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in which I smoke some heavy Granola
So, we watched most of the English leader's debate on CBC on October 2 and felt very virtuous, what with the much higher draw of Sarah Palin going on at the exact same time. A few things struck me:
Apparently, I wasn't the only one who thought so. Her approval shot way up after the debates, and overall support for the Greens now stands at about around 9.3%.
http://greenparty.ca/en/node/8156#comment-8291
Yeah, I know this can change dramatically before the election. But still, I find it encouraging.
And it does seem to fit with something we heard at a Green meeting. The woman we were talking to, one of the folks running our local candidate's campaign, mentioned at one point that she used to be Conservative.
"Wow. That's... a bit of a major switch, isn't it?" I asked, and she laughed.
"You'd think so, but no, it's not. Did you know 43% of Greens used to be Tories?"
?!
"Yeah. Fiscally responsible and socially concerned, that's us. Green makes sense, from a conservative point of view."
Don't ask me where she got those numbers, 'cause I don't know, and I don't know if they're true. But it did make a certain amount of sense.
For us it's not really about the economy, though. For us it's a moral thing. It's a "we don't inherit the world from our parents - we borrow it from our children" kind of thing. We've told the boys, over and over, that if environmentalists' worst disaster scenarios come true and it all goes to pot and climate change turns the world into a mess the likes of which has not been seen since the dinosaurs went poof, we will, in all likelihood, be OK. We have money, we have skills, we have intelligence, we live in a country that's wealthy enough to probably get through relatively unscathed - at least as far as our socioeconomic strata is concerned, though we may have to give up some goodies. But as far as starvation, homelessness, etc? Probably won't affect us. Partly we tell them that because we don't want to scare the crap out of them, but partly because we (or at least I) truly believe it.
But we also teach them that it's not just about us. We are not all that counts. Other people in Canada count too. The same folks who are really feeling the current rise in the price of food and gas, which we've mostly dealt with by walking more, buying a Prius, and shrugging philosophically. They won't necessarily be OK, and that should matter to Daniel and Justin, because they're Canadians too.
And even if Canada is mostly OK, a lot of the rest of the world won't be. A lot of the rest of the world already isn't. We're not isolated from folks in Africa - or America - whose food sources are suffering from ever freakier weather. We're not isolated from them, or the thousands of people who are getting flooded out/dried out with more frequency these days, or who are fighting over ever scarcer water.
And even if they were mostly OK, humans are not the only inhabitants of this planet. Yes, species go extinct all the time, for reasons that have nothing to do with us. But if we as a species are causing devastation for a lot of the rest of the living things around us... that's not OK. It's not All About Us.
I don't know how much of this has to do with spirituality in Chris' case. For me it does. I don't believe in God, or an afterlife; for me, this is it, and it's precious. It's not a trial run for a next life or Heaven, and there isn't a God looking over us, like a loving parent, willing to correct our mistakes so we don't hurt ourselves. Easter Island, Greece, and the Dust Bowl, to name just a few places, seem to indicate to me that if there is a God up there, He's not interested in playing Mommy to toddlers.
One of my favourite quotes from the Little House on the Prairie books (The Long Winter) sticks with me to this day. I read it as an atheist child, but it made me think if I believed in God, he would be like the God Charles Ingalls believed in:
======================
Laura put her hand on the wall of their house. The coarse plaster was hot in the hot wind and sunshine, but inside the thick mud walls, in the dark, the air must be cool. She liked to think of the muskrats sleeping there.
Pa was shaking his head. “We’re going to have a hard winter,” he said, not liking the prospect.
“Why, how do you know?” Laura asked in surprise.
“The colder the winter will be, the thicker the muskrats build the walls of their houses,” Pa told her. “I never saw a heavier-built muskrats’ house than that one.”
Laura looked at it again. It was very solid and big. But the sun was blazing, burning on her shoulders through the faded thin calico and the hot wind was blowing, and stronger than the damp-mud smell of the slough was the ripening smell of grasses parching in the heat. Laura could hardly think of ice and snow and cruel cold.
“Pa, how can the muskrats know?” she asked.
“I don’t know how they know,” Pa said. “But they do. God tells them, somehow, I suppose.”
“Then why doesn’t God tell us?” Laura wanted to know.
“Because,” said Pa, “we’re not animals. We’re humans, and, like it says in the Declaration of Independence, God created us free. That means we got to take care of ourselves.”
Laura said faintly, “I thought God takes care of us.”
“He does,” Pa said, “so far as we do what’s right. And He gives us a conscience and brains to know what’s right. But He leaves it to us to do as we please. That’s the difference between us and everything else in creation.”
“Can’t muskrats do what they please?” Laura asked, amazed.
“No,” said Pa. “I don’t know why they can’t but you can see they can’t. Look at that muskrat house. Musk rats have to build that kind of house. They always have and they always will. It’s plain they can’t build any other kind. But folks build all kinds of houses. A man can build any kind of house he can think of. So if his house don’t keep out the weather, that’s his look-out; he’s free and independent.”
Pa stood thinking for a minute, then he jerked his head. “Come along, little Half-Pint. We better make hay while the sun shines.”
His eyes twinkled and Laura laughed, because the sun was shining with all its might. But the rest of that day they were both sober.
======================
If there is a God, I think he gave us intelligence, and the responsibility to use it wisely. We can't rely on him to bail us out.
And if there isn't a God, and there isn't an overarching purpose to us being here... well, then, that doesn't make this life meaningless. To me it just means I feel more connected to the world around me, because I don't see much of a difference between myself and it. I feel... a lot like Carl Sagan did, I think. One of the things that struck me when I re-watched Cosmos with the kids was how Sagan, an atheist, radiated such incredible joy and wonder at the universe throughout the entire series. The idea that we evolved, totally randomly, from the same atoms that made the stars, didn't seem demeaning or pointless at all to him. It seemed amazing. And the fact that we had a consciousness, that we could look around and appreciate what was around us, was something worth celebrating, and something to be considered precious.
And our stewardship of this planet was something to be taken very, very seriously, because we were connected to it, because we were it as far as being able to care for it was concerned. He was speaking during the Cold War, so the kind of devastation he wanted us to avoid was nuclear, not environmental (though he did bring that up as well), but as I watched I couldn't help thinking that everything he said was stuff I wanted my kids to think about, and consider important. How it didn't make much sense to think of ourselves as Russian v. American, because in the end what we shared was far more important than our differences. How America First (or Russia First, or England or Canada First) was stupid, shortsighted and destructive to the planet as a whole.
We've had a number of talks about this kind of thing with the kids as the election has come closer. And because Chris is kinda black and white on a lot of stuff, both of them have expressed opinions, based partly on Chris' talks with them, to the effect that the problem is Conservatives. Or Americans. Or rich people. Or Christians. Not that Chris has put it that way, but when he talks I think he often doesn't realize just how literally kids can take off-the-cuff remarks. A mostly joking, "Bloody Americans, always thinking only of themselves" becomes The Absolute Truth because Daddy Said So. Because Daddy didn't immediately qualify his statement with, "Not that they're the only problem, and not that there aren't plenty of Americans being part of the solution, and not that rich conservative Americans like Arnold Schwarzenegger (gag) aren't doing a far better job at protecting the environment than, say, Canada is."
I want them to not think in easy absolutes like that, even though that's what kids do best. I'm trying.
Today, for example, we were talking about native concepts of land stewardship v. what we think of as traditional Judeo-Christian concepts of property and land stewardship. How most natives didn't feel the land belonged to them, any more than the air belongs to anybody. And how many other societies believed that the land, if it belonged to people at all, belonged to three sets of people: our ancestors, ourselves, and our descendants, so it wasn't up to us, the ones currently alive, to harm or destroy it at will.
Contrast with Christian thought, which sees all of Creation as something that God created, in six days, and then gave to us. Us! It's all ours! The Creator made it all for US US US. Go! Us!
Yeah, OK. But another way of looking at it is, he gave it to us. That's a precious gift, isn't it? A gift from God. Are we really going to take something that important, and wreck it? Or do we have a responsibility to it? A responsibility to everything that God created and put here, and then entrusted into our care? A responsibility to God, to show respect and appreciation for what he made for us?
Yeah, it's a rhetorical question. But it's something I want my kids to think about. And it's something that, whatever they decide to believe in the future, whatever party they choose to align themselves with, I want them to take seriously. The Earth, and all that's on it, and not just their own bottom line.
And OK, how did we go from Elizabeth May to Little House on the Prairie and Carl Sagan and Christianity? ::blink blink:: This is why I love lj-cut links.
- Although the kids were irked at Stephen Harper's persistent smarmy smile, I could really imagine a lot of people thinking he looked... Prime Ministerial. The other four were ganging up on him, often falling over themselves to agree with each other while tearing him down, and often their responses to his assertions re. his government's actions could be summarized as "Liar Liar Pants on Fire." And he didn't get rattled, didn't start attacking them, just smiled his little smile and reassured his fellow Canadians that Everything was Fine.
- Dion and Duceppe (Liberal and Bloc Quebecois) probably sounded a lot better during the French debate. ::sigh::
- Layton (NDP)? I agreed with a lot of what he said. And he seemed forceful and persuasive. And a bit of a bully.
- Elizabeth May? I wanted to kiss her. Not just for talking Green, but for talking economics. Notsomuch with the owl-hugging and tree-saving, much more pointing out how climate change and environmental degradation hurts the economy now, and will hurt it more in the future. And that although many people ask "Won't it hurt the economy to protect the environment?" the real question we should ask is, "Should we spend some money now, to make things better/prevent them from getting worse, or spend a lot of money now to deal with environmental damage, and spend even more tomorrow, as the damage gets worse?"
Apparently, I wasn't the only one who thought so. Her approval shot way up after the debates, and overall support for the Greens now stands at about around 9.3%.
http://greenparty.ca/en/node/8156#comment-8291
Yeah, I know this can change dramatically before the election. But still, I find it encouraging.
And it does seem to fit with something we heard at a Green meeting. The woman we were talking to, one of the folks running our local candidate's campaign, mentioned at one point that she used to be Conservative.
"Wow. That's... a bit of a major switch, isn't it?" I asked, and she laughed.
"You'd think so, but no, it's not. Did you know 43% of Greens used to be Tories?"
?!
"Yeah. Fiscally responsible and socially concerned, that's us. Green makes sense, from a conservative point of view."
Don't ask me where she got those numbers, 'cause I don't know, and I don't know if they're true. But it did make a certain amount of sense.
For us it's not really about the economy, though. For us it's a moral thing. It's a "we don't inherit the world from our parents - we borrow it from our children" kind of thing. We've told the boys, over and over, that if environmentalists' worst disaster scenarios come true and it all goes to pot and climate change turns the world into a mess the likes of which has not been seen since the dinosaurs went poof, we will, in all likelihood, be OK. We have money, we have skills, we have intelligence, we live in a country that's wealthy enough to probably get through relatively unscathed - at least as far as our socioeconomic strata is concerned, though we may have to give up some goodies. But as far as starvation, homelessness, etc? Probably won't affect us. Partly we tell them that because we don't want to scare the crap out of them, but partly because we (or at least I) truly believe it.
But we also teach them that it's not just about us. We are not all that counts. Other people in Canada count too. The same folks who are really feeling the current rise in the price of food and gas, which we've mostly dealt with by walking more, buying a Prius, and shrugging philosophically. They won't necessarily be OK, and that should matter to Daniel and Justin, because they're Canadians too.
And even if Canada is mostly OK, a lot of the rest of the world won't be. A lot of the rest of the world already isn't. We're not isolated from folks in Africa - or America - whose food sources are suffering from ever freakier weather. We're not isolated from them, or the thousands of people who are getting flooded out/dried out with more frequency these days, or who are fighting over ever scarcer water.
And even if they were mostly OK, humans are not the only inhabitants of this planet. Yes, species go extinct all the time, for reasons that have nothing to do with us. But if we as a species are causing devastation for a lot of the rest of the living things around us... that's not OK. It's not All About Us.
I don't know how much of this has to do with spirituality in Chris' case. For me it does. I don't believe in God, or an afterlife; for me, this is it, and it's precious. It's not a trial run for a next life or Heaven, and there isn't a God looking over us, like a loving parent, willing to correct our mistakes so we don't hurt ourselves. Easter Island, Greece, and the Dust Bowl, to name just a few places, seem to indicate to me that if there is a God up there, He's not interested in playing Mommy to toddlers.
One of my favourite quotes from the Little House on the Prairie books (The Long Winter) sticks with me to this day. I read it as an atheist child, but it made me think if I believed in God, he would be like the God Charles Ingalls believed in:
Laura put her hand on the wall of their house. The coarse plaster was hot in the hot wind and sunshine, but inside the thick mud walls, in the dark, the air must be cool. She liked to think of the muskrats sleeping there.
Pa was shaking his head. “We’re going to have a hard winter,” he said, not liking the prospect.
“Why, how do you know?” Laura asked in surprise.
“The colder the winter will be, the thicker the muskrats build the walls of their houses,” Pa told her. “I never saw a heavier-built muskrats’ house than that one.”
Laura looked at it again. It was very solid and big. But the sun was blazing, burning on her shoulders through the faded thin calico and the hot wind was blowing, and stronger than the damp-mud smell of the slough was the ripening smell of grasses parching in the heat. Laura could hardly think of ice and snow and cruel cold.
“Pa, how can the muskrats know?” she asked.
“I don’t know how they know,” Pa said. “But they do. God tells them, somehow, I suppose.”
“Then why doesn’t God tell us?” Laura wanted to know.
“Because,” said Pa, “we’re not animals. We’re humans, and, like it says in the Declaration of Independence, God created us free. That means we got to take care of ourselves.”
Laura said faintly, “I thought God takes care of us.”
“He does,” Pa said, “so far as we do what’s right. And He gives us a conscience and brains to know what’s right. But He leaves it to us to do as we please. That’s the difference between us and everything else in creation.”
“Can’t muskrats do what they please?” Laura asked, amazed.
“No,” said Pa. “I don’t know why they can’t but you can see they can’t. Look at that muskrat house. Musk rats have to build that kind of house. They always have and they always will. It’s plain they can’t build any other kind. But folks build all kinds of houses. A man can build any kind of house he can think of. So if his house don’t keep out the weather, that’s his look-out; he’s free and independent.”
Pa stood thinking for a minute, then he jerked his head. “Come along, little Half-Pint. We better make hay while the sun shines.”
His eyes twinkled and Laura laughed, because the sun was shining with all its might. But the rest of that day they were both sober.
If there is a God, I think he gave us intelligence, and the responsibility to use it wisely. We can't rely on him to bail us out.
And if there isn't a God, and there isn't an overarching purpose to us being here... well, then, that doesn't make this life meaningless. To me it just means I feel more connected to the world around me, because I don't see much of a difference between myself and it. I feel... a lot like Carl Sagan did, I think. One of the things that struck me when I re-watched Cosmos with the kids was how Sagan, an atheist, radiated such incredible joy and wonder at the universe throughout the entire series. The idea that we evolved, totally randomly, from the same atoms that made the stars, didn't seem demeaning or pointless at all to him. It seemed amazing. And the fact that we had a consciousness, that we could look around and appreciate what was around us, was something worth celebrating, and something to be considered precious.
And our stewardship of this planet was something to be taken very, very seriously, because we were connected to it, because we were it as far as being able to care for it was concerned. He was speaking during the Cold War, so the kind of devastation he wanted us to avoid was nuclear, not environmental (though he did bring that up as well), but as I watched I couldn't help thinking that everything he said was stuff I wanted my kids to think about, and consider important. How it didn't make much sense to think of ourselves as Russian v. American, because in the end what we shared was far more important than our differences. How America First (or Russia First, or England or Canada First) was stupid, shortsighted and destructive to the planet as a whole.
We've had a number of talks about this kind of thing with the kids as the election has come closer. And because Chris is kinda black and white on a lot of stuff, both of them have expressed opinions, based partly on Chris' talks with them, to the effect that the problem is Conservatives. Or Americans. Or rich people. Or Christians. Not that Chris has put it that way, but when he talks I think he often doesn't realize just how literally kids can take off-the-cuff remarks. A mostly joking, "Bloody Americans, always thinking only of themselves" becomes The Absolute Truth because Daddy Said So. Because Daddy didn't immediately qualify his statement with, "Not that they're the only problem, and not that there aren't plenty of Americans being part of the solution, and not that rich conservative Americans like Arnold Schwarzenegger (gag) aren't doing a far better job at protecting the environment than, say, Canada is."
I want them to not think in easy absolutes like that, even though that's what kids do best. I'm trying.
Today, for example, we were talking about native concepts of land stewardship v. what we think of as traditional Judeo-Christian concepts of property and land stewardship. How most natives didn't feel the land belonged to them, any more than the air belongs to anybody. And how many other societies believed that the land, if it belonged to people at all, belonged to three sets of people: our ancestors, ourselves, and our descendants, so it wasn't up to us, the ones currently alive, to harm or destroy it at will.
Contrast with Christian thought, which sees all of Creation as something that God created, in six days, and then gave to us. Us! It's all ours! The Creator made it all for US US US. Go! Us!
Yeah, OK. But another way of looking at it is, he gave it to us. That's a precious gift, isn't it? A gift from God. Are we really going to take something that important, and wreck it? Or do we have a responsibility to it? A responsibility to everything that God created and put here, and then entrusted into our care? A responsibility to God, to show respect and appreciation for what he made for us?
Yeah, it's a rhetorical question. But it's something I want my kids to think about. And it's something that, whatever they decide to believe in the future, whatever party they choose to align themselves with, I want them to take seriously. The Earth, and all that's on it, and not just their own bottom line.
And OK, how did we go from Elizabeth May to Little House on the Prairie and Carl Sagan and Christianity? ::blink blink:: This is why I love lj-cut links.
no subject
That's all I've got at the moment (a bit too much beer in me for coherent political response) but I wanted to let you know how much I appreciated and enjoyed this post.
no subject
LOL! You're very very welcome :) :) :)
no subject
There's a movement to really embrace enviromentalism among some evangelicals, and even more among mainstream Christians (I think), because if God did give this planet to us, then shouldn't we take care of it? This place is amazing, miraculous, etc.--we should do our best by it, and in doing so, do our best by our fellow creatures and by God.
no subject
no subject
Thanks for clarifying :D :D :D