Ode to Louis Riel

Another Louis Riel Day has come and gone, marking the fifth anniversary since its inception, and throughout the province nary a satisfying word was spoken of Mr. Riel. There was little in the way of a tribute covering the life and times of Louis in the media. There was little awareness of Louis’ numerous contributions to Canadian history in our schools and even less at the universities. There were no great speeches by government officials recognizing Louis’ vast influence to our Canadian identity. I even watched the Winnipeg Jets game on Sunday night hoping to see a modicum of attention for this Canadian icon.  But I was disappointed.

Louis Riel was not only a leader to the Métis people but a central figure in Canadian history. He is the Father of Manitoba and one of the original architects of multiculturalism in Canada. He negotiated Manitoba into the confederation on the basis of religious and cultural freedom and with terms to protect Indian Title to land throughout the Province. He envisioned a Canada where the dispossessed from across the world could come to start fresh in a place that flourishes on diversity. Like many Aboriginal leaders before and after him, he fought fearlessly against all odds and with every ounce of his life to carve out a space in this country for marginalized people to pursue their own unique identities.

Mr. Riel’s story has been an essential apparatus in shaping the Canadian conscience, a tool for advancing our critical thinking, and a window for our personal self-reflection. His legacy opens up public debate about Aboriginal and linguistic rights, about the significance of diversity and about the very nature of our unique character as Canadians. Every Canadian in this country owes Louis Riel a debt of gratitude. At the very least, we could acknowledge his tremendous influence on Canadian history on a day named in his honour. Yet there is a disturbing paucity of knowledge about a man that is by far the most written about person in Canadian history. Louis Riel Day should be about bringing all Manitobans together to learn about the history of this province, raising awareness of Riel’s contributions to the Canadian identity, and acknowledging the significance of diversity for all Canadians.

Louis Riel is a hero that still wears a traitor’s noose. It is time for the government of Canada to finally profess his innocence, to recognize that few other Canadians in our history have sacrificed as much as Riel in the name of a better, more inclusive Canada. Riel’s voice will echo for generations to come. Sooner or later, it will overpower an antiquated government, which will one day wake up on the wrong side of history. Louis Riel Day should be an impetus for the awakening.

Stephen Harper Hates Us for Our Freedom

It used to anger me that the conservatives narcissistically changed the official name of the federal government to the Harper Government.  Now I am pretty sure that it is quite appropriate.  While they may be our current majority government, it should now be disturbingly clear they could care less about the majority of Canadians. By scrapping the per-vote subsidy vital to opposition parties, pushing government committees behind close doors, sanctioning shady free trade deals with China and Europe, and proroguing parliament not once but twice (this is just the shortlist), the conservatives have abused their power time and again to recklessly obliterate any semblance of a Canadian democracy.

Now with their most recent act in their campaign against the Canadian citizenry, the ‘Harper Government’ strikes again, taking a drastic stride toward the dissolution of our rights to privacy. Under the delicate disguise of a “protecting children from internet predators act,” the conservative government is proposing to introduce measures that will allow the police and intelligence communities to access personal communications online. The bill proposes a “backdoor” for these agencies into the personal, electronic lives of Canadians via your telecommunication company.

Suspiciously, the word child does not even appear throughout the entire document. It seems quite clear that this title is nothing more than a surreptitious appeal to the emotions of Canadians. “If you do not support this bill, you stand with child pornographers” is the brilliant argument of schoolyard bully and Canadian Public Safety Minister Vic Toews. How can you reason with someone that stoops to this insidious misuse of logic? “Oh, you piece of shit” comes to mind.

The invasion of privacy act was strangely absent from the conservative agenda during election time.  Now, not even one year into a majority, the conservatives are showing Canadians the damage they can do when they have full reign over Parliament.  This bill demonstrates the utter contempt this government has for Canadians and our basic human rights.

If there was ever a time to email your MP, this would be a good one.

Feminism is for Everybody: Navigating Feminism and the Politics of Difference

The evidence is overwhelming. We are more enlightened now, and men – most men, anyway – behave much better. That is bad news for the grievance industry, which must stretch its definitions of assault and abuse to ridiculous extremes to keep its numbers up. It can’t acknowledge the good news, because it has too much at stake. – Margaret Wente

To be clear from the beginning, I believe that a so-called ‘grievance industry’ within the feminist movement does exist. It exists just as it does within any movement, be it feminist, anti-racist, socialist, or otherwise. Analogous to war profiteering, these industries arise as a result of the booming profitability of conflict. Like never before, there are massive monetary returns from social conflict. This trend is, in part, a consequence of the careful inclusion of resistance movements into the dominant system of difference that weaves through all social institutions in a liberal democracy.

The creation of vast employment opportunities for otherwise strong feminist voices ensures the protection of the system. It creates a sort of brain drain, by which women are effectively pulled towards economic positions that are usually limited to a focus on band-aid responses within the system rather than taking up a more fundamental struggle toward the genuine abolition of the politics of difference that generates oppression against women in the first place. It is crucial that these forms of exploitation and corruption by intra-group members are continuously brought to the attention of the general public so that we are able to discern and separate the messages of those working with and for the system from those that aim to displace the system and create true, ongoing social change. 

The extrapolation of the idea of a ‘ grievance industry’ to all feminists is at the very least contemptuous of the feminist movement and, at its worst, a very dangerous form of violence in and of itself.  Violence against women continues to be problematic and extends beyond traditional notions of physical violence. Contrary to Wente's view of social progress, we are not more enlightened now and one of the primary reasons for this is that much of what passes as feminism today exists only in the hollow structural reproduction of the status quo. Because of this, there is still a very basic ignorance of the meaning of feminism. Perhaps the most basic step toward rectifying such ignorance is to acknowledge the diversity in the feminist movement. It is imprudent to discuss feminism as though it were a homogenous body of thought that shares uniform social goals. In order to demonstrate this point I will briefly contrast the divergent approaches of two of these strands of feminism: liberal feminism and radical feminism. 

On the one hand, liberal feminism, the dominant form of feminism in the West, strives for equality of opportunity within a liberal democracy that assumes equality of conditions for all people. Freedom then, is merely the freedom of movement within this system. Wente falls into the umbrella of liberal feminism, as she contends that because there is statistical evidence to support increased freedom of movement for women within the liberal system, there is no more need for further change.  Victory for Wente is ironically the silencing of feminism as women are assimilated into a preexisting value system.

The problem with liberal feminism is that the current system of social relations is at its core a patriarchal system, founded on the value systems of privileged white males. If we look closely at the alleged advancements of liberal feminism, it becomes clear that advancement often means inclusion into a preauthorized patriarchical system. To claim a moral victory once women have access to the same employment opportunities as men in the absence of a glass ceiling is an absurdity and runs counterintuitive to the aim of true liberation.  Liberal feminists have essentially fought their way into a more intricate system of domination that allocates success to women only in so far as they are willing to maintain the basic functions of the system. Emma Goldman was spot-on when she said, “Now, woman is confronted with the necessity of emancipating herself from emancipation, if she really desires to be free.” Over a century later, this assertion holds true.

Radical feminists tend to understand the oppression of women as structured into the very fabric of our society, in our social institutions, our social relations, and into the social agent. Radical feminism is intrinsically tied to the politics of difference. It is not a response to a conflict between men and women but is rather one dimension of a greater movement against a system that structures social relations by unequally distributing power to particular identity markers. The dominant social structures do not just claim a central position for men over women but also for white skin, for the upper-class, for Christians, for heterosexuals, etc. All other social identity markers are pushed to the periphery and forced to assimilate to the values of the dominant social structures in order to ascertain social mobility. The compartmentalization of resistance movements into particular identity markers then, is a superficial one. The struggle for freedom is an inclusive struggle by its very nature.  Although it takes place on many plains, it is a unified struggle toward liberation from the politics of difference.

As bell hooks succinctly states, “feminism is for everybody.” Exclusionary movements are very dangerous and if men are not engaged in the feminist movement, if Euro-Canadians are not engaged in Aboriginal movements, if heterosexuals are not engaged in gay and LGBT movements, these movements will fail us all. At the same time that movements require inclusive spaces, the onus is also on people as agents of change to stand up for one another. There is a lot of truth to the axiom, ‘When one of us is oppressed, we are all oppressed.” I am a feminist because of the inherent interconnections of identity politics.

The task cannot be to change the rules of the boys club to allow entry for women but rather to radically decentre patriachical social structures and replace them with a system centred at the intersection of social differences. Not equal opportunity to succeed in this society but rather equal opportunity to affect this society. The very basis of all social relations is negotiation. Equal footing in the processes of negotiating our individual and collective identities is not just a step toward liberation, it is liberation. There is intrinsic value to the natural and social differences in humans.  We need diversity so that we can learn, challenge, negotiate, change, and grow with one another.

The Paradox of Charity: Deconstructing the Divide Between "Moral Busybodies" and "Robber Barons"

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.  -C.S. Lewis

All charity is NOT good charity

In large part people give uncritically.  There is a general public belief that any and all charity must be good charity.  Any growth in money injected into development or increment toward more development agencies working toward the ‘end of poverty’ is generally accepted as a necessarily positive step for the future of mankind.  This is a difficult myth to disprove to the mass of people that, in whatever capacity, participate in charitable organizations.  There is a lot at stake for these participants.  People desperately want to believe in the good of Western nations.  Even more so they want to believe in the good in themselves.  And so it goes, people anxiously cling to a model self-image that they have been trained to aspire to, one that best serves their interest.

Charity and self-interest

There is a hegemonic narrative in our society that clearly defines for us the people we ought to be.  Charity is one of the most prominent characteristics of the good human within this narrative.   Because helping others has been structured into our society’s expectations of one another, the act of helping itself becomes an act to satisfy these expectations.  People undertake acts of charity, in other words, to illicit a specific response from their audience.  This audience could be made up of friends, family members, employers, etc.  Each charitable act is an investment.  It is a currency that can be traded in for a more positive image from an audience that grants the charitable an increment of upward mobility in a particular system.  This is most evident in the job market which looks very favourably on those that have committed themselves to charitable acts such as volunteer work. To help others is often the most surreptitious means of helping ourselves.

The mask of charity

Charity perpetuates a narrative where the privileged classes are the saviours of the hopelessly poor.  How many times in our lives have we been exposed to images of Westerners nobly grasping on to the child of some poverty stricken family in the global south?  Each image contains a message.  It reaffirms the superiority of the West.  It conceals the truth that we are the robber barons.  Our privilege is a direct result of the detriment of billions of people we will never see and thousands we see everyday but choose to ignore.  Most are out of sight and out of mind.  But when we do take notice, any guilt, embarrassment, or unease is quickly erased with an arrogant decision to give, to help, to be charitable toward those that we assess are in need.  We pat ourselves on the back so that we never  have to look at the deeper cause and effect relationship between our privilege and others' despair.

Charity will never solve poverty; it will only serve to mask the social structures responsible for its creation.  Charity does not address the root causes of the distribution of access to resources. It can only ever scratch the surface of the structures of inequality contained within global capitalism.  Indian author and activist Arundhati Roy once said of the ngo industry: “it doles out in aid what people ought to have by right”.  It waters down people’s anger at a system that does not work for their interest.  It prevents the mass revolutionary change required to restructure the system upon more equitable terms. Charity, aid, development, call it what you will but the truth is that it functions in order to maintain order in a system of mass inequality. And until we are able to see it for what it truly is, the charity of moral busybodies will keep the robber barons at the master’s post.

Beyond Good and Evil: Manufactured Enemy, Manufactured War

Every war in history has required the meticulous construction of an adversary.  As a nation at war, it is necessary to conjure up an enemy so fantastically wicked, that a critical mass of people of that nation are willing to, without question, either take the life of another human or die protecting their nation from the threat presented by this enemy.  It is an intensive process of dehumanization so extreme that it nullifies the conscience of the citizenry and converts them into fuel for the war machine (i.e. soldiers and wartime supporters or at minimum apathetic non-dissenters).

Bin Laden has been the poster child of evil, the visage of terrorism that has fueled America’s war on the Middle East.  With his death we are left with a plethora of imperative questions.  Had Bin Laden outlived his utility as an author of American hatred for Middle Eastern agitators?  Will someone rise to take his place? Or is American intolerance of Muslims so deep that this job has been rendered obsolete?  Will this mark the downsizing of the American-led military campaign for control of the Middle East? Is this merely a transition into a more insidious means of control through policy and puppet governments? 

Whatever the answers may be, in the post-Bin Laden political landscape one thing remains certain.  As long as America attempts to control this region, there will always be strong and violent opposition from the people.  If America wants to make the world safer for Americans, it might be time to think of how America might make the world safer from Americans.

Beyond Good and Evil: The Life and Times of Osama Bin Laden

Rarely has the death of one individual been the cause of so much celebration.  Thousands of people in the United States gathered in triumphant rejoice with the news that Osama Bin Laden has been killed.  President Obama has called it a “good day for America” while Prime Minister Harper has taken the opportunity to exploit Bin Laden’s death to justify his deployment of Canadian troops to Afghanistan.  But before we all jump up and down and pat our leaders on the back, let us first examine what such a reaction says about our worldview and about us more generally.

There were around 3,000 deaths on the tragic day of September 11, 2001.  Immediately, Americans passed through an emotional vortex from shock to sadness to anger to blame to war with an unfortunate promptness.  It was unfortunate because public policy should never be decided on while the logic of the collective masses was detained by their emotions.  This has always been a breeding ground for irrationalism and further allows for what Naomi Klein has termed ‘the shock doctrine’, policy that is passed while the public is in shock with the onset of a disastrous event.  The outcome, of course, has been a decade long war on terror.

Depending on what side you are aligned in the conflict, you are perceived to be either good or evil, freedom fighter or terrorist.  On the one side, the United States military personnel are awarded the highest of honours for their attacks on countries like Iraq and Afghanistan, countries where tall buildings have been decimated, historical artifacts destroyed and pillaged, women raped, civilians kidnapped and imprisoned without evidence of their transgressions, and where upwards of a million have died as a result of the supposed war on terror.  The horrors and atrocities that come along with warfare are still inflicted on Iraqis and Afghans everyday.  Imagine for a moment that September 11 was just the beginning of a nearly decade, and counting, long campaign to exert foreign influence upon the United States.  This has been the reality of these countries as America is trying desperately to hold onto its rapidly declining global power.  And for these countries there is still no end in sight to the conflict.

On the other side of the conflict, al Qaeda has been demonized for conducting a military offensive against a perceived threat.  In fact, what was so shocking about this attack was not how al Qaeda attacked but who they attacked, a country that was once thought to be untouchable in its dominance.  The targets they chose were strategic military targets that any belligerent force would have attempted to target.  This is the nature of war.  Military, political, and economic targets are the most highly sought after targets.  For many, the White House, Pentagon, and World Trade Centre symbolize the imperialistic character of the United States.  These are three institutions that have, for better or worse, touched every corner of the globe with their influence.  When puppet governments are pacified in the Middle East, or elsewhere, by the influence of a foreign power, there will always be opposition amongst the people. Al Qaeda rose up to fill this role.  Sadly, they were guided by the same destructive dichotomous thinking as their opponents and sought out the death of a perceived evil.

In order to progress as a society, we have to look beyond simplistic dichotomies of good and evil, narratives that have indoctrinated us from birth lodged within fairytales, religious stories, political propaganda, etc.  This type of categorizing and partitioning of the world is false, misleading, and very dangerous.  Instead of seeking to understand one another, we are handed pre-packaged images in black and white coupled with the binary that if you’re not with us, you’re against us.

Osama Bin Laden was not on the side of good.  Nor was he on the side of evil.  He was a human being consumed by a false belief in these two dichotomies.  For Bin Laden, America was evil. America was corrupt, greedy, and power hungry.  And while these latter three characteristics may aptly apply to many Americans and much of America’s foreign policy, it does not define Americans as a people.  It does not justify the murder of American lives anymore than the American occupation and decimation of foreign nations could be justified by a diffusion of freedom.  And to celebrate the death of this man is ironically to accept, and ultimately perpetuate the ideology of good and evil that was the very foundation of Bin Laden’s actions (and for much of the world’s conflicts).  What would be cause for celebration is the death of this idea of good and evil.  Only then could we really seek to understand one another and begin our struggle towards a more peaceful world.

“What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

Sexual Apartheid: In Defense of Non-Monogamous Relationships

An Oppressive Society: Setting the ‘Norm’

The discriminatory treatment of non-monogamous people is a significant show of oppressive behavior in our social world.  Non-monogamy is held to be the behavior of insatiable social deviants.  That many people feel an immediate discomfort, disdain even, for the personal choices of others is a conditioned response that social agents have learned in order to reproduce the dominant social relations of the specific space and time they inhabit. The oppression of alternative sexual and intimate lifestyles reflects the hegemonic idea of how our existence ought to be lived out filtered down to social agents from a plethora of social structures.  This statement finds evidence in the numerous laws that enforce the monogamous nuclear family. From tax breaks for families to laws that illegalize certain intimate and sexual behaviour between consenting adults, our social structures sanction social action so that it replicates the dominant social norms.  Agents internalize these structured norms of behaviour and mindlessly reproduce it by ridiculing any social activity that strays from the centre of accepted social principles. Each degree of separation from the dominant model of social behaviour is sanctioned through the marginalization of difference. The system is able to increase its reproductive ability by limiting the voice of dissent from the mainstream.  In the absence of these marginalized voices, a communication gap develops between those that offer an alternative to dominant modes of thinking and those that are entrenched within it.  This communication gap then breeds conflict between various social groups.  Suffice it to say that our society is not accepting of lifestyles that deviate from its defined state of normalcy.

Capitalism, Monogamy, and Marginalization

What monogamous relationships essentially accomplish is the bureaucratization of social relations at the personal level.  It mirrors our relationships as they are organized in the workforce, among other social structures.  There is thus a hierarchy of emotional commitment amongst members that separates us from one another.  The more distance between members of society, whether it be friendships, intimate and sexual partnerships, business relations, the less likely the possibility for interaction between members. Monogamy facilitates control in our society through the creation of apathy for the strange.  Apathy for the strange is a breeding ground for the self-interest that liberal thinkers have taken for granted as human nature.  A significant effect is a breakdown in communication and cooperation, between various social groups in any given community, a breakdown that may occur both globally and locally. 

To state the most relevant case, there is segregation between men and women to varying degrees in many, if not most, societies.  The institution of monogamy regulates who may talk to whom, when they may talk, in what manner they are to communicate, etc.  Consequently, the ability for men and women to participate in meaningful dialogue outside of specific designated areas, where such dialogue is tightly controlled (most notably the workforce) is severely disconnected. It should be noted here that because this segregation between the sexes is coupled with patriarchical domination, women bare the brunt of miscommunication and their voices are more likely marginalized from the public domain. Society as a whole suffers since it is partitioned into a sort of sexual apartheid, and as a result oppresses a variety of inputs integral to its healthy functioning.

Non-Monogamy and the Challenge to Domination

When social bonds in society are reduced and fragmented, people have a diminished capacity to act together toward a common goal.  Non-monogamy relations go beyond the structural barriers that exist between social groups by promoting communication between them outside the designated time and space.  They challenge the hierarchical nature of interaction between groups and individuals that hold different positions within the relations of power.  Intimate bonds are an extremely powerful means of facilitating cross-identity relations that, I believe, can aid in a society’s capacity to accommodate social differences so that all members of any given community may exert their social influence upon their environment.

Any alternative, if considered with a critical rigour by social agents, represents a threat to the dominant culture.  New ideas, by their very nature, contain a transformative quality.  New ideas change people and people have a capacity to change social structures as a result. Non-monogamous relations, it follows, should be embraced, not necessarily practiced, by anyone with the desire to create a positive social change.

Note

The argument here is not to say that monogamy is inherently a reflection of other social structures.  Nor is it an argument for the demonogamization of society.  It is merely a critical treatment of the consequences of the institutionalization of monogamy in certain societies as the only form of accepted sexual relations.   It is one of my most deeply held beliefs that the oppression of difference is to the peril of all people.

Mino Wicewitonan

The Tourist Trap: An Alternative View of Tourism in the Global South

The Great Escape

It is very easy to fall in love with the notion of travel as it is packaged and sold to us from the very lucrative world of advertising. Since birth we have been receiving innumerable messages that have fortified a vision of a paradise that awaits us. From naked virgin beaches, to beautiful, exotic locals, to the seemingly endless adventures of the backpacker’s trail, travel seemingly has something for everyone. It is not a difficult task for the advertiser to lure people away from the painful uniformity of life in the Western workforce.  We are sold a thousand blindfolds by the time we even set foot on foreign land.  We are so blinded by our yearning to flee to paradise that we overlook the consequences of the industry that has been built in order to satisfy it.

The Culture of Tourism

One of the most bizarre consequences of tourism is its extraordinary homogenizing power over tourist spaces.  While tourists set out to presumably take a break from the monotony of their tired, uneventful lives, they contradictorily look for a place that allows them to live out a one-size fits all fantasy amidst all the same types of people they knew back home.  It is an opportunity to meet other privileged people from across the globe to discuss how foreign everything is and to talk about how great it is to live a life of luxury, to have this great opportunity to ‘escape’.

The locals that tourists confront, hotel workers, bartenders, tour guides, etc., are inevitably themselves a homogenous group, in so far as they contrive a disposition somewhere between the clichés of their specific culture and those of the Western one.  Local tourism workers are trained to a specific standard and consequently behave a particular way towards tourists that simultaneously draws feelings of comfort and exoticism from the visitors. 

The adventure into the unknown landscape is more of a well-structured mirage than a place that is attainable to the traveler. Even for the most courageous traveler, the tourist trap, like a straight jacket, is very tricky to escape. The more developed tourism becomes in any particular country the more the traveler’s ‘adventures’ are preordained by the structures of tourism. 

Tourist spaces are a product of extensive market research, which inevitably arrives at what has always worked in the past.  There is little creativity, just the bottom line.  Creativity is just a question of how old pleasures can be repackaged and sold fresh.  And so a beach resort in Thailand mirrors the beach resort in Guatemala.  A thrilling tube ride down the Mekong River in Laos has all the appearances of the drunken orgy of Mardi Gras celebrations.

The culture of tourism is a culture of excess.  It is an excess of food and drink, an excess of lustful desire, an excess of trinkets and souvenirs, and an excess of carefree living.  In short, the culture of tourism is an excess of excess.

Cultural Voyeurism

Those few who are brave enough to venture off the resort, or go as far as to backpack through smaller towns and other off the beaten path destinations, still rarely achieve any ‘real’ adventure.  The most their exploits realize is what can only be characterized as cultural voyeurism.  It is to take a quick glance at a culture through a looking glass.  Without any significant, prolonged interaction, what really takes place is a visit to the zoo rather than the kind of meaningful, life-changing dialogue that the adventurer had imagined would impact them forever.

Tourism as Colonialism

What the tourist industry achieves alas is the disbursement of large tracks of land for colonial interests, earmarking the most beautiful land in the world for exclusive access by the rich, privileged few.  For the wealthy, every tourist space on earth has become an extension of their kingdom.

Locals are diminished to the status of servants.  After a hard days work serving the insatiable thirst of ‘all inclusive’ demands, playing the role of the exotic, and plastering on a thousand plastic smiles, they go home.  For many it is a home far removed from the luxuries of resort life.  Tourists are forewarned not to venture too far from the resort.  For they might accidentally witness that the servant’s quarters do not match the picturesque, utopia that they intended to visit.  A trip outside the fantasyland of tourist compounds might awaken the tourist to real issues and real people, the real world that they so desperately wanted to escape.

Like most industry in so-called developing nations, tourism is modeled onto a dependent relationship with wealthy nations.  As adept students of capitalism, we ignorantly pat ourselves on the back for the great contribution that tourism has made to the local economy (as though the act of tourism were charity itself).  We overlook the structures of global trade that allow us, the privileged, to go where we please, to consume what we want, to name every beautiful place on earth for ourselves, and to turn local people into servants.  These are the true consequences of global tourism.  And until we challenge the global relations of power that tourism is premised upon, tourism will remain a wholly unethical practice.


Note

"And I’m still as stupid as anyone, but I know my mistakes." - Propagandhi.  This quote has stuck with me since jr. high school.  I, for the record, adore seeing new places, learning from new cultures.  But I have found that it is very easy to travel unethically.   Many of these criticisms were first spoken looking directly in the mirror.

“Fuckin’ Hippie!”: Thoughts on the Urgency of a Critical Society

We live in a society that abhors freethinking.  Thinking that challenges the status quo is immediately marginalized by the mainstreamers of society.  Critical thinkers are dismissed as fanatics, hippies, communists, etc.  Quick labels that sweep confrontation under the rug at the first sign of disobedience.  Individualism it seems has been designated to the fetishized wonderland of consumer spaces.  (Spaces which have crept into every facet of our daily lives).  Only then do we seek to peacock ourselves over the crowd and screech our consumer chorus: “Buy me!”

The version of reality that people develop through their lives is extremely resilient to change.  The mind employs a number of defense mechanisms which attempt to maintain and reproduce its conception of the real.  To question widely accepted ‘truths’ creates a distressing degree of discomfort.  This discomfort leads to shame, shame to anger and anger to an irrational, fear-based refusal to contemplate alternative viewpoints.  The chilling prospect of public ridicule, or worse still social exclusion, is so intense that death, so long as it is coupled with a sense of belonging, is a much more desirable fate for most.  Conformity is the soothing refuge of the consumer society.    “Sssshhhhhhh!  The television is singing our song.”

Without criticism, we are the walking dead.  Our existence is relegated to the unconscious reproduction of the very systems that enslave us.  Uncritical recognition of social structures is the source of contemporary slavery.  It is the definitive forfeiture of our inalienable right to impact the social world. Critical thinking is the most valuable weapon that citizens have in the protection of freedom and the imposition of the right to a dignified existence. Citizens that voyage the social terrain unarmed with this basic tool are defenseless, and ultimately doomed to the oblivious acceptance of social control. One fleet of empty vessels floating along in time and space to the pacifying rhythm of consumer jingles.  “Everything is for sale!”

So seek out the ‘truth’.  Assume nothing.  Disobey, explore, question, and criticize. These are the true expressions of a free society.  Challenge your friends, colleagues, family members, and political representatives.  Challenge everyone you know.  But most importantly, challenge yourself.  Cause if you truly value your freedom you are going to have to be prepared to wake up and fight for it.  “Fuckin’ hypocrite!”

Note: This article/blog is largely a concoction of the views of four brilliant philosophers that have enduringly pursued a more conscious citizenship: John Ralston Saul, Zygmunt Bauman, Jean Baudrillard and C Wright Mills.  If these views appeal to you, please contact me for more information.