Is Our World Getting Worse, Or Maybe Better?

Is Our World Getting Worse, Or Maybe Better?

You make the road by walking on it. 

- Nicaraguan saying

The world changed on February 11, 2011. You may have considered it a minor news item as you went about making a life for yourself. But the incident may have marked the beginning (or at least a major step) of a change in human history. Life on our planet may be different--may last longer and be more peaceful and cooperative--as a result of what happened.

Hosni Mubarak, president of Egypt for the past three decades, resigned and left his country. True, presidents leave office around the world frequently. This departure was different.

It began with demonstrations in Tahrir (Liberation) Square, Cairo. Eighteen days of noisy demonstrations by hundreds of thousands of people. Without violence or anyone being trampled to death, almost unprecedented in demonstrations of this nature.

Most world watchers consider the Middle East the most likely place for a Third World War to begin, an area where peace seemed to suffer at the hands of an endless parade of violent protesters, demonstrations, wars, oppression and repression. You and I lived through an occasion that may prove that all of the political forecasters have been wrong.

Not only did Egyptians find a way to enact change using peaceful demonstrations, the rest of the Arab world watched, cheered and agreed that change is possible by methods other than violent ones.

When forecasters saw the president of Tunisia leave office as a result of demonstrations, they expected the rest of the Arab world would burst into flames--into revolutions and insurrections--in similar demands by average people. It didn't happen. In almost every Arab country the people have begun to agitate for change toward better political representation, better treatment by the police, legal and penal systems, better human rights and the departure of leaders who prevent such changes from happening.

Demonstrations--peaceful ones--have happened in Algeria, Jordan and Yemen. The regime in Syria has banned all demonstrations. Demonstrations happen regularly in Iran. The independence vote in Sudan--relatively free of violence by Sudanese standards--should see the south of the country become a new nation within a few months. Some of the most unsettled parts of the world are in change.

If your only source of information about our world is the media, you must feel that life on our planet is much worse now than it was when you were younger. The problem is not our planet, but your sources of information and the fact that you know more now about the world than you did years ago. The media focus on bad news because they have persuaded us that bad news is what we want to hear. Extremely few provide good news. The media have brainwashed themselves as well as many of us.

Fewer wars are underway in the world than ever before, according to the United Nations. Humans are doing more good work around the world today than ever before in human history. Individuals are helping individuals, groups are helping individuals and groups. Schools are opening where they have not existed before or where they had been closed due to war or repressive regimes.

To provide a few examples would be shamefully insufficient. However, I would refer you to two if you wish to look further.Development Action Awareness Nationwide , in Rajasthan, India, has a short interview with its founder and director  on YouTube. In Africa you could learn more about Putumaya Kids at http://putumayokids.com/  No doubt these organizations are distant from your location. Phone your local city hall or elected representative to find out what is happening in your own area.

Don't bury yourself in the bad news spread by the media. Learn about the good things that are happening all over the world, including in your own community.

When you do, the world will look like a much better, more peaceful, more valuable, more progressive worldwide community of people helping people than you ever imagined.

Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents, grandparents and teachers who want to teach children the knowledge and skills they need beyond school curriculum in order to become healthy and well balanced adults.

Learn more at http://billallin.com/  

Is Freedom Really Worth Fighting For?

Here lives a free man. Nobody serves him.
- Albert Camus, writer, philosopher, Nobel laureate (1913-1960)

The concept of freedom has as many interpretations as there are people who use the word.

We fight wars in the name of freedom. We insist that people who have been wrongly convicted and incarcerated be freed because freedom is a basic human right. What the concept of freedom means is confusing.

Politicians manipulate our thinking on various subjects by hinting or clearly stating that our freedom will be reduced or confined if we do not support the action they advocate. It motivates fear, which is what gets them elected.

Freedom is a great political football because nobody is clear about what it means. Most times the word is used, it means whatever the user wants it to mean.

Whatever freedom is, the concept exists between the ears.

Is it worth fighting for? If you can't think for yourself and tend to take your view of the world and your opinions of the parts of it that affect you from others, it's not worth fighting for. You have given up your freedom voluntarily already.

Freedom as a tool of political persuasion is only used--can only be used--with people who have already given up their right and ability to think for themselves. When we see how many wars are fought in the cause of freedom, we can see how many people don't think for themselves. Many people don't think at all, they just follow.

People such as The Mahatma, Mohandas Gandhi, who was jailed many times for annoying the British with his peaceful insistence (resistance) that the UK free India, and democracy leader and Nobel Prize winner Aung San Suu Ki, of Burma, under house arrest for years, did not consider their freedom to have been removed. No matter where they were (or are) they could think for themselves.

Their freedom to move around from place to place was restricted, but their freedom of mind was not--could not--be taken from them.

Are you free? Because you read, because you choose to seek out information and opinions on various subjects, you certainly are free. Or you have greater potential to be free, whether you adopt it or not.

You may listen to input from a variety of sources, but you don't make up your mind on any subject until and unless you have learned more than enough on which to base a sound decision.
If freedom is based on the unfettered ability to think, isn't everyone free, almost by definition?

By definition, yes. By choice, no. Too many people allow their minds to be manipulated by others who have something to gain by having them as allies or supporters. Look at the effectiveness of most advertising and religions as examples of how propaganda can be used to have people voluntarily give up their freedom.

Follwers listen to one line of thought and adopt it as if it were inherently good and right and the only possible choice. It's like two siblings fighting over something and mom supporting the first one to explain their case to her. The first one to make a good case get the most supporters.
No one can take away your freedom of thought. The only way you can lose that is to give it away.

Why do so many people give away that right? They aren't taught it at school. At home, kids have to follow the ways of the family, at least when they are younger. At school, kids are taught that the teacher's way is the right way. Even at the college level students learn that it's risky to take a position on a paper that is contrary to that of the teacher because a low mark may result.

People who enjoy true freedom of thought generally do not voluntarily go to war. Some may take leadership roles and send others into battle. They don't go themselves because they value their own freedom.

The freedom to think.

We can teach this. The world won't fall apart or be bombed out of existence if we teach freedom of thought and support freedom of expression. It's not just a clause in a constitution. Freedom can be a way of life.

It's only a risk when too many people allow themselves to be persuaded that it's a dangerous thing to allow others to express their opinions.

Freedom of thought and expression is embedded in the constitutions of many countries. Yet people in those countries give away that freedom when they accept the fear mongering by leaders who want opinions that differ from their own to be suppressed.

We have nothing to fear from differences. We only allow ourselves to be afraid when we don't have exposure to all sides or positions of an argument or issue.

Those who limit our exposure to differences of opinion or forms of art or anything else want to remove our freedom of thought, our freedom to make our own choices. The more we restrict our learning of information about differences, the more we sacrifice our freedom.

When we imprison our own minds, all that's left is our bodies. And they are no more sophisticated than the bodies of other animals or plants. Bodies aren't intelligent, they just are.

We can teach the freedom to think. We can teach it in schools. We simply need to teach boundaries with it, such as when freedom of thought becomes licence or anarchy that impinges on the rights of others.

Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to teach children how to think for themselves.
Learn more at http://billallin.com

Intellectual Obesity And Information Diarrhea

The internet and technology associated with it have opened access to quantities of information unparalleled in human history. No emperor of Rome, monarch of the British Empire or ruler of any other empire has ever been able to acquire information the way anyone with a computer can today.

A friend wants to buy a garden tractor. He is able to research many different brands, compare quality and durability within brands of each manufacturer and among the various brands available on the market. Having selected a few for further research, he accesses several blogs and forums to learn about the experiences of users of each and gets warning about what to avoid. Then, trailer behind his van, he can pick up the best buy he has made by playing each seller against the others.

Not long ago I was contacted by a college student from Australia as a source for material she was researching on a topic on which I have expertise. Others, strangers every one and representing six different continents, have contacted me for information and advice about problems they have experienced. To them, I am accessible due to the internet.

However, this unprecedented access to information by millions of people comes at a cost. That cost is time, as a researcher must wade through mountains of information that is more advertising and propaganda than fact, and that takes time. Google can only point to sources, not to the most factual and succinct sources.

Children use the internet to learn about all sorts of topics. The media warn us about the dangers of pornography and adult web sites for kids. And they caution parents to monitor the activity of their children on social sites like Facebook.

But the media can't help children or parents to distinguish between factual information and political propaganda, religious come-ons, sites that outright lie about the products they sell, warranties on products they sell that aren't worth the paper they could be (but aren't) printed on, or "research" that could better be described as personal hobby than oriented to scientific method.

In short, the internet is the greatest source of trash information in human history.
Yet children and adults read this stuff. If it's well written, readers tend to become believers. Form, rather than factual substance, gives it street cred.

As television viewership declines, reading of material on web sites increases dramatically. This contributes to what retired Canadian educator Jim World calls intellectual obesity. Kids and adults can have heads crammed full of misinformation, trivia that may be attractive but serves them no good purpose (think the style and content of supermarket tabloids) and opinions-turned-beliefs on topics about which they have very limited verifiable facts.

In general, schools don't teach how to distinguish between facts, lies and propaganda, whether on the internet or on television. A small part of one course I took years ago focussed on political spin, editorialized news sources and propaganda. It may have been the best time I ever spent in school. Most people never get that experience, so they become prey for the wolves of the internet. Internet wolves know their sociology.

Humans being subject to human nature, the more they know, the more they want to tell others. Rumour and unsubstantiated fact has always been a part of human dialogue. But it could usually be distinguished as rumour and ignored or treated accordingly.

Today we have kids and adults who believe the most outrageous things because they read it on the internet. In North America, over half of all adults use the internet as their primary source for news and information. With a few rare exceptions, most of it is not subjected to scrutiny the way newspaper and television news reports are.

If US President George W. Bush could use newspapers, radio and television to spread lies about weapons of mass destruction that didn't exist in Iraq, then use the lies to start a war, what could happen when the unfiltered internet is used to brainwash people in every country of the world about the lies or misinformation its sources want to spread?

Don't call it information diarrhea if the term offends you. But let's not pretend that the internet is a source of verifiable facts. It's not. Most web sites are supported by companies or organizations with something (product or idea) to sell or individuals who want their ill-considered and often poorly formulated thoughts to be recorded for posterity.

Do we need more laws to protect us? No. The present plethora of unenforced and unenforceable laws on the books now prove that method doesn't work. More laws just make the bad guys get smarter to avert and avoid them.

The only way to protect people from misinformation and religious or political propaganda on a global scale is to teach children how to identify fact from fiction, truth from propaganda, sham from gem. That means changing part of the curriculum in high schools.

The other day I discussed with a friend the twice in my life that I have used skills I learned from two years of trigonometry in high school. I struggle today to comprehend how the average person could use calculus in their lives when they can't tell truth from lie, don't know how to think for themselves and believe everything that is carefully presented as if fact by a politician.

Being able to tell fact and truth from what is not is an essential life skill. If it's not taught in schools, most people will not learn it. They will be potential victims waiting to be victimized. This has always been true, but never more important than in this 21st century.

This world does not need any more victims or people who are too stupid to distinguish between truth and lies. We need to teach every child.

Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to make their children savvy about the ways of the world that could make them victims if they can't protect themselves.
Learn more at http://billallin.com

My Country: Free But Not For Every Citizen

The most certain test by which we can judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities.
- Lord Acton (John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton), historian (1834-1902)

Canadians have viewed the claim by US President George W. Bush that the US is fighting the war in Iraq for "freedom" with skepticism. For one thing, Canadians are not certain what the measure of freedom would be when Mr. Bush achieves it.

However, we Canadians are confident that we live in a free country. Unless, of course, you happen to be of Middle Eastern origin.

Maher Arar, a naturalized Canadian citizen born in Syria, travelled to various countries as part of his business. With his Canadian passport, he felt confident that he could move freely, even into and out of his native country.

On one trip back to Canada from Syria, Arar was stopped at Canada Customs and held on suspicion of terrorist activities or connections. When the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (the national police of Canada) and the Canadian Security and Investigation Service (spy agency) could get nothing of interest from Arar, they sent him to the USA.

When their equivalent agencies in the US could also not get any worthwhile information from Arar, they deported him to Syria where he spent a year in prison being tortured every day. The Syrian authorities also got nothing from him.

It had never occurred to these agencies that Arar had nothing to tell them because he had nothing to do with terrorism, terrorist cells or with arrnaging finances for terrorist organizations. He was born in Syria (an "Axis of Evil country), he visited Syria and he phoned people in Syria. That was enough for them.

Arar did, however, have a beard (as all Muslim men do), olive coloured skin and Syrian heritage, which seemed to be enough to make him guilty in the eyes of Canadian and US security agencies.

Neither Canadian nor US agencies had the legal right to send Arar to another country, least of all Canada because he was a Canadian citizen. The US deported him to Syria without even telling Canada about it.

Maher Arar survived, returned to Canada, suffered through successive thorough investigations and eventually was given about 10 million dollars to go away and shut up by the Canadian government. He was removed from the Canadian list of suspects relating to terrorism.

The Canadian government, pressured by the media who were now firm Arar supporters, asked the US to also remove Arar from its watch list. The US refused, declining to give any reason.

After all, that would be tantamount to admitting they broke their own and international laws.
Maher Arar continues to live in Canada with his wife and family, trying to cobble together a life after a year of torture and daily expectations of death in a Syrian prison. Nights, for him, are the worst time of the day.

Meanwhile, three other naturalized Canadian citizens in situations amazingly similar to that of Maher Arar want to be absolved of any accusation of association with terrorism, receive compensation and build new lives after their own extensive bouts with torture abroad.

These four men have a right to wonder where in the world they could live now where their lives and those of their families would not be at risk.

Certainly not in any country that is fighting in Iraq. Or in any country whose government knows how to find Iraq on a map of the world.

Free countries, yes. But how free when the national police break the law and destroy people's lives without fear of being held accountable?

Are we in the "free world" fighting for freedom for everyone or just for those with the same skin colour, religion and nationality as us?

Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to make a complex world a little clearer to understand.
Learn more at http://billallin.com

Is Media Reported Cruelty Realistic?

Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt, 32nd US President (1882-1945)

Not only do some nations seem to believe that they must be cruel to be tough, many individuals have adopted this belief as if it will either assure them of success in business or at least protect them from those who want to take away their power.

The United States military is tough. Many American citizens have joined with millions of people elsewhere in the world to make everyone aware of the atrocities at Abu Graib prison, the murder of innocent Iraqis, the slaughter of several troops of their allies (four Canadians at one shot) in incidents of friendly fire and more events that suggest the US military is cruel. By association, people come to believe that the United States must be a cruel country.

This is not true. Seldom are the many good deeds that the US military does in Iraq or Afghanistan daily reported in mainstream media. They aren't as interesting as people dying. The humanitarian and rebuilding efforts, the assistance with setting up government systems and training security forces so that the people of these countries can tend to their own problems go almost unnoticed. To people who have come to believe that oppression and restrictions are how life should be, teaching them the concept of freedom is a big job.

Afghanistan, still the laregest producer of opium poppies in the world, all of it under the control of rogue warlords, receives a contant supply of aid from the US to convert its agriculture base to something the rest of the world will respect and appreciate. If the small poppy farmer sees little help from the US, it's because the US can't put its experts in the field on a one-to-one basis to help everyone. They need to trust someone and sometimes they trust the wrong people.

In Iraq, the US challenge is not to subdue the Sunnis or the Shi'ites, but to keep the two factions from trying to annihilate each other in their struggle for dominance. The "Iraq War" is a US led mission to prevent the entire Middle East from turning into a bloodbath as the two flavours of Islam defy the most fundamental rules of the Prophet Muhammed by killing other Muslims, including unarmed and non-aggressive women and children.

US troops who could face death from a sniper or suicide bomber at any moment of any day receive full press coverage when one of them goes berserk from fear or stress overload and kills someone who wasn't a threat after all. The offence is reported, the stress seldom receives any attention.

The patina of cruelty by the US in Iraq or Afghanistan consists of nothing more than Hollywood style trash reporting by the media with little or no attention given to balance or depth.

Television, especially the reality shows, are trending toward cruelty among individuals in their attempts to outdo each other in the ratings, which are all about advertising dollars. Does the world really want to know which contestant on The Apprentice will be hired by the Trump Empire, or does the audience want to see what creative ways The Donald can devise each show to lead up to "You're fired!"?

Soap opera style incidents enlivened the competition on programs such as Survivor in the easly series, but dirty tricks get the attention today. Someone has to suffer if the show is to retain its popularity. People eagerly watch on television behaviour they would be ashamed to have happen in their own families.

That's not real life. In real life, Americans are helping Americans every day. And they contribute to charities and NGOs that help people around the world, every day. These events seldom make the news. During and after the Katrina disaster, did we hear about the good work that was done by thousands of volunteers from many parts of the country and from other countries daily or did we hear about those who suffered because someone didn't get to them soon enough?

The media have a right to choose what they print and broadcast. We have no right to interfere unless they break a law. However, we have the right to boycott the advertisers who pay for programs that twist the truth until it sounds like lies. And we have the right to turn our favours to programs and publications that produce more balanced reporting.

We don't need to be concerned about people who know the difference between propaganda and truth, between slanted reporting and balance. We need to be concerned about people who can't tell the difference. That includes young people who are just beginning to take an interest in world affairs but have not been taught to recognize propaganda and editorials masquerading as news. They are vulnerable. They are potential victims, our sons and daughters.

We need to teach those who don't know so that they don't reproduce more people who don't know.

Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to put it all into perspective.
Learn more at http://billallin.com