In Praise of Luddites

Posted on March 18, 2024March 20, 2024 by Peter Scott Cameron

A confession: while I was living in Toronto, Amazon announced that it was planning to begin using robots – these would travel along city sidewalks and make deliveries to individual addresses. It was rumoured that they would start very soon in the city. I couldn’t wait. I imagined messing with them in numerous ways: from simply blocking the robots’ paths to see if I could confuse them, to forcing them to drop off the curb into the line of an oncoming Toronto Transit bus. I took pleasure in picturing assaulting the things with a baseball bat if there were no constables around. I mentioned my thoughts to a friend, explaining that sidewalks were for people, not corporate interests, and every delivery robot represented jobs lost for individuals for whom unemployment in the capitalist economy is the great motivating terror. “Luddite!” my friend exclaimed.

Indeed. Thank you.

Luddite is a pejorative that we have deep affection for, using it, as we do, to insult those we love, and even relatives. It means our victims are resisting technology pointlessly, or they won’t do what we want them to do, such as wasting ten minutes of their short life watching a TikTok influencer with mauve hair explaining why we should use only organic asparagus butter. Luddites are people who are uselessly anti-progress, negative nay-sayers, inept at using technology, standing against the development of human productivity and well-being. They are a bit stupid, unruly and stubborn, a bit like donkeys, we think. However, we are wrong.

Our estimation of Luddites is incorrect, as is our assessment of donkeys. What we think about them is not who they were at all.

The Luddites, in fact, were intelligent and self-controlled craftspeople who correctly foresaw their lives altering for the worse as a result of disruptive technological change. They consciously chose to resist. They wanted to preserve a life that was home-based, autonomous, productive, satisfying, and even artistic.

The Luddites took their name from a “Ned Ludd,” a mythical figure in the Robin Hood tradition, who, legend has it, fought for justice in the same area of Nottinghamshire as had Robin and his merry band. “General” Ludd was said to be more or less up to the same devilry: protecting the poor and powerless from arbitrary exploitation, oppression and debasement, as carried out by the powers that be – Kings, Sheriffs, land owners, and the wealthy.(1)

They were mainly skilled weavers, combers, and dressers of wool, along with cotton trade artisans, who worked as independent craftspeople in their workshops in homes and cottages. As a group, they were described as highly disciplined, organized and effective. They were also well supported; despite bribes and threats, no one ever betrayed them to the authorities. Given that they operated merely for a fifteen month period in 1811 and 1812, in an area that included only parts of five counties around Nottinghamshire, it is remarkable how well they became known and how long they have been remembered.

The accurate view of them has been buried in propaganda propagated by authorities of the day, and perpetuated by the corporate and technology interests of our own time. Our current Techno-Nottingham Sheriffs would have us believe, in a form of false consciousness, that, for example, watching a video of nature online is the same as being in nature, or that we should be enchanted with the prospect of artificial intelligence.

Yet, despite all the efforts to discredit the Luddites and our use of their name as a deprecatory label, their call echos still, if mostly in the subconscious level. I believe we know that they were on to something. Their cause, in fact, is one that resonates in all of us: our humanity itself. They were not fighting against machinery; rather, they were fighting for what it means to be a human being.

But were they not violent, you ask? If violence can be committed against inanimate objects, I suppose that we have to say yes, they were. They attacked the new factories at night and destroyed the power looms and other machinery. In some cases they burned buildings, including factories and in a few cases, the homes of owners. However, there were no known instances of Luddites attacking or killing human beings. (There were instances of personal violence during the period, when members of the starving general population rebelled against the terrible conditions of the time but these killings were not carried out by followers of General Ludd.) Despite the actions of the Luddites being directed at machines and not people, authorities responded with everything they had, including shooting, imprisoning, transporting and executing people who they believed were part of the cause. In less than a year and a half, their resistance collapsed, although the broader unrest noted above continued because of the dreadful social conditions of the time.

On a most basic level, the Luddites were just protecting their livelihoods, but you could say they were prescient. They did not hate machinery as such. What they hated was the life that the new industrial age devices was bringing, and they saw that life with clarity. Workers in the new factories quickly became near-slaves, held to their work hour after hour, day after day, in dirty, hot, and dark conditions. Foremen walked the aisles with whips, to ensure absolute focus on the mind-numbing and body-damaging toil. Women were abused, sexually and otherwise, and children who did not perform up to standard were beaten. The prevailing industrial theory of the day – not so far removed from the ideas of some of our present titans of the gig economy (2) – was that one should pay enough so that workers would not starve, but not so much that they would not be hungry, literally speaking.

The result has been well documented: gruesome factory conditions, ghastly tenements, increasing crime and corruption, starvation, disease, addiction and alcoholism, demoralization and mental illness. Descriptions are nearly unbearable to read:

Not one father in a family of ten in the whole neighbourhood has other clothing than his working suit, and that is as bad and tattered as possible, many, indeed have no other covering for the night than these rags, and no bed, save a sack of
straw and shavings…

On the occasion of an inquest held Nov. 14th, 1843, by Mr. Carter, coroner for Surrey, upon the body of Ann Galway, aged 45 years, the newspapers related the following particulars concerning the deceased: she lived at No. 3 White Lion Court, Bermondsey Street, London, with her husband and a nineteen-year-old son in a little room, in which neither bedstead nor any other furniture was to be seen. She lay dead beside her son upon a heap of feathers which were scattered over her almost naked body, there being neither sheet nor coverlet. The feathers stuck so fast over the whole body that the physician could not examine the corpse until it was cleansed, and then found it starved and scarred from the bites of vermin. Part of the floor of the room was torn up, and the hole used by the family as a privy. (3)

Who would not want to resist this?

But of course, over time things did get better, at least in part of the world. In the Western world conditions did improve over the course of more than a century. Working conditions got better, wages grew, and health, housing and living circumstances improved to the point that it can be said that the industrial revolution resulted in a standard of living and personal longevity that was beyond the most fantastical imaginings of everyday humanity. And so, were the Luddites mistaken?

Not exactly. Such working conditions remain in many areas of the world: the clothing factories of Bangladesh, for example. Aside from that, the changes for the better were a result of decades and decades of struggle by workers, by unions of people, by individual humanitarian champions, by agencies and governments who saw the plight of people and responded to it with regulation and legislation. The Luddites were not wrong in what they were seeing.

However, we could say that the Luddites could not see the bigger picture, and so were shortsighted – that change is always disruptive, and technological improvement will ultimately lead to a betterment of life for humanity, if we give it time. But is this true?

I would respond: not necessarily. First, all technological improvement comes with a price tag. The automobile was instrumental in getting rid of the mountains of horse manure on city streets, but now the planet is choking on the exhaust fumes. Cell phone technology resulted in instantaneous, full-time communication among people, but also has resulted in a distracted, misinformed population with their noses stuck in their devices at the dinner table, uninterested in communicating directly with one another. Our rivers, our lakes and oceans, our land, and even our bodies are full of plastic. Reefs are bleaching, birds are dying, animals are disappearing. And overall, we seem to believe that the meaning of life can be found in what we own. To be human, it has become, is to consume. Meanwhile, this wealthy Western world is in a crisis of meaning, wherein thousands, addicted to opioids, are dying in streets and alleys, and where, at least in America, automatic-weapon-carrying young men in a state of anomie are murdering children with great regularity in their school rooms.

There was a more recent span of Luddite-ism in the twentieth century: the short-lived Hippie period and its back-to-the-land movement. The Hippies have been denigrated too, and perhaps some of that is deserving. But at the heart of the movement was a rejection of materialism, a resistance to the conversion of human beings into consumers. The Hippies were opting for a life that was more generous, loving, sharing and made of authentic experience rather than possession of material goods. Of course, pampered Baby-Boomers were ill prepared for the hardship, complexity and skill requirements that life on the land entailed, and so mostly they failed. In addition, it is extraordinarily difficult to try to live outside of mainstream culture; to do so, your customs and ideology have to be very strong, as is, for example, the ethos of the Mennonites. The Hippies did not have this cohesion of practise. Finally, corporate powers recognized the threat and mobilized powerfully during the period to counter the movement and to complete the colonization of the culture. One can see this clearly in the co-opting advertisements of the nineteen-seventies. Consider these paint colours offered for your new Ford Maverick in 1970: Freudian Gilt, Hulla Blue, and the best one, Anti-Establish Mint. It was completely successful of course: the Hippies and anti-materialism became an inside joke. We capitulated and the Baby-Boomers became the most materialistic generation of humanity ever in history.

Given all that, is there any relevance left to consider, if not for the Hippies, at least for the Luddites? I think: yes. I don’t think I am alone in this. Many people are concerned about the quality of our technological life and the associated problems of meaning. Many are disturbed and frightened by what we are doing to the planet and our fellow species with our uncontrolled spewing of fossil-fuel emissions. Many are simply dissatisfied with the state of things: the bombardment of twenty-four-hour-a-day marketing and the ever-titillating yet desolate wasteland of most television, the phones, screens, Facebook, Instagram, X, and TikTok.

In a sign of cultural health, some groups of teenagers have emerged, in more places than one, who are rejecting the smart-phone lifestyle for something more substantive, including sketching together, discussing Dostoevsky or Kerouac, or simply listening to nature in a park. “Social media and phones are not real life,” one said, correctly. (4) Further, educators are – surprise! – discovering that children learn better on paper than on screens (5) and that banning cell phone use in school improves concentration and outcomes. (6) Who’da thunk?

I think, when remembering the Luddites, that the story of their struggle challenges us to ask: must we accept every technological invention, every change, even when there is a chance it will degrade or debase us? Short of that, must we necessarily accept something new when it will result in our losing something old that we love? The answer is no, of course. The continuing popularity of physical books over electronic readers shows that many are willing to make such a choice. Computer word processing programs are wonderful tools, without a doubt, but is there not something satisfying about starting in writing on a yellow legal pad with a freshly sharpened pencil? Is not selecting, then taking an record album out of its sleeve, and stopping to read the liner notes, a greater pleasure than catching half a song in your Spotify stream as you go about your other business? Of course, these are trivial and we are merely talking about preferring an earlier technology to a newer one, which is a common leaning, especially for those of us with more than a few miles on us.

But what about more profound and far-reaching change? What about genetic editing or artificial intelligence? What about a million of us living on Mars, in SpaceX City, as Elon Musk would have it? What about living in a Meta-verse designed by a Zuckerberg?

One can say that it is futile to resist technological change: after all if we choose not to do something, someone else will do it. We might not want to select our children, through gene-editing, to become blond, blue-eyed Aryan ideals, but someone will. We may not want Musk’s chip planted in our brain so that the internet can be directly connected to our precious consciousness, but some will pay for that. We may prefer to read and research the history of Western Civilization for ourselves, but others will prefer a summary generated by AI. We may find pleasure in producing a poem or other piece of writing, a song, a painting, a photograph – but there will be others that would rather have AI do that for them, and they will see it as the same thing.

It is hard not to observe that we have become slaves to our technology. We, in our fun-land Western Civilization live a life of unbelievable wealth, health, and comfort, without a doubt due to our technology. There is a lot to be said for light bulbs, television, and central heating on a cold winter’s night. And yet…personally, I cannot help but feel sad when I see a group of adolescents sitting on a stoop, each one of them a gorgeous bundle of vibrating life, yet all of them with faces buried in phones, while the sun shines, and the street flows by. The birds that are still left sing directly to them, but they do not hear.

Convenient technology can become our master. Mary Shelley, writing about science and technology, saw that likelihood. Dr. Frankenstein’s monster, his creation, says, near the end of the story: “You are my creator, but I am your master;- obey!” (7) In this, do we not hear the ghostly and premonitory whisper of artificial intelligence?

The lesson of the Luddites is to question. They challenge us to discern and to resist if we do not like what we see, and to opt for the richness of authentic experience. As Marguerite Duras put it, “Everything seems to be done in order to spare man the effort of living, both in his work and his daily living. It’s terrible.” (8) Or, as Lao-tze said, centuries earlier: “Let there be labour-saving devices that are not used.” He was speaking, even back then, to the tendency of technology to distract us, even to alienate us, from the natural flow of life, from that the directness of experience that is our birthright. (9)

Even if Luddite resistance is futile in the big picture, is such resistance not fundamental to who we are? Do we not have a right to say no? Is there not nobility, dignity, in refusal?

I think so. I believe we should take courage from our Luddite brothers and sisters and resist, where and whenever we feel it, whether such resistance is futile or not in the bigger picture. Eschew the electric scooter, and take a slow walk along a city street on a sunny day. If you do see an Amazon robot, try not to get arrested, but you will have my blessing if you knock it off the sidewalk. Close the Facebook page, and call up the real friend whom you actually care about. Turn off your TikTok feed and dance a little jig yourself. The effort of being a living, breathing human animal is worth it.

_____________________________________

1. Sale, Kirkpatrick. Rebels Against the Future: The Luddites and Their War on the Industrial Revolution. Persus Books Group, 1995.

2. Greenhouse, Steven. Major US corporations threaten to return labor to ‘law of the jungle:’ Trader Joe’s and SpaceX are among businesses challenging the constitutionality of the National Labor Relations Board. The Guardian, March 10, 2024. Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/10/starbucks-trader-joes-spacex-challenge-labor-board.

3. Engles, Frederick. The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844. Translated by Florence Kelley Wishnewzky. Information Age Publishing, 2010. See particularly pages 29-40.

4. Vadukul, Alex. ‘Luddite’ Teens Don’t Want Your Likes: When the only thing better than a flip phone is no phone at all. New York Times, December 15, 2022. Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/15/style/teens-social-media.html?searchResultPosition=1.

5. MacArthur, John R. A groundbreaking study shows kids learn better on paper, not screens. Now what? The Guardian, January17, 2024. Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/jan/17/kids-reading-better-paper-vs-screen.

6. Root, Tik. What happens when a school bans smartphones? A complete transformation. The Guardian, January 17, 2024. Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/jan/17/cellphone-smartphone-bans-schools.

7. Shelly, Mary. Frankenstein (1818 text). Oxford Wold’s Classics, 1994, p. 140.

8. Duras, Marguerite. Me & Other Writing. Dorothy, A Publishing Project, 2019, p. 82.

9. Cathart, Thomas, and Daniel Klein. I Think, Therefore I Draw: Understanding Philosophy Through Cartoons. Penguin Books, 2018, p. 86.

On Retirement: Part II, The End Game

Posted on October 24, 2023October 29, 2023 by Peter Scott Cameron

          Be happy if there is something to be happy about!
          When the moment comes, do not lose it!
          Though they say life lasts a hundred years,
          Who has seen a full thirty thousand days!
          You are in this world but an instant,
          So don’t sit there grumbling about money.
          At the end of The Classic of Filial Piety
          It tells you all about what funerals are like.(1)

“Be here, now!”

So Alan Watts charged us.(2) In my twenties, it sounded great. The problem was that I couldn’t do it. I observed that I was mostly running ahead, toward completion, toward the next thing. There was much to do: studying, jobs, money, marriage, a child, where and how to live – “caught between the longing for love and the struggle for the legal tender.”(3) Admittedly, there were times of Flow: becoming lost in a ego-less process, absorbed in the moment, losing track of time itself in the pure pleasure of being.(4) But mostly not: mostly, it was do this or that, and get on to the next thing.

This goes on for years, with the cares of family and daily life and concerns of career. Then, with retirement, an opportunity opens up. Unless one is planning a new career as a winemaker, tractor-trailer driver, or TikToc fashion influencer, or you fill the void by chauffeuring grandchildren around to Sufi dancing or kettle drum practice, the present opens in a way it has not been open for a long time.

In this openness there is a natural inclination to review the past and to assess how one has done.(5) You have run your career race and came in seventh. This can be okay and work out well enough, depending on attitude: “I was married more times than a radio talk-show host, but I never lost hope.” Or, “I didn’t end up writing The Great Novel, but that chapbook of racy limericks was a killer!”

In my work, I made the world a better place.

Or this can turn to rumination and recrimination, which is never a good thing for the emotions or disposition. My ship came in, but I failed to get on board. It can be depressing, because we all fail spectacularly, and at this point there is nothing you can do about it. But the latter is also the good news. There most definitely is nothing you can do about it, so you might as well give up on it and make a nice fried egg and tomato sandwich.

Your thoughts also go forward toward The End Game, as a ninety-two-year-old friend calls it. Somewhere along the line, starting in late middle age, our mental calculation changes from time spent on the planet to time left. In older age, this is acute. There is no room for denial: time is limited and the outcome is fixed. It is just a matter of when and how.

How this goes is naturally affected by one’s state of health. Even without major problems, aging issues can be vexing. Brown things and skin tags start growing on you like you are a compost pile. Your arm hurts for no reason. Legs get stiff and athletic activities like tying your shoelaces make you short of breath. Or like me, a hand starts to shake one day and doesn’t stop: “essential tremor,” Dr. Google calls it, which means they have no idea where it comes from and there is nothing that can be done about it. Why it is “essential” beats me. My fine doctor offered me neurological testing, which I appreciated, but declined. Why bother if there is no fix?

After seventy, one can become afraid to go to the doctor for fear of discovering something that will kill you sooner or later, but of which, until that appointment, you were happily ignorant. That has been the case with me. I go to the doctor with no complaint and pow! Now I have a problem. That is one reason that the annual physical is terrifying. Adding to the horror, if you are of a certain age, they start asking you to remember three words and recall them later, or ask you to draw a picture of a clock showing twenty to ten. (My advice on this? Refuse. Don’t do it – don’t go down without a fight!) All this naturally leads one to think that the obvious solution is not to go to the doctor at all, which was the recommendation of a friend’s mother. She lived to 91 and died happy. However, such a course can lead to a surprise heart attack while imagining Shania Twain without any clothes on when you are country line dancing at the Senior Centre, or keeling over with a stroke while serving figgy pudding to that felonious band of in-laws at Christmas dinner. So not having checkups is not most advisable.

Entirely too many people in retirement age are troubled, if not tormented, by illness and debilitation, and I am sorry for them. I do not yet have this. I only have to know where the washrooms will be if I go for an urban walk. I count myself very lucky. I feel much compassion for those who are afflicted, who feel so poorly and who are stuck in endless rounds of appointments, tests, and treatments, and those as well who suffer pain and impairment. I have friends among them and have lost friends to the diseases they have encountered. It is something that the Buddhists warn us about, and they suggest that we prepare; but still, it does not feel quite fair. You put in a lifetime of effort and good work, kindness and caring, and it comes to debilitation and discomfort. Then you die. Jarring, that.

So you have to face your mortality: The End Game. Retiring does both make it plain that you have been to the mountaintop and now are on the downslope, and it gives you more time to think about it. This might be alright, a sort of preparation for death as Freud proposed.(6) For some it might bring relief; you will miss things, of course, like how the kids are doing or the laughter or your mate; but on the other hand, you will be free of pain if you have that, and certainly you will not have to hear or read about Taylor Swift ever again – no small compensation, that.

Still, death can be a ruminative burden and for some is frightening, although not inevitably so. Many are consoled by religion, and look forward to an afterlife. Others – those of us without a strict belief in the continuation of a human soul – are without this solace, yet we are still not afraid. After all, if we come from the cosmic ether, we will go back to it; there is not much frightening about that. Although to be sure there can be anticipatory grief – about one’s pending absence from the dance.

So with the past done, and a future that is dodgy, what we are left with is the present moment – just as good old Watts prescribed. And as Freud implied, and the Buddhists advise, contemplation of mortality provides a focus, an opportunity to experience the present to its fullest, in a way we never have before.

Friends and companions help a great deal on this journey. The old gang at the office or the plant have gone on ahead without us. What we are left with is a partner, if we have one, and our old friends. The old reliable, more-or-less daily, enforced socializing of the workplace has vanished, and for many a void is opens up.

Much is made of the value of socializing in general, especially in popular psychology and the New York Times. This notion is a regular feature and sells a good number of issues of Psychology Today. But the idea appears to be overrated and there is not much real social science behind this.(7) As a confirmed and contented Introvert, I am skeptical about the value of casual socializing. I can take it or leave it, mostly the latter. And I don’t think I am alone in this: ask the third of the North American population who share my temperamental trait.

That said, complete isolation is bad for one, and correlates with higher rates of depression, heart attack, early death and inebriated purchasing of workout equipment from infomercials at three in the morning. So for goodness sake, despite the reservation expressed above, if you are isolated and lonely, by all means do join that backgammon club, church choir, or a weekly book club, or if desperate and in danger of developing suicidal ideation, take up pickleball. Make a friend!

I am sitting on an August Sunday early afternoon, eating a store-bought turkey sandwich with a good old friend at the picnic table at the Stewart’s store in the quaint village that he grew up in. He is an empathetic fellow who sat with me one time many years ago in another Stewart’s, and listened when I was at a very low point in my life. A couple of times a month I receive a brilliant multi-page longhand letter from him, describing the subtleties of everyday life, his reading regimen, and intellectual explorations. He is a member of a select class of people: highly intelligent, yes, but more, a true scholar. I count myself fortunate to know not just one, but two people like this, who, no matter what they are doing as a livelihood at a particular time, read and learn and think for its own sake. Once I called up the other of them, M.W., when he was in Brooklyn visiting his daughter and I asked him what he was planning to do that evening. “I’m going back to the hotel to think,” he replied.

K.B. takes me on a walking tour around the village, with tales of adventures at the old school, early and later grades, middle-school exploits, and unrequited teenage love. We wander by the now-dilapidated band shell where his high-school rock and roll band debuted. As we walk away from the now sad and decrepit little public park, I am carrying on about my current side-by-side re-reading of Jack Kérouac’s The Subterraneans vs. Leonard Cohen’s Beautiful Losers, and why the former is a success, while the latter is a failure, in my opinion. I declare that it is because Kerouac’s telling is full of emotion and a visceral love of life, while Cohen’s lacks these and is rather cold. I find I have no empathy for its characters: surprising in a work by the writer of So Long Marianne and Dance Me to the End of Love. K.B does not interrupt my opining and instead listens attentively, which I appreciate. Is it not true that we all want to be heard?

After the walkabout, we talk about his upcoming project of reading the eight hundred pages of L’Être et le Néant : Essai d’Ontologie Phénoménologique that he had ordered – half-jokingly he proposes to read two or three pages at a time, in the booths at each one of the 350 plus Stewart’s stores in New York and the few in Vermont. I think this is an outstanding idea. He jokes again and wonders how it might stack up against the wanderings of Herodotus.(8) We consider what kind of car would be appropriate for such an epic journey. K. B.’s 2018 Honda does not seen quite right for the odyssey – a more classical ride would seem appropriate. I suspect my friend leans toward something like his previously-owned late-sixties Dodge Charger, but I am envisioning something more modest, such as a Morris Minor Traveller station wagon from 1957, preferably in the classic British racing green. Of course, I am thinking that offsetting the carbon would have to be considered, which is difficult these days as it has come to light that most of the available offset schemes are fraudulent.

Before we part, we wonder out loud if there is a market for a basic car without all the annoying features like fobs, lane correction, touch screens and heated seats. Something with key-entry, roll-down windows, no-draft vents, and a standard transmission would be nice. I am imagining a two-door Valiant with a Slant Six under the hood, not with that push-button automatic, maybe a sixty-one with the classic fins. A perfect car: would there not be buyers for such a thing in 2023, I ask? We muse that one would think so, but probably not. To be sure, for my part, this – old cars were better etc. – is retired geezer jawing at its very best. Very satisfying. I am sorry to take leave of my friend.

Now I am back in the afternoon sun, in the yard, sitting in a weather-worn wooden Adirondack chair. I am the lazy one; I am reading and smoking a cigar while my mate labours in the garden. I see a bee – not my bee from July, the one that came to the window during news time, but another one and I wonder where my bee went. I hope it wasn’t eaten. A big Monarch butterfly comes by and flutters around me, darting here and there, up and down, back and forth. Then, apparently not bothered by the the cigar smoke, it alights on my knee and there it perches.

I am one lucky bastard. This Monarch thinks I am trustworthy enough to rest awhile on my blue jeans. I live on an acre of rural paradise. My modest income is sufficient for my needs: there is nothing more I want to own and nowhere I want to travel. My health ain’t perfect, but it ain’t bad, either. I have some friends. My wife, K., loves me unconditionally, and when I grumble about one or another of my shortcomings, tells me that I am perfect just as I am. I am inclined to disagree with this assessment, but I do not debate the point; in any case, I feel the same about her, so have no basis to argue. The sun is on my face, the book is excellent, and our friendly dog-like cat is lying by the raised garden. My daughter, off in Toronto, is thriving, and my smart and good-natured grandchildren are launching into the world. None of this is permanent, of course; any of it could change in an instant.

But in this moment, I am grateful. I am retired and have nothing to do.

I have only to be here, now.

__________________________________

1. Hanshan. Cold Mountain: 100 Poems by the Tang Poet Han-Shan. Translated by Burton Watson. Columbia University Press, 1970. Accurate details have been lost in time and myth, but the Buddhist recluse is thought to have lived around the seventh or eighth century.

2. Columbus, Peter J., and Donadrian L. Rice. Alan Watts – Here and Now: Contributions to Psychology, Philosophy, and Religion. State University of New York Press, 2012.

3. Browne, Jackson. The Pretender. Flat Town Music Co., 1976.

4. Csíkszentmihályi, Mihály Róbert. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper and Row, 1990.

5. Erikson, Erik, with Joan Erikson. Childhood and Society. W. W. Norton & Co., 1959.

6. Freud, Sigmund. Beyond the Pleasure Principle. Translated by C. J. M. Huback. Digireads Publishing, 2020. First published 1920.

7. La Grassa, Jennifer. Do Exercise, Nature and Socializing Make People Happier? Research Suggests We don’t Really Know. CBC News, August 26, 2023.

8. Kapuściński, Ryszard. Travels with Herodotus. Translated by Klara Glowczewska. Vintage, 2008.

I Answer All Your Questions

Posted on April 18, 2021June 17, 2023 by Peter Scott Cameron

Hello!

Theories, explanations, and revelations swirl in the maelstrom that is the Internet! They confuse us – it is difficult to separate falsehoods from truth and reality! And this bubbling cauldron of toxic thought-swill contains problems that exist in addition to everyday thorny conundrums that have perplexed even philosophers and theologians for millennia, let alone the rest of us everyday knuckleheads.

But relief is at hand. Today I am going to answer all these questions. Some are quite simply answered with facts, but others are difficult, defeating some of the greatest thinkers on the Internet. Nevertheless, I answer them here.

Part I (Second Installment Coming!)

Question: Was the American election stolen? Answer: No. However, Trump and the national Republicans did everything in their power to do exactly that.

Question: Will Trump run in the 2024 election? Answer: Maybe, if he is not in jail.

Question: I read on Facebook that the Clintons belong to a secret cabal of mainly Democrats and “Deep State” pedophiles who not only have sex with children in a pizza parlour basement in Chicago, but also eat them. Is that true? Answer: No.

Question: As an avid reader of the Weekly World News in the nineties, before the Internet, I have always wondered: did Hillary Clinton really have a love child with Bat Boy? Answer: No. Bill’s shenanigans kept her too busy to think of having an affair of her own.

Question: How about the Alien– Answer: No.

Question: Did Jews, assisted by Democrats, aim lasers from outer space to start the California fires? Answer: No.

Question: About Covid-19. Is it spread by 5G towers, the same way radar, even though it had not quite been invented yet, caused the 1918 flu pandemic? Answer: No.

Question: Was it invented by Bill Ga– Answer: No.

Question: Did the Chinese create Covid-19 in a laboratory? Answer: No, probably not. It looks like Covid-19 was accidentally passed from animals, probably bats, to humans somewhere near or in Wuhan.

Question: Did people believe as many strange explanations during the Great Plagues and the 1918-1919 flu epidemic as they do now? Answer: Yes, though it appears not quite as many that are as bizarre as those propagated on the Internet at present.

Question: Did that flu, the “Spanish Flu,” start in Spain? Answer: No, it started in Haskell County in Kansas.

Question: Why was it called the “Spanish Flu,” then? Answer: Prejudice. It is like the French, who in the old days, called syphilis “The English Disease.” The English called it “The French Disease.” In Zaire, in more modern times, H.I.V. was called “The American Disease.” Americans thought it came from Haitians.

Question: Are the Covid-19 vaccinations safe and effective? Answer: Yes. With AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson, there is a one in a million chance of a blood clot. You are more than nine times more likely to get a blood clot from Covid-19. You should get vaccinated with whatever vaccine is available, if not for yourself, then for the rest of us.

Question: Do the various Covid vaccinations contain microchips that governments will use to control us? Answer: No, although perhaps there are some people who would benefit from such a thing.

Question: Do vaccinations cause autism? Answer: No. This idea came from a long-discredited study published in 1998 by Andrew Wakefield, who is not necessarily a quack, but is a fraudster. The finding has been determined to be an “elaborate fraud.” But unfortunately, the idea was picked up and propagated by famous people who should know better.

Question: What about all those other problems that vaccines cause such as auto-immune problems in children, along with all the money drug companies earn and a bunch of other bad stuff outlined on the Internet, etc.? Answer: Vaccinations along with other public health actions are among the greatest contributors to human longevity and wellbeing that we have ever known. And they are remarkably safe.

Question: Given all the conspiracy theories and half-baked ideas floating around, are smart-phones and social media doing humanity any good? Answer: Social media: some usefulness, but overall, no, not very good for the species. Seems to me it will be the final nail in the coffin of inner-directedness, making us entirely other-directed as David Reisman, the sociologist, predicted all the way back in 1950.[i] Although it is true that helps budding musicians build a reputation for themselves and make sales, as in Justin Bieber.

The phones? Hard to say, although there is considerable comedic value in seeing all these people with their noses in their phones while walking, at concerts and sporting events, eating in restaurants, and riding around on tour buses. I feel sorry for the kids though, whose total reality is being mediated by social media and smart phones. I’m glad I grew up before these things happened. Seems like my young life was more interesting and more fun.

Question: But isn’t the immediate connection of human beings, that the phones offer, beneficial? Answer: It is a bit of a stretch to call it an “immediate connection,” I think. As I consider this, I am reminded of the great Charles de Gaulle who, when he was asked why he did not answer the telephone, is reputed to have answered: “Because if I had wanted to talk to him, I would have called him up.” I like texting; however, I find I have a limit on how many I can tolerate in a single day.

Question: Okay. People question whether scientists and doctors can be trusted. Can we trust them? Answer: Yes. Almost all of them, although not Andrew Wakefield, obviously.

Question: Can science itself be trusted? Answer: Yes, with the recognition that it is a step-by-step process and always a work in progress. Science is saving our behinds in this pandemic.

Question: Are human beings intelligent? Answer: I would say clever, but not exactly intelligent. The invention of non-fungible tokens and then the selling of same at astronomical prices makes my case splendidly. We are certainly not nearly as intelligent as we think we are. We are rather primitive and paranoid with our old reptilian and mammalian core brain areas, but with frontal lobes making up stories, telling us all the time that we are the smartest creatures in the room.

Question: Does this apply to you? Answer: Of course.

Question: Speaking of different areas of the brain, are you saying life evolved, or was it created? Answer: Evolved.

Question: How could that happen, given evolution to the point of human consciousness? Answer: It is a remarkable mystery.

Question: Do astrology and numerology have any validity? Answer: Only for the bank accounts of Astrologists and Numerologists, as well as providing something enjoyable to read in newspapers.

Question: Are there spirit-beings on other planes of existence that we can communicate with who can help us with our personal problems? Answer: No. Although it makes sense to invoke, within ourselves, the essences of great dead people as guides and for inspiration.

Question: What about pet psychics? Past-lives-regression therapy? Answer: Codswallop. Hogwash perpetrated by flim-flam artists and balderdash perpetrated by frauds.

Question: Is psychotherapy helpful and effective? Answer: Very helpful! In-depth self-reflection with an objective helper: what could be better?

Question: Is meditation good for you? Answer: Oh very. I do this, in an effort to still the “puppy-dog” mind and to sit for a while with the great mystery.

Question: What about yoga? I read in the New York Times that in support of a twenty-eight-year-old ban on yoga in public schools in Alabama, evangelical Christians argue that yoga causes injuries, psychosis, and Hinduism. Is this true, does it cause these problems? Answer: I’ll ask my daughter, who is a thirty-year practitioner – she is currently in the broken- bones unit at the Toronto Hindu psychiatric hospital, ha, ha! But seriously folks, all jokes aside, I have always wondered what causes Hinduism, ha, ha! But seriously folks, all–

Question: Okay, we get it! But tell us then, is yoga beneficial in any way? Answer: Yes, all that pretzel-like bending and mental focus is good for the body, the mind, and the spirit, especially so as one ages. I regularly consider practicing it.

Question: Is Buddhism useful? Answer: You mean, does it cause you to speak on riddles and kōans and cause mindfulness, har, har? Okay, yes. Some really good ideas. Hilarious stories and good mind-puzzles, too. Big on compassion, and we sorely need that.

Question: I have heard you used to practice Zen Buddhism. What does Zen say about what happens after death? Answer: It says nothing about life after death, only that you should anticipate dying.

Question: What does happen after death? Answer: Although we make up all sorts of stories, spooky and otherwise, about it, nobody knows. I believe that it will be silent.

Question: How about reincarnation? Answer: A dubious proposition. If this were true, given the law of karma, logically there would be a lot fewer human beings in the world than there are currently, and a lot more bugs, bats, and bullfrogs.

Question: Is there an individual soul that survives, then? Answer: A gratifying idea, but I have my doubts. Decide for yourself.

Question: But, what about the testimonials of near-death experiences, you know, the white light and all? Answer: Last-minute activity of our oxygen-starved, marvelous, story-telling frontal lobes.

Question: Does God exist? Answer: That is not something I can say. You will have to decide for yourself. Please don’t consult the Internet on this matter. I’d say go for a walk in nature on a sunny day. Or a rainy day.

Question: What about Jesus? Answer: Oh, I trust he existed alright: a stupendous person and philosopher, or the Son of God, depending on your belief. Too bad we seldom really understand him, due to Biblical nonsense and the endless prevarication and confabulation of believers.

Question: As an aside, would you say Jesus approves of gay people having sex? Answer: It is impossible to imagine, given all the real and horrible problems in the world, that Jesus would spend his time worrying about how people play with each other’s private parts. If he did pay any attention at all, I’m sure he would enjoy any and all of the imaginative consensual coupling and frolicking that people indulge in.

Question: Okay, then, back on track: does life have meaning? Answer: Certainly, and it is our job to create it, as Viktor Frankl says. I admire his take on this. He survived the concentration camp. His wife did not. See Man’s Search for Meaning. But in addition to that, it is as the great Spanish writer, Manuel Vilas, realized: that life “was worth living even if it was just to sit in silence.” [ii]

Question: So then, the Hokey-Pokey is not really what it’s all about? Answer: No, but it is an excellent place to start.

Question: I gather from the previous question that you are an existentialist. So, what do you believe? Answer: I believe that students should know, after 12 years of extensive schooling at considerable public expense, when and where to use the apostrophe. I think adverbs are useful, and the passive voice is perfectly serviceable in the English language. I also believe that we should go back to the correct use of the verb “to lie,” as in, “I am going to lie down,” as opposed to “I am going to lay down.” Bob Dylan’s song should be Lie, Lady, Lie, not Lay, Lady, Lay. The lady, in whatever state of undress she is in our imaginations, should lie across Bob’s big brass bed.

Question: Given your lack of faith in a religious system that gives you succour; how do you get up in the morning? Answer: After I wake up, I have a cup of coffee, listen to classical music, read a poem, and then make breakfast.

Question: Okay, thank you. I, and surely the readers, have many more questions we would like to ask. We have inquiries about the Proud Boys, Brexit, whether we will avoid climate catastrophe, and whether or not you are happy. Will you come down from the mountain top again soon to answer these? Answer: Indeed, yes. How about three days from now?

Question: Great! Thank you! Your cheque is in the mail. Answer: Okay, good, my Internet service provider payment is due. And you are most welcome. See you Thursday.

[i] Riesman, David, et al. The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Character. Doubleday, 1950.

[ii] Vilas, Manuel. Ordesa. Andrea Rosenberg (transl.). Riverhead Books, 2020. Page 57.