I think I’m in political overload. Too many elections in two years for me. Canadian elections, Municipal election. US election. And now a BC election. Please – no more elections for 3 years. Give us all a break.
The only one that had a lot of appeal because of the drama – was Obama! A people’s campaign that I didn’t have to work in – just watch and armchair quarterback it. Obama seems to be the right person at the right time, although I don’t envy his challenges.
We seem to be in a curious phase politically in North America. Our economy is on the ropes – just about everyone I know is impacted in one way or another by the world economic doldrums. Normally, environmental values take a back seat in tough economic times: a classic “either-or” situation.
Yet currently, environmental values, while not as high on the public issues list as jobs and economic security, are still high on the political agenda. In British Columbia, for example, the election was being fought on economic issues, but through pressure of environmental organizations, the “carbon tax” and “cap-and-trade” became political and media issues. And Hollywood seems to be driving an environmental agenda politically as well, despite the fact that more people in America care more about their jobs and their financial security.
However, on the doorstep – despite the media, jobs and the economy are still the issues. And leadership in these tough times. And hope.
Hope. In America, hope is still with Obama and the people. In Canada, hope is not much of a political issue, because the federal leadership seems somewhat removed from current issues. At least from the standpoint of media coverage, I would be hard-pressed to find what the current critical political issues are from all four federal parties. The best current news is that borrowing rates are at their lowest in recent history.
In British Columbia, the election is heavily oriented to leadership and the economy. The Liberals have a detailed platform that outlines key economic, environmental, health and social initiatives. The left-leaning NDP, on the other hand don’t seem to have a grasp on the seriousness of the weakened state of the economy and business (and therefore, employment) in the province. They can’t even get on the “correct” side of environmental issues. In desperation, the NDP and some of their friends, have moved to smear tactics – which everyone in politics knows is a sign of a party in dire straits.
Yet despite this situation, there are still a few small business people who are protesting the Liberals’ carbon tax and feel they should either not vote, or vote for the NDP. Likewise, there are some union folks who don’t feel their economic futures are being addressed by the NDP – and they also feel they should either not vote – or vote for the Liberals.
Elections aside, I believe that the North American public are in political overload. They don’t want to hear any more vague political promises. They see themselves, or friends or relatives, losing jobs. They see the value of their homes decreasing. They see their retirement nest eggs being threatened. They want security. They want hope.
The political leaders who insist on drinking their own bathwater are doomed to failure. The politicians who actively engage in defining a roadmap to economic recovery – and engage the public in it – will succeed. Adding the environmental agenda to this as a legacy adds to this.
Obama has set the standard for all North American politicians. And in Canada, it seems that BC’s Premier Campbell is doing the same.
As we head into the full blown election campaign here in BC, Piros takes a look at why political rhetoric fails to move us, while political symbols really work.
Technology is burdening me with two constant challenges today.
One is finding the time to learn and stay up-to-date with new and emerging communications tools and methods that others seem to be lazily relying upon in their everyday discourse.
The other is a more profound challenge. It is the challenge of resisting the free fall into a life of constant superficial distractions that are supplanting discourse and dialogue with tweets, nudges and instant messages that speak without meaning and move us further apart instead of closer together.
I had to restrain myself the other day when I was about to craft an email to a friend. That friend had just experienced a tragic loss of a loved one. I was planning to offer my condolences in writing—spilling out some heartfelt words of meaning to comfort. I communicate regularly with this person using email messages. It was almost instinctual to start typing a message to convey my thoughts of sympathy. How inappropriate that would have been.
Fortunately, I came to my senses in a matter of seconds and I pulled a couple of sheets of fine stationery from my desk to pen in my now unpracticed handwriting some personal words that were intended to mean something. I put a postage stamp on the envelope and dropped it into something that is almost foreign to a young person today—a mail box.
My friend David Berner calls them the “the devil’s toys”—Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, MSN Instant Messaging, etc. He recently lamented on this subject in his blog:
“with each incremental increase in these devil's toys comes double the inability for people to actually, really communicate. There has rarely been such a social disconnect in human history.”
I couldn’t agree with him more.
We don’t have to talk with one another anymore, we can simply message. How do you convey feelings when you are messaging? Oh, there are neat little icons—happy faces, sad faces, upside down parentheses and little animations that instantly pop up to supposedly signal a feeling or emotion. Sorry, but I want to look into someone’s eyes, hear the tone and inflection in their voice or see their body language when I am having a serious discussion.
My friend’s teenaged kids rarely talk on the phone. Night and day they are quietly focused with heads-bent down, staring at a small screen on their cell phone or Blackberry. (The only blackberries I have are usually added to my bowl of oatmeal in the morning). In an effort to try to “connect” with these friends of the younger generation, I will once in awhile use instant messaging. The level of literacy in their text messages to me is appalling. They chastise me for the time it takes me to craft real sentences and spell words as they were intended to be spelled. Texting is supposed to be instant. There is no time for proper English.
I fear for our culture when I think about the illiteracy that technology is enabling and even promoting.
As my so-called “conversations” progress with these teenagers, I get frustrated with the texting back and forth and I will often spontaneously dial their number to initiate a voice telephone conversation—something that is becoming increasingly rare, as well. My frustration only gets worse as the banter of the conversation is at an almost impossible rapid pace synonymous with the speed of keyboard typing. Enunciation isn’t important. The vocabulary is one foreign to me. I have trouble understanding a single word. They might as well have been talking to me in a foreign language.
I repeat—I fear for our culture.
I also fear for our democracy. We now shamefully have politicians reducing public discourse, public policy debate and political rhetoric to 140 characters in a tweet.
I don’t know why it is important for me to know that a certain Liberal candidate for MLA in my community had a “great start to the weekend, door knocking yesterday and the 'Dim Sum' circuit today” and that he “got a little wet and met many great people.” Hardly the kind of thing that will make me vote for him.
There are political consultants out there promoting this kind of superficial approach to earning the trust of voters.
I repeat—I fear for our democracy.
With our culture and our democracy at such risk, remember to use today’s ever-evolving social media tools for what they are— mere tools to superficially communicate instantly, faster, wider, more targeted, more spontaneously, etc. The operative word is “superficially”. But don’t mistake tweeting, texting and tagging for dialogue or discourse.
Meanwhile, I’ll continue to stock my desk drawer with some good writing paper and a fine fountain pen or two.
“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it."
It doesn’t matter who originally said this (it’s attributed to a number of worthy people); its truth is obvious, even in an age of celebrity whoredom that sometimes makes the concept a good reputation seem ridiculously quaint.
But it isn’t, and these days Vancouver is feeling the fear and pain of ruin in the old sense. The city’s reputation as a safe and quiet city whose virtues find favour on a global scale is taking a pounding. Do we care? You bet.
A colleague of mine offers the thought that the huge public outpouring of grief over the murder of Wendy Beaudry-Ladner is partly displaced mourning for what the city has lost on a much larger scale in recent months.
Beaudry-Ladner was an exemplary Vancouverite – hard-working, public-spirited, inspirational and much loved, yet far from the public eye until her appalling death. In many ways, she embodied the decent characteristics this city likes to attribute to itself, including a becoming modesty about her own substantial achievements. A community would have to very jaded not to grieve the loss of such an exemplary member.
But there is little to love in the image of the many young men who have died this year in the city’s drug wars, and in the process brought Vancouver into disrepute. Their families and friends sometimes speak well of their better characteristics in tearful eulogies, but the telling phrase, “known to police,” tarnishes whatever social currency they take to their graves.
But these deaths do not go unnoticed; the city feels their loss, just as it feels the loss of reputation it suffers from the cruel and duplicitous actions of the criminal underworld in which they function. It is for itself that the city grieves – for the loss of the lives of its citizens who once held such promise, and that its collective reputation should be globally shredded in such a way.
Back in 2000, the British newspaper The Independent had this to say about Vancouver: “For a taste of laid-back West Coast living that's closer than LA, you could do worse than Vancouver. If the air feels particularly fresh it's because this groovy Canadian city is bordered by mountains, forests and ocean... and it has just banned smoking in public.”
Twenty years.
This month, it rendered a much more-quoted judgment: “Once upon a very recent time, Vancouver had a clean, safe image. Nestled between a spectacular bay and snow-capped mountains, this Canadian city, which is twice the size of Birmingham, was described by The Economist as the most liveable in the world. Not any more. As it prepares to host the 2010 Winter Olympics, what it's got now is not cuddly, eco-friendly publicity, but blood-spattered streets littered with shell casings and corpses.”
Five minutes. The image of crime has attached itself to Vancouver, and our reputation has suffered as a result. We know this, and we are not happy; our grief is obvious. So is the road back. As with all efforts at rehabilitation, we must start now to work hard to build our reputation again.
