Journeyman Philosopher

Today’s post is about the current state of politics in Canada and a personal perception of how and why the current events have come about.

A Short Update

If you don’t live in Canada allow me to fill you in on what’s going on in our government. Currently in Canada we have a minority government run by the Conservative Party of Canada led by Stephen Harper. As of a week ago Stephen Harper announced a planned budget which really made distraught all of the other political parties in the minority government (there were two main reasons for this reaction; a lack of an economic stimulus package, and the removal of parties being given funding for each vote they received). As such two of the parties have threatened to unify as one and attempt to run Canada as a coalition government, following a vote of no confidence, if allowed by the Governor General of Canada. As we sit now our government has been proroged until January 26th in order to give Stephen Harper time to adjust the budget in the hopes of regaining the confidence of the other parties in parliament.

What I See

I think there are only truly two ways to look at these events; either Stephen Harper is stupid and all the problems stem from that, or Stephen Harper is not stupid and all the problems stem from a hidden agenda. I don’t think Stephen Harper is stupid, I do think he is an intelligent strategist that is intent on manipulating public opinion in order to secure more seats for the Conservative party.

Lets do a quick flashback. Initially the Conservative party came into minority power due to scandals in the Liberal party; simply put the Liberal party had had a majority government for far to long (non-deservingly), as such their majority led to lax of supervision and thereafter various Liberal financial scandals.

Earlier in this year the Conservative government reported that parliament wasn’t running efficiently because all the other parties refused to play ball. As so an election was called; it should be noted that every other party said that in reality it was the Conservatives that refused to play ball. Throughout this election Stephen Harper really emphasized that the other parties weren’t respecting Canadian voters wishes by making parliament run ineffectively. He criticized that in essence the other parties were attempting to fulfill their own agendas despite the wishes of the people. This argument was relatively persuasive to the average voter who had come to know of the old Liberal financial scandals. Many voters could only see the Conservative perspective that of the other parties being selfishly motivated individuals who were in essence just trying to hold on to the old corruption. As such during the election the Conservatives were given more seats in parliament than before by the voters, although they were still given a minority government.

Now we snap to present day. Stephen Harper announces a budget that clearly will piss off the other parties, it in no way has compromised to the other parties wishes and in its removal of funding for votes it in essence debilitates the weaker parties in their ability to campaign effectively in the next parliamentary election. Are we to truly believe that Stephen Harper would be surprised by this turn of events? If he was an idiot, yes, but surely he is not an idiot.

What has Stephen Harper really done in this situation? In essence he has created another catalyst for change that is very effective at manipulating the views of the masses to further favour the conservative party.

Lets zoom out for a second. What has recently been dominating the news of the world? The presidential race in the United States of course. Its safe to say at least 80% of our media in Canada is of American origin, and as well its safe to say that more people in Canada understand the American system of politics than the Canadian. So when Stephen Harper says “Canadians did not give Stephan Dion their mandate to run this country.” what does this imply? If you as a voter were framed within an ‘American Voter’ framework of knowledge you would believe that, fundamentally, someone was getting into office who was not voted into office and that’s damned well unconstitutional. Hence many Canadians horrible reactions to the concept of the coalition government (the reality is however in Canada we don’t vote in a Prime Minister but instead MPs who then vote in a Prime Minister).

What I Think

In essence what Stephen Harper is doing from my perception is taking advantage of Canadian’s misinformation of our own political system that is consequently imported to us through our addiction to American media. I don’t mean to imply that Stephen Harper is necessarily an evil man with evil purposes, but I do mean to say that he is using very scandalous means to bring about his agenda be it good or not.

Wrap Up

I think when you look at the current political situation you can only assume two things; either Stephen Harper is an idiot completely unaware of the other parties wishes, or Stephen Harper is making a calculated decision in which he is gauging the reactions of the other parties in order to promote his own interests.

So which is it?

The following is an interesting excerpt from Nietzsche’s essay ‘On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life’.

“Socrates took it to be a malady approaching insanity to imagine that one possesses a virtue when one does not possess it: and certainly such imagination is more dangerous than the opposite delusion of suffering from a shortcoming, from a vice. For through this delusion it is perhaps still possible to become better; the former imagination, however, will daily make a man or an age worse…”

This is an interesting opinion, what do you think about it? Is imagining you have some trait more detrimental than imagining you don’t have it?

I agree with him, rather under-confidence than over-confidence; our world is full of those who speak firm-footed on nothing, hence problems.

A very interesting thought entered my mind the other day while discussing the concept of scripture in the classroom. Scripture (writing), as we all take for granted, is a technological invention. It is a technological invention that permeates all of our society. In order to be able to write and to understand someone’s writing it is necessary to be trained in it, without this training our own writing becomes disjointed and nonsensical whilst the writing of others becomes alien.

Ask yourself why it is that when you read someone’s blog whom you disagree with you find it inherently more offensive than when you encounter the same opinions verbally? This has to do with more how we perceive writing than with the content of the words themselves. Plato commented that writing was in a sense ‘inhuman’ as once thoughts were transferred on paper they became separate from the individual thinking them. This separteness in essence put them on a different plain of reality than the verbal words and opinions the writing stemmed from. You can’t argue with text, all text is a statement of truth in some manner or another. If you read ‘The dog ate the cat’ you can reply ‘No it didn’t’ but this in essence does not change the composition of the text ‘The dog ate the cat’ is still ‘The dog ate the cat’ regardless of your objection to it.

To understand and cope with this concept human beings have taught reading and writing for centuries and in essence it has transformed how we see the world (as a matter of fact our world would not exist without writing). A technological invention came about that we in essence societally evolved ourselves to use efficiently. In such a manner we evolved through technology. Take this line of thought to the present day. Currently we depend on huge amounts of technology to live our daily lives, but one fundamental difference between how we have adapted ourselves to understand writing and how we have adapted ourselves to deal with technology is that in essence technology although becoming more complicated and powerful is progressively being made more human user friendly, whereas writing was a system adopted because of its advantage despite its lack of user freindliness.

With writing we adopted an efficient system of technology for the transmitance of knowledge and maintained it through generations ‘by teaching ourselves how to work with it’, however now computer technology is being adopted and used in society as an efficient means of a varied amount of things yet fundamentally ‘it is being taught how to work with us‘. There exists an important transference of power, initially human beings evolved through the technology of writing however now the technolygy of computers is evolving through us!

This I believe is very important. If artificial intelligence does ever come into existence human beings are in some ways going to be an evolutionary ancestor of their species, just as in some ways the technology of writing has become an evolutionary ancestor of ours.