American Cultural Pollution of Canada

Hi Paul,

Oswald Spengler observed that 'democracy' was matched to 'capitalism'. Mass production matched to mass movements, but the movements were manipulated in the interests of the monied elite. When I hear the rhetoric about taxation and the 'discipline of the market' I can't help but think that he was right. The rules of the game have been written by the 'owners'. Pro sports are an interesting analogy since there millionaires are butting heads with billionaires. The gladiators in the NHL want 50%# of revenue but the owners balk at that. Imagine if workers-Joe Plumber- got 50% of revenue. Until we sort our tangled notions of economic 'freedom' we really can't get to the main issues.

Even more basic is the question of freedom. As an undergrad, Eric Fromm framed the issue of freedom for me by distinguishing between freedom from and freedom to. We define liberty in terms of freedom from various things, but the bigger challenge is what we will do with the freedom we so generously enjoy- freedom to do what? This gets very personal. If you have free time, what do you do with it; if you have money what do you do with it.........It's not really the economy, stupid, it's what you do with the economy, stupid. In the past we were prepared to imagine great projects for the public good, now we have difficulty saving land for public parks. Our houses are oriented towards private backyards not the common street.In Barrie the health of a street is seen by whether the kids play there. Worse still, in the USA a very high % of all new housing is gated. Clearly this is a sign of a distrustful society- like the stockades on the frontier.

The barrage of fear generated by TV (the best measure of how fearful people are is the hours of TV they watch) and other media for profit is a great danger. Lazy 'news' scans the internet for related jolts when a situation arises in a community. A pedofile is caught in Britain and immediately all the pedophiles in the world are related to the story and it looks like an epidemic, when in fact sexual crimes were just as common in the past. Even the subtext in old movies where the language is very polite, indicates lots of domestic violence in the past. To me this miasma of American media- Fox news and the dumbing of popular culture for advertising $s is the greatest threat America poses for Canada. When you breathe polluted air you eventually get sick.

The tectonic shifts that are re-shaping civilizations need fearless and prescient leaders but I don't see them in the West. We are a fraction of what we were a 100 years ago in geography and demographic size, but much greater in influence through economic and cultural power. Our message of freedom, democracy & human rights belies our self-interested action in various military actions so we are gradually losing our credibility just as we have lost our physical size. I think that this leaves us with the choice to be good people ourselves and to try to make our immediate surroundings better. If enough people do this, life will get better.

We need to stay involved but take care of first things, first.

Cheers,

w