Rocco de Giacomo

I’m part of an Evangelical Christian email list. Long story. Anyway, I receive from time to time email newsletters from various church-goers, often providing me and others on the mailing list with their own perspective on Canadian and world events. The following is one I found in my in-box this morning. I have removed the name of the its author.

Please keep in mind, I did not post this for the sake of ridicule. The voice of the writer, I believe evokes best of intentions. Whether these intentions have been properly placed or not I leave up to you to decide. Though I am trying to keep this preface short, I will state however, that if there is any doubt that religious groups like this are organized and active in Canadian politics as much as they are in that of the US, letters like this should put that doubt to rest. (Also, see Charles McVety )

I can’t state more without tarnishing the reader’s perspective on this letter. So I will save my second point until afterwards.

Dear Friends.

Blessings,
 
 

Ahem, now to the second and final point about this letter. I mentioned in a previous article, that reality has kindly removed most of my faith in a supreme being. But, if there is providence of any kind, it gave me a little nudge today – the same day I received the above newsletter – when I chose to listen to a podcast of Karen Armstrong. She is a British scholar in comparative religions. I only mention her because, more than the topic of the upcoming election, that of Israel dominates the letter. And one cannot mention Israel without mentioning something about Islam, as the writer does. Perhaps it was providence that also made one particular part of Karen Armstrong’s speech stick in my mind. It is as follows: People seem to equate religious faith with believing things. We call religious people often “believers”, as though that was the main thing they do. And very often secondary goals get pushed into the first place, in place of compassion and the Golden Rule, because the Golden Rule is difficult…because a lot of religious people prefer to be right rather than compassionate.

In 2008 Armstrong called for a council of Christian, Muslim and Jewish leaders create a Charter of Compassion, and agreement that would help push the current world ethos beyond mere tolerance. Upon listening to her speech, some have find her tone towards a multi-religion world quite balanced. Others do not. The following is a comment copied form the TED Talks website, and if it doesn’t peek your interest about Karen Armstrong, I don’t know what will:

I simply can’t believe what I read, if anybody here is impress in the slighest way by what this lady says, then they should bowing down 24 hours a day at the feet of Jesus. What kind of evil is this, they worship the saying of this lady, but Jesus was ok, I mean, you have got to give Jesus some credit after all, he is just the most famous person on earth, I mean just a little respect for Jesus, people.

You come here to listen to this lady and to listen to Richard Dawkins rant and rave about God, and you worship this people, and you expect me to think highly of you, you are trash of the lowest kind. Your compassion is an abomination to God and if there is no God, then your compassion is hypocrisy, it’s what you do in public so that others can say how compassionate you are. But then you turn around and commit adultery, or lie, or deciet others in business. Who the hell told you that you were good and holy, God dammed you people.

We have much work to do. The first step is to get out and vote.

Now, I don’t mean to mix politics with religion on my own site. But in my own defense, I’ll just take from my religious background and state that the lord moves in mysterious ways.

But for the Lord’s sake, VOTE!!

Jane Auer:

Voting is one of the few things where boycotting in protest clearly makes the problem worse rather than better.

This is embarrassing. After two decades of joining protest marches in Toronto and Vancouver, six years of professing my political opinions on Latchkey.Net, a one-year subscription to Adbusters, and a two weekends at an Alaho Valley Anti-Logging Camp, I must confess to you that I didn’t start voting until I was 28.

Reasons? It wasn’t apathy. I wasn’t shy of hitting the streets and demonstrating my political views with others. As well, my interest in politics had been strong since my early twenties; my curiosity was fervent enough to lead me to a communist cell meeting during my U of T years. But thinking about it, perhaps here, in this cell meeting, is a good place to start.

The interest in other systems was sparked by pessimism towards my own. An Elections Canada survey, published in 2003, lists the top ten reasons participants decided not to vote. The top three are: 1. just not interested, 2. didn’t like parties/candidates, 3. vote wouldn’t matter. Numbers two and three could best describe the reasons for my voter abstinence. Both reasons were fueled by my burning cynicism, and the culture of my twenties bolstered this cynicism. The books and magazines I read condemned any individual who dared to lead, regardless of their political party or persuasion. The system was a corrupt sham, and anyone who joined it was corrupt by having become a part of it. Looking back, it seemed that the only ones who were of any virtue to me were those who were trying to undermine the system. No wonder the original movie, The Matrix, resonated with so many people of my generation. When I think of the main character, Neo, pulling himself out of that tub of amniotic fluid, I can’t help but think of the front cover of Kalle Lasn’s book, Culture Jam depicting the back of a man’s head with a bar code tattooed to the back of his neck.

With the idea of culture jamming, popular methods of subverting the system come to mind. Faux slogans like “Is there a GAP in your life?” and collective boycotts like “Buy Nothing Day”. I see now that the operative word in the latter concept is “nothing”. Buy nothing from the system, contribute nothing to the system, do nothing for the system. If you don’t like a job, leave it. If you don’t like a newspaper, don’t read it. In the 1990’s we voted with our feet. The idea was to choke the system with our absence, and if the system failed to notice us gone, then stage a protest (with the municipalities approval, of course). Though this wasn’t social apathy, I’d call it aggressive apathy. I really did want change, but I was terrified of becoming part of the system and therefore selling out. What I had to sell, I have no idea, now. A few poetry chapbooks?

Regardless, the idea of aggressive apathy has two flaws. Let me explain. At the core of my twenty-something cynicism were evil multinational corporations like Monsanto and Philip Morris. (I haven’t thought of these companies for years, this brings back memories….sigh) As I saw it, these companies could do whatever they want, whenever they want, wherever they want. They had minor governments and armies in their pockets and they answered only to the shareholders. The public was powerless to stop them. Now, the connection I failed to make was that the public also has shares. Like shareholder, every individual, or citizen, to be more exact, is a part owner, not of a company, but of a country. And like the collective power of ownership shareholders have over their multinational corporations, as a taxpaying Canadian citizen, I OWN small part of Canada and I have a little bit of power over who runs this country. And I consider the Voter Information Card I received before an election proof of this ownership.

Now, in the aggressively apathetic mindset, the weapons of choice are subversion on a prankster-ish scale, public demonstrations, and boycotts. Here lies the second flaw. The single article of power I have over my country, I cannot execute through any of these methods. The years and energy I spent trying to force the system to change could have been better spent simply walking to my nearest polling station and casting my vote. This is not to say that public demonstrations and boycotts are ineffective, but they are useless gestures without the electoral participation of those involved. If you want to hit them where it hurts, vote. The rest is window dressing. This is what I’ve learned.

Now, if you take what I have learned and apply it to the American Gore/Bush election in 2000, you might cringe as much as I do. The voter-turnout in the US has always been dismal, and if only a few more people, disinterested youths perhaps (like myself, a Canadian counterpart at the time) would have cast their vote, things would have no doubt turned out much different in the world today.

VOTE!!!