The Serial Re-discovery of North America

North America is discovered every day -- masses of immigrants arrive at airports and discover it for themselves. Layers of Canada are constantly uncovered, something new appearing not noticed by everyone else. 

They say no one creates, only re-creates; it's the same with discovery. As an infant you discover the world beyond your crib, and then your neighbourhood as a child venturing out on your first bike. Maybe one day you discover a mountain-top, a stunning view, after a laborious hike. It's irrelevant whether you're the first to see this view; this is your discovery of the place. 

Let's stop arguing about which race saw something first, since everything is serially re-discovered in every generation. With unsettling speed things are often rediscovered in another guise: live animal becomes meat, wild space becomes farmland, tribal territories becomes a country, an oasis becomes a tourist resort. Life is all discovery -- of change.

Scientists discover new species. They've always been there, but they're new to science. Their evolutionary descent is uncovered through genetic analysis. 

A stream is altered by flooding, a shoreline altered by a cliff collapse. If you're not discovering new things in your surroundings most days, you're not alive -- or at least not looking around. Everyone brings new eyes to a locale, and it keeps offering something new to discover. Yes, it will be transformed, and the documents describing it can also be changed: new values discovered, and then, in the future, past values rediscovered. "History" is the history of rediscovery.

Prairie becomes pasture, then lawn, then pavement. Each generation sees what previous ones never knew. Discovering the same place, generations see different places. So who's the first discoverer? There's no such person. What you discover isn't about where you are, but what you notice, and we tend to find what we are looking for.

Maybe we should focus on uncovering joy instead of tribal resentment. Sharing instead of evicting. We need to discover open-mindedness, especially in education. Schools shouldn't re-shape information to fit political correctness of the day. Learning new information is scary, but that's not news: book-banning by religious and nationalist forces has always been about fearing to uncover inconvenient historical facts -- and other people's ideas. That's why it's essential to keep a country's National Archives preserved and away from the political agendas of rivalrous groups. That's why the recent deletion of certain words, facts and records from the National Archives of Canada is deeply dangerous -- it's an official cover-up.*

Whenever records are suppressed, historians silenced and history itself made ahistorical, we discover ourselves to be lost in a wilderness of muddle and dispute.

So who "discovered" North America? Primitive Asian tribes migrating over an ice bridge from the northwest thousands of years ago? Vikings crossing the Atlantic from the northeast? Spanish explorers sailing up from the south? 

Once Europeans discovered that the planet was round, mariners sailed around it. Looking for a water-way to the Far East, Europeans found continents: North and South America. Whatever lands adventurers explore and settle in, someone else always wants to cover up parts of history they dislike. But no fear: it's fuel for RE-discovery. The partisan cover-ups of documents today will supply revelations for generations to come -- lots of material for new history scholars to do their PhDs about. 

*See Purge of 'offensive content' in national archives a guess to employees | Toronto Sun :        “Much of the content on the Library and Archives Canada website reflects the time at which it was written,” wrote Canada's Chief Archivist in a June 9, 2021 email.  Of course it reflects its time! It's supposed to. That's why it's in an archive (the "place in which government records are kept"). This archivist goes on to say "much of this content may be offensive". All historical content offends somebody, but an Archive's job is to preserve it, not delete it.

Has "safety-ism" gone mad?

Someone online demanded that the government create free programs in parks during school holidays, for kids whose parents can't afford summer daycare programs. 

Governments already have: the parks themselves. That's why we have them -- so kids can go there and play. Together. With other kids, of all ages, using the playground equipment provided, or racing around the grass and hiding-and-seeking among the trees -- without adults.

"Go out and play" parents used to tell kids in the summer holidays, and kids reveled in freedom from school, rules and supervising adults. They hung out with other free-range kids, learning to make their own entertainment and plan their own day. "Be home by dinner" was the rule, plus "look both ways when you cross the street".

Today kids are prisoners in lockdown, pandemic or no pandemic, living a merely virtual life, becoming unfit and often obese. 

If you do see kids at a playground, the parents or minders won't be far away yet they're usually mentally absent: heads bent over phones, texting, scrolling ... not actually interacting with the kids they're helicoptering around.

The playgrounds themselves are peppered with warnings, for we have helicoptering bureaucracy too, in mortal fear of lawsuits, and caught in the grip of Safety-ism:

Parents won't even let their kids ride around quiet neighbourhoods on bikes. Assuming they're not unfortunate enough to live downtown, that's a major brake on independence. Much better to learn the best rules early: stay on the curb, use hand signals, obey stop signs, and watch what's going on around you. The road to responsibility -- so many kids never take it. 

There May Be a Shortage of Workers, But Don't Go Short of Humour

Is the current shortage of staff (in retail, wholesale, transport, airports, ferries, health care, construction) linked to a reluctance of upcoming generations to seek employment? A preference of graduates (or drop-outs) to keep living with parents (citing existing rental unaffordability), while dreaming of careers "working online", i.e. never having to step away from the computer screen? 

Does the worker shortage (and shortage of qualifications for positions of responsibility) also result from changes in the education system? What do schools teach, today? They've given up on Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic, that's obvious. Those are replaced by texting, TikTok and "oral traditions". Arts and Science (literally and originally, meaning "skill and knowledge") have been replaced in the K-12 curriculum by subjects like Safetyism, Competitive Victimhood, Neuro-variance (Curating Your Moods), Gender-rights, Data Violence, and Dysphoria (the state of feeling dissatisfied). 

Students certainly aren't being groomed to be satisfied with customer service work or jobs involving skill, physical labour, or commitment. (On-again off-again gigs are always short-term, for when you want to be off again. This is called work-life balance.)  

Does this sound like a typical aging person's grumpy assessment of the "younger generation", as offered since time immemorial? Yes, indeed. Yet, some things are different now: the technology-driven ones (retreat to life on-line) and ideological ones (creating mediocre education through PC virtue-notions of equity, diversity,  inclusion ... and colonials' exclusion). 

Maybe the healthiest thing is to keep a droll sense of humour -- our best armor against "dysphoria". Some folks choose to be "On the Droll":  

On the Droll | Mad Swirl

Some kids choose to drop out of school.

 

City Councils Proclaim Anti-Canada Day

Post-Covid-lockdowns, in 2022 and 2023 Canadian residents of Victoria BC again gathered for Canada Day on July 1st, although it's now considered Anti-Canada Day by some (including Winnipeg -- and Victoria municipal councilors and their "Family"). 

Re-naming Canada's national day in 2024 is being proposed in 2023*, the better to free us to repudiate our founding fathers and cultural mothers (and all of the British Isles), and to make room for maple-syrupy declarations of allyship with the "marginalized and victimized".

That way, we will be able to go on apology-overdrive for being a liberal democracy. 

Apologizing is what Canada does best. Victoria's City Council wants to have a "review", meaning a thinly disguised process to de-platform history with "thoughtful analysis" -- and to enforce compelled speech about it. 

To culturally-correct drumming we will sing the new version of our national anthem: No Ca-nadaaa ...🎶

Participants in Canada Day festivals are asked to leave their maple leaf flags at home, in case the white spaces on them are offensive to vulnerable groups.

In Victoria, statues of colonial figures will kindly stay locked in their crates.

Editorial: Victoria Portrait Facing Uncertain Future Amid Debate About Colonial Symbols (iheartradio.ca)

See below: An old-fashioned insubordination celebration (!)      Canada Day Picnic 2021 in a municipal park, held when Victoria Council decided to "cancel" Canada Day -- but others did not. 

*https://www.timescolonist.com/local-news/victoria-considers-taking-lead-on-canada-day-events-again-7366576

The Last Stoics Standing Are the Elderclowns

The CLOWN is an ambiguous figure. S/he goes two ways. The ELDER clown, wearing the famed double mask of theatre, is a seasoned expert at perfecting dual comic-tragic presentation -- being old enough to have seen all sides of life. A clown (also known as the "wise fool" or "holy fool") is a philosopher. Elder ones are often of the Stoic school. 

Do schools of philosophy match phases of the life span (and maybe also the eras of human civilization)? Infants are still at one with nature, and humanity's earliest mind-body lore is pagan. Beyond early childhood, which schools match which phases of life?

Adolescence: Nihilism (Morality has no factual basis.)

Early adulthood: Existentialism (Life has no inherent purpose, it's up to the individual to create meaning. Wear weird clothes.)

Early middle age: Hedonism (Pleasure is tops. Seize - and share - the most you can get while you can get it.)

Later middle age: Empiricism (with a topping of Rationalism. Face facts, be logical. Top up your pension, slim down your diet.)

Senior years: Stoicism (Acceptance, inner balance, calmly knowing what you can and can't control, and seeing the humour in it all even in the face of death).

At the Philosophy Cafe the elder-philosophers consider themselves the Last Stoics Standing -- while also falling down laughing. 

Visit the Cafe at Just Jests:

https://justjests.blogspot.com/2022/12/chapter-one-epictetus-was-street-corner.html

Combatting Systemic Erase-ism

How can the past be future-proofed, if Systemic Erase-ism blanks it out for current and future generations? Erase-ism doesn't see history as a series of events that have happened, but as an assault on the sensibilities of some people in the present. It re-shapes history as parable ("fictitious narrative or allegory") in defense of dominant attitudes of the present. Once it becomes a creature of ideological opinion-shaping, History as a subject is no longer a scholarly discipline but a branch of identity politics. 

The problem is not only that new parables are written to suit contemporary tastes (every generation does that), but that actual historical evidence in the form of documents, memorial sites, graves, archaeological remains, architecture, letters and memoirs are being erased and destroyed.

In every generation, knowledge of the past must survive depredations of the present. If we (the present) suppress parts of our past story considered discriminatory or "unsafe" for some (e.g. "privileged, dominant, colonialist, white, elitist, etc. ...), what will we be leaving descendants and future scholars? The future, where scholarship is concerned, will be blank.

How is this erase-ism accomplished? With displays of diversity-equity. This takes forms we have become used to: statue destruction, vandalism of buildings, removal of inconvenient documents from public archives and libraries, name changes of cities, streets, schools and universities.

This process is common when one regime or zeitgeist replaces another. It can change names and streetscapes, but not the actual facts of what happened in the past, because the past cannot unhappen. It can be unknown however, to an ignorant populace. This is engineered ignorance.

Removing statues of early explorers, politicians, inventors and philanthropists in Canada doesn't remove the fact of their having been nation-shapers. Changing the name of Ryerson University (for example) to Toronto Metropolitan University, doesn't change the fact that Egerton Ryerson the person had enormous effect on Canadian literacy, education, journalism and free speech. It can only erase public knowledge of the fact.

In the past, churches and polite taste muzzled certain expressions of speech, but speech was loosened up during the 20th century -- only to be re-muzzled today. Today we suppress not profanity but ideas that others say make them feel marginalized. 

Now, scholars with a different take on history than the ideologically correct one are banned from campuses (exactly the arena where they would be speaking, in an open society). It only needs someone to call their theories "hate" for them to be sent the way of statues: de-platformed. 

Next, editors of mainstream media accept submissions only from "disadvantaged" groups. Festivals, conferences and theatres only receive funding if they demonstrate the right kind of "diversity" (i.e. non-diversity). We live in paradoxical times. 

Thought can be erased before it even finds expression -- through self-censorship.  This is about freedom of speech, debate and analysis among citizens, academics, writers, bureaucrats and officials. Only if we preserve open expression can the past and present be held proof against future erase-ism.

“If we lose our freedom, it will not be because of invasion from without, but erosion from within; not because of autocratic dictators looking to do bad, but parochial bureaucrats seeking to do good.”
                     — Alan Borovoy, Canadian Civil Liberties Association

The Settler's Ballad for Canada Day

(You know the tune 😊)

Old Macdonald had a farm

E I E I O

and on that farm he made a life

E I E I O

With a bank loan l here and a workforce there,

here a flood, there a fire, everywhere another care,

Old Macdonald settled here

and shaped the countryside

Old Macdonald made the wealth

of Canada though toil,

Old MacDonald fed the crowds

when settling he broke soil,

and Macdonald took a wife

without whom he'd have led no life

Thank Macdonald for our health,

and Mrs. Mac for Canadian wealth