Some of the best philosophical work of the 20sth century was done by a combination of two men: Michel Foucault (1926-1984) and Jacques Derrida (1930-2004). I mention them together because I view their work as being similar, as being 'post-Hegelian with an edge to it', and as being 'deconstructionist' (as focusing on the 'anti-thesis' portion of the Hegelian triadic 'thesis', 'anti-thesis', 'synthesis' cycle).
Now the term 'deconstruction' is Derrida's (I added the 'ist' to make it 'deconstructionist' which Derrida wouldn't have liked -- he wanted to keep the term as a 'verb', not a 'noun', a 'process', not a 'structure'. I understand where he is coming from -- call it the 'Heraclitus/Korzybski-Hayakawa/Gestalt' influence of 'You can't step into the same river twice. -- Heraclitus; or 'Everything is subject to change.' -- Gestalt Therapy. I acknowledge this but I also note that it is very difficult to talk in English without using nouns -- you just have to be careful how you use nouns and not to turn 'crystalized nouns' into 'crystalized generalizations' and 'crystalized thinking' that fails to detect change in the normal life process of evolution and/or entropy/aging/disintegration).
Foucault emphasized the connection between power, knowledge, categorization, and good or bad things happening to you -- on the 'good side', acceptance, credibility, normalcy, money, even fame and idoltry; on the 'bad side', rejection, discrimination, marginalization, restraint, suppression, jail, mental institute, violence...
As I have written in previous essays, we live in an 'either/or' society and this is not always good because oftentimes both the 'either' and the 'or' contain elements of both 'good and bad', 'right and wrong', 'health and pathology'. This idea is also contained in Hegel's dialectic or triadic formula (thesis, anti-thesis, synthesis). This is why we have 'left' and 'right' political philosophies, 'conservative' and 'liberal', 'Democrat' and 'Republican', 'capitalist' and 'socialist', 'orthodox' and 'alternative', 'modern' and 'post-modern', 'righteous' and 'rebellious', 'structuralist' and 'post-structuralist... Health in biology, psychology, philosophy, economics, law, biology, religion, architecture, art, language...all usually entail 'working polar (or 'binary') opposite perspectives, philosophies, lifestyles, processes, phenomena...towards a position of 'homeostatic balance' or 'central stabilization' (if only for a passing length of time before something upsets the homeostatic balance and puts the Hegelian formula back in motion again).
Now here is the problem according to both Foucault and Derrida. 'Power groups' (people with money, fame, beauty, prestige positions, power positions, accreditations, degrees...) can distort and disrupt the natural Hegelian evolutionary process by 'freezing the dialectic interplay between the dialectic or binary opposites (polarities)'. This creates 'artifical or arbitrary icons' that are categorized as 'good', 'right', 'healthy' etc., spotlighted, pedestalized, thrown into centre stage, referred to as 'fact', 'knowledge', 'truth', all that is wonderful, etc...; and at the same time it also creates artifical or arbitrary 'shadows' -- discriminations, marginalizations, stereotyping, exclusions, stigmitization, victimization, violence, poverty, misery, restraint, jail, hospitalization, etc.
Now according to Foucault, this whole process of 'categorization' and, in bad cases, potential for stigmitization and ostracization can happen in a matter of minutes if not seconds through what he called 'The Gaze'. This, in my opinion, is one of the most fascinating -- and scarey -- philosophical concepts of the 20th century.
The Gaze as Foucault meant it was more or less a metaphor -- and/or a real facial component -- reflecting underlying judgment, diagnosis, reductionism, categorization, and in particular, negative categorization that includes all the previously mentioned stereotypes -- alienation, discrimination, stigmatization, ostracization, restraint, jail, institutionalization, unemployment, poverty, violence, war, torture, etc.
To be sure there are other types of 'gazes' -- romantic gazes, sexual gazes, affectionate gazes -- but none of these types of gazes are what Foucault had in mind by...'The Gaze'...
Now, personally speaking, I think one has as much to worry about in 'the non-Gaze' as one does in 'The Gaze' but both can be completely relevant to what we are talking about here, and to what Foucault was talking about. 'Context' is everything.
Some examples of The Gaze in history pulled from my own head in no particular order, and some more horrific than others: The Roman Catholics, Jews, and The Spanish Inquisition; Hitler and the Jews, Salem and the witchhunts; the orthodox Jews in Holland and Spinoza; the Greek politicians and Socrates; to other varying degrees of The Gaze depending again on context: doctor and patient; policeman and protester; the rich and the poor; Conservatives and Liberals, Republicans and Democrats; blacks and whites; masters and slaves; insurgents and Americans; Americans and Talibans; Talibans and Americans; the Taliban and women; women and the Taliban; King Henry Vlll and his six wives; The Government of Canada and the Women's Movment in the 1920s; The Supreme Court of Canada and their decision in the famous 'Persons' Case (1928)...Oftentimes, The Gaze can be both ways but with one side holding significantly more power than the other, the discrimination, the injustices, the atrocities, the violence, tend to be blatantly one-sided and one-directional...
Fresh in the newspapers today, is a genocide I never knew about until I started exploring it on the internet tonight: The Armenian Genocide (anywhere from hundreds of thousand to 1.5 million Armenians starved or otherwise killed) at the hands mainly of the Young Turks (1915-1917) who were governing the Ottoman Empire at the time. Personally, I think it was another U.S. international blunder to bring up this genocide at this present time when an already very bad war in Iraq could become that much worse if the Turks decide to invade northern Iraq. However, in the context of this much smaller and less public forum, the genocide does much to emphasize an extension and application of Foucault's concept of The Gaze...
Young Turk memoirs show us very clearly how aware they were of the growing gap between Muslims and non-Muslims. Born in the traditional Muslim quarters they gazed in awe at the villas the Greek and Armenian industrialists built along newly laid-out avenues with tramways and streetlights. The contrast defined their loyalties… The Young Turks developed a fierce Ottoman-Muslim nationalism, which defined the “other” very much in religious terms… [T]he Muslim – Non-Muslim divide would completely dominate politics and lead to the tragedies of the expulsion of Muslims from the Balkans and Greek-Orthodox from Anatolia, as well as to the wholesale slaughter of the Ottoman Armenians. (Wikipedia, Armenian Genocide)
What these concepts by Derrida and Foucault show, as perfectly illustrated in the example above, is the inherent danger of any form of political, nationalist, religious, and/or ethnic extremism, the inherent danger of delving into 'either/or', 'Us' vs. 'Them' thinking in a way that is 'divisive', 'exclusive' and 'negatively categorical'. Two religious groups or racial groups or ethnic groups grow to dislike, even hate, each other but one group has significantly more power than the other. (The Armenian Christians were not allowed to carry guns whereas the Muslim Turks were). Atrocity, disaster, and mass tragedy ensues. The more things change, the more things stay the same. Are things really any different -- particulary in the Middle East -- today?
dgb, Oct. 17th, 2007.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Friday, October 12, 2007
On The Distinction Between 'Natural', 'Civil', and 'Equal' Rights
The very thorny set of issues I am about to tackle here is critical to the well-being of both men and women in the 21st century. It dates back to that period of philosophy called 'The Enlightenment' which was associated with at least two revolutions -- The American Revolution (1775-1783) and The French Revolution (1789-1799).
In Canada, our investigation will take us back to The original British North America Act (1867), the Women's Movement in the early 1900s, to the Canada Act and The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and to modern day issues of Canadian Family Law, and for lack of better wording, 'The Battle of the Sexes'.
We would like 'reason' as much as possible to prevail in these matters but as tends to invariably happen in these types of controversial issues, reason will invariably evaporate at least partly into passion and narcissistic bias. I am no different than anyone else in this regard. Abstract principles are often easy to agree about but when these abstract principle start to get interpreted in terms of practical applications involving 'either/or' decisions, then all hell is likely to break out as everyone seeks to protect their own concrete narcissistic interests.
Call this 'humanism' in a more than slightly satirical, cynical Hobbesian sense. (Hobbes believed -- rightfully so in my opinion -- that 'total human freedom' would result in total anarchy and corruption; thus, government must step in to impose serious restrictions on freedom to seriously deter if not stop people from killing each other and stealing each other blind. (Like Schopenhauer, Hobbes had a pretty good understanding of 'unbridled human narcissism' -- at least in the case of many people. See the internet, Wikipedia, Natural Rights, Hobbes)
While I don't agree wholely with Hobbes' philosophy, and the 50 million dollar question becomes: 'Where do you draw the line between too much freedom and not enough freedom?', still, I at least partly agree with his argument, and the older and more jaded I get, the more I tend to agree with the extent of Hobbes' cynicism about man's 'narcissistic impulses and their corruptive, self-serving, anti-civil nature' (particularly in a culture that promotes and trumpets 'unbridled narcissistic impulses, philosophy, and lifestyle', directly and indirectly, overtly and covertly).
To go to the opposite philosophical corner, I love the philosophical idealism of The Enlightenment period. As naive as the philosophy in this period partly was, it was still a great period of philosophy -- a period of remarkable political and economic philosophers from Locke to Adam Smith to Diderot to Voltaire to Tom Paine to Thomas Jefferson...to the partly post-Enlightenment German Idealism of Kant, Hegel, and Marx.
However, with all due respect, John Locke's and later Tom Paine's theory of 'natural rights' which found its way both into the American Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States -- is unfounded, assumptive, 'pseudo-firepower'. Before I get tarred and feathered here, let me clarify.
There is no such thing as 'natural rights'. The concept is a myth aimed at giving an argument more force -- just like people/preachers/politicians who use the name 'God' or our 'Creator' to rhetorically try to give their argument more 'kick' and 'juice' with the assumption/myth of 'Divine Authority' (as if any of right up to and including the Pope have any contact with this 'Divine Authority').
The same is true with the use of the term 'Nature' and 'Natural Rights'. I am a big fan of 'The American Declaration of Independence', 'The American Constitution', of Thomas Jefferson and Tom Paine. Add Locke, Diderot, and Voltaire to the list and these are five of my favorite political philosophers. Add Adam Smith and Karl Marx to the list and we have my 'Super Seven'. Round out the list with arguably my favorite three philosophers of all time: 1. the best German Idealist and Dialectic Philosopher -- Hegel; 2. the best 'Wholistic and Spiritual' Philosopher -- Spinoza; and 3. the most firey and hard-hitting 'Deconstructionist' -- Nietzsche, and you have arguably my 'Top Ten' Philosophers. (This list could change tomorrow but it is a pretty good list of some of my top philosophical influences.) Honourable mention off the top of my head relative to my purposes and influences in 'Hegel's Hotel' go to: Anaxamander, Heraclitus, Confucious, The Han Philosophers, Hobbes, Schopenhauer, Freud, Jung, Adler, Korzybski, Hayakawa, Perls, Derrida and Foucault.
The best two arguments against the use of the term 'Natural Rights' I found on the internet yesterday. They come from Jonathan Wallace and Jeremy Bentham...
...............................................................................
From the internet, Wikipedia, 'Natural Rights':
Jonathan Wallace has asserted that there is no basis on which to claim that some rights are natural, and he argued that Hobbes' account of natural rights confuses right with ability (human beings have the ability to seek only their own good and follow their nature in the same way as animals, but this does not imply that they have a right to do so).[2] Wallace advocates a social contract, much like Hobbes and Locke, but does not base it on natural rights:
We are all at a table together, deciding which rules to adopt, free from any vague constraints, half-remembered myths, anonymous patriarchal texts and murky concepts of nature. If I propose something you do not like, tell me why it is not practical, or harms somebody, or is counter to some other useful rule; but don't tell me it offends the universe.
Jeremy Bentham, a utilitarian philosopher, famously stated:
Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense — nonsense upon stilts.
.................................................................................
All human rights are civilly and/or legally bestowed; they don't come from God or Nature. All rights depend on some sort of 'social contract' between the members and government of a particular society or nation and since this social contract will never, ever totally be agreed on without dissension -- i.e., with 'perfect agreement', this 'contract' will always at least partly be in a state of 'flux'. The 'homeostatic balance' may stay steady if it is a good contract, fair to everyone, but inevitably over time, with changing people and a changing world, any social contract, any 'legal template' (legal document or any section or sub-section of it), and its interpretation, is going to come under scrutiny and review again. This is true of The American Declaration of Independence, and The American Constitution. It is also true of The British North America Act, The Canadian Constitution, and The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. And it is also true of all the constantly changing 'equal rights' Acts in both Canada and The U.S (as well as in the rest of the world).
Governments may lay out Constitutions or legal templates and these legal templates may then be interpreted by judges and/or juries but there will never, ever be total and perfect agreement on what the exact content of this 'social contract' should be, and how it should be interpreted. It will always be the subject and content of philosophical investigation, editorializing, narcissistic bias, power-mongering, dialectic-democratic disagreement, and everything else that makes us 'human'.
It isn't the 'rights' that make us human; rather it is the disagreement over these rights that make us human. This disagreement is generally the product of 'narcissistic bias' and different types of reasoning processes that usually at least partly are meant to 'prop this narcissitic bias up' to give it a more 'civil tone and justification'.
Still, we all must seek a 'working, homeostatic balance' whether this be between the sexes and/or between different races, religions, cultures...and this is why these social contracts are made and solidified from philosophical and then political documents -- into law.
To get along harmoniously, we all must go back to the bargaining table -- dialectically, democratically and in 'good faith' -- when things start to sour and civil harmony turns to civil strife. We are in such a period now. Partly, indeed largely, suppressed under the name 'political correctness' for some time now, the civil strife I am talking about is a volacano seething underground but capable of 'blowing to the top and over' at any time. It is already blowing over the top in England. I am talking about 'men's rights' issues due to the constantly changing family law ammendments which in turn are largely due to a barrage of constant 'unbalanced laobbying on the part of hundreds of feminist lobbying groups. We are no longer in the 1950s and 60s. Viewing women as a 'minority group', as 'discriminated against', as 'marginalized', as the 'victims of patriarchal laws' and 'narcissistic masculine bias' is, at this point in time, a collosal, anachronistic myth. Indeed, the teeter totter of Canadian justice (I can't speack too much about American justice in this area but can speculate that it is very similar) has swung from 'low to high' in the area of women's family and sexual protection rights' and from 'high to low' in the area of men's family and sexual rights. The scales of family and sexual justice have reversed themselves due to excessive feminist lobbying unbalanced by masculine lobbying -- we still haven't gotten it right -- and it is time to get back to the dialectic-democratic bargaining table again, and get it closer to being 'right'.
In Canada, I will examine the civil destructiveness and misery caused by too much one-sided, unbalanced feminist lobbying and its 'reverse-discrimination' effect on the family and male-female 'assault' laws in Canada, and the unfair misery and silent rage of thousands of men.
Let me be perfectly clear here. I support 'egalitarian feminism'; I do not support 'narcissistic feminism'. Women too, need to decide where they ethically stand on this matter and whether they want to be viewed as an egalitarian feminist or a narcissistic feminist (the latter basically being the femaile equivalent of a 'male chavanist').
Narcissistic (unbalanced, one-sided) feminism has grown out of egalitarian feminism in a way that is no different than any other philosophical, political, legal and/or lifestyle perspective is bound to become 'narcissistically out of control' if it is left 'unchecked' by the opposite perspective (i.e. in this case unchecked by 'egalitarian masculinism' in a dialectic-democratic dialogue, debate, negotiation and integration process that reflects the Hegelian cycle of: thesis, anti-thesis, and synthesis).
Without this dialectic-democratic dialogue and debate -- which is why we have a 'left', 'right', and 'central' political philosophy; a 'prosecutor', 'defense', and 'juge/jury' in the legal system; and an 'orthodox' and 'alternative' medicine in the medical field -- the political, legal, and economic outcome is a foregone conclusion: 'Unchecked power ultimately leads to corruption' -- no different with women than with men.
Just as unchecked masculine power has led to unbridled masculine narcissism and corruption in the past -- and still is active in business and some/many cases of law today -- the opposite phenomenon can no longer be ignored, denied, dismissed, or suppressed as 'political incorrectness' and must be properly labeled and identified for what it currently is: feminist power and matriarchal law over-running the family, domestic violence, and sexual transgression courts of Canada.
To be sure, every case is different. Some cases are more moderate than others. Some cases still involve women being taken advantage of by men -- manipulated, abused, victimized, and/or violated.
However it is long past time that a pattern of legal and civil 'counter-abuse' and 'reverse-discrimination' needs to be identified here as definitely not 'equal rights' and definitely not fair to men, particularly separated fathers.
The goal of this section is to explore more fully the concrete nature of this present civil strife, how unfair one-sided, feminist lobbying has had much to do with the current pattern of discrimination and marginalization against men and particularly separated fathers in the family courts, and what we can do about this situation to bring our family and domestic violence laws back to a 'better working homeostatic balance and centre' that is fair and protective to both sexes; not just women, mothers, and children.
dgb, October 13th-15th, 2007.
In Canada, our investigation will take us back to The original British North America Act (1867), the Women's Movement in the early 1900s, to the Canada Act and The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and to modern day issues of Canadian Family Law, and for lack of better wording, 'The Battle of the Sexes'.
We would like 'reason' as much as possible to prevail in these matters but as tends to invariably happen in these types of controversial issues, reason will invariably evaporate at least partly into passion and narcissistic bias. I am no different than anyone else in this regard. Abstract principles are often easy to agree about but when these abstract principle start to get interpreted in terms of practical applications involving 'either/or' decisions, then all hell is likely to break out as everyone seeks to protect their own concrete narcissistic interests.
Call this 'humanism' in a more than slightly satirical, cynical Hobbesian sense. (Hobbes believed -- rightfully so in my opinion -- that 'total human freedom' would result in total anarchy and corruption; thus, government must step in to impose serious restrictions on freedom to seriously deter if not stop people from killing each other and stealing each other blind. (Like Schopenhauer, Hobbes had a pretty good understanding of 'unbridled human narcissism' -- at least in the case of many people. See the internet, Wikipedia, Natural Rights, Hobbes)
While I don't agree wholely with Hobbes' philosophy, and the 50 million dollar question becomes: 'Where do you draw the line between too much freedom and not enough freedom?', still, I at least partly agree with his argument, and the older and more jaded I get, the more I tend to agree with the extent of Hobbes' cynicism about man's 'narcissistic impulses and their corruptive, self-serving, anti-civil nature' (particularly in a culture that promotes and trumpets 'unbridled narcissistic impulses, philosophy, and lifestyle', directly and indirectly, overtly and covertly).
To go to the opposite philosophical corner, I love the philosophical idealism of The Enlightenment period. As naive as the philosophy in this period partly was, it was still a great period of philosophy -- a period of remarkable political and economic philosophers from Locke to Adam Smith to Diderot to Voltaire to Tom Paine to Thomas Jefferson...to the partly post-Enlightenment German Idealism of Kant, Hegel, and Marx.
However, with all due respect, John Locke's and later Tom Paine's theory of 'natural rights' which found its way both into the American Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States -- is unfounded, assumptive, 'pseudo-firepower'. Before I get tarred and feathered here, let me clarify.
There is no such thing as 'natural rights'. The concept is a myth aimed at giving an argument more force -- just like people/preachers/politicians who use the name 'God' or our 'Creator' to rhetorically try to give their argument more 'kick' and 'juice' with the assumption/myth of 'Divine Authority' (as if any of right up to and including the Pope have any contact with this 'Divine Authority').
The same is true with the use of the term 'Nature' and 'Natural Rights'. I am a big fan of 'The American Declaration of Independence', 'The American Constitution', of Thomas Jefferson and Tom Paine. Add Locke, Diderot, and Voltaire to the list and these are five of my favorite political philosophers. Add Adam Smith and Karl Marx to the list and we have my 'Super Seven'. Round out the list with arguably my favorite three philosophers of all time: 1. the best German Idealist and Dialectic Philosopher -- Hegel; 2. the best 'Wholistic and Spiritual' Philosopher -- Spinoza; and 3. the most firey and hard-hitting 'Deconstructionist' -- Nietzsche, and you have arguably my 'Top Ten' Philosophers. (This list could change tomorrow but it is a pretty good list of some of my top philosophical influences.) Honourable mention off the top of my head relative to my purposes and influences in 'Hegel's Hotel' go to: Anaxamander, Heraclitus, Confucious, The Han Philosophers, Hobbes, Schopenhauer, Freud, Jung, Adler, Korzybski, Hayakawa, Perls, Derrida and Foucault.
The best two arguments against the use of the term 'Natural Rights' I found on the internet yesterday. They come from Jonathan Wallace and Jeremy Bentham...
...............................................................................
From the internet, Wikipedia, 'Natural Rights':
Jonathan Wallace has asserted that there is no basis on which to claim that some rights are natural, and he argued that Hobbes' account of natural rights confuses right with ability (human beings have the ability to seek only their own good and follow their nature in the same way as animals, but this does not imply that they have a right to do so).[2] Wallace advocates a social contract, much like Hobbes and Locke, but does not base it on natural rights:
We are all at a table together, deciding which rules to adopt, free from any vague constraints, half-remembered myths, anonymous patriarchal texts and murky concepts of nature. If I propose something you do not like, tell me why it is not practical, or harms somebody, or is counter to some other useful rule; but don't tell me it offends the universe.
Jeremy Bentham, a utilitarian philosopher, famously stated:
Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense — nonsense upon stilts.
.................................................................................
All human rights are civilly and/or legally bestowed; they don't come from God or Nature. All rights depend on some sort of 'social contract' between the members and government of a particular society or nation and since this social contract will never, ever totally be agreed on without dissension -- i.e., with 'perfect agreement', this 'contract' will always at least partly be in a state of 'flux'. The 'homeostatic balance' may stay steady if it is a good contract, fair to everyone, but inevitably over time, with changing people and a changing world, any social contract, any 'legal template' (legal document or any section or sub-section of it), and its interpretation, is going to come under scrutiny and review again. This is true of The American Declaration of Independence, and The American Constitution. It is also true of The British North America Act, The Canadian Constitution, and The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. And it is also true of all the constantly changing 'equal rights' Acts in both Canada and The U.S (as well as in the rest of the world).
Governments may lay out Constitutions or legal templates and these legal templates may then be interpreted by judges and/or juries but there will never, ever be total and perfect agreement on what the exact content of this 'social contract' should be, and how it should be interpreted. It will always be the subject and content of philosophical investigation, editorializing, narcissistic bias, power-mongering, dialectic-democratic disagreement, and everything else that makes us 'human'.
It isn't the 'rights' that make us human; rather it is the disagreement over these rights that make us human. This disagreement is generally the product of 'narcissistic bias' and different types of reasoning processes that usually at least partly are meant to 'prop this narcissitic bias up' to give it a more 'civil tone and justification'.
Still, we all must seek a 'working, homeostatic balance' whether this be between the sexes and/or between different races, religions, cultures...and this is why these social contracts are made and solidified from philosophical and then political documents -- into law.
To get along harmoniously, we all must go back to the bargaining table -- dialectically, democratically and in 'good faith' -- when things start to sour and civil harmony turns to civil strife. We are in such a period now. Partly, indeed largely, suppressed under the name 'political correctness' for some time now, the civil strife I am talking about is a volacano seething underground but capable of 'blowing to the top and over' at any time. It is already blowing over the top in England. I am talking about 'men's rights' issues due to the constantly changing family law ammendments which in turn are largely due to a barrage of constant 'unbalanced laobbying on the part of hundreds of feminist lobbying groups. We are no longer in the 1950s and 60s. Viewing women as a 'minority group', as 'discriminated against', as 'marginalized', as the 'victims of patriarchal laws' and 'narcissistic masculine bias' is, at this point in time, a collosal, anachronistic myth. Indeed, the teeter totter of Canadian justice (I can't speack too much about American justice in this area but can speculate that it is very similar) has swung from 'low to high' in the area of women's family and sexual protection rights' and from 'high to low' in the area of men's family and sexual rights. The scales of family and sexual justice have reversed themselves due to excessive feminist lobbying unbalanced by masculine lobbying -- we still haven't gotten it right -- and it is time to get back to the dialectic-democratic bargaining table again, and get it closer to being 'right'.
In Canada, I will examine the civil destructiveness and misery caused by too much one-sided, unbalanced feminist lobbying and its 'reverse-discrimination' effect on the family and male-female 'assault' laws in Canada, and the unfair misery and silent rage of thousands of men.
Let me be perfectly clear here. I support 'egalitarian feminism'; I do not support 'narcissistic feminism'. Women too, need to decide where they ethically stand on this matter and whether they want to be viewed as an egalitarian feminist or a narcissistic feminist (the latter basically being the femaile equivalent of a 'male chavanist').
Narcissistic (unbalanced, one-sided) feminism has grown out of egalitarian feminism in a way that is no different than any other philosophical, political, legal and/or lifestyle perspective is bound to become 'narcissistically out of control' if it is left 'unchecked' by the opposite perspective (i.e. in this case unchecked by 'egalitarian masculinism' in a dialectic-democratic dialogue, debate, negotiation and integration process that reflects the Hegelian cycle of: thesis, anti-thesis, and synthesis).
Without this dialectic-democratic dialogue and debate -- which is why we have a 'left', 'right', and 'central' political philosophy; a 'prosecutor', 'defense', and 'juge/jury' in the legal system; and an 'orthodox' and 'alternative' medicine in the medical field -- the political, legal, and economic outcome is a foregone conclusion: 'Unchecked power ultimately leads to corruption' -- no different with women than with men.
Just as unchecked masculine power has led to unbridled masculine narcissism and corruption in the past -- and still is active in business and some/many cases of law today -- the opposite phenomenon can no longer be ignored, denied, dismissed, or suppressed as 'political incorrectness' and must be properly labeled and identified for what it currently is: feminist power and matriarchal law over-running the family, domestic violence, and sexual transgression courts of Canada.
To be sure, every case is different. Some cases are more moderate than others. Some cases still involve women being taken advantage of by men -- manipulated, abused, victimized, and/or violated.
However it is long past time that a pattern of legal and civil 'counter-abuse' and 'reverse-discrimination' needs to be identified here as definitely not 'equal rights' and definitely not fair to men, particularly separated fathers.
The goal of this section is to explore more fully the concrete nature of this present civil strife, how unfair one-sided, feminist lobbying has had much to do with the current pattern of discrimination and marginalization against men and particularly separated fathers in the family courts, and what we can do about this situation to bring our family and domestic violence laws back to a 'better working homeostatic balance and centre' that is fair and protective to both sexes; not just women, mothers, and children.
dgb, October 13th-15th, 2007.
Wednesday, September 5, 2007
The Socio-Economic-Political-Legal Dynamics and Results of Over-Compensation: Lobbyism, Reverse-Discrimination, Reverse-Marginalization, and Reverse (Silent) Civil Rage
Not all rage is bad. It depends on where it is coming from, how it is handled and how it is channeled. Some forms of rage can be extremely constructive, providing the badly needed energy and sharply focused direction to help balance out and/or compensate for traumatic personal, social, economic, legal, religious, and/or political injustices. Off the top of my head, MADD comes to my mind -- Mothers Against Drunk Driving. Another good example is John Walsh, host of the popular tv show, 'America's Most Wanted'. Walsh's young son Adam, six years old at the time, was abducted and murdered in 1981.
(From the internet on John Walsh, host of 'America's Most Wanted')
'July 27, 2006 will go down in history as the day that changed how America protects its children from sexual predators. At a ceremony in the Rose Garden, President George W. Bush signed a new, tough-as-nails law to track and apprehend convicted sex offenders who disappear after their release from prison. The date wasn't chosen randomly. It was exactly 25 years earlier that John Walsh and his wife Revé suffered the most horrendous loss that any parents could endure: the abduction and murder of their beautiful six-year-old son, Adam. Since that day in 1981, John has dedicated himself to fighting on behalf of children and all crime victims. As a result, thousands of victims have found justice, and dozens of abducted children have been safely brought home. The new law signed by President Bush is also a result of John's fight. It's called "The Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act."'
The American Civil War was based on the principle of 'equal rights' and 'rage against slavery'.
Even further back, The American Revolution was based on rage against British 'overtaxation' (The Boston Tea Party). Same with the French Revolution which bacame nasty and horrific (as if war in itself is not nasty and horrific enough) when it turned into 'The Reign of Terror' where all Enlightenment sense of reason was lost in the wind amid a blood bath of torture and executions after the revolution.
I am not advocating the connection between rage and violence. I am however, advocating the connection between rage and the correction of dialectic-democratic injustices. The main problem with the people of Canada -- and I am speaking of myself too here -- is that we are, as a whole, both politically apathetic and politically inept. There is plenty of silent rage in Canada -- I have as much or more than many -- but there is not enough open, democratic, civil rage towards the political and legal correction of political and legal injustices.
Who has more power in Canada?; The politicians of Canada? Or the people of Canada? Except at election time, undoubtedly the politicians of Canada do. They say that they are working for the people of Canada, have the interests in mind of the people of Canada, when they make their political decisions and laws. But although I can only speak for myself, I would surmise that most people would probably very much believe differently. A distinction can be made between an 'equal rights' poliitican and a 'narcissistic' politician. The two categories are not totally black and white -- it is impossible for all people not to have some degree of narcissism in them; indeed, this is very much one of the main distinguishing features of our time and culture. However, how many people of Canada do not believe that the poliitcians of Canada are very much alienated from the people of Canada and visa versa. Alienation is another primary feature of 21st century Canadian 'pseudo-democracy'.
Democracy should not be over-rated. Democracy is not the 'be all and end all' of Utopia. Every concept, every philosophy, has a weakness. And the biggest weakness of democracy is its 'inefficiency'. So that becomes one of the most challenging philosophical questions of the 21st century: 'How do you make democracy more efficient?' A second and equally challenging question and problem relative to 21st Century Democracy is this: 'How do you get the people (of Canada) more 'engaged' in 21st Century (Canadian) Democracy? The answer to this question is partly simple. We saw it just recently in American politics. The internet. But this is not sufficient. How else can we re-invent 'Participatory Democracy'? The internet could play a huge role in re-inventing Participatory Democracy but we need more. How can we re-invent Participatory Democracy in the spirit of Ancient Greece or is that a laughable pipe dream? Where there is a will, there is a way. Let us reword the question: 'How do you get a country of 33 million people to speak politically in small public political forums in every city, town, and village in Canada?' Perhaps we can 'kill two birds with one stone' here. And I know I am throwing a lot of 'shotgun ideas' at you, at one time here.
Canadian Political Lobbyist-Special Interest Groups (CPLSI Groups) as they are currently constructed and function -- or shall we say 'dysfunction' in Canadian society -- need to be 'deconstructed'. Destroyed, Killed. Anihilated. Re-invented under different rules, laws, structures, and processes. This means something else at the same time. Political Party Funding (PPF) through CPLSI Groups need to be deconstructed as well. Destroyed. Killed. Anihilated. These groups are at the heart of 'un-democratic forces' at work in Canadian society that are hurting the Canadian people because they spread 'preferential VIP treatment' to these CPLSI Groups while spreading second class treatment and 'unequal rights' to the rest of the people in Canada in a supposedly democratic society.
Does anyone know how 'feeding' works in the taxi industry. You should. It is a very simple phenomenon and it goes right to the heart -- as a metaphor -- of what is wrong in Canadian society. It goes right to the heart of 'unadulterated narcissism' in Canadian (as well as American) Society.
I am a taxi dispatcher so I know at least partly what I speak of. I have not been directly involved with some of these forces at work so I do not know all of what I talk about. But I know some. It's kind of like the 'steroid scandal' in baseball or 'Ad-Scam' in Canadian politics. (The latter is an example of a much bigger type of 'feeding' than the type I will talk about here.)
It is very simple. A taxi dispatcher gets an 'out of town' run from a customer. Say it is worth $150. Instead of dispatching the call on the radio so that all the company's drivers have a fair shake at it -- the essence of 'democracy and equal rights' -- rather, the dispatcher calls his taxi cab buddy on his cell phone and gives him the call. (This is the driver being 'fed'.) Later, this driver may 'slip' the dispatcher $20. (This is the dispatcher being 'fed'.) All the other drivers are left out in the cold -- no preferentialism, no favoritism, no out of town orders. They are not being 'fed'. The principle here is that 'two parties feed each other or scratch each others backs' while the third party, usually the largest party -- i.e., the general Canadian public -- is left out in the cold, or worse -- fleeced of the proper use of their tax money.
This is what happened in 'Adscam' in Canadian Politics and it is what happens in general in Canadian Lobbyism. One CPLSI Group funds the political party in power a lot of money (in this case, the Canadian Liberal Party). For argument sake -- I'm just making up these numbers because I don't know the real ones -- let's say the private advertising company in question funds the Candian Liberal Party $100,000. (Here the Liberal Party is being 'fed'.) Now a very lucrative public/private governament contract comes up for bidding. Say it is worth 10 million plus. The contract involves advertising 'federalism' to the province of Quebec. Now instead of conducting a 'democratic, above-the-board bidding process', a member of the Liberal Party gets on the phone -- just like a taxi dispatcher would -- and gives the lucrative government contract to the private advertising company that funded the Liberal Party $100,000. And/or a 'scam-below-the-table bidding process' takes place where we know what the inevitable outcome of this bidding process would be -- and was: the private, corporate Liberal Funding Lobbyst Advertising Firm 'wins/won' the bidding. (Now the Liberal funding advertising firm -- the CPLSI Group -- has in turn been 'fed' at the expense of all other Canadian advertising companies who may have (or did) also put in a bidding even though the bidding was already a 'done deal'. This is the essence of Canadian Lobbyism and why it needs to be 'deconstructed'. It is know different than how it works in the taxi industry and in Canadian industry in general. Many a cab driver knows how to 'privately lobby' a taxi dispatcher. Bring him (or her) coffee. Chat him up. Become 'friends' with him. And in turn generally eventually look for 'economic favors'. That is why an 'ethical' taxi compay will for the most part try to keep drivers and dispatchers apart. 'Close the dispatch door to all drivers.'
Same with the hotel industry. And the restaurant industry. And the pharmaceutical industry. And every other industry in Canada. Private 'lobbyism' is rampant everywhere and destroys Canadian ethics and equal rights. It brings Canada down to a prace of raw, unadulterated, unbalanced narcissism. Lobbyism sucks. It brings down Canada and America to a shared culture of uncontrolled and unbalnced narcissism.
A taxi driver approaches a doorman at a big hotel or (visa versa). He 'slips' the doorman $20. In the code language between the two, he gives the doorman a 'cookie'. )Or the doorman asks for a 'cookie'.) The next 'airport run' the doorman gets from a customer, who do you think is going to get it? Of course -- the taxi driver who gave the doorman the 'cookie'. Again, lobbyism and narcissism at work.
A customer at a high end restaurant 'slips' a waiter $20. Anothr 'cookie'. The customer gets a 'preferred seat'. A customer arrives at a busy night club and 'slips' the bouncer $20. His group gets into the club immediately. Many other people -- some who have been waiting in line at the club for an hour or longer -- don't. 'Cookies win private favors while ethics, naivety, and ignorance don't.' Ethical, naive, and/or ignorant people are always 'left out in the cold'.
I know very little about pharmaceutical companies and how they operate. However, one does not need to be a rocket science to 'guess' how they operate -- or at least how the more 'unethical' ocmpanies operate. The 'government lobbyists'. Every now and then a newspaper article will hit the papers and the public's attention to reveal a 'pharmaceutical-government' scandal. It gets the public's attention briefly. But then the story fades away and you have to know that pharmaceutical lobbying does not fade away -- is not going to fade away -- unless and/or until the people of Canada and America demand that it does. This is all hypothetical with no substantiating actual cases within my easy grasp. But you have to know that pharmaceutical lobbying is real -- and goes on all the time. Just like steroids in baseball although maybe the latter has been harnessed or at least, for the present time, been brought down to a dull roar. A membr of a large pharmaceutical company approaches a government inspection agent. The pharmaceutical company wants to 'lobby' him or her. The company wants a particular, potentially very lucrative, drug passed -- but there are issues about its safety. That is what the government inspection agency is supposed to be there for. To protect the people of Canada (or America) from potential drug harm. Drugs 'passed' by the government inspection agency are supposed to be 'safe'. But the drug isn't safe. There have been some 'deaths' in trial experiments. Now it may be hard to actually pinpoint the 'cause' of the deaths in the experiments. Maybe it was the drug. Or maybe it was the 'disease' the experimental subjects were being treated for. (This easy source of 'unclarity and possible confusion' between 'drug and/or the disease as the main causal source' has taken many a doctor and/or surgeon off the hook for potential cases of medical malpractice and/or criminal negligence.) Anyway, the pharmaceutical company doesn't want any government hold-ups. It just wants it potential lucrative profits from its unpassed drug. So it 'slip' a government inspection agent -- let us say, for argument sake, $10,000 -- and the inspection agent passes the drug. Another 'cookie'. Another example of government lobbying and 'mutual feeding'. So much for the protection of the Canadian (and American) public.
This is only a very small part of my silent civic rage. There is much, much more. The rest is much more personal. At work relative to drivers being coerced to work 16 and 17 hour shifts while only getting paid for 12. The rest goes into the company's coffers.
Who's lobbying for the drivers? They get threatenedd with firing if they mention going to The Labour Board or bring up the management-hated word -- Union. (Which is exactly why unions exist in this country -- and in case like this, should exist, which is not to say that unions can't be abusive towards both management and/or workers in their own right.) Most of the drivers choose to decline civil action and keep their jobs and the abuse over the prospect of not having a job and money to pay their bills. Some quit or are fired, but for most of them, the prospect and anxiety of poverty keeps them in line and under control over the reality of management abuse of work hours.
The issue of Feminist Lobbyism is a huge can of worms for Canada -- not for women but for men -- because Feminist Lobbyism is unbalanced by Masculine Lobbyism. That is partly men's fault because they continue to keep their mouth shut -- and don't organize civilly to balance the power of Feminist Lobbyist Groups (of which their are 100s bombarding Ottawa with demands for 'new rights'.)
Right now, men are the 'donkeys' of Canadian society for two reasons. One, they are too stupid and/or too proud to organize civilly into 'Counter-Lobbyist Groups' to offset and compensate for the power of Feminist Lobbyist Groups. And secondly, many of them -- at least the divorced and separated men out there, particularly with children, are getting financially reamed in The Family Courts of Canada to a legislature that does not bear any resemlance to the parameter of 'equal rights'. These men are being legally coerced into carrying financial loads -- often trying to support two families at once and/or not being able to even properly support themselves, not being given an inch by Government (Revenue Canada doesn't even know or care that they are often making overbearing support payments) -- indeed, separated men are in effect being coerced into the playing the role that Welfare and Mother's Allowance used to play in Canada -- a collosal savings to the Government and to Canadian Taxpayers as a whole, but in exchange, divorced and separated men are being scapegoated, being treated as the 'overburdened donkeys' of Canadian society.
There was a time, 30 years ago and longer, where women were being neglected and marginalized by the law, both in the home and in The Family Courts of Canada. Not any longer. That has all changed. For good -- and then for bad. Over the last 20-30 years, the pendulum has swung hard the other way and now it is men who are being neglected and marginalized in the home and overpowered and abused in The Family Courts of Canada. This subject, this phenomenon, will be the subject of the rest of this section.
Now there is an important note to be added here. The argument started above and which will be continued below relative to massive feminist lobbying over the last 10-20 years in Canada and its flagrant effect on biasing Canadian Family Laws and the judges who use these laws in favor of women -- are generalizations. As such they hold the same caveat emptor that any generalization should hold. In particular cases, things can be different. Women can still get unfairly treated in court if the man has a good enough lawyer. And some, indeed many, women obviously still do get 'stiffed' by ex-husbands or boyfriends who get away with making not making the support payments that they should be making. But this is not about that. There are hundreds of feminists groups who have written and/or argued articulately about that. This is about the opposite. A man giving an admittedly subjective, masculine opinion about all the men who have, and are continuing to be, subject to laws of reverse-discrimination against men -- men who have been used and abused in their homes by women who have simply picked up the phone, dialed 911, and had their husbands or boyfriends arrested, thrown in jail, and evicted from their mutual home at a moment's notice even on unsubstantiated evidence; men who have been used and abused in their wallets and in their bank acounts (if they have any) through The Family Courts of Canada and by follow up government enforcement agencies who 'just happen' to only ben overseeing and enforcing the behavior of men, not women. I am talking about the type of cases where the women are still living in the 4 bedroom house and taking regular vacations -- with the children -- on the man's money -- while the man is still making a good gross income but struggling to come up with rent money for a furnished room in a house. No vacations. No 4 bedroom house. No car. Not even enough money for a taxi to work. A bus, a bicycle, or walking -- these are often the separated father's modes of transportation to work. I know this because I have seen it as a landlord who rents rooms to these type of men, usually 45-55 years old. I hear the stories about the types of large houses these men lived in with their families for many years, and I get them after the 'Hiroshima' that has hit their lives, the emotional devastation of the separation itself from their family, and the economic devastation that hits them in the form of a particular branch of The Family Court of Canada -- full of female judges and female lawyers in all probability deserving to be there -- but no less biased than a court full of male judges and male lawyers 30 years ago passing judgment on a separated female. This is the Brave New World for men in the 21st century, in Canada at least, as they try to pick up their shattered lives after their pockets, their bank accounts, their property, and their paycheques have all been picked clean by The New Family Courts of Canada.
dgb, Oct 9th, 2007.
(From the internet on John Walsh, host of 'America's Most Wanted')
'July 27, 2006 will go down in history as the day that changed how America protects its children from sexual predators. At a ceremony in the Rose Garden, President George W. Bush signed a new, tough-as-nails law to track and apprehend convicted sex offenders who disappear after their release from prison. The date wasn't chosen randomly. It was exactly 25 years earlier that John Walsh and his wife Revé suffered the most horrendous loss that any parents could endure: the abduction and murder of their beautiful six-year-old son, Adam. Since that day in 1981, John has dedicated himself to fighting on behalf of children and all crime victims. As a result, thousands of victims have found justice, and dozens of abducted children have been safely brought home. The new law signed by President Bush is also a result of John's fight. It's called "The Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act."'
The American Civil War was based on the principle of 'equal rights' and 'rage against slavery'.
Even further back, The American Revolution was based on rage against British 'overtaxation' (The Boston Tea Party). Same with the French Revolution which bacame nasty and horrific (as if war in itself is not nasty and horrific enough) when it turned into 'The Reign of Terror' where all Enlightenment sense of reason was lost in the wind amid a blood bath of torture and executions after the revolution.
I am not advocating the connection between rage and violence. I am however, advocating the connection between rage and the correction of dialectic-democratic injustices. The main problem with the people of Canada -- and I am speaking of myself too here -- is that we are, as a whole, both politically apathetic and politically inept. There is plenty of silent rage in Canada -- I have as much or more than many -- but there is not enough open, democratic, civil rage towards the political and legal correction of political and legal injustices.
Who has more power in Canada?; The politicians of Canada? Or the people of Canada? Except at election time, undoubtedly the politicians of Canada do. They say that they are working for the people of Canada, have the interests in mind of the people of Canada, when they make their political decisions and laws. But although I can only speak for myself, I would surmise that most people would probably very much believe differently. A distinction can be made between an 'equal rights' poliitican and a 'narcissistic' politician. The two categories are not totally black and white -- it is impossible for all people not to have some degree of narcissism in them; indeed, this is very much one of the main distinguishing features of our time and culture. However, how many people of Canada do not believe that the poliitcians of Canada are very much alienated from the people of Canada and visa versa. Alienation is another primary feature of 21st century Canadian 'pseudo-democracy'.
Democracy should not be over-rated. Democracy is not the 'be all and end all' of Utopia. Every concept, every philosophy, has a weakness. And the biggest weakness of democracy is its 'inefficiency'. So that becomes one of the most challenging philosophical questions of the 21st century: 'How do you make democracy more efficient?' A second and equally challenging question and problem relative to 21st Century Democracy is this: 'How do you get the people (of Canada) more 'engaged' in 21st Century (Canadian) Democracy? The answer to this question is partly simple. We saw it just recently in American politics. The internet. But this is not sufficient. How else can we re-invent 'Participatory Democracy'? The internet could play a huge role in re-inventing Participatory Democracy but we need more. How can we re-invent Participatory Democracy in the spirit of Ancient Greece or is that a laughable pipe dream? Where there is a will, there is a way. Let us reword the question: 'How do you get a country of 33 million people to speak politically in small public political forums in every city, town, and village in Canada?' Perhaps we can 'kill two birds with one stone' here. And I know I am throwing a lot of 'shotgun ideas' at you, at one time here.
Canadian Political Lobbyist-Special Interest Groups (CPLSI Groups) as they are currently constructed and function -- or shall we say 'dysfunction' in Canadian society -- need to be 'deconstructed'. Destroyed, Killed. Anihilated. Re-invented under different rules, laws, structures, and processes. This means something else at the same time. Political Party Funding (PPF) through CPLSI Groups need to be deconstructed as well. Destroyed. Killed. Anihilated. These groups are at the heart of 'un-democratic forces' at work in Canadian society that are hurting the Canadian people because they spread 'preferential VIP treatment' to these CPLSI Groups while spreading second class treatment and 'unequal rights' to the rest of the people in Canada in a supposedly democratic society.
Does anyone know how 'feeding' works in the taxi industry. You should. It is a very simple phenomenon and it goes right to the heart -- as a metaphor -- of what is wrong in Canadian society. It goes right to the heart of 'unadulterated narcissism' in Canadian (as well as American) Society.
I am a taxi dispatcher so I know at least partly what I speak of. I have not been directly involved with some of these forces at work so I do not know all of what I talk about. But I know some. It's kind of like the 'steroid scandal' in baseball or 'Ad-Scam' in Canadian politics. (The latter is an example of a much bigger type of 'feeding' than the type I will talk about here.)
It is very simple. A taxi dispatcher gets an 'out of town' run from a customer. Say it is worth $150. Instead of dispatching the call on the radio so that all the company's drivers have a fair shake at it -- the essence of 'democracy and equal rights' -- rather, the dispatcher calls his taxi cab buddy on his cell phone and gives him the call. (This is the driver being 'fed'.) Later, this driver may 'slip' the dispatcher $20. (This is the dispatcher being 'fed'.) All the other drivers are left out in the cold -- no preferentialism, no favoritism, no out of town orders. They are not being 'fed'. The principle here is that 'two parties feed each other or scratch each others backs' while the third party, usually the largest party -- i.e., the general Canadian public -- is left out in the cold, or worse -- fleeced of the proper use of their tax money.
This is what happened in 'Adscam' in Canadian Politics and it is what happens in general in Canadian Lobbyism. One CPLSI Group funds the political party in power a lot of money (in this case, the Canadian Liberal Party). For argument sake -- I'm just making up these numbers because I don't know the real ones -- let's say the private advertising company in question funds the Candian Liberal Party $100,000. (Here the Liberal Party is being 'fed'.) Now a very lucrative public/private governament contract comes up for bidding. Say it is worth 10 million plus. The contract involves advertising 'federalism' to the province of Quebec. Now instead of conducting a 'democratic, above-the-board bidding process', a member of the Liberal Party gets on the phone -- just like a taxi dispatcher would -- and gives the lucrative government contract to the private advertising company that funded the Liberal Party $100,000. And/or a 'scam-below-the-table bidding process' takes place where we know what the inevitable outcome of this bidding process would be -- and was: the private, corporate Liberal Funding Lobbyst Advertising Firm 'wins/won' the bidding. (Now the Liberal funding advertising firm -- the CPLSI Group -- has in turn been 'fed' at the expense of all other Canadian advertising companies who may have (or did) also put in a bidding even though the bidding was already a 'done deal'. This is the essence of Canadian Lobbyism and why it needs to be 'deconstructed'. It is know different than how it works in the taxi industry and in Canadian industry in general. Many a cab driver knows how to 'privately lobby' a taxi dispatcher. Bring him (or her) coffee. Chat him up. Become 'friends' with him. And in turn generally eventually look for 'economic favors'. That is why an 'ethical' taxi compay will for the most part try to keep drivers and dispatchers apart. 'Close the dispatch door to all drivers.'
Same with the hotel industry. And the restaurant industry. And the pharmaceutical industry. And every other industry in Canada. Private 'lobbyism' is rampant everywhere and destroys Canadian ethics and equal rights. It brings Canada down to a prace of raw, unadulterated, unbalanced narcissism. Lobbyism sucks. It brings down Canada and America to a shared culture of uncontrolled and unbalnced narcissism.
A taxi driver approaches a doorman at a big hotel or (visa versa). He 'slips' the doorman $20. In the code language between the two, he gives the doorman a 'cookie'. )Or the doorman asks for a 'cookie'.) The next 'airport run' the doorman gets from a customer, who do you think is going to get it? Of course -- the taxi driver who gave the doorman the 'cookie'. Again, lobbyism and narcissism at work.
A customer at a high end restaurant 'slips' a waiter $20. Anothr 'cookie'. The customer gets a 'preferred seat'. A customer arrives at a busy night club and 'slips' the bouncer $20. His group gets into the club immediately. Many other people -- some who have been waiting in line at the club for an hour or longer -- don't. 'Cookies win private favors while ethics, naivety, and ignorance don't.' Ethical, naive, and/or ignorant people are always 'left out in the cold'.
I know very little about pharmaceutical companies and how they operate. However, one does not need to be a rocket science to 'guess' how they operate -- or at least how the more 'unethical' ocmpanies operate. The 'government lobbyists'. Every now and then a newspaper article will hit the papers and the public's attention to reveal a 'pharmaceutical-government' scandal. It gets the public's attention briefly. But then the story fades away and you have to know that pharmaceutical lobbying does not fade away -- is not going to fade away -- unless and/or until the people of Canada and America demand that it does. This is all hypothetical with no substantiating actual cases within my easy grasp. But you have to know that pharmaceutical lobbying is real -- and goes on all the time. Just like steroids in baseball although maybe the latter has been harnessed or at least, for the present time, been brought down to a dull roar. A membr of a large pharmaceutical company approaches a government inspection agent. The pharmaceutical company wants to 'lobby' him or her. The company wants a particular, potentially very lucrative, drug passed -- but there are issues about its safety. That is what the government inspection agency is supposed to be there for. To protect the people of Canada (or America) from potential drug harm. Drugs 'passed' by the government inspection agency are supposed to be 'safe'. But the drug isn't safe. There have been some 'deaths' in trial experiments. Now it may be hard to actually pinpoint the 'cause' of the deaths in the experiments. Maybe it was the drug. Or maybe it was the 'disease' the experimental subjects were being treated for. (This easy source of 'unclarity and possible confusion' between 'drug and/or the disease as the main causal source' has taken many a doctor and/or surgeon off the hook for potential cases of medical malpractice and/or criminal negligence.) Anyway, the pharmaceutical company doesn't want any government hold-ups. It just wants it potential lucrative profits from its unpassed drug. So it 'slip' a government inspection agent -- let us say, for argument sake, $10,000 -- and the inspection agent passes the drug. Another 'cookie'. Another example of government lobbying and 'mutual feeding'. So much for the protection of the Canadian (and American) public.
This is only a very small part of my silent civic rage. There is much, much more. The rest is much more personal. At work relative to drivers being coerced to work 16 and 17 hour shifts while only getting paid for 12. The rest goes into the company's coffers.
Who's lobbying for the drivers? They get threatenedd with firing if they mention going to The Labour Board or bring up the management-hated word -- Union. (Which is exactly why unions exist in this country -- and in case like this, should exist, which is not to say that unions can't be abusive towards both management and/or workers in their own right.) Most of the drivers choose to decline civil action and keep their jobs and the abuse over the prospect of not having a job and money to pay their bills. Some quit or are fired, but for most of them, the prospect and anxiety of poverty keeps them in line and under control over the reality of management abuse of work hours.
The issue of Feminist Lobbyism is a huge can of worms for Canada -- not for women but for men -- because Feminist Lobbyism is unbalanced by Masculine Lobbyism. That is partly men's fault because they continue to keep their mouth shut -- and don't organize civilly to balance the power of Feminist Lobbyist Groups (of which their are 100s bombarding Ottawa with demands for 'new rights'.)
Right now, men are the 'donkeys' of Canadian society for two reasons. One, they are too stupid and/or too proud to organize civilly into 'Counter-Lobbyist Groups' to offset and compensate for the power of Feminist Lobbyist Groups. And secondly, many of them -- at least the divorced and separated men out there, particularly with children, are getting financially reamed in The Family Courts of Canada to a legislature that does not bear any resemlance to the parameter of 'equal rights'. These men are being legally coerced into carrying financial loads -- often trying to support two families at once and/or not being able to even properly support themselves, not being given an inch by Government (Revenue Canada doesn't even know or care that they are often making overbearing support payments) -- indeed, separated men are in effect being coerced into the playing the role that Welfare and Mother's Allowance used to play in Canada -- a collosal savings to the Government and to Canadian Taxpayers as a whole, but in exchange, divorced and separated men are being scapegoated, being treated as the 'overburdened donkeys' of Canadian society.
There was a time, 30 years ago and longer, where women were being neglected and marginalized by the law, both in the home and in The Family Courts of Canada. Not any longer. That has all changed. For good -- and then for bad. Over the last 20-30 years, the pendulum has swung hard the other way and now it is men who are being neglected and marginalized in the home and overpowered and abused in The Family Courts of Canada. This subject, this phenomenon, will be the subject of the rest of this section.
Now there is an important note to be added here. The argument started above and which will be continued below relative to massive feminist lobbying over the last 10-20 years in Canada and its flagrant effect on biasing Canadian Family Laws and the judges who use these laws in favor of women -- are generalizations. As such they hold the same caveat emptor that any generalization should hold. In particular cases, things can be different. Women can still get unfairly treated in court if the man has a good enough lawyer. And some, indeed many, women obviously still do get 'stiffed' by ex-husbands or boyfriends who get away with making not making the support payments that they should be making. But this is not about that. There are hundreds of feminists groups who have written and/or argued articulately about that. This is about the opposite. A man giving an admittedly subjective, masculine opinion about all the men who have, and are continuing to be, subject to laws of reverse-discrimination against men -- men who have been used and abused in their homes by women who have simply picked up the phone, dialed 911, and had their husbands or boyfriends arrested, thrown in jail, and evicted from their mutual home at a moment's notice even on unsubstantiated evidence; men who have been used and abused in their wallets and in their bank acounts (if they have any) through The Family Courts of Canada and by follow up government enforcement agencies who 'just happen' to only ben overseeing and enforcing the behavior of men, not women. I am talking about the type of cases where the women are still living in the 4 bedroom house and taking regular vacations -- with the children -- on the man's money -- while the man is still making a good gross income but struggling to come up with rent money for a furnished room in a house. No vacations. No 4 bedroom house. No car. Not even enough money for a taxi to work. A bus, a bicycle, or walking -- these are often the separated father's modes of transportation to work. I know this because I have seen it as a landlord who rents rooms to these type of men, usually 45-55 years old. I hear the stories about the types of large houses these men lived in with their families for many years, and I get them after the 'Hiroshima' that has hit their lives, the emotional devastation of the separation itself from their family, and the economic devastation that hits them in the form of a particular branch of The Family Court of Canada -- full of female judges and female lawyers in all probability deserving to be there -- but no less biased than a court full of male judges and male lawyers 30 years ago passing judgment on a separated female. This is the Brave New World for men in the 21st century, in Canada at least, as they try to pick up their shattered lives after their pockets, their bank accounts, their property, and their paycheques have all been picked clean by The New Family Courts of Canada.
dgb, Oct 9th, 2007.
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