Category Archives: Extremism

Always More Room for Hate

Extremism, Hate, Polarization

 

According to CBC News a group of white nationalists showed up to intimidate and frighten people on a first Nation territory in BC. They were dressed ominously in black pants, black long-sleeved sweaters, black hats and white pull up masks in a straight regimental style row. Strict ideological conformity was enforced. It also seemed cowardly. Why did they need masks?  The police said they were there “to intimidate, provoke fear, and sow division.” Apparently, they were members of the Second Sons Group as they moved through Kamloops and nearby by Tkʼemlúps te Secwépem Reserve.

 

They carried a banner which asked, “GOT BONES?” That was probably a disparaging reference to what happened at the nearby Residential Schools. The Canadian Anti-hate movement says White Nationalism is more present in Canada than it has ever been. In other words, hate is growing in Canada. It also says Second Sons is a part of that. They have shown up in many Canadian communities recently. Perhaps Steinbach is next. They advocate white men training to be able to protect the White Nationalist movement. They consider themselves white patriots who “remember when Quebec was white.”

 

It does seem to me that there is always more room for hate in Canada.  Where is all that hate coming from?

 

That’s what I have been trying to figure out, without much success.

 Ecosystems of Hate

Extremism, Hate, Polarization

 

It is a sad fact that hate has been sharply on the rise in Canada. We are becoming more like the United States in other words. Canada is an ecosystem of hate.  And the Canadian military plays a big role in it. As if that was not bad enough it followed closely on the heels of another hate filled incident near the Sons of Jacob Synagogue in Belleville, Ontario which police have indicated was a deliberate hate-motivated attack against the Jewish community there. Both the Islam communities in Canada and Jewish communities have been deliberately and viciously attacked Canadian that can surely be called domestic terrorists in both cases.

 

I also heard recently, that Utah Valley University was severely criticized for not doing a more thorough security assessment before Charlie Kirk was invited to speak outdoors there.  That is what is has come down to. We always think about security.  It is never true anymore to say that murder is unlikely. It is likely everywhere.

 

What is happening in Canada and the United State? Where is all this hate coming from? Canadians tend to think we are so much better than the Americans in this disregard because they live in such a violent gun-filled society. It seems we don’t have much reason to feel superior as we once thought. We also have a society being swamped by hate.

 

Death threats are now so common in Canada and the United States that it almost seems that if you, like me, have not received death threats, you are, like me, a nobody.

 

Where can you go and not find hate?  Nowhere.

 

Reducing Life

Beauty, Extremism, Polarization, Truth and Beauty, Truth Seeking

 

The Irish poet and former Catholic priest, John O’Donohue said, “I always think that contradiction is what makes a person interesting.” This was a bit like Nietzsche, another brilliant philosopher, who said that if you want to make a person interested in you at a party, you should blush or get embarrassed. Now that is interesting. Perfection is dull. As a person who has always been quick to get red, much to my dismay, I can appreciate the wisdom of these words, though in my case it is likely just wishful thinking. Perhaps it was the same with Nietzsche, but I really doubt that.

 

O’Donohue also said, “In the world of the soul, contradiction is the presence which makes the complexity of the person visible in some way.”

 

O’Donohue says “one of the problems with our western thought patterns and models is that we have been very unfair to contradiction. We constantly want to reduce the complexity of contradiction to one of its sides or dimensions.” This is what polarization is all about in modern society.  Polarization banishes complexity.

 

This is where O’Donohue drags us back to the problems of polarization, without mentioning that nasty word. He says complexity is a good. A fundamental good. Concentrating on only one side, like left or right, good or bad, life or death, is to suck the blood out of life. I have always thought it sucked the blood out of truth, but now I must consider does it also do that to life?

 

O’Donoghue pointed this out, “In a certain sense what western thought has dreamed of, and its rationalism has tried to create, is a kind of one-dimensional kind of painting.” That of course is a pretty thin life, or art. Picasso was the first person to really drive this idea home. It was the basis of his Cubism. He wanted life as a cube not a square.   He actively sought the complex and was repelled by the simple. That of course is a difficult thing to achieve on a canvas with paint, but he manfully worked at it.

 

O’Donohue went on:

 

“If we agree that in our personalities and in our presence, the shoreline of a great immensity, we are just the stencil line, the external visage of an incredible eternal interiority, then naturally there will be many dimensions of us coming awake at the same time. And if we decide that contradiction is undesirable and has to be either hammered out or rooted out or flattened then we will do immense damage to the mystery of our own inner landscape.”

 

I know this is a bit hard to grasp, but I think the effort it worth it.

Aristotle was not the only Greek philosopher who considered the idea of contradiction. Parmenides also has things to say about contradiction. He said that “something cannot be and not be.”  No doubt this comes from Aristotle too. In saying this he had an inner kind of criterion of truth, according to O’Donoghue. Something that has inner contradictions then cannot actually be. This of course is what Aristotle said. He said A is A and not A is not A. sounds simple. But is it?  Ayn Rand the American author and ultra-right-wing provocateur, long before the time of the neo-liberals made this the theoretical basis of her philosophy. But she like things to be simple. A is A.

 

In the world of A is A, complexity is banished. And with it goes a lot of truth. And beauty too.

John O’Donohue: The importance of Contradictions

Extremism, Philosophy/Ideas, Polarization

 

Will Braun asked Christiane and I to consider the poetry of John O’Donohue when he was teaching us to dissolve the extremes. I loved the poetry and his glorious voice, but it took me awhile to figure out this fit into the concept of polarizations and how to neutralize them. He did not spell it out for us. He mainly sent a link to a glorious interview with him and some even better poetry.

 

John O’Donohue was a brilliant Irish poet and modern-day mystic. Please note O’Donohue also does not see awakening of life as a bad thing. He does not use the word “awakening” as a pejorative.  It is a good thing. To be awake, or to come out of a slumber is blessed. It is good to be alert. There is a time and place for sleep, but to deal with important ethical questions, for example, being asleep is not an advantage. This is contrary to MAGA right who have been adamant—and not just adamant, but fanatical—about the evils of wokeness.

 

Donald Trump has even tried to make it contrary to law. American Universities are now required to renounce wokeness in order to get millions of dollars in federal grants. Needless to say, they are all scrambling to get as far away from woke as they can possibly get and as fast as possible.

 

John O’Donohue took a different approach which was founded by an unusual idea.

 

O’Donohue thought contradictions were important and could be very useful. He said this:

 

 “Part of the awakening of any life, is the arrival of contradiction within that life. There is no sense of the other deep sides of ourselves. One of the sad aspects of the modern exploration of the self, is that it lacks all irony, that smile at us as we explore the miniscule explorations. It is sometimes in the most unusual places that you discover the gift of the beautiful.”

 

Contradiction is “a precious arrival” he says. That is counter intuitive, at least to me, a student of Aristotle who found non-contradiction as the philosophical foundation of the rational life.  If you arrived at a contradiction, Aristotle asserted, you have arrived at a falsehood.

 

But O’Donoghue said “we have demonized negativity, paradox and contradiction”. In this way we have removed irony from our lives at great personal cost. He felt that did not expand life, it  reduced life.

 

It took me a while to figure out how this related to extremism?  It is impossible to be extreme when you admit the opposite of your position—i.e. the contradiction—is part of the good.

 

To embrace contradictions you must give up the extremes!

 

Are The Democrats as bad as the Republicans?

Extremism, Polarization

 

Democrats recently have been demonstrating that in many ways they are just as bad as the Republicans. This should hardly be surprising. Tribalism runs deep, particularly in the USA.

 

In the US the Democratic party has found itself in a moral quandary.  As we all know they want to win the upcoming mid-term elections badly. To do that most commentators believe they have to win the Senate race in Maine to defeat the Republican Lisa Collins the incumbent who is seeking a 6th term. Her seat is considered shaky because Democrats were strong in Maine.

 

At least until recently, the leader in the race to gain the primary in Maine was harbor master Graham Platner who has more than a chequered record. Apparently he has a Nazi tattoo. He has faced a lot of claims of sexual harassment and now even an accusation of rape.  Platner was leading in the race with 72% support until after a long delay he was forced by the party elite and others to withdraw.  Until then the Democrats had a choice to support a much less than ideal candidate or lose the election to Collins   Many Democrats were showing they were fully prepared to hold their noses and vote for Platner despite their long history of virtue signalling.

 

In November 2017, during his election campaign for U.S. Senate in Alabama as a Republican several public allegations of sexual misconduct were made against Roy Moore. 3 women stated that he sexually assaulted them when they were aged 14, 16, and 28. 6 other women reported that when he was in his thirties, he pursued sexual relations with them even though some were as young as 16. He denied assaulting them but acknowledged he had approached them.  None of this was sufficient to stop Donald Trump from endorsing him and that encouraged some Republicans to endorse him as well, but fortunately he lost the election to a Democrat. Democrats of course were quick to mock Republicans for their deplorable behaviour.

 

Now the shoe is on the other foot. Many Democrats were making it clear that they were quite prepared to ditch their morality in the hopes of defeating Collins but the damage to the Democrats’ reputations   has been done. They have demonstrated clearly that they are not much better in this respect than Republicans.

 

On both sides, this is how tribalism works and it stinks to high heaven. Tribalism is the mother of extremism.

 

 

 

We Seem to Disagree on Everything

Extremism, Gender Warfare, Moral Humility, Pluralism, Social Issues, Woke

 

The divisions in America keep growing in number and in the depth of those divides. As usual, Canada is the same just a little more gently. Polls have shown that many Americans think those divisions are so deep that the country will not be able to survive its problems.  In other words, because of polarization we are doomed.  But are things that bad?

 

Mark Edmundson writing for the New York Times pointed out that evolutionary biologists have determined that,

 

“binary behavior is an evolutionary adaptation. It inheres in the reptile brain. There was a time when it was incumbent on us to decide and decide quickly who was friend and who was foe. Will it eat me? Am I safe around it? Err, if you must, on the side of enmity. You don’t want to equivocate about a sabre-toothed tiger.”

 

But, he also said, he did not agree things were that bad. Edmundson suggested the famous philosopher Jacques Derrida had some important things to say on the topic.  Derrida hated the compulsion so many of us have to divide the world into binaries or polarities.  Life just was not that simple he said.  That is why according to Edmundson, Derrida was an “an enemy of simple, dualistic thinking.” That is not a bad thing. Such thinking deserves critics. Added to that, he said “Derrida worried that compulsive binary thinking, in which one seeks opposition everywhere, could readily lead to violence…”  Edmundson agreed with Derrida. So do I.

 

Edmundson preferred the position of that modern philosopher Ted Lasso, who said instead, we should “Be curious, not judgmental.” That is often good advice. As a result Derrida called for thinking that did not require polar opposites but instead “resembled a form of thinking that was not based on the tension of opposites but resembled an ever-expanding web of rich associations.” Derrida’s curiosity led him to affirm the free play of the interpreting mind.

 

I agree with both of them but put it just a little differently.  My take is that we should not think and see in black and white, nor even gray. We should think and see in colour. Glorious colour. But that is not what we do.

 

Instead of that we think in black and white. We think the world is either A or B. 2 choices no more.  Pick a side and stick with it. As Edmundson said,

 

“Our culture is amok with binaries. We have two major parties, just two, and they are forever opposed. When a group tries to start a third party, it can be summarily disabled by the existing powers. We love sports, generally the most binary of activities. One side wins; one side loses. Root hard for your squad and the devil take the opposition. We savor debates where one side wins and one side loses.”

 

In the larger world, we find allies and we find enemies. We are, as I say, Democrats or Republicans, realists or idealists, people of much faith or people of none. We wear our team jerseys with pride and scoff at the opposition’s colors.

 

 Such binary thinking is just plain impoverished and so are we if confine ourselves to black and white.  Yet it is everywhere.

 

There is one clear modern example of this deficiency which is pretty plain if you look. That is thinking about  sex and gender.  More and more people are saying there are only 2 sexes and 2 genders.  A person is a male or female. Oner or the other. The pendulum is swinging. There are no other choices. In fact this is an issue in the municipal elections in Steinbach this year, as odd as that seems.

 

But life is not that simple, even if we would like it to be.  It is an uncomfortable fact that some people are born with ambiguous sexual organs. It is just not clear whether the person is male or female. Such a person could be one or the other or some combination of both. Such people are called intersex.

 

The differences between the genders is even less clear. There seem to be a lot of choices when you look. As Edmundson said, “Insisting on purity — you must be one thing or another — will inevitably create confusion and resentment.” That really is the point.  Insisting on simple answers will just bring about a lot of unnecessary unhappiness and pain.  There is no need to insist upon a clear distinction. There is nothing to be gained by such simplified thinking. Its none of our business. Let others live and let live.

 

Edmundson had a better approach, which he found in eastern religions. This is what he said,

 

“A person influenced by the great Eastern texts, the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita, would be likely to see it differently. The best state of mind is one in which you can look out on all creation, other people in particular, and say to yourself: That, too, I am.

 

We are all part of one being; we all possess the same soul. This way of seeing does not cultivate opposition or conflict. It accepts what comes its way without picking sides and initiating strife.”

 

This does not just apply to issues of sex or gender. We should look at the other and keep our opinions to ourself.  If the other person is suffering from confusion let him or her or they choose. Be happy.

 

I am not sure the Bible actually says, as some suggest, “we are all God’s children,” but it could still be true. If you believe in God surely you would say we are all God’s creation. Is that not enough to give us all dignity? Sometimes, we should give up judging in favour of accepting. As the Beatles said, “Whispser words of wisdom. Let it be.”

 

Is that not enough?

Even Hitler was Loved by his Mother

Extremism, Hate, Polarization

 

Mark Edmonson pointed out in a New York Times articles something that is actually quite obvious. He said, “Our culture is amok with binaries.” I have called it ‘My way or the highway’ thinking. This is particularly true in politics but this attitude has seeped into many aspects of modern life. For example, in can still be seen among some religious communities where each thinks they have a monopoly on truth and the “other religions” wallow in ignorance.  Sadly, many Mennonites think that way, though not as many as before.  There is some improvement. For example, my teacher Will Braun, did not think that way. He always worked hard to avoid such binary thinking. He was a Christian but admitted that there is truth to be found in other religions.

 

Sports is one field where binaries still rule and the glaring ugliness of it can be seen there.  At hockey games or football games as soon as the referee makes a call adverse to “our side”, we tend to leap up in with venomous disgust. We can’t stand it.  I have even seen parents jumping and screaming at very young refs of games in which their children are participating. It is ugly enough to tarnish the sport.

 

And really, we must admit that these games and these perceived injustices are really pretty insignificant. Why do I love the North Carolina Tar Heels and hate the Duke Blue Devils? They are both great basketball teams and live about 7 miles apart in North Carolina. But there is a lot of hatred between those teams, and sadly, not all of it is good natured. Some of it is vile and really the differences between the two sides are puny.

 

This is what Freud called the “the narcissism of minor differences.”  And their sole purpose is to keep insignificant binaries alive. Yet, even though I know this is true, when I watch the next basketball game between Duke and North Carolina is will be dying every time Duke makes an unlikely basket or North Carolina misses an easy shot. These small differences to me are very important. My bad.

 

We should not think and see in black and white, nor even gray. We should think and see in colour. Glorious colour.

 

Will Braun’s attitude which he got from his interpretation of the Bible was that we are all God’s children.  My wife Christiane says something similar, also wisely, “Even Hitler was loved by his mother.”

 

 

The Noise Machine: Create Confusion, Doubt, and Anger

Extremism, Right-wing Extremism

 

Eric Boehlert of Media Matters for America pointed, in the film The Brain-Washing of my Dad, that  out often The Noise Machine, as he called it, tries to create confusion, fear, and misinformation. This is a common tactic used by those political leaders that want to be kings or modern equivalents. By the Noise Machine he meant the Republican Noise Machine that works in conjunction with Fox News. He said “It is designed to attack people and smear people…in order to confuse viewers and news consumers and get them all riled up.” There is not much better than fear or anger to get people engaged. That is its goal and it is very effective. It helped Trump win 2 presidential election. In the world of social media there is nothing more important than engagement.

 

Senko, the producer of the film,  asked  Boehlert for some examples of deliberate spreading of misinformation.  One he gave was the 2008 American presidential election where a lot of right-wingers were unable or unwilling to believe that Obama won the election and claimed  voter fraud and faulty voter registration. Sort of like Trump does too.

 

There was very little voter fraud meaning someone shows up to vote and pretends to be someone else. That did not stop American conservatives from  alleging voter fraud in the election and then again and again. Lies have a long life span it seems, on the right.  Of course, this same tactic was used by Trump in the election he won in 2016, as crazy as that sounds, and once more in 2020 in the election he lost, and he was even trying to set up his supporters once more in 2024, but did not need to do that. The claims were bogus, but they got their own based riled up so effectively that they thought the Democrats had tried to steal all of those 3 elections.

 

Political theorist Noam Chomsky said this was similar to the massive attempts to create climate change denial. Again, these were very effective campaigns by corporations who benefitted massively from delaying action on climate change. They tried to convince Americans that humans have nothing to do with climate change even though they had a lot scientific information from their own scientists that this was not true.

 

This was also a fantastic success for the oil and gas industry which gained decades of American inaction on climate change when the science had already made it clear that climate change was real and was caused by human activities. A lot of this information has come out in litigation where courts have required these corporations to reveal their tactics. In law suits this is called discovery. Participants in a trial must disclose a lot of information to the other side. As Chomsky said, “you gotta make profits tomorrow and if the species goes down the tube that is somebody else’s problem.”

 

Decades earlier tobacco companies used the same approach to convince Americans that tobacco smoking did not cause serious harms to smokers even though they had massive scientific data showing that this was not the case. They ended up paying billions in those law suits. The oil and gas sector used the same public relations firms to sell those falsehood to Americans, again giving those corporations decades of extra profits as Americans were getting sick and dying.

 

In each of these cases the corporations used tactics of sowing confusion through disinformation designed to make people angry at the liberals who were interfering with their life style choices. In each of these cases the corporate predators that organized the campaigns showed callous indifference to the harms caused by their disinformation campaigns to the American people. Profits are all that mattered.

 

As Brown and Williamson a former tobacco company said in a memo it was forced to disclose, “Doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with the ‘body of fact’ that exists in the mind of the general public.”