We need to talk about the future of Canada. It should be unlimited and maybe it can be, but we haven't been doing very well in the past few years.
Sixty years ago we were a major industrial power with full employment and virtually no poverty. Now we have a branch-plant economy with a huge national debt, disastrous unemployment, a failing public medical system and tens of thousands of homeless people.
And if we don't make some changes it's going to get worse. Politicians tell us that our problems are caused by world economic conditions and that they will soon be fixed, but that's bafflegab. In fact our economic problems are the result of decisions made and programs adopted by the politicians of years gone by, and today's politicians hope to fix them by continuing those same programs.
That's no surprise because politicians tend to stick with old ideas, whether they work or not. More than 120 years ago the English philosopher Herbert Spencer observed that when a government program does not work, the usual reaction is to enlarge it.[1] I call this "Spencer's Law" and, as we will see, it explains a lot of government programs.
Politicians like old ideas because they are part of what economist and philosopher John Kenneth Galbraith termed "conventional wisdom."
This is the wisdom that "everybody" knows. We might also call it tradition and, since pre-human times, it has been a vital part of our heritage.
In prehistoric times human conventional wisdom would have included such gems as "don't eat the mushrooms with the bumps on them; don't tease the big orange cat with the black stripes; don't swim near the big lizards with the bumpy backs," and "don't stand on top of a mountain and shake your spear at a thunderstorm."
Through the ages, children who took this kind of advice were more likely to grow up than those who did not, and we developed a tradition of listening to the elders of our tribe and ignoring new and un-tested ideas.
That probably dates back to pre-human times. Biologists in Japan found that only a few hours after the alphas of one troop of Japanese monkeys learned to eat wheat, the whole band would eat wheat. In another band low-status monkeys were the first to eat caramels and, 18 months later, only 51% of the band would eat caramels.
We may think that animals know by instinct what is good to eat and what is not but some, at least, know only what they have been taught.
English biologist Kenneth Hall watched a baboon that had been moved from a high-altitude forest in the Transvaal to a low-altitude game preserve on the Cape of Good Hope. Vegetation at the lower altitude was different and, until local baboons showed it which plants were edible and which were not, the newcomer could not eat.[2]
For practical purpose we have to learn to live, and the basic lessons of conventional wisdom become very firmly established. As human culture developed, our conventional wisdom became more and more complex. Among the Maya it included a method of processing the poisonous cassava root to make it edible, and the Indians of California learned to make safe food from acorns, (which are also poisonous).
But as it became more complex our conventional wisdom also became less dependable. Among the Maya, conventional wisdom included the 'fact' that the gods would be pleased if a teen-aged girl was weighted with gold jewelry and thrown into a well to drown. The Inca believed it would please their gods if young children were drugged and left on mountain-tops to freeze. Priests in Carthage sacrificed their worshipers' babies and Aristotle taught that some men were natural-born slaves and others natural-born masters.
Once it takes root conventional wisdom will persist indefinitely, and it is sometimes dangerous to question it. Most of what Aristotle believed about the physical world was wrong but his mistakes were accepted as gospel for nearly two thousand years and, because they were conventional wisdom, they could not be questioned.
Aristotle taught that the sun orbits around the Earth. In 1543 Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus proved that the Earth orbits the sun but, rather than contradict Aristotle, he described his own theory as a "mathematical trick" that made it possible to predict the positions of the planets. The Vatican's own astronomers used Copernicus "trick" but in 1600 priest Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake because he insisted that Aristotle had been wrong and that the Earth really does orbit the sun.[3] In 1642 Galileo Galilei was put under house arrest for the rest of his life, for the same 'crime.'
Over the years most of Aristotle's misconceptions have been corrected but, like Japanese monkeys, many humans still accept ideas only from the elite members of their band.
But as a rule the elite don't have many new ideas, partly because they are full of the old ones. In most cases a member of the elite gets his or her initial training in school, from teachers who did well enough themselves to get paper qualifications but who did not manage to join the elite.
After students have been programmed in school they go into the real world where, if they can ape the views and behavior of the elite, they may be accepted as "management trainees." If they go 20 or 30 years without challenging the views of the elite they may themselves join the group, but by then their ideas will be hopelessly stuck in the past.
Economist John Maynard Keynes wrote "There are not many who are influenced by new ideas or theories after they are twenty-five or thirty years of age, so that the ideas which civil servants and politicians and even agitators apply to current events are not likely to be the newest."[4]
Most members of the elite don't like to change, because their self-image demands that they believe they are right. By Galileo's day no sane man could seriously believe that the stars were points of light on huge crystal spheres that surrounded the earth, but church leaders who had never questioned Aristotle's ideas could not afford to admit that the church was wrong.
Even if he knows the truth, a member of the elite may find it convenient to support a falsehood. In The Affluent Society John Kenneth Galbraith reminds us that the man who tells people what they already believe will generally get more public approval than the man who tells them something new.[5] The man who spouts conventional wisdom tells his audience what it wants and expects to hear, and he will be approved. In the long run he may be proved wrong but, since he may be dead before that happens, it makes more sense for an authority figure to support an accepted falsehood than a novel truth.
As Keynes wrote --- "Worldly wisdom teaches that it is better for reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally."[6]
The conventional wisdom of pre-historic times was developed and tested in the real world. People who did not tease tigers and people who did not eat poisonous mushrooms lived longer and raised more children than those who did. Tribes whose elders gave good advice flourished, and others did not. The selection process was automatic and dependable.
But as civilization developed, conventional wisdom became less and less dependable. By Aristotle's time it could be and was manufactured for the benefit of priests and rulers. In the modern world conventional wisdom can be manufactured by anyone with a budget to buy advertising or the contacts or the expertise to get free publicity.
Manufactured conventional wisdom has always been a problem for some of us -- Aristotle's slaves, for example, and people who were sacrificed to gods. The conventional wisdom manufactured by modern advertising and publicity is created for the benefit of commercial interests and some of it, at least, creates problems for humanity and for the world.
The problem for individual humans is that most manufactured conventional wisdom encourages life-styles that are neither healthy nor satisfying. The problem for humanity as a whole is that some of these life styles create the kind of problem that is generally known as the tragedy of the commons.
Feudal villages in England had a field called the "commons" where villagers were free to graze sheep or cattle. The capacity of any field is limited but, with no central control, anyone could put as many animals as they wanted on the commons.
If the field was over-grazed all would lose, but if any one villager reduced the number of his animals the commons would still be over-grazed and others would reap the benefits. Because each individual stood to gain more by grazing as many animals as possible for as long as the field lasted, most commons were over-grazed and ruined.
Conventional wisdom manufactured by commercial interests tells us that it's good for the world economy if we buy imported goods rather than Canadian and, if we will buy imports, it makes sense for a merchant to sell them. We all know that our decision puts Canadians out of work but we think that we, personally, gain more than we lose.
Manufactured conventional wisdom tells the stockbroker that he's more of a man if he drives an SUV from Rosedale to Bay St. every morning.
Manufactured conventional wisdom tells us that the stench of a chemical plant or paper mill is "the smell of money."
And because conventional wisdom tells us that we are better people if we have more money, many of us have selfish reasons for trashing the commons.
A developer who destroys cropland or a watershed to build suburban houses knows that we have no cropland or watershed to spare, but he also knows that he will make a profit from the development. A man who buys a suburban house knows that city sprawl is a threat to his children's future, but he also knows that he will gain prestige if he buys the house and that if he does not buy it someone else will.
A movie or TV producer may know that the show he creates will be harmful to society, but he also knows that he will make a big profit from it.
The advertising manager of a tobacco company may have children of his own, but he will still look for new and marginally legal ways to sell cigarettes to teen-agers.
The "lawn care expert" may know that pesticides cause developmental problems in children but he makes his living by applying pesticides to lawns that children play on.
The captain of a fishing trawler knows that the undersize fish he catches this year will not grow to breed the fish he will need next year, but his immediate problem is the need to make enough profit on this trip to cover his expenses and pay his crew.
If any of these people think about the future they can tell themselves that if they make enough money they will be safe, no matter what happens. The prospect of future safety is so attractive that some people form "survivalist" communities in which they hope to live through an apocalypse. For a self-centered person, it makes sense to do whatever it takes to make enough money to survive.
If most people work for the common good an individual who works only for himself will profit. Because we accept wealth as a virtue we have developed a society in which it is respectable to work for personal profit with no concern for public welfare.
But in the modern world the tragedy of the commons is not just a matter of over-grazing a field. Now we are, quite literally, talking about the survival of the human race.
There are several views on this. One is that God's plan is coming to completion and that after the final battle at Armageddon, Christ will establish his Kingdom on Earth. People who believe this look forward to the end of the world and sometimes, it seems, they try to bring it about.
Another view says that the world has lasted for hundreds of millions of years so far, and it will last for hundreds of millions more. That's true, but I'm not worried about the survival of a geological entity. I'm worried about the survival of the human race.
I grant you that we haven't seen much danger of extinction in the past couple of hundred years, but that's just the blink of an eye in geologic time. We do know that 70 or 80,000 years ago the eruption of the volcano Toba, in present-day Indonesia, nearly wiped us out. Some scientists estimate that in the whole world less than 10,000 people survived.
We don't have good records from prehistoric time but we know that the eruption of volcano Tambora in 535 AD -- just 1,500 years ago -- caused famines that destroyed empires around the world. It may have been because of conventional wisdom created by that famine that, a thousand years later, the Inca kept enough food in storage to feed their population for about three years.
Famine has been our constant companion since the spread of grain agriculture and the overpopulation that came with it. Author/historian Jack Weatherford counts 111 famines in France, from 1371 to 1791.[7] Even now, millions of people are hungry.
We also know that a global plague is going to come, probably not far in the future. This is not speculation or scare-mongering, it is a virtual certainty that the world of medicine has worried about for at least four decades.[8]
It's just a matter of arithmetic. The more people there are in the world and the closer they live together the more chances germs, viruses, parasites and other micro-organisms have to mutate. The more we travel and the more we ship goods around the world, the more chance micro-organisms have to find and infect people who have no resistance to them. This is not theory -- it has already been responsible for some of the most horrifying disasters in human history.
Bubonic plague -- the black death -- had been around for years but it did not run wild until it reached Europe. According to some estimates the smallpox and other diseases that Europeans brought to the Americas may have killed up to 90% of the natives of the two continents.[9]
Still another danger is war and, as always, we are threatened by natural disasters.
We know that these dangers exist and we count on our government to guard our commons but elections are won by personal charm, big advertising budgets and pie-in-the sky promises rather than by good policies. Even if a politician does recognize a danger he knows that he can get more big-money support -- which will translate to more advertising and more votes -- by selling out to big business than by protecting the commons.
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