Suicide: Maybe Not As Wrong As You Think

Suicide: Maybe Not As Wrong As You Think

[Warning: People who are easily offended should not read this essay. Some find this subject sensitive.]

The dissenter is every human being at those moments of his life when he

resigns momentarily from the herd and thinks for himself. 

- Archibald MacLeish, American poet and librarian (1892-1982)

Heaven forbid that anyone dares to resign himself from the belief set of the herd and think for himself. He becomes a pariah, a self appointed renegade, perhaps worse. Especially so if the person decides to end his own life. What right does he have to do that?

What right does he lack to be denied that choice?

One of the most widely held beliefs across cultures holds that suicide is wrong. Yet when you ask why of anyone who believes suicide is wrong, most replies are lame, at best, totally lacking in logic and, at worst, a violation of the principle of freedom of choice we claim to value so highly.

This essay brings a personal perspective to the topic and is not intended to advocate either way as to the ethics or wisdom of suicide. Except to say that suicide is the ultimate personal choice, though a selfish one as a person prepared to end his life considers no one but himself. I am not feeling suicidal, though I confess to having thoughts of dying during periods of depression in the past.

We claim, at least in Western countries with which I am familiar, that freedom of choice is a value we hold dear. A woman or man can choose to be a parent or not by taking birth control measures during sex. If she becomes pregnant, the woman (in most Western countries, most jurisdictions) has the choice to abort or to carry the child full term. These are critically important life choices we can make. Each makes, ends or prevents a life. Laws support these choices, even when religions may oppose those laws and their practices.

Surely the choice to end one's life is the ultimate indicator of freedom. If we consider thoughts of suicide to be the work of an insane brain, let's remember that insanity is not illegal.

Our governments do not hesitate to send young men and women in the military or police service into violent situations, even into war zones. Whether decisions to do so are made by a governing party, the head of state, a mayor or chief of police, one human chooses whether another human will be sent into situations where the latter's life could end. In effect, we allow one person to send another to death, should it come to that. We claim that we don't want death and provide protective devices to the person at risk, but isn't that like providing free condoms to prostitutes?

In many parts of the world, the militaries of dictators receive orders to shoot to kill at unarmed demonstrators who give no indication they plan to riot. These situations often precipitate riots, in reaction. The leaders who gave the orders never present themselves for trial for murder, most find safe haven in other countries even if they lose their battle for control. Do the countries that provide safe haven not effectively condone the murder of innocent, unarmed people who disagree with the regime? The safe haven countries always consider themselves to be upstanding and righteous democracies, protectors of human rights.

Paramilitaries, little more than armed gangs who want a change of leadership in their respective countries, sometimes kill innocent people who have nothing to do with the cause they fight, simply as indicators of their strength against the heads of state. As I write this, nearly 1000 innocent and unarmed civilians died in Ivory Coast for exactly that reason, to persuade President Laurent Gbagbo (who lost power in a democratic election) to step down.

So far as we know, Adolf Hitler took his own life in his final stand in a bunker in Germany. We know that many Germans and some people in several other countries grieved. Do most of us care about those who grieved? Many would regret that Hitler took his own life simply because they wanted him to stand trial and to be executed under more formal and official circumstances.

During the same war, Japan committed far more atrocities (and more detestable ones) than Germany. Japan's emperor was not held to account. He admitted that he would no longer claim to be infallible, but suffered no further consequences. Rich people in other Western countries rushed to invest in both Japan and Germany after the war, making them the economic power houses they are today. Neither Germany nor Japan were made to suffer shame as a result of what their leaders and their militaries did to destroy lives and to severely harm the lives of many millions of people who almost died but managed to survive. For Western democratic governments, the self interest of their corporations trumped any feelings of loss in so many countries.

In the pre-historic past when the human component of the world was comprised of many tribes, most of which battled with neighbouring tribes at least once each generation, losing a member of the tribe to suicide would have been a physical loss of one fighter, but also the damage to morale of the rest of the fighters. In tribes, suicide was forbidden, except in some cases in some places where suicide was a form of retribution for loss of honour. Modern day taboos against suicide merely extend the moral dictates against suicide though the original reasons for the censure vanished over time.

Religions, whose primary function has always been control of behaviour of their followers, picked up on the suicide taboo. Restrictive rules of behaviour help to unify followers of a religion and to help members distinguish themselves from the "others." In general, the stronger the rules of a religion, the more devoted and committed its followers are to its survival and its spread to others as yet uninitiated. When one member of a religious community ends his life, the rest close ranks to either support and protect those family members who are left or to isolate and ostracize them from the community. Either way, the unity of the group gains strength.

Religions, by their nature, dictate morals. Yet other than for reasons of self interest, a religion has no valid reason to oppose suicide among its members. Indeed, more than one cult in recent decades has ended when the leader announced that its members would all "go to Glory" together. Nor is this a recent phenomenon. Jewish rebels at Masada ended their own lives in 73 CE rather than submit to execution by the Romans, according to Jewish/Roman historian Josephus.

In recent years, where we have more people living longer, thus more people suffering the pain and devastation of disease for more years rather than dying sooner without drugs and other medical interventions, we have more people wanting to end their lives rather than endure the final stages of terminal illness. Our societies insist that these people must suffer as long as medical science can keep them alive. A doctor or nurse who fails to keep to that standard may be accused of assisting in suicide, which could result in loss of licence and criminal charges.

A mother or father who simple can't bear seeing their child suffer in great pain and devastating emotional stress as a result of a terminal illness will be imprisoned for taking that final step. Euthanizing a dying pet dog or cat is considered merciful, but euthanizing a person warrants criminal prosecution and penalty.

What is the reason for the taboo against suicide? Set aside all the propaganda we have been taught, all the preachings from religions, all the self interested (self protection) from doctors for a moment. What is a real and valid reason to oppose suicide?

We know that for most suicides someone or a few people will suffer. Do they suffer guilt that they did not offer help when a depressed loved one wanted to end his life? Do they suffer the loss of someone they cared about, more than if the person had died of natural causes (in other words, death is inevitable, it's a matter of date). Or do they suffer because of the shame of having had someone with "that curse" or someone who was "overcome by the devil" in the family?

Thankfully, suicide bombings by Palestinians have been fewer in recent years. I vividly recall recorded interviews with the families--especially  the mothers--of Palestinian suicide bombers in the past. They claimed their sons were heroes, martyrs, role models for others of their families. They were happy that their sons (usually sons) had gone to heaven in Glory and would be welcomed there as heroes by God. Were they mentally ill or did they simply have different ways of thinking from people of other cultures?

Our old ideas about a boy growing to become a man--a man with particular cultural values and beliefs--and about a girl becoming a woman are coming apart. No longer can a mother believe with certainty that a young son will grow up to be a man these days, given surgery for transgendering. Nor can she even know that the lad will not one day join the gay community. If our concepts of life have changed that much, it's not much of a stretch to change our beliefs in the morality of suicide.

Let's also consider the role we play--or don't play--in slow suicide. Smoking tobacco has been proven to cause many diseases, yet it's not illegal to smoke or to sell or buy cigarettes. Tobacco manufacturers put chemicals that are poisonous and harmful to the health in their cigarettes, yet selling them remains legal and governments collect tax revenues happily. In Canada, my home country, 25 percent of adults smoke cigarettes. While the number is dropping for older adults, it's rising among teens. There is a lesson there that is not being taught or learned.

Almost every packaged food has chemical preservatives that manufacturers claim are safe, but testing only takes place over a few years. No tests exist for long term consumption of chemical-laden foods over, say, 40 years, despite the fact that our bodies tend to react and break down under severe stress such as bad food over that number of years. People are said to just die young. Before their time, but was it?

Our governments encourage us to eat fresh foods, garden foods, produce sold fresh in our markets. Yet almost every piece of food on those shelves has multiple applications of chemical fertilizers. And pesticides, whose sole purpose is to kill animal life smaller than us. As I recall from reading murder mysteries, poisons accumulate in the body over time. What will kill an insect today may help to destroy us 40 years from now if we keep eating the same stuff.

[Before reviewing and rewriting this essay, I stopped to wash two windows in a closed storage room in my house. Cluster flies had swarmed into the room, so I put an insecticide strip in there to kill the flies. As I opened the door to the room I saw a dead mouse curled up in the middle of the floor, no flies. As it was obviously too young to have died of old age, the little dude must have died from inhaling the insecticide. This kind of strip used to be placed in hospitals, nursing homes and restaurants in the past, though I believe that practice has stopped now. A mouse is a mammal, albeit a small one, and you are a mammal, albeit an unsuspecting one. Connect the dots.]

Some sports, such as American style football and boxing, depend heavily on banging of heads. Research has shown the each concussion brings a person closer to death or irreversible brain damage. Yet we not only play these sports as children, we watch them avidly and encourage more hitting among professionals in our own adulthood. Are the participants in these sports really not risking death, meaning gearing themselves to die, which is a personal choice of potential suicide?

Do millions of people watch car races, downhill skiing and snowboarding events at least partly because they believe they may witness the death of one participant? Is participating in such events suicide (though we prefer to sanitize it by calling it sport)? Did the inexperienced luger from Georgia die during the Vancouver Olympics due to suicide, in effect, because he wasn't up to the challenges involved with an Olympic level event? How many times did you watch video reviews of his head hitting that post? It was sad, but nothing in the rules of Olympic luging changed to prevent it from happening again. Nothing will stop television networks from replaying the video until viewer no longer want to watch instant death.

Slow suicide, such as by engaging in harmful behaviours, or faster suicide, such as by participating in risky sports, hold established places in the lives of millions of people. They are called sport, not suicide, because there is money to be made from them. In a sense, suicide (or at least life-risking behaviour) is accepted by society in many forms. Why not the one where it's a simple, straightforward choice?

We should also consider the one factor that overrides all others in the minds of many people regarding suicide: its irreversibility. A depressed person who wants to end his life, but is prevented in some way from doing so, will likely "recover" and be glad he did not die. Not being allowed to die at the time of his choice does not take away from his suffering when he wants to die. Life is full of "IFs". It's not realistic to live your life based on all possible IFs. Terminal cancer and terminal stages of other diseases are not reversible either. We want to change that because people in those conditions do not necessarily want to die. But what if they do want to die?

Murder is irreversible. That means ending the life of another person, not your own, but it's still legal if a government does it in war and illegal if you make your own individual decision to do it. Murder in any form is, ultimately, a personal choice to end a life. The commission of any crime is, in a sense, irreversible in that a criminal record follows the convicted person who does something uncharacteristic and rash in a moment of ill-considered action. It affects every day of that person's life. Psychological damage from a brutal childhood, a bad marriage, rape or even from financial bankruptcy are irreversible. Yet as a society we do little or nothing about preventing them, or even reversing them if that is possible.

Irreversibility as an argument against suicide works only if it is used in isolation, forgetting that most important decisions in life are effectively irreversible. Many people live in abusive marriages because they believe they have no viable way out. If murdering the partner is not an option and you can't afford to live on your own and you don't have the skills to survive on your own, living with the constant threat of abuse becomes irreversible in the mind of that person. Irreversibility is not, on its own, a valid argument against suicide.

Suicide is the ultimate example of personal free choice. If we lack that choice, we are not truly free. However, when someone wants to make the choice of suicide, in many cases it means that society has allowed the conditions of that person's life to degrade to the point where he no longer wants it to continue. Pointing the finger of blame means little if no one knows for certain how to avoid the problem.

Is this life choice confusing? Of course. Then why not let the individual sort it out himself and make his own decision? The alternatives are to provide coping strategies for people with severe problems and intervention strategies for people who can't cope. But that means society must change to support the individual, including poor and broken people as well as the rich and powerful. That isn't happening now in any country in the world.

Could we actually get to the point of encouraging, or at least accepting with equanimity, suicide for some people? That would mean that we would actually have to put into practice the lip service we pay to the value of life. That would mean that we would have to actually physically and emotionally care for others that we only give a passing nod to now. That would mean that we would have to provide each child with the tools he or she would need in life to be able to cope with life's stressors and downturns. That would mean that we would have to provide support for those who need it, when they need it, and how they need it. And that support would have to be unstinting and offered with confidence and assurance rather than with shame.

That would make the world a very different place.

Here's a suggestion that the author of the quote at the beginning of this essay claims would make me a dissenter: Let's make those changes anyway.

If the world is really going to improve on our watch, let's not just act like politicians and talk about improvement while doing nothing to implement it. Let's actually do it. When you look at the changes suggested three paragraphs above this one, none would be costly, none would be hard to do, none would take long to implement. Let's get started.

That would make the world a very different place indeed. In your lifetime and mine.

Bill Allin wrote Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for teachers and parents, which also includes a simple, effective and shockingly cheap methodology to implement the kinds of changes recommended above.

Learn more at http://billallin.com/   

I Grew, I Learned, I Showed Them All

I Grew, I Learned, I Showed Them All

It is of interest to note that while some dolphins are reported to have learned English -- up to fifty words used in correct context -- no human being has been reported to have learned dolphinese.

- Carl Sagan, American astronomer, astrophysicist, author (1934-1996)

I disappointed my father because I was poor at sports. As a result of brain and nerve damage at birth, doctors had predicted that I would never run and would not likely ever walk without a prosthetic device such as a cane or brace. The fact that I learned to walk and run without a limp did not impress him.

I learned through experience that I could not keep up with my peers in ice hockey (my father's best sport). Only after I quit hockey in my mid teens did I learn about problems at birth that would impair my abilities both physically and mentally. I learned that I never had a chance at equality in sports.

I disappointed my father because I was unable to become an avid fan of sports. It took decades for me to learn that a chemical problem in my brain caused me to endure devastating stress when I became excited while watching a game. He took my cousin (a quarterback on his high school football team, but a young man with a bad attitude) to a Grey Cup game (the Canadian equivalent of the US Superbowl) because he thought I wouldn't be interested. He didn't even ask me when he was given free tickets. My father had died in later years before I learned of my brain chemical problem and tried to learn strategies to combat it. My maternal grandfather had the same problem, but no one took notice.

I disappointed my mother because I was not good at school. I just got by. As many times as she read on my report cards that I was "not working to [my] potential", neither she nor any of my teachers ever twigged to the fact that my poor performance was because I could not read and a brain impairment meant that I had trouble remembering anything for exams. To them I was just "lazy."

I disappointed my mother, an excellent and entertaining pianist, when I studied piano for many years yet was unable to reach her level of competence because I was physically uncoordinated (small motor muscle problems) and could not read music. I learned to be a great appreciator of recorded and live music through my experience with them, but this did not impress. I could have become an orchestra director, except that I could not read music fast enough.

I disappointed my greatest supporter among my high school teachers. As head of the music department he guided me into leads in music activities and musical plays and delighted when I entered the Faculty of Music for my first year at University of Toronto. He would not speak to me when I left the faculty program after one year because I was physically and mentally unable to do the work. I learned that I had a head for directing music, which benefitted and excited many children over the years in choirs and musicals when I was a teacher.

I disappointed most of my immediate superiors in my jobs. They could not understand why I did not pick up on how to do the jobs easily, though none of them made the slightest attempt to show me what I needed to know, not even once. Years later I learned to teach others what I knew because I understood how helpless it felt to be given responsibilities to do something but not the tools to do them with.

I disappointed the principals of the schools where I taught. I directed my teaching attention in different ways from other teachers because I thought it important to raise a whole child--including social and emotional skills and development--rather than to just each to a curriculum. I was often in trouble for being "different" in my methods. As it happened, my methods tended to be five years ahead of their time, as five years after I got into trouble in several cases the school board began to insist on all teachers teaching the way I had--because the "new" methods were in use in California, not because I had succeeded with so many children.

I disappointed my first wife--a very good teacher and a reader--because I never read books. She didn't understand that I was functionally illiterate due to my childhood problems. She was not impressed that I got a master's degree from the University of Toronto although I was functionally illiterate and never read a book the whole way through. While I muddled my way through teaching and she was a resource teacher--a teacher whose sole purpose was to help other teachers--in a different part of the school board, she never offered to give me the slightest assistance. She divorced me because she thought I lacked potential.

I disappointed some of my staff in the small business I ran for several years. They resented my insistence on quality and consistency, while they wanted to do things the easiest way, and they begrudged my coaching them to do their jobs in the best ways possible. Most left my employment to take jobs in places where working conditions were far worse. I learned that quality standards mean a great deal to many people who want to get their money's worth when they buy something. In turn, I learned how to look for quality and durability in my purchases as well.

I disappointed my neighbours for many years before I moved a couple of years ago. One group wanted me to drink and take drugs on weekends, which I would not do. Another wanted me to ignore local and provincial laws to give them favours. I knew that these were wrong for me, so my wife and I researched to learn what we believe is the best community in our country in which to live. We were right. Life has never been better for us since we moved.

Along the way I learned that disappointment is part of life. People will always be disappointed in us when we don't do what they want us to do and when we refuse to do things the wrong way. I have even had my life threatened twice. I learned that I can easily avoid and ignore people who are just plain bad for me.

I learned that to gain the respect of many people you need to be good at something. It doesn't really matter what so long as it can impress them. Everybody can be good at something. If they learn at what they can be good with the help of others who care for and about them, it will come sooner than it did for me. We can all help by teaching that lesson to children.

I began my lifelong learning mission at the age of 15. Until I learned to read better at age 44, I listened a great deal. When I began to read, I read things that made me more knowledgeable. Eventually my "encyclopedic knowledge" frightened some people. I learned that I could teach the ones who cared about what I knew and ignore the ones who refused to learn.

In recent years I have learned that helping others (the Dalai Lama calls it "compassion"--I am not a Buddhist) is the secret to happiness and to finding our purpose in life. May you be blessed with this knowledge as well.

Bill Allin is the author of Turning it Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to give children what they need rather than just what the school curriculum offers or what they can learn from television and video games.

Learn more at http://billallin.com/  

Taliban-Style Sharia Almost Became Law in Canada

Taliban-Style Sharia Almost Became Law in Canada
Islam wishes to destroy all States and Governments anywhere in the face of the earth which are opposed to the ideology and program of Islam...If the Muslim Party commands adequate resources, it will eliminate un-Islamic governments and establish the power of Islamic governments in their stead."
- Abul Ala Maudoodi, Sunni Pakistani, father of modern Political Islam and the Jamaat-e-Islami political party (1903-1979)

Wait, it gets worse before it gets better.
A few years ago (2003), Islamists in Canada boldly attempted to get Ontario (Canada's most heavily populated province) to pass laws allowing provincial laws to be set aside and Sharia law to apply to all Muslims in the province who were charged with offences against the law. They almost succeeded.
Canada takes pride in its many cultures that have found places within its communities, even proclaiming itself officially "multicultural" in an effort to encourage its various cultural groups to make themselves at home in their new country. In some parts of the country, its First Nations (Canada's term for its aboriginal Indians) people had persuaded governments to allow First Nations youth who had been charged under the law to be tried and sentenced in native-operated courts rather than provincial courts.
The thinking behind allowing these native courts to become legal was that First Nations youth would have more respect for First Nations courts and would take their sentencing (that better fit the culture they had grown up with) more seriously, thus lowering the recidivism rate. The program was more successful than many expected. The radical program worked.
Muslims are those who follow Islam, aspire to follow the teachings of their Prophet, Muhammed, and the holy Qur'an, which the Prophet committed to print. Muhammed was the Messenger who brought the Word of God (Arabic: Allah) directly to the people, though the Prophet himself was not considered (did not consider himself) a deity.
Islamists have politicized the religion, wanting to make every state in which Muslims are in a majority into a legal Islamic State. Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan and Mauritania are examples of nations that have officially declared themselves Islamic Republics.
The biggest problem with Islamic States, as pointed out by Tarek Fatah in his book Chasing A Mirage: The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State, is that no Islamic State in history has ever succeeded in terms of being peaceful and embracing respect and human rights for its people. The concept of an Islamic State did not begin with Muhammed (in fact he discouraged it, never set up any mechanism for it, didn't want his family members to be part of one), but immediately after his death when rulers known as Caliphs became, effectively, dictators.
Islamists point to what they call the Golden Age of the Islamic State, which supposedly comprised the years of the first four Caliphs (known as the Rightly Guided Caliphs) after the death of the Prophet in 632 CE. Islamists do not mention this, but it is a fact that Islam in those days was a tribal religion (with all the primitive brutality that entails). The first Caliph died of natural causes two years after becoming the ruler and religious leader of Muslims. However, the next three were all murdered by other tribal leaders who wanted supreme power. This is the period that Islamists point to as the ideal period to follow for Islamic States. Muslims killing Muslims, or enslaving them, was a way of life.
This was what Canadian Islamists wanted to launch in Ontario in 2003. Canadian governments, not wanting to offend Muslims, considered adopting Sharia for their Muslim citizens, as they had cut slack for their First Nations people. Islamists gained greater purchase in Ontario when Premier Dalton McGuinty appointed former attorney-general Marion Boyd to study the issue and make recommendations to the Legislature. Boyd shocked many (not the Islamists, who were ecstatic) when she recommended that "Muslim principles" be allowed to hold sway for Ontario Muslims in place of the Family Law Act. She didn't use the word Sharia.
After consultation with many Muslim leaders and groups, Premier McGuinty's Liberal government dropped the whole idea. Here are some examples of what Ontario missed out on by avoiding adopting Sharia law:
(1) The Head of an Islamic State cannot be punished under Islam's Hudhood (Islamic criminal and family) laws that govern acts of murder, rape, and thievery. [Law #914 C in volume three of the Codified Islamic Law] How long would it have taken for a criminal Muslim leader to claim immunity from prosecution because of his religious beliefs?
(2) If the husband's body is covered with pus and blood, and if the wife licks and drinks it, her obligations to her husband will still not be fulfilled (as a female must be totally committed to her husband by Islamic law). [from Imam Ghazali's classic Ihya ulum al-din] I had trouble even writing that for others to read.
These are but two components of Sharia law. Can an ordinary human like Imam Ghazali create Sharia law? Alas, every part of Sharia law was written by ordinary humans who made no claim that they received guidance directly from Allah.
In fact, there are five different versions of Sharia codified laws, written by five different imams [Imam Abu-Hanifa (699-767), Imam Jaffer Sadiq (702-765), Imam Shafi'i (767-820), Imam Malik (712-795), Imam Hanbal (778-855)]. As you can see, Imam Ghazali is not one of them. His laws were added later, as were the laws created by other imams of their respective times.
The compilations of the sayings of Prophet Muhammed, which are considered by Muslims to be as important as the Qur'an itself, were complied over 200 years after the death of the Prophet. Who could be certain of the accuracy of word of mouth after 200 years?
Imams, over the years, perverted the words of the Qur'an to encompass polygamy, wife-beating, men's right to have concubines, and slavery, via Sharia. Many of those slaves were Muslims, often black-skinned ones from Africa, as slavery existed in the Islamic heartland long before Europeans adopted the practice. The Qur'an explicitly forbids slavery and strongly advocates equality of all Muslims. However, imams wrote Sharia law. The Qur'an forbids suicide and murder as well, but Sharia finds a way around these as well.
What about Muslims who disagree with Sharia, who oppose or who ignore the imams who hold the power of Sharia? Anyone who even disagrees with such an imam could be declared an apostate, banished (a few lucky ones) or killed (most, as Islam has traditionally detested those who "lost their faith"). Using officially sanctioned Sharia law, imams and ayatollahs literally hold the power of life and death over their subjects, with the official legal system of the state holding less important status.
Let's not forget those women who were raped or who committed adultery. Adulterers were often stoned to death (a penalty exacted even today in some cases in Pakistan and Iran, even when the accusations cannot be proven). Under Sharia law, a woman who is raped must provide five eye witnesses who will testify in court against the accused or the case will never go to trial. How many instances of rape do you think have five eye witnesses?
Most people reading this will have enough knowledge of examples of inequality of women in Islamic States that I need not go into detail. It's the same for girls. Recall that when the Taliban controlled Afghanistan it eliminated all education for girls and forced all woman to wear burkas. The theory behind burkas is that women should not show any parts of their body that men could find titillating. Science has proven that the more of a woman's body that is hidden, the more titillating men find them. That evidence means nothing to Islamists. Let's not get started on the subject of female circumcision for girls in some Islamic states.
These are the kinds of situations that come with Sharia. Not all at once. But remember, even in a democratic country like Canada, Islamists have great experience and expertise in propaganda, in dirty-trick debating and in destroying the reputations of enemies, enough to put advertising executives to shame.
This is what Ontario avoided. Islamists still live and work in Ontario, in Canada, indeed in every democratic country in the world. Though no Islamic state in history has ever been successful, Islamists continue to fight for Islamic states around the world. Moreover, the kind of states they want are like those of the Middle East in the 7th and 8th centuries. Like where the leaders were assassinated and enemies were slaughtered or beheaded. That's the Golden Age of Islam the Islamists want.
Let's take particular note that millions of good Muslims around the world must try to live in the same countries where their perverted and mentally unbalanced (often brainwashed) Islamist neighbours make life miserable for decent Muslims. And let's remember that Christianity and other religions have histories no less tragic or violent than Islam.
If the 21st Century is to be better than previous centuries in humanist terms, we must be prepared to keep governance out of the hands of extremists, be they religious extremists or political extremists. We have seen what has happened in the past when leaders who base their popularity on fear in their followers have been allowed to take over. Inevitably, in the past, many have suffered and many have died.

Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to know what their children need to learn beyond what is taught in school (and in most homes).
Learn more at http://billallin.com/

The Genocide Canada Wants to Hide

The Genocide Canada Wants to Hide


If we sell you land, you must remember that it is sacred, and you must teach your children that it is sacred and that each ghostly reflection in the clear water of the lakes tells of events and memories in the life of my people.
- Chief Seattle, Suquamish chief, the statement commonly believed to have been part of a speech delivered in 1851

The English and French in what is now the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador did not buy the island of Newfoundland from the Beothuk Indians. They chose instead to slaughter them. Some stories claim that white men hunted the Beothuk for sport. Others say that the French brought Mi'kmaq Indians to the island from Nova Scotia to kill the Beothuk. Either way, the last surviving Beothuk, Shanawdithit, died in 1829, driving to extinction that last member of a tribe of native people whose skin colour reportedly gave the native people of North America the label "Redskins."

That is the way the English wrote their history of Newfoundland. Of course they blamed someone other than themselves for driving to extinction a tribe of gentle people who likely migrated from mainland Labrador when Jesus walked the earth.

No doubt genocide was involved. But did the Beothuk really go extinct? In a way, they didn't, any more than the Aztecs of Mexico whose descendants live in the Yucatan and Central America today. Mi'kmaq were not imported to Newfoundland, as history states. They cohabited the island, likely for centuries, with the Beothuk. They intermarried.

Only today are the Mi'kmaq of Newfoundland being recognized by the Canadian government as actually existing as a cultural group. History books said they had left the island. History stated clearly, and this was taught in Canadian schools for years, that once the last Beothuk died no more Indians (known as First Nations in Canada) lived on Newfoundland island.

History was wrong. History was written, as most history was, by the conquerors. However, a few people who lived on Newfoundland taught their children that they were in fact Mi'kmaq people, not descendants of English settlers. Most Newfoundlanders who have Beothuk and Mi'kmaq blood in their veins grew up believing that their parents were white people. to their grandparents, it was a safer way to survive. Only a small number knew the truth.

While many Francophones in Canada still hate "the English" for stealing their land, neither regrets the extinction of the Beothuk or (likely) the deaths of many of the Mi'kmaq. These native peoples had no concept of land ownership when the Europeans arrived in the 1500s. They believed, as Chief Seattle said, that "We are part of the earth and it is part of us." They believed that the earth owned them, not the other way around. The Europeans had guns and a lust for power.

First Nations people in Canada today have problems, in many cases, but their heritage survives, some of their languages are taught in native schools and their history--the real history--is taught to every child. Not just their history and heritage, but their values survive. Though their numbers are small compared to the whole Canadian population, they are having a remarkable influence, on the Canadian government, on the Canadian people, even on people in other parts of the world.

If we want what we believe to survive our passing, we must teach our children. If we want the world to be a better place and we know how to do it, we must teach the lessons to our children.

Believe it or not, the world is a much better and safer place today than it was when I was born, during the Second World War. That change happened because good people cared. They taught their values to their children. The renegade thinkers of the past have grandchildren who share the same values but are now considered mainstream.

Chief Seattle was a great teacher, but he was not unique. He was determined to teach his values to everyone. He began by teaching the children of his tribe.

It was my turn to teach you. Now it's your turn. Go and teach your children, no matter what their ages.

Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for teachers and parents who want to grow children with more important life objectives than to be good employees and consumers. The book gives not only reasons, it gives the lessons as well.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/

What if You Just Can't Cope?

Not that I want to be a god or a hero. Just to change into a tree, grow for ages, not hurt anyone.
- Czeslaw Milosz, poet and novelist (1911-2004)

Marc loved his new home. What he loved most about it was that Kathy would finally have a kitchen of her own. And the three kids, Joelle, 12, Marc-Ange, 7 and Louis-Philippe, 4, would have a yard of their own to play in. In the Saguenay area of Chicoutimi, Quebec, as in most parts of North America, to be able to hold you head high in your community you have to own your own home. The Laliberté family reached that milestone about six months ago. They had a home to call their own.

Then it all unravelled.

Despite falling lending rates for mortgages, people chose to remain in their old homes rather than buy new ones. A real estate agent, Marc Laliberté couldn't sell enough in a failing market so his employer had to let him go not long before Christmas. Mom Kathy Gauthier had brought in some much needed cash to support the family from her Christmas rush job, but that income disappeared just before Christmas when she was laid off.

In the face of impending public shame and the humiliation expected to come with it when the Lalibertés lost everything, including their dreams, what could the family do? Who could they turn to for answers?

Quebec provincial police believe, based on the evidence, that Kathy and Marc had decided on a murder-suicide pact. As the bodies of the children had no marks, they were likely either poisoned or smothered. Marc's body was hacked up enough that he couldn't survive. Kathy, slash wounds on her arms, managed to call the 911 emergency number so their bodies would be found before they decayed.

Kathy didn't die. Emergency services personnel took her to hospital where she is expect to recover. Police say they have sufficient evidence to lay first degree murder charges against her.

Consider Kathy's state of mind as she gets better. To have done what police believe she did required that she be tragically depressed and distraught. When she recovers, the thought of spending the rest of her life in prison might well prompt her to complete the job she failed earlier, taking her own life. If financial distress caused the family shame, killing her family would cause her further psychological trauma. In prison, where inmates traditionally don't take kindly to anyone known to have killed a child, Kathy would likely find death preferable to being surrounded by enemies all the time. One way or another, in prison she would be a goner.

Everyone faces bad times in their life. The Laliberté family had no idea how to cope with their most critical bad time, the loss of their home, their dreams, their future. Without considering the consequences of what Marc and Kathy decided to do, they chose an even more desperate and destructive path. Ultimately, that decision destroyed five lives.

With all of the education opportunities offered in our communities, where is a course offered that can help people learn how to cope with personal tragedy? With steadily rising rates of teen suicide, what are we doing about it other than to find someone to blame? With individuals and families sinking into poverty and many people choosing to live on the street because they can't afford a decent and safe place to live, often turning to begging just to survive, what public policies do we have that will turn these situations around?

As usual, everything governments decide to do--if they choose to acknowledge a problem at all--is reactive. Try to fix what's broken after it's damaged, rather than preventing it from happening beforehand.

Part of how we cope in the face of tragedy or depression is physiological (that is, chemicals produced naturally by the body). The adrenal hormone cortisol, for example, keeps most people upright when tragedy strikes while the lack of it or low levels send others over the edge. The more important component of coping is learned skills. To learn coping skills we need to have sources. They must be taught.

Knowing what to do in a personal crisis removes the necessity for the body to use its own chemicals to prevent our bodies from damaging themselves. That "knowing" is called coping skills.

The first rule of coping is that we will live through tragedy or depression, recover, and be more capable people for it afterwards. We will survive. For someone who doesn't know that they will survive and that everything will come together again eventually, the only thing they may see is the devastation of their lives and the lives of their loved ones. If the problem is depression, they can only see the tragedy of their own lives, as depression forces people to be self-centred, solely self-interested.

Both depression and a low level of cortisone could affect the immune system, which could prolong the effects of the crisis, chemically trigger a disease such as cancer or bring about chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia or some similar syndrome or disease affected by the immune system.

Knowing that much alone could save lives. It could help people understand how they will get through their own problems that seem life threatening at the time. It will help others assist those with problems because they will know how to help.

The book Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems explains not only how to cope with personal problems, it also provides a methodology and resources whereby families, communities, schools and governments can launch programs that will give people the knowledge and skills they need before tragedy strikes.

When it comes to tragedy, ignorance helps no one. It's incumbent on each of us to do what we can to save lives. As the quote at the beginning of this article said, we don't have to be heroes, just want to avoid hurting anyone. We now have at hand the ability to prevent tragedies such as the one in Quebec from happening.

The way to help and the means to do so is in our hands.

Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to grow competent and confident children who can cope with life's downturns and tragedies without creating more of their own.
Learn more at http://billallin.com

We Have Solutions for Drugs, Violence and Abuse

"When the first human being began to write, he or she set the world upon a new evolution. Similarly, if a few individuals have the strength and the power to walk way from the restrictions of the world and to stand fearlessly beyond it, eventually in some distant millennium, all mankind will also come to that same liberation. It will be a special pleasure for you to look back, poised in some place in eternity, and know that you were there at the beginning of the movement. Your gift was that you realized at an early stage that you were indeed eternal, immortal, and infinite, and that you had the courage to walk with that idea in your heart while the rest of mankind said that such a limitless overview wasn't true or even possible."
- Stuart Wilde

Some will read that quote and assume that Wilde was encouraging people to do the impossible. That which is most certainly impossible to accomplish is what we believe is impossible.

We are all abundantly familiar with impossible things that were accomplished in the past. Look what was accomplished once the wheel was invented. Indeed, look at the magnificent structures that were built before the wheel, including the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World and the awe-inspiring structures that were built in South and Central America.

Transporation without the assistance of animal power was unthinkable. Flying through the air was out of the question except in the imaginations of visionaries such as da Vinci and a few others. Travel into airless space couldn't be considered except in fairy tales or the minds of science fiction writers. Cures and preventives for all sorts of diseases and genetic defects weren't seriously considered a century ago.

Now we want peace in the world, peace in our communities, peace in our families and peace within our hearts. Impossible?

No. The biggest obstacle to overcome is the belief that these are inevitable consequences of our modern technological world. They are not, no matter how often ultra conservatives try to make us believe they are.

Is terrorism necessary? No more essential than the anarchist movements of a century ago where its participants committed many of the same acts as today's terrorists. Yet how often do we hear about the "terrorist" period at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th? It's lost to most students of history, even today.

Such movements as today's brand of terrorism have causes and perpetrators. These can be addressed. Not with weapons, which obviously only makes the perpetrators work harder and their causes more attractive. With education, so that the large majority of good people will collectively come together to silence the violent ones.

Drugs, murders, home invasions, road rage (implicated in as much as 80 percent of road accidents today according to the Ontario Provincial Police) and abuse of women and children, each of which is increasing at an alarming rate, have causes that may be addressed.

Building more prisons and hiring more police isn't working because they do not address the causes of these social ills. Trying to solve them when the perpetrators are already involved with their offences is like trying to solve the high rate of divorce by training more family counselors. It's too late then.

The only place to deal with social problems is before they begin, with children. We must teach children what they need to know. We must provide children with what they need other than "the basics" at school and scoldings for misbehaviour at home.

Before that, we need to teach the teachers who will spend more time with our children than most parents do each day. And we need to teach parents before they have children about what all is involved with parenting beyond what they already know.

We know the solutions. We know that teachers and parents must be able to address the needs of children with regards to their social and their emotional development. Not enough people know about those, so the ones who do must be encouraged to speak and to spread their message.

So long as most of us remain ignorant about the unaddressed needs of people and how these could be satisfied by fairly easy changes to education curricula, we will suffer the consequences of our ignorance.

But understand this: we have the solutions already. The message isn't known by enough people.

Yet. You could do your part.

Bill Allin
Turning it Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to get the word out to every part of the world.
Learn more at http://billallin.com

Asking About Someone's Welfare Could Change Your Life

"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle."
- Plato

But it doesn't seem like it, does it?

Yesterday I asked a friend how he was. He replied "Can't complain. No one would listen anyway." I responded that I would listen. His retort was "Yeah, but you won't care."

Was he telling me that I didn't care about his problems, that he didn't want to divulge them to me, that he was afraid of seeming vulnerable by telling me his problems, that he didn't want to take the time to explain his problems to me because I couldn't help him? Maybe simply that he was having a bad day?

Fortunately he knew from other occasions that I did care about him and his family. But that is not the point. Did he believe that everyone is fighting his own hard battle of life and that his was no worse than that of me or anyone else?

These questions cannot be answered by anyone but my friend. However, it's important for us to remember that the most obnoxious or irritable or annoying or sad or even happy person we meet is also suffering his own serious problems.

True, some problems are worse than others. But we raise our worst problem in our own mind to the level of a critical problem in many cases. That is, no matter how severe or mild a person's worst problem is, it seems very bad to him. That's important because some people can't cope with problems at the critical level sometimes.

How people conduct their interpersonal relations show how they are managing to cope with their problems of the day.

How a person responds to a question about their welfare can tell us a great deal about their state of mind.

Given the numbers of murders, of suicides, of people on mood altering drugs and of people who can't cope with their problems to the point where they are about to commit a crime, how we interpret their reply to our question could make a great difference to that person's future.

Maybe ours as well.

Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to make you aware of potential problems that others have so that you know when intervention is needed.
Learn more at http://billallin.com

Civilization Progresses As We Help Each Other

A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable to them for the injury. - John Stuart Mill, philosopher and economist (1806-1873)

This opinion enters the realm of morality. Only in part does it involve legal repercussions if inaction causes injury to others. Morality and law often overlap (by design), though mostly in the area of criminal law.

If you were to stand by watching another person being beaten or killed, you might be charged if you could have done something to prevent it but did not.

At its core, this dual responsibility (guilty by action or inaction) raises the question of to what degree we are each our brother's keeper. That is, what is our responsibility to help someone who may not have helped us if the roles were reversed? Are we both responsible to and for each other and what are the consequences of not acting?

In an urban environment where helping others has become less common than it was in pioneer days or when people were spread across the land more evenly and people helped each other because they knew that one day they were need help themselves, many of us give little thought to the possibility of helping others.

Charities must beg for donations because people do not have a natural inclination to give money to help others. Yet stories of heroism where one person has risked death or made a great commitment to help another reach the news media as well.

Today someone who helps another is considered to have done so out of goodness. In the past, it was more of a social obligation for everyone. Mill considered it duty.

In movies, on television and in newspapers we give unintended social lessons that each of us must look after our own best interests because no one else will help us when we most need help. In general, we have responded to this with me-first selfishness.

Yet the good examples, the role models, are with us every day. With each passing day, especially as the world experiences increasing numbers of natural tragedies, more opportunities to help others present themselves. At the same time, more people than ever before complain about the selfishness, the greed and the thoughtlessness of others.

People will tire of the ethics of reality TV programs and realize that the world should not be that way. It's part of a cycle.

In the past, such cycles were traditionally broken by war, where people need to help each other through catastrophe. Most countries of the world are not at war today, but their people take a greater interest in the welfare of people of others countries than ever before. When people hurt and die, others will care.

Civilization advances only when people help each other. This opportunity presents itself today as more of us take an interest in an earthquake in Iran, a tsunami in Sri Lanka or a flood in Bangladesh. They all kill people. We feel the need to help the survivors. In doing so, we learn about the lives of people we previously knew nothing about.

More of us than ever before no longer stand by and watch tragedy and wrong as spectators.
Mill said it was an obligation. We see it today as more of a necessity to help others in need in the global village that is our home.

The lessons of civilization are learned slowly and painfully, but they happen and we do progress.

Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to shine a light through the dark smog that some people view as life today.
Learn more at http://billallin.com