governance

My Shadow Ballot 2022

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It’s that time again! Needless to say, this will be a long post… but with the elections coming up (And please do what you can to be able to vote!) it’s well worth it. (And if you’re concerned it makes no difference, please read this post about it.)  With the recent spurious rulings by the SCOTUS and the cruelty by conservative governors/state legislators as well as many corporations, it’s increasingly more apparent that elections do indeed have consequences for us all (and that they’re not all the same).

I’m going to switch it up this time and talk about the California-specific propositions last. Continue reading →

Philosophy Tuesday

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This seems like a very appropriate time to discuss motivated, a priori, and presumptive reasoning.

Because they are the very antithesis of reasoning.  Rather than start at the wide field to narrow to a conclusion, they instead begin with the desired conclusion or outcome already determined and use the illusion and language of reasoning to justify themselves, irrespective of what the complete picture may actually say.

In a way I’ve touched on this before when I noted that we are rationalizing rather than rational creatures.  Motivated reasoning is this writ large:  we start with our “truth” and then rationalize our conclusion.

But it also engages so many other of our biases and foibles.  MR lets us bring out the big guns, like cherry-picking, confirmation bias, or our ultimate weapon, that of simply being dismissive.  We even get to be creative, by making up whole new goals, tests, causes, doctrines, laws, interpretations, “truths”, and more, whatever’s needed to create a pathway from here to that desired outcome.

(And you better believe that these are independent pathways – a rationale pathway to create one desired outcome can be quickly twisted or discarded when creating a different rational pathway when ensuring another desired outcome.)

In the end, that predetermined conclusion is, well, concluded, all while cloaked behind supposedly coherent and good faith deduction.

This, like all our foibles, is quite a universal ability that comes with being human.  And, again like nearly all of our foibles, we are often not even aware of it.**  That is where the practice of being mindful comes in, to recognize and acknowledge our desires and find the balance so that we include them in our deliberations and thus avoid being hijacked by them.

** On the other hand, some are fully aware of their motivated reasoning and just don’t care.  They willingly bear false witness to further their aims, trying to hoodwink everyone into missing their actual intent and harm(s).

#cdnpoli

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Hello my fellow Canadians!  As I contemplate my absentee ballot, I’d like to share my experience as a current expat and provide some perspective about our choice.  Living in the USA for numerous years, I have seen firsthand the results of conservative/republican governments and the policies they champion.  They have not, and do not, create good and desirable outcomes.  They do not create equity, harmony, or prosperity for the country or the majority of its citizens, and are instead heavily titled towards the select few at the expense of the many.  And when it comes to solving the real issues of our time, they’d rather pretend they didn’t exist, blame others, or drum up irrelevant false outrage instead of being courageous and doing the hard work.  There is no leadership.

Therefore, I strongly recommend you not to vote for the Conservative Party of Canada in this upcoming election.  (And please do vote!)

Now, the CPC and its leader especially are trying to paint themselves as a “kindler, more gentle” conservative party.  Except that their policies still crib heavily from the Republican playbook.  One only has to look at how Doug Ford has run things in Ontario to know what’s at the heart of the modern Canadian conservative mindset.  (Even the promise of one dollar beer for everyone was a bogus boondoggle.)  Or how Conservative senator Don Plett stated, out loud, “We can all hope that the right side will win [the US election], and we will all send President Trump our congratulations when they do.”  Or how their environmental plan is to roll back targets, set pricing that will be ineffective, and then to enact a reimbursement scheme that manages to be both a pain to set up, crazily restrictive, and will benefit the wealthiest the most.  Or how its shadow cabinet members voted against banning the practicing of the harmful application of conversion (and I hate using the following word, for it is anything but a therapy) therapy.

And the like.  They try to dress themselves up and couch themselves in accommodating terms, but they are anything but.  They do not have the vision, nor the policies, to grow Canada to what it could be for itself, its people, and the world at large.  I have seen what this mindset and the Republican policies create, and it is not what they claim.  The results are deleterious, compounding even more more so for the future.  (And if you fondly remember the Progressive Conservatives… these are not them.  They have long been pushed out of the party by the Reform/Republican mindset.)

Therefore, again, I strongly recommend that you do indeed vote (voting is important!) and that you do not cast that vote for the Conservative Party of Canada.

Philosophy Tuesday

Kannik2 Comments

“A company’s purpose is to make money.”

We need, I strongly assert, to stop saying/repeating this.  Because it is false.

Which I think, deep down, we all know.  But it’s weird, ‘cuz it kinda feels true, doesn’t it?  It’s a classic example of both a “false opposite” and an “adjacent mistruth” operating in harmony:  A company that continually loses money isn’t going to be in business for very long* – that’s the true part.  The false opposite is that a company has to make loads of profit to remain in business.  Similarly, to avoid losing money, a company has to think about its cash flow.  Which is fair, but the adjacent mistruth that arises is that therefore the company must think about, and almost only about, maximizing its profit at every turn.  Put those two together and it has got the veneer of veracity.  One that is further burnished by repetition.  We hear this phrase over and over so often that it feels true just through recurrence and agreement.

And boom, there it is.  We get companies that do just that, and we, perhaps unwittingly, encourage it.

However, despite this truthiness it is a falsehood.

A company’s purpose is to produce a good or service that is of value to the community while earning those who provide that good or service a decent living.

That’s it.  That’s what a company ought to be aimed towards.

If a company is in business for 50 years and breaks even every single year while providing a solid living for its employees, it’s doing great.  It may not be “crushing the competition” or “growing by leaps and bounds” or “earning a 50% profit” or “making it’s owner insanely rich” or “producing amazing shareholder value.”  But it’s been around for 50 years, providing something worthwhile that has it stay around for 50 years, all the while with employees living mighty fine lives.

A company need not overcharge its customers so it can pocket the difference.  Or underpay and overwork its employees to pocket the difference.  Or offset costs into the community to pocket the difference.  Or harm the environment to pocket the difference.  Or make detrimental and injurious products to pocket the difference.  It need not impoverish us all, fleecing us to further line the pockets of a select few.

Companies are about people making vital and fun and really nifty stuff for each other so that we can all live and thrive together.

And that’s what we need to be saying.

 

* Usually – companies/rackets like Uber notwithstanding.

Voices in Unison: “I Don’t Matter” Edition

Kannik3 Comments

All throughout this crazy year, I have been inviting people to vote.  There are stark reminders every day of the difference between bad or absent or incompetent or self-serving “leadership”, and what’s possible under competent leaders.  And so today I’d like to extend a special invitation to those who say “My vote doesn’t matter” with these responses…

My vote doesn’t matter; TLDR version:  In short, this question:  if your vote doesn’t matter, then why are they doing all they can to violate your right to vote, both in ability and in its impact?  Whether it be by closing polling places, or implementing unnecessary and onerous voting ID and registration issues, or making information difficult to discover, or participating in extreme gerrymandering, or linking voting rights to the paying of fines and fees, or attacking mail in voting, or creating a false panic about fraud, or simply to engage in behavior that is designed to put you off voting, there is so a lot being done to decrease voter turnout.  And they cement it in place by fostering that very feeling you have, that feeling that your vote doesn’t matter.  They want you to think it doesn’t matter, that it’s too hard, that you’re better off staying home and just not vote.  Because they know that the less people vote, the easier it is for them to influence the outcome.  The more people they can get to tune out, and the more roadblocks they can throw in the way, the greater the impact of their fervent base upon which they can count on to show up while at the same time making it easy for their base to vote.  Which, in turn, makes it easy to gain the power.  By doing all this they get to break the system and choose their electorate, not, as it should be, the other way around.  To that, I say no.  Please vote. Continue reading →

Philosophy Tuesday

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As I’ve noted here before, there is great clarity that comes from comparing who we proclaim ourselves to be (or to be about), and looking at what our actions, or the results thereof, say about what’s ACTUALLY going on.  And what’s going on right now is really showing us a very stark view of how authorities view and treat people, to the tune of 422+ incidents of overreach, brutality, and aggression* that have hurt, injured, and even killed people they supposedly swore an oath to protect.

And with that comes a hard look at how we let things get to this point.  And what to do about it.  Be ready, for the tactics and fallacies are going to get deployed real fast, in thick clouds (and yes, that imagery is not chosen by accident), trying to excuse these actions.

Especially when it may be coming from within.  So let’s look at one of these fallacies in detail, because by doing so we can both recognize it when being deployed against us, and moreover inoculate ourselves from ourselves, from our own internal monologues that may also attempt to dismiss, or minimize, some of all that is going on.  And it is the No True Scotsman fallacy:

“No true Scotsman, or appeal to purity, is an informal fallacy in which one attempts to protect a universal generalization from counterexamples by changing the definition in an ad hoc fashion to exclude the counterexample. Rather than denying the counterexample or rejecting the original claim, this fallacy modifies the subject of the assertion to exclude the specific case or others like it by rhetoric, without reference to any specific objective rule – “no true Scotsman would do such a thing”; i.e., those who perform that action are not part of our group and thus criticism of that action is not criticism of the group.” [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman] **

This is, of course, nicely related to the “few bad apples” trope that is so readily trotted out.  (which, by the way, notice A) always only seems to get applied to one side of someone’s preferred group, ie, “our side has only a few bad apples, while the other side I am more than willing to tar with a broad brush and apply a single action/trait to degrade a whole group, and B) ignores that the complete saying is “one bad apple spoils the barrel.”)  But my own variant of it comes in this form:

“No climber/paintballer would ever steal my wallet.”

This comes from my days of playing paintball and, later, going to climbing gyms.  There were times where there were no lockers available, or place to stash something, or should I lock my car, or any of those kind of moments… and my mind would head straight into that fallacy:  “Well, I’m a good person, and I am a paintballer, so therefore paintballers are good, and besides, I’ve met a bunch of them, and they seem all like fun friendly people, so clearly I’ve got nothing to worry about…”  The same went for climbers.  “We’re all cool dudes and dudettes, all is safe.”

Fortunately for me, my wallet, or anything else, was never stolen.  But I’ve known others who have had things “walk away” in those kinds of situations, and I’ve been overcharged or otherwise tricked by paintballers and climbers alike.

This is a great example of what’s known as “positive bias” – instances of our hidden prejudices that favour those we have an affinity for, or an identity towards.  This quick piece on NPR is a great primer.

With these biases we can so easily deceive ourselves.  Especially as often we will do anything to avoid something uncomfortable.  Or to avoid a new truth that challenges us and our reality and our identities.  And this fallacy is an easy one to reach for.

But eating bitter is where true growth can happen.

 

* Keep scrolling in that thread — it’s a long list to get to 422+.  There’s also a spreadsheet here:  https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YmZeSxpz52qT-10tkCjWOwOGkQqle7Wd1P7ZM1wMW0E/edit#gid=0  All noted and saved for posterity, so that it cannot be forgotten or denied.

** Also, if you aren’t familiar with all of the logical fallacies, they are mightily powerful to learn about.  Here’s one site that does it in a lighthearted fashion:  https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/  and the more extensive wiki article:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies

It’s Tuesday

KannikLeave a comment

I really don’t know what to say.  I don’t know what more could be said that already hasn’t been said, and by many voices and in many more eloquent ways.  And maybe it isn’t a time for me to say much, but instead to listen.

And to that, listen… if this anger is a surprise to you, then I assert you have very likely been either willingly disengaged or deliberately dismissive and smug.  There is a lot of shit happening to people for no (real, justified) reason, a lot of disproportionate infliction of suffering, a lot of power plays and asshattery and sycophancy and pathological hording and so much treatment of others as nothing but pawns and expendable nothings, led by psychopaths who have closed themselves off to human connection.

I even spoke about it just a couple of weekends ago, about myself being table flippy from all the f-ed up parts of our systems that have been made worse and put onto stark display during the ‘natural’ event known as a pandemic.  And how much of that is supported by and held in place by our systems and how much we need to step up and speak up and especially to march to the ballot box and get our hands dirty in wrenching those systems back to serve us and not us serve a system that is designed to only serve a few.  And to that I still hold – step up, wrest control, and point things towards a world that works for everyone, with no one left out.

(And, of course, step one is to recognize that everyone includes EVERYONE.  There are no “that group/race/nationality/fandom/whatever over there are lazy or stupid or evil or lesser than or etc.”  I often think that should go without saying, but, of course as it turns out, it isn’t so automatic.  To many people, their so-called superiority is so much a part of their identity and they are willing to, and even hoping and wanting to, inflict and harm and fight and kill for it.  This is immoral, corrupt, depraved, and an absolute sin.)

But even then I must remember that I get to speak here from a platform of privilege.  I’m table flippy about many shitty things and about people being shitty, but some of those really shitty things I have the absolute luxury of not having to face.  Of not having to worry about.  Of not even having to think about them if I choose not to.

And so there is the moment to choose.  Choose to listen, to think about them, to reckon, and to support the voices, the actions, and the people who are leading things towards equity and justice.  With an absolute emphasis on the listening part, and to listen hard.  To read accounts like the one below, one filled with nothing one might consider extreme or outright cinematic, but the general, daily, so-common-it’s-in-the-background-but-it’s-always-there-like-a-sword-over-your-head experience of living in a system that is geared to make you and keep you a lessor (and potentially dead).  I likely won’t ever have this experience, but I can imagine it, and I must imagine it and listen to it and let it in.  So that I can be a more open person for having done it.  To ensure I account for any of my hidden biases (and remove them wherever I can).  And to be rightfully angered so that I never step over this kind of shit and let it slide.

This needs to end.

Please read this account by Asha Tomlinson, as reported on the CBC:  https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/raising-young-black-man-1.5594179.