't even seem to want to anymore. But I know there’s all sorts of surveillance up at York University. I expect to get in trouble when I go digging the garbage for food. Must honestly try, though –- even if only for the principle that humans can be people too.

Few years back, I began noticing what misery it was for small birds surviving winter. There are somewhat green spaces at York University -– spaces not yet entirely trammeled. Such spaces can’t be, by any decent stretching imagination, proper or adequate habitat. Yet, birds persist attempting to survive winters there. Come harshest times, birds start flying into the concrete and glass tunnels connecting Vari Hall to York Lanes. Do they survive in there? Do they ever get out again? No clue. But I became sufficiently concerned to throw them crumbs. And their desperate enthusiasm diving between human legs to get at crumbs -– that’s what got me going.

That’s also what got me noticing all the garbage. The unbelievable waste.


There is no waste in nature.


Seagulls love pizza crust.

Where does all that garbage wind up? What’s the additional waste and cost getting it there? What’s the point razing natural habitat –- then refusing even refuse to bereaved and beggared animal kinds attempting surviving, just peripherally, about our technecity?

So simple. Just transferring some waste to where it isn’t wasted. To whom it’s totally and vitally appreciated. That’s how each overflowing bin became, for me, a potential transfer station.

Couple days every week, for about an hour, I travel bin to bin, station to station across York campus. And I totally leave campus cleaner than I find it. Inedible waste gets deposited. Edibles get shared. Not so much with squirrels, though -– they have no trouble chewing through styrofoam and rummaging garbage bins. I make sure to whistle advance warning on arrival -– otherwise, if surprised, squirrels are liable to leaping like crazed lizards.


Apple core? I’ll trick you good if you don’t treat me better!

Mostly, found edibles get shared with birds. Smaller, crumbling items for smaller birds. Anything from French-fries up goes to seagulls and geese. Often, when seagulls see how I find food in bins, they go looking for themselves. But they can’t get through the styrofoam.


C'mon Man! Stop teasing!

I’ve become fairly comfortable rummaging the garbage at York. Some know why I do it. Most don’t -– but so what? My shame at being such a loser at human modes of consumption and destruction is completely outweighed by even just trying to become more natural a person. Why even try? Impossible to accomplish anything while living in the city? Maybe not. Maybe more students up at York will begin feeding the animals. Maybe more humans can start becoming people too. There’s no hope otherwise.

Support our Troops: Give ‘em Jack

This article was so not going to be about Jack Layton. Sure, Jack Layton was going to get mentioned fairly often. But this absolutely was not going to be about him. This was going to be about how the Globe and Mail turns its back on genuine democracy. No choice now, though. Not any more. Not after how I didn’t shake Jack Layton’s hand last Friday.

Couldn’t shake Jack Layton’s hand. Not on Friday, October 19th. Maybe no other day of the week -– or year –- either. Not after what I’d written about him.

Except it wasn’t really me writing those terrible things. Not exactly.

Wasn’t exactly me. Been decades since I began exploring (not only) media, democracy and public spheres. Since last year, under the alias of “Lie Detector”, I embedded myself under deep cover to specifically investigate Globe and Mail reader forums. To find out what consent and dissent got manufactured there. Whether Globe forums inflated or deflated public spheres. And it was at those wild and riotous Globe forums that, as Lie Detector, I found myself self-expressing as I never otherwise would. Guess virtual anonymity is like that. Makes us write and do things we never otherwise would. Point being that it wasn’t really me wrote them terrible things about Jack. It was Lie Detector.

So what was I to do? It was Friday, about half past noon, and there I was holding office hours in Vari Hall. No warning whatsoever. One moment everything was routine. The next, it was as if some great spotlight penetrated an invisible fog to reveal Jack Layton not twenty feet away. Jack Layton aglitter with surrounding media apparatus.

Curious what occasion brought Jack to York University, some students and I slunk behind the media bobbing in his wake. And, just slightly external and aside the glass Vari Hall front door, I somewhat made it out. Not tuition fees. Not the subway extension. None of the above. Went something like this: “… Afghanistan.. must understand that.. Afghanistan… Therefore.. Afghanistan.”

“What’s he talking about?” inquired one student.

“Not the subway extension. Not tuition fees,” I replied. “Afghanistan.”

“Oh,” said the student. Rolling his eyes.

“I’m from Afghanistan,” said another student.

“Really? Maybe you should ask him something,” I encouraged.

“Like what?” She made the notion sound extremely marginal. Very dubious.

“Anything. I just wish I’d brought my camera,” I complained.

“I’ve got my camera,” she showed me. “But I’m not taking any picture of him.”

Just about then Jack came up to the clump of us. Yet another student brandished a camera, requesting Jack pose a moment.

“Sure,” grinned Jack. “But make it snappy.”

Had to laugh. Thought Jack was both witty and charming. Pretty darned photogenic, too. Nevermind how great it would have been to have Jack pictured by me for this article. If only I’d brought my camera.

Stepped right back when Jack started pumping the manual flesh, though. Nothing against manual pumping, but no way could I shake his hand. Not in good conscience. Not after what Lie Detector had written about him. All those terrible things.

What got Lie Detector bleeping off the scale? Can’t be certain. Not entirely -– since the Lie Detector persona is not really me. More like some very strange and alter ego Hyde-ing beneath the floorboards of my mind. But I strongly suspect it was those two headliners the Globe ran consecutively September 29th and September 30th. Afghan president seeks peace with Taliban after suicide bomb and Taliban peace deal possible, says Karzai. About how Afghanistan’s Karzai was hoping to negotiate with the Taliban.

That’s what I suspect. That it was those two headliners -– and the tone of comments following. Comments such as this one from 'Jack Robertson':

Given that Karzai has offered the Taliban a place in Afghanistan's government, it now appears that Canada's soldiers really have been dying in vain. This is not surprising however. If Canada and other NATO countries ever believed that they could introduce 'democracy' to Afghanistan, they were truly delusional. There is not one predominantly Muslim country in the world in which liberal democracy has succeeded or where it can succeed. With apologies to Stalin for the paraphrasing, 'Western liberal democracy fits the Islamic world like a saddle fits a cow'. This 'mission', if there ever was one, was lost from the beginning. We should hope that Ottawa does not add insult to the injury of needlessly sacrificed Canadian lives by welcoming Karzai and his cronies as 'refugees' once the Taliban have regained control.

Or 'Richard Roskell's':

What cognitively-functional Canadian ever remotely imagined that it would turn out differently? The only thing in doubt was how many Canadian lives would be lost along the way.

'No use for a name from Toronto:

“Taliban' Karzai?...Isn't that what the braying morons called Jack Layton for even daring to suggest negotiations with the Taliban?”

Frank Stogre from Vancouver:

Taliban Jack was right and the right wingers are wrong again an again an again ...

Carl Hansen from Canada:

So now we can surrender and go home?

Opinion in Toronto from Toronto:

So, Canada lost the war and the Taliban win...

Denis Love from Victoria:

I seem to recall Jack Layton saying folks should be talking to the taliban. Some folks, especially here made fun of him by calling him Taliban Jack. Now it seems the folks who run the country have the same idea as Layton…

Comments like Stevo the Orange’s from Winnipeg:

Is Jack Layton going to say 'I told you so'? It seems there is only one federal leader with any brains when it comes to making peace. The liberals have already completely failed a the conservatives are failing as we speak. Give the NDP a chance and I guarentee you through diplomacy and rational thought we can find peace. Guns and bullets will never create Peace. Brains will. Vote NDP.

And, of course, like the incomparable Yvonne Wackernagel’s from Woodville:

AFGHANISTAN is NOT the only country where women are uneducated, so WHY ARE WE THERE WHEN THE PRESIDENT AND THE PEOPLE WHO BELONG TO THE COUNTRY -THE TALIBAN- WANT US OUT! Did you not see it on TV -By a secret journalist -THE PEOPLE WERE SHOUTING 'DEATH TO CANADA'. TELL ME AGAIN, W H Y A R E WE T H E R E?

That’s when I noticed hair sprouting from my palms. When Lie Detector started banging my keyboard:

When Taliban Jack kept demanding we talk to the Taliban and stop our military spending -- i.e., just surrender already -- the lefties were all like, 'Yay!' But now, when Karzai demands keeping NATO troops in Afghanistan while talking to Taliban -- i.e., don't just surrender but do negotiate already -- the lefties are all like, 'Oh my gawd, that NeoCon traitor!' Is it hypocrisy? Nope. Not sufficiently coherent for hypocrisy. When NATO shoots back at Taliban and hits innocent civilians, lefties are all like, 'The Canadian military is murdering innocents!' Doesn't matter how not intentional NATO killing innocent civilians was. Doesn't matter what efforts Canadian troops go to, what extra hazard to own life and limb Canadian soldiers take on, how much farther into harms way they go to avoid killing innocent civilians. Doesn't matter to lefties. Far as lefties are concerned, it's murder. But when Taliban, as usual, fully intentionally kill innocent civilians -- not a peep. Nevermind how killing innocents intentionally is what 'murder' means. Nevermind. If Taliban did it then that's fine. Not a problem. Cheerleading terror like that? While our troops are engaged trying to halt -- at least slow it? By appeal from Afghanistan's first ever elected government? Used to be called treason. Most places, it still is. But not so, far as lefties are concerned. No way. What it is, lefties say, is supporting our troops. Get it? Support our troops -- disband the Canadian military. Or, at least undermine the Canadian military. Make sure our gals and guys over there fail too bad ever to try anything military again. Is this sufficiently coherent to qualify as hypocrisy? What lefties mean when they say 'support our troops'? Pretty much. Coherent enough to qualify as treason, even.

Some posters did not appreciate Lie Detector’s contribution, of course. Peter Bell, for instance:

Excellent meisterspinning from Lie Detector at 10.32 am. Now, where does this come from. All government offices are closed on weekends. Not the GOP headquarters or the Manning School. They are open 24-7 and working overtime about the Karzai story. Which of the two among others supplied this meisterspinning. Was is GOP headquarters in the states or the Manning School. Was it straight from the Ten Neo Commandments. It is all meisterspinning. Nobody is buying.

But Peter Bell’s comment only seemed to embolden Lie Detector. He probably loves it when anyone mistakes his diatribing for some sort of official policy.

N B, however, actually tried communicating sense with Lie Detector:

Lie Detector from Toronto You blame the wrong people for the problems in Afghanistan. The war was lost the moment American invaded Iraq. The majority of NATO countries knew the brain dead right wing strategy of not knowing what motivates your enemy and never compromising or communicating with them was wrong. The right wingers believe we must beat them into submission and force them to become something we want them to be. Good luck, it's never worked before.

Lie Detector wasn’t the least interested. Pounding my keyboard, he made complete nonsense of N B’s comment. Thus:

… N B you are too hasty leaping to that conclusion. I am against idiotic ideology -- regardless left or right. See? I almost agree with you. Just only except for slight elaboration. Like this: The military wars -- whether Afghan or Iraqi -- were won faster than flashes in pans. The ideological police actions were then immediately lost. The ideological, incoherent, ignorant police actions seeking to impose democracy at gunpoint were lost. Of course they were lost. Democracy means never imposing at gunpoint. Right? No gunning is democratically legitimate other than in self-defending. Bush has done incomparably more harm to democracy than militant Islamic fundamentalism. The Bush regime has scuttled the former bastion of democracy -- United States -- and set back democratic culture in the tolerant West a couple centuries. See? Just because I stand against the ideological left doesn't mean I stand for the ideological right. Not while I stand against ideology.

There was lots more –- all in the same gushing vein. Much as I might resent Lie Detector’s eruptions, however -– secretly I was cheering for him. Especially following this particular comment:

Derek Holtom wrote: "cbc just reported the Taliban said no thanks" Sure, Derek. But they thought about it. They're still thinking about it. You got'ta have some understanding how they feel, Derek. Islamic Jihad of Taliban and other varieties ran off full scale Soviet invasion. And now what? They can't run off 2000 NATO (especially) Canadian troops? While reading all about the "support our troops -- disband Canadian military!" leftie hysteria here in Canada? It's hard to swallow, Derek. Try to appreciate how they feel. Like, which side is god on, anyhow? Is it worth it? Our Canadian troops even being there? Until such time as Taliban gives up on militant Islamic fundamentalism sufficiently to cut some workable governance deal with Karzai? Hell, no. Not as far as I'm concerned. But still. It's debatable. Maybe after 50 years of additional futility, Taliban might start forgetting how great god is. Not likely. Maybe not even possible. But conceivable. And hence, debatable. What's not conceivable is how lefties agitate supporting our troops. What they mean by supporting our troops. As if slandering our troops and cheering terror were not treason but civic duty. As if being Canadian was all about totalitarian fundamentalism.

Anyhow. There was no way. After the terrible things Lie Detector wrote about Taliban Jack –- and me secretly cheering for Lie Detector -– how could I possibly shake Jack’s hand last Friday?

On the other hand, Rosie DiManno’s I would have no second thoughts shaking. And not only since her Saturday article -- Afghans see progress that we ignore –- when she wrote:

NDP leader Jack Layton wants Canadian troops out now and Liberal leader Stéphane Dion wanted them out by early 2009 (although I'm not really sure what he favours at the moment). They've argued.. the assignment isn't working, the overall approach to Afghanistan ruinously unbalanced, the insurgency impervious to military intervention and the citizenry increasingly disillusioned, pushed by NATO further towards the neo-Taliban. Anyone who's been to Afghanistan, spent time in the company of ordinary Afghans, knows this to be emphatically untrue. It's heartening that a detached poll has borne that out. Afghans get it… [T]hey know enemy and they know friend.

Yeah. But for absurd ideology, more of us would know friend from enemy as well. Not a single second thought about shaking Rosie DiManno’s hand.

Techne-City I

Toronto is coming alive in our imaginations. We no longer mutter so defensively how really, truly, honestly and sincerely Toronto is a world-class city. We’re done muttering. Done envying, resenting and also-running. Some days now, we actually reckon Toronto the greatest.

There’s always been a sense, however, in which the greatness of cities has meant abomination. The greater the city, the more abominable. Not only biblically –- as in Sodom, Gomorrah and other cities of original sinning. More generally, when it comes to our cities, there has always been a nagging sense of greatness entailing abomination –- because cities just aren’t natural. Because cities epitomize the un-natural.

We don’t let it bother us too much. Like, what does being natural even mean? Can any clear distinguishing categorically separate urban technologies and architectures –- from even our most romantic ideals of pristine virgin landscape? Between modern SUV driven convenience -– and our hunting, gathering, slashing, burning, mastodon and buffalo-jumping heritage? Does anything divide the most artificial in technological culture from what’s natural?

Difficult to say so. Many argue that the distinction between culture and nature is itself a cultural artifact. But then, if artefacts of technological culture determine our ability to distinguish technology from nature, it follows that the more technology insulates culture from nature’s influence, the more disabled we grow distinguishing them. The world turns entirely to clockwork. Our eyes become cameral and bi-cameral. Our cities keep growing into concrete jungles.

Relationships with our tools mushroom too intimately ubiquitous not to supplant –- super-seed –- our natural discernment. Technology grows right in and out of our bodies. Technology increasingly astoundingly seems to extend our natural bodies.

Can’t help seeming that way. Entirely not just because Marshall McLuhan said so. Doesn’t take a loaded gun or a pilot’s license. Doesn’t even take a driver’s license. Can’t help feeling arm’s reach and power extending when wielding a club. Precisely as depicted in The Dawn of Man –- the introduction to the most culturally and socially influential science fiction film ever. Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. Can’t help feeling it the way audiences did when gazing on the hominid Moon-Watcher throwing his bone club in the air. After he’d used it to shatter bones. After he’d used it for murder –- but before he’d yet used that club and its derivatives to commit genocidal slaughter. When that club went sailing up in the sky and kept right on going. Just kept turning against the backdrop of clouds up there. Until it was neither dawn nor day -– until the sky turned black as night and that club was turning against a backdrop of stars. While audiences first realized that club wasn’t ever coming down again because it had turned into a space station -– and that this huge curve ball emerging in the frame was the Earth. As seen from the orbit into which that club was tossed.

It can’t help seeming tools extend our otherwise helplessly reaching bodies in the most natural way. But there are vast and potentially irreversible hazards entailed by uncritically extending organic metaphors to our tools. Tempting as it is to imagine an ambulance speeding down the road as extending our immune systems –- like some huge lymphocyte -– what are the roads down which that ambulance speeds extensions of? Our circulatory systems? Are new media and the internet extensions of our central nervous system? So tempting to think so. As if no different from how Moon-Watcher’s club extended his arm. But if arms were to evade our most remote control and go inter-continentally ballistic? What would that be extending? And now, with industrial exhalations melting icecaps and poisoning the tree of evolutionary life, both root and branch? What does that extend? Our breath? Our respiratory systems? Absurd. Such poison has no natural origin in or out of our bodies.

There may come a day our tools get totally out of hand. When, rather than extend us, our tools start self-extending totally independently. When our tools lurch with un-natural life and consciousness. When they become Frankenstein monstrosities. But no worries -– despite every speculating what will happen when toasters declare independence and start using us for food, that day is neither yet nor near. No fear getting electric shocked reaching to flick off one’s computer; of the blue screen of death flashing jagged spectral strings like, “Don’t ever try that again, human.” No fear our computers will get together and decide to terminate us before we try again.

No fearing such rank speculation. Even though, as Ernest Nagel long since pointed out, sufficiently sophisticated thermostats may be considered teleologically goal directed -– i.e., to maintaining some temperature range despite independently varying environmental interference. Even though our increasingly networked tools are such ordered magnitudes more sophisticated than thermostats. Doesn’t matter. However goal directed our tools become, they are nowhere near deciding to terminate us. Nowhere near independently making autonomous decisions or declaring independence. Toasters, thermostats and quantum computers are not people too. Not now, not ever –- so long as the ‘off’ switches remain stacked in our favour.

More troubling is how utterly dependent on networked machinery we become. Such that, should the machinery stop, few of us will be able to go on. Some, however, hope so. Since, within short decades of our absence, everything natural will flourish again. Just like at Chernobyl.

Most hopelessly troubling, though, is that we shall go on -- just like we have been. That, completely insulated by our tools and architectures, we shall become so un-natural that we’ll go on to devastate the Earth and everything natural in it. Which scenario, even to imagine, expels us from fiction into darkest fantasy.

But what is the meaning of the natural? Even so insulated by our tools and architectures, are we not thereby proving fittest and, thus, surviving naturally? No. By no such means. True, natural selection has no prescriptive eye to the future. Criteria of fitness are all wishful thinking. Despite Darwin’s misgivings, one day to the next we may tumble from the pinnacle of creation to become dinosaurs. There are sound criteria of un-fitness, however. Such as utterly failing to negotiate ecologically.

Any plague -– regardless whether microscopic or of vertebrates -– utterly failing negotiating sustainable ecological positioning gets counted among evolutionary casualties. Must negotiate sustainable ecological positioning –- whether obviously up and down the food chain, in the dance of physical spacing or invisibly, obliquely in terms of respiration. Must negotiate in every way from the molecular to the behavioural. And in this evolutionary sense, Earth’s ecology is in global symbiosis.

That’s what’s so hopelessly troubling. While our bodies yet archive the record of global evolutionary symbiosis, we are progressively abandoning all ecological negotiating. Not because we want to. We’re over that Genesis 1:28 passage –- the one about subduing the Earth and dominating every living thing that moves on it. We all want to be green, nowadays. We just don’t know how any more. Our tools are almost entirely alien to natural evolution. They are incapable of ecological negotiating. And, insulated as we are becoming within networked technologies and urban architectures, with the immediate intimacy relating to our tools displacing every natural discernment –- how are we to retain or regain natural character?

David Brin, in the postscript to his Uplift War, wrote:

First we feared the other creatures who shared the Earth with us. Then, as our power grew, we thought of them as our property, to dispose of however we wished. The most recent fallacy (a rather nice one, in comparison) has been to play up the idea that the animals are virtuous in their naturalness, and it is only humanity who is a foul, evil, murderous, rapacious canker on the lip of creation. This view says that the Earth and all her creatures would be much better off without us. Only lately have we begun embarking upon a fourth way of looking at the world and our place in it… Perhaps we are the first to talk and think and build and aspire, but we may not be the last. Others may follow us in this adventure.

Wonderful. Truly. But doesn’t the scenario of Brin’s fourth way pass entirely beyond science fiction into fantasy? What chrysalis, technological or otherwise, could conceivably transform us into such elven stewards of everything natural –- from the orcish despoilers we have become?

In the most practical sense, the one most toxic at grass roots, city dwellers now utterly fail appreciating the completeness of nature’s ecological symbiosis. How there’s no garbage in nature. No waste. We see green bins overturned by raccoons and our noses contort in reflexive disgust. Not just the smell. The very idea. The mess. We don’t see bio-degradability, the symbiosis of nature or that raccoons are among the very few among natural kinds willing and able to negotiate with us ecologically. But a pile of computer monitors? That’s alright. Stacked all neat and clean. Never mind those aren’t bio-degradable or even bio-neutral. Never mind how bio-toxic those are. How they shall spill mercurial poisons to gnaw progressively the tree of living to toxic death. Neat! Clean! Antiseptic! Get germs off soap – use Drano. Defoliate the tree of living. Defoliate our own selves. Disable immune systems. Purge mitochondria, even – they’re no proper parts of us. Such is our technological, industrial, un-natural disease.

Probably it is too late. By far. Just on principle -– natural principle -– though, there may be a point of entry to Brin’s fourth way. Beginning by relating to plants and other animals. Particularly those other animals prepared to negotiate with us and meet us halfway right where we live. In our cities. So easy. Just cease razing natural gardens. And feed the animals some of our leftovers. Scraps from our tables. Yes -– even raccoons. Because the world so is not our zoo. Because otherwise, in abandoning all natural discernment, that club of Moon-Watcher’s will only have transformed us into the most un-natural plague of vermin ever to disfigure the face of this Earth.

To be continued…..

The Biggest Realtor of them All

Some count beans. Others count marbles. Making sure they’re all there. There’s a bunch tracking cracks in sidewalks. Perfectly understandable. Takes all kinds. But what’s with the crazed municipal politics lately? The way municipal politicians been carrying on -– do they expect us to believe it’s some novel sort of public service? That they carry on that way for our own good?

While icecaps melt. With ever more species forever gone extinct. While, rather than work together salvaging some future, humanity clashes cultures like there’s no tomorrow. Which, so long as we don’t emerge from our bloody past, there isn’t. And meanwhile, here in our great city, in Toronto the good, it isn’t even business as usual. Not even that. It’s about inconceivably absurd municipal politics.

And there’s no ignoring Toronto council squabbling over Miller’s taxes. They keep demanding our attention. Like when threatening to ditch the Sheppard subway. As if we’d get fooled that easy. Threats, tantrums and antics –- invariably nothing but tactics. Right? The Sheppard line will be safe. David Miller will bully his taxes through opposing council. Miller’s broom will sweep opposing councillors off their feet, six feet under the rug. And then Miller’s bold new taxes will solve all Toronto fiscal crises. The Sheppard line will be safe. Right?

Not likely. Never mind the Sheppard subway. If Toronto gives Miller enough time, nothing Toronto will be safe from Miller.

But I hadn’t realized any of this prior the weekend. Which is why I was so confused watching that press conference a couple weeks back. When councillors got near screaming at each other. When the Miller stalwarts kept repeating how it’s all Mike Harris’ fault.

Mike Harris? No way they believe that, I said to myself.

“Self,” I said, “there’s no way. No conceivable way they mean that. It’s only tactics.”

And I was perfectly justified saying so. For how could anyone go digging up Mike Harris -– while spontaneously burying how and why Ontarians voted for him? Like, by majorities -– twice in a row? Digging up Mike Harris for blame means digging up what he stood for -– and what he stood against. Why Ontarians elected him not once -- but twice. Bringing up Mike Harris means bringing up Bob Rae. The reason we elected Harris in the first place.

What reason was that? Simple. Ontario viscerally and reflexively turned away from hard left ideology. Much the way a hand will turn from the stove burning it. Because Rae got so ideologically entrenched, he forgot the meaning of productivity and responsibility. With recession looming, Rae went kiting Ontario’s credit on a nine billion dollar spree. Then, when reality hit Ontarians with that frivolous deficit compounded recession, Rae introduced us to his social contract. Not yet forced collectivization -– but quite the leaping first step toward it. That’s what got Mike Harris elected -– what got Ontario so revolutionary for Mike Harris’ brand of common sense.

And that’s why I used to get confused watching and hearing Miller’s stalwarts bleating how it’s all Mike Harris’ fault. As if Ontario had flocked to Harris on some whim. As if Ontarians hadn’t been forced so hard right by Rae driving us off the road to the ideological left.

But it started coming clear last Friday. September 14th. When I noticed the front-page article in the Toronto Star: Miller renews tax pitch – Approve levies quickly to avert cuts, council told. Not the article itself, though -– nothing in it seemed the least substantial. But the picture of Miller and stalwarts, where the article continues on page A6, caught my eye. Totally immobilized my eye. Stopped my eye in its tracks like a scrapped Sheppard subway. Because I’d seen that picture before. Just couldn’t remember where. Utter déjà vu.

Saturday, I kept Friday’s Star open to page A6. Gave that picture every chance to haunt down my memory of it. Nothing. Not until Sunday when, sheerly out of boredom, my eye drifted to the following passage at top left of the picture:

We heard from realtors,” Miller said in a jab at the Toronto Real Estate Board, which opposes imposing the land transfer tax. “Now we’re going to hear from real Torontonians.

The passage was from Royson James’ column –- Mayor’s game plan full of holes. But it ought to officially have captioned that A6 picture. Since it clicked that picture into place like finding the lost piece of a puzzle.

Miller’s scapegoating realtors and the way his stalwarts so look like sheep in that picture -– that’s what clicked it. Goats. Sheep. Farm animals. George Orwell’s Animal Farm. Been decades since I’d read the novel or seen the film. But now, whenever I see that Friday Toronto Star page A6 picture, it might as well have been yesterday. Most of all because in it Miller so totally is Napoleon.

Scary, how well the puzzle fits. What it reveals. Miller’s stalwart figurative sheep? When they get bleating how it’s all Mike Harris’ fault? Just like in the film. It’s meant ideologically –- as a conversation, deliberation and debate stopper. “Four legs good, two legs bad!”

Miller’s scapegoating realtors? Hell. I’m no fan of realtors. I’ve never much understood why real estate vendors and purchasers don’t delay some months until listing agreements expire. Then they can negotiate privately. And subsequent to transfer of title, they can each send real estate agents who introduced them a couple hundred bucks -– the proper amount such introductions are reasonably worth. But Miller scapegoating realtors? When he seeks to encumber all Toronto real estate transactions precisely as realtors do -- but absent even pretext of specific service or voluntary character? When, in event of recession, such uniquely additional disadvantage to real estate transacting will devastate Toronto? Too hypocritical for words. If Toronto realtors aren’t real Torontonians -– how unreal does that make David Miller?

Regardless, it seems David Miller must continually scapegoat those questioning his policies. Which leads us to questioning who the real Torontonians are. Fortunately, in this Twilight Zone remake of Animal Farm, the answer’s obvious. Chickens welcoming sacrificing as David Miller decrees are the real Torontonians. Precisely as George Orwell had Napoleon expressing:

The needs of the windmill must override everything else, he said… [I]f more money were needed, it would have to be made up by the sale of eggs… The hens, said Napoleon, should welcome this sacrifice as their own special contribution towards the building of the windmill.

Such déjà vu. How similarly the Star quoted David Miller expressing, “You cannot build a great city of the size and stature of Toronto on the backs of a property tax alone.”

Perhaps not. But so what? The issue is responsible taxation and, when needed, responsible service cutting. The issue is not getting carried away by ideology and not forgetting the meaning of responsibility and productivity. And the problem is that Torontonians, however real or unreal Miller may deem us, have seen and heard only the most astounding irresponsibility lately. Bullying, threats, tantrums and scapegoating antics. The most thoroughly irresponsible scare tactics. How are we to not conclude that Miller and stalwarts have gotten ideologically carried away –- and seek to sweep us all down the same river?

Used to be Miller stood for a mighty decent ideal. When he stood with his broom. Stood to sweep Toronto clean. To maintaining, perhaps improving this great city Torontonians have built. No longer. Now, no pronouncement or photographic opportunity lapses absent emphasis that Miller and stalwarts are building a great city. In Friday’s Toronto Star page A6 picture? That’s the larger than life and decency slogan overhead: “building a great city”. And this great city Miller and stalwarts are building -– that’s what isn’t real. Precisely unreal as the windmill in George Orwell’s Animal Farm. Just like the windmill which, when threatening actualization, was destroyed most likely by Napoleon. Just the same -- the great city Miller and stalwarts are building is an ideology.

It isn't Toronto Miller and stalwarts are building. Not in reality. Since the city of Toronto has long since been and continues to be built by the enterprise of Torontonians. Since the city of Toronto is already great. Ranked anywhere between number five and number one in the world. Building a great city? Sorry -- not Toronto. Toronto's already great just the way it's already been built. Municipal workers, public servants and politicians can and indeed must assist orderly maintaining and responsible building. But there never has nor never will be any city built by municipal workers. They must never, under any circumstances, give in to the hubris of insinuating it is they building our city. Such hubris is consistent with trampling the actuality of Toronto -– not with public service of any conceivable variety. Yet, as he now stands, David Miller will not likely abandon the ideology of building a great city. For David Miller, building our great city has come to mean we Torontonians had better not get in his way. That we’d better welcome sacrificing as David Miller decrees. Or else he’ll shut us down and derail us right along with the Sheppard subway.

On the other hand, it is insinuated that if we do welcome sacrificing as Miller decrees, then his bold new taxes will solve all Toronto fiscal crises. Yeah. Sure. Not too likely. Not in this Twilight Zone remake of Animal Farm. For when the meaning of responsibility and productivity get forgotten, shortfalls and deficits expand in perpetuity regardless amounts transferred from elsewhere. Ever greater sacrificing gets invoked. And scapegoating progresses from ugly to dangerous.

There are some, of course, who benefit. Not all those Miller praises as real Torontonians. Hens eventually get trampled along with everyone else. Just the elite stalwart few. Those animals which, in Animal Farm terminology, are more equal than others. Quite in keeping with Royson James’ reporting,

No cuts to councillors’ perks or 9 per cent salary hike… The mayor was asked whether curbing councillor frills such as municipal golf course and zoo passes, and generous office expenses -– an issue that infuriates the very citizens who the mayor hopes will lobby their councillors to vote in support of his higher taxes – wasn’t one way to find the $700,000 needed to halt Monday closings at the community centres. Miller replied: “The best way is to vote for the taxes."

Of course. However. Here’s hoping Torontonians give Miller plenty of time building that great city of his. Why? Because ideals are better than good. Because ideology is worse than bad. Because opportunities to learn the difference between ideals and ideology firsthand as from Miller and stalwarts are too few. And because Miller is so spectacular at production of meaning, it's difficult anticipating all the meanings he'll produce next.

Cartesian Dreaming

Cartesian Dreaming
by Peter Fruchter

i think therefore i am
-- uncertain thinking originates with me

but take no issue,
only let 'me' be

-- by thoughtful definition --
that thought originating source,
which source i'll name and say is 'me'.

then, if thought originates with(in) 'me'
it follows close i must so be
to necessarily exist in being
so as to originate the thinking.

so i think,
and so i seem,
the very origin of my own dream.
but what if not?
what if anything appear unthought?

thinking thus of things unthought,
conceiving possibilings unconceived,
i must haste again to thinking,
to conceiving, to defining
what might appear wholly unthought,
what not with(in) 'me' originating
as 'experience' -- meaning, beyond doubt,
any and all that originates without.

might all be 'me'?
might all be thought?
might i be all and
might 'experience' all be naught?

is all with-in --
and naught without?

alas, too late
to think like that.
having thought what is
yet is unthought,
i must now think how may-be not --
i must think beyond my thought.

'experience', then,
it may-be naught --
yet even so,
if just in thought,
makes me wonder what might there be
that be entirely unthought by 'me'.

so must i wonder
so must wander i
for all there is or yet may-be
that is yet unthought by 'me' --
for all i must get up, set out and see.

Defusing God’s Warriors: The Nature of Truth

Does anyone watch CNN any more? Some days it looks like they got young Anderson Cooper running the show. Hosting interminable stretches of it, anyhow. Might possibly work out fine. Such a great head of air. And American audiences might relate. Not intimately like they relate to Homer Simpson -– nobody redeems American ignorance like huggable, indestructible Homer. But, provided sufficient boyish charm and childish innocence -– maybe like with Bart.

And how about that “God’s Warriors” miniseries? Wasn’t that worth watching? Wasn’t it hilarious?

Toronto Sun’s Michael Coren watched it. Didn’t much like it, though. Didn’t like it so much -– he got fuming incendiary at CNN.

Comparing Christiane Amanpour’s CNN miniseries to a suicide attempt, Coren wrote that,

.. CNN ran three shows on religious fundamentalism, making the appallingly relativistic and fatuous argument that the Christian, Jewish and Islamic varieties were not only similar but equally hazardous.

Well.. yeah. Sure. CNN programming can get fatuous, alright. But why get upset? Why expect meaningful significance when viewing footage of Anderson Cooper exclaiming how strong the wind blows? Or when Lou Dobbs declares undocumented workers are waging war on Americans -– regardless how such workers stand, fall and risk their lives for the American dream? Or when Wolf Blitzer comes at us live as smoke grenades from the over-stimulation room -– quivering to make news even when there’s nothing to report? Because, like Wolf told Bill Clinton, he’s a newsman and that’s his job -– making news?

So why get upset at Christiane Amanpour? She’s just doing her job. Accidental tour-guiding us to fundamentalist footage. And look -– see? There’s some Christian fundamentalism here. Alright –- keep very still. There! That was Islamic fundamentalism. And if we all just look behind this rock -– quietly! There! Yes! Jewish fundamentalism.

Of course Christiane neglected telling how the time to worry about Christian fundamentalism was hundreds years back. When Christian soldiers really got crusading the heathens. Or how the time to worry about Jewish fundamentalism was thousands years back. When their tribes spilled from the dessert and got genociding anything that moved if it worshipped false idols. Whereas the time to worry about Islamic fundamentalism is now more than ever. Particularly when in potential conjunction with weapons of mass destruction -– as reported repeatedly.

Right? We don’t lose much sleep over Christian or Jewish fundamentalism any more. We did for a while. Kept waking in the wee hours. Wondering if the militant Christian or Jewish fundamentalist terrorists were coming to make pastries of our blood. But when militant fundamentalist terrorists did arrive, when we woke to explosive pounding, there weren’t any Christian or Jewish fundamentalists to be found. None. Nowhere. Oh, we looked. We searched. After the dust settled, we searched high, searched low, searched sideways. Behind stones. Behind trees, bushes, shrubs and flowerbeds.

“Hey there, stone,“ we’d ask, “are there militant Christian or Jewish fundamentalists hiding behind you?”

And the stones –- trees, bushes, shrubs and flowerbeds –- invariably replied, “Nah. Haven’t seen any those lately. Not the past hundreds years. Thousands, even.”

Not one militant Christian or Jewish fundamentalist to be found when terrorist dust settled. What we found, invariably, was militant Islamic fundamentalists. Islamists. Invariably. Got real used to finding those whenever dust settled. We’re getting so familiar how they tick -– pretty often now we find them even before they blow up.

Sure there’s Christian and Jewish fundamentalists. Absolutely. Might be there’s a couple Jehovah’s Witnesses in the flowerbed this very instant. But Christiane Amanpour can’t confuse us. Those are not the variety found when terrorist dust settles. And in event of singular exception, when Christian or Jewish fundamentalists do grow sufficiently militant to assassinate or spontaneously blow up –- we don’t run the streets celebrating. We don’t celebrate, admire or venerate anyone remaining in Christian or Jewish fundamentalist ignorance. We manage tolerating their ignorant, fundamentalist religious freedoms -– just so long as not militant. Not a shade longer. For militant means not just ignorant –- but criminal. Nevermind combining militant criminality with incurably intolerant fundamentalist ignorance -– that’s both criminally insane and insanely criminal. So. We manage tolerating fundamentalist ignorance -– barely. But anything getting militant hereabouts goes direct to jail, does not pass go -– and totally does not collect $200. And we do much better without fundamentalism in the first place, thanks so much. That’s why we not only separate church from state –- we even have second thoughts public funding prayer in schools.

Christiane Amanpour can’t confuse us. Because we’re getting militant Islamic fundamentalism -– the meaning of it -– in the (relatively) tolerant West. Not (only) since 9/11. That’s a myth. That we’ve become Islam-phobic since 9/11. In the tolerant West we don’t mistake all Muslims for militant fundamentalists. We know far better. But since 9/12 through 9/whenever –- that’s different. We’ve seen the collective 9/12 dancing in the Middle-Eastern Muslim street. Seen it on T.V. Seen it on Al-Jazeera and CNN. The 9/12 collective rejoicing. We tried laughing it off –- i.e., with (non)Muhammad cartoons. Tried laughing it off as we would Christian or Jewish fundamentalism. Tried laughing it off as we would any ignorance. But that Islamic fundamentalism is too militant. Too criminal insane. It rules the ignorance of Islamic fundamentalism as it has not ruled Christianity for hundreds of years -– or Judaism for thousands.

No way can Christiane Amanpour confuse us. Not when we kept falling asleep during her breathless narrating Christian and Jewish fundamentalism. But militant Islamic fundamentalism? Hell. We can’t get nowhere near sleeping without it falling down the stairs. Blowing up the house right along with the stairs. Militant Islamic fundamentalism blows up and keeps right on ticking. Like some crazed vaporizer bunny. Blows up nightly, blows up daily. Keeps on ticking. No way will it go gently into no sweetly slumbering good night. Not on our lives, it won’t.

There’s no laughing militant Islamic fundamentalism off. Not while it keeps us up nights – and blows us up most days. No laughing it off in Chechnya, Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Iraq or Lebanon. Not in Asia, Africa, Europe or America. No laughing off how it worships death, how it suicide-murders innocents as eagerly in the West as the mid-East or the North or the South.

But what’s the point Michael Coren getting all upset at Christiane Amanpour -– or anyone at CNN? They’re just doing their jobs making news. Just show business as usual. Reporting things that move. Like wind. Undocumented workers. Fundamentalists. Whatever. Reporting the meaning and significance of movements –- like, why things move –- is so not part of Christiane’s job description. Not at CNN.

Christiane did a great job. Just indiscriminately pointing out fundamentalism. It is indeed a huge problem. She did a superlative job –- simply as a mainstream conversation starter. So that now, six years after 9/11, we can finally begin really talking about it. Right out in the open mainstream. So that more thoughtful individuals can start reasoning why Islamic fundamentalism is such a huge problem –- whereas both Christian and Jewish fundamentalism are not.

That’s the issue. Why on the Islamic shore, as Columbia University’s Mark Lilla puts it, “.. political institutions are conceived in terms of divine authority..” -- while on non-Islamic shores they aren’t. That’s the issue, the difference our understanding of which Lilla declares “.. the most urgent intellectual and political task of the present time.” And the way Lilla declares this -– right out in the open mainstream rather than all covert in some merely academic journal –- owes plenty to Christiane Amanpour. To her tearing into and through the mainstream indiscriminately as an icebreaker.

So here we are. Right out in the open mainstream. Owing plenty to them that broke the ice. Like Rosie O’Donnell, proclaiming Christian fundamentalism equally dangerous to Islamic fundamentalism. Yet far more so to Christiane Amanpour’s “appallingly relativistic and fatuous argument” that Islamic, Christian and Jewish fundamentalism are all equally dangerous. Michael Coren ought to be grateful rather than furious. But now that we’re here, right out in the open mainstream, it’s time to figure out what makes Christiane so spectacularly wrong. We’d better make some headway following Mark Lilla in figuring out this “most urgent intellectual and political task”.

So what happened? How come Islam musters endless Islamist armies, each militant fundamentalist soldier of which is so bolstered by divine authority that they are eager to die if only it means bringing God’s truth to those of us infidels they kill? How come we in the (relatively) tolerant West scarcely manage raising even sporadic few divinely authorized militant fundamentalists –- and that whenever we do, we hunt those down as if criminally insane and insanely criminal both?

Mark Lilla says what happened -– accounting for Western democracy and, arguably, also for Canadian tolerance and multiculture such as in Toronto -– was the “Great Separation”. And that we can blame it all on Hobbes:

This liberal-democratic order is the only one we in the West recognize as legitimate today, and we owe it primarily to Hobbes. In order to escape the destructive passions of messianic faith, political theology centered on God was replaced by political philosophy centered on man. This was the Great Separation.

This might very well be right. Lilla’s “Great Separation” may account for the cultural shift in the moral and political character of the West. But even so -– how could the mantle of divine authority have become such a rag, to be discarded so out of hand, if we continued even to suspect God was watching us? From no matter how great a distance? No. Something far more fundamental, more culturally tectonic must have occurred to account how we’ve discarded divine authority. How we’ve thrown off that divine mantle once indispensable to ruling as if it became a rag of ignorance and impotence.

Something far more culturally tectonic did happen. God turned up dead one day. The eighth biblical day, perhaps -– when we killed God. That’s what turned the mantle of divine authority to rags.

How did we wind up killing God? Unintentionally. All the while our materialist Enlightenment prophets -– Copernicus, Galileo, Newton and Darwin –- were demonstrating everywhere God was not found, the nature of truth was shifting beneath us. Took about one thousand years for truth to turn entirely and categorically from ontological idealism to epistemological materialism.

Prior to shifting, truth and authority were divinely revealed and granted. The actuality of God was incontrovertibly definitive for St. Anselm. God was the greatest possible. Therefore, God couldn’t just be an idea. God had to be real. For if God were just an idea then God would not have been the greatest possible. Which, of course, God was –- the greatest possible. But, hundreds of years later, after Copernicus and other materialist prophets kept demonstrating how fully reliable God wasn’t, there was a tide of doubting God’s greatness. Descartes sought to stem the doubting. Tried to demonstrate how there was some God given truth -– given directly to human minds –- we could be certain of. But Descartes failed. Among many others, Hobbes maintained only science reliable in providing -– only evidently provisional -– knowledge. More strongly, La Mettrie pretty much ridiculed Descartes. Claimed that lacking evidence could mean nothing but ignorance. And then, after Darwin made such monkeys of us, doubting God’s greatness flooded the West. Today, in the West, truth has turned entirely -– from certain as God given to -– provisional. Since we now know that anything’s possible, we reject that purportedly greatest. Anything’s possible –- so there can always be greater. Hence God, the greatest possible, can’t be real. There can be no greatest when there can always be some greater. Therefore, as the greatest possible, God can only be an idea. And a rather silly one at that.

That’s what killed God in the West. The way the nature of truth shifted between back then, in St. Anselm’s day, and now. A stark and categorical difference the practical significance of which is easily illustrated by before-and-after thought experiment.

Imagine, for instance, that there’s a bible passage pronouncing all swans white. And imagine any true, devout believer, familiar with that bible passage, living sometime in middle-ages. Imagine, finally, that some fellow arrives carrying a large black bird -– loudly declaring he’s found himself a black swan.

What to do? As a true, devout believer, one surely tries to help. For the fellow’s own good. For sake of his immortal soul. One calls his attention to the bible passage pronouncing swans white. One encourages him to realize his error -– that the black bird he holds can’t be a swan. Right? Swans are white. But, madman that he is, the fellow starts to laugh. What can it mean? Is he possessed? Is he rebelling against God’s word? Is he a heretic? No telling. Must call on the village priest. Still, the fellow will not admit his error. His pride is such that, rather than recant, he vomits his sacrilege high and low. The priest has no option but to call on higher authority –- like the local inquisitor.

Fast forward a few hundred years. It becomes conceivable -– for some –- that swans are not necessarily white. The heretic becomes a naturalist. The devout believer begins having some difficulties remaining true.

Fast forward to the present. The heretic has become a scientist. The devout believer is now regarded as an ignorant fundamentalist. Western society permits and respects religious freedom to such ignorance only so long as it does not (re)turn militant.

That’s what happened. That’s what accounts for the difference. And that’s why still, six years post-9/11, instead of joining forces to deal with climate change, with icecaps melting as we breathe, humanity is clashing cultures like there’s no tomorrow. There can be no tomorrow until we emerge from our bloody past.

The Principle of Tolerance (Culture & Multiculture, Part 10)

There’s nothing more dangerous than ignoring culture. Nothing fatal as ignorance when it comes to cultural principles. For cultural principles are made equally of ideology and of ideals. And while ideals shape the world -– ideology will surely destroy it.

Mentioning any clash of civilizations produces vehement denial. Fair enough. Wherefore art these civilizations? Whereabouts is even bare civility remaining? Thus and however, though -– nobody can deny how cultures are clashing. No one tries denying cultures clash like there’s no tomorrow.

What tomorrow? The long cold-war years are over. Done, those days of superpowers balancing, cavorting on the cutting edge of mutually assured destruction. Perhaps coming to grips with climate change isn’t hopeless -– should we only work together in good time. But what hope of working together? What hope while the conjunction of militant fundamentalism with weapons of mass destruction approaches? The spectre of our twenty-first century looms too vast. Threatening, as it does, to shroud us not only in greenhouse gasses -– but also in unholy smoke of mushroom clouds.

In “The Politics of God” (New York Times Magazine, August 19, 2007) -- an essay adapted from his forthcoming book -– Columbia University’s Mark Lilla declares understanding political theology “[T]he most urgent intellectual and political task of the present time.” And he’s right. Whatever called, we absolutely can’t afford persisting in ignorance when it comes to political theology -– perhaps better known as militant fundamentalism.

Lilla is quite right, as well, to point out how categorically our ignorance persists:

.. we see political theology, especially in its Islamic form -– as an atavism requiring psychological or sociological analysis but not serious intellectual engagement. Islamists, even if they are learned professionals, appear to us primarily as frustrated, irrational representatives of frustrated, irrational societies, nothing more. We live, so to speak, on the other shore. When we observe those on the opposite bank, we are puzzled, since we have only a distant memory of what it was like to think as they do. We all face the same questions of political existence, yet their way of answering them has become alien to us. On one shore, political institutions are conceived in terms of divine authority and spiritual redemption; on the other they are not. And that, as Robert Frost might have put it, makes all the difference.

Indeed. But what to do? How even to begin emerging from our ignorance concerning cultural principles entailing militant fundamentalism? Lilla proposes we get in touch with our own fundamentalist roots:

Even the most stable and successful democracies, with the most high-minded and civilized believers, have proved vulnerable to political messianism and its theological justification. If we can understand how that was possible in the advanced West, if we can hear political theology speaking in a more recognizable tongue, represented by people in familiar dress with familiar names, perhaps then we can remind ourselves how the world looks from its perspective. This would be a small step toward measuring the challenge we face and deciding how to respond.

Is that so? Could we do that? Take that one “small step” to reminding ourselves? To get in touch with our own fundamentalist roots? No. Not likely. Not by however many small steps.

Lilla completely underestimates how distant our memory “of what it was like to think as they do” has stretched. How distant? Stretched past all breaking points. Inconceivably distant. We have crossed a great and categorical divide from our fundamentalist roots. There’s no small stepping back across.

Our division from fundamentalist roots is categorical. With but few exceptions compassing those we deem criminally insane -– i.e., David Koresh -– almost none of us remain able in the West to conceive as militant fundamentalists do. We can’t help regarding exploding murder-suicides, for instance, as we would enemy combatants prepared to make the supreme sacrifice. As if willing to die for their cause. And, while simultaneously realizing it isn’t so, we still can’t begin conceiving how fundamentally such murder-suicides are not sacrificing. How not willing -– but eager they are to die for their cause. How eager they are to die if it means bringing God’s truth crashing and crushing us infidels. We can’t begin conceiving it -– how great God is for the truly faithful of militant fundamentalism.

Lilla doesn’t appear to deny our division from fundamentalism. He does question the divide, however. How and when did it come to be so great? How categorical is it, anyhow? As Lilla put it, “The history of political theology in the West is an instructive story, and it did not end with the birth of modern science, or the Enlightenment, or the American and French Revolutions, or any other definitive historical moment.”

Quite right. It didn’t happen overnight. Our division from fundamentalism spanned hundreds of years and involved everything Lilla mentions. More, even. But none of that means we can’t figure out what happened. Our trouble recognizing and identifying what happened is due only how thoroughly and intimately we take it all for granted -– not how long it took.

What happened? We killed God dead -– that’s what. So that now, as we’ve heard long since -– God is dead. How did it happen? When? Once we began following the great materialist prophets of our Enlightenment. Copernicus. Galileo. Newton. And the greatest of our prophets -– Darwin.

Copernicus and Galileo showed us how lights didn’t move in the sky around us by God’s hand. Newton showed us how nothing in the mechanics of the world was getting moved by God’s hand. And when Darwin made such total monkeys out of us -– that was the last spike. Went right through God’s coffin and killed God dead. Because Darwin showed us how nothing in our ancestry and own bodies had been moved by God’s hand.

That’s how it happened. Us killing God. By wresting his creator hand right out of creation. Our great Enlightenment prophets showed us everywhere God wasn’t. Not in the stars, not in the mechanics of the world -– not even in our own bodies. Such that, when all God’s workings had been unsaid and undone, biblical thumping invoking God given truths came to mean ignorance more so than divine authority.

That’s what happened. Thumping bibles hasn’t lost all authority -– we haven’t come entirely that far. But almost none of us can help regarding thumping bibles as ignorant. Most of us regard them thumping as clowns. Which contradicts and demolishes our inclination or ability to credit their divine authority. Hence, we’ve laughed Christian fundamentalism right off. Laughed it out of state and out of court. It hasn’t even much prayer left in public schools. And while many of us bring in the clowns or go visiting them when feeling nostalgic -– we just can’t conceive how to be ruled by them any longer. Not by such clowns.

Once we killed God, the very nature of truth changed on us in the (relatively) tolerant West. We just haven’t got that old time revelation to fall back on any more. God’s own truth is empty and shut to us. Consequently, we’ve got nothing but solid evidence to rely on. Trouble is, evidence can never be solid like God’s truth used to be. Evidence is all descriptive and provisional. Nothing certain about it. Nothing definitive like God’s truth used to be. Damned evidence keeps arriving on daily basis. Never lets up. And no matter how confident we might feel -– we keep getting proven wrong eventually.

Killing God has made us provisional, uncertain and post-modern about truth. It has traumatized us and made us (relatively) tolerant. It has also made us intolerable to militant fundamentalism -– to the truly faithful. Who, by (their great) God’s own truth, know that they are right. Right to bring God’s truth to us. The more spectacularly the better. For their redemption, their eternal reward and for our own good, even. But even so -– we can’t conceivably respond in kind. How could we ever go out crusading to save heathen souls or die the martyrs’ death again -– knowing we might be completely in the wrong?

What if we could, though? Just hypothetically -– what if we could follow Lilla’s suggestion and get in touch with our fundamentalist roots again? What if we became certain of God’s truth once more? If we managed conceiving how truly great God is, if we found that absolute faith -– individually and especially collectively -– once more? If so then God help us all. For then we shall have re-crossed the categorical divide backwards and rejoined the truly faithful. And all helping ourselves from the spectre of this twenty-first century will have utterly passed us by.

There’s another avenue open to our understanding. Rather than getting in touch with our fundamentalist roots, let’s explore, discover and learn to better appreciate cultural principles distinguishing us as Canadians -– and Torontonians. For anything good and positive we might contribute stems from Canadian moderation, democracy -– and from the best of multiculture as in Toronto.

Let’s better appreciate the source, origin, meaning and significance of the principle informing our moderation, democracy and multiculture. Let’s better appreciate the principle of tolerance. For in so doing we enhance our identity as Canadians and Torontonians -– and more generally emerge from ignorance concerning cultural principles. Concerning all cultural principles -– including those entailing militant fundamentalism. Because what’s made our ignorance so fatal hasn’t been losing touch with our fundamentalism. It’s been how we’ve dismissed both the ideals shaping and ideologies destroying the world. How we’ve dismissed all principles. What’s been so fatal to our understanding and future has been how deeply the relatively tolerant West has fallen into materialism.

That’s our trouble. Materialist monism contradicts appreciating any principle -– regardless whether that principle informs other cultures or the meaning of our own tolerance.

Toronto Culture and Multiculture Part IV: Sitting with the Gypsies

I was so stupid. Sitting with the gypsies and failing grade one. In a way it was all my fault what happened. The entire misunderstanding was my fault. That entire, horrible misunderstanding.

No way was I looking to mouth off asking too many questions. I was just trying to understand. Why this, why that, why not do it different. Why not do it how I thought was better. Wasn’t mouthing off. Kids didn’t go mouthing off behind the iron curtain. Just wanted to understand by authority what reason things were to be done that way. So stupid – me never realizing things weren’t done by authority any reason. Never realizing how most everything was done entirely by reason of authority behind the iron curtain.

So there I was, sitting with the gypsies, failing grade one. Not smart. Not good. The good smart ones sat fronting each row. They were the ones getting all perfect grades. Also kept order. Like orderlies, I guess. Snitching the rest of us was officially their job. Didn’t bother with me, though. Not back there with the gypsies. I was beneath their contempt. Too far back to see, nevermind snitch on.

Sitting with the gypsies didn’t make me one, either. The gypsies didn’t speak much Romanian – and I sure didn’t speak Roma. Even if I had, I don’t think they would have spoken to me. Yet, even had they spoken to me, it wouldn’t have done me any good. No conceivable incantation could have meant I’d get away unbuttoning my collar, slouching back from sitting at attention and join with them just marking time. Their immunity to the pecking orderlies wouldn’t have translated for me.

Official orderlies didn’t bother me. The wan’na-be orderlies did. The sore and persecuted ones seven or eight seats back from the front – one or two ahead of me. No hope getting up front for them. They’d have lied, cheated, stolen and killed indiscriminately to get ahead a couple seats, though. And that meant if my fountain pen smudged one line in my notebook, I got reported. If I squirmed a tad from sitting at attention, I got reported. If I even creaked my bench funny – yeah. Reported.

Got so I didn’t much have to sit at attention or fear creaking my bench any more. Because many days, I wasn’t sitting. I was standing. At attention, by my bench. Except when everyone went for recess. Then I’d get to sit back a while. Just me and Tovarisha Diriginta – Ms. Director. I’d put up my hand and she’d go on with whatever she was doing. About once a week, if I managed keeping my hand up all recess, she’d look at me with her marble eyes.

“Is there something you would like to say?”

Stupid me, there always was. Some objection. Some idiot question. How to make things better. Which, of course, just made things worse.

Finally, one day late that year, the waste hit the fan. Tovarisha hadn’t looked my way for weeks. Another recess ended. It got to be too much. My arm hurt and I couldn’t bear lowering it empty handed in defeat no more. Got to be too much. If I had to put my arm down in defeat again then rather down the throat of that orderly girl returning from recess. Put it down her throat and see how far down I could reach. Had I been thinking, it would have been along lines that if I was gon’na do that kind of time, better go ahead and commit some crime. But it got too much and I wasn’t thinking. As everyone was returning from recess I got up, grabbed my books, advanced two benches – and sat.

And then there was silence. Nobody went reporting to Tovarisha. Just all stared amazement at me.

Seconds passed. A minute. Another. Tovarisha looked to see what everyone was staring at. And she didn’t much react. Almost like she’d been expecting it.

“It’s just an animal,” she said. “Doesn’t know better.”

She came around, grabbed my ear and led me back. Not back among the gypsies. Four or five benches further. All the way back behind empty benches, where nobody sat or could be conceived to sit. So I became nobody.

Didn’t seem too bad at first, being outcast. Even the out of school drubbings stopped. Only the gypsies craned back my way once in a while – like they couldn’t believe what an idiot I was and almost pitied me. Seemed alright, at first. I wasn’t to speak or be spoken to – and it seemed a relief. But not for very long.

One particular day, it became imperative to use the facilities. What to do, absent voice and mobility? Nothing. Endure. And so I did. Most of that vividly particular day, I endured. But not long enough.

Afterwards, I was sent for a bucket and mop. The custodian returned with me. The bucket had been heavy and I’d wound up making another mess in the hallway. Anyway. Everyone stood in a circle while I was cleaning. Like visiting the zoo right there in the classroom. With Tovarisha, eyes of marble, tour guiding.

“See? That’s what happens when animals get out of control. We must teach it to not soil itself. Teach it to not soil our classroom. Teach it to not soil our school. Teach it to stop soiling our splendid socialist society! Teach this animal better!”

It happened only days after that. Less than a week, anyhow. A group of them from my class cornered me in the building I lived. By the huge, black cast-iron entry door. My hand was forced into the hinge. The door was shut. And the group vanished like they’d never been there. Which, of course, they hadn’t been. Not officially.

Found out, later, that throughout some twenty minutes the entire building heard me screaming. Can’t recall that part. Don’t remember anything but flashes. Alarming snapshots from some pitch of darkness place I’d never been – because it couldn’t have been me trapped there. How far from reaching the door handle was. My grandfather’s face. So many stairs to the second floor. How my thumb was hanging. How my thumb and arm were bandaged in place. And then a murky kind of twilight, a dim and endless boredom when entertainment was peeling dried blood off my arms. Like glue.

Months later I was able to twitch my thumb. And it was back to school. Grade two.

Not the end. Were this short story tall tale, it would be. Protagonist hears last nail hammered in his coffin. But there’s more point to this tale than woe. And it’s not that I’ve enjoyed peeling glue ever since. Or how I loathe buckets and mops.

Second grade was different. I was different. Couldn’t conceive questioning. All was obedience, no questions asked. Not by me. Not ever.

Started out sitting with the gypsies again. Soon enough, Tovarisha rolled her marble eyes at me. My obedience was impeccable, though. Impeccable to tiniest detail. It was her questions answered by my posture at attention – rigid as exclamation marks. Rigid as blades and cast-iron spikes facing her eyes.

My grades went from failing to perfect. I was moved up, one seat at a time, until I was second in row. Tovarisha announced that, should I continue sustaining such heroic progress, it was just a matter of time until I’d be first – in row, in class, an example to all.

My immaculate socialist rebirth was stained but once. There was this sad little man. Came around once every month to teach us art. He’d been inappropriately kind to me in first grade – got himself rebuked by Tovarisha. Never failed me when he should have. Justifiably should have. Art was one subject I ought to have failed. Couldn’t even get stick figures right when time came to drawing. Never could and still can’t. In any event, he was no longer sad when he came round our second grade classroom. He was pathetic. Stooped and trembling. Cringing.

We were to draw the school-yard. I did my best. But the art teacher insisted I hadn’t. Took my drawing and tore it.

“Why can’t you ever follow instructions?” he demanded while grabbing my ear and. pummelling me around some.

I didn’t bother trying to answer. Didn’t bother explaining that following instructions no questions asked didn’t mean I could figure drawing from sticks. He was nothing – I wasn’t there to answer his pathetic questions. Besides, I was more interested how come that orderly girl left class without permission.

Once the art teacher calmed sufficiently he took my grade-book, marked in a large 4, and returned it. That got to me. Standing at attention, staring at the row of perfect 10s culminating in a 4. I looked up from my grade-book, thinking, “This is an animal. It doesn’t know any better.” And I saw Tovarisha standing in the doorway. With the little orderly girl at her elbow.

And Tovarisha called out that pathetic art teacher into the hallway. Closed the door. We heard the shouting anyway. Both were shouting for a bit. He was much louder, initially. As I now realize hearing in hind-sight, hysterical. Soon, it was just Tovarisha shouting. Nothing more from him but a single sound. Sounded like a moan.

He came back in. Not trembling any more. Shaking. Injured like any other animal. Stood swaying a moment, searched and found me through watering eyes. Advanced. Tottered groping at my bench. Grasped my grade-book. Rummaged in his pockets. Pulled out a razor blade. Opened my grade-book and scraped at it with the razor. Placed razor back in pocket, cast about, found my fountain pen, made entry in grade-book, put fountain pen and grade-book down and stumbled from the room.

Never saw that pathetic art teacher again. Didn’t matter. His final entry in my grade-book answered every question I’d ever asked. Not that I was asking any more – but when I saw what he’d done, there wasn’t anything left to asking. Because grade-books were official documents. Had to be triple counter-signed – grading teacher, Tovarisha and parent. Forging signatures or altering grades once entered – totally illegal. Yet that pathetic art teacher had scraped away his original entry. Using razor blade much as I’d once used a bucket and mop. And his final entry in my grade-book was a perfect 10.

And the answer to all my questions – whether or not asked? Why like this and not like that? Why this way and not that? First and foremost and always: fear. Over, above and prior to all else, fear. Reason, as needed, might cower beneath and far behind. Far enough behind to ensure absolute, reflexive, blind flinching obedience. Otherwise, should reason dare questioning authority, reminders were ever crushing close at hand. Reminders how like animals those disobedient were subject to physical rupture, emotional shatter and spiritual fracture.

The point? Merely this. Simple-minded as my not realizing how intolerantly totalitarian life behind the iron curtain was, it is yet simpler minded – and more hazardous – not realizing how relatively tolerant, multicultural, free and democratic life here in Toronto, Canada is.

But for isolated flickers, state society governance has and continues to be by might – not by right. Might made right in the past. And increasingly, it does so again. Might, however, is not established by tolerance. Precisely not. Might is established by totalitarian intolerance to opposition.

What matters the specific character of totalitarian intolerance? What difference whether opposition be exterminated by communism for putative class enmity, by fascism for putative inimical inferiority, by fundamentalism for putative heresy or infidelity to God’s truth? It matters naught. Reason ceases signifying when intolerance turns totalitarian. There’s no reasoning – or questioning – when truth is re-written at gunpoint.

Not so here in Toronto, Canada. Building from cultural foundations in principled tolerance, we demonstrate to the world that right makes a greater might. We serve by example to the world truths and possibilities of multiculturalism and democracy elsewhere remaining unrealized.

Toronto hockey might let us down. But Toronto cultural diversity is unmatched. Toronto multiculturalism isn’t just world class – it’s a beacon to the world. And so, increasingly, is the freedom and democracy of Canadian society a light in the darkness. Wasn’t so until quite recently. But it is so becoming. We haven’t changed – not in any way radically – but we seem to have in the eyes of the world. Because the star-striped backdrop we’re inevitably seen against has turned inside out like over exposed negatives.

United States used to be the bastion of democracy. Now, it’s on a rampage. Since becoming the sole super-power and since the tragedy of September 11th, 2001, the United States has taken to overpowering. Taken to super-powering. More like an angry bear than the eagle far above – striking swift and deadly effective only when it must. So taken by super-powering, the United States becomes lost to it’s own founding democratic principles. There is no imposing democracy. Like a garden, democracy is cultivated – and, when absolutely necessary, defended. Democracy, like a garden, must be preserved and defended from coercion. No conceivable way can it be established by offensive – military or any other kind. Only by defensive. Democracy means cultivating free say in human life – precisely not coercing, ever, other than vital defence. To stop coercing.

Canada will not replace the United States as the bastion of democracy. But contrasting as a free and democratic beacon – illuminating what cultivating democracy in all reason demands? Increasingly.

Rooted in tolerance, we cultivate our free, democratic, multicultural society as a garden grown increasingly dramatic – and not only by contrast. Just one problem. We fail to appreciate the source and significance of the very principle of tolerance we are culturally rooted by. And this lack of cultural self-identification – this cultural self-disrespecting – means worse than Toronto living in no one’s imagination. It means worse than Canada living in no one’s understanding. Not only do we fail appreciating who we are – we fail guarding what we stand for.

The conquerors in history, the mighty of the world – they make no apologies. Not when they win. Totalitarian intolerance? Absolute oppression? Genocide, even? Too bad. When they win, they win. And since might makes them right, they require no reason but overpowering force. Since might makes them right, victory becomes self-evidence their gods are stronger, their destiny more manifest, their ideology more justified, their ways more precedent.

Not so with us. Rooted in tolerance, we do eventually grow mightier than the mighty of the world. For they live by the sword. And die by it. They rise and expand, they decline and fall. As they gamble the fortunes and misfortunes of war, we cultivate consistently. And so long as we stand adequate guard, so long as we cultivate our garden just long enough, we ultimately win simply by default of not losing.

But that’s the problem. We tend to forget standing guard. We tend to forget defending the garden we cultivate. Why? Because we don’t appreciate our own tolerance. Not in principle – we’re too materialistic to understand principles. More importantly, because the very principle of tolerance rooting our culture and guiding our democratic, multicultural ways leaves us prey to guilt. Debilitating, easily invoked guilt. It’s because we’re so committed to tolerance in principle that charges of intolerance, however spurious, get us wheeling – cartwheeling – right off the edge of reality.

We must start appreciating, understanding, even celebrating who we are and what we stand for. We must ask some better questions about the meaning of our tolerance and where, in principle, our tolerance comes from. Lest we fail guarding who we are, what we stand for – and decline, stumble and fall instead. We owe it to the world as much as we owe it to ourselves.

Toronto Culture and Multiculture, Part III

Being Torontonian means having nothing to declare. Took me a long time discovering it.

My second year in Toronto, there was this particular boy in school. Particularly self-assured and a little scary. Had that inscrutably hazardous Stone Cold Clint Eastwood character mix to him. Nobody knew who he was. Everyone knew not to ask. Anyhow, one day he showed up with a rather nice tennis racket. Nothing extraordinary – but all the other boys acted like it was. Acted like that tennis racket was some kind of holy grail. They kept on and on about it. Where’d he get it? How much did it cost? How was it different from their tennis rackets? How was it different from his old tennis racket? On and on.

Me, I didn’t get what the racket was. Like, who gave a flying tennis ball? Most of them didn’t even play tennis. What was so spectacular about it? Why did it matter? Was it supposed to make him more special, somehow? What annoying nonsense. Got so irritated I blurted out: “Yeah, he got it at the Household Finance.”

One moment’s utter silence. Next, like every pin and second shoe dropping at once, the entire class cracked up. In hysterics. Falling out of chairs, rolling on the floor. That’s how hard they were laughing. All but two. Stone Cold Clint of the new racket was alternating glaring at me as if his food had turned poisonous bugs – and muttering to all else that alright already, it hadn’t been entirely that funny. Sure didn’t help him any. Between gasping, all kept assuring him that it had, indeed, been that funny. Funnier. Funniest. Laughing all harder at his expression. Laughing in his face. Laughing at him like they’d never stop.

And I wasn’t laughing either. Not for fearing getting my head bashed in by that damned tennis racket. However likely and totally deserved, getting bashed seemed relatively trivial. I wasn’t laughing because I still wasn’t getting it. Sure, when anyone looked my way I plastered what I hoped would appear a roguish, knowing grin on my face. Like I’d meant it all along. Like I might do it again whenever whim breezed. Anytime at all. Better watch out for me, boys and girls. But I hadn’t a clue.

Reason I’d blurted out “Household Finance”? Between not having yet mastered reading English, struggling with bouts of agoraphobia and flipping over 13 television channels – I was fast becoming a T.V. vegetable. A strange plant, hydroponically nourished by cathode rays. And possibly most overplayed, right then, was the “Household Finance” commercial. Couldn’t get that “Household Finance” jingle out of my head. That’s why I blurted it. No other reason. I’d gotten so irritated I had to blurt something – that’s just what came out.

Hadn’t a clue back then. Decades later, though, recalling the episode, it was obvious what happened. Clear as aquarium glass. That damned racket was nothing extraordinary. Stone Cold Clint was. Extraordinarily inscrutable character. And all those other boys would start asking themselves who to be – not when they’d grow up, but right away whenever Stone Cold Clint was around. Reasonably enough – he was so mysteriously extraordinary, couldn’t help but make them feel inadequate in who they were by contrast. Couldn’t help but make them question themselves – they certainly weren’t about to start questioning him. What wasn’t reasonable was those boys expecting to become more like Stone Cold Clint if only they got themselves tennis rackets just like his.

Not reasonable at all. Absurd. Pathetic. Too pathetic to put up with. But what could I say? That Stone Cold Clint’s new racket was nothing special? No way. Those boys figured Stone Cold Clint was so special, his gear had to be special too. Would have been heresy, questioning their faith in the sympathetic voodoo of product placement. Nor could I have asked if they truly believed superficial emulating – regardless how special he was – would really make them be somebody. Somebody really special. Coming from a nobody like me, that would only have served as confirmation.

But blurting out that Stone Cold Clint’s clan had to finance that tennis racket? Wow. Had I known then what I do now – and were I cleverer – I might have added that they got it no money down. Nevermind. The absurdity was punctured. Not knowing who he was, the mere suggestion he might be an overcompensating, posturing nobody got those boys wondering whether Stone Cold Clint’s new tennis racket didn’t better belong with the emperor’s new clothes. Got them realizing most likely it did. Got them realizing how preposterously they’d been fawning. Soon as absurdity burst, realizing flooded.

So – what’s the point? This: it was absurd those boys believing they could get personal character superficially emulating Stone Cold Clint’s behaviour; and it’s no jot less absurd us Torontonians believing we can get cultural character by merely – superficially – sharing experience. Those boys were either too childish or had uncritically bought into the voodoo of product placement. Us (not only) Torontonians are too behaviouristic, positivistic, materialistic in our beliefs to know better. Different reasons – identical absurdity.

That’s the point. That’s why I say being Torontonian means having nothing to declare. We are completely fallen into materialism. But, culture isn’t material. Culture is a kind of understanding. And there’s no getting any kind of understanding by transitive osmosis of experience – shopping all the right places. Getting any kind of understanding requires appreciating the meaning – the significance – of experience. It requires getting the cultural principles entailing and entailed by significant interpretation of experience. So I say being Torontonian means having nothing to declare as reminder how completely we discount understanding the significance of experience – whether or not shared – while believing culture is merely sharing experience.

That’s why so many repeat that Toronto lives in no-one’s imagination. We’ve discounted understanding – and imagination – to such extent, we don’t believe there’s anything like cultural principles to declare when it comes to who we are. We’ve got nothing to declare. Nothing to understand. Nothing to imagine. We expect getting to know each other – even to agree with each other – merely by making small-talk and eating each other’s food. Admiring each other’s tennis rackets.

That’s why, finally, (not only) Toronto fragments into monocultural communities. There are no over-arching cultural principles for us to agree on. Since we so absurdly believe culture is not entailed by and does not entail principles in the first place. There’s nothing to understand. Nothing to imagine. Nothing to declare. There’s just lots of different menus to order from. Thus, much as most all of us would like to discuss, debate, agree or even disagree what in principle makes us Torontonian – too bad. Nothing to discuss. Nothing more in principle than small-talk. So, sooner or later, of course we fragment. How are we to get to know each other? Learn about each other? Figure out who we are and what we stand for ourselves? No way. Not through small-talk. It’s not through small-talk we learn and get to know each other. And while small-talk makes not knowing bearable, insisting on nothing but small-talk is insisting not knowing. That can’t go on forever. Remain strangers long enough, sooner or later we won’t bother talking at all any more. Happening as we – don’t – speak.

Interestingly, Amy Lavender Harris ceaselessly demonstrates the wealth of Toronto literature. However, I don’t see Toronto’s literary wealth enlivening Toronto in our imagination. Just the contrary. So long we persist with nothing but small-talk, Toronto literature vanishes without cultural trace. Like stones dropped in a lifeless, inert lake – making neither splash nor ripples. Unless it’s in a classroom, on a talk-show or some publicly mandated forum, we don’t discuss, debate or celebrate meaning and significance of our literature. Literature? We don’t even discuss implications of newspaper articles outside the sports section. So much for imagination. So much for understanding. We’ve resigned all that to remaining strangers. Not good enough any more.

Coexisting as strangers can’t do indefinitely. The more diverse we become multiculturally, the less we can depend on culturally impoverished coexisting. We must discover those principles most significant to reversing fragmentation. We must discuss, debate and eventually celebrate understanding significance of those principles. And there is one (not only) I consider most significant: the principle of tolerance. We hold to this principle like nobody’s business. Unfortunately, we don’t realize it. It has precious little life in our imagination or understanding. It is my hope we will begin appreciating it –start understanding how it informs who we are. Perhaps even, eventually, celebrate how it pulls us together.

Toronto Culture and Multiculture, Part II

In Toronto we'd like to think our multiculturalism has made us culturally rich. What other city provides such opportunities for tasting the world -- as when crossing Toronto? Yet, at the same time, in the very midst of Toronto's unrivaled multicultural diversity, we feel culturally deprived. We say, repeatedly, that Toronto lives in no one's imagination. The Globe & Mail said it. The Toronto Star said it. Toronto Life said it (twice). We say so as a matter of fact. We mention it as we might snow in winter or puddles after rain.

It’s puzzling, though. Why would we feel culturally starved by the banquet of Toronto multiculturalism? What is culture, after all, but shared experience and tradition – including culinary tradition? And, since we share such diverse experience and tradition in Toronto – how could we possibly feel culturally starved here?

It’s totally puzzling so long as we believe shared experience to be the source of culture. It isn’t, though. Came to me a couple years back – while lecturing, of all things. Very much in passing, I’d said that culture doesn’t come from shared experience. At lecture’s end, one of the course directors demanded I reveal where culture does come from – if not from shared experience. I tried not answering. With the tide of almost 200 students fidgeting to leave, I tried laughing it off. Said that was another lecture – for another day. But she insisted. Vehemently. And the students had stopped fidgeting. Tide halted mid-stride. As if they actually wanted to know. What to do? Had to say something. So I said culture comes from shared principle. I said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world. Which it was, after I’d said it. But, regardless how obvious now, I haven’t forgotten that moment. Mostly due to her shocked reaction. Dramatic expressing that the very notion of culture emerging from shared principle rather than experience not only flies in the face of materialism – but gives it a spectacular shiner to boot.

Why we starve for culture surrounded by such diversity of experience as Toronto offers can’t cease puzzling while we believe culture emerges merely from shared experience. Fact is, shared experience is to culture as the visible tip of an iceberg is to the glacial sheet from which icebergs shear. Culture is tectonic. It is shared interpreting the significance of experience – regardless whether the experience itself be shared, orally told or posted on YouTube. Culture is shared signification in light of common principles. Culture is shared meaning. Far beneath and beyond ways of people coinciding, it is the very identity of peoples. Culture is who we are and what we stand for. It is the nation building mortar of common thought – and the often devastating bondage of common thinking.

Total fiction – culture emerging merely from shared experience. Yet, for Toronto, it has proven a highly useful and convenient fiction. For seating diversity, Toronto is front row centre. Progressive as it gets in terms of multicultural diversity. All that and more. While elsewhere, far less spectacular diversity has been feared to cause trouble. Like, pretty much everywhere in the world. Thing is, we don’t fear such trouble in Toronto. Got nothing to fear here. We’re culturally rich and fear no culture clashing – that’s how progressive we are in Toronto.

Hardly. We’re multi-culturally diverse – not culturally rich. Culturally, we’re starved. Toronto lives in no one’s imagination. Being Torontonian means having nothing to declare. What’s there to declare? So long as we maintain culture as nothing but shared experience, habits and traditions, there’s nothing to declare. Were we to admit culture as identity signifying shared principles, there’d be plenty to declare. Our cultural – maybe even personal – principles. But, while only we keep from admitting it, we reduce culture to shared experience fictions. Including culinary shared experience. Like taste-testing each other – instead of declaring who we are and what we stand for. As if who we are were reducible to what, when and how we eat. As if it came down to what’s in our spice-racks. As if. Yet, thereby, we may continue congratulating ourselves on spice variety in Toronto life. As if spice variety sufficed making us culturally rich – not just multi-culturally diverse.

Very convenient fiction – culture as merely shared experience. Enables our believing variety of experience available sharing in Toronto makes us culturally rich. Perhaps more importantly, it encourages our illegitimating those persisting declaring themselves. Since there’s nothing to declare. Right? Maintaining culture as shared experience, we look very far down our noses at them going on about who they are and what they stand for. Wan’na get included in legitimate cultural exchange? Shut up and stop declaring. No faster way getting disqualified from Toronto life than walking the streets declaring who you are. Shut up, stop declaring and open a restaurant.

More than just convenient – our fiction of culture as shared experience. Safety measure, too. The more diverse we become, the more hazardous should too many of us start running the streets declaring ourselves. Declaring who we are, where we stand, what we run the streets for. Because, if too diverse many of us run streets declaring inevitably contradictory principles – well, sure, it might lead to culturally enriching discourse. It might get us thinking a little more about who we ought and might yet be. But far more likely, if we run the streets declaring ourselves, it’ll just get us clashing cultural principles right there in the streets. And most of us would rather avoid that. Much rather. Most of us escaped here to get away from the consequences of precisely that.

So we’re mostly agreed. Culture is just shared experience. We require nothing but multicultural diversity to enrich us culturally. Nothing cold about Toronto but occasional weather. We aren’t culturally starved here. Most of all, we don’t hold with all that declaring. We’ve got nothing to declare here. Far as we’re concerned, too much declaring illegitimates culture. Yet more personally – too much declaring illegitimates character.

It has worked well for us. Though impoverished culturally, we’ve enjoyed unrivalled multicultural diversity – without fearing cultures clashing. It’s really something, how much we don’t make the (bad) news when it comes to cultures clashing. But we’re running into trouble now. In her February 8th Globe&Mail article (Do ethnic enclaves impede integration?) – Marina Jimenez warns: “Canada’s famed multicultural mosaic has morphed into a series of monocultural neighbourhoods. And she cites some shocking statistics. Apparently, in 1981, there were only six “ethnic enclaves” in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. By 2001, however, there were 254.

Sure sounds like trouble. But what sort? Should we look to a future when all our neighbourhoods become so thoroughly and pervasively monocultural that they proclaim independence and demand sovereignty association – or worse? Of course not. Neighbourhoods can’t secede. Trouble is, though, that they can – and increasingly seem to – withdraw into monocultural enclaves. Which, taken to eventual extremes suggested by Marina Jimenez, would mean irretrievable cultural fragmentation. City and country wide cultural fragmentation. In other words, an end to viable continuity across city and country – to be replaced by culturally segregated communities regarding one another with increasing suspicion and through increasing mutual alienation. Finally, there would be hostility – cultures clashing in the streets.

But it’s not that monocultural enclaves impede integration. That’s not at the root of this trouble. No. It’s that we’ve gone too far maintaining the culture as merely shared experience fiction. We’ve culturally impoverished ourselves too much in Toronto, Canada. We’ve starved ourselves to the point where there’s no culture remaining to integrate with, other than the kind of multiculturalism we encounter at food festivals, festivals that leave us hungry because their sustenance only a shadow of a meal. In Toronto, Canada we’ve lost all clue who we are and what we stand for. Thus, it’s only natural for those who retain some however residual identity in former cultural principles to seek each other out. Yes, they have come here searching better lives. Yes, they have materially improved their lives coming here. But not culturally. Much as 'they' might wish to join with 'us' culturally – there’s nothing here for them to join. So why should they impoverish themselves as we have?

We must figure out who we are and what we stand for. Not so that our cultural principles preclude or even occlude those of newer arrivals. Precisely not that. To the contrary. It’s about finding such mortar as will preserve our cultural mosaic from fragmenting entirely. We must figure out what it means to be Canadian – and Torontonian. We must so that those arriving will at least have something declarable to integrate with – beyond recipe sharing.

Toronto Culture and Multiculture, Part I

Posted for Peter

Could Toronto be the world’s most multicultural city? Hard or impossible to measure. Might be, though. Far as multiculturalism goes, Toronto might be better than world class. Might be in a class of its own.

Be only sensible, then, expecting so top-notch a multicultural city to glitter cosmopolitan and sophisticated. Be only sensible expecting Toronto to prove culturally vibrant. And it is. Relative to Barrie, anyhow. Otherwise, world-stage wise, talk about false expectations.

Like a strange double image, multiculturally top-notch Toronto seems lifelessly inert. Culturally profuse yet precisely not vibrant.

There’s no doubting the cultural profusion. Crossing town via Bloor then Danforth, one can taste the world. Yet, as recently as a year ago essaysists in uTOpia: Towards a New Toronto, Vanity Fair and the Globe & Mail declared that Toronto lives in no one’s imagination. And although the reference was to Toronto literature, it could as easily have been Toronto culture, since decent literature is as culturally significant as sincere artistic expressing gets.

There’s no doubting Toronto’s cultural profusion. So why say Toronto lives in no one’s imagination? Like, not anybody’s? Could that be even remotely true?

Amy Lavender Harris doesn’t think so. Reviewing particularly Toronto literature and teaching a course called “Imagining Toronto” at York University, she’s been arguing for years there’s deep, broad, all year long literary profusions here. As if Toronto culture were veins of ore thrumming underneath and streets, buildings, the very city literarily outcropped expressions of it.

It’s a lovely vision. Few try and none succeed denying it. Yet, nobody seems to believe it, either. Last fall, Amy gave a talk on Toronto literature at a speaking series called Salon Voltaire. The audience expressed each and every cue receptivity and appreciation required - and then some. But come time for audience questioning and commenting -- well, all audience questions and comments were the singular same. How and why Toronto literature dies of poverty. Amy might as well not have bothered. Absolutely, the audience had enjoyed their guided tourism to deep wells, founts and wealths of Toronto literature. Nor had they doubted what they’d so unerringly been guided to. Thing is, it didn’t register. Such literary profusions in Toronto? Such cultural wealth? Why, that’s wonderful news. Really, that’s magnificent. So sad all Toronto culture dies of poverty. Why is that do you think?

Far as any Toronto audience is concerned, it’s incontrovertible. Toronto lives in no one’s imagination. But why is that? What’s with the strange double image of multiculturally top notch yet culturally inert Toronto?

It hasn’t been very long since I found out. There’s this greatly admired fellow here in the Junction, a Vietnamese electronic engineer. None recall his real Vietnamese name. We call him Gem. And there’s nothing like getting together after business hours at Gem’s. Because Gem single-handedly creates culturally vibrant multicultural community. How he manages this is another story -- how any man can be so much larger than life. What he manages, though, is to get everyone expressing their most fundamental passions, beliefs and principles. Even those of us that have forgotten -- -perhaps never realized -- the principles we live and would die for. At Gem’s, people hailing from every corner of the world talk for real. And almost always, when done talking, even those discovering themselves standing opposed in fundamental principle yet appreciate one another like nowhere else I’ve seen -- especially not in Toronto.

It’s unique in Toronto. Gem, of course, had no clue how unique. Not until a couple years ago. When I told him. Shouldn’t have. But how not? Talking with Gem demanded expressing one’s realizing -- one's understanding.

Gem, as so often, had finished recounting how he’d repeatedly demonstrated what he stood for by fiercely extolling: “Declare who you are!” But I felt sad, suddenly. Because, much as I’d once believed in it myself, long ago, there was no hope of that in Toronto. So I told him the way it is here -- that being Torontonian means having nothing to declare. He didn’t want to believe it, of course. Scoffed the very idea. But there was the beginning of that long sadness in his eyes. Curtains began falling and lights blinking out.

Being Torontonian means having nothing to declare. It’s our cultural principle. Took me years to realize after first arriving here. That the more one declares who one is and what one stands for, the more one gets discounted in Toronto. And it was certainly painful realizing it. I used to think there was something terminally wrong with me. Suffered bouts of agoraphobia over it. But it wasn’t me. It was the anti-cultural bias of Toronto multiculturalism.

Thing is, however painful Toronto bias against culturally vibrant, even forceful expressing who we are may be, it’s nevertheless been good and necessary. Culture’s a big deal when it comes to both building and wrecking nations -- not just cities. And Toronto’s anti-cultural multiculturalism has proven a viable alternative to less tolerant approaches. Old Soviet-style forced dislocation of entire peoples, for instance. Or even American identity melting into the common patriotic pot. Trouble is, it’s starting to crack seams.

Good as it’s been, it’s no longer good enough. Multicultural Toronto now fragments into mono-cultural community shards. It’s not just refusal to integrate by one or even two communities. Were it so, we could reasonably blame them. But it isn’t just one or two. Not any more. It’s fast becoming the rule. And should it become the established rule, that would certainly spell the end for Toronto. Whether culturally, multiculturally or in every other wise and way.

To be elaborated next week: Toronto multiculturalism is historically significant. It might even constitute an historical stage -- or minimally some evolution -- toward the emergence of tolerant yet principled community. Be the community village, city or nation. Be the village local or be it global. But multiculturalism can hope but to usher the task of tolerant yet principled community. It has no hope fulfilling what it seeks to usher on its own.

What would fulfill it? Not sure yet. Working on it -- and looking forward to what I'll say about it next week.

ScamCity

from peter, posted at his request:

---

Ever tried advertising at Craigslist? We tried it recently. With fascinating consequences.

Rosevelt Wagner seemed nice enough. Fairly decent grammar, too, considering foreign extraction:

Dear Peter,Thanks for the e-mail. I'll really love to rent the apartment but I'll also need your assistance to make things work.I'm coming over for a program, i would be sponsored for my pro grammes in Jan., Ideally our protocol agent handle everything that's got to do with travel, accommodation but since I'm staying for a longer period (12months), I've requested that they allow me look for a suitable accommodation for myself and they've accepted, they'll need review,confirm, approve and release payment…

Ok, fair enough. Seemed strange and unrelated, though, when the mailman arrived at our door with a bank draft for $4500.00. We had no clue who from. So we called the issuing bank. And it turned out the draft was the wrong colour. And the police came and got it – forgery is pretty serious.

Then, we found out the forgery was from Rosevelt:

Dear Peter,Thanks for your mail.I was informed that the payment sent to you was for travel logistics expenses and accommodation.I'll call a travel agent to confirm my bookings. So you can assist me make alternate arrangement for tickets.Let me know when u got it.Happy New year.Rosevelt

Aha! Well, we didn’t let on what we knew. And that the police already had the forgery. Nope.

Hi Roosevelt,
Ok, so what you want me to do is cash the bank draft
and send part of the amount to your travel agent?
If that's right, please be clear. How much should I
send to your travel agent? And who/where should I
send the amount to?
Best,
Peter

Rosevelt’s same-day reply:

Dear Peter,
Thanks for your mail.I've confirm that the payment sent to you was to cover first and last month rent and my travel logistics cost.
I called a travel agent here in the UK and they've confirmed my booking's. however they'll need funds to precure my ticket and Luggage shipment.
Pls,you should send the stated amount directly them. via western union money transfer, so as to avoid any delay. Once I present my travel ticket to our human resource dept. they'll process and issue a travellers check that would take care of my entire stay in Toronto, Ontario on my arrival i intend to pay more rent in advance.
You should make the payment to: Greg Andrew 528, Lea Bridge Rd, London, E10 7DT UK Amount: $2,800Kindly Send all transaction details to my email,(MTCN no.(usually 10digits on transaction reciept). Sender and reciever names, amount sent) so i can present it for travel agent pickup.Thanks,
Rosevelt.

Yeah. Sure.

Rosevelt,
I'll put it in -- but I'm not wiring money until it
clears at my bank. Not sure how long it takes.. maybe
only 5 business days.. but maybe more....
If that's alright, let me know and I'll put it in.
You know, much time would be saved if your school sent
me right amount for first/last (2X$385) and paid your
travel agent separately.. sending everything to me and
then back to your travel agent is going around the
world too many times....
Best,
Peter

And,

First we have to talk. Is there a phone number I can
reach you at?
Peter

So, Rosevelt decided to call me – pre-emptively. Except I didn’t know it was Rosevelt. The voice on the phone was incoherent – in English, anyway. But it turned out to be Rosevelt:

Hello Peter ,
It is unfortunate that you could not hear me clearly
on phone , so i decide to get to the computer to send
you mail,i was calling from a public phone booth as i
have to sell off my NOKIA N91 phone in order to have
some more fund to keep the body and soul toghether
here .
Since you said you wuld like to talk to me on phone so
i decide to get your number and ring you……..

, Alright fine. Time to try getting some hard evidence (like a listed phone number) another way:

Hey Rosevelt,
That was you on the phone? Wow -- very bad line. I
could barely hear your voice.
Too bad you had to sell your phone. It means I can't
call you. But no worries, you don't have to call me.
Just email me the telephone number for Greg Andrew.
I'll call and confirm with him.
Peter

Immediate reply:

Hello Peter,
Greg Andrew number +447011150869
Rosevelt.

Well now. Searching revealed this number as unlisted and non-landline. Did it say "Cretan" on my forehead? Did it say "I accept unlisted cell numbers for international confirmation"? Just in case, I went and washed my face. Then, I responded:

Rosevelt,
I try to confirm what you want. Confirm means make
real. With real person with real landline telephone.
Not payphone. Not cellphone/mobile/etc.
Just email telephone number for Greg Andrew's office.
Or for your protocol agent at University. Your
department secretary at University. Anyone you want.
But keep it real.
Help confirm what you want.
Peter

And this is when Rosevelt started flipping. Cartwheels. Right off the edge of reality. Some excerpts:

Hello ,
Thanks for your carefullness as a matter of fact you
are a very nice man and i really apprecaite that you
have indeed consider my sitaution and you do not want
me to be cheated as a matter of urgency i could not
wait anylonger as time is running out of me and i do
not have funds on me anylonger so with the little fund
on me i have left through tube (train) to london so
that could help instead of sending to greg andrew name
send it to my name i will use my id to get it and take
care of my reservation myself as quick as possible i
am not a kid and that will be no problem for me at
all, i am very tight now , It is 4.30 now in london.i
need to make the reservation ontime before night.
send to my name urgently .
rosevelt wagner.
ADDRESS - i am hanging out in Bayswater london Inn
Hotel but not lodging because i have no fund for that
just hanging arround need to fly tonight
use this address in the western union form = 8-16
Princes Square - W2 4NT London
i will get the cash with the MTCN . it is simple .
I CAN WALK TO ANY WESTERN UNION LOCATION HERE IN
LONDON AND COLLECT IT AND GET MY RESERVATION DONE
IMMEDIATELLY TO CANADA
WHY YOU HAVE REFUSE TO ANSWER ME I ASK WHAT AIRPORT IS
NEARER TO YOU OUT OF ALL THESE.
Toronto Pearson International Airport
Ottawa International Airport
Ontario International Airport
ALSO WOULD YOU BE ABLE TO COME TO THE AIRPORT TO PICK
ME WAITING URGENTLY
PLS THERE IS NO TIME I WANT TO LEAVE TONIGHT FROM
GATWICK AIRPORT I HAVE NO TIME LONDON IS EXPENSIVE I
HAVE NO FUND TO SPEND HERE.
JUST DO IT QIUCK AND EMAIL ME.
THANKS.

Yeah. Right. For sure. Would you care for some thumb-screws with that heart attack, dear?

Dear Rosevelt,
That sounds terrible. Please, don't waste any more
time.
Email telephone number of any person with landline
telephone who knows and can confirm you. Do it now.
Don't waste more time. Any person in the world with
landline telephone is OK.
Confirm what you want, Rosevelt. Do it right away --
before it is too late for you.
Peter

Massive coronary. Not just Rosevelt, either – whole family. Maybe entire village. Excerpts:

I dont really know what you are driving at , i have
never had such a frustrating experience like this in
my life why have you decided to do this to me for God
sake i contacted you and no one else , you have asked
for so much , my dad died of hypertension just a year
ago much worries , much thinking and frustration made
him to develop that and now he his gone my heart is
getting close to that because it is becoming
unbearable for me ………… i had to use the last fund on
me to get to london myself so you could send it to my
name thinking that might solve the problem yet you ask
me to start looking for a land line number of anyone
in the world this is very terrible , you already have
the cash i dont really know what you want mr peter ,
dont you wants me to say with you in the apartment?
what is important for me is to come over to canada ,
fly tonight and come down and you ask for all these
why why why why why.
crying right now.

And shortly after this email, the phone rang. On answering, I concluded it was Rosevelt. Not sure why. The screaming? The retching? The machine-gun in the background? Time to ratchet thumbscrews:

Dear Rosevelt,
If you are honest person then the last thing I want to
do is cause distress and hardship.
But I don't know if you are honest person. Someone
warned me maybe you are not honest:
"Someone (usually claiming to be from another country)
offers to pay for multiple months rent before seeing
the dwelling. They (or a third party) will send you a
cashiers check or money order for well over the total
rent, on the condition that you wire the difference
back to them so they can pay for their travel
expenses. This is a variation of the distant buyer
scam. The cashier's check is fraudulent, and in
addition to you losing the money you sent to the
buyer, your financial institution will hold you
accountable for the fraudulent check."
Do you understand, Rosevelt? I don't know if you are
honest person. And all I ask is to find out -- for
you to show you are honest by providing landline
telephone number of anyone I can call who will confirm
what you say.
But you don't provide landline telephone number. And
I don't understand why not.
And then a few hours ago you call me -- and your voice
sounds very clear. Not like the first time. So I
think, maybe this is landline you call from. Maybe I
can call back and confirm after all. So I check for
the telephone number. And the telephone number is
(555) 555-2984.
But this is a local Toronto telephone number! How can
you call from a Toronto telephone number if you are
not in Toronto? How is this possible? Maybe there is
a way to do this???
Rosevelt, I don't want to make life hard if you are
honest person. But after you don't help to confirm
what you want -- and then call me from Toronto! how
can I believe you are honest person?
Peter

Rosevelt’s death-rattling reply was long – but here are some excerpts:

Now i know that the whole thing is to make me sad ,
make me get sick make me get hypertension so that it
affect my heart and finnally taken to the hospital and
die so that you can take the money all for yourself
anyway ………… Do you think that BANK are very foolish to
have given you money without having check the Authenticity
of the check , why why why Mr peter YOU HAVE HOLD UNTO THIS
MONEY FOR LONG DELAYING ME MAKING ME SAD AND YOU
ENJOYING OVERTHERE ………… If people cheat this way it is strange but how on earth will i take all this long to cheat
i am cming to canada and that s it i am dying here i have
no fund on me anymore nothingggggggggggggg , if you have
send me the money would have made my trip yesterday and
been in canada by now
i wonder what you will gain if i finnally die of
heart cardiac arrest .
you are so cruel that you cannot even release just
some part of the money to me at least 800 us dollars
so i can afford to take care of my self and buy drugs
, i am hypertensive i am dying here.

Well, now. Better be careful. Better be gentle. Hypertension has been known to cause lying.

I don't want to make you sad or sick, Rosevelt. But
too much strange has happened. I just don't believe
you.
All I ask is to confirm. To make me believe you.
It is easy to confirm. Just give real landline
telephone number anyone in the world I can call who
will say "Yes, I know Rosevelt. Yes, Rosevelt says
what is true."
Anyone in the world. It can be landline number for
Greg travel agent office. Or your protocol agent. Or
your department secretary. Or your mother. Or your
cousin. Or your friend. Anybody in your family.
Anybody anywhere -- Europe, America, Asia, Africa,
Australia, anywhere -- who has landline telephone and
who knows you. So easy.
But not cellphone/mobile/pager number like you say you
give for Greg. There is no way for me to see this is
number for Greg. Number like this does not confirm.
Number like this means nothing. I waste no more
time/money calling number meaning nothing.
So easy to confirm what you want Rosevelt. Easy if
you are honest person. But if you are not honest
person then too hard for you.

Rosevelt:

…………Here is a JAMES GRANT land line number you can call
+442078701639 he his a friend to my juniour sister
ANGELA and we both attend the same church before in
AMSTERDAM , HOLLAND…………

Nice try, eh? It was landline, alright – but not listed. Better put out some lights at the end of this tunnel.

Send LISTED landline number. Anywhere in the world. Like
I have in my home. Like everyone has. Like any
office has.
But no. You give cellphone. You give unlisted.
Confirm too hard for you. You refuse to confirm what
you want too long now. You are not honest person.
Confirm with LISTED landline number immediately. Next
time not confirm will be too late for you.
Rosevelt – feeling increasingly victimized, picked on and defrauded at this point:
I t is glaring that you are a fraud,
you are using so many ways and you playing so many
games to make sure you take all the money i will sue
you for this and report to the police for you holding
unto money that does not belong to you i have all my
evidence , what the hell you trying to do ,
the money does not belongs to you what right have you
got to hold unto money that does not belong to you.
that is scamm , that is fraud.
the bank has realesed money to you and you are spending
it , you have a fake telephone directory to check,
rent your room to another person and return the check
, go back to your bank and return the DRAFT if you are
sincere go back to your bank and tell them to return
the money into the HSBC bank from where the money is
taken from ,i will make sure the money is return back
you will never be allowed to spend the money .
i will report it to the FBI the london metropolitan
police , and the canadian police of your scam

Shortly after this, the phone rang. Couldn’t tell who it was – the screaming was too incoherent. Something about me killing Rosevelt, about someone else killing me, about police killing. Then, a couple hours later, the phone rang again. Ranting rather than screaming this time – but just as incoherent. Claiming to be London Police. Demanding why I killed Rosevelt. Saying they knew my address and promising to get me. Went on for at least 5 minutes – but the rest was too incoherent to make out. Maybe it was the foreign office – otherwise, London Police desperately needs to enrol in some English as second language courses. Finally, this arrived:

Hello Peter Fruchter,
Telephone: 555.555.2235
Full Name: Peter Fruchter
Mailing Address: 555 Gilmour Ave., Toronto, Ontario Canada M5P 5B5

We have been informed about a matter by a troubled and frustrated
lady by name ROSEVELT WAGNER she had said you scamm her of money .
Can you explain to us the reason why you have held unto her money
up to this time and trying to scam a poor and dying lady of money.
Metropolitan Police Service
New Scotland Yard
Broadway
London SW1H 0BG .
Telephone: 020 7230 1212
=
Call Center Monitoring
The SunDial Windows Predictive Dialer gives your new or existing call
center a state-of-the-art, reliable, flexible and user-friendly
predictive dialing solution.
http://a8-asy.a8ww.net/a8-ads/adftrclick?redirectid=891e82f17ba3afd114bb0b8c8cd17837

I couldn’t believe it. It was London Police after all. But hold on. Check out the electronic signature. Why was London Police using call centre software?

this confirm nothing. anyone can say londonpolice.
boyfriend not sound like londonpolice first time, when
he scream threats on telephone. not sound like
londonpolice second time, when say he is londonpolice.
even your english better than his.
email from londonpolice fake. Electronic signature of
email prove it fake:
http://a8-asy.a8ww.net/a8-ads/adftrclick?redirectid=891e82f17ba3afd114bb0b8c8cd17837
really working for call centre or bulk emailer, even?
no. even this too much real for you. just proxy.
all i ask from you was confirm. i give you so many
chance to confirm. just one real person with listed
number to confirm you. so simple. so easy for honest
person. but you not honest person. real too much for
you. confirm too hard for you.
told you: next time not confirm, too late. next time
is now. now too late for you.
understand? if you not real then draft not real. if
draft not real then not go in bank. not real draft
not belong in bank. not real draft go to police.
real police. toronto police.

And that was that. We didn’t manage getting any real information to speak of. Toronto police advised there’s a call tracking feature – *57, I think – but this advice came too late. There’s more to the story than forgery and scammery, though.

We feel we know our city. Toronto envelops us physically. We know approximately where it starts and where it ends. Not exactly, on any given day – but not that far north of Steeles. Some summer weekends maybe Highway 7.

And we know our neighbours. Not too intimately, of course. Toronto’s no small town or village for rummaging each other’s business. But still. We share Toronto in understanding and imagination. It’s more than landmarks, bus-routes, where to jaywalk – and where not.
We don’t get in each other’s business – but that’s actually one way we recognize and acknowledge each other in Toronto. We’re more aloof in Toronto than in Gananoque, for instance. Doesn’t mean we’re anonymous strangers, though. We’ve no intention being anonymous strangers. It’s just an agreement we share. Our notion of being civilized in the big city. A cultural agreement.

Not so when we get online. All too often, when we get online, we’ve every intention of becoming anonymous strangers. We totally do, online. Become anonymous strangers. Which, on second thinking, is kind’a surprising. Wasn’t the network of electronic networking anticipated to reduce the global to a village? Ayup. And in villages, unlike globe-class cities, doesn’t everyone know each other’s business? More’n likely. So – wasn’t the internet supposed to usher us into each other’s business? Each other’s back yards, even? Sure it was.

It was and it did. Via internet we found our way into each other’s computers, each other’s back yards, back pockets, wallets – and not always legitimately. Scary. Can’t have that. For protection, electronic security professionals tried selling us on (sometimes) false security. Since active measures such as electronic membranes remained necessarily permeable. So, we’ve (re)turned to anonymity. The primal yet most effective security. Since active measures may protect after we’ve been targeted – but anonymity protects us from getting particularly targeted in the first place.

This is our reaction and resistance to finding ourselves too intimately networked. Anonymity. It’s a problem. We’re not persons online. Online, we’re personas. Proxies. Sock-puppets. When we go online we don ski-masks. Which is not appropriate to any village – whether global, virtual or otherwise. Anonymous, masked, we wind up looking like scammers or muggers. Any of us might be. Increasingly more of us are.

Increasingly more of us behave illegally or just abominably online. Because anonymity erodes standards, identity and principles. Sure, anonymity protects. Just as sure, though, it insulates from consequence. It ferments a culture of irresponsibility. Not what we want for our global village.

Amy and I decided we’re against it. That’s why we continued efforts penetrating the scammers’ anonymity. Persisted despite police advice. Despite lacking secure anonymity. Yeah, they know where we live. But we felt like helping the police investigation. Felt like standing against anonymity. Felt good. It did. It does. Feel good standing up sometimes.

No such thing as standing one’s ground anonymously. And though there well nowmay be no option but going sneaking occasionally – as when mortally besieged – that’s not standing up. Regardless what one might succeed sneaking anonymously, standing up in principle is precisely not anonymous sneaking.

Original version this article @ http://www.readingt.readingcities.com/index.php/toronto/comments/5705