Tag Archives: Wikipedia

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The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men Gang aft agley

Two steps forward and one step back –isn’t that  always the way with progress? Reward coupled with unintended consequences? The Industrial Revolution with worker exploitation? Nuclear power with the Bomb. Nothing, it seems, comes without a price. Even religion, the great leveller, once established brooks no rivals. Life itself, is a succession of survivors outcompeting the other contenders.

But simply to focus on the successes is to miss the important lessons to be learned from the failures. In biology the difference between winning and losing might hinge on a single change in a single gene, or more instructively, on an adaptation of an existing organ for another, more useful function in a different environment –an exaptation. Arms and hands for wings, in the case of bats, or for fins, in the cases of aquatic mammals like whales and dolphins.

In the early days after the discovery of X-rays, their ability to see through things was thought to be miraculous, and many possible uses were suggested. It was not until much later, after countless reports of cancers, burns, hair loss and worse, that the dangers of its careless use were acknowledged. Then, Phoenix-like, from the ashes of its many unwanted side-effects, grew carefully investigated treatments like irradiation for tumours, CT scans for internal visualizations, or fluoroscopy for placement of medical kit like stents, anti-embolism balloons, etc.

Unfortunately, even nowadays, the sundry complications of progress are often inadequately predicted in advance, probably because most things are multifaceted and changing one parameter has a knock-on effect on the others. Clearing forests for agriculture changes the animals that can survive in the changed ecosystem; monoculture to maximize demand for a particular variety of crop, say, increases the likelihood that the plants –previously diverse- may not be able to withstand the onslaught of a disease or infestation that would otherwise have only affected a small portion of their number. Evolution would normally have winnowed out the susceptibles, leaving only the resistant plants to reproduce. But all of this is Grade 9 biology, isn’t it?

What led me to think about this was an article in the Smithsonian Magazine discussing the effects of making friction matches on the women and children involved in their manufacture: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/friction-matches-were-boon-those-lighting-firesnot-so-much-matchmakers-180967318/ – 6ZQ6WshMH2Ghpoys.03

‘Like many other poorly paid and tedious factory jobs in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, match makers were predominantly women and children, writes Killgrove [in an article for Mental Floss]. “Half the employees in this industry were kids who hadn’t even reached their teens. While working long hours indoors in a cramped, dark factory put these children at risk of contracting tuberculosis and getting rickets, matchstick making held a specific risk: phossy jaw.” This gruesome and debilitating condition was caused by inhaling white phosphorus fumes during those long hours at the factory. “Approximately 11 percent of those exposed to phosphorus fumes developed ‘phossy jaw’ about five years after initial exposure, on average”. The condition causes the bone in the jaw to die and teeth to decay, resulting in extreme suffering and sometimes the loss of the jaw. Although phossy jaw was far from the only side-effect of prolonged white phosphorus exposure, it became a visible symbol of the suffering caused by industrial chemicals in match plants.’
So much so, that by 1892, newspapers were investigating the problem. ‘“Historical records often compare sufferers of phossy jaw to people with leprosy because of their obvious physical disfigurement and the condition’s social stigma,” Killgrove writes. Eventually match makers stopped using white phosphorus in matches, and it was outlawed in the United States in 1910.’

Civilization is the steady accumulation of successes over failures. Trials and errors –mistakes which perhaps seem to have been largely anticipatable in retrospect- summate to useable compromises. It’s how a child learns; it’s how evolution learns.

But the point of this essay is not so much to highlight the exploitation of workers in the past as to suggest that there can be sociological as well as biological evolution. After all, the etymological root of the word is the Latin evolvere –to unfold.

Occupational Safety and Health -as a distinct discipline, at least- is a relatively recent development stemming from labour movements and their concern about worker safety in the wake of the Industrial Revolution. As Wikipedia explains it: ‘The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in the period from about 1760 to sometime between 1820 and 1840. This transition included going from hand production methods to machines, new chemical manufacturing and iron production processes, the increasing use of steam power, the development of machine tools and the rise of the factory system.’

Although this provided jobs and undoubtedly improved many aspects of living standards, the driving force was production, and in its early stages, had little regard for worker safety or health. Enter the labour movements in the early 19th century, along with great resistance to their demands. In many instances they were seen as antithetical to progress –antithetical to Capitalism, for that matter. And yet, in the fullness of time, the benefits of a healthy workforce to economic success evolved from an initial, grudging pretense of acceptance in some countries to a legal framework of protection in others.

There is certainly a long way to go along this path to be sure, and exploitation still seems a default that is all too easy to overlook. Especially since it is the poor and vulnerable who are usually the victims –people with little voice of their own, and even less power to resist.

But are things actually changing? Does knowledge of exploitation make a difference? We know slavery is still practiced; we know that refugees are still being brutalized and abused in places like Libya; women are still being kidnapped and sold into prostitution despite the best intentions of agencies like the World Health Organization.

So, do the gains experienced in some areas, offset the tragedies in others? We cannot appreciate the broad sweep of History in the few years we are allotted, and evolution –even social evolution- can be deceptive and disheartening. But remember the words of Khalil Gibran:

You are good when you walk to your goal firmly and with bold steps.
Yet you are not evil when you go thither limping.
Even those who limp go not backward.

I have to hope he saw something that I missed along the way…

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Oh, What Men Dare Do!

There seemed to be an inordinate amount of talk about polygamy last year –perhaps because of the long-awaited trial of two offenders from the town of Bountiful in British Columbia. In Canada, polygamy is a criminal offence under section 293 of the Criminal Code, but prosecutions have been rare. Polygamy must be differentiated from Bigamy, of course. With both of them, there are multiple partners (usually women) but with polygamy the marriage partners are presumably willing and knowledgeable about the other partners, whereas with bigamy, there is an attempt to deceive. Or, in a more legal framework, bigamy is the crime of marrying while one has a spouse still living, and from whom no valid divorce has been obtained.

I have to admit that I didn’t know that ‘polygamy’ was gender neutral –or, rather, it was nowhere near the apex of the pile of words I figured I’d look up some day. But, now that I mention it, I wonder if I’d stopped to think about the etymology, I would have known something was up –at least in our increasingly multi-gendered society… Although, in fairness to me, it’s roots are clear: gamos means something like ‘marry’ or ‘union’ in Greek. In fact, the term can be either ‘polygyny’ –many wives, or, I suppose, ‘polyandry’ –many husbands, but we don’t usually need to be so specific. As Claudio says in Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, ‘Oh, what men dare do! What men may do! What men daily do, not knowing what they do!’

The origins of polygyny –sorry, polygamy– are nested in the depths of time, but according to a 2010 article in the Independent, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/the-big-question-whats-the-history-of-polygamy-and-how-serious-a-problem-is-it-in-africa-1858858.html, ‘It is most common in places where pre-colonial economic activity centred around subsistence farming […]Africa being a prime example. High levels of infant mortality may be a factor; when many children do not survive past the age of five a family needs more than one child-bearer to be economically viable. Then there is war. When a lot of men die, having more than one wife boosts the population most swiftly.’

But of course, times change, and so do economic and political pressures. Interestingly ‘Some anthropologists believe that polygamy has been the norm through human history. In 2003, New Scientist magazine suggested that, until 10,000 years ago, most children had been sired by comparatively few men. Variations in DNA, it said, showed that the distribution of X chromosomes suggested that a few men seem to have had greater input into the gene pool than the rest. By contrast most women seemed to get to pass on their genes. Humans, like their primate forefathers, it said, were at least “mildly polygynous”.’

It’s certainly not the norm nowadays, and often illegal. And yet, remember that in 2010, the president of South Africa, Jacob Zuma, ‘married his fifth wife in a traditional ceremony at his remote homestead in KwaZulu-Natal. His first wife, whom he married in 1973, was there to see him wed a woman 30 years his junior. His second wife stayed home to prepare the reception. He had two other wives but he divorced one in 1998 and another committed suicide in 2000.’ And the article went on to suggest that ‘he has not finished yet. The other day he paid the traditional dowry for his sixth fiancée [the article was published in 2010].’

‘In 1998 the University of Wisconsin surveyed more than a thousand societies. Of these just 186 were monogamous. Some 453 had occasional polygyny and in 588 more it was quite common. Just four featured polyandry.’ The study is obviously an older one, and societies and their mores evolve. According to an article in Wikipedia (last edited in July 2017), ‘Polygamy is [now] legal in 58 out of nearly 200 sovereign states, the vast majority of them being Muslim-majority countries situated in Africa and Asia. In most of these states, polygyny is allowed and legally sanctioned. Polyandry is illegal in virtually every state in the world. In India, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, and Sri Lanka polygamy is only legal for Muslims. In Nigeria and South Africa, polygamous marriages under customary law and for Muslims are legally recognized.’ That said, however, it is relatively common still in many Arab nations; among the Bedouin population of Israel it stands at about 30 per cent, according to the Independent.

I’m not sure what to make of all this. At the very least, it’s confusing -and not only for me, I suspect. What about at the state level for those countries in whom polygamy is illegal, like Canada and the U.S.A.? What are they to do with immigrants with two or more wives who seek asylum from persecution or war in their home countries? Should they be refused entry under all circumstances even if their needs are compelling and otherwise would have been candidates for acceptance?

There have been attempts to work around this dilemma, of course. Until recently at least, the U.S. has denied immigration to polygynists (either the man or any of his wives) but under some circumstances, ‘a refugee who was practicing polygamy before he immigrated will be required by U.S. immigration law to designate one wife as his legal wife to accompany him to the United States. Years later, after becoming a U.S. citizen, he might divorce that wife, and marry the woman who was formerly his second wife, in order to petition for her to immigrate to the United States.’ (nolo.com -legal encyclopedia)

Okay, so there are ways around it, but in an already overcrowded world and especially in modern societies with safety nets for its more vulnerable citizens, it seems to me that whatever use polygamy once had –marrying widows to ensure orphans are taken care of, or maybe a way of quickly increasing a specific population, or even, of course, lessening the burden of work for a solo wife- is no longer necessary. One gets the distinct impression, however much disguised, that polygyny is merely an excuse for male sexual gratification dressed up as a tradition –another not so covert way of diminishing female authority and power.

I fail to see any way in which polygyny fosters gender equality, let alone female autonomy. And I would challenge any male who purports to believe that parity is possible under those circumstances, to argue as strenuously for polyandry. To accept that he would be as equal a partner as his wife and her other husbands… But of course, he could argue that polyandry is extremely uncommon and also illegal almost everywhere. That there must be a reason for that.

Gosh, I wonder what that would be…

 

 

 

 

 

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She wears her faith but as the fashion of her phone.

Everything is a matter of time, isn’t it? Everything changes. Like the apocryphal monkeys typing away infinitely, everything will be written. Everything will be transmogrified somewhere. Some time. Somehow. I suppose that should be a comfort, but I can’t escape the nagging feeling that there is something unrequited in all that: an imbalance between now and then -no bridge to mediate between what is, and what some nebulous future may unfurl for our children’s children.

And yet, an article I found offers some hope that I might have missed the entr’acte, missed a vital link in the ever lengthening chain of progress –or at least underestimated its importance. I’m talking about the smartphone. I grow old… I grow old… I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled, as T.S. Eliot wrote –that, at least, may be a suitable mea culpa for my inattentiveness, perhaps.

I should have seen that with all of the changes occasioned by the phone, other subtle philosophical alterations might well hide within its shadow. ‘He wears his faith but as the fashion of his hat; it ever changes with the next block’, as Beatrice says in Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. Who would have thought that religion itself might live the same fate? http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170222-how-smartphones-and-social-media-are-changing-religion The mobile phone Bible seems to be replacing the book Bible –at least with many of the younger religious crowd. And the result may have been a loss of context –no thumbing through the pages looking for something, just an arrival at whatever nugget was requested –like looking it up in Wikipedia. In other words, an information Christianity, a virtual religion. ‘“A new kind of mutated Christianity for a digital age is appearing,” says Phillips [director of the Codec Research Centre for Digital Theology at Durham University in the UK]. “One that follows many of the ethics of the secular world.” Known as moralistic therapeutic deism, this form of belief is focused more on the charitable and moral side of the Bible – the underlying tenets of religion, rather than the notion that the Universe was created by an all-seeing, all-powerful leader.’

Although I hold neither religious affiliation, nor any particular interest in the Bible, I have to say I am intrigued by the philosophical machinations the smartphone seems to be engendering –the moralistic therapeutic deism, as it is increasingly being referred to. The results of interviews with three thousand teenagers were summarized in (sorry) Wikipedia, and seem to establish the tenets of this theism. First of all, ‘A god exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth.’ And ‘God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions. The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.’ But what I found particularly interesting was the idea that ‘God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.’

And why do I find this  so-called ‘moralistic therapeutic deism’ so interesting? It seems to me it may be the early phases of an evolution of religious thought engendered by the way we are beginning to assimilate information. Or perhaps I should say they are –the millennials. I suspect that we elders –or should I say just ‘olders’- still adhere to the belief that data does not necessarily spell knowledge.

But, as the article points out, ‘[…]a separate strand of Christian practice is booming, buoyed by the spread of social media and the decentralisation of religious activity. For many, it’s no longer necessary to set foot in a church. In the US, one in five people who identify as Catholics and one in four Protestants seldom or never attend organised services, according to a survey conducted by the Pew Research Centre. Apps and social media accounts tweeting out Bible verses allow a private expression of faith that takes place between a person and their phone screen. And the ability to pick and choose means they can avoid doctrine that does not appeal. A lot of people who consider themselves to be active Christians may not strictly even believe in God or Jesus or the acts described in the Bible.’

I doubt that this phenomenon is exclusive to Christianity, either. Any religious doctrine which has a credo that can be digitized, is susceptible -nuggetable into bite-sized digestible portions. Wikipediable.

I think that is what two girls were talking about at the bus stop a few days ago. Both wearing delightfully colourful hijabs, they were huddled around their smartphones giggling.

“Where did you find that?” the taller of the two said shaking her head. She was dressed just like any other teenager –running shoes, jeans, and a bright orange leather jacket- but a dark blue hijab seemed almost tossed onto her head and barely draped over her shoulders. Perhaps it was the wind, but the almost-studied disarray was charming.

The other girl, stouter and wearing a long black coat, also sported a red, hijab-like scarf that barely covered half her head despite her constant readjustments. “It’s Al-Quran [an app, I later discovered],” she answered as if that should have been obvious.

The taller girl tapped on her screen for a moment and then nodded her head. “But, you know that’s not what Abbad said…”

The other girl just shrugged. “He always thinks he knows everything, Lamiya.”

“Well…” I could see Lamiya sigh, even though I was trying not to watch them. “He usually gets it right, Nadirah… I mean, don’t you think…?”

I couldn’t help but smile when Nadirah rolled her eyes. “He only gets it right when you don’t know! If you don’t check on it…”

Lamiya seemed to pout. “I just, like, took his word for it…”

“You can’t do that blindly, Lami… Not anymore.” She made another attempt to readjust her hijab in the biting wind. “Not when you can look it up!” She shivered deeper into her coat and I could see her breath whenever the wind died down. “Things just aren’t what they used to be for our parents… We can actually, like, check,” she said as their bus pulled up and they got on, leaving me still informationless in the cold.

 

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The Dark Night of the Canadian Soul

I hesitate to refer to the 16th century mystic Spanish poet St. John of the Cross’ dark night of the soul, but I am troubled by the political process in which I feel engulfed. Swallowed… And yes, powerless. And it’s not so much that I disagree with the ideology expressed or dislike the personalities of the leaders and their approach to solving what they feel are the problems confronting the country (according to their polls) –that is politics and universal. If it were only that, it would then become merely a matter of taste or confirmation bias that determined my vote. I might feel disappointed if I didn’t get my choice of government, but not angry.

But I feel angry now –already. Or is it helpless? I find myself powerless to change what appears to be happening around me. Mutating around me as I watch. Party after party seems to be willing to debase itself for votes, pandering to the fearful in one population and the ignorant in another. It is not a principled approach and it does not provide equality for all –or even most.

It seems to me that in a democracy –especially one that espouses multiculturalism as does Canada- it is the rule of law that must be equitable: laws that apply to all -and equally, no matter whether it is a small minority whose ethnic or geographic culture pulls it in an awkward direction, or an elsewhere-maligned religious group who chooses to dress differently from our current norm. Democracy –at least as I imagine it- is not simply the rule of the majority; intrinsic to it is an obligation to protect the minorities within it because it is the right thing to do. And because the law applies to everyone –even minorities.

The rights of all should not be subject to arbitrary or capricious revision without exhaustive and careful consultation from all those who might be affected. It should not be so much a majority decision, as an examined and consensus-driven decision. One side should not be pitted against another. As in international relations, the ideal would be for all sides to talk to each other. Communicate. And while a decision need not be unanimous, it should at least meet with the general approval of every side. Polling –no matter how cleverly conceived- canvasses only those who are polled…

But you wonder why I am angered and not simply disappointed at the political process? I seems as if I can no longer vote for the principles I hold important. Perhaps I have retrospective falsification of my memory, but I can’t remember as much divisiveness in federal politics before -as much negative advertising, as much pretended obsequiousness and crawling for power. As much casting aside of principles in a desperate grab for control. I am appalled that we, as a nation, must tolerate this fawning pretense of servility. Appealing to the lowest common denominator may seem fair to some, but it is certainly not the way to run a country for all.

I blame the current government for acceding to those who would divide the country to satisfy their agenda. I blame the political system for allowing those who stumble first past the post (FPTP) to be elected even if they have not earned the majority of votes. And I blame us all –you and me- for not demanding a more representative way of electing the government. As much as I dislike using quotes from Wikipedia, one of their summaries does seem to illustrate my frustration with FPTP: Wasted votes are votes cast for losing candidates or votes cast for winning candidates in excess of the number required for victory. For example, in the UK general election of 2005, 52% of votes were cast for losing candidates and 18% were excess votes – a total of 70% wasted votes. This is perhaps the most fundamental criticism of FPTP, that a large majority of votes may play no part in determining the outcome. This “winner-takes-all” system may be one of the reasons why “voter participation tends to be lower in countries with FPTP than elsewhere.”

In other words, in Canada, I have no option but to attempt to vote strategically -and for someone with whom I do not necessarily agree- simply to make sure that the one I disagree with even more, does not get elected. If I vote on principle, or electoral platform, my vote may be wasted.

So why do I vote? Perhaps because the devil I know may well be worse than the devil I don’t… Help me St. John of the Cross, because I find it truly dark out there.

 

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Can Anyone Laugh?

Frailty, thy name is woman, Hamlet said, upset about his mother’s behaviour. Perhaps Turkey’s Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc had bad memories of the play. In a recent speech on moral corruption in Turkey, he is quoted as saying that : “Chastity is so important. It is not only a name. It is an ornament for both women and men. [She] will have chasteness…. [The woman] will know what is haram and not haram. She will not laugh in public. She will not be inviting in her attitudes and will protect her chasteness.“

http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2014/07/deputy_prime_

minister_of_turkey_says_women_shouldnt_laugh_in_public.html   

She will not laugh in public? This part, at least, is so patently stupid that I wondered whether it hid a voracious appetite for literature and philosophy -some reference or other to something pedantic or arcane. He is reputedly well educated and intelligent; perhaps he was naively mindful of Nietzsche and his assertion that laughter is an escape from the prison of reason and logic, while also having the potential of expressing social conflict. Maybe Arinc is afraid that women may have reason to stir up social tension.

Too academic? Okay then, suppose he has read Henri Bergson who felt that laughter may eliminate eccentric behaviour because it derides those who deviate from social norms… On the other hand, maybe he hasn’t: I suspect this is a bit more of a Mobius strip than Arinc would like.

Well, there’s always Plato, who didn’t feel that laughter had much value for human experience and in fact may be malicious. He argues that laughter is a malicious reaction to the domination over a more unfortunate member of society, and those occasionally engaged in laughter are exposed to something base which should be avoided. (Many of these quotes are from Sewanee Senior Philosophy Essays:

http://www.sewanee.edu/philosophy/Capstone/2002/Greenfield.html)

But of course Arinc would then be cognizant of the various classical theories of laughter – the three most mentioned ones being: Superiority Theory which is the one advanced by Plato and which suggests that “all laughter is a response to the comical ignorance in others.” And then there is the Relief Theory engendered by stress or anxiety. Another would be the Theory of Incongruity which is a reaction to something unexpectedly inappropriate…

But these don’t seem to capture the thrust of his argument. Maybe he understood the impenetrable words of Thomas Hobbes: “The passion of laughter is nothing else but sudden glory arising from sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the infirmity of others, or with our own formerly.” –although isn’t that just the Superiority Theory disguised by words..?

My own theory is that he was unduly influenced by the Wikipedia take on Herodotus:

For Herodotus, laughers can be distinguished into three types:[32]

  • Those who are innocent of wrongdoing, but ignorant of their own vulnerability
  • Those who are mad
  • Those who are overconfident

Why not Wikipedia? It’s easily found, easily assimilable and, in a pinch, easily editable. And it would be simplistic enough to appeal to people who are only half listening to his speech. Who only half remember his words. Too bad he didn’t plagiarize the page –then he could have been exposed for more than just propounding a silly statement. But no, he decided to try on the philosophical garb of religious authority.

And yet, when I actually stop and think about what he said, I have an uneasy feeling that his comments were not steeped in philosophy –Western philosophy, at any rate. They seem to emanate from an assumption that women are beginning to assume a too prominent –too equal–  role in Turkish society. You note that he uses the term ‘haram’ to contain a woman’s actions. As I understand the term, it is an Arabic one of Islamic jurisprudence employed to designate any action forbidden by Allah, and referred to in the Quran as such.

Clearly I am not an Islamic scholar and may be way off the mark, but I cannot seem to find any prohibition on laughter –male or female- in my research. It doesn’t appear to be haram… So what is Arinc talking about? Occuring as it does in a speech for an Eid el-Fitr meeting July 28, it is not likely to be a simple off-the-cuff remark.

http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/women-should-not-laugh-in-public-turkish-deputy-pm-says-.aspx?pageID=238&nID=69732&NewsCatID=338

No, I suspect this was an ill-conceived, and terribly naïve attempt to curb the rising power of women in Turkey. It no doubt disturbs the sleep of those in power –those with vested interests in maintaining the archaic status quo. But by using the religious card, it is all the more abhorrent. That any religion –any culture, for that matter- would proscribe laughter for its adherents is itself ridiculous. Unbelievable. Risible…

At the risk of parsing the stereotype, let me return one final time to Shakespeare –this time to Valentine in The Two Gentlemen of Verona:

“That man that hath a tongue, I say is no man,                                                                                   If with his tongue he cannot win a woman.”  

Listen up Arinc; the world is waiting…and laughing.