Five Orders of Human Consciousness

David C. Korten in his book "The Great Turning", lays out five Orders of Human Consciousness which I have greatly condensed and which are presented below —
GET THIS BOOK AND READ IT!!

The first experience of consciousness takes place in the womb where we float effortlessly in the warm amniotic fluids. There is no beginning, no ending. There is no "I" and no "not I". Just to be is sufficient. For the first one to two years we learn to adapt to our physical world and to differentiate the "I" from the "not I". From this point on, we progress through some or all of the following five stages of increasingly mature consciousness.
__________________________________________________________

First Order: Magical Consciousness

A child of two to six years of age experiences a world influenced by magical beings, both friendly and sinister, such as those that exist in the classical fairy tales. Magical Consciousness is limited in its ability to connect the actions of the self and future consequences and cannot accept responsibility for such actions. Magical Consciousness depends on external figures to make things magically right.

Second Order: Imperial Consciousness

Transition from first order to second usually starts around age six or seven. A child at this age begins to dicover that many relationships are predictable and that actions have consequences, and begins to explore its ability to influence the world through its own actions. The Imperial Consciousness is able to acknowledge another person's point of view for purposes of calculating how to get what one wants but with little concept of loyalty, gratitude, or justice.

Third Order: Socialized Consciousness

Transition beyond the second order normally begins around age eleven or twelve. Coinciding with the onset of teenage rebellion, it brings a growing emotional intelligence and a recognition of the extent to which personal security depends on the mutual loyalty of the members of one's group in a sometimes hostile world. It also brings an ability to see one's self through the eyes of another and is capable of empathy.

Socialized Consciousness internalizes a play-by-the-rules, law-and-order mentality where fairness means a society that rewards those who work hard, leaves slackers to suffer their fate and demands retribution for wrongdoers. It adheres to culturally defined moral codes but lacks the ability to subject those codes to critical examination. It is the conciousness of those who have a "Small World" view defined by their immediate reference group and who expect that playing-by-the-rules will give them, their families and their communities a decent life. They do not yet grasp that complex system relationships may prevent whole classes of people from finding jobs or staying on the right side of the law.

Fourth Order: Cultural Concsiousness

Adulthood brings encounters with people whose cultural perspective is different from that of those in one's own group. The initial reaction to such encounters is often a sense of cultural superiority or even absolutism: "The way of my people is the only right way". A Cultural Consciousness is rarely achieved before age thirty, and the majority of those who live in modern imperial societies never achieve it, partly because most corporations, political parties, churches, labor unions and even educational institutions actively discourage it.

If, however, the Socialized Consciousness is secure in its identity, it may come to recognize that culture itself is a social construct and that cultural norms and expectations are subject to choice. This represents a profound step in the development of a true moral consciousness based on examined principles , and the beginnings of a capacity for cultural innovation. Those who have achieved a Cultural Consciousness are concerned with equal justice for all people not just for one's own kind, and they work to repeal or revise unjust laws.

Those who raise significant challenges in an imperial society are likely to be subjected to a loss of standing or outright rejection. However, because they have the capacity to question the dysfunctional cultural premises of Empire, those who have achieved a Cultural Consciousness are essential to the cultural renewal and maturation that the Socialized Consciousness suppresses as threatening to the established social and moral order. They have an "Inclusive World" view that sees the possibility of creating inclusive, life-affirming societies that work for all.

Fifth Order: Spiritual Consciousness

The Spiritual Consciousness, the highest expression of what it means to be human, manifests the awakening to Creation as a complex, multi-dimensional, interconnected, continuously unfolding whole. It involves coming full circle back to the original sense of oneness of the womb experience, but with a richly nuanced appreciation for the complexity and grandeur of the whole of Creation as manifest in each person, animal, plant, and rock. Persons who have attained a Spiritual Consciousness have an evolving "Integral World" view.

Spiritual Consciousness is the consciousness of the elder statesperson, teacher, tribal leader or religious sage that supports an examined morality grounded in the universal principles of justice, love and compassion common to the teachings of the most revered religious prophets. It approaches conflict, contradiction and paradox not as problems to be overcome, but as opportunities for deeper learning. Each encounter with diverse people and situations opens a window to a piece of reality previously hidden from the conscious mind. Eventually, what appeared to be disconnected fragments of experience link together to awaken a profound sense of the spiritual unity of Creation.

The Socialized Consciousness is prone to characterize persons who have achieved a Spiritual Consciousness as lone contemplators disaffiliated from society because they disavow special loyalty to any group or identity. However, the Spiritual Consciousness simply transcends the exclusiveness of conventional group loyalties to embrace an identity that is inclusive of the whole and all its many elements. The sense of duty and loyalty once reserved for members of one's immediate family, ethnic group, nationality or religion now extends to the whole. To the Spiritual Consciousness, the satisfaction of living in creative service to the whole is its own reward.
__________________________________________________________

This post was transcribed directly from my website (below).


MY WEBSITE   —   ANewHumanity.CA

FACEBOOK PAGE

Tweet THIS POST

Follow @anewhumanity

More thoughts from "New World New Mind" - Robert Ornstein and Paul Ehrlich, 1989

This piece starts back when humans were still hunter-gatherers,   >15,000 years ago.

__________________________________________________________

". . . everybody could keep track of all, or almost all, of the relationships among the people in their tribe. In a society of one hundred people, typical of communities before the Agricultural Revolution, about five thousand relationships are possible between [pairs of] the different individuals* "

"This number is large, but possible to comprehend. One hundred is probably close to the "designed limit" [read "evolved limit" there is no indication the author was referring to the current term "intelligent design"] for human acquaintance — the maximum number of individuals with who a human being can reasonably interact at more than a superficial level."

"Today things are very different . . . it is impossible for one person to keep track of the 12 million possible relationships between 5,000 people — but many high schools in large cities have that many students . . ."

"The overload of information in modern society means that even the most brilliant and well-informed members can store only a small portion of the society's culture . . . This lack of familiarity of people with their culture can be a fatal flaw. Politicians often make critical decisions about issues ranging from the proliferation of nuclear missiles to AIDS in nearly total ignorance of the technical aspects of the problems involved. At the same time the scientists and technologists that politicians need to rely on for technical advice frequently have little grasp of the manifold social and political consequences of their discoveries."

"Unconscious cultural evolution developed in small-group, short time-horizon animals in full possession of their culture. It is inadequate to deal with a world overpopulated with individuals who are only partially in contact with their own cultures yet who must make critical decisions about the medium and long term. Unconscious cultural evolution has not led people to pay explicit attention to their biological or cultural evolutionary heritage."

"Cultural evolution has not compensated for the baggage of an outdated human perceptual system. It has not, for example, invented a cultural "time lapse" system for perceiving the gradual changes that human biological systems are incapable of sensing. It has not led to school curricula to convey the limits of the human perceptual system. It has not led to the establishment of governmental institutions that force politicians to pay attention to the long-term consequences of their actions. It has not generated TV programs designed to produce a widespread awareness of the diverse limitations and built-in biases imposed upon people by their biological and cultural evolutionary history. It has not provided provided us with an inventory of tools specifically designed to overcome biases."

"Cultural evolution has not even allowed most human beings to perceive that their familiar world results from and on-going evolutionary process, even as it has accelerated that process to unprecedented rates of change. It has not, therefore, given us the means of survival."


*Based on the formula   n(n — 1)/2
__________________________________________________________


This post is the second installment in what has become an on-going exploration of why humans cannot respond to crises that build up over an extended period of time. It should be read together with the previous post (Feb 9 - Homo sapiens, a classic misnomer — Excerpts from "New World New Mind" - Robert Ornstein and Paul Ehrlich, 1989) and with the following two or three.


MY WEBSITE   —   ANewHumanity.CA

FACEBOOK PAGE

Tweet THIS POST

Follow @anewhumanity

Homo sapiens, a classic misnomer — Excerpts from "New World New Mind" - Robert Ornstein and Paul Ehrlich, 1989

This book was written 23 years ago and the problems facing humanity have shifted slightly in the interim, mainly because even more critical crises have emerged. Also some of the 1989 crises such as the proliferation of nuclear weapons have slipped from view even though they continue to be worrisome.

In some cases, 1989 crises have been renamed and re-defined to be more inclusive ̬
the problem of Greenhouse Gases is now Global Climate Change as the effects are becoming obvious, A.I.D.S. has become Global Pandemics as other diseases such as haemorrhagic fevers and animal/human influenza strains emerge. In any case the response by humanity to these potentially catastrophic problems remains slow, inadequate and generally faces opposition from those we choose to lead us.

In the book, Ornstein and Ehrlich present a hypothesis to explain how these anthropogenic crises are allowed to form and expand as potential remedies languish without support, and as public understanding seemingly remains non-existant. This hypothesis maintains that the biological evolution of the human brain can no longer keep up with the pace of cultural and technological evolution and, as a result we have lost the ability to control the systems that make up the human-created world of the 21st century.

__________________________________________________________

"Humanity, until very recently, lived almost entirely on its "income" — on solar energy captured by green plants in fields, on farms and in forests by the process of photosynthesis. Now, thanks to cultural evolution, humanity is living largely on its "capital" — non-renewable resources. Homo sapiens was the recipient of a one-time bonanza — whose use has shaped our societies and attitudes as nothing ever did before. The capital that we inherited included fossil fuels, high-grade mineral ores, rich agricultural soils, groundwater stored up during the ice ages, and above all, the millions of other species that inhabit the Earth along with us. Our total inheritance took billions of years to assemble; it is being squandered in decades . . ."

". . . In most cases that capital cannot be replaced any faster than it was originally produced, and yet we are spending it in one tenth to one millionth of its production time. In one year the United States burns in its automobiles more petroleum than the Alaskan oil field accumulated in 100,000 years, more soil goes down Haitian rivers in a day than soil building processes can replace in a year, and more species are exterminated in tropical forests than speciation could replace in a million years . . ."

". . . For some 4 billion years species originated faster than they disappeared. Our dependence on other species that thus accumulated cannot be overestimated. Without the descendants of three species of wild grasses — plants that we know as wheat, rice and corn — most people would starve to death, and civilization would disappear. Without many crucial medicines and industrial materials that have also been drawn from the library of other living beings that evolved along with us we would be much less healthy and prosperous. The potential of that library has barely been tapped, but Homo sapiens is rapidly destroying it . . ."

". . . Cultural evolution, by giving us the ability to live on capital, has made biological evolution completely inadequate as a way for humans to adapt to their environments. Time is too short: even a "rapid" change through biological evolution ordinarily takes hundreds of generations; a major change, such as the evolution of mammels from reptiles, ordinarily takes millions of generations. We are less than ten generations away from the time that human beings began, through the Industrial Revolution, to create the new world. We are only a few hundred generations away from the Agricultural Revolution, and but two thousand generations from the days of the Neanderthals. The human gene pool cannot change fast enough to make a creature originally suited to dodging spears suddenly suited to dodging thermonuclear warheads."
_________________________________________________________


This inability to comprehend and control the world we have created is echoed by Thomas Homer-Dixon in his 2000 book, The Ingenuity Gap.

"The challenges facing our societies range from international financial crises and global climate change to pandemics of tuberculosis and AIDS; they cross the spectrum of politics, economics, technology, and ecological affairs. They converge, intertwine, and often seem to be largely beyond our ken — incomprehensible even to our leaders and specialists."


MY WEBSITE   —   ANewHumanity.CA

FACEBOOK PAGE

Tweet THIS POST

Follow @anewhumanity

Of Feedback Loops and Tipping Points, and Cabbages and Kings

The sea was wet as wet could be,
The sands were dry as dry,
You could not see a cloud, because,
No cloud was in the sky,
No birds were flying overhead,
There were no birds to fly . . . . .

__________________________________________________________

One of the most frightening aspects of global climate change is the triggering of natural feedback loops. These loops begin with a natural process which is in a stable condition that can be destabilized by inputs beyond the usual levels found in nature. Once stability is compromised, the resultant outputs feed back as inputs and accelerate the instability until a "Tipping Point" is reached and an unstoppable, runaway condition is created.

A good analogy would be a young child anchoring an open boat in a still pond and then placing a single pebble in the bow section of the hull each day. During the first few months or even years, little if any visible effect would be detected. As time went by and the total mass of the pebbles grew, the change in aspect of the boat would become more apparent.

A boat design feature called reserve buoyancy would provide greater resistance as the instability grew but this would bring only temporary relief to allow time to re-balance the boat. At some particular mass of pebbles, the tipping point would be reached, the bow dip below the water's surface, water pour in at an accelerating rate and the boat would sink.

Depending on the size and design of the boat, and the size and specific gravity of the pebbles, this might take a lifetime or the task might even need to be passed on to another generation but, as long as the input of pebbles continued unabated and no offsetting process was initiated to re-balance the system, the boat would eventually sink.

Below are just three probable climate change feedback loops, these are having an effect already   —   there are more being identified:

Melting of Arctic Sea Ice

Warming of air or water causes a decrease in the average area of annual sea ice cover in the Arctic along with a corresponding decrease in albedo. Albedo is the fraction of solar energy reflected from the Earth back into space. It is a measure of the reflectivity of the earth's surface. Ice, especially with snow on top of it, has a high albedo; most sunlight hitting the surface bounces back towards space. Water is much more absorbent and less reflective.

So, if there is a lot of open water, more solar radiation is absorbed by the ocean than when ice dominates. This extra energy absorbed by the water increases its temperature and further decreases the area covered by ice, thus fueling the feedback loop.

With information from - Earth & Space Research

Thawing of Permafrost

"Permafrost contains carbon, accumulated from the decomposition of plants and animals over tens of thousands of years. Last September, researchers at the University of Florida estimated that more than 1,800 billion tons of carbon are stored in northern permafrost—twice the amount in the atmosphere today. In its frozen state, organic matter decays very slowly. But as the temperature rises and permafrost melts, the material breaks down rapidly, releasing carbon into the atmosphere."

"When organic matter degrades in dry air, carbon dioxide is emitted. And in wet soil or underwater, where there is little or no molecular oxygen, anaerobic bacteria break down the organic materials and give off methane. Both CO2 and methane are greenhouse gases [methane much worse than CO2]. As they are released into the atmosphere from permafrost, scientists predict that a disastrous cycle will emerge: The gases will trap hot air, raising the air temperature and melting the permafrost, releasing more carbon and further heating the planet [in a classic feedback loop]." - Popular Science

Carbon Sinking Capacity of Canada's Boreal Forest

"Scientists have identified the 1.2 billion acre Canadian boreal forest as the largest intact forest and wetland ecosystem remaining on earth. Rivaling the Amazon in size and ecological importance, Canada’s boreal supports the world's most extensive network of pure lakes, rivers and wetlands and captures and stores twice as much carbon as tropical forests. It teems with wildlife — including billions of migratory songbirds, tens of millions of ducks and geese, and millions of caribou. The Canadian boreal is an irreplaceable global treasure."

"Tree mortality due to regional drought in the western Canadian portion of the boreal forest grew at a rate of 4.9% per year from 1963 to 2008. Drought and warmer temperatures brought about by climate change has increased the extent of outbreaks of beetle and insect infestations which can contribute to tree mortality. Drier forests adds to increasing wildfire frequency, intensity and size which releases carbon and affects the forest's capacity to regenerate."

"Such interactions among climatic warming, ecosystem disturbances and forest responses represent potential positive feedbacks that could dramatically alter future carbon sink-source relationships in boreal forests. If this tree mortality continues to increase more rapidly than growth in response to climate change, this will reduce net forest growth, transform Canadian boreal forests from a net carbon sink into a large net carbon source, [triggering a feedback loop]." - Indybay
__________________________________________________________


. . . . . "O oysters", said the carpenter,
"You've had a pleasant run,
Shall we be trotting home again?"
But answer came there none,
And this was scarcely odd, because,
They'd eaten every one.
Lewis Carroll - "The Walrus and the Carpenter"
(from Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, 1872)


MY WEBSITE   —   ANewHumanity.CA

FACEBOOK PAGE

Tweet THIS POST

Follow @anewhumanity

Part of the Prologue to ANewHumanity.CA

The End of Cheap Oil will bring unprecedented and mostly unwanted change to the industrialized world. No known combination of alternative energy sources, with the possible exception of nuclear reactors, will produce more than a small percentage of the energy currently used in countries like the USA, Canada, Japan and most of Europe. Nor would such alternate sources of energy allow China, India and other emerging industrial nations to develop to the extent that they are presently expecting to achieve. This raises the spectre of rich nation-states fighting over the remaining stocks in what they see as a last chance to 'save' their way of life; a number of these possess nuclear weapons and the chance of them being deployed in an attempted preemptive strike will be very high.

But, does it have to be this way or is there a possibility of avoiding this 'Last One Standing' option through planning and co-operation? Would it still be possible to make changes that might slow the runaway nature of Global Climate Change or to reverse the growth of world population?

Petrogeologist Colin J. Campbell has developed a possible way of trasitioning peacefully away from dependency on oil and this is expanded on and presented by Richard Heinberg in his book The Oil Depletion Protocol. However this book was written in 2006 and governments around the world have predictably ignored both the warning and the starting of a conversation around the possibilities. Likewise, efforts to start meaningful action on Global Climate Change have faltered or, as in the case of the 2009 UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, been dismal failures. Slowing of population growth has been somewhat more successful but, mainly as an inverse relationship to increase in Standard of Living for under-developed countries. While this is hopeful in the short term, return to an agrarian lifestyle in many parts of the world might restart the "Many hands make light work" approach to family planning. Financial chaos continues to be brought about by the almost unbelievable excesses of those in a position to make trillions of essentially worthless dollars out of thin air. A good book to read about this and possible solutions to it is David C. Korten's book, Agenda for a New Economy.

Even if governments can summon the will to accept the problems, which seems very unlikely in democratic countries where the people's representatives spend much of their effort presenting options which will appeal to the electorate, there will be massive resistance from business interests and citizens to any measures which appear to cut profits or challenge the insanity of perpetual economic growth. I wish I could be more positive but I cannot, based on my own observation of human nature as well as historical reaction to change and apparent hardship. I will agree with all the authors I have read on these subjects that a pro-active approach would result in hugely better outcomes and like them, I will continue to attempt to spread this message but, I don't see many people listening yet.

There will be one, last chance to turn Spaceship Earth around when it becomes painfully clear that there is simply no alternative. With luck and a lot of skill, we may still be able to navigate the asteroid fields and other critical dangers but every day that goes by before consulting the chart and beginning to plot a course will make it harder.

In the meantime, the good news is that there are things we can do as individuals or small communities which will help us to prepare our families, friends and those around us for the coming Century of Declines. My website (below) presents some ideas which I have found, collected and hatched myself and will continue to expand as I find or think up more. If you have comments you would like to share which might help us all to survive the up-coming challenges, please pass them on.



MY WEBSITE   —   ANewHumanity.CA

FACEBOOK PAGE

Tweet THIS POST

Follow @anewhumanity

Get a Job

The song was recorded by The Silhouettes in 1958, the year that I got a job that turned into a 37 year career. In the 1950's the expectation was that you would work at your career, build your home and family, retire on your pension and spend the rest of your life relaxing. By 1964 Bob Dylan recorded - The Times They Are A-Changin'.

Perhaps you have to be as old as I am (72) before you realize that, far from being synonymous, 'Standard of Living' and 'Quality of Life' can actually be in opposition as they are in my case. We live at a frenzied pace for a working lifespan that is now tending to last until we are entirely unable to function . . . then we die. The ideal of retiring, sitting down and relaxing has apparently been abandoned in favour of acquiring so much "stuff" that we can never find it or figure out how to use it. This shifting of values has resulted in MY Quality of life declining since at least 1980, perhaps since the late 1960's.

So, the imperative to consume, pushed on those who live in the industrialized world by corporations and the governments they control, requires us to work longer hours for less pay in poorer working conditions and . . . LIKE IT! Regressive politicians build their election campaigns by claiming that only through the growth of the status quo, guided by their skilled and loving hands will we be able to "Get a Job" and fully participate in the "Abundance" of the Holy Democratic Capitalist Society   —   BULLSHIT!!

The icons of the industrialized world - Capitalism, GDP growth, Free Trade, Patriotism, Competition, Globalization and most hideous of all, Consumerism have added up to such a decline in the Earth's resources that humanity may well be on the cusp of an inexorable decline towards extinction. When the unmentionable evidence of our excesses is exposed as it was on September 11, 2001 and we glimpse the manifestation of our actions and pause . . . . . we are exhorted to "Go shopping".

Our over-the-top lifestyles and refusal to think about change and even 'degrowth', a non-word which will take its rightful place soon enough, causes the insanity to continue as we rush towards the edge of the abyss. "Get a Job" is the mantra of success, even though you may have to get two or three to be financially viable as wages and benefits decline and full-time careers are consigned to the history books.

No one seems to be very interested in how many GOOD and LONG TERM jobs would be created by the building, operating and maintaining of a complete infrastructure for post-fossil fuel energy. Such infrastructure will, of course, be absolutely required at some point and might be very nearly impossible to build if we wait until so little fossil fuel is left that we cannot use existing construction techniques and equipment. For me, the choices are to start the transition now or wait until it is too late and we have used up the last of our options.

Perhaps the most damaging effect of the frenetic pace of life is the way it impedes our ability to think about anything important . . . like humanity's place in the Cosmos, happiness as opposed to survival, natural vs artificial and most importantly the relationship between needs and wants. Popular uprisings like the Arab Spring and the Occupy Movement happen because some people take the time to look objectively at their world and search for progressive alternatives to the Status Quo.

If you are in the habit of dismissing the counter-cultures that arise from inequity, oppression or elitism, take the time to THINK, THINK and THINK again. The human experiment can only continue and improve through progressive ideas and actions - anything else will bring stagnation, decline and ultimate demise.



MY WEBSITE   —   ANewHumanity.CA

Tweet this post

Follow @anewhumanity

From 'Meritorious Service' to Radical Ideologue to Enemy of the State: How the Meritorious Have Fallen

The title above refers to me, not the writer of the letter below. I am proud to have a 'Certificate of Meritorious Service' hanging on my wall, in recognition of over "36 years of loyal and devoted service with the . . . . . Government of British Columbia".

Two weeks ago I discovered that federal Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver considers me a radical ideologue for opposing the Alberta tarsands and the processing, transport and use of the dirty oil they produce. Now comes news from the PMO that I have been promoted[?] to 'an enemy of the government of Canada' and 'an enemy of the people of Canada'. Until now, I had always thought that I and others like me were the people of Canada.

PS: I, along with all other BC Gov't retirees have recently been informed that most of the Medical premium benefits that I was eligible for as part of my pension are now considered "subsidies" and have been removed. This will cost my wife and I an additional amount over $3,000/year. Perhaps its time to take down the 'Certificate of Meritorious Service' mentioned above, and mail it back to my former employer with a note telling them where they can 'shove it'.

Here is a link to the story as reported by Global News.

. . . . . and an open letter to the Canadian people written by Andrew Frank, the 'Whistleblower'. I have included the entire letter in case it starts to disappear from sites that have it posted.


A Whistleblower’s Open Letter to the Citizens of Canada

My name is Andrew Frank. I grew up in a small town in the Okanagan valley of British Columbia. My granddad taught me how to fish. My father was a well‐respected lawyer known for his unwavering integrity, and my mother was a favourite kindergarten teacher. Both have always impressed upon me the importance of telling the truth.

Today, I am taking the extraordinary step of risking my career, my reputation and my personal friendships, to act as a whistleblower and expose the undemocratic and potentially illegal pressure the Harper government has apparently applied to silence critics of the Enbridge Northern Gateway oil tanker/pipeline plan.

As I have detailed in a sworn affidavit, no less than three senior managers with Tides Canada and ForestEthics (a charitable project of Tides Canada), have informed me, as the Senior Communications Manager for ForestEthics, that Tides Canada CEO, Ross McMillan, was informed by the Prime Minister’s Office, that ForestEthics is considered an “Enemy of the Government of Canada,” and an “Enemy of the people of Canada.

”This language was apparently part of a threat by the Prime Minister’s Office to challenge the charitable status of Tides Canada if it did not agree to stop funding Forest Ethics, specifically its work opposing oilsands expansion and construction of oilsands tanker/pipeline routes in Canada.

This is especially concerning because Forest Ethics is a legally registered intervenor in the National Energy Board’s Joint Review Panel process, currently examining the Enbridge oiltanker/pipeline proposal. By attempting to silence a registered participant in the review, I fear the Harper government may have permanently damaged the integrity of this process.

After waiting more than two weeks for Tides Canada to go public with this story, it has become clear to me that the organization is too afraid of reprisals from the government to act. Tides is responsible for the employment of hundreds of Canadians and dozens of crucial environmental projects like the Great Bear Rainforest, and has been understandably paralyzed in challenging the Prime Minister’s Office on this matter. I on the other hand, am speaking out as a private citizen because I feel that the rights and civil liberties of my fellow Canadian citizens, including freedom of expression and freedom of speech, are at risk.

There was a look of fear and disbelief on my fellow staff members’ faces the day they were told our own government had labelled them enemies of the state. Our administration coordinator had tears in her eyes. In the days that followed, our employees couldn’t sleep well. They lost their appetites, and they began to fear for their own personal safety and civil liberties, and those of their families and loved ones. They began looking over their shoulder, out of fear and paranoia, because their own government might be watching them.

The language of anti‐terrorism, when applied to Canadian citizens who legitimately question the wisdom of an unsustainable oil tanker/pipeline plan, is an affront to the rights of all Canadians. It is the language of bullying. It is language that is violent and above the law, and harkens to previous examples of RCMP surveillance of Canadians for political rather than legal purposes, including Tommy Douglas. The casual use of such loaded language at the top of our government is immoral, unethical and probably illegal.

A strongly opposed oil tanker/pipeline plan is now the least of this government’s worries. In its heavy‐handed attempt to over ride public opposition, the government has breached the public’s trust.

I now invite Canadians, including the media and members of the House of Commons, to challenge the unacceptable behaviour described in this letter and sworn in my affidavit.

Approximately three weeks from now, Mr. Harper will visit China on an official state visit. In China, Amnesty International asserts that a half‐million “enemies of the government” are held in prisons without charge. If the argument in favour of the Enbridge pipeline is that Canada stands to make billions selling oil to an oppressive Chinese government, then my answer is “no thank you.” That’s not “ethical oil,” especially when profiting from this oil wealth requires repressive tactics against critical citizens ‐ tactics we would normally associate with the Chinese state, not Canada.

The events of the last month have ensured that I will never take my rights as a Canadian citizen for granted again. That is both sad and encouraging. Sad that I ever had to question them, and encouraging because I have been reminded of another lesson taught to me by my parents: the best way to stop a bully is to stand up to him.

I invite you to join me in expressing your voice on what is perhaps the most pressing moral crisis facing our nation today. Together we can hold this government to account and prevent the dismantling of Canadian civil society and the further erosion of citizens’ rights.

Andrew Frank is a Canadian citizen, and the former Senior Communications Manager withForestEthics Canada. He is also an instructor in the Environmental Protection Technology program at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, in Surrey, British Columbia.


MY WEBSITE   —   ANewHumanity.CA

Tweet this post

Follow @anewhumanity