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The Issue of Replacing Old Perspectives with New Ones; Instead, Coexist
Recently, I have become conscious of severe bias in “educational” content that I have received and amazingly paid for in the past year. By looking back, I am now aware of the contradiction that many educational resources and its teachers make, as well as general ideas in society.
Have you ever been told that you need to listen to all sides of an argument before you judge someone, or that the least common ideas are the most important ones to hear? I know I have been told this repeatedly in classrooms for many years, especially on topics of history. It is frequently told from a single perspective, and the focus has been to shift that to the other perspectives. But what happens when we try to replace the old with the new? How can we tell if there is an improvement if we forget the things that the old practice entailed? The truth is, we can’t. If we eliminate the voices we simply don’t have the patience to hear, how will we ever rightly call ourselves just? If we silence those who we say are not important, we are not improving, just reversing the narrative.
Humans are wired to want revenge. It is in our nature, because that is how we could most efficiently protect ourselves from further harm inflicted by something or someone. If you get hit on the head by a coconut, you can chuck that coconut as far away as you want so it doesn’t bother you again. But what if the coconut hits another person? You are then just redirecting your problems. We can’t just dump responsibilities onto other people and expect our problems to disappear, especially when those problems are caused directly by that ignorance. And we cannot simply turn the tables on the people who previously caused our problems, then call ourselves better.
But this happens so much. People are too preoccupied with their own problems or ideas to care about how other people’s problems or ideas are just as important. Maybe you both want the same thing but have different reasons. Maybe you both have the same obstacle but have different ways to get around it. Or maybe your negligence to do what you say everyone should do is stopping you from getting things done.
Teachers and officials always insist how it is important to get the perspectives of different groups on issues, yet they almost always participate in these discussions only to talk instead of listen. They hardly budge in any form of argument, especially with a student or someone younger than them.
It is often easier for people to tell younger generations what to do without showing them how. First, it saves the instructor from actually taking the time to give the younger person the tools to do so. Second, the instructor can put off their own responsibility onto a younger person with less experience and fewer tools to complete that responsibility. Listening to others is easier said than done, especially when you are already set in your ways. However, it is just as hard to listen while thinking critically if you haven’t got the tools to do so. It is increasingly frustrating when you have those mental tools but the very people who tell you to listen to all perspectives are hiding the sides of the issue they disagree with. Instead of instructing others, you can learn from them and set an example simultaneously. Create an interdependent relationship with others instead of an instructing relationship.
People often stress the importance of gaining as much information as possible about something before you make a decision, but they hide the perspectives of the people they disagree with. When we learn about a movement in school, even in some university courses, we only learn about the beliefs and actions of the side that won. Don’t you ever wonder why the movement happened in the first place? What sparked it? What did the opposition do? What were the beliefs and actions of the side that didn’t win? Arguments and political movements don’t exist in a vacuum. There are multiple sides, and rarely are there only two. The other people deserve to be heard, and we deserve to learn about them, if only so we know what not to do in the future. One cannot simply erase half of history, which was the issue with the imperialism of European countries and narratives. It is just as bad to flip the narrative and erase the previous one, because then you are no better. Think about what you are asking others to do, and see if you can do it just as well before you put that responsibility on them. We cannot keep replacing everything; some things are better when they work together.
Until next time, keep thinking outside the box, and keep reading in between!
Downsizing Our Economy Could Prevent Future Pandemics
Globalization is the increasing interconnectedness of the countries, cultures, and people of the world. We are so interconnected at this point that it is hard to find out where certain thoughts and practices come from. Our economies are dependent on one another like a Jenga tower, so that if one experiences a shift most others need to adapt. International companies can suck money out of millions of people in several countries for the richest few to take home. Cultures can interact and teach each other amazing things.
Don’t get me wrong; there are so many benefits of globalization that we can feel every day. Lower consumer prices, exposure to different cultures, and access to the newest, coolest technologies around the world. However, there are negatives as well, including modern Western imperialism, international political conflict, exploitation of external labour and tax havens by international corporations, the cloudy origins of climate changing emissions, and the spread of diseases and viruses on an immense scale.
I have read some articles recently about how the COVID-19 pandemic originated and was spread by our food systems, and the WHO bulletin “Pandemic prevention and unsustainable animal-based consumption” says this specifically relates to the consumption of animal products by humans. However, in the Future Perfect Podcast episode, “How to prevent a factory farmed pandemic,” one of the guests on the show, epidemiologist Martha Nelson, brings up the ways that pigs are moved around the US which increases risks of disease transmission between pigs and then into the human population. This made me think more about the ways that animal movements, including our own human movements, as well as our relationships with each other and other animals, are at the root of disease and virus transmission.
Animals have always held a place in human interactions. From the European use of livestock to supply humans with food to the Native American interactions with dogs, we have almost always had some form of interaction with animals. As these interactions grew in number of animals, frequency, and physical closeness, the possibilities of transmission from animals to humans grew. The same thing happened when humans began building larger civilizations that had people living closer together and interacting closely more often. When we add in the more recent movement patterns of people and animals around the world, we can see how the spread of disease becomes a larger scale issue.
Many scholars say that if we want to help the planet and our own health, we need to stop eating animal products or at least dramatically decrease our consumption of them. While I agree that it isn’t good for humans to have a diet heavy in meat, I think that the practice of eating meat is not necessarily the cause of disease transmission or climate change. I think that when we look not at the fact that we interact with animals, and instead look at how we interact with animals and each other, as well as the scale at which we perform these interactions, we can begin to see the real origins. The cause of disease is not that people eat meat; the cause of disease is the interactions with animals and people that occur before and during the production of the food, as well as the movement patterns during which these interactions happen. The cause of climate change is not animals existing; instead, the cause of climate change is the tremendous scale at which we, as humans, do most things nowadays without an equally large balancing method for these practices. This is not only regarding food consumption. It also has to do with transportation, production of material goods, movement of people and animals, and waste.
If life is not lived in balance of good and bad, the scales tip so that things change. If we produce too much heat trapping gas in too short a time, we are bound to get hotter until we give nature the time to heal. If you produce no heat trapping gas, however, you’re going to get pretty cold. In the past, we lived more in the healthy balancing range of nature. We had smaller civilizations, we had natural population checks, and we didn’t overconsume. I think that instead of completely abolishing capitalism, and ceasing to eat animal products altogether, and going back to separatist social policies, we can find a solution in between the extremes that allows people to continue interacting with one another while helping the planet recover from past and present damage. I think that we could downsize the economy to focus on small businesses and communities instead of focusing on the individual or the global picture. Farms could go back to ethical, small, non-factory operations and supply for those who want the products in that area. We can provide more jobs that are better in quality when we have a greater variety of smaller businesses that are not operating at a global scale out of greed. We can maintain our progressive social state without dramatically changing our economic systems.
Capitalism itself isn’t bad, and animal products are not bad in themselves. It is the scale that things have grown to with the human population that I think is a bit of an issue. Any big change to a system is bound to have undesirable effects, so why don’t we limit these impacts by starting with small changes? In the future, if those changes don’t work, then you can go make more. Sometimes by saying “This doesn’t work, so let’s just do the opposite”, we could end up in a worse situation or overshooting our needs. If we had an economy based on small businesses, what would you be able to do better without fear of being gobbled up by a dominant corporation? The possibilities are limitless, which means that with more businesses, we have more ideas, motivation, and innovation to get us to sustainability and balance.
Until next time, keep thinking outside the box, and keep reading in between!
Power Relations in the Distribution of Knowledge
A common idea held by upper class and educated people is that the issue with the world is that so many people are uneducated. However, I don’t see many sophisticated, rich people paying for or giving away educational resources. Nor do I see post-secondaries allowing people without university emails and passwords giving away access to academic articles that they say are extremely influential and helpful for thinking about life. I also don’t see people who are wishing for equal distribution of everything giving their thoughts and resources to everyone. If the real issue with the world is that so many people are uneducated, why don’t the people who think this use their power and superior stance to stop it? I think there may be a few reasons.
Now, let’s say for a moment that the issue with the world is that resources, power, and knowledge are distributed unevenly among people, species, and countries. Many scholars say this is the problem and advocate for a “new” economic system of communism/socialism to solve this issue. They want to change the economy so things are not sold, they are distributed for “free” by a higher power (government) equally to everyone in the country. However, articles about this very concept aren’t distributed equally. Now, I understand the obvious reasons for this, which include materials costs and the authors right to gain money in exchange for their work; that does not mean that I cannot see the hypocrisy underlying this reality of unequal distribution of knowledge. These scholars want resources and power to be evenly distributed to everyone, which means they should want people to have equal access to their work (especially if they believe their work could make a huge difference in the world). Not to mention, if you cannot afford to spread free knowledge to everyone using the powers of the internet, how could we afford distributing tangible items throughout a country to everyone for free? It doesn’t make any sense…
Until we think of how the world runs. If we can find any substance in the phrase “knowledge is power,” and I believe we can, then we can understand why knowledge is something you need to pay for in so many cases. You need to pay to buy a book, take a class, earn a degree, learn about philosophy, learn how to grow plants, or how to parent. Once you have this knowledge, no one can take it away from you, and you will always perceive yourself as having a mental advantage over anyone who does not share the same knowledge base because of the value you place on that knowledge. Those with more knowledge that is considered relevant to life will have more power. We as a society value the people with abstract sorts of knowledge more than we value those with other kinds of knowledge, even if the sort of knowledge possessed by those who we value less is more relevant to or useful in the majority of people’s daily life. The issue of unequal power relations does not lie in the amount of knowledge one has, rather in the types of knowledge they have gained throughout their life and how much we value that type of knowledge.
Then, there is the fact that those who already have power get to decide what knowledge we deem powerful as a society. Celebrities who say that they like a certain brand make us want to gain experience with and knowledge about that company. Scientists and entrepreneurs who say that a certain type of technology is better than the rest give us the impression that this knowledge is better than knowledge about other less important forms of technology. Politicians who say that the economy is no longer beneficial to people with certain skills give us the impression that those people are less valuable members of society. So, if the powerful decide what types of knowledge are most powerful, they can ensure that they stay powerful until there is no longer any power in regular people.
A huge basis for feminist and anti-racist activism, as well as other forms of important activism, is the reality of the powerful remaining in power by deciding who gets to be powerful. They ensure their own power by making those without power believe them about what knowledge is useful and valued. In the case of communism or socialism, the amount of government intervention and control of the market and the actions of the people through laws and informal social control would make the government the one entity that has this concentration of power that is currently reserved for those with money and valued types of knowledge.
If we want to actually close the wealth and power gap, we can start by closing the knowledge and access to information gap. Why don’t we start with complete government transparency? Why don’t we start with eliminating the reservation of knowledge and power for the already rich and powerful? If you think this is unreasonable, why? Could it be that you just want yourself and people who share parts of your identity to be more powerful? Could it be that you have prejudices against people who don’t share your identity? Could it be that you think your power and knowledge are more important than someone else’s? Could it be that you, too, know that the government is not going to allow the public to access absolutely everything they do? Not everything is as it seems, and maybe we would be able to conceptualize the truth if we ALL had access to ALL the resources we wanted, from all perspectives.
Until next time, keep thinking outside the box, and keep reading in between!
Strict Moral Labels Can Affect our Children’s Relationships to Food: How to Help Them Through It
TW: mental health talk, EDs
Almost everyone was raised with the categories “good food” and “junk food.” We were also raised with food guides that strongly discouraged eating things like chips, cake, pop/soda, and candy. However, while these things are proven to be harmful to your physical health after a lot of time consuming them and only them, I want to talk about the more immediate effects on our mental health that are arguably more harmful in the long run that are caused by the moral labeling of different foods.
When we label things as “good” or “bad”, our goal is to either encourage the repetition of that behavior or discourage that behavior from happening at all. These binary attitudes toward human behaviors bind us to a certain course of action depending on the situations we find ourselves in. Unfortunately, we often learn as children that good behavior is good all the time, such as being polite, using our manners, and saying nice things. This then follows that the opposite is also true; bad behavior is reprimanded all the time, such as hitting, raising one’s voice in anger or frustration, or calling someone names. This labeling of behaviors in simple terms is good for the first steps of learning that a child takes, but can be harmful later on if they are not taught how to expand this labeling to be more complicated and shifting.
When parents teach young kids that hitting is bad, they usually understand after a while of being told not to do it that they just shouldn’t do it. This immediate effect is good; after all, we don’t want a person to grow up thinking that fighting random people for mild inconveniences is okay. But when we raise our kids to understand that “bad” things are those that you should never do, they begin to be affected later in life by what other people label as positive or negative.
It is a well-known fact that school age adolescents are extremely affected by the actions and opinions of their closest peers. Starting out, children often echo the opinions of their parents. Different parents have different opinions. This causes discrepancies between what behaviors children deem appropriate at what times, meaning that children will either be influenced by the other kids who they like most or they will fall into groups that believe similar things as they do. Unfortunately, due to the dynamics of popularity in schools and children’s wish to be accepted by their peers, they usually start with the former and may continue changing in order to fulfill this goal.
Influence and interactions between people is how we learn how to carry out our roles in society. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing in itself. However, when we combine this fact with the tendency of children to learn things in extremes, we get the unfortunate result of potentially negative mental health impacts.
By teaching kids indirectly that bad things are always bad, often for the convenience of not having to tell them every situation in which certain “bad” things are okay, they learn to sort information into only two categories. Adults may get frustrated with children who see things as black or white, or truth or lie because we have been able to develop more than two categories to sort information into. Children may get upset with their parents because they have difficulty understanding what “maybe” means after years of only yes or no. As a result, when they get into school and the important people in life shift from family to friends, they are still too young to understand the “maybe” underlying what their friends are talking about.
Fast-forward to young teen years. They are now exposed to media, often only containing one perspective (read my previous article on how algorithms divide society), which they tend to cling onto for a long time and use to sort things into one of the “good” or “bad” categories. Children are taught about food, body image, and trends through the media more than they learn from teachers in school.
Friends see a new trend – good category. Friends or role models (including parents) go on a diet – pizza and chips are now in the bad category instead of the fun category. They don’t yet have the tools to understand that sometimes trends are bad or unkind, such as the lucid dreams trend, and don’t understand that things full-grown adults are doing to look like full-grown adults may not be good for kids. When we apply this to food and body image, this knowledge of how we learn puts mental health issues into perspective.
Eating disorders, self-esteem issues, and bullying stem from what we all teach our kids as a group of older role models. Children mimic behaviors that they see, and rarely have an easy time listening to what we say unless we also show them through our actions. This is how drugs, dieting, and general behaviors are learned and taken up by kids. While kids learn faster from actions instead of words, repeated words have just as much of an effect on them because of how our minds are wired. When we apply this to food and body image, we can see how spoken words, even when directed at other people, can have an effect on the eating habits and image children have of themselves. Bullying works this way. You get a bunch of little kids calling one kid fat or ugly, every day. The kid begins to sort “fat” into the bad category because so many other kids are projecting their view of it being bad, even when their image of obesity is a lie. If they are called fat, then they are bad, and must become “good”, which is often where the issue starts. They don’t understand that good foods aren’t good to have all the time, nor do they make one pure, and they don’t understand that “bad” foods aren’t always bad.
From the point our kids are born, we want them to grow up happy, strong, and accepted by their peers. We help them fit into society by teaching them the basics of behaviors that society likes and doesn’t like. When they grow up to go to school, their close ties to parents tend to grow a bit further away and their friends make up for that closeness. Unfortunately, this is where the problems start for the majority of kids. Their friends start preaching what their parents have told them, and the most dominant child usually projects this standard and these ideas onto the other kids in order for them all to “fit in.” When they combine moral teachings from parents with the information absorbed from the media, they begin to think that different things are either good or bad at a new level. They still have a difficult time figuring out different situations that make behaviors acceptable or not on their own, and begin to think in the same extremes about new things. These new things often include their bodies and food.
So, it isn’t the parents’ fault that their kid may have confidence issues, nor is it the fault of the child. It is simply a result of our relationships with our children and our kids’ relationships with other children. However, we can make sure that our relationship with our kids remains strong. Children cannot learn things that aren’t concrete on their own. They need help. So, I think that one way we can help prevent some negative impacts of life on our children’s mental health is to maintain that close relationship with your kids. Yes, your kids are still going to grow up a little and want to do different things, and they are going to get closer to their friends. You can still build that loving, caring, mutually-respecting relationship with them early on and keep it alive. Adapt to your child’s interests and support their natural curiosity. If they ask you a question, don’t put it off or say that they will learn when they are older because this shifts the responsibility for getting the answer onto them when you could just give it to them and ease their minds, thus lengthening the relationship ties between you. If you see them developing new habits, make sure that they are positive and don’t lead to unhealthy practices later on. Let them know and prove to them that they can depend on you when they want to instead of only when they’ve lost everything else, and be as good of a role model as you can. It may take some time and you may need to change how you deal with things, but it will help their mental health in the moment and build a brighter future for them. Who knows, maybe it will help your mental health as well. Relationships are about interdependence, so make sure that your relationship with your children is strong but still breathable so you can both flourish.
Strength comes from multiple muscles working together and supporting each other. Relationships are designed to be similar. Love your kids and they’ll love you back. Most importantly, even if things do turn out less than perfect, it isn’t too late to rebuild or patch up relationships to help them. Encouragement and support are key, and in return your child will begin to behave similarly as well so they may help you.
Until next time, keep thinking outside the box, and keep reading in between!
How Algorithms Work To Divide Society, and How To Prevent It
Almost everyone has a phone or a smart TV, a tablet or iPad, or even a smart toothbrush and smart mirror. We are more connected to each other than ever before, but division in society persists and worsens. With billions of people using the same apps, watching the same videos, and hearing the same sounds, one would think we would have unlimited exposure to consistently new ideas and information. However, anyone with TikTok knows that it shows you select things that the algorithm thinks you’ll like. This, however, does not only happen on social media websites to make sure you receive the cutest dog videos or the hottest makeup challenges. It results in a huge amount of division in society in a number of ways, and its effects are seen everywhere you look.
Social media is pretty much essential if you want to avoid seeming like you live in a sewer. For online businesses, social media is the easiest and cheapest way for you to establish your brand and gain new customers. For celebrities, it is a fun way to engage with your fans in ways that you couldn’t before. For individuals, it is a way to follow people and brands you like and keep up with family and friends. However, we have been studying and feeling the negative effects of social media for years now, and the truth isn’t as pretty as all those filters would make you believe. First off, the filters themselves serve as a wonderful destructor of young people’s self-esteem. They change your facial features in subtle ways that trick your mind into thinking your body is ugly when you take the filter off.
Another way that social media contributes to ill mental health is increasing the fear of missing out (FOMO), especially in young people. You see all your friends going to a party but you didn’t go, and it makes you feel left out and divided from the group. Similarly, while you compare yourself to filters and friends, you are also comparing yourself to celebrities who have tons of experience, money, and makeup (not to mention probably age differences). You begin to feel as if your life is less important or cool than theirs, when it really isn’t. This constant state of comparison gives you a sense of not belonging or becoming an outsider.
Outside of social media, algorithms work to control what information you have access to and influence what you spend money on and where you spend it. Every media site and search engine has algorithms that show the most popular or “relevant” information at the top of the first page. These would normally go by number of clicks and how many people actually use these websites. However, once search engines and media sites figured out that they can charge money for people to show up first when people look for certain things, they began to take advantage of it (sensibly so). It is a good way for people to get their brand or company noticed, but it stops those who work just as hard from gaining the same attention by putting money first. Since studies show that the subconscious mind picks up far more information than the conscious mind, advertisements are valuable ways to sneak into people’s minds so they think of you when they look at a certain product or need a service. The purpose of advertising is to sell the consumer’s attention. This wouldn’t be bad if two important defining things didn’t happen: ranking of importance according to money paid for advertising and continuous streams of advertisements from the same rich companies.
Companies that are already well-established have a really bad habit of snatching up any good advertisement space they can. For example, Walmart has spent around 2 billion US dollars every year since 2009 except from 2011-2014, which was at 1.81 and 1.94 billion. And that’s just in the United States of America alone! How about Nike? In 2019 they spent 1.47 billion dollars for advertisement in the USA and 3.75 billion worldwide. As a result, you see their ads almost everywhere you look. In flyers, newspapers, news sites, social media, and on search engines. They pay their way constantly into your mind so you become a reliable income source for them. This creates a cycle of putting more money into ads and gaining more money from the consumers that see those ads. But, when you have billions of dollars to spare because you don’t pay your workers a living wage, it totally makes sense to use this on advertising so you can crush any small competitors before they even think of starting up. The more advantaged you are, the more advantaged you’ll continue to get. Since there aren’t any limits or rotations for frequency or size of certain companies’ ads, the big ones will be able to continue being the most prevalent. This doesn’t sound like a fair competition to me. You see the same ads from the same companies where you are already shopping so you cannot know about other, cooler, maybe better places that you could shop at.
When you allow the permissions for apps and websites on your phone or computer, what do you think they use that information for? Most of the time, they use it to show you more content similar to stuff you search for and view often. This is how the algorithms on social media and search engines work. It is so personalized and advanced that they can see books and objects in the background of images and show them to you and other people who have seen other videos or pictures with similar books in them.
Now, this may not, on the surface, seem like all that bad of a thing. If you like dog videos, why not see more cute dog videos? If you like tractors, why not see some ads for tractors? However, when our minds get used to seeing or hearing the same content over and over, we begin to think that it is inevitable and the only thing there is. This is the same thing that happens with myths (stay tuned for a future, more detailed post). Your brain hears the same thing over and over again and starts to believe it due to frequency rather than knowing that it isn’t true due to accuracy. It is also how you get a song stuck in your head, or keep on thinking of a joke after you’ve heard it a million times. For news and general informative content, this causes serious division between groups in society.
People who enjoy different things are exposed to different kinds of information. They continue to see the same kinds of information, which often opposes the information that another group is exposed to. When people don’t get access to all sides of a story, they latch onto what they know and think of it as the truth. When people are exposed to different sides of the truth and their brains won’t help them piece together the whole truth, they disagree. This is caused by algorithms, social media, big advertising, and censorship in the media. Unfortunately, some of these things are very hard to avoid due to the need to make money, talk to people who aren’t in your area, or buy things.
We are constantly consuming. We are consuming products, information, and advertisements all the time because of our electronics, connected lifestyles, and jobs. This isn’t a bad thing if we are careful, but there are negatives in everything. If we try to make the good outweigh the bad by trying to find new types of information from new perspectives, making sure we take mental health breaks, and by communicating with others in person as much as possible, we can reduce some of the negative effects of these practices and items on us. We can stop dividing ourselves in society and hating each other,and instead focus on common problems.
Until next time, keep thinking outside the box, and keep reading in between!
Why A Lot of People Don’t Want (and Can’t Afford) for the Convoys to Give Up Now
Are you thankful that you are a woman and have the right to vote and run for office? Are you thankful that you have the legal ability to get a safe abortion, even if you don’t want to or don’t have easy access? Are you thankful that you or your family members can be openly gay without facing legal persecution? Are you happy that you are able to choose which company you work for or that you have the right to start your own business? There are still inequalities and issues with carrying out these rights sometimes, but the structures are there for you to be able to call them out and advocate for change. You may not personally be affected by these rights, and you may not have experienced life without these helpful structures, but they mean wonders to those who would have a terrible life without them. I know I am happy that I can vote, and protest, and choose to have children or not.
However, we often take these things for granted. Some of us have not yet experienced the feeling of helplessness that comes with rights being denied, or the feeling of rage that comes with government control of your body, or the fear of going out in public wearing a gay pride pin. How about the feeling of dread when your kids are taken from you to be shipped to a school that may kill them? Or maybe the pain that comes as your child dies during birth because you didn’t have access to healthcare that could have saved them or at least terminated them before this event. We have so many privileges and basic rights, even if they are more sound in principle than in practice, that make it so we usually don’t have to worry about these things happening to us. However, when these things do happen to us, we have the ability and the rights in place to allow us to do what we can to change things for future generations.
This is happening right now with many issues, but there is significant division over which is more important. I am going to frame it in terms that show the relative significance of each issue when you look at it in a dynamic way.
In 2020 and the few years before it, there were gatherings of Indigenous people on public roadways to protest the building of pipelines to carry oil through their land. They were met with resistance, and it eventually resulted in the creation of Bill 1 in Alberta. This is the Critical Infrastructure Defence Act, and it can be used to stop blockades, protests, or similar activities that the government says is harming essential infrastructure and causing public safety issues, social, environmental, and economic consequences. This bill made it so the Indigenous could no longer protest on public roadways, and it effectively allowed the government to put their concerns on the back burner. This should not have happened, and these people should have been heard.
In 2018, during the Pride parade in Edmonton, protesters halted the parade in the middle of it to bring light to their issues with uniformed police involvement in the event. The LGBT+ community has a long history of butting heads with police in the US and Canada, mainly because of the countries’ history of homophobia and discriminatory criminalization of deviant acts related to homosexuality. Now, gay marriage is legal in Canada and the US, and anti-discrimination laws are being put forward in most places in these two countries, but there are still some issues that affect the racialized and marginalized members of the queer community. One of these issues is police violence against racialized , particularly black and Indigenous, members of the community. These protesters stopped the parade to have their voices heard after other forms of communication failed, and there was backlash about it. Because of this social and political conflict, the 2019 parade was cancelled. This was another way that the people with larger amounts of power silence the voices of citizens who disagree with the mainstream.
Fast-forward to 2022, when convoys begin happening country-wide to protest the vaccination mandates that the government has put in place for many workers, mainly sparked by their mistake of being unclear about those mandates affecting truckers. Unvaccinated or partially-vaccinated against COVID-19 truckers will be turned away at the border under the mandates that were not communicated clearly or with ample enough time for people to digest the information and comply. This sparked a reaction from Canada’s very large trucker community, for a lot of reasons. Many of the people involved in the protests are those who have already lost their jobs due to the pandemic or the mandates, those who see the injustices of this issue, and those who want life to go back to normal (which may be almost everyone). The tactics of these protests are simple; by blocking important routes and traversing the country, they can get the attention needed to get a meeting with the prime minister, Justin Trudeau, to lift the mandates and restore personal choice over medical procedures. That is their goal. However, only days after hearing of the convoy’s plans to meet and negotiate their wishes, Trudeau became a close contact to a COVID case and decided to self-isolate (which was not necessary according to Ontario public health measures at the time). Trudeau did not meet with the truckers, has not heard from them what their purposes are, and has instead tried to turn to precious emergency legislation to give him more power over the protesters. He did this after the Ontario Premier invoked provincial measures to give police the power to arrest members of the protest and fine them heavily.
Now, there is controversy in Alberta about whether the premier, Jason Kenney, will invoke Bill 1 against the protesters near Coutts border crossing. Some Indigenous people have brought up the discriminatory use and creation of this bill, saying it is only used and was made to shut up the people that the government disagrees with (such as environmentalists). This puts the government in a tricky spot; if they do not invoke the Act against the truckers blocking the roads, they confirm that the issue being addressed by Indigenous people is something they don’t agree with and that they were discriminating; if they do invoke the Act, then they confirm that they do not agree with the actions of the truckers, and that the Act was only made to give more power over protesters who block public roads and disagree with them. This Act limits where people can go to protest injustice and may decrease the amount of attention they receive from the media and the government, meaning that they are more easily ignored.
The Pride parade backlash and cancellation, the use of legislation to stop Indigenous protesters, and the attempted use of emergency legislation to stop the truckers from being heard in the House of Commons all have to do with power. Right now, we are facing the height of power struggles. From COVID tensions within countries worldwide to international disputes, the anticipation and uncertainty are at an all-time high. The government and government-influenced organizations in all the above situations have exercised their self-obtained power to ignore the needs and wants of citizens and minority groups. They ignore intersectionality, they twist stories in the media to make these oppositional groups look bad, and they use their own long-held power to push away all challenges to their power.
Prime Minister Trudeau has said in response to the truckers (before he enacted the emergency legislation) that it would be easier if they just went home. He has also threatened to freeze the bank accounts of those who continue to participate in the protests and blockades. Compounding this with the provincial measures that allow heavy fines of up to $100,000 and a year in prison, the amount of power the government is willing to exercise just to be able to ignore their citizens is kind of disproportionate to the real harm being done.
Well, the narrative of the government during this whole pandemic has been that if we just do one more thing, if we comply one more time, we will go back to normal and have our rights and freedoms again. Two years into the pandemic, we can tell this has been largely misleading. Quite frankly, if the people participating in the stonewall riots had stopped when they were told, LGBT+ people would not be allowed to hold hands in the street without being arrested. If the black people who used white bathrooms and sat in white spots on buses had stopped so it would be “easier”, black people would still be subject to separation from whites in public and private spheres. If women had stayed at home instead of delivering a coffin to Justin Trudeau’s father’s doorstep, women would still be dying in large numbers from unsafe abortions or unhealthy childbirths. And, if the truckers give up now, this will be an instance in which the government succeeds in controlling citizens’ bodies and power relations.
And, he shouldn’t need to worry about the truckers. They are just going to be there for two weeks to “flatten the curve” of injustice, and it will go back to normal if Trudeau just complies. (See what I did there?) A large number of people in these protests are not anti-vax, or far-right unreasonable people. The media simply chooses to focus on these people because they will get more views that are sparked out of hatred than out of happiness. The goal of these protests is to restore our right to choose what happens to our bodies.
In conclusion, all these issues are just as important is one another. If we don’t address climate change by becoming more sustainable, we will face significant disaster. If we have police domination, nobody will be safe from their biases and violence. And, if we don’t retain our rights to our bodies, our bodies won’t be ours anymore. If we stop ranking our issues in terms of personal importance, and instead begin to think of solutions that we can coordinate to solve all of them at once, we will actually find ways to achieve justice and equality among people. If we stop struggling to have power over others and switch the narrative, and instead begin working together under a model of equal power, oppression would eliminate itself. If we stop thinking in extremes and come up with solutions to satisfy all needs while maintaining sustainable lifestyles, we can actually be happy.
Credits to random people on the internet for the use of genius sarcasm in the second last paragraph. And, as always, keep thinking outside the box, and keep reading in between!
Introducing the Idea of a New Economic System
In a capitalist system, one in which there are free markets with very little government intervention, wealth is able to be hoarded and distributed unevenly. Intergenerational wealth may be accumulated, meaning that people can have it in their will that their house, car, and possessions are to be given to a certain person after the owner’s death. Life insurance money goes to the next of kin to pay off any debts, and the leftovers may be kept to pay for other things. In these systems, individual rights are prioritized, personal accomplishments or misdeeds are seen as personal issues, and success is mainly measured in wealth and fame. Some people cannot find work, or business owners do not want to hire them for whatever reason, and some people are homeless. It is obviously difficult for those who are homeless to get jobs because they do not have an address, often do not have transportation, may not have a desirable work history, and do not have professional work attire. The largest disadvantage of this system is that it takes already having money to be able to make money in the future. Grants and loans are there to help, but these are not prominent in capitalist systems because the government does not intervene in the issues of the market. However, the majority of individuals have self-determination capabilities and have individual agency over their work, body, and property. This system often has a large wealth gap between the rich and the poor, and it will keep getting wider and the middle class will continue shrinking as the markets progress. However, there is a baseline of power that an individual possesses that allows them to behave as they wish in most situations.
In communist systems, however, there are some issues that come from doing the exact opposite of capitalism. Markets are strictly controlled by the government, if there are any markets at all, meaning that food, hygiene products, and other necessities are only able to be obtained in quantities that the government thinks are sufficient for people. In this system, wealth is not concentrated among citizens, and is instead used by the government in areas that they decide need it most. This involves people working in jobs they are told to do, almost if not all of their pay being transferred to the government, and the wealth being redistributed to other people. Those people who work only get the benefits of a portion of their work, and people who do not work still gain roughly the same benefits of those who do work. Personal property is not a thing. People share spaces, objects, wealth, and food. Wealth is theoretically evenly distributed, and theoretically all regular citizens of the working class (which means everyone not in government positions) have the same amount of power and agency over their labor, bodies, and health – none. Everyone gets the same treatment, which would definitely eliminate the marginalization common in capitalist societies (Iris Marion Young’s “Five Faces of Oppression”, 1990), but this treatment is decided by a few people with most of the power concentrated among them. People are theoretically able to protest the actions of the government, but I don’t recommend that since the government is in control of your food supply, home, and life. So, even though this is theoretically a good thing to do, it is not meant for large populations of people, especially in parts of the world where self-sufficiency is difficult due to climate and technology.
In newer versions of communism/socialism, there are some modifications to the original idea. First, instead of sharing everything, objects, spaces, and tools will be rented from the government. Everything is owned by the state, and people are only permitted to use things if they pay for it. In this system, taxes are still substantially heavier than those in capitalist societies, and above those taxes people must also pay each month or each use for certain things needed in daily life. This means that vehicles, homes, furniture, and household appliances are rented by people for personal use. Eventually, all money goes to the government, and the government uses that money to purchase necessities for all its people and to pay its working people their wage, which they then obtain all the money for again. However, there is a problem with this system. If all things are owned by the government, including the means of production, the government is essentially making and giving away things to citizens for free. If the government wanted to use any foreign materials, have its means of production in other countries, or gain investment from foreign institutions, they would need to delegate their currency to those other countries in return for goods. Many foreign investors will be extremely hesitant to invest in socialist countries because they are generally not sustainable in the long run according to history. So, in order to gain foreign materials to make the objects and food that the citizens of a country need, there is a limited amount of money and wealth that may be used. The country will eventually run out of money unless it is 100% self-sufficient, which we should know is virtually impossible given the large populations of societies today. We would need extremely high yields of crops, large amounts of farms, and huge numbers of people working on these things in order to maintain a sustainable country.
Some countries are successfully blending the two economic approaches together along with social norms to give people a good life, such as Norway and Sweden. However, most countries and political parties in the world have either goals of being as free market as possible or as communist as possible. If one were to be achieved, people would have little mobility between classes but relatively high levels of agency, and in the other people theoretically have their needs provided for but are at the mercy of relatively few people in power. One risks celebrities and rich people running the place but the other risks a harsh dictator coming into power. One can lead to the exploitation of thousands of workers, but the other can lead to the devaluing of all citizens and inflation. In one it is seen as a life goal to work yourself to death, but the other values being at the mercy of someone else’s productivity. One is forced by the judgment of other countries to be leaders in environmental healing and social progression, but the other is forced by the competing market to always be productive and innovative and see everything as a race. I don’t see how either one of these is understood by politicians to be more desirable than the other, because they both have shown us the inequities and issues associated with them.
Instead of thinking that we need to ban all currency and share everything with everyone, or that it is always every person for themself, we should instead adopt a new but also old type of economic system that encourages productivity but also allows for downtime. One that allows power and life chances to be distributed equally even if wealth cannot be. One that prioritizes the local community inside of a broader scope of global communication so that many issues of increasing importance can be fixed instead of worsened.
Neither of these extreme systems work, and neither are sustainable. If we wish to help the planet, the economy, and the people and animals living on it, traditional solutions are not going to be sufficient. Instead, there are a growing number of scholars who are thinking about ways to improve social circumstances while also improving our economic situation. What works for one country may not work for another, which is why we need local scholars from all different fields and local citizens to work together to come up with a socially, environmentally, and economically responsible solution to the hardships and challenges we are facing. Division is not the way to go; diversity is valued in these situations. Diverse opinions coming together to find a happy medium is what we need right now in many parts of the world. All that needs to happen to prepare us is opening our minds and becoming dynamic thinkers.
Until next time, keep thinking outside the box, and keep reading in between!
Three Ways to Stop or Reduce the Gatekeeping of Knowledge
Any university or college student who has gone to school in the last five to ten years has probably been at least annoyed, if not financially impacted by the prices of required textbooks for courses. If you are a really cheap student or you have been unable to get textbooks due to the pandemic (like myself), you have probably tried to do your courses without the aid of the textbook or tried to share notes with a classmate. However, this can impact your performance in the course and understanding of the content.
If you are an avid reader of non-fiction, science, political, or economics, you too have probably been impacted by the prices of some credited pieces you would love to get your hands on. However, at least once, supply and demand was not on your side, and your bank account was screaming at you not to demand it that much.
These are examples of gatekeeping knowledge, and for a long time this has been going on without much resistance. Students in primary and secondary school have to deal with donated or old books that ring in at an age older than their parents. Students and scholars in post-secondary have to pay dearly to find textbooks that are just recently released, meaning that they don’t even have the option of used materials. And recreational readers are sometimes annoyed that the book said to make you into a millionaire costs a fortune on its own right now.
Don’t get me wrong; I hold no ill will toward the authors or the people who work in the publishing process or the retailers. However, it has been known for a long time now that knowledge is becoming a function of disposable income and, really, the presence of any income at all. How can we stop or reduce the gatekeeping of knowledge on academic topics unless one is wealthy, and still get the authors the compensation and credit they deserve?
I have a few proposals, and then I will outline some potential benefits from these changes, as well as the drawbacks.
- Have substantial discounts for students when they prove their status as a current student or when they use the university/college bookstore. Reward the students for spending more money at that institution when they could buy a paperback textbook for only twenty bucks more through online retailers than they could buy a temporary access code for an e-book through their university bookstore (one of my textbooks as an e-book rental was $75 through the bookstore and would only be $100 through eFollet for a paperback). I understand that the reason these prices are so low is probably because of some unethical exploitation of a worker somewhere, but how about the university’s manipulation of those students? They are already paying at least $550 per course for at least two years, and now they have to pay an additional 70, 80, 150 dollars above that per course in order to not fail. This adds stress to their plates, potentially further decreasing their performance in the course, or they will engage in some not-so-ethical activity themselves in order to get a free copy of the textbook online… Most university students know what I am referencing here. So, we could offer group discounts in universities like they do for transportation, and using this group deposit we could offer some free copies for those in need. And, rentals that are also e-books should be noticeably cheaper than the hard copy. They should not say “Well, it’s only forty bucks more to get the physical one, so I might as well save me some eye-strain.” They should be able to say “Wow, that’s a really good deal!” One of the cons of this method would be that the bookstore does not get paid quite as much per year as they do now. Actually, they may even end up making more by improving their sales to hundreds more students each term by making their prices affordable for people who are literally living off of government loans for now. So, really, the only con is that illegal websites may be used less often; that doesn’t concern the bookstores though.
- Make textbooks more widely available in bookstores, either online such as Kobo or Kindle, or in store such as Chapters. This approach would not only lower the cost of individual textbooks for students, but in doing so it would open the knowledge to the general public. Some people may be thinking that this would make universities go out of business because people could then get the equivalent of a university education for thousands less, but this is actually untrue. It is untrue because with the current requirements for many jobs, people getting an education to fulfill a certain career plan still need that piece of paper at the end of it saying they won’t chop off the wrong leg or something. And, even if that does change in the future, and most people can get jobs they like without going to college, then I would personally count that as a step back in the right direction. University was originally a place to go to learn and explore and enrich your life, but it has become a huge institution whose only purpose is to produce degrees and 9-5 jobs for millions of people in a country. Not to mention, even if universities and colleges do drop in popularity, educators and professors can actually do a lot more to make money and enjoy life. They can do guest lectures that are open to the public, similarly to Ted Talks. Or they could sell their pre-recorded lectures to students and members of the public so they could gain passive income (making money without actively doing any further work). Or they could even write their own books, make them available to the public, and combine all the above avenues into a comfortable retirement plan.
- Coasting off of the previous point, professors and textbook writers could self-publish their books online, in paperback, or in hard covers. Many authors are now turning to this much cheaper and much more efficient avenue for writing and publishing books. They don’t have to worry about having a publisher that will take a significant portion of the earnings for themselves, nor do they need to get an overly expensive editor. They also would be able to make more decisions about who gets ahold of their book, where it is sold, how it is produced and distributed, as well as the formatting of the book. This is a really good idea if you are a scholar and want your stuff published and have the means to do it, and it is passive income after you publish it either online or in stores. The only continued cost may be having to pay a printer company to make pre-ordered paperbacks, but you could even choose which one to use.
Now, there are a lot of benefits to these avenues.
- Fewer people would need to find illegal ways to obtain materials for school, and copyright violations would not be so common.
- More people in the general public would be able to make informed decisions about their money, their lifestyles, their political decisions, and their careers.
- Individual profits of authors would go up and their quality of life would increase by not having to be away from home all the time.
- The huge dollar amounts in student loans would drop significantly because explorative programs such as Bachelor of Arts would not be necessary to open future avenues.
- Bookstores would open up a whole new demographic of buyers, increasing their sales
- Professors who write their own books would be able to sell to more customers
Some cons may be:
- The decreased need for big publishing companies, in which case publishers could become independent, freelancers, or become writers themselves.
- Bookstores would face the risk of having to find which types of academic books sell best, but they do this frequently so they should survive it.
- Online free book sources may get fewer users because they are no longer needed by the masses of students enrolled each year
- Professors who promote their own textbooks and writings in class will need to also do marketing outside of classrooms
- Universities may become less popular for exploratory programs
These are, of course, only three ways we could increase the knowledge of our society, and only some of the benefits and drawbacks of these three methods. However, these could show substantial increases in both monetary gains and quality of life of both those looking for books and those who sell them. If you think it would work, or if this would benefit you or someone you know, please share!
Until next time, keep thinking outside the box, and keep reading in between!
Writing Prompts for a Creative Mind
Here’s a fun little break from my usual content: a list of writing prompts for you! Everyone loves imagining or writing short stories from time to time, but sometimes our imaginations need help to get started. Writing prompts are a good way to do this, and there are tons out there. Here are a few if you’re interested. If you would like to share your stories from these prompts with me, you can either comment below or tag on social media! I would love to read them. Have fun and let the ink flow! (recommended teen+)
- A huge storm swept through your home and left your house in pieces. While looking for your pet, you find a mysterious object peeking out of the wall. Soon, you don’t have to worry about getting insurance money, but you do have to worry about a certain person who wants this object more than you could imagine.
- The main character of your story lives in a society where everyone is given the exact same amount of the same types of food, drink, and medicine no matter what. Cancer is curable, heart disease is non-existent, and all people with mutations are exterminated. The main character gets into a chemical accident that causes a mutation never seen by world elders before. But they don’t want to exterminate you; what they want to do is much worse.
- You get framed for creating the explosion that killed your family on a holiday. When you come out of prison five years later, your goal is to actually commit murder… against the person who took the people you love.
- You watch a major world shift in governing practices happen before you. You’re the last person alive who saw the ways of the old world when global governments decide to preserve your body and mind in case they need information in the distant future. Seventy-five years later, a malfunction in the preservation tech causes you to be rebooted, and you are angry.
- After a devastating civil war in your home country, all government is eliminated and structure is completely gone. It’s everyone for themselves. However, this is actually going better than the country ever was under government rule. That is, until a lonely surviving dictator wants to have it all for them and will do anything to get it. You lead the resistance against this person, but quickly realize you are ill-prepared. How do you fix this and maintain citizen’s freedoms?
- Your character has had a very bad experience in romance lately, so they decide to stop trying. A few weeks later, they meet someone who claims to be able to fix that dismay. Your character thinks this means they will get set up with someone, but this person has something different in mind.
- Finally, after years of searching, your character has found their family heirloom after the disappearance of their parents. When a business partner sees the heirloom on the coffee table at a company party, your character is thrown into some ugly events and unexpected acquaintances.
Until next time, keep thinking outside the box, and keep reading in between!
Where Do Opinions Come From?
Why do people have such strong opinions about things that do not affect them? Many people will stand by their opinion on issues that have nothing to do with them at all. Whether the situation goes their way or the opposite way, that person would not be impacted positively or negatively by that occurrence, but they still won’t budge.
Other people will have opinions that they say repeatedly but when put to the test they disregard ever saying that opinion in the first place, or excuse it by trying to claim that the situation they were just put in is different. For example, a parent may say that they are perfectly fine with people of the queer community until their child brings home someone of the same gender. Some people will say that they never claimed to be okay with it in the first place, or that it is different because this is part of their family. Quite frankly, this does not actually affect them other than how they interpret it in their mind.
Sometimes, people will change their opinion on a daily basis or it will change depending on the situation. One day, they could be perfectly fine with children playing video games, then they will say later that children who play video games are going to become useless members of society. Or their kid can play video games, but other kids aren’t allowed because they play different games.
Other people will agree with whatever opinion is most dominant in the setting. I see this mostly in classroom discussions, where people who voice an opposing opinion or a question that other people deem weird, the less popular opinion-holder will be forced to be quiet about any future deviant statements so they do not face social or academic repercussions. This is particularly unhelpful in situations of debates that are meant to have people disagree and think critically.
So why is it that opinions are flexible for some people and stubbornly rigid for others? I think that it may be a result of what we have grown up with. Mannerisms and habits often transcend generations, as seen in intergenerational trauma or addictions, and the same thing may happen when children are growing up and learning how to formulate opinions. When children hear people talking, their minds begin to pick up on some trends. This could be how words are stringed together or what topics are most frequently discussed. They can also pick up how people talk about certain topics. Individual habits often coincide or clash with the speaking habits of family members they most often interact with. If one is a particularly dominant conversation-starter, their parent or sibling may have also been lively. If someone is fairly quiet, they could have had a role model who was calm as well.
The ways that people talk about their opinions may be more contrasted by than similar to the behaviors of their families. For example, if a parent has always been very strong with their opinions, a child may learn to agree in order to prevent an argument. If a parent encourages listening to every opinion, the child may learn that they can say what they are feeling at the moment without receiving opposition.
Everyone’s opinion is valuable, but positions on major topics are usually supported by information related to it. If you look for information against your thesis, you can also think about whether those sources make sense or if they can be disproved. When you listen to other people talk about things, your communicating skills will also improve, meaning that you can gain a stronger support for your opinion by hearing from other perspectives. More people will believe you if you coherently support your ideas than if you just assume that you are right. If you want to become good at creating, voicing, and changing your opinions or ideas, try listening to other people or read other works in the area. Maybe your opinion will change, maybe it will stay the same, but at least now you will have support for your decision.