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Saturday, May 22, 2010

D.I.Y. and the Canadian Left: Linguistic Overdetermination, or Coincidence?

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D.I.Y and the Canadian Left

I intend this article to try to explain the shortcomings of the Left that have enabled the success of the Right in the last three or four years. It comes from a cultural, rather than a political, perspective. First, let me first explain that one of the problems of the political culture in Canada is that it is widely thought of in terms of a straight line with a small batch of communists on the far pole of the left, who are by and large excluded from public discourse, and the former Reform Party sectors of the new Conservative Party on the far pole of the Right, some of whom hold very important positions at the current juncture, such as Jason Kenny, the minister of education, or Stockwell Day, the minister of trade. I would like to propose thinking of the political spectrum as more of a continuum: a circle, even.

Once you look at the political spectrum as a circle, you can start to see how cultural phenomenon of the Left, such as aspects of DIY culture, can actually undermine the success of the Left. Let me first define DIY as I understand it. I grew up in a mid-sized city in Southern Ontario that had an amazing music scene. One of the characteristic features of this scene was its relative independence from the industrial entertainment machine, as exemplified by the major music labels, the big publishing houses, etc. It was youth putting on shows for younger youth, and the profit motive was a marginal component of this culture. The DIY punk scene in particular was highly politicized, opening critiquing the military strategies and foreign policy of the mainstream political culture as well as the shallowness of consumer culture, and the lack of quality of its products. DIY stands for Do It Yourself. In other words, rather than accept the standards and criteria for achievement prescribed by the industrial entertainment machine, make the music you want to make and share it with your peers and others.

I was an active participant in this culture, and in 1999 I started my own record label. Due to various difficulties, changes of interest, and my general lack of business savvy, I quickly realized my imminent failure. Perhaps the linguistic singularity of “yourself” in the acronym DIY became a psychological barrier for collective action. Great things have rarely been accomplished by people acting on their own. While I was certainly not the first to have started a record label, others in my circle quickly followed suit and started their own record labels of similar material. This led to local competition that, from my perspective, undermined the collaborative and collective aspects of the scene. Perhaps if DIY instead stood for “Do It Yourselves” that would have emphasized the collective nature of successful resistance. Instead, the movement atomized its individual members; some DIY magnates actually became consultants for the political Right when they grew up.

I propose that strategies the Left has used in their struggle against the Right have been uneffective. Rather than dismiss the Right outright and uttlerly, the Left should study the tactics they have used that have made them successful, and incorporate some of these tactics into their own strategizing. While it is true that some consider it problematic to frame resistance in terms of the “Master’s tools,” at a certain point, the left will lose support just because people don’t enjoy losing. Coalition building is important, and for that we need to identify points of priority and solidarity, not to eliminate our differences, but to be more effective in our struggles. The circle folds in on itself: after all, individualistic anarchism is the point at which the far Right joins the far Left in the political circle. Max Stirner is closer to Alan Greenspan than you may think.

Friday, April 16, 2010

Negative Writing

I took this page from an old zine I published. I managed to sell around 56 copies. That is only 10 or so less than the first edition of the first volume of Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra. I had this idea of writing negatively - by taking existing, published texts, and crossing out letters and/or making substitutions to create a new, mythological text. By doing it in this format, I have preserved the entire process of negative writing. The perpendicular text in the background visually represents the kind of "unofficial" speech that surrounds and in-forms the background of stories, told by "official" storytellers, vetted/or seen as such by their speech communities.

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Thursday, April 01, 2010

The Old Poetry of Trevor Cunnington


I wrote this poem about war when I was 16 years old. I am now 35, and I have renounced my former pacifism. I still think this is not a bad poem. One of the few I wrote in my adolescence that has any staying power. I redesigned it and released it in a zine when I was in my mid-twenties, and now I am re-posting it. Personal archive fever!!!!

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Monday, March 22, 2010

The Life of Pie Graphs and Spurious Projects

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The latest Whore Derv is awarded to one of the shining stars of Canada’s literary firmament. While I must give him a priori and de facto respect for contributing to the re-invigoration of reading and writing in our nation, strong and free, I must admit that the concept of his latest book smells like poo. Writer’s Block is a pain in the ass, isn’t it my friend?

After selling over 1.2 million copies of the novel that won our winner a Man Booker prize, which is the most prestigious book award in the Commonwealth, our hero was the first Canadian appointed to represent the Washington Arts Commission. He has also been shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award for fiction, and won the Hugh MacLennan Prize for fiction. The book that won him a Man Booker prize impressed me simply for the fact that many people who don’t read a lot asked me if I’d read it, expecting that since I was a rabid reader that I would have. Granted, my taste tends towards the obscure sometimes, and I still have not read this book. But I cannot pooh-pooh anyone who gets people who don’t usually read excited about reading.

What I can pooh-pooh is a bad book idea, and a total waste of time. Our winner’s latest project is mailing the prime minister a book every two weeks on the general theme of stillness. He has then compiled in a book all these mailings: the book plus a page or two written by our great author on the book he mailed. His reading list, I must say, is excellent. Having read around 50% of the titles, I can flatter myself that I am very well-read, flattery which embodies the real purpose of any of these reading list books. Useless. . .

What he hopes to gain, or what his very purpose is, is beyond me. Perhaps he thinks reading makes you a better person. Perhaps it does, but I doubt it. The Prime Minister responds to our great writer only twice, and for that, I suppose we should be outraged. What?! Our Prime Minister isn’t secluding himself to read all of these books a famous Canadian writer is suggesting to him! FOR SHAME! Absolutely outrageous! Don’t get me wrong, I am not a fan of the current Prime Minister, and I’m sure a little extra reading wouldn’t hurt him.

But really the whole premise of this project is ridiculous. First of all, the Prime Minister is a busy fellow, even though he prorogued parliament when there was a lot of business to finish. Maybe he suddenly thought that the great writer was right! He hadn’t read all these masterpieces, and perhaps he started to feel a little insecure. Perhaps the prorogation of government was actually so Stephen Harper could catch up on his reading, about which our great writer has steadily been harassing him. Yes indeed, if anyone else had embarked upon this, besides one of the most famous living writers, I think we would have to regard this project as harassment. That would make the prorogation that pissed off the whole nation at least partially the great writer’s fault!!!

Secondly, the Prime Minister was indeed busy. He was busy undermining the foundations of our democracy through his iron fist control over his media image. The notion of the press as the fourth estate, the watchdog of government, protecting citizens against the tyrannies, large and small, of the political apparatus, has given way to pervasive suspicion of the media, a suspicion which the Prime Minister shares. This suspicion is part of his pseudo-populist appeal. Fourth Estate be damned: Stephen Harper is subjecting all media coverage of his government to approval through the Privy Council*. Doesn’t our great writer think that more appropriate readings should be drawn from, say, the creative commons movement who valorize the free circulation of information and knowledge? I guess we should be grateful, though, our great writer didn’t recommend The Art of War by Sun Tzu, or Machiavelli’s The Prince, Hobbes’ Leviathan, or any books that may have been written by Goebbels.

If you haven’t figured out who our winner is today, it is Yann Martel, author of the legendary novel The Life of Pi. His most recent book, the reading list I have been discussion, is called What is Stephen Harper Reading? I must say, I don’t particularly care what he’s reading. I do, however, care very deeply about what he is doing as our prime minister. Congratulations Yann! I hope that writer’s block goes away soon, for everyone’s sake!

*information in this paragraph was revealed to me by Mary Higgins, who is about to embark upon a research project on political communication in Canada.

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Yeah, that 100 million dollar surplus MUST be a sign of incompetance!

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The winner of this month’s Whore Derv has run the gamut of politics, not in the sense of crossing the floor and joining another party (ahem Belinda Stronach), but in the sense of holding multiple positions and jumping levels of government. A former Health Minister of Ontario during the heady days of dollar flux now known as the e-health spending scandal, he left that portfolio for the Environment. At first I resented his attempts to undermine incentives for property owners to invest in renewable energy, however, he eventually made good and introduced the FIT program in the Green Energy Act. For those who don’t know, FIT stands for Feed-in Tariffs, and it guarantees independent green energy producers a fixed price for their surplus energy against the vacillations of the market price. Bravo, energy minister.

He has jumped the provincial ship though, and landed in the lifeboat of municipal politics. By now, you’ve probably guessed that I’m talking about the (no longer) Right Honourable George Smitherman. He made the news last night, a desperate grab for a soundbyte, criticizing current mayor David Miller for announcing a 100 million dollar surplus in Toronto’s budget. He announced he was confident that the mayor knew of this surplus much earlier and merely waited for the campaign to replace him to “ride in on a white horse” and … presumably to save the day. George! I love the FIT program, and I was all ready to embrace you after the bitterness in my heart over Caplan taking all the heat for the e-health spending scandal waned. But no, you had to show up on the news and slam the current mayor, who is leaving of his own volition, for announcing a 100 MILLION DOLLAR SURPLUS. And this after one of the most severe recessions since the great depression! Am I the only one who thinks you sound like a total nitwit again?

Congratulations George! Rather than simply congratulating current Mayor Miller for his recent success, you chose to desperately grab a soundbyte and sound like a numbskull in the process. You have won the current Whore Derv. By peddling your infantile brand via a gigamillion pixels, and trying to revive a Miller hate-on that has for the most part waned since the city strike last summer, you have honoured the award.








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Tuesday, March 09, 2010

The Laundry

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I can’t sleep because logic’s

Recipe is full of tar and sand.

Equal parts get me out of this mess

And get me far enough in it

To not be able to tell the difference.

Underbellies of thought

Bring but subtle comforts to not

Quite born beings.

Once it happens, they say, it

Comes naturally.

As if something could not be natural.

Water breaks the surface

Tension, that but holds together

This ragged self

Tells of monopolies of exhaust

Worry, tear-drops to clear

Duct work

And preserve, above all else

The sense that chance is not so random.

That those little fists

Have healthy walls to beat on

That the light of day

Pokes through holes

And gives these objects

That clutter the space in my bedroom

Their very colour.

That soil will grow

Something fantastic

And tasty to shade the lawn

With the ichor

Of plenitude

The lenient feathers of

Winged visitors in night’s

Event of apparition,

Who tell me this tar and sand

Ropes thick through

Rolls of waves too

Frightening to behold

So you hold a mirror up to it

To see it but once removed

And once removed,

This veil of vision leaves

And sleep settles in

Like blankets

On the clothes line

When the wind

Disappears.





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Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Bay Street, circa 1924, or after the Apocalypse?


I found this image in the archives at Toronto's Metropolitan Reference Library. I guess it was a bad air day. The more things change...

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Holy Zamboni! This Week's Whore Derv goes to...

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The winner of the latest Whore Derv is a juggernaut of local politics in Toronto.. As chair of one of the largest and most complex organizations, he has had an unfortunate convergence of publicity. His tall gangly frame has been in the news almost constantly for the last month. As a city councilor, he has been variously praised and scoffed. There’s something endearingly earnest about his face and manner, but I don’t think this feature will save him from his current downwards spiral.

If you live in Toronto, you’ve probably seen, or at least heard about his zany youtube photo, depicting him engaging in various calisthenics to prepare himself for the race for the mayoralty of Toronto. In the end of the video, he declares himself ready. That was enough to make the news. But then the denizen citizen journalists, who sent in photos of sleeping TTC collectors, increased tension between the TTC and the public because of a fare hike and produced a good deal of criticism of the TTC, which is our winner’s ship to steer. Add to all the speculation of his mayoral ambitions and the negative press pouring in against the TTC under his supervision, the spectacle of a sex scandal. Not only did Adam Giambrone, this week’s winner, pull a Bill Clinton, but apparently he told the Ms. Lewinsky of the situation confidential information about the pending fare hike. All in all, poorly played Mr. Giambrone.

A young lad at 32 years, I can certainly forgive Adam his sexual dalliances. The public, however, is not so enamored of such promiscuity. Why else would it be a “scandal?” For all we know, his partner Sarah knows about his behavior and is cool with it, but that doesn’t necessarily make good television. But really, the ship seems to be sinking for our young captain. Let’s hope that time heals his wounds, and that he pulls his shit together to run for mayor. On the plus side, he has certainly got his name out there, and is probably by far the most recognizable name on the ticket. Congratulations Adam Giambrone, you have won this week’s Whore Derv award for refusing to let the media bully you into breaking down in tears on camera. The wildebeest knows best of a crocodile’s tears. Thank you, Adam, for sparing us the media’s lurid interest in human frailty. Dance, monkey, dance!

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Fourth Whore Derv of the Apocalpyse

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This week’s Whore Derv. goes to a singer, whose soulful devotion to our smaller, furrier companions, is truly mind-numbing. If this sounds like someone just being mean you might be right, but I doubt it. She is truly an icon of Canada, her songs lurking in outdoorsy craft shops on the outskirts of a town you’d live in to be close to point A but you can’t afford to live there. Her voice pulls your heartstrings while you shop for plastic waldo dolls or vintage arcade game shot glasses. She considers percussion some sort of anathema. Piono is her instrument of her choice.

It is Sarah McLachlan. A Liz Phair away from Tori Amos, Sarah has been singing the same song since the early nineties, and laughing all the way to the bank. Way to go Sarah! Her latest public service announcement, on behalf of the OSPCA, has had no shortage of airplay on CTV or on CBC; hell, it’s probably the soundtrack of your walk between your house or apartment to your car. Sarah, thanks for helping the voiceless, and for making your “one” song a part of our everyday lives!

From the people who like your music,

You’ve put us in a simulcast nirvana and we love you.

From the rest of us,

STFU!




Monday, January 04, 2010

The Revenge of the Suburbs

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The Third Whore Derv of Canada goes to a long-deserving citizen and politician. Elected as one of the most crucial pieces of the governing party of Canada that was elected on a platform of free-market shenanigans, streamlined government, and increased transparency, he became the architect of the biggest government intervention in the Canadian economy since the great depression. Also a member of the largest Cabinet since Brian Mulroney’s 40 member Cabinet, excepting Paul Martin’s 39 member cabinet, he is also a governor of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

The neo-colonial relations perpetuated by these institutions, namely the provision of funds for development of poorer nations, thereby saddling them with unwieldy debts, are well-known. The interest rates, set by these institutions, which are to a large extent run by people from former colonial powers or their closest satellites, preclude timely payback. Furthermore, they encourage to parceling out of arable land to grow cash crops for export, crops such as coffee and sugar, rather than food crops for domestic consumption. This cycle of poverty dependence is not unlike that shared by the lower echelons of the developed world’s economy, the huge majority of which are the working poor, becoming dependent upon credit with punishing interest rates. Granted, the poorest nations in the world, those with per capita incomes of less than $865/year, are sometimes given interest-free loans. However, the middle range poor nations, those with per capita incomes over $1305 are given loans with interest rates higher than market norms.

While we might laud this Cabinet Member for not being so rigidly dogmatic in his adherence to neoliberal ideology, and for incorporating a corrective dose of Keynesianism into his financial vision for Canada during hard times, his actions strike one as so out of step with his publicly-held beliefs that it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to call him a nihilist. Moreover, Prime Minister Harper has recently asked Governor General Michaelle Jean to prorogue Parliament for a second year in a row. The reason he gave is so that the government can prepare the budget statement, due to be announced on March 3. Given that government critics have posited various theories explaining this move as an evasion of the Afghan torture scandal, or as a holiday for politicians to do some political schmoozing during the winter Olympics, the Invisible Truth does not wish to retread ground that has been beaten smooth. It is true that the committee designated to investigate the Afghan torture scandal will evaporate for now and face time-related obstacles in reconstructing pertinent events, especially if the Conservative paper shredder works overtime during the prorogation. Instead of these well-fleshed-out theories, The Invisible Truth dares to take the Prime Minister at his word.

Therefore, the third Whore Derv of Canada goes to Finance Minister Jim Flaherty. Congratulations Jim! If the government needs prorogation to prepare the next steps of Canada’s economic action plan, this implies you haven’t been doing your job. Because you haven’t been doing your job, the Prime Minister has dispatched government and subverted democracy yet again. Way to go! As a former member of provincial parliament in Mike Harris' government for Whitby/Oshawa, The Honorable Jim Flaherty has come a long way: he is also the government official responsible for the Greater Toronto Area. Take that you snooty urbanites!

Sunday, December 20, 2009

The Second Whore Derv of Canada goes to....


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The second Whore Derv of Canada goes to Peter A. Crossgrove. Peter is a corporate Director of Barrick Gold, the largest gold production company in the world. Some of of you may think, well that’s all you need to write, but that’s not entirely fair, is it? If you have been left of centre for over a decade, you might remember the many protests of Barrick that emanated from their operations in Bolivia in the 1990s and evoked solidarity ripples all across the hemisphere. Peter has been a director at Barrick since 1993. While these protests have for the most part waned, and Barrick claims many measures of corporate social responsibility through both their website and other sites, Barrick is far from a corporate angel. As recently as January, Norway’s Finance Minster announced the Norway Pension Fund’s withdrawal from investment in Barrick, to the tune of 300 million dollars. The withdrawal of one of the largest Pension Funds in the world from Barrick’s operations came after their Council of Ethics determined that Barrick’s activities, especially in Papua New Guinea, were not environmentally sustainable. To read an article on these activities; among which are dumping mine waste directly into rivers, something forbidden according to United Nations Environmental agreements; visit this website:
Barrick&PapuaNewGuinea

Barrick currently runs many mines all over the world, and they are currently developing mines in the Dominican Republic, the border of Chile and Argentina, and northern Nevada. Their development in Nevada has been contested by various Shoshone tribes, as well as Environmental activist groups such as the Great Basin Resource Watch. While the state Court of Nevada overturned their plea to stop the expansion of the Cortez mine to include part of Mount Tenabo, a sacred mountain for the Shoshone, they appealed. On Dec. 9, 2009, the case went to Supreme Court in San Francisco. It had been waged on two fronts: a lack of research into environmental impact according to the National Environmental Policy Act, and the obstruction the mine represents to the Shoshone in the practice of their religion. In Supreme court, the previous decision was overturned on the grounds of environmental impact, but not on the grounds of the freedom of the Shoshone to practice their religion. For more information on this case, consult this website:
Nevada

Why Mr. Crossgrove, and not Peter Munk, the founder and chairman of Barrick’s board of directors, who himself won an Order of Canada? Or why not the Right Honorable Brian Mulroney, who sits on Barrick’s board of directors as well? Well, Mr. Munk offsets his corporation’s dirty fingers with philanthropy, and Brian Mulroney has sufficiently disgraced himself over bribes he accepted from Karlheinz Schreiber during his tenure as Prime Minister. Since we here at the Invisible Truth believe in spreading both wealth and honor, as well as shame and depravity, we give this award to Peter Crossgrove. Having an extensive history with Barrick, while the new C.E.O and president Aaron Regent has only worked with Barrick since the Norway withdrawal in January, Peter has presided over and shared responsibility for more environmental degradation and cultural insensitivity to the globe’s indigenous peoples than most of his other colleagues. Gregory Wilkens, former C.E.O and Vice-Chairman, died on December 16th, and it pleases us not to speak ill of the dead.

Congratulations Peter! We wish you the best in continuing your ruthless extraction of the world’s oldest and most dependable commodity from the earth while trampling the rights of indigenes and dumping heavy metals into watersheds. Your ass makes us tremble with delight!

Monday, November 23, 2009

Drum Roll Please... The First Whore Derv of Canada goes to...


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The first Whore Derv goes to a person who has been in the midst of a political fracas in Canada. Before we reveal who the winner is, however, a little history is in order. Lester B. Pearson, the only Canadian Prime Minister to win the Nobel Peace Prize (a sometimes dubious honour, no doubt), established Canada’s reputation as a country that was dedicated and skilled at resolving conflict and peacekeeping. Although various governments have stretched the meaning of peacekeeping into the realm of peacemaking, the Canadian Mission in Afghanistan has gone beyond even peacemaking into outright war.

Canada has recently been accused of breaking international laws by none other than the Canadian diplomat to Afghanistan. As few teeth as these laws might have in reality, the UN is still used with varying degrees of effectiveness to pressure countries to improve their behaviour with regards to human rights. The specific laws claimed to have been broken are those governing torture, and the law transgressed is that nations must not knowingly transfer detainees to organizations who are known to use torture to extract information from detainees. The evidence coming out from former diplomat, Richard Colvin suggests that Canada‘s Armed Forces (CAF) have done exactly that. Richard Colvin’s accusations have been substantiated by EU diplomats with experience in the region as well.

Peter McKay, the present defence minister, has denied that the CAF has handed over detainees knowing full well that they would be tortured. He said in a speech, part of which was aired on CTV’s eleven o’clock news on November 22, 2009, that “it cannot be proven that any Taliban detainee was tortured after having been handed over to Afghan authorities.” Notice that he doesn’t deny that such a thing ever happened in his hair-splitting rhetorical parry. He says simply that it cannot be proven. Then again, we can’t prove that blue is really blue after all, can we Peter? And notice how he uses the hot-button word “Taliban” as a modifier to the more neutral “detainee.” When you have no rational justification, emote, emote, emote!

Canada has been criticized (and the more sane citizens have also
contributed to some degree of self-criticism to the nation’s credit) over its current government’s refusal to abide by the now dated Kyoto Protocol. Not only that, but the Conservative government of which Mr. McKay is a part declines participating in the new initiatives sparked by the growing global consensus of the need for policy changes geared towards lowering carbon output. In a country where a large majority consider the environment the most important political issue, this is unacceptable.Add a faltering human rights record to the mix, one so diligently built by Pearson, Paul Hellyer, and Léo Cadieux, among others, and we have a precipitous slide in Canada’s international reputation, one of the sources of our national pride.

Peter McKay is the first winner of the Whore Derv of Canada. His rhetoric has gone to great lengths to cover his own ass and that of his cronies in Afghanigate after the vice squad has broken into the pay-by-the-hour motel where he was peddling ????? And, according to the demagogues of might, Canada was there to train the Afghan military? He he he he he . . . Oops. I suppose we can take comfort in the fact that we can still rant in retrospective ire about Bush and about how we didn’t actually torture anyone with some degree of justification, but really. Taking comfort in someone else’s failure does not make you any more of a success. And is it any wonder that with plans to withdraw from Afghanistan by 2011, the Canadian government has decided to pull itself up by its bootstraps to grow opium poppies for the bourgeoning pharmaceutical industry?


Congratulations, Peter!



Thursday, November 12, 2009

The Whore Derv of Canada

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Here at the invisible truth, we are embarking upon a new chapter. For the next few weeks, or until we get bored with it, or until you help me blow it up into the next interweb sensation and I can quit grad school, we will be devoting a virtual award to various Canadians who we would like to see receive a public spanking. The title of this award is the Whore Derv, a play on both the prestigious Order of Canada awards, and Hors D'ouevres, little bits of deliciousness that can serve as an appetizer for deeper thought. Plus, the award recognizes the extent to which the recipient is willing to really put his or her ass out there on the not-so-free market and compromise most things decent in humanity. The award also recognizes the Darwin Awards as a precursor, although we at the Invisible Truth think it is much more fair to mock the living than the dead, because the living at least have a chance to defend themselves. In the next week or so, I will be working on designing the icon to represent the award, like a little Oscar, only it will be a sexified slutty dervish.


No offense is intended, of course, to those hardworking sex-workers who continue to be denied legitimacy in Canada because of whitebread bourgeois pseudo morality. Too left, you say? We say you're being too stubborn or stupid to think outside of that whole ridiculous spectrum in the first place! Go left, er, I mean West, young thing. Let's not be coy about the whole situation here. You ARE a THING. As soon as you sell your labour on the market, boom! You ARE a THING among other things.

We at The Invisible Truth are looking for both suggestions and submissions. If you want to submit a Whore Derv award speech, we would love to read it and consider it, although I will not guarantee you I will publish it. And if you want to lampoon a figure on the left, that's fine too, but make it funny and intelligent.

Suggestions, queiries, and submissions (in .doc format please) can be sent to trevor.cunnington@gmail.com





Tuesday, October 27, 2009

The Guitar


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La Guitar





I am the head held high, the invasion of aspirations to become part of the world, to catch up with its spinning; I will the mysticism of movement, the self-love of grace, the lovesick bliss of moons too subtle to behold; I move not only bodies, but souls, the emotions in them kicking and straining to the sound of fingers sea-sawing across ore dredged up from the earth and stretched into strings that sing into the anti-matter of the universe and draw out its anti. The air holds the memory of each of our positions for a moment before it disappears into the warm sheath of metabolism. I am the pleasure given unto people by the empty body of trees sacrificed to the health of a community, the dark cloud spreading around the head of the player, on which we can dance to remember the reasons we are.

drawing by Cecil Carriere, Paris. Prose poem by Trevor Cunnington, Toronto.


Saturday, October 10, 2009

Against Atheism, Chapter 2

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4. Canada was the third nation in the world to legalize homosexual marriage, and churches were important in the movement to legalize same-sex marriage, thanks to Reverend Hawkes and Cheri Dinovo, who both performed same-sex marriages before they were recognized by law. And this is far from the only progressive movement in which churches have been invaluable. Take for example, the advocacy of the Anglican Church for the Lubicon, who have had their land claims violated by the greedy pursuit of oil in Alberta. Canada has been criticized by a United Nations working group on this account. Or take the recent stance of the United Church on behalf of beleaguered Palestine against the expansionist and colonial Israeli state-enterprise. And before the knee-jerk charge of anti-semitism can be leveled against me for praising that stance, remember the Jews against the Occupation (www.jewsagainsttheoccupation.org). In other words, I think there is considerable evidence that churches have done lots of work to further the cause of social justice in the world. Pray tell, why should I, who values human rights and social justice, give credence and legitimacy to a doctrine that attacks the very source and motivation for this social justice work?

5. I cringe to think what would happen to the most vulnerable members of our own society should atheism continue succeeding in its relentless war against religion. The anti-poverty movement has constantly been ministered by churches from the founding of the Salvation Army, to countless church-administered soup kitchens. Who, after all, feeds the poor in our urban centres? In large part, it is Churches. Again, the atheist attack on religious doctrine fails to take into account the vital aspects of church practice. In other words, what churches do is as important as what its members believe. The implications of the gradual erosion of churches as social institutions are far-reaching, and I think the success of atheism in undermining churches has some very unpleasant and as yet unexplored social Darwinist and eugenic tendencies, such as the elimination of the aforementioned impoverished, vulnerable urban citizens. Furthermore, Harvard professor John Putnam has recognized that the decline in church participation has contributed to the erosion of social Capital, which McGill University ethics professor Margaret Somerville characterizes as “embedded trust” – “how much confidence people have in one another. Higher social capital correlates with fewer social problems.” (Lorimer, Gasher, & Skinner 2008). Churches, above and beyond any kind of doctrine, provide a social context for the building of community, and for that alone they are valuable.

6. Science and Religion are not mutually exclusive. This also refers to the aforementioned naïve view of history that some atheists seem to harbor. The antagonism between them is a relatively recent phenomenon. Some of the greatest scientists ever were also devout believers, among them Einstein, Newton, and Avicenna. Indeed, some of the early natural history tomes were published by Church organizations, such as The Life of an Insect: An Account of Insect Habits and Manners (1850), which was published by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. Mind you, there is a very Christian flavor to this text, but it does feature empirical observation and experimentation as methods to treat its objects of study.


Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Against Atheism, Chapter 1.5

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3. Many atheists have not even bothered to engage with theological scholarship and/or liturgical hermeneutics. This is especially true of subcultures that systematically misidentify the exoteric readings of scripture as somehow essential to religion, such as the gay press, for example. As a gay man, I certainly sympathize with their attacks on hatred emanating from certain religious groups, religious groups that usually emphasize exoteric, or literal, scriptural interpretation. But it is a false generalization to take this hate and turn it back on all manifestations of religion, rather than the specific groups that promote hate against queers. Hate has never been an appropriate response to hate very successfully. Dear gay press: such a thing as queer theology actually exists, and better than that, it is a fairly sophisticated and positive phenomenon.. Spiritual scriptures are not immune to the diversity of interpretation that characterizes all language. Furthermore, consciousness itself is historical; it does not remain static through time, and it is through consciousness that the act of interpretation occurs. Please, for the sake of peace on earth, and harmony amongst human beings, let us level our anger and vengeance against the people who promote hate, rather than hastily dismiss and vituperate against multi-leveled spiritual verse and narrative that has been utterly de-contextualized from its historical and cultural origins by both fundamentalists, who tend to take the bible literally, and some atheists, who likewise take it literally and condemn it on this literal interpretation.