Time and Tide

... wait for no man. But it is interesting how we attempt to optimize said time based on what our priorities are. Too often, these priorities are dictated by social norms. We spend so much time studying to get our degrees, then we spend so much time in the workplace making our money, etc., sometimes neglecting our physical and mental health. The physical side when we sit at a desk for eight hours and insist that we need to drive to work and to lunch every day, the mental side when we are overcome by the stress associated with what we are trying to achieve.

And this only increases with the increase of how work is run in an increasingly globalized market that is based less on capital itself and more on the time that it takes to create the capital. People are told that if they work really hard they will get promoted, but objectively all they are doing is exchanging a raise of a few dollars an hour and maybe an extra week of holidays for increased production from each individual. It is sort of like the idea that if you do something stupid for 'a chance to win X amount of money' (as in Edmonton's The Bear radio station's 'Really Tough Contest(s)'), it somehow becomes warranted. The whole issue revolves around the chance to have your situation improved, because if you don't have hope, you become lethargic, because usually there is no other internal or ontological feeling of satisfaction you get from increasing your output for the good of the company since it is, indeed, for the good of the company and not, as it were, for yourself and your fellow co-workers. I recall one instance when I was working a warehouse job and had been away for a few months in Asia. When they re-hired me after returning, I noticed they had posted a piece on the notification board entitled 'One Last Push' that talked about the parent company being on the brink of record profits and putting it out as if it would be felt as an achievement and be beneficial for everyone when, in fact, they reneged on promises to hire people full time and provide benefits saying that they had to 'tighten their belts', despite these apparent record profits:

First, the fact that labor is external to the worker, i.e., it does not belong to his intrinsic nature; that in his work, therefore, he does not affirm himself but denies himself, does not feel content but unhappy, does not develop freely his physical and mental energy but mortifies his body and ruins his mind. The worker therefore only feels himself outside his work, and in his work feels outside himself. He feels at home when he is not working, and when he is working he does not feel at home. His labor is therefore not voluntary, but coerced; it is forced labor. It is therefore not the satisfaction of a need; it is merely a means to satisfy needs external to it. Its alien character emerges clearly in the fact that as soon as no physical or other compulsion exists, labor is shunned like the plague. External labor, labor in which man alienates himself, is a labor of self-sacrifice, of mortification. Lastly, the external character of labor for the worker appears in the fact that it is not his own, but someone else’s, that it does not belong to him, that in it he belongs, not to himself, but to another.

--Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts

And it is, indeed, interesting that people become 'hooked' in such a way. They are promised that bigger is necessarily better, that achievement is defined in terms of wealth and capital rather than, for example, meritocratically.

But that still makes one wonder about this element of time that creeps in. In the 19th century, John Stuart Mill argued for the regulation of labour in terms of nine hour days, something unheard of at the time when most labourers worked upwards of eleven or twelve hour days to achieve what they required. But in this day and age there is really no reason for this. Last night, my Tanzanian friend talked about if he had a bit of capital back in Arusha, he could buy a tractor or harvester and do in a few days what it takes locals many weeks to do. And not with an eye to monopolizing the output of the community, but by teaching them how to become self-sufficient in terms of optimizing their labour output. The question becomes, then, what does one do with this newfound 'free time'.

Well, for one thing, I'm sure it would be nice for a lot of these people to save their children from having to do back-breaking labour in order for the family to survive. Having extra time to spend educating themselves would be highly beneficial as well. But these both fly in the face of imperialist tactics that attempt to keep people ignorant and keep cheap and/or free labour available by monopolizing people's time so they remain trapped in an unending chain of hard labour, coerced hard labour.

And, of course, above all of these abstract ideas of self-betterment, in the highly mobilized capitalist society we presently call our own, we could probably all use a few extra hours of sleep...

Tourist Traps: How I hate them

Victoria Falls is probably the first heavily touristy niche Ive been to in Africa. It is probably the first such place Ive been to since Siem Reap almost 18 months ago.

The entry into the park containing the waterfall is $30, which, considering it costs only $20 for a day pass to Angkor and you can walk around for hours, seems a bit steep. Touts follow you around and harass you to no end about buying their carvings, going on the their rafting trips, bungee jumping, etc. But the main difference between Victoria Falls and Siem Reap is that Cambodia probably gets a huge portion of its income from tourism: go anywhere, and there are plenty of tourists. On the other hand, Im not sure Ive seen a single tourist in Zimbabwe (including Harare, Rushinga, Bulawayo, and Bindura) since I arrived two and a half weeks ago (outside of Victoria Falls, of course, which is swimming in them... no pun intended). Maybe one or two, but I wouldn't swear to it.

So I asked a number of people how they came to be there. It seems many are on tour buses from Johannesburg, some fly straight into Livingstone (internal flights are pretty ridiculous outside of South Africa), others come via Zambia. But what worries me most is the perception that the hordes of tourists may get of Africa in general and Zimbabwe in particular. Victoria Falls isn't Africa at all, and you really learn nothing about Africa by coming here. If you only came to Victoria Falls, there is nothing to say that you're in Africa other than that the local touts are black. For example, an individual I met said that some people he knew 'didn't like Zimbabwe at all', and I can see why if they only visited Victoria Falls. But we aren't in Zimbabwe. We are in a tourist bubble.

Like China, Zimbabwe is probably, on the whole, safer than North America. Consider the fact that in Canada you have to practically get cavity searches before you get on buses, and even a small pair of cuticle scissors will often have to be put with your stored luggage. On the other hand, at Mbare bus station when I was sitting on my bus waiting to go to Rushinga, there were touts outside the bus selling plenty of bizarre things, including 12-inch long kitchen knives and 15-inch sickles (which Li Weiguang could have used to behead an individual in one swipe...), their points capped with a small piece of cardboard or the top of a Coca-Cola bottle. Then on the bus as we were traveling through Harare, there were a few touts who stayed on the bus to do their selling. Standing in the middle of the bus aisle, he pulled out a chopping board and some cabbage to demonstrate the manner in which his 5-in-1 knife could shred cabbage. He then brought out some green onion and made short work of those. After this demonstration, the asking price was a dollar each and he distributed them like candy around the bus to anyone who put up their hand.

I can't explain this phenomenon completely, but my guess would be that there are at least two major contributors (aside from the completely random, absurdly gruesome, and probably unrepeatable Li Weiguang incident, which actually started the checks on buses in the first place). The first lies with the traditionally communal and often pacifist nature of Africans. Many are farmers (especially those going to remote villages like Rushinga) and survival is by no means a given (see the previous post), so violence is basically unheard of in many parts (putting aside violence between tribal factions, that is). In North America, the ultra-competitive and high intensity nature of society seems to lead people to adopt much more aggressive and dog-eat-dog demeanors. I have seen a few fights arise in bars in Africa now and again, but there is always a certain level of pride and humility involved on both sides. It isn't what sometimes feels like Hollywood nature of a lot of the bars in Canada with guys in muscle shirts calling each other out and heckling each other because they are so incredibly bored and need to somehow validate the inflated and often farcical notions of 'respect' and 'street sense' that they take from sitting in front of gangster and/or ghetto survival movies.

The other reason is likely the manner in which 'lawsuit society' has crept into Western society. Bus companies probably care much more about not being sued or getting bad publicity over some incident than the actual safety of their customers. When it is possible to sue the Winnebago company and win (and this may be an urban myth, I haven't corroborated that such an absurd incident actually happened) because it crashes because you put yours on cruise control to go into the back and make a sandwich, and 'it wasn't in the owner's manual that I couldn't do that', then companies this side really need to cover their asses.

But it brings me to a notion of freedom: in Africa there is much more freedom because of the organic nature of society, whereas in North America, everything is much more scrutinized and much more controlled. We may think we have more freedom because of the constant banding around of political buzzwords like 'freedom' and 'democracy', but in the end society ends up controlling itself through (amongst other things, see for example, Adam Curtis' series The Trap and/or Ray Bradbury's short story The Pedestrian), a combination of vanity and lack of confidence in one's ability to think for oneself. Acceptability and unacceptability to often come down to popularity amongst the general population: people think it absurd that I could study mathematics and philosophy with no eye to a possible career.

Education as an end in itself? You actually what to learn about the world for it's own sake? You want to satisfy your own curiosities about the underlying secrets of human nature? Have you seen a psychiatrist lately?

Africa and Consciousness

I lasted less than 24 hours in Gaborone. It is something like a Johannesburg in the sense that a western business sense seems to have been ushered in, which is possibly justified by many opinions that Botswana has 'the fastest growing economy in Africa', or something like that. But what does it mean for an economy to grow?

When I was in Lesotho, the individual that I spent my time with and stayed with his family once said to me 'Lesotho is a poor country'. I asked him why he said that, and noted that the notion of 'poor' is based on a western model of GDPs and capital, but Lesotho is, in fact, a rich country in the fact that it has sufficient land for its population and has a very agrarian lifestyle. I told him that money with only get you so far, as you cannot eat it. Those who control land and food production are the ones that will be guaranteed survival, as Tolstoy so aptly noted in his allegory Ivan the Fool.

One of the things that has really come to the fore, however, and really made me understand the situation in Africa, that is, the social situation in Africa, is what I can only best sum up as:

"Regardless of whether it is a socio-political challenge created by the environment one lives in or a personal challenge created and implemented by one on oneself, it is only when survival challenges an individual that that individual becomes and remains conscious."

By that I mean I realize why I enjoy Africa (and 'the developing world', like during my travels in Asia) so much more than 'the west' is because people are forced to be conscious so that they may survive in a socio-economic environment where survival cannot be taken for granted, as it too often is in the affluent west.

One can think about it this way: if one knows that all one needs to do is 'enter the system' and they will basically be guaranteed eight hours a day five days a week doing whatever but, importantly, making more than enough money to survive, there is no reason for that person to change their ways, unless they feel that there is more to survival than simply being able to afford whatever basic needs and luxuries that they should require.

And this is a vicious cycle perpetuated by the capitalist mentality, and exemplified by the fact that the names on people's lips are no longer the Platos, Leonardo da Vincis, Max Plancks, and Alexander Flemings of the world, i.e. those that contributed to our collective well-being through theory and practice. Rather, it is the Bill Gates's, the David Beckhams, the Justin Biebers, the Johnny Depps, and the American Idol winners of the world, i.e. those with power (in whatever form) and money.

This shows the dramatic shift that has occurred in the past century where capital has usurped merit with regard to importance to the 'random individual'. And because of this, there is an abyss that has opened up before us because, as Marx said 150 years ago, capitalism, which is based on profit, cannot sustain itself, because eventually there are no new markets that can be exploited for profit. This may be a blip in human evolution where a few decades or a few centuries down the road we realize the pointlessness, uselessness, and stupidity of following a track that is based on vanity and personal acclaim over merit, theory, and socio-political sustainability. The human race is at a very interesting crossroads. It is of my humble opinion that the current situation can be summed up best by a quote from Patrick Stewart (as Captain Jean-Luc Picard) in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation:

"For us to go forward, the cycle must end."

Notes from a Small Country

It's been awhile since I posted, mostly because it's largely been business as usual around here now that university is out and Im preparing to spend my break in various other southern Africa countries.

Today, however, I had to go into town to do a bit of volunteer work with an organization that is trying to put together cheap high school textbooks to help get more people educated in a country where a lot of people have few resources, especially in the townships.

As I got on the train car at Rondebosch, I heard an all-too-familiar 'commotion' in the form of some random guy blithering on about how Africa must give themselves over to Jesus Christ and yadda-yadda-yadda. While I stood there, a guy opposite me was taking a bit of an interest in me. The usual 'icebreaker' followed: "Hey man, you know, you look a lot like... Him." I said "Yeah well..." because as much as my appearance has got me into many interesting conversations with many interesting people, most of them just sort of make that comment and it doesn't really go anywhere. But then he pushed to the 'next level' asking me if I was a Christian. And then we got into a discussion about religion. So I asked him what I usually ask these sort of people in true 'Fanonist' style: why is it that after being persecuted and enslaved for over a century by Europeans, and still to this day feeling a fair bit of animosity towards colonialism and neo-colonialism (with good reason), they find favour in 'the white man's religion'?

But this guy was quite smart and quite interesting. It turned out that he was from Gabon ("Libreville?" I asked, since I know all the capital cities) and then he started talking about the 'head of his tribe' in his village. I didn't know much of anything about Gabon, and he told me that he came from a village called 'Bongoville' that was named after this 'tribal head' who he described alternatively as his 'uncle' and 'basically his father', namely Omar Bongo, who ruled Gabon for 42 years from 1967 to his death in 2009.

What struck me most about what he talked about, however, was the manner in which he described the situation in Gabon in such graphic detail. I had used terms like 'fucked over' and such, and this guy proceeded to use the same sort of terms in such graphic detail that I didnt know whether he was speaking figuratively or was actually describing what happened. He told me something like "when the white men came to Omar Bongo and took him into the forest and fucked him [and he actually went through the somatic motions to go along with act], he didn't cry. He let them do it again and again, but he didn't say anything, because his sadness was inside him. Then when they were done with him and left, he told them when they came back that if they ever touched anyone else in his tribe, he would kill them [and here again he acted out a few mock haymakers]."

As I said, I didn't know anything about Gabon at the time, but reading the wiki article about Omar Bongo, it seems that Gabon had incredible wealth, which now justifies why he kept telling me how the faith in African people derives from the manner in which they have been blessed with resources, and that the people of Gabon strongly feel that they are, in some sense, 'chosen ones' because of the rich wealth that was bequeathed to them. He told me, in a way that very creepily reflects Sartre's declarations in the preface to The Wretched of the Earth, e.g.:

1961. Listen: ‘Let us waste no time in sterile litanies and nauseating mimicry. Leave this Europe where they are never done talking of Man, yet murder men everywhere they find them, at the corner of every one of their own streets, in all the corners of the globe. For centuries they have stifled almost the whole of humanity in the name of a so-called spiritual experience.’ The tone is new. Who dares to speak thus? It is an African, a man from the Third World, an ex-‘native’. He adds: ‘Europe now lives at such a mad, reckless pace that she is running headlong into the abyss; we would do well to keep away from it.’ In other words, she’s done for. A truth which is not pleasant to state but of which we are all convinced, are we not, fellow-Europeans, in the marrow of our bones?

He said that Africa in general is where things actually happen, that Westerners are basically zombies made content by wealth. That Westerners come to Africa because the peoples and cultures are interesting and beautiful to behold. That Africa is where all the resources are, it has been richly endowed with resources.

That is why people have faith, he says. Because they can see that they are in a privileged position, despite their history being sabotaged by economic crimes.

But it wasn't all fun and games. He told me with brutal honesty how as a young boy of around 9, he saw his mother raped and his village compromised. That there were definitely things that he had seen growing up that were filled with shocks and horror.

When I got off the train, I was already sort of 'late' to where I was supposed to go, but still I spent about 10 minutes standing at the train station listening to this guy's story. And then he told me about how he had actually fled from Gabon for various reasons, that people were looking for him for some reasons, that in his village and later in Libreville there had been problems, but I didn't really understand what was behind it all.

And then he told me he had to go to a class. He was being taught how to fight like Bruce Lee, so that when it came time for him to meet these assailants, he would be ready.

Brush with the BBC over SlutWalk issue

I frequently contribute to 'BBC Have Your Say' discussion on facebook, and yesterday after one such post, I was surprised to see a message in my inbox from a certain Ben James that went as follows (with personal details cut out, of course):


Hi ______ -

I'm a producer at BBC World Have Your Say. Thanks for your comment on the SlutWalk discussion.

Would you be interested in taking part in the radio discussion later today? If so, please email me a number I can call you on to ___________, or message it to me here, and I can explain more about the programme.

Best wishes,

Ben James
BBC World Have Your Say
+44 207 --- ----


So I responded by giving my number in Cape Town and after a few tries, whilst walking along the road on the way home, I received a call from Ben James who told me about what was going on, asked me a few questions about my position on whether the police officer should have said what he said and what my opinion was on the subject, then said that they were several people who had been contacted on the topic and that 'there were no guarantees', but that he 'hoped to get me on'. Then we spoke a bit about the upcoming Manchester City v. Tottenham game that I said I was hoping to watch and he bid me adieu. I wasn't exactly sure what I would say, so I prepared the following statement should I get called:

These protests are supposed to be a justified form of direct democracy. The Toronto police representative represents the executive arm of the government, so if someone condemns the public protests of people who disagree about a very contentious progressive issue, they are effectively backing fearmongering in the form of 'do this at your peril'. And this applies to both the freedom to dress as one wishes and the freedom to organize.

With regard to the matter at hand, namely 'women dressing like sluts', this sort of idea is inherited from a history of paternalism and patriarchy. It basically says that those who are dominant (most often physically, e.g. men) can wear whatever they like: topless, shirts that say 'hung like a ....', etc., because their dominance means that there are no consequences. Yet others, who don't fall into this category of dominance, those who are vulnerable (e.g. many women) must adhere to a strict dress code. Why should women who dress suggesting 'I am looking for a mate' not have the freedom to choose which mate she wants simply because there are those who can force her to make a choice that that she doesn't want to make? If she wears clothing that suggests she is sexually free, this should NEVER mean that she is sexually available to everyone. This is why there is the notion of CONSENT. If women and vulnerable individuals are constantly discouraged, harangued, and exploited for the way they dress, the 'freedom' to 'dress like a slut' then becomes elitist: it becomes a form of 'freedom' that is genderly biased, and takes us back to Feudalism where biological facts were used to justify that it is only men who should act while women should merely follow.

Third, it is important to point out that this phenomenon does not occur in a bubble. Sex sells, and cosmetology and fashion are huge industries. Individuals like Beyonce Knowles and Jennifer Lopez are constantly portrayed in scant clothing and are glamorized as enslaving beautiful men, and then they turn around to the vulnerable youth that take in these messages and look up to these people and suddenly say 'don't do this'?? If people really want women to stop 'dressing like sluts', then they had better be willing to take on the fashion industry, the film industry, the music industry, and all the media that represents them. Otherwise, it is blatant hypocrisy that puts business interests ahead of human rights.

In the end, I didn't get called to participate in the radio show, but it was cool to get a call in South Africa and talk to a BBC representative. And I am glad that it allowed me to crystallize my opinions on the subject.

So... SlutWalk Cape Town anybody??

The Morals of the Wretched (Interlude: The Walk of Life)

I didnt actually expect to create this entry, but neither did I expect to create the last interlude to my entry on (see causality of this article) et al. But just like in that instance, 'something came up', and it just happened to fit with the theme (with a little stretching involved).

In January, a Toronto police representative made an ill-advised comment that “women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized”. And so the SlutWalk was born to 'take back the word slut' and bring the public's attention to the manner in which people (predominantly women) are marginalized, bullied, and generally treated with contempt when their freedom of expression goes against the often dominant voice that advocates sexual conservatism, and the dangerous precedent that this stereotyped objectification sets. Marches have been held in many cities throughout North America, and over the next few months, these demonstrations are being planned in Amsterdam, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand.

The phenomenon was originally brought to my attention by a feminist activist friend of mine, and at the time I didn't really think much of it other than 'huh... interesting concept', but on Sunday there was a BBC article that gave it a good deal of publicity, and the following day, a second BBC article announced details of the SlutWalk planned in London for June 4, rightly saying: "Organisers say the aim is to highlight a culture in which the victim, rather than rapist or abuser, is blamed. So what started as an 'interesting concept' was suddenly becoming a global phenomenon.

So the request, as put to me was "I would like to see an entry on people's delusion that they can provide any help for a cause by participating in a 'walk'". Now, I'm not a psychologist, nor do I have the ability to read minds, so I cannot know for sure how close my assessment will come to the reality of the situation, and clearly different people have different reasons for participating in public demonstrations, but I'll give it a go, but before I do, let me motivate the topic a bit by mentioning a few anecdotes about the situation in South Africa.

First and foremost is the HIV/AIDS problem. Sub-Saharan Africa, especially Southern Africa, has probably the highest proportion of HIV positive cases in the world, and the prevalence of rape, which, up until very recently when it was updated, was justified by a "Sexual Offences Act [that] dates back to 1957: the days of apartheid when the country's rulers were not only all white, but also all male." It doesn't help that the country's president is a polygamist with five wives, two fiancees, and twenty children, and had gone through an infamous rape trial when he had sex with an HIV positive woman (and later revealed he had 'showered to avoid HIV'). Indeed, under the previous government, president Thabo Mbeki pretended there was no HIV problem, and dismissed anti-retroviral treatment as 'toxic and dangerous'. Things are getting better, with groups especially from the townships like Khayelitsha coming together and boldly wearing shirts describing themselves as HIV positive, and billboards with celebrities like Ryan Giggs saying things like 'Be a man. Know your status." with regard to HIV.

Another, more personal story, occurred when I was sitting in the pub in a discussion with some friends of mine. For some reason we got into the topic of rape, and the gal at the table, who I didn't know, volunteered that there was an instance when she had been at a party and would have been raped but for a friend of hers happening to walk in 'just in the nick of time'. The gentleman to my left then volunteered that he 'had heard' that most rape instances 'are actually when women have second thoughts after the fact'. I told him flat out that this simply wasn't true, that if it is truly consensual, then there shouldnt be any 'second thoughts' and if there is any doubt there shouldnt be any sex. I told him about the historical accounts of women being intimidated and marginalized to the point where they rarely report rape cases, where too often the burden of proof is on them to prove that it wasn't consensual and that it often simply comes down to her word against his and she usually ends up losing out. A story was brought to my attention by friends of mine in Ghana about a purported 'thief' in a student housing block who was eventually mass-raped by a group of students. I have followed people's reactions (i.e. friends of friends in Ghana) on the story, and most of them (who are males) tend to offer little sympathy, justifying it by saying 'she got what she deserved'.

So what does this tell us? It tells us that there is a problem. As I alluded to in my gender bender story, the history of patriarchy means that gender equality is still not taken very seriously by many, even in 'developed' countries (and this includes the current Prime Minister of Canada). And this apparent 'ignorance' seems to grow in proportion to conservatism, especially religious conservatism. So what can be done about it? Well it appears that one may run into difficulties and general inaction if one petitions one's government representative to take it up as an issue, so there must be another way (though this is usually how it is).

I will start by saying that such a 'walk' is a form of 'direct democracy', a "form of governance in which people collectively make decisions for themselves, rather than having their political affairs decided by representatives." The truth is that if democracy was all about voting every couple of years, any majority government could do whatever they pleased (we will see if that is the case in Canada), when, in fact, mass protests are the means for people to tell their representatives in no uncertain terms that they are not doing a very good job if they refuse to deal with issues that are important to those that they purport to represent. Moreover, it sends a message to the general public that this is, indeed, an important issue that cannot be absorbed or swept under the carpet. Instead of dropping hints here and there, there is an active and very real component that brings people together in protest, and also brings people who may never have thought about such an issue to get the gears in their mind turning, and (hopefully) they may begin to ask themselves what they really think about the issue and why. Even if they do not agree, critical engagement and dissenting voices are always important democratically to figure out the best way forward.

And protests are important to keep governments in check. Oftentimes it turns out that violent protests, though riskier, are often much more effective (my Ghanaian friend's treatise on student activism gave me an intimate look into this world), but one must remember that non-violent protests are a show of obstinate defiance and (assuming the Declaration of Human Rights is upheld) insulates protesters from being victims of violence themselves. This is also what eventually allowed Gandhi to free India from British colonial rule.

So I ask who is responsible enough to stand up and fight for the rights and morals of the wretched, in this case, victims who have to carry the burden of the shame of objectification, marginalization, manipulation, and egregious invasions of their personal privacy?

Lest we forget also that protests are a means by which like-minded people come together for a cause, so it also presents the opportunity for a very interesting and often very rewarding social experience for everybody.

Hmmm... I had better get that 'SlutWalk Cape Town' ball rolling...

The Morals of the Wretched (Part I)

The Genealogy of Morals is a book written by Friedrich Nietzsche talking about his perception of how morality arrived at its present state as upholding asceticism, piety, and pacifism.

I would recommend it as an interesting historical account of the power balance between politics and religion that is ongoing, but basically he surmises that way back when, when 'good' was associated with power and 'bad' was associated with inferiority, the clerics sought to upset the system, suddenly defining 'good' as pious and 'evil' as powerful. Meanwhile, the clerics could now count on an army of people wishing to be 'saved' which would bring them power and control.

It is an interesting idea, and one that I take seriously. The situation that exists between politics and religion is still a very real one, and it just goes to show the somewhat paradoxical outcome of colonialism which ended with the colonized accusing the colonizers of tyrannical brutality, yet embracing the religion that these 'tyrants' brought with them:

"All values, in fact, are irrevocably poisoned and diseased as soon as they are allowed in contact with the colonized race. The customs of the colonized people, their traditions, their myths—above all, their myths—are the very sign of that poverty of spirit and of their constitutional depravity. That is why we must put the DDT which destroys parasites, the bearers of disease, on the same level as the Christian religion which wages war on embryonic heresies and instincts, and on evil as yet unborn. The recession of yellow fever and the advance of evangelization form part of the same balance sheet. But the triumphant communiqués from the mission are in fact a source of information concerning the implantation of foreign influences in the core of the colonized people. I speak of the Christian religion, and no one need be astonished. The Church in the colonies is the white people’s Church, the foreigner’s Church. She does not call the native to God’s ways but to the ways of the white man, of the master, of the oppressor. And as we know, in this matter many are called but few are chosen."

--Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth

But then what comes of this? Today as I was walking to the university, an individual called out to me ('Jesus!') from the place by the river where he regularly squats with other destitute individuals. He told me of his situation. That they are harassed constantly by the authorities, that the situation is so unfair because whenever he has bread, he shares it with his comrades but they do not reciprocate. That he cries a fair bit because of his destitute situation (though when he mentioned this to me, I wasnt sure if this was actual or metaphorical), that he was born in Guguletu, and had a pretty rough life, that he was born in 1974 and had lost his mother recently, that he had talents and liked to sing, and wanted to somehow find a change for the better and no longer live and be treated like an animal. During that time, a 'Groote Schuur Community Officer' came and started harassing him and his fellow strugglers, and forced them to disperse, while they protested that they werent cheating and stealing; they were just trying to live. And so during the conversation, we moved from the open to a more discrete location away from the main road while he continued his talk. And after this, he did indeed start to weep at his miserable plight. But a common theme kept arising: his Christian faith.

Although I often lend an ear to such people, I am not always inclined to help them. When I was in Oxford, and even back in Canada, people ask for money on a lot of occasions but it is fairly easy to shut them out. You wonder what has crept into their situation: if you give them money, how will it be used? Yesterday at the pub, my friend pointed out a grizzled elderly white woman that had tried her best to add some notion of beauty to her features with little dabs of makeup here and there. She had started coming to the pub fairly recently (as far as I could see), but I thought I remembered seeing her somewhere before. And then my friend said 'I see this old woman in Observatory all the time and I always give her a bit of change when she asks me for it. Seeing her in here purchasing beers, I now know where my money is going.' Sad.

But you cannot blame these people, as I mentioned in the post on death, I spoke of the book 'Better Never To Have Lived', and the difficulty that children face when they are brought into this world. Of course, some have it much more difficult than others, and it is not always easy to deal with hardship and have the strength to continue. Sometimes when I see Rasta at the house after a hard day's work, it really pains me that I can't do more. But when it comes to randoms, Cambodia always comes to mind, and I remind myself that I can't save everybody. And so anyway, these people must find a way to continue the struggle, often by bypassing the reality of the situation through substance abuse, domestic violence,... or religion:

"Here on the level of communal organizations we clearly discern the well-known behavior patterns of avoidance. It is as if plunging into fraternal blood-bath allowed them to ignore the obstacle, and to put off till later the choice, nevertheless inevitable, which opens up the question of armed resistance to colonialism. Thus collective autodestruction in a very concrete form is one of the ways in which the native’s muscular tension is set free. All these patterns of conduct are those of the death reflex when faced with danger, a suicidal behavior which proves to the settler (whose existence and domination is by them all the more justified) that these men are not reasonable human beings. In the same way the native manages to by-pass the settler. A belief in fatality removes all blame from the oppressor; the cause of misfortunes and of poverty is attributed to God: He is Fate. In this way the individual accepts the disintegration ordained by God, bows down before the settler and his lot, and by a kind of interior restabilization acquires a stony calm."

--Ibid.

Anyway, this individual, 'Albert', wanted me to sing with him, and went into some hymn or something or other about how Jesus saves and all that, while all the while I watched him and the other passersby who were curious about this white man being entertained by a homeless local. The Officer came back briefly but didnt approach us while I was with this man. Then Albert asked me for food, as I knew he inevitably would. Normally I say no to these people, but he had done some work: telling me about his situation, about the situation of many of his ilk in Cape Town, singing for me, etc. He had wanted to follow me into the shop, but as he approached, he was barred from entry but the security guy, so I went in myself. As I had left him to go in, he had called after me requesting a veritable smorgasbord of food. I at first thought that I would 'do the usual' and just buy him a loaf of bread, but then as I was near the deli, my eye looked over the possibilities on offer, and there was a fairly cheap chicken curry and rice, so I went for that and repaid him in kind with some rice and chicken curry from the Pick n Pay that came to about R18 ($2.50). I emerged from the store just in time to see a group of these guys (including Albert) getting shooed away by the security staff, and as he moved away, I caught up to him, gave my offering to him, said 'best of luck', and walked off.

I had to go, and I wasnt particularly interested in hearing his long-winded lamentations about how he had just been treated.

Gender Bender (or Behind Closed Doors)

The beginning of the month often sees rooms, houses, properties, etc. change hands. And in the house that I am staying in, this followed accordingly. The most obvious (if you had read about my recent scenario involving death) new arrival would be the one filling up Danny's room, since given that it has a personal bathroom and kitchenette, it would provide the greatest amount of extra income to the landlady. Another individual arrived to fill another room and a third room was also on offer that would have prompted a re-shuffle (in terms of various people switching rooms), but for the 'unbelievability of the unknown'.

I don't know the whole story, but the individual who stayed in this room had done so for quite a long time (I've been told for possibly up to four years). He had his share of problems, being a drug addict, and having some very strange behavioural issues in terms of possible 'kleptomania', and there was some animosity towards him from one of the other individuals who had also been there long term. But the landlady told me that she didnt have a problem with him staying because on the one hand his personal issues weren't her business and on the other hand his mother always promptly transferred the full amount of the rent into the proper bank account at the beginning of every month. He was scheduled to arrive last Thursday or Friday to clear out his stuff, but it ended up being that he didnt actually arrive until late on Saturday. I was there at the time sharing a toke with Raymond (Rasta), and I had tried to convince him that we should check out what's happening at the pub, but he kept motioning to me that he was worried about leaving this guy at the house by himself should he decide to take something with him on the way out. But at the end of it all he relented and we left.

The next morning, I woke up to the sound of 'Holy shit! This is really not good!' and thought that perhaps we had made a mistake by leaving him alone and he had made off with something. But when I eventually dragged myself out of bed, one of my other roommates came up to me and said 'Check out the room! It's like Al-Qaeda has been staying there and let a bomb go off!' I thought it couldn't be that bad, since I'm usually fairly untidy when it comes to leaving clothes and stuff strewn about my floor and a mess of papers and books near and in my bed because of the myriad of projects that always seem to pull me this way and that, so I went to check on it and... wow.

There was an almost indescribable mess, with a giant mess of things strewn everywhere in and around the room. A giant pile of wood and plastic and various broken things in one corner, the bed in a disgusting state and covered with garbage, etc. There were also to ropes tied across the middle of the room, I imagine to hang his washing on. And it was a very small room. But that wasn't the most interesting thing.

It always interesting to know what goes on behind the closed doors of people who are very secretive, especially those who have various substance problems. For the first month I had stayed at the house, he seemed a fairly regular guy, though the only sight I ever had of his room was him squeezing the door open as little as possible, squeezing through it, and then when leaving, he would always have a hockey bag containing who knows what (two heads in a duffel bag, for all I knew), but he spent most of the second month apparently staying out with his mom near Bellville to be closer to work, so I hadnt seen him much lately. While I had been there, the landlady had always talked about a lot of things that had gone missing: dishes, a receipt booklet, various odds and ends here and there, but she was always adamant that even though she contained an extra key, she couldnt by law go in to check his room (another thing she told me was that because of recent legislation she couldnt by law kick non-paying tenants out without a long legal procedure, so, as with the things missing, she took the people who had failed to pay over the month of April in stride). So now we were all going to get a peek into this individual's weird little world.

Unsurprisingly, during the cleanup that followed over the coming days, most of the missing dishes were found (and put through a very rigorous washing process), the receipt book had been found, and many other missing things had shown up in the room of an apparent kleptomaniac. But now, surveying the room, the first thing that occurred to me was the overfull ashtray next to the bed. This in itself might not be particularly interesting but for the fact that many of those cigarettes were stained with lipstick. Then my eyes went to the mess on the floor where there sat numerous bottles of makeup products, colognes, perfumes, and who knows what else. You saw condom packages, tampon packages, women's underwear. The landlady had always had a rule 'no sleepovers, male or female' (though this rule was only very loosely adhered to by most of the tenants). So what had been going on there? How often had women been going in and out? How long of the four years had all this stuff been fossilized there?

Well, the speculative answer to a lot of these questions has to do with the the fact that it had already been revealed to me by the landlady that there was an instance when she had surprised him one day by catching him in a dress or some such (perhaps when he had to take a quick bathroom break) and he had immediately taken to his heels to seek the privacy of his room. So it seemed that, to at least some extent, the 'women' who had been visiting him were his effeminate alter egos. Though this could not (and still doesn't) explain what a male who likes to get regularly in touch with his feminine side, and in a rather pro-active way, requires condoms and female hygiene products for. Either there had been women there at various times (though it would be odd for him to keep 'hygiene products' around for her unless she had been there constantly, and no such individual had ever been seen to have entered or exited his room), or he had REALLY allowed his imagination to run wild.


The notion of gender has very interesting ontological connotations. Just like we might say that humans are such because of certain physiological or genotypical traits, so one might make the same assessment of gender. You are male if you have certain hormones, a Y-chromosome, certain anatomical essentials, etc. Similarly, you are female if you have certain hormones, two X chromosomes (and therefore polar bodies), certain anatomical essentials, etc. Then there are those that are often lumped into 'gender neutral' groups, such as those with Klinefelter's syndrome, those that have under-developed sex organs of both genders, various hormonal 'imbalances', etc. But just as we might say that to define a human being as 'a bag of bones' or 'a bag of DNA' is not particularly useful, so it might be said of gender. How are males and/or females 'normally' 'supposed to' or 'not supposed to' conduct themselves?

In my MA philosophy thesis, I wrote about how political notions of 'human freedom' are often defined by looking at the ontological definitions of 'humanness' as depicted by the theorist in question. What, aside from physiologically or genealogically speaking defines people as being human? Is it based on 'thinking'? 'Consciousness'? 'Productive capilities'? 'Hierarchical structure'? 'Socio-political structure'? Different answers imply different notions of political notions of freedom (so I have argued anyway).

But I believe a similar approach could be used to see what is behind gender stereotypes. If we talk about humanity in terms of its procreative needs, it leads to notions of 'heterosexuality', 'homosexuality', and 'bisexuality'. If we talk about humans in terms of 'thinking' or 'consciousness', which is the mark of the 'classic' and 'early modern philosophy', it turns into the perpetuation of stereotypes of women as intellectual socialites due to the egregious declarations that the patriarchy made about the general 'inability' of women to critical engage with and critically assess epistemic and intellectual pursuits. Note how women were basically treated during those times, and note that the hierarchical implications of these assessments are then sneaked in the back door to imply that women are fundamentally 'lower' because of their inability to engage with 'higher' forms of learning, as well as their biological 'closeness' to the children that they carry with them through the nine-month gestation period implying that their role is to 'create and maintain the family'.

But then a reassessment started to take place during the Romantic period when women started to show their intellectual worth through their ability to write many very important and very deeply insightful and philosophically relevant novels. The notion of the intellectual inferiority of women then took on a different tact that it was restricted to 'female' perceptions of the world, and was explained by the romanticization of women as storytellers and artists, etc. Eliot summarized it in 'The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock' by repeatedly referring to 'the women who come and go talking of Michelangelo'. But still they were largely excluded from 'real' male pursuits like philosophy and the sciences. And still the bias became about a woman's productive capabilities: stereotyped as being more 'delicate' (and lacking the required levels of testosterone, apparently), they were restricted to 'light labour' if they were to be loosed from their traditional banishment to household labour in terms of 'the woman's place in the kitchen', etc.

When Marx arrived on the scene, and reinvented human ontology as being based on production in the physical realm rather than thinking in the intellectual realm. He spoke of the importance of female labour and, largely, the end of gender stereotypes with respect to production: we are now a species-being and we should further our species-capabilities through whatever means possible and quit squabbling about individual roles. And it has been this ontological modernization, in my opinion, that has been at the heart of gender modernization; I do not think that it is any secret that women who wish to be 'very' progressive in terms of gender must also be ontologically progressive, and, transitively, politically progressive, in terms of 'leaning more to the left', in some way or another (for example, my thesis speaks of Hannah Arendt's philosophy as being 'progressive' in this way, even though she always largely pooh-poohed socialism).

And so I believe we can take this lesson from history and ontology to define human beings first as human beings before we say that, being this or that gender, they must act in this or that manner. If this individual is curious about what it might be to live as a woman, then I believe he should be encouraged to do so, just as I believe John Howard Griffin made a bold and important move to live as a black.

And it just underlines what is the central tenet of my social-political theory, which has been derived from my numerous travels and engagements in countries around the world and could be at the heart of so much socio-political progress in terms of race, gender, and economic class, if only it could be universally adapted:

We must look at, see, and accept each other as human beings before we allow notions of ethnicity, gender, and other visual cues to creep in and corrupt our judgments.

Elections Canada

Well the results are in, ladies and gentlemen:

Conservatives: 167 seats (majority)
NDP: 102 seats (official opposition for the first time in history)
Liberals: 34 seats (outside top 2 for the first time in history, party leader Michael Ignatieff lost his seat)
Bloq Quebecois: 4 seats (party leader Gilles Duceppe lost his seat and Quebec was basically swept by the NDP)
Green Party: 1 seat (party leader Elizabeth May won the first ever Green Party seat in Canada)

I will be brief in my reaction, but I think that there are many positives to take out of it:

Pros:
1) NDP opposition: it seems that democratic socialism is not dead, even in Canada. It also means that although the Conservatives have a majority, they must tread carefully, and will perhaps have to be less Conservative than in former times. We shall see...
2) Green party seat: it's always nice when a new party gets a foot in the door.
3) Liberal fail: since history has not been repeated in terms of 'who does historically well', it may be that more people are actually critically engaging with issues.
4) Conservative majority: why is this under pros? well it will be under cons as well. But I think it is useful that people can finally see how much damage the Conservatives will do to the country over the next four years. Moreover, recall that it was after Mulroney's failures in the early in the 80s and early 90s that caused people to become disillusioned with Conservativism and ushered in Jean Chretien, who I still think was a reasonably good leader. Perhaps this will usher in an era of Prime Minister Jack Layton? Doubtful, but let's see what happens. And it also means that there will be no more elections and dissolved parliaments for awhile, as it is always a bit annoying to hear the ranting and raving and mudslinging every few years...
5) Linda Duncan consolidating her success in Edmonton-Strathcona. Nice to see she got a majority of the popular vote (>53%) and destroyed the Conservative candidate (~40%).
6) Left vs. Right. It will be interesting to see how the Conservative-NDP dynamic unfolds over the next few years. And it is very interesting to see how much the opinions of the voting public have been polarized recently, rather than opting for the more central-left Liberals.
7) Bloq destroyed in Quebec. Perhaps this will see a much more unified Canada over the next few years.
8) All the major gaffes that may come back to haunt various people down the line (see below).

Cons:
1) Conservative majority. They are in control of both the Commons and the Senate. How much damage will they do?

The gaffes are always the best though, so I recommend going through them yourself: 2011 controversies and gaffes. Though here are a few of my favourites:

i) Raymond Sturgeon, the Conservative candidate for the federal riding of Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing was until December 2010 a lobbyist for Lockheed Martin Aeronautics, the manufacturer of the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II fighter plane – which the Canadian government agreed to purchase in July 2010.

Insider dealings? You're kidding me.

ii) Cheryl Gallant, the Conservative candidate for Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke compared Michael Ignatieff to Libyan dictator Gaddafi. She later apologized.

I dont see the connection. One is an individual that led a country from poverty to a general degree of wealth, and enacted a very interesting general political theory. The other is a washed-up pseudo-American whose books are filled with rubbish. But then one sort of expects uninformed mudslinging in these trying times.

iii) At a tightly controlled event aimed at immigrant communities in Brampton, Ontario, Harper used the phrase "you people" to attendees, implying they were categorically different from he or his party or government. Ignatieff and Layton immediately criticized Harper and pointed to his record of reducing family reunification quotas for immigration, and criminal justice policies that disadvantage non-white populations.

It's always nice to know that your leader cares about 'you people'.

iv) The Conservative Party came under heavy fire on April 11 when a draft report for the G8 summit was leaked to the Canadian Press, which indicated that the Tories misled the Parliament of Canada to seek approval for $50 million tax dollars to be spread on dubious projects, which over half of it was spent on the riding of Parry Sound—Muskoka – Tony Clement's riding. It prompted calls from the other leaders to release the report now, but the Auditor General of Canada, Sheila Fraser; told reporters the rules forbid her to release it because she has to release it to the Speaker of the House of Commons.

Funneling public money into campaign coffers? You're kidding me.

v) Canadian Arab Federation president Khaled Mouamar received an email from Etobicoke Centre Conservative campaign staffer Zeljko Zidaric asking him if he had any groups that would like to participate in a Conservative rally "by having someone at the event in an ethnic costume". The email further elaborated that they wanted them for a "photo-op about all the multicultural groups that support Ted Opitz our local Conservative candidate and the Prime Minister." Mouamar took offence to the email.

Ignorance and over-simplification with respect to foreign, racial, and cultural issues by right-wing political groups? You're kidding me.

vi) A Liberal campaign volunteer for Joe Volpe in Eglinton-Lawrence was caught on camera removing Green Party pamphlets from mailboxes, throwing them away, and replacing them with Liberal campaign materials, as Volpe looked on. Tampering with mail is a criminal offence in Canada. Volpe has since fired the worker, but only after being caught on camera standing next to the worker as he committed these actions.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. What more need be said?

But in the end, just remember:

"The people will think [the House representative] is voting on toleration, on peace or war, on billeting or taxes or what not; but the real question on which he will always be voting is whether or no his party shall remain in office or he himself have to spend half his property on another election with the chance of losing his seat if his opponent has a few thousand pounds more to spend than he."

--George Bernard Shaw

Being in South Africa, I didn't see much of what was going on, but I hope everybody back home enjoyed the unfolding drama!!

The Corruptly Educated

Napoleon, Bismarck, the Kaiser, Mussolini, and Hitler were quite right in their perception of the fact that no systems of government can stand for long unless they get hold of the children and can bend the sapling in the way they wish the tree to grow. They must all not only grow their chosen flowers but weed the garden and destroy the vermin ruthlessly to the utmost of their power: the definitions of flower and weed and vermin being in their own hands. Honest government is impossible without honest schools; for honest schools are illegal under dishonest governments. Honest education is dangerous to tyranny and privilege; and systems like the Capitalist system, kept in vogue by popular ignorance, Churches which depend on it for priestly authority, privileged classes which identify civilization with the maintenance of their privileges, and ambitious conquerors and dictators who have to instil royalist idolatry and romantic hero-worship, all use both ignorance and education as underpinnings for general faith in themselves as rulers. Such corruption is at present universal. Democratic education cannot be tolerated under Capitalism because it inevitably leads to Communism, against which Capitalism has to defend itself by systematic propagation of a capitalist doctrine and vilification of Communist teachers so as to make us all proselytes of the Manchester School with an inculcated phobia against any State interference with private profiteering or concern with national welfare. Not only is the trend towards Communism treated as a social danger to be stemmed at all costs: government itself is assumed to be an evil to be minimized as far as possible and to have its powers not only constitutionally limited but broken, even at the cost of revolution and regicide, until the real power passes to private capital and finance, and its official representatives are either disarmed royal scapegoats or armed protectors of private property. All this propaganda has to be disguised as education, and the schools, founded for the enlightenment of the poor and the encouragement of scholarship, are made inaccessible to proletarians by fees beyond their means, and at the same time kept in the atmosphere of feudalism with all its duties abolished and its privileges retained: in short, of simple plutocracy. Finally, education in practice comes to mean mental and moral obfuscation.

Now this is all very well from a capitalist point of view; but Capitalism cannot develop its possibilities without genuine technical education. It must confine its obfuscation to the cultural side. Its accountants may be political idiots; but they must know that two and two make four and not five. Its carpenters must know that twelve feet are longer than twelve inches; and its ship captains know that the world is not flat, even when they have been taught that Jesus was omniscient when he said that in the day of his coming the stars would drop on the earth as specks of soot fall on a pancake.

Thus we have technicians of the utmost eminence politically and religiously obfuscated to a degree that should disqualify them from taking any part in public affairs. They use the words Communism and Communist to denote everything and everybody vile, and thus make infamous proposals that rate welfare of human society above the luxury of the propertied classes. They label Lenin and Stalin as bloodthirsty scoundrels and guttersnipes just as their fathers labelled Hegel, Tyndall, and Bishop Colenso destroyers of religion. Honor, privileges, and authority are heaped on rich and 'well connected' persons who have hardly brains or skill enough to knit socks. Although the country is up to the waist in Communism because there are so many vitally necessary public services out of which capitalists can make no profit, they assume that Communism is as impossible as it is wicked, and throw about such words as Proletariat, Bolshevist, Dictator, Liberty, Democracy, Law and Order, without connecting them with the facts of human life that are staring them in the face all the time: in short, without knowing what on earth they are talking about.

And here again I must remind you that they are not all hypocrites and confidence-trick-swindlers deliberately and cunningly lying for their own ends. They are mostly quite decent folk just parroting the noises they have heard round them all their lives and see printed in their newspapers every day.

--George Bernard Shaw, Everybody's Political What's What?

Who is responsible?

An individual from Ghana that I have become connected to through the miracle of facebook via various condemnations I made of policies taken in Libya on the BBC 'Have Your Say' page sent me a message on Sunday night. A few years ago, he had a work published containing anecdotes of his time as a student activist at the University of Ghana, the difficulties he faced during the time as both student and activist, and recommendations for the means and the justifications for other students to become active. He wanted my help in making the piece 'more international'. In an almost Trotskyist way, he wanted to reach out to the international student community with a universalizable creed.

So I read it that night, all 167 pages of it. And it was quite a thrill for me, because through his many anecdotes and many attempts to incite student action, and many mentions of tribulations that came from government resistance, reactionary student resistance, etc., I saw what I had been missing being educated in the first world. As I said to him in my reply,

"Although you wish to make it ‘more international’, I believe that the struggle facing the students in the developed world are diametrically opposite to the struggle facing students in the developing world. Those in the developed world are in a state of apathetic contentment because of the privileged socio-economic conditions that they have inherited, while those in the developing world are in a state of resistance against neo-colonialist control and marginalization because of the oppressive socio-economic conditions that they have inherited."

In other words, the means to action in the developed world is not really present because those that are oppressed to the point of desperation (I mean, pretty much everyone who works for a large corporation is oppressed, the CEOs laughing all the way to the bank), are a minority. Most of them are the Native peoples that have been treated like primitive beings since North America was colonized: marginalization on reservations as their land was stolen, sterilization programs and residential schooling as their right to maintain the existence of their beliefs and life-world were stolen, forced into various substance abuses and addictions as their collective dignity was stolen, etc. Much of these individuals live outside of the student collective, and those that find themselves within it do not really have a voice: they are quickly marginalized by their 'archaic' nature, and the mistrust and subjugation that too often exists between racial groups, especially those that have been almost totally disenfranchised.

People in South Africa think that it is all rosy in North America, but I tell them that this is really not so. We have Native populations that are subjugated just like in South Africa. The only difference is that they have no voice because they are neither of the economic majority (as the whites are here) or of the population majority (as the blacks are here), so they are successfully either marginalized or assimilated.

When I ask 'who is responsible?' I do not mean 'who is responsible for this state of affairs?' because I already know the answer: the minority who control the majority who produce through economic and other oppressive means. Rather, I ask 'who is responsible?' as in 'who is going to become responsible enough to answer Bob Marley's plea?'

You can fool some people sometimes,
But you can't fool all the people all the time.
So now we see the light,
We gonna stand up for our rights!

In other words, what is your/my/our role as students? The author of the piece is absolutely correct. He says:

"It is even more worrying as the fallacy of “future leaders” is gaining acceptance not only among the general student mass but beyond. This may result in a situation where majority of the youth across the continent will not take initiatives today because they have accepted that they are the leaders of tomorrow; they will not take responsibility today because they are the leaders of tomorrow, and more important, they will not provide answers to problems today because they are the leaders of tomorrow. For them the future is tomorrow.

Already, in spite of the myriad problems confronting students amidst gross and glaring human rights abuses on their various campuses, student leaders do not feel inclined to fight, or more importantly, propose solutions. Choosing between their fellows and university administrators or the Government has almost always seen them leaning on the latter alternative because it seems to have proven safer and more rewarding, given the fact that either the administration or government could guarantee the safety of their positions and sometimes their grades.

Indeed, it is not surprising to find highly disappointed students encouraging themselves with a rather awkward question: “How many days more do I have to leave this institution?” Obviously, even a whole academic year of eight months could be reduced to 224 days. Thus, by this thinking, they unfortunately leave behind problems that could have been resolved in their time, arguing that the purpose for schooling is the essence of studying, and that is what they do exclusively. As a result, students who could have provided alternative solutions to some teething problems in their various institutions or the nation as a whole sink that innovative side of their minds into oblivion."

I read this and immediately thoughts began to swim through my head: we, as students, have the power to control, because we are collectively pursuing all modes of education that are required to govern, to control, and, ultimately, to lead. All that is required is collaboration, organization, and mutual aid. The author cites one such instance:

"On the streets however, the police fired tear gas to disperse the thick crowd of protesting students. But with the help of some chemistry students, the mob soon learnt that by wetting their handkerchiefs with urine and placing them against their noses, they could still stand safe in the midst of the poisonous fog."

So who is responsible? Who are the people who will lead? Who will say 'no more' to our fathers and forefathers who treat us like children: marginalize us, disrespect us, steal from us, and try to convince us that it is just, all in the name of their own greed? All in the name of the carrot that is dangled before the noses by the global economic powers that be who want nothing more to preserve the status quo: that keeps the dinosaurs laughing all the way to the bank, grooming the next generation to take their place as the next generation of oppressors?

I thought of this and envisioned parallel entities being created through the collective will of the student body: parallel universities where students come together to share their knowledge, and to educate their brethren through the two modes of learning: academic and existential. But by so doing bypassing the stringent corporatization of education that seeks to put money in the coffers of the ruling elite in return for a piece of paper that makes one's academic achievements 'official'. Parallel housing structures that are erected by students for students to come together in parallel committees and discussion groups to discuss what needs to be done to expand the mandate of those who have every right to lead: the people. And who can speak better for the people than those who must enter into and deal with the world that they have inherited from the previous generation? Who is better to say 'no, we dont want this world of pollution and corruption, fragmented and divided, full of mistrust because of all those individuals who will sell their mothers, daughters, brothers, and sons for the almighty buck'?

I mentioned this vision to him and he replied "won't this be seen as subversive?"

You bet it will.

Hate Speech, Violence, Struggle Songs & Reggae

The ongoing Julius Malema saga constitutes an interesting philosophical question: when can historically relevant modes of expression—such as, in this case, his singing of "awudubhulu ibhunu" or "shoot the boer", a black struggle song, at a university campus over a year ago—be prosecuted as 'hate speech'. There are many interesting angles with respect to the sorts of incidences, but I think there are two that are most important; first, is it still relevant after the conditions that created it have changed, and second, what is the motivation for the person in question singing it?

It is useful that Bono was just down a couple of months ago and had plenty to say about 'shoot the boer', likening it to rebels songs in Ireland about the Republican army.

"We sang this and it's fair to say it's folk music ... as this was the struggle of some people that sang it over some time. But would you want to sing that in a certain community? It's pretty dumb," Bono reportedly said.

This caused some major controversy:

[Afrikaans singer Steve] Hofmeyr, writing in Afrikaans on his official Facebook fan page yesterday, said he 'just chucked his two, R2500 U2 tickets into the Jukskei [River]'. "Bono is trying to lick the asses of the ANC by attempting to validate hate speech struggle songs by comparing them to Ireland's songs. The difference Bono? Your songs are in a safe context while ours are not. You live in peace in Dublin while our boere are exterminated like flies. The Irish songs are cold nostalgia - ours are warm blood," wrote Hofmeyr.

On the other hand,

Kallie Kriel, CEO of AfriForum, yesterday said the organisation "welcomed" Bono's comments. "It's actually a reflection of what we're saying. We don't want to wipe any struggle songs off the history books. [Bono] said there are rules as to when you can sing these songs, and Julius Malema does not abide by those rules," he said.

But Dirk Hermann, deputy director-general of trade union Solidarity, whose uncle was murdered in a farm murder last week, said he was "nauseated". He "dared" Bono to still call the song a folk song if his "uncle or brother or father was murdered in such a cruel manner on a farm".

So what is the final verdict? Well it isn't final, but my opinion would be to side with Sartre on this one:

"The only possible way out was to confront total negation with total negation, violence with equal violence; ... colonialists needed a sub-proletariat, but they had to live at the frontier of the impossibility of life because wages had to be as close as possible to zero. The violence of the rebel was the violence of the colonialist; there was never any other. The struggle between the oppressed and oppressors ultimately became the reciprocal interiorisation of a single oppression: the prime object of oppression, interiorising it and finding it to be the negative source of its unity, appalled the oppressor, who recognised, in violent rebellion, his own oppressive violence as a hostile force taking him in turn as its object. And against his own violence as Other, he created a counter-violence which was simply his own oppression become repressive, that is to say, reactualised and trying to transcend the violence of the Other, in other words his own violence in the Other."

--"Racism and Colonialism as Praxis and Process" in Critique of Dialectical Reason (1960)

In other words, the 'violence' that the Afrikaaners see in the singing of such songs is not just a veiled fear that these will initiate a certain call to arms. It is also a form of humiliation: a symbol of the counter-violence that had to be acceded to by the natives because they were pushed by violent means to ever-more marginalized status by colonialists. And it is the same dialectical violence: thrust and counter-thrust. What they have begun has come back to haunt them: the violence that they are experiencing is the same violence dished out through decades of repression. But is it right to 're-open old wounds'?

Well from my experience, these wounds are anything but old. Racism and discrimination still exist on a very large scale in South Africa; people have just learned to 'bottle it', i.e. it has become internalized. But the truth is that whatever is bottled often comes out in the heat of emotion, and the fall-out from apartheid is a topsy-turvy situation of thrust and counter-thrust: whites argue that blacks are taking advantage of their 'newfound equality', blacks claim that these objections by whites is a veiled attempt to perpetuate inequality, oppression, and racism (and the coloureds sit in the middle, lashing out at both sides and believing that since the situation was flipped on its head, they've gone from the middle of the old system to the middle of the new system, basically remaining completely ignored). The externalization of such racism in the singing of such songs has become a major taboo, because it is symbolic of the precarious socio-political position that the people of South Africa find themselves in. It is akin to a truce in which each side is still wearing the scars of history, and always have their arsenal of weapons at the ready in case 'someone' should break the ceasefire.

It is true that as a nation, South Africa needs to move on, but all African nations need to move on, and that is not really possible while they are still being oppressed in violent ways. Just because the violence is now economic rather than physical it makes no difference: "Repression is repression, no matter who does it [or, for that matter, how it's done], and it's got certain consequences, irrespective of the ethnic origins of those who are practicing undemocratic measures" (Ngugi wa Thiong'o). And what is violence? According to one definition on dictionary.com: "an unjust or unwarranted exertion of force or power, as against rights or laws: to take over a government by violence." When you change the type of power (economic instead of feudal), you equally change the definition of violence.

The bottom line is that things like the UN Charter of Rights and Freedoms basically make it illegal for the oppressed to meet violence with violence. As explained earlier (6th paragraph), the violence that the colonialists used before was feudal violence using superior weapons; if African natives wish to use feudal violence to counteract this problem, as they are now more able to do so (look at the weapons that the Libyan government has: the models may be outdated, but the weapons themselves are still modern enough), the rules have already been changed and feudal violence is no longer allowed. Instead, economic violence through superior capital is being used to undermine nations by establishing monopolies and oligopolies, assimilating or driving small-market competitors, etc. out of business, until the point where these corporate consortiums can charge whatever they want.

If people don't believe me, they can look at an article written about the economic downfall of the Goulart government that I came across:

"Although the Brazilian industrial and commercial entrepreneurs publically announced several times that they were prepared to assist the government as much as they could to control inflation, they actually used the power they had to speculate and to rise disproportionally the prices of their goods, passing along the stabilization costs to the customers. In a meeting promoted by the Association of Commerce of Sao Paulo at the end of 1962, for instance, this issue of speculating as well as transmitting and even anticipating increasing output costs to prices was raised by a member of the Association, who wanted to denounce to the press those firms that did not respect the agreement made with the government. Nevertheless, one of the most important and affluent commerce leaders in Sao Paulo, Nivaldo Ulhoa Cintra, who was also attending the meeting, opposed drastically to that proposal. Nivaldo pointed out that the Association of Commerce could not release a public statement recognizing that its members were increasing disproportionally the prices of their goods, contributing to the mounting inflation. This would be an issue, according to him, which should be discussed within the “walls of the Association”, but not out of them.

--Felipe Pereira Loureiro "Economic Policy and Social Actors: The governments of Janio Quadros and Joao Goulart in Brazil (1961-64)."

That may have been decades ago, but we can see that this sort of thing goes on by looking within South Africa itself at the recent bread-fixing scandal:

"The commission's investigation established that between 1995 and 2006, Premier Foods, Tiger Brands, Pioneer Foods and Foodcorp were involved in price fixing and market allocation. The commission found that they held telephonic discussions and meetings where they directly fixed the selling price of bread; directly fixed the dates when such agreed price increases would be effective [drastically raised in tandem during the holiday season]; and divided markets by allocating territories where each firm would be the only one operating a bakery in a particular territory and supply all distributors in the allocated area."

And what does all this have to do with Reggae? Well a couple of days ago I watched Marre's 'Roots, Rock, Reggae' documentary: "An extraordinary year for Reggae music, captured live in this award-winning film. Roots Rock Reggae was the first in-depth documentary about Reggae music in Jamaica and looks at the social and political importance of this 'cry of the people'." When does a 'cry of the people' become outdated? I would argue that it becomes so when the suffering that has necessitated this cry becomes outdated.

Does this mean that I support Malema's position? No. Because the suffering that has necessitated this cry HAS become outdated. "You are rich because you are white and you are white because you are rich," as Fanon wrote in The Wretched of the Earth, is no longer a valid claim. Although it is true that the roots of economic power still lie with the whites, this is the 'old money' and there is becoming more and more 'new money' that is showing up in the form of rich blacks, and that group includes you, Mr. Malema (note how he predictably turns it into a race issue: "The problem with you is that when an African child is emerging and becoming successful, that is when you have a problem"). Hypocrites, one might call them, 'walking left and talking right' as it were, though this was predicted by Fanon in the chapter "Pitfalls of National Consciousness": "The ministers, the members of the cabinet, the ambassadors and local commissioners are chosen from the same ethnological group as the leader, sometimes directly from his own family. Such regimes of the family sort seem to go back to the old laws of inbreeding, and not anger but shame is felt when we are faced with such stupidity, such an imposture, such intellectual and spiritual poverty. These heads of the government are the true traitors in Africa, for they sell their country to the most terrifying of its enemies: stupidity." So there is now no longer a major racial component because there is no longer an equivalence between race and economic class. If they changed it to 'Shoot the Rich (Especially Hypocritical) Assholes', then I would applaud.

But then Malema would have a real dilemma on his hands...

Cargo Cults, Causality, Capitalism (and Mathematics) (Part II)

And now the next, and quite possibly last chapter.

Teaching mathematics, especially in Africa, is a bit thankless. The foremost reason for this is that, more often than not, no one really cares. People take a course and they say "I cant wait to be done with this. All I need is a pass and then I will never have to take another mathematics course again." And I ask "so why are you in this course then?" And more often than not, the answer is something to the effect of "because I have to"; most of these individuals are in economics or math finance or actuarial or something like this. In other words, mathematics has gone from a search for truth to a means to perpetuate greed. Hurrah!

But there is a reason for this, and it points to a much larger problem. Basically, I think there are two elements at play here. One is that the lack of real conflict in the last century on North American soil has meant that it has been able to maintain a great deal of uniformity in its educational approach, and hence it has been allowed to develop in a way that maintains a certain amount of continuity with much more historical treatments of education, namely in terms of a more meritocratic system of developing ideas, experimentation, discovery, and notions of 'truth'. Because of this, the strong roots that it was allowed to maintain with mathematics in terms of major ideological debates that strike at its very core, such as the one that surrounded the Hilbert program, etc. This has allowed it to able to maintain a certain level of 'ivory tower' status against the recent push for the commodification and corporatization of education. On the other hand, South Africa in particular and Africa in general does not have: a) the historical continuity that allows for this, b) the economic history to that allows it to put 'theory' before 'practice' (since so many people have so little, it is incredibly difficult to conceive of people having time to spend 'contemplating their navels' as it were), and c) the current economic feasibility to try to instill any sort of change in ideology, etc.

But the bigger problem is the state of education in general. A recent article that notes that there are only one or two universities in Africa that feature in the top echelons of university rankings systems provides some insight:

“Africa inherited a higher education system that was a carbon copy of [that of] the powers that colonised it. Right from the beginning, Africa started on a wrong footing – well behind the starting line, so to speak. Despite all the political and economic turmoil it has gone through since independence – often of its own making – it is now expected to compete on a completely non-level playing field. Not only is this unfair, it is also inappropriate,” says Mohamedbhai, who has also served as vice-chancellor of the University of Mauritius. “One could argue that other regions that were also colonised – South Asia, Latin America – are doing reasonably well. However, none of these regions suffered from the sort of exploitation that Africa underwent and continues to experience.”

Latin America cannot be put in this category simply because their colonization occurred centuries before Africa and Asia: they have been able to generate a reasonable amount of uniformity and, moreover, when the Europeans relinquished control of these countries there was still a fairly long period within which they could develop out of the limelight of the 'modern world' that allows for individuals, groups, corporations, etc. to jump from one continent to the next at the drop of a hat. Brazil's independence from Portugal was 'recognized' in 1825, Argentina from Spain in 1816, Chile in 1844, etc. In fact, other than the three 'Guyanas' that were claimed by the British, Dutch, and French respectively, and are largely seen politically as part of the West Indies, only one country achieved full independence after Canada did in 1867. That country was Peru: although it was declared long before in 1821, it was only officially 'recognized' in 1879. Contrast that to Africa where, aside from Egypt which has basically been able to maintain its independence throughout its history because of the very strong historical legacy of Egypt, all countries only emerged from European colonization in the mid-20th century, with Tunisia and Morocco the first to gain independence in 1956, and Ghana the first sub-Saharan country to gain their independence in 1957.

Moreover, South Asian universities also tend to be quite low on the scale, and aside from Thailand, which has maintained its monarchical rule throughout its history, all of these other South Asian nations also emerged from colonial rule only post-WWII. Those countries that have done exceptionally well in Asia, namely Japan, China, and South Korea have largely been spared the Western colonial cosh, though they have had their differences throughout history (i.e. the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, and their occupation of the Korea peninsula until the division of Korea occurred post-WWII).

The two exceptions are Hong Kong (1841 to Britain, 1997 back to China) and Singapore (1963 from UK, 1965 from Malaysia). But it should be no surprise that these are exceptions: they have few natural resources, and a high population density, meaning that the people were forced to develop their know-how since they couldn't very well live off the land. On the other hand, most colonial 'land-grabs' were for the purposes of owning land and the corresponding resources. There was no need to educate the people, since they basically were enslaved to serve as free labour for the production of goods. When they were allowed to declare their independence, globalization had already had its say: transport of people, goods, and information across great distances was now fairly routine, so they were given no period of 'privacy' to establish what was to be done. For example, Indonesia were able to declare independence from Japan in 1945, but were besieged for the next four years by the British and the Dutch trying to retake control of the archipelago. After this, they had to deal with the fact that most of the industry was ethnically controlled, namely by the Dutch and ethnic Chinese.

Thus, the problem is not that such nations are incapable due to their people, it is rather that history has dealt them a very cruel hand, and they have only emerged with some difficulty from colonial rule during a period when they are being constantly scrutinized by powerful countries with superior military and economic might. Emerging, as it were, with these very same countries still owning the brunt of the economic resources (e.g. the situation as it has played out in Zimbabwe). It is difficult to decide what is to be done in one's own country when no one will leave a people alone to make this decision, and no one will leave a people alone to take stock of THEIR OWN RESOURCES to decide how best to allocate them for THEIR OWN INTERESTS. I already dealt with the other side of this problem in Part I.

So let me get back to the mathematical side of things. Although frustrating, it seems that one cannot but accept that mathematics as a tool to business is, in some sense, a necessity. It is unfathomable why an individual would study Banach algebras over finance if there is little money available in mathematical research and one is likely living like the much of the rest of the population: day-by-day hand-to-mouth.

It is not difficult to see why the educational systems in these countries are poorly conceived of and poorly managed; it is because they have not had any time to themselves since independence: they have been thrown into the deep end of a world that is constantly spinning about them both economically and politically, with their former colonial masters standing at the poolside constantly taunting them and pushing them back into the middle should they get to close to the edge where they might gain some sort of respite from their perpetual treading of water. Continuing the above article:

In light of the continent’s urgent problems, Mohamedbhai thinks that African universities should absent themselves from the race to rise up the rankings and focus their efforts on immediate needs. “Do African universities need to be ranked globally? I don’t think so. Their mission should be to produce the appropriate manpower required for Africa’s development, to undertake research that is of direct relevance to Africa – which may not be acceptable for publication in the best scientific journals – and to reach out to assist the communities in the many challenges they are facing, especially poverty reduction. None of these fits the criteria used for global ranking. African universities have a duty to serve their countries and region first before seeking global glory. The tragedy is that many African governments, blinded by the prestige of global rankings, are challenging their universities to be ranked without understanding the consequences of the grossly inappropriate use of resources that that would entail. At the end of the day, this brings us back to the very purpose of higher education in a country. Not all universities in the world can have the same mission. Priorities are different in different countries, and universities must not be forced to conform to a single model of a world-class university.”

I personally believe that there is a different type of education that Africa (and many countries in Asia) requires: a push towards a much more critical pedagogy that provides its people with an understanding and a genuine belief that it is not them that is the problem; it is rather their colonial wardens that give them no peace that are the problem. They must learn and understand who they are and what is at stake. They must realize that Africa and its people are ontologically no different than anywhere else. That it has the potential for greatness if only enough people see and genuinely believe in this greatness and are willing to come together to enact real change towards a real Africa that is Africa through and through rather than an poor interpretation of Western society.

And, most importantly, they must understand that this change can only come from them.

Cargo Cults, Causality, Capitalism (and Mathematics) (Interlude of Absurdity)

It was nice to know that the interlocutor from part one was nice enough to email me and tell me that he was 'still waiting for cargo cults part II!'.

I wasn't able to do Part II in a timely fashion as I have been spending a fair bit of time doing other things as a midterm test and subsequent marking clashed with a few articles I had to write and various other things. And I still haven't got there yet, and the interlocutor above may be disappointed because there is something I saw in the news that I felt I needed to comment on and goes nicely with the present topic. It was a BBC article entitled "Obama urges spending cuts and increased taxes on rich". I read this headline and thought, "Nice one buddy!" And then I read the article, and, true to form, the Re-pubic-ans were total dicks about it and fought it tooth and nail: "Primarily, [the Republicans] firmly rejected his proposal to raise additional tax revenue from the wealthy." Surprise!! But let's have a look at it shall we:

"At a time when millions of our countrymen remain unemployed, the president again proposes tax increases on job creators," said Jeb Hensarling of Texas.

A classic capitalist ploy: 'hey, dont make us pay, we're creating jobs here'. Used the world over: "Yeah we're giving elderly Bangladeshi women 10 cents an hour to make Diesel Jeans with their arthritic fingers and selling them for massive profits. But we're 'creating jobs'. We're 'helping these people'. We're 'giving them opportunity'." Really? Have you ever seen Happy Gilmore?

Stiller on the phone: 'This is handmade quality shit here! Alright. Good doing business with you'
Stiller to the elderly: 'Alright people turn up your hearing aids. I've got good news. Arts and crafts time is going to be extended by four hours today.'
Elderly woman: 'My fingers hurt.'
Stiller (feigning concern) 'What was that?'
Elderly woman: 'My fingers hurt.'
Stiller: 'Well now your back's gonna hurt because you just pulled landscaping duty. Anyone else's fingers hurt? I didn't think so.'

Sad but true. Creating 'opportunity', huh? Whose opportunity? Let me guess. If one of those workers say "I can't live off of these terrible wages and work under these terrible conditions", you're going to say "Fine. I'll 'create opportunity' for someone who will"? You people are genocidal maniacs. Oh wait, but this is business as usual, right? Ever notice how during feudalism, BEFORE capitalism really took hold, it was alright for leaders to go around physically killing people, and now with the hegemonic hold that capitalism has on the world, that's 'not alright' (just check the UN's 'Universal Declaration of Human Rights'!), but now to economically kill people... well, that's 'just business'. Hey, I think I just realized why they called it 'feudalism'. Oh wait... that's probably just coincidence.

Anyway, to get back to where I was before I went off on that tangent, I wanted to say "Hey Jeb, have you ever thought about WHY millions of your countrymen are unemployed. It couldn't be because these very RICH people you are defending are filthy rich BECAUSE they arent doing their JOB of CREATING JOBS??? Jobs COST MONEY. You have to PAY PEOPLE. When you are NOT PAYING OTHERS, you are able to ACCUMULATE AND HOARD MONEY TO BECOME RICHER." (Of course you know that, you just need an excuse to defend your 'contributors' tooth and nail).

Ok... enough about that, let's move on:

Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, chairman of the House budget committee, said: "Exploiting people's emotions of fear, envy and anxiety is not hope, it's not change, it's partisanship. We don't need partisanship. We don't need demagoguery. We need solutions."

'Exploiting people's emotions of fear, envy and anxiety'?? Who was just talking about 'if we tax the rich, there go all the jobs?' Who was it, for eight years hammered home the idea that those great and ever-present opportunists 'the terrorists' were hiding around every corner, waiting for you to look away for just one second before they would rape and murder you in your bed and eat your children (because of their jealousy for the 'white man's way of life, of course')?? It wasn't BUSH (and Cheney and Rumsfeld and Condy and Colin Powell and...) was it??? A REPUBLICAN??? Oh, wait. That wasn't 'fearmongering', that was 'a genuine concern for people's safety', right? I forgot. Yet Gaddafi talking about Al-Qaeda and various foreign powers being behind the rebel force in Eastern libya is obviously 'the talk of a crazy man'? OF COURSE that can't be true!! I mean we all KNOW (see Part I of this article) that Western leaders would NEVER impinge on the sovereignty of other countries for their own gains. Of course, of course. That makes perfect sense. So let's move on.

Led by Mr Ryan, Republicans have offered their own proposal that would go further than Mr Obama's, slashing $6.2 trillion from government spending over the next decade, in large part through cuts to government programmes that serve the elderly and the poor. The proposal would also drastically reduce taxes for wealthy Americans, a move conservatives say would boost economic growth.

Nothing new there. We gotta create jobs, right? I mean, if we dont make billionaires richer than they already are by giving them more money from the poor and unemployed, how else is the poor and unemployed going to get money? Erm... wait a second... Ok, let's just ignore the circular logic, shall we? It may look like we are sodomizing the poor and weak to the point where their pants no longer jingle during the thrusts because there's nothing there to jingle, and they can no longer walk straight, but we all know THAT'S JUST NOT TRUE!!! JOBS, MAN!!! WAGE LABOUR, MAN!!! THAT'S THE WAY THE WORLD WORKS, MAN!!! YOU CAN'T DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT, MAN!!! [continue "rich white man smoke and mirrors" rhetoric here]. But Obama continues by putting it all into perspective:

"They want to give people like me a $200,000 tax cut that's paid for by asking 33 seniors to each pay $6,000 more in health costs? That's not right, and it's not going to happen as long as I'm president. There's nothing serious about a plan that claims to reduce the deficit by spending a trillion dollars on tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires."

Right on, Barack!! That's the nail on the head!! Crystal clear!! And clearly in a 'democracy', where the poor greatly outnumber the rich, such a plan will pass easily, right? Well not if Eric Massa's interview with Glenn 'Nazi Moron' Beck (or... history for that matter) is anything to go by, where he revealed that his job as a politician had a strange resemblance to that of a telemarketer: he spend most of his time on the phone trying to convince rich people and corporations to give the government money. He was even coached on who to call when, and how to talk to them. From my experience, telemarketing is a dead-end job that pays low wages and has a massive turnover of employees. It's nice to know that by re-categorizing them as 'politicians', all those negative aspects of such a job go away.

So let's consider one of two plausible scenarios:

Rich man on phone: 'Hey buddy, if you pass this bill and my net worth starts to go down, you arent getting ANY money from me, my empire will boycott anything that you stand for, and my media friends will drag your name through the mud the world over.'

OR

Rich man on phone: 'Hey buddy, if you vote against this bill, I'll push up your funding 'substantially', I will try to convince people to back your rallies, and my media friends will put your name in lights on the front page (or, at least, on page 3) whenever you do 'a good' and will defend you tooth and nail whenever you 'mess up' or there is a 'misunderstanding' no matter how much of a bonehead you might be.'

I mean, who WOULDN'T reply "sorry man, I was elected by 'the people', and this is best for 'the people'... do what you must..." I mean, this is a democracy, right? And they must be the 'best democracy in the world' if they are going to be 'spreading democracy' right?

And only NOW do I realize WHY my term of 'cargo cults' to describe those in other countries waiting for the Manichean avengers of the US and others to come in and make everything OK by spreading 'freedom' and 'democracy' to them was misguided. I mean, all they want is a little democracy. All they want is to say "Please stop these feudal tyrants from forcing us to our knees through their autocratic rule. Being on our knees is not enough... we would prefer instead that you bring your economic tyrants to help us give away what little money we have so that our faces can well and truly be down in the mud, as we want not only our dignity but our economic well-being as well to be completely in tatters."

Life is all about being 'happy', right? And whether that happiness comes from surrounding yourself with genuinely good things or it comes from the bliss that ignorance gives you, its still happiness, right? That's why I love cargo cults: because ignorance is bliss.



And the denouement:

So what becomes of the politicians? Aren't they supposed to be serving the people? Isn't that their job. Not really. Remember 'Williams', from Enter the Dragon:

Han: Your style is unorthodox.
Williams: But effective.
Han: It's not the art but the combat you enjoy.
Williams: The winning.

I think that just about sums up the ideals of politicians. But let's just remember Han's reply:

"We are all ready to win, just as we are born knowing only life. It is defeat that you must learn to prepare for."

[And what does Williams say? "When it comes, I won't even notice. I'll be too busy looking good."

...That's probably a fairly accurate depiction of a very common attitude as well...]