What`s Wrong With This Picture?

According to what I read in the paper today, housing costs in Vancouver are set to rise by up to fifty percent next year.  This after levying a fifteen percent tax on foreign buyers and kicking the snot out of Air BNB?

What is wrong with this picture?  Why have we become so numbed by greed and self-interest that the general good no longer matters unless you yourself are being affected?  Our governments impose these cosmetic toothless measures then wring their hands and make compassionate sounds as housing costs continue to skyrocket.  Are they really that helpless?  Or are they so in the pockets of the development corporations that they don't dare lose their precious funding and kickbacks?

And what about homeowners sitting on their mutating equity like a fantasy vulture sitting on top of a big fat radioactive egg?  Why aren't they being targeted with blame, since all they want to do is watch the value of their property grow and grow so they can turn themselves into accidental millionaires, sell and go buy a luxury condo in Costa Rica or wherever, without caring a damn about the role they are playing to make this city unaffordable and unliveable to anyone but the most obscenely wealthy?

Our lives have been ransomed by our elected governments to global forces of capitalism and international banking.  The rights and needs of the citizens of this country get only lip service while the wealthy one percent roll and grunt and squeal like pigs rutting in mounds of fragrant dung.  It is time for a massive resistance to be organized against these forces before we are all driven into the sea by these greedy rich bastards.  It is time for a revolution, for a real uprising of the people.  I am not calling for violence because violence simply breeds more violence.  We have only to consider the bitter fruit of most of the violent revolutions in history, which for the greater part, barring perhaps the French experiment in the late eighteenth century, have created violent and dangerous societies.

We need to take individual and collective action, resisting greedy landlords and unjust rent hikes, refusing to pay unjustly high rents, refusing to pay more than thirty percent of our monthly income for housing.  I am also calling on home and property owners in this city to resist the selfish temptation towards greed and to not hold out to sell to the highest bidder.  You don't really need those extra two million, do you now?  Not when one hundred thousand people, one third of whom are children, in this richest province of one of the world's richest countries have to line up at food banks?  Aren't you ashamed of yourselves?  How about, through mass direct action, imposing that homes in Vancouver be sold only at the national average, being less than half a million, to families and persons of medium and modest incomes.  The millionaires can all go to Grand Cayman.

We have to start taking back from this kleptocracy that is running our country and ruining our lives before we are all driven into the sea.

They Can Make Our Lives Miserable, But They Are Never Going To Break Us, 7

Gentle Reader, this will be the last of this series.  Number Seven.  I want to explore in this article an idea that has been implicit throughout these posts, but here I want to make it a little more obvious.  This is the idea of living as though we are already free.

I am free.  This isn't to say that I don't have obligations.  Tons.  Especially professional.  I have to attend to the needs of a dozen clients, at least, every week while at times bending over backwards to keep my supervisors happy and quiet.  If I don't do this I could lose my job, the ability to pay my rent, feed myself and otherwise take care of myself.  That would certainly take care of any of my future travel plans, expect a few trips to the food bank every month.  My health would go south, I could end up in hospital, perhaps dying prematurely. 

So really, how could my life be free, and how could I dare call myself free except that I'm lying, crazy, or both?

Well, first of all, I am free to serve.  This might seem like a bit of a paradox, but as a Christian who believes strongly in the power of love and truth, my work of serving vulnerable adults is an act of love.  It is for me a strong expression of my religious faith.  The freedom I enjoy is not so much a freedom to do what I desire and not suffer consequences but the freedom to do what is right, what is just, loving, merciful, kind...

There is something very sustaining about being responsible and caring for others.  It somehow helps throw the various disparate parts of my life into a harmonious working order.  Of course, I do credit this to the work of the Holy Spirit in my life.  Okay, atheists, you don`t have to agree, but perhaps instead of categorically dismissing what you yourselves have never experienced, you could be a little bit generous and give me the benefit of the doubt.  Show a little humility and admit that you yourselves don`t really know?

This sense of freedom is what I receive each day as God's gift of his love for me, a gift he reaches out and extends to all, though few seem willing to accept.  As I walk in this freedom, a freedom of discipline, I see increasingly the image of Christ in others and the presence of God in nature.  I also desire justice for others because of the love that burns in my heart. 

And I feel free: free from the government, from my employers, from the advertising media, from scary people who try to threaten our wellbeing, from prejudice and hate, from the terror of consumerism, from the slavery to money and things.  Having given myself to God (or, love) I am free from everyone, though still free to serve in a spirit of love.

I simply refuse to wear their chains, I trample them underfoot as I walk on in a spirit of joy and gratitude.  No one is going to take that from me.  And I also pray that those who would try to break us would themselves be set free from those very chains that deny them their very heritage as human beings.

They Can Make Our Lives Miserable, But They Are Never Going To Break Us, 6

Based on my own life experience, this is what it could take to make ourselves resilient against the powerful:

1. Spirituality.  This would be the most important and most essential characteristic needed for positive, successful and creative resistance.  I am not thinking specifically about religion, though as a Christian I will be drawing particularly from my experience.  I am not going to recommend the popular nonsense of New Age or what I call Buddha Babble.  Nothing at all against Buddhism or Buddhists by the way.  That said, concepts of mindfulness, meditation and yoga have been so bastardized and co-opted as items of popular narcissism and consumerism that they do not qualify as authentic spirituality.  What I recommend is a daily spiritual discipline that comes from a personal experience of conversion and enlightenment.  If the spirituality is authentic then it will flow beyond your own personal needs and gratification.  It will be a spirituality of love, truth and justice that embraces and includes others: other people, including the stranger on the street, other creatures, the environment.  It will be an active work of love that simultaneously includes yourself and the other, and that lifts you and raises you out of and beyond yourself, raising up others with you.  Hopefully you might luck into a supportive community of fellow travellers.

2. Self Care.  This includes the common sense stuff: good diet, good sleep habits, exercise and recreation, creativity, rest, and maintaining healthy relationships with family and friends.  If they have already been making your life particularly miserable with a chronically low income, it could be very difficult to secure a good diet.  This has happened to me.  To cope, I have bought mainly in bulk, lived without meat (still vegetarian) and made everything from scratch, from bread to cookies, to meatless stews and soups.  You might even find that you don't need the food bank if you try it this way.  It is also important to stay in close contact with those who can help you with your health needs, especially if there are already underlying conditions, be they mental or physical.

3. Education:  Read, listen, think, explore.  Get thee to the library, or to the book stores. Try to avoid pop culture, except to critique but maintain a healthy distance.  Stay aware of the issues that matter to you the most and try to maintain correspondence with thinkers, writers and journalists whose work you particularly admire.  Learn and study things that are not issue-related: art, culture, history, science, math, psychology, philosophy and more.  Learn and become fluent in a second or third language.  If you are able to, travel every year to the country or countries where the language is spoken, to gain fluency and to learn the culture, to know and love the people who speak the language.  Stay away from social media as much as you can as that is usually a bottomless sinkhole.

4. Educate.  Write a blog, stay in contact with like-minded people, join or form conversation and reading circles.  Inspire, challenge and learn from each other.

5. Love the earth.  Get out in nature, learn about  and learn from the rich diversity of life in your region, get out in the forest, the wilderness whenever you can.  Start a garden, organic, of course.  If you are able to travel try to focus on natural and wilderness areas.  Notice the birds, the insects, mammals.  Learn to love and respect them.  Get outside in all kinds of weather.  Try to walk long distances, every day if you are able.

6. Keep the bastards accountable, be they politicians, journalists, or whatever.  Use email, make phone calls.  Start and circulate petitions.  Hold their feet to the fire.  Be willing to make friends with some of them, but never compromise on your values.

7. Cultivate a sense of humour.  Learn to laugh at yourself, to see your place in the universe, small but not insignificant.  Take delight in others, in small joys and small pleasures.  Enjoy beauty, art, music, literature, good theatre and cinema.  Sing freely and loudly if you can get away with it.  Remember that we are all one big complex organism, we are all interconnected and we are all interdependent, each one on the other.  No one is unimportant in this amazing web of life.  Do everything you can to reduce your carbon footprint.  Treat strangers and friends equally with kindness, respect and consideration.  Live the life of love.

8. And live with the belief that you have already won!

They Can Make Our Lives Miserable, But They Are Never Going To Break Us, 5

I don't know how I have managed to do it.  I have coped with a system hostile to poor people and have come out okay, if still poor.  I have generally worked all my life, with some periods spent on unemployment benefits and welfare.  Finding sustainable, remunerative employment was always a challenge for me, I think especially for my lack of training and credentials.  I have always been treated by employers like disposable goods.  It hasn't been easy.

I think my spirituality has done more than anything else to protect my integrity.  Those of you who have read a lot of this blog will understand that I became a Christian when I was fourteen,  This was a profound change in my life and ever since that auspicious date I have lived more or less with a strong certainty of God's nearness and presence.

Without this perpetual infusion of my spiritual life I'm not sure how well I'd have born up.  I was already a survivor of childhood sexual, physical and emotional abuse and neglect as well as my parents' bitter divorce.  In my Christian community I had new friends and mentors and learned much better from some of them what my own parents never could have taught me.  I was already politically aware from regularly reading underground journalism and asking questions and learning from the many people I was meeting.  I learned from my friend, Big Bird, about vegetarian nutrition and how to live well on a tight budget.  From everyone I was inspired to be kind, loving, compassionate to others and hospitable.  My situation with my family worsened and I was bounced from my father who hated me to my mother's drunken and violent partner who didn't love me much either.  I was on my own and fresh out of high school, struggling to survive.  They were making my life miserable and they couldn't break me because I refused to be broken.  From a succession of friends I learned other things, especially about books, psychology, literature, philosophy, and I began to read, learn and explore.  While living with fundamentalist Christians for six months they made my life miserable but couldn't break me.  I stayed with friends, freewheeling bohemian Jesus freaks and learned especially to value freedom, gentleness and inclusiveness.  Then I got caught up with a fundamentalist cult whose harshness traumatized me.  But they couldn't break me.  I remained connected with a radical Mennonite house church and a radical lesbian feminist and other friends who taught me and mentored me and helped me find healing.  I ran into problems with a church of fundamentalist evangelicals and walked out on their intolerant hatred, unbroken.  I spent several years caring for the old, sick and dying while reaching out to the rejected on the streets and in the queer community.  I ran into difficulties with the Anglican church and with a coven of Satanists out to destroy me.  But they couldn't break me.  I was desperately poor, eating weeds out of the back yard and walking nine miles downtown from Richmond to minister to the unwanted because I didn't have money for the bus.  People were literally dying around me and my own partners in God's work turned on me and betrayed me.  My mother died and I went to Europe where I was extorted, robbed and nearly killed.  I returned to a bad situation in Vancouver and struggled to cope with very difficult friends who almost all ended up turning against me and betraying me.  They couldn't destroy me, they could not break me.  My life imploded and I became homeless and my own father turned against me and almost drove me to suicide.  He could not break me.  I was up against a welfare system designed to disempower and humiliate and dehumanize everyone on social assistance.  I stood up against them.  They couldn't break me.

My life has improved exponentially.  God has sustained me and blessed and healed me throughout.  I have also had to learn to be disciplined and use with wisdom and care all the resources at my fingertips.  I have come to realize that being kind to others is in many ways the key to my own survival.  I have learned that we are all interconnected, we are all members of one organism and not one can survive or do well without the others. 

Yes, the powers in our government and economic and social systems are indeed making our lives a misery, at times a horror.  But they cannot break us, not so long as we remain open to one another in a spirit of love and care, not as long as we go on learning and imparting to others our knowledge, not so long as we don't lose our sense of humour, as long as we keep on growing.

We are small, yes.  But we are not as weak as we think.  Together we will rise.  Together we will prevail.

They Can Make Our Lives Miserable, But They Are Never Going To Break Us, 4

Today, Gentle Reader, we are going to talk about money.  We are going to talk about those who have money, and those who do not, why they do and why they do not and why this whole situation stinks worse than an outhouse that hasn`t been cleaned in over a century.  I just read in this weekend's Globe and Mail that Donald Trump and the members of his half-filled cabinet so far have a net-worth of eleven billion dollars, and this is exactly the way Trump supporters like it.  Yes, they may, themselves, be poor, but with a rich asshole like that in the Oval Office they feel somehow reassured that the possibility of themselves becoming rich assholes just like President Dump, will always be there for them.

This is the problem with the American Dream.  It's all about money, accruing wealth, and through wealth, power.  It has always been this, and Canada has also been infected by the greed virus, though in many cases we still remain relatively asymptomatic.  Our prime ministers have always been individuals of means, if not obscenely wealthy like their American counterparts.  Campaigning for political office is itself an expensive process requiring substantial sums of money for a basic platform.  Please notice that no one on a low income has ever been elected to high public office in this country, nor likely ever will.

The problem with so many people wanting to become wealthy is, there are only so many resources to go around.  The generation of wealth, like anything else, is going to have its limits.  Not everyone is going to get rich, and in a highly competitive struggle, there are going to be many losers and not a few casualties.   The lucky few win the prize, get the fat bank accounts and investment portfolios and generally have access to such power as to induce misery on the rest of us, the Great Unwashed.  So this is the American, and by extension, Canadian Dream: become unreasonably rich and basically shit on everyone else. 

This isn't to say that there aren't those who try to give back, but it is always going to be on their terms.  Unlike in a system of fair taxation, the wealthy benefactors get to pick and choose, to cherry pick which causes they are going to champion and bankroll, and everyone else can go dumpster dive for empty cans and bottles.  They are also going to be expected to buy their own shopping buggies, of course.

With so much of our nation's wealth being horded by the One Percent, is it any wonder that social inequality is always the issue du jour?  The rest of us work at increasingly insecure occupations with stagnated or lowered pay for longer hours to feed ourselves and our families while shelling out to pay for food and housing costs that rise exponentially faster than our incomes.  Is it any wonder we are angry?  Who wouldn't feel betrayed?  To add insult to injury, Prime Minister Junior has approved the Trans Mountain Pipeline, hoping that his past year and a bit of offensive charm and sex appeal would seduce and lull us into giving him a blank cheque to go on kissing the derrieres and other anatomical bits of Chinese billionaires and American political and economic Godzillas hoping that we wouldn't even notice.  Quick, another shirtless selfie, that'll distract 'em.  Maybe unzip my pants, too. 

Justin, you can keep your clothes on.  The thrill is gone, for me it never was, and without adjusting or removing one single item of clothing you have successfully mooned every person who lives in Canada.

The wealthy certainly can make our lives miserable, but we don't have to concede.  We are still richer than they are.  We have at our fingertips, at low cost, or even for free, all sorts of resources for enriching and ennobling our lives.  I have always been poor, yet I have become fluent in a second language (Spanish) am well-read, well travelled and speak and write like someone with a post-graduate degree.  Not bad for a college dropout.  I cook well, bake, enjoy my friends, take good care of myself, and love nature and the outdoors.  These and many other riches that have nothing to do with money, the rich cannot take from me, because in my poverty I am far wealthier than even President Dump. 

We have to continue to live our lives as though these idiots didn't matter, while continuing to hold them to account for their selfishness and greed, for the way they perpetually betray us.  We also need to continue to summon forth the better angels of our nature so that we don't have to sink to their depths of lowness.  Gentle Reader, even if you don't believe in God, even if you are an agnostic or an atheist, I still summon you to stretch forth and touch your Highest Good, and to let your Highest Good become your leading star.  We are in this together, and together we will rise.  Together, we will win.

They can make our lives miserable, but they are never going to break us!

They Can Make Our Lives Miserable, But They Are Never Going To Break Us 3

Another notorious holdout for the feudal system is our rental arrangements with landlords.  Ooh...Don't get me started! 

We are relatively new to the concept of housing as a human right.  It still isn't accepted here in dear progressive Canada, Gentle Reader.  Believe it or not.

Sign my petition if you haven't already.

https://secure.avaaz.org/en/petition/Canadian_Prime_Minister_Justin_Trudeau_make_housing_a_Canadian_human_right/

In the feudal system, housing was more or less a guarantee, in that you were working the lands of your lord and master.  It never was really your land or your home, it was there at the king's convenience as you would have been as his bonded servant.  With the rise of the Bourgeoisie, Industrialization and the Common Man, it became accepted that every man could be his own king (bear with me, sisters!), could own his own home or castle and could form and boss his own family, all in fair exchange for working for a living.

Only the wealthy could own their own house, usually the aristocracy or landed gentry.  Eventually home ownership became an expected entitlement, in North America.  In Europe, most families rent.  With the opening of the New World the rigid class systems of Europe could be left behind.  We formed a meritocracy where you worked for your opportunities and rose up in life through your own efforts, sweat and cleverness.

Now, in my own city of Vancouver, anyway, just over half the people rent.  We all tend to be on low or lower incomes.  In order to maintain a roof over our heads we enter into agreements with landlords.  In the case of homeowners, the bank becomes the landlord, for some twenty years or longer, anyway.  Nowhere is it even hinted that our housing is ours by human right.  We have to pay our rent or mortgage on time, every month, the full payment.  Failing this, we lose our homes and if we don't pay anywhere, even because we are unable to, there is no mercy.  We are homeless, sleeping on the street.  Our entire lives spiral downward as our mental and physical health come to ruin and we completely lose all connection with our communities.  We become effectively the walking dead.

There is much that is wrong with this picture, not least of all, the fact that lack of sufficient income makes many of us housing vulnerable, disempowered, helpless and dependent on charity, since the government largess always becomes severely scant whenever it comes to aiding the economically vulnerable.  

Yes, people need to be justly rewarded for providing housing, as they also must pay off their own housing providers, but maybe our dependence on money and our tendency to value everything according to economics is doing something to dehumanize us.  Landlords, be they property management companies, property developers or individual homeowners, all have incredible power to make miserable the lives of their tenants.  This, like the hierarchical system in the workplace is every bit as unjust as it is unequal. 

From the cradle we drink inequality mixed with our mothers' milk.  Failing to address this, failing to turn money values on their heads and failing to develop a way of life and sense of community based on love, equality and social justice has made us less than human.  We see the homeless languishing in our streets and we are all reminded that we could be next.

Housing is a human right.  Without it, we cannot bring our lives together into a working whole.  Without adequate housing we can never feel part of our communities.  Without housing we are rendered vulnerable and powerless.

During this time, living as we are in the dark and stinking shadow of global capitalism, we are going to be needing one another more than ever.  We are going to be increasingly reliant on one another as housing and food availability are continually threatened and jeopardized by our governments` ethically bankrupt policies and procedures.  We are going to have to increasingly hold their feet to the fire, and if that doesn`t work then we are going to end up setting them on fire.  Our governments, by abrogating their most essential obligations to the people they elected, by ignoring our housing needs, by maintaining us in legislated poverty, are only sowing the seeds of revolution and their own imminent destruction.   This does not have to happen, and there are indications that our leaders are beginning to wise up to their irresponsible governance.  They are at least paying lip-service to the problem they have created.

We are going to need more, much more than meaningful words and sympathetic cooing if we are going to see any significant and lasting change.  Otherwise...I dread to think of it.

They can make our lives as miserable as they want, but they are never going to break us and if they don`t begin to implement real and meaningful reforms then we are going to end up breaking them.

They Can Make Our Lives Miserable But They Are Never Going To Break Us 2

We have, here in Canada, a feudal system in, regardless our parliamentary democracy and our lovely liberalism.  It even reflects on our political system.  Even though our head of state is elected for a limited term they are still going to live like kings, queens and emperors, in the lap of luxury, all their needs and wants attended to and with constant security protecting their sorry soft fat hienies from the envious unwashed.

Feudalism is very much the inheritance of Western Civilization.  It is so deeply engrained into our collective DNA, I doubt that we will ever be able to completely shake it off.  Factor in the unpleasant fact that humans tend to be hierarchical by nature and we really have a communal ethical dilemma.  It was the feudal lords dominating their little parcels of land throughout Europe during the Dark Ages that laid the foundation for our nation states and eventually our capitalist economy.  The lords became kings as their lands increased into small nation states, all gained through military prowess and bloodshed, of course.

With the signing of the Magna Carta in the Thirteenth Century began the long and slow progress of creeping democracy.  Revolution and threats of general uprisings, over the centuries, limited the sovereign`s power.  Global commerce became such that goods and products from all over the world stimulated such curiosity and envy in the masses that their rulers would have to gradually begin the irksome process of gradually ceding their power to the masses.  The bourgeoisie began to grow and flourish further eroding the power of the king.  Aristocracy slowly would evolve into a commodity of purchase.

The French Revolution flung open the palace doors, following the American, and in the Nineteenth Century all bets were off.  Popular movements and uprisings, advances in science and commerce and the advances in public education all seemed to conspire in making the aristocracy irrelevant, a charming anachronism to be dusted off and brought out periodically for public viewing, much like the contemporary British Monarchy.

Democratic processes would not be restrained.  Monarchies either fell through popular uprisings or fell into irrelevance through public enlightenment as the Common Man rose to take his place of predominance.

The Common Man is a great lover of money.  And power.  And influence.  And dominance.

The Industrial Revolution, the rise of the bourgeoisie, parliamentary and liberal democracy, the secularization of the state and the disempowerment of religion and the abolition of slavery all might have worked beautifully in tandem to transform Europe and America into a Utopian paradise, but for one little detail.  We never did shake ourselves free from a mentality of feudalism.  Not even with all our democratic and human rights, nor with the huge progresses in the social and hard sciences.

In the workplace you have the CEO governing the administrators who control upper management who supervise middle management who take care of lower management who supervise the low rung employees who often are structured, officially and unofficially into their own professional and social hierarchies.  There is still virtually no democracy in the workplace.  We are at the mercy of our bosses and of our betters: lords, vassals and serfs.  The contemporary workplace is a recipe for disempowerment, professional and personal and power is very easily and readily abused.  The fallout for poor mental health outcomes is already well known and documented and is worsening.

It is that our survival, our lives, depend on our work that makes this a particularly odious reality.  Our ability to feed and house ourselves and our families is usually dependent on the good will of our paymasters who exploit us.  They have this control over our lives and they can pay us whatever low crap wage they want because of this feudalistic mentality we have never really grown out of.  Yes, they can make our lives miserable, and, no, they are never going to break us.