Category Archives: Social Justice

Compassion for the Vulnerable

January 29, 2022Philosophy/Ideas, racism, religion, Religious Quest in the Modern Age, Social Justicemeanderer007

To Brother Cornel West the concept of Hesed is central. I had never heard of Hesed before I heard him talk about it. I guess that shows profound ignorance. In the Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament, if you like, when God appeared to Moses to give the Law a second time, he said that he was “abounding in” or “filled with” Hesed, which is translated as “love and faithfulness,” “unfailing love,” “faithful love,” “steadfast love,” and “loyal love,” depending on which version of the Bible that you read. The relevant passage is (Exodus 34:6–7). The idea is that of a love that is loyal within a group. West emphasizes, as did American Philosopher Walter Kaufman, the idea of compassion for the vulnerable that is so important in the Hebrew Bible. Once more, that is the essence of religion. I believe that it is the essence of the religious quest in the modern world.

Cornel West says that the greatest play on the American Empire is Eugene O’Neil’s The Iceman Cometh. The plays deals with the idea, what does it profit a nation to gain the whole world and lose its soul?

The western tradition is important, but it is also limited. The western tradition had no room for indigenous people of Africa or the Americas. I went through 7 years of university without paying any attention to any part of the indigenous culture other than the western culture. That is what I thought culture was all about. I, like so many others was completely western centric. The western tradition was all that mattered. I did not see vulnerable.

Now we know better. Even I know better. We need African culture and tradition. We need indigenous culture and tradition from the Americas, and from everywhere! Anything less is shabby. We need to learn from the oppressed. If we get all our ideas from the dominant culture we are badly served.

Walter Isaacson when he interviewed West on PBS’s Amanpour & Co asked West how these others could be added to the western tradition? How do they become a part of it? West’s answer was very interesting. He said the way to be part of it is to challenge it. We must challenge the dominant culture to learn from those that were oppressed by it. That is the start.

That is something that modern conservatives don’t want to do. For example, they worry about critical race theory which is used to challenge white supremacy. They don’t like it when their dominant culture is challenged. They don’t want their children to be challenged. They don’t want their children to be disturbed. But that is what you must do to wake up and see more than your own privilege. The point is not to make white children feel guilty. That serves no purpose. The point is to make them see.

Hesed means to be concerned about and have love for others. To do that you must first see them. If you don’t notice them you won’t care. So you can’t be scared to look and look without blinkers or rose coloured glasses.

The Black Tradition: There is a lot to be learned from the Oppressed

January 27, 2022Philosophy/Ideas, religion, Religious Quest in the Modern Age, Social Justicemeanderer007

Brother Cornel West frequently reminds us that he comes out of the Black tradition from African to America. Sometimes West calls that the “chocolate side of life.”

Not that long ago, I also a wonder interview of Cornel West by Walter Isaacson on Amanpour and Co in April of 2021 on PBS television. Brother West started talking about one of his heroes—Martin Luther King Jr. According to West, King had a deep conversation with the ancients and the classics. He could do that, West says, because he learned it from a people who had been despised for 400 years and yet still tried to teach the world so much about love. So did John Coltrane, James Baldwin, and Toni Morrison among others. All of them came from a people who had been traumatized for 400 years, but still at their best decided to be wounded healers rather than wounded hurters. He came from a people that had been terrorized for 400 years all the way up to Brother Floyd in 2020. What did that people do? They called for freedom for everybody, West pointed out. They did not create a black version of the Ku Klux Klan. “If they opted to be like the Klan there would have been a civil war every generation. There would have been terrorist cells in every chocolate centre of every city.”

West believes

“these black leaders focused on the tradition of the virtues, that embraces all, that is predicated on the humanity of each and everyone of us, each human being made in the likeness of God, that gives us a value, a worth, a sanctity, a dignity. That has been the best of black leadership, and once that black leadership has been reduced to just a quest for dollars, and smartness, rather than justice, and deep commitment to love and compassion, then you lose the best of the black tradition.

West does not say all black leaders have demonstrated the best of that tradition. But these, and others, have done that. West said the best of the black freedom tradition has been the” levelling of the democratic low”. In the 2020 presidential election in America it was the votes of blacks, particularly the votes of black sisters that handed the victory to Biden. A majority of whites voted for Donald Trump! 58% of white men and 53% of white women voted for Trump. Whites should never forget that. Trump of course always bragged about being a winner and his worst insult to others was that they were “losers”. West, like Jesus, always wanted to be on the side of the low—i.e. the so-called losers.

Trump tried to appeal to the black voters on the basis that the average income of blacks in American had never been better in comparison to whites than it was during his administration. While this might be true, according to West, it was one of the few good things about his administration, and he could not persuade blacks to abandon the quest for justice merely for dollars. That is what I have called the religious quest for justice. Were it not for the black voters, particularly the black women voters, America could have had Trump again and would been even closer to a neo-fascist America! As a black man, West was proud of that.

As West said,

“the best of black folk has always been about the broadening of not just rights and liberties but of the equality of our relations to one another. It’s also about the Hesed that great concept that comes from the genius of Hebrew scripture. That loving kindness is to be spread to the orphan, and widow, and fatherless, and motherless, and to be spread to the weak and the vulnerable. And if you give up on that, it becomes simply might makes right. And if you give up on that it becomes simply survival of the slickest. If you give up on that and push the 10 Commandments away and take the 11^th Commandment, ‘Thou shalt not get caught, thou shall take over by any means, and make as much money, and status and spectacle as you can’, you lose your democracy you lose your soul.”

To save your soul, you must rally to the low, rather than the high and mighty. Is that not exactly what Jesus always did. And the Hebrew Prophets. We should all ask ourselves, what side are we on?

Secular Prophecy

January 26, 2022Philosophy/Ideas, Politics & Religion, religion, Religious Quest in the Modern Age, Social Justicemeanderer007

According to Brother Cornell West, “even atheists like Karl Marx can be a secular prophet”. Remember West identifies as a Christian. Marx was deeply secular, but in his concern for working people and in what West refers as “his call for accountability of capital, and the bosses, and elites at the top including oligarchs and plutocrats there is a prophetic element to his critique.” West denied that Mao, or Stalin, or even Lenin are prophets. They have become “gangsters” said West. They were not on the side of the oppressed. They are not prophets at all. They manipulated working people for their own advantage. They did not care about the poor.

The presence of gangsters who claim to be followers of Marx does not detract from the fact that Marx’s critique was an act of secular prophesy. When Marx said that capitalism would generate a system in which there would be more and more autocrats and plutocrats at the top who will not be accountable and will instead try to buy off politicians in such a way that working people become “secondary and tertiary” he was prophetic. That does not mean that Marx correctly predicted the future. It means that he was correct in his analysis of the present (at that time) workings of the capitalist system. And the present is the the mother of the future. That is what pragmatic prophecy is all about. Like the Old Testament Prophets, West does not advocate trying to predict the future. That is false prophecy. The real Prophet tries to look closely and fearlessly at the present, analyze it, and tell us what he or she thinks is wrong with it. Often that entails telling the powerful what they don’t want to hear. That is a Prophet.

As a result, West accepts Marx as a secular prophet even though as a Christian he disagrees with him on the God question. He does not agree with Marx that all forms of religion are opiates. Some certainly are. Not all. At the same time he rejects some of the forms of Communism that flowed from Marx’s work.

What is important is a basic empathy for humanity. That is a big part of pragmatic prophecy as West sees it. We must, he suggests, must ask “how do we get out of our tribalism, our clannishness, our narrow groupism, let alone our egos, our narcissism, our hedonism and our rapacious individualism that renders us callous to the suffering of others?” That is the type of question the prophet asks, whether secular or religious. I think that is a very important approach. I even think it could be an important part of a religious quest in the modern age which is what I am looking at.

That is a perennial problem that every generation must face. As West said at his talk at the University of Winnipeg, “We have to learn to support not just those who look like us, that have the same colour of our skin, that attend the same churches or mosques as us, and support the larger humanity.”

Taking up a notion I got from the American philosopher Peter Singer, what we must do, is expand our fellow feeling is how I would put it. I think that is what Brother West was saying. And I think that is profound. Again, since my view is that fellow feeling or empathy is the fundamental core of religions—virtually all religions—that is the what it means to be engaged in a religious quest in the modern age. If you are not expanding the circle of compassion you have fallen off the trail and it’s time to get back.

Moral Constipation

January 25, 2022Ethics, religion, Religious Quest in the Modern Age, Social Justicemeanderer007

Brother Cornell West, like Woody Guthrie, always wants to be on the side of the oppressed. That does not mean the oppressed are always right about everything. It does mean they are oppressed and they deserve to be relieved of that oppression. Is that not what the Old Testament prophets urged us to do? Is that not precisely what Jesus did as well? West was not on the side of the money lenders. They didn’t need his help.

West translates that point of view to modern times. That is why I refer to him as a modern prophet. Sadly, sometimes the rich and powerful are not satisfied with their luck; they want to interfere with any ameliorative action on behalf of the vulnerable. When they do that they must be stopped. Then they are on the side of injustice. As West said, at the University of Winnipeg, when the elites are addicted to status and resist change, that is a case of “moral constipation.”

In 2015 when he talked at the university it was before the age of Trump. It was the age of Obama. Many people saw Obama as a modern Messiah. He was not a messiah to West. West actually campaigned for him, but told Obama that as soon as he was elected he would turn out to become his fiercest critic. Like Socrates, the job of the Prophet is to be a gadfly to power. Socrates one of West’s heroes and one of mine too.

West complained, that in the US many liberals did not want to criticize Obama because they sympathized with him in his fight against Fox News and other Conservatives. West compared Obama to what happened in the Savings and Loans crisis in the US when many people lost a lot of money as a result of those financial institutions collapsing. As West pointed out, during the S & L crisis in the US, which was during the Presidency of Ronald Reagan, 1,100 businessmen went to jail. And Reagan was not exactly a visionary for social justice. Yet during the Presidency of Obama, notwithstanding the financial chicanery, fraud, and shenanigans not one of those businessmen went to jail. as a result of financial crisis. Is that taking the side of the poor and weak?

Obama’s financial advisors, like Tim Geitner came right out of Wall Street. Eric Holder, Obama’s Attorney General, was expected to investigate his best friends. How well did that work? It worked out well for them. For us not so much. West was suspicious of what Obama would do as soon he saw the advisors that Obama had selected. When Larry Summers was appointed Secretary of the Treasury by President Obama, he knew Obama’s government would be a Wall Street friendly government. There would be no investigations of Wall Street malfeasance. That undermines the legitimacy of the rule of law. Even when they admit they did wrong what do they do? They just write a cheque. JP Morgan and Chase. They negotiate how much to pay. No talk of imprisonment. It is just the price of doing what they were doing. It’s just business. That is what West did not like.

West realized that this enraged many youthful radicals. “The young are filled with rage but the key question is how do you channel that rage through love and justice rather than hatred and violence. That is the fundamental question of any generation,” opined Brother West. That, I would submit is in the spirit of the Prophets and Jesus.

West was asked at the University of Winnipeg, if he believed that a secular Prophet is possible. West asserted strongly that it was.

“Anybody who has the courage to speak the truth about human and social misery and provide an analysis of that social misery in such a way that they can be changed and transformed and alleviated and maybe even eliminated has a prophetic element to what they are doing.”

That is what it means to be a secular Prophet.

Justice: Prophetic Pragmatism and the Quest for God

January 24, 2022religion, Religious Quest in the Modern Age, Social Justicemeanderer007

Brother Cornell West has been called a “prophetic pragmatist.” He likes that label. It is part of his desire for the Socratic life. Decide what sort of life you will lead, “what virtue you will enact in your short journey from womb to tomb.” That is the deeply Socratic life. West said, “That is William James and John Dewey the indigenous philosophy of pragmatism that I have been a part of.” But he also says, “it is prophetic because I remain a Christian.”

This is what West said in May of 2015 at the University of Winnipeg:

This is the prophetic Jewish tradition that was continued by a Palestinian by the name of Jesus. He said that we have to spread and love and kindness to the orphans and widows, fatherless, poor. Just like the Bible he means that in a broad sense of those who need help. He wants to spread kindness to the human particularly those who are weak and vulnerable and that includes gay brothers and sisters, workers, the colonized, the physically challenged, indigenous people, black, red, brown, white, poor working class whites.

Prophetic pragmatism is just establishing a fundamental tilt toward the weak and vulnerable. That includes the elderly and children. In the US 40% of our children of color live in poverty. 22% of all children live in poverty! And that is in the richest nation in the history of the world. “That is a moral abomination.”

Even here in Manitoba, 25% of the children live in poverty. That is just not right. That is a state of emergency for them and their parents.”

We should be treating it like an emergency. That’s what prophets do. They don’t just go to the pub with their friends. Or to the golf course with their buddies. Not that there is anything wrong with such activities. After all I have done them many times. But, prophets do more than that.

That is what I liked about West. It is the same thing I liked about the Prophets of the Old Testament which I blogged about earlier.

The Prophets refuse to allow the powerful to stand in the way of helping the needy. That is fused throughout the Old Testament. Jesus inherited and even transformed this tradition. That is all for the good. West wants to do that too for modern society. That is why he is a prophetic pragmatist.

In my language that is why I think Brother West, as he likes to be known, is on a religious quest and can help us all learn something of value. Who knows, maybe even we can go on such a quest.

Cornell West: a modern prophet on a religious quest in the modern age

January 23, 2022religion, Religious Quest in the Modern Age, Social Justicemeanderer007

I

It is time for me to renew my religious quest in the modern age.

I have hear Brother Cornell West, as he likes to be known, speak a couple of times and once in person at Arizona State University where they invite the world’s greatest teachers to come to speak and invite mere minions like Chris and I. He is a flamboyant speaker and in my opinion a great thinker. He has taught at Harvard, Princeton, and Union Theological Seminary. He is a frequent speaker and in fact says he has never been home for one weekend. Usually he has 4 speaking engagements per weekend! He is the author of 20 books and has edited 13 more. I have seen him frequently on Real Time with Bill Maher where he usually outshines all the other guests. He is never boring. He also had a part in the Matrix. Naturally, he rarely sleeps.

West is also “a prominent and provocative democratic intellectual” according to his own website. He is not shy as you tell from that. He is certainly not shy when he speaks. Although I have not heard him call himself a prophet I think the word is appropriate. He is a modern prophet on a religious quest in the modern age. He has said this of himself: “I am a profoundly Jesus-loving free black man who bears witness to truth and justice until the day I die.”

Cornel West is a man of great interests who has a passion to communicate to a vast variety of publics in order to keep alive the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. – a legacy of telling the truth and bearing witness to love and justice. That is what being a prophet is all about.

One person he does say was a modern prophet was Martin Luther King Jr. Cornel West sees the legacy of King as one of “telling the truth and bearing witness to love and justice.” That is what the Hebrew prophets did. That is what Martin Luther King Jr. did and that is what Cornell West has done. Being a prophet is not about making predictions. That is cheap prophecy.

This is what West said in 2015 after his talk at the University of Winnipeg:

“Martin Luther King, was an example of a modern prophet. That does not mean he made predictions about the future. That is not what prophets are about. That is cheap notion of prophet—a trickster. West, said, inspired by King ,that there were 4 diseases eating at the heart of the US democratic experiment and they are poverty, racism, militarism, and materialism. They are eating the heart out of that great country. (And the same thing is happening in Canada, I would add.)

That type of thinking became a danger to the oligarchs. They were more than uneasy with it. Just before Martin Luther King Jr. died 72% of Americans and 55% of Blacks in America, disapproved of him because he was too dangerous. “Anybody filled with that much love and full of that kind of fire for justice and will cut against the grain.” That’s why corporate radio referred to him as an extension of Hanoi. They called him a Communist. The truth always allows the suffering to speak out.”

West sees the essence of the job of the prophet (mirroring the Hebrew Prophets of the Bible: “My job is to go down swinging for truth and justice,” said West. That is the job of the prophet. He wants to give voice to the powerless. The powerful don’t need his help.

I will speak more about him in future posts.

Should we discriminate against Vaccine resisters?

May 26, 2021Epidemics/Pandemics, Hummingbirds, Social Justicemeanderer007

I like Jimmy Kimmel. He is a funny. I don’t like vaccine resisters so much. Jimmy had a funny rant on his show the other day. Here it goes as far as I got it:

“Now that the CDC has announced that with few exceptions vaccinated Americans don’t need to wear masks indoors, and since they did that there has a been a sharp increase in fake vaccination cases. Searches for fake vaccination calls are up more than 1,100% which is gross. Lets start calling these vaccine avoiders what they are—freeloaders! The only reason you are somewhat safe now is because other people got the shot. You’re the person who who heads for the bathroom when the check comes in the restaurant. You’re the lady who takes home the centrepiece from a wedding you weren’t invited to. You’re the guy that brings 5 napkins to a pot luck dinner. That’s you! You don’t know it, but that’s you.”

I agree with Jimmy. Now people claim vaccine passports discriminate against them, when they chose not to be vaccinated with free vaccine and let others take the risks of getting vaccinated. Some businesses for example, don’t want to let people in who have not been vaccinated. Why should they? That’s not discrimination! That’s justice! We should discriminate against them.

Each of these people who declined to get vaccinated of their own choice increased the chances of the rest of us getting covid-19. Each of these vaccine resisters increased the chances of the coronavirus mutating into more dangerous variants of the virus even to the extent that the new variants might not be hindered by the vaccines we took. Each of them increased the risks of the coronavirus being passed on to us so that we could get sick (even very sick) and perhaps die because they were possibly going around without symptoms. In other words each of these vaccine resisters endangered the lives of all of us. Frankly, if they were just risking their own lives I wouldn’t care. Each one of these resisters also increased the chances that our health system would be overwhelmed which we are now experiencing in Manitoba. At least 18 Manitoba covid patients are now in hospitals s outside the province because people took unnecessary chances, such as not taking their vaccine. All of us are now paying a heavy price for that. Covid resisters are partly responsible for this. They took reckless chances and now are paying a price. Let them pay it.

We have the right to discriminate against these people just like we have the right to discriminate against drunk cab drivers and just like we have the right to take a ride from them no matter what the colour of their skin.

I say let them suck socks.

What is equitable Distribution of Vaccines?

April 7, 2021Epidemics/Pandemics, Ethics, Social Justicemeanderer007

Yesterday Chris and I got the first of our vaccine shots. Hooray! We didn’t ask if this was just or not. It was offered to us and we grabbed it.

No one asked whether the current system of vaccine distribution was actually fair or just. Such questions were off-side. This was an emergency. No one had time to think about justice. What an arcane concept. Every official concentrated on getting the medicine out as quickly as possible. Questions could be asked later when the job was done.

Now some interesting information is becoming available. Information is critically important in assessing actions. Good facts make good ethics. And there were some ethical issues.

Here is what Lindsay Glassco said,

“With the reality of our global interdependencies laid bare, the race for mitigation has already begun. A recent study found that equitable vaccine distribution was about more than ensuring all countries have a line of defence against the health impacts of COVID-19 — it is also our best line of defence against economic devastation.

In the most extreme scenario, with most wealthy countries vaccinated by the middle of this year and lower-income countries largely excluded, the global economy would suffer losses exceeding US$9 trillion.”

Money has a tendency to sharpen judgment. With trillions at stake, where are the ethics? Was the rush to fill arms with vaccines the right approach? Not according to the World Health Organization:

This is why the World Health Organization is advocating for an equitable response through the COVAX global vaccine sharing initiative. While one country’s vaccination strategy may keep its citizens safe temporarily, the heightened risk for virus spread and mutation in unvaccinated countries can continue to grow, eventually crossing borders. Within a few weeks, or even days, we could find ourselves in the same situation we were a year ago — or worse.

It is only natural that all of us (except for the sceptics) want the vaccine as soon as possible. We want it for ourselves and our loved ones. That is only natural. And we won’t spend a lot of time thinking about whether anyone should get it before we do, or at the same time. As a result, neither will our governments. The politicians can see by our actions what we want. We want justice for ourselves and families immediately. Once we are all safely inoculated we can discuss what we should do for others. Not now.

Many Canadians have learned what it is like to live in a pandemic coupled with a severe loss of jobs. People are suffering. Either from the disease, or the economic costs of the lockdowns. It is understandable that people want their political leaders to look after these issues and keep their eyes on the ball at all times. This, to most Canadians, is a time for action, not a time for justice. As Lindsay Glassco said,

“As a result of COVID-19, for the first time in many of their lives, Canadians are experiencing some of the hardships that millions of people in other countries face every day — children out of school, economic disruptions, sickness and disease, and scarcity of resources — leading even to hoarding. While these hardships are experienced to varying degrees, their existence is eye-opening and powerful for many.”

Yet, at the same, many of us can see, that we are all in this together. None of us want to be seen as hoarders. We mocked hoarders of toilet paper. We felt sadness for hoarders of vaccines. We have deep empathy for “front line workers,” who are putting their lives on the line for the rest of us every hour of every working day. Some of us even feel a modest twinge of guilt. Not enough to get us to change places with those “essential” front line workers we claim to cherish so deeply. At least we want to say we feel connected to them, even if none of our actions show that this is true.

Personal interest does not usually sharpen our moral compass. Rather it often dulls it.

Flattening the Curve for Rich People: Wall Street, Main Street, or Willow Place?

March 18, 2021Capitalism, Epidemics/Pandemics, Social democracy, Social Justicemeanderer007

Once again Wall Street is doing much better than Main Street. Th at should not surprise anyone. And Wall Street is doing even much better than Willow Place. This is always an interesting phenomenon. In my view this will always happen in a system that permits plutocracy, and even worse in a system that encourages plutocracy. If we left the rich rule they would do what is in their best interests. It really is that simple.

As Scott Galloway said,

“As a nation we suffer from an idolatry of innovators. And we personify companies and believe that it all starts with the shareholders. The shareholder class is the premier class and as long as the economy is strong everything will fall into place. And we measure the economy’s health by these dangerous indices called the Nasdaq where 90% of the stock are owned by the top 10%. The Nasdaq and the Dow are not indicators of the health of our economy; they are proxies for how well the wealthy are doing. And–spoiler alert–they’re killing it.”

Again no one should be surprised by this. We have a system that is designed by the wealthy for the wealthy and inevitably such a system will deliver the goods to the wealthy. Our system does that well.

Another problem Galloway draws to our attention is that private power has been unleashed as a result deregulation. As he said, as a result of regulators doing nothing,

“… we end up with a lot of private power that has now overrun government. There are now more full-time lobbyists from Amazon that are living in Washington D.C. than there are sitting US Senators. There are more people manicuring Sheryl Sandburg and Mark Zuckerberg’s image in the communications department of Facebook than there are journalists at the Washington Post. So, we now have a situation where if you look across the market at the S&P 500, the 50 biggest companies are up for the year, the companies in the middle are down in the high single digits and the smallest 15 companies are down in double digits. We have decided that companies are either big tech monopolies, or too big to fail. That is our priority. And the wealthiest cohort in America small business owners have received one of the largest bail-outs. There will be very well publicized examples of the owners of a cupcake bakery that made it through the other end, but mostly what PPT has done is two things. Not giving bridges to small business but giving them piers where they are still going to go out of business, but we have just kicked the can down the road. This economy is reshaping. It’s coming down differently. And two, we have flattened the curve for rich people. Small business owners are millionaires typically, and there was no reason they needed a bailout. The big mistake here, looking back, will be we should have protected people not companies. We should have put money in the hands of people and then let them decide what businesses survive and what perish. Capitalism and rugged individualism on the way up and cronyism and bailouts on the way down is just cronyism. It doesn’t help the economy. And money is nothing but the transfer of time and work and all we’ve decided is that we want our kids and grand kids to spend less time with their loved ones such that wealthy people now can stay wealthy.”

Keep the wealthy being wealthy. That is what is happening with cronyism. Is this what modern capitalism is all about?