The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho - Part 1 of 4

2020 Reading Challenge - Day 188

July 7, 2020

Book 54 - The Alchemist
Paulo Coelho (1993)
 Part 1 - page 1-47
Reading Time - 60 minutes

I've read this classic book a few times but always benefit from a re-reading. The book might not have changed, but I have changed, and I always get something new and different from it every time I read it.

The book is all about following your personal calling, legend, dream. Along the way, we come up against four main obstacles...

• As a child, we are told it is impossible
• We don't want to hurt those we love as we abandon our "regular" life for our dream
• A fear of defeat
• A fear of realizing the dream for which we have fought all our lives. If we reach our dream... then what?

We meet Santiago, a shepherd who lives quite a happy existence, leading his sheep around the meadows and mountains of Andalusia. He has this recurring dream of travelling to the Pyramids in Egypt and discovering a treasure. Interestingly, he had this dream in an abandoned church.. hint... that church will come up again later. Santiago doesn't expect much of life, hopes to meet the baker's daughter again when he passes through a certain town but, basically he is content. Except for that dream...

He then meets a man who says he is the King of Salem, Melchizedek. We learn from him about Personal Legends and the Soul of the World which is nourished by people's happiness. Melchizedek encourages Santiago to follow his personal dream, to realize his destiny. When you want something... all the universe conspires to make it happen. I would think the key factor there is... us actually wanting something... not just a shallow want. But a real, soul-deep, want that is rooted in the very depths of our being. But how many of us have that sort of a want? Because if we really want something that we don't have (like a treasure from the Pyramids) then we have to give up what we have become accustomed to (a shepherd in Andalusia). And how many of us really want to give up what we have, what we know, what we are comfortable with?

Well... Santiago really wants the treasure... so he sells his sheep, buys a ticket for Africa (Tangiers) and heads off on his quest. He reaches Tangiers and is promptly robbed of his gold. Santiago has a bit of a rethink of this adventure business... because it would be easy enough to turn tail and head home... He realizes that he can choose to see himself as the poor victim of a thief or as an adventurer in quest of treasure. I do have to say... if Santiago hadn't had any challenges on his quest, it would have made for a pretty boring story... All is not lost for Santiago talks himself into a job with a crystal merchant. From the merchant he learns how much money and time it would take to get to the Pyramids and... he's down in the dumps again. He figures he'll earn enough to head back to Spain and call it quits but... that isn't the end of the story...

I can totally sympathize with Santiago... it takes guts to turn the apple cart upside down and head off into the unknown. It's far safer to stay with what we know... even if it means that we have to give up our Personal Legend or dream or calling. We really don't want to be pulled through the keyhole of life... on the other hand, sometimes life pulls us through the keyhole anyhow... So why not at least know that we are headed in the direction of our Personal Dream while that's happening? I guess the other aspect of this is... how many of us know what our Personal Dream is? Maybe as kids we had a sense of it... but as we get older and more "sensible"... after adults convince us that dreams don't put food on our plates and roofs over our heads... our dream gets lost in the underbrush. Because as we get older, life gets more complicated. We have more responsibilities... more demands on our time... more things that we think are really, really important. Although... The Little Prince would tell us that adults are really out of touch with what is important. Sooo... kudos to Santiago for hearing and listening to his Personal Dream!

Demand the Impossible - Bill Ayers - Part 4 of 4

2020 Reading Challenge - Day 187

July 6, 2020

Book 53 - Demand the Impossible: A Radical Manifesto
Bill Ayers (2016)
 Part 4 - page 146-200
Reading Time - 60 minutes

In this section, we examine Education, the Environment and the Conclusion. Right off the bat... I have to say I was appointed with the chapter on the Environment, it was the shortest chapter of the book and barely skimmed the surface. There was, for example, nothing on the Food Industry which, I think, could have been a whole separate chapter. It would demonstrate quite nicely the commercialisation of nutrition...

Let's start with some stats from education:

• Public Schools in the District of Columbia get $11,965/pupil
• A Private School in DC gets $37,750/pupil
• Student to Teacher ratio at public schools in DC - 13.32:1
• Student to Teacher ratio at private school in DC - 7.8:1

This chapter actually has a stronger "What if..." slant than some of the previous chapters. Ayers refers to Freedom Schools which engage students with their real life experiences and teach them to think for themselves by interrogating and engaging with the world. Compare that with the average urban public school where the goal is obedience, standardisation and conformity - i.e. control. Even in private schools, students who are smart, talented and driven end up anxious, timid and lost - unable to think for themselves. Education has been commodified and commercialised and likely needs to be completely rethought. My understanding is that the current education system was designed to train workers for corporations, for their factories. In which case, conformity and control would make sense. But the world has changed... is changing... will change. So perhaps education needs to be rethunk. This quote stuck with me:

Free people, including free teachers and free students, refuse obedience and conformity in favor of liberating dispositions of mind: initiative, questioning, courage, audacity, imagination, creativity, inventiveness, and empathy. These qualities cannot be delivered in top-down ways, but must be modeled and nourished, encouraged and defended, and mostly practiced again and again and again.

We then move on to the Envrionment and Ayers admits that there is evidence of cataclysmic climate change all around us - so easy to see and yet it is denied "in favour of magical thinking". Somehow technology will save us... or maybe, to quote a current politician - climate change will just "disappear". Ayers gets right into the heart of it by saying that climate change is denied because the solution would be to overthrow capitalism. Which makes sense. Capitalism is based on expansion - always searching for more, selling more, producing more, extracting more... we need to slow down. The Earth is finite... and there is no "more"...

Sooo... where does that leave us? Well... the American Dream, according to Ayers is "a deadly illusion". The US thinks it is an indispensable nation, that it has the good guys... which is purely naked narcissism. Ayers refers to a little snippet from the TV show, Newsroom... I had seen this before but lost the link... glad to have it again!

Martin Luther King got quite clear that just reforming society wasn't going to work, it needed a complete rebuild, if we were to combat racism, poverty and war.

Ayers has a few tips:

• I can't do everything. True. But, can I do anything? Anything at all, no matter how small? Yes. We can always do something.
  
• The Fire from Below is what will generate change - people agitating and organising and putting pressure on the politicians and corporations.
• Breaking free from the TINA trap - There is No Alternative. The world we live in is not necessarily the best of all possible worlds. What else could it be? Ayers suggests a world of socialism with participatory democracy and freedom.

Capitalism has no answers for us, nor for the crises we face. In many ways, it reminds me of a booster rocket that has pushed us high and far but... it is on its last gasp of fuel... and unless we eject it... the weight of it will drag us down.

Ayers suggests that we choose life, choose possibility, choose rebellion and choose revolution. And lest we think revolution means guns and war... gardening is a revolutionary act. Other countries do things differently... look at Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany... they all have something to teach about living life differently. Which reminds me of Michael's Moore's film, Where to Invade Next...

 but that would be a whole other blog...

Demand the Impossible - Bill Ayers - Part 3 of 4

2020 Reading Challenge - Day 186

July 5, 2020

Book 53 - Demand the Impossible: A Radical Manifesto
Bill Ayers (2016)
 Part 3 - page 88-145
Reading Time - 60 minutes

This section of the book examines three concepts: Debt, Policing and Health Care. Given current events, all three topics are quite timely. Mind you, the entire book is quite timely!

First, let's talk about debt... here are a few numbers:

• Total outstanding student debt in 2013 - $1.2 trillion
• US credit card debt (2016) - $935.3 billion
• Household net worth lost during the Great Recession - $16.4 trillion

Not surprisingly, governments are put in place to hold things in trust for the common good, but over time, have sold that trust to private corporations - water, electricity, education, health care, prisons. And, generally speaking, those private corporations are not in the business of holding things in trust for the common good. They are in the business of making as much money as possible, a rather short-sighted approach that then leaves citizens and governments holding the bag. As Ayers notes, Big Business rides on the back of the taxpayers... and when things go wrong, Big Business comes to government looking for bailouts... which are paid for with the tax dollars of citizens.

There was one quote from Ayers which stuck with me: The US is "a permanent war economy, married to a prison society, with education and health care kicked to the curb and the abused and neglected paying the ticket". One anthropologist/anarchist/activist suggested cancelling all debt, moving to a 4 hour workday with 5 months of vacation... which would give us a chance to save the planet and reimagine labour. In a weird kind of way, Covid 19 has put a lot of things on hold, including the typical work pattern... although debt is still an issue. I have for a long time thought that the debt loads carried by the average North American keep us in a semi-permanent state of debt slavery. The average American has $38,000 of personal debt while the average Canadian carries $24,000 in personal debt (both those numbers exclude mortgages). Debt keeps the hamsters madly spinning on their "get-out-debt" wheel...

The next section in the book examines policing, and, as we currently see in the news, there is a growing cry to defund the police. Some numbers first:

• Percentage of city budget dedicated to police in Baltimore (2012) - 20%
• Percentage of city budget dedicated to police in Oakland - 40%
• Chicago had 28,567 civilian complaints about police misconduct from March 2011 to September 2015
• Only 2% of complaints result in a police officer receiving discipline.

It might come as now surprise, but most shootings by police are found to be "justified". But independent investigations, by journalists or private citizens, have found cover-up, corruption and murder. We see it in the news as well... the official police version is held up to justify the police actions. Until a video emerges which demonstrates the utter fabrication of the police version. If there is a video that is... The news is also bring forth stories of militarized police - police who are trained by the military and receive military equipment. All just an extension of a militarized society. Ayers notes that racial injustice and economic exploitation are correlated with a violent military system abroad and a colonial militarised police practice at home. Even after slavery was abolished, racism and white supremacy were alive and well in the police and government systems. But... Ayers expresses hope with the youth of today who are leading the way.

Finally, this section looks at health care. Some numbers:

• Out of 11 wealthy countries, the US ranks dead last in health system performance
• Out of 224 countries, the US ranks 43rd in average life expectancy
• Number of Black/White deaths per 1000 in the first month of life (2013): 7.46/3.34. That means Black children twice the death rate as White children

I learned a bit about the US health care system here... like the old (or current) Medicare is only for the elderly and disabled and is severely limited in what it provides. In general, Americans seem to be strongly averse to anything that even has a whiff of socialism about it. And universal health care would definitely reek to high heaven of socialism. The problem in America is capitalism... dollars are the standard of care. And the system is rife with corruption as well with doctors recommending tests that aren't required because they get a cut from the referral... not surprise there. Did you know the US is the only industrialised country where it is legal to advertise prescription drugs to the public? How did that happen? Who runs the country? Big Pharma? Ayers argues that the US system is deeply unequal and stacked against the elderly, the poor, women and those with mental health issues. In the US, 50% of bankruptcies are due to medical bills.

Which made me wonder... what about Obamacare? I thought that was a good thing?? Apparently not... it is still in the pockets of the health insurers and Big Pharma. Which is no surprise when you consider that the US has a corporate health industry which is designed to make money, not care for the individual. On page 141, Ayers compares the US system to his Canadian friend who had a "national insurance card" which covered dental, medical, drugs and vision. That might be a bit of a stretch. Here in Canada, we have provincial health cards which are recognized across the country but... generally do not include vision and dental. Still... a huge step above what the US has...

I have to say, I'm a bit disappointed in these three chapters. In his Introduction, Ayers had suggested that the "What if..." question could open up new possibilities... but that question isn't really being asked to the extent that it was in the first couple of chapters. Which means these later chapters are a bit unbalanced... a recitation of the state of affairs, but no real vision of what it could look like...

Demand the Impossible - Bill Ayers - Part 2 of 4

2020 Reading Challenge - Day 185

July 4, 2020

Book 53 - Demand the Impossible: A Radical Manifesto
Bill Ayers (2016)
 Part 2 - page 43-88
Reading Time - 60 minutes

In this section of the book, Ayers looks at Abolition (Prisons) and Economics (Labour). I have to say... some of this just blew my mind...

Some states for the chapter on Abolition: American prisoners account for 21% of the world's prisoners. A quarter of Americans work in the business of "guard labour" (some form of keeping their fellow Americans in line). It costs $148,767/year (2011) to keep a juvenile in detention. It costs $12,926 (2011) to find the average school child.

Some shocking numbers, but here's an even more shocking tidbit:

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. (Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution (1865), Section 1.

I highlighted that one little phrase with italics... because it is a loophole so big you can drive an entire prison system through it. Flip it around and... slavery and involuntary servitude is OK as a punishment for a convicted criminal. So... yes... slavery was technically abolished in 1865 but... if you believe it's dead and gone... well... it's clearly not. The prison system just became the new slave plantation. It's the same work, done by the same workers, just with a new label. Trade in slaves for forced labour. A rose by any other name... It's kind of a hard nugget to swallow... that racism is not just bigotry but the institutional expression of white supremacy. Add in the bit from the first chapter and you have the US, land of the free and home of the brave, as a war-making, punishing state. Brave warriors? Free prisoners?

Ayers would argue that getting rid of mass incarceration is part of the road of abolition. Getting rid of slavery wasn't enough, if it just got morphed into a prison system that disproportionately affects African Americans and people of colour. There must be alternatives to caging people. Asking the "What if..." question shifts the point and changes the frame. What if... prison was the last resort? Instead of the first resort?

And let's not even talk about the prison-industrial complex... privately-run prisons supported by the federal government. And... finally, Ayers argues that schools for the poor are simply the prep schools for the prisoners of tomorrow...

We then move on to Chapter 3 - Shoulders to the Wheel, which looks at the Economic Complex. Some stats are in order. Sweden has 67% of its workers in trade unions... the US? Only 11%. Americans work 30% more hours than the Dutch. The top 400 richest Americans have the same net worth as the poorest 150 million Americans. That's 400:150,000,000.

Ayers argues that there is no such thing as the Free Market. Gross disparities in wealth distort and destroy democracy and... under capitalism... everything is monetized. Everything is an "industry" or a "market" and individuals are not "citizens" but "consumers". Labour is simply a commodity and one of the easiest ways to cut the cost of production.

Ayers also takes a look at the Communist Manifesto of Marx and Engels, both of whom admired capitalism (really, they did) but who also condemned its exploitation whereby it reduces people to the level of objects. When everything becomes an object - people, animals, trees, rocks, the Earth itself... then everything has been robbed of its own intrinsic value. And money cannot and should not be the sole determining factor in deciding the value of something.

Demand the Impossible - Bill Ayers - Part 1 of 4

2020 Reading Challenge - Day 184

July 3, 2020

Book 53 - Demand the Impossible: A Radical Manifesto
Bill Ayers (2016)
 Part 1 - page 1-42
Reading Time - 60 minutes

I bought this book in 2017, because I couldn't get it from any library and it looked really interesting. It's taken me three years to actually get around to reading it, but I'm glad I did. It seems a very appropriate book for the times in which we are living - virus, economy, racial inequity, climate catastrophe, ongoing war, etc, etc. Take your pick...

I know nothing about the author although he does seem to be a social justice activist. He organizes the book by theme and has an introduction in which he basically points the finger at capitalism as the origin and source of most of the evils in the arena of social justice. "Freedom without socialism is a license for privilege and injustice, while socialism without freedom can become slavery and brutality". It's kind of a mind blowing concept and he acknowledges that the biggest obstacle to revolution is a serious and often unrecognized lack of confidence. If we are convinced that capitalism is the only game in town then... we aren't  going to be open to going anywhere else... The author encourages us to push beyond the obvious and the settled, to envision an alternate universe with a couple of simple words... "What if..."... Because, when you actually look at the state of the world, and  the US in particular... it's actually kind of shocking. And I think... perhaps we have been the lobsters in the cooking pot... with the temperature going up so gradually that we haven't even noticed that things have gotten quite intolerable...

The chapters of the book are arranged by various themes, but there are a couple of threads that bind them all together. The first is that most everything in the world has been commercialized or capitalism-ized... It's not just  the military... it's the military-industrial complex. It's not just food... it's the food-industry. It's not just health care... it's the health-care industry... or market or whatever. And that's a bit of a shock, to recognize that everything has been market-ized... to make money. The second theme that runs through the book is the smack-in-your-face numbers of what gets spent and what does not get spent. He starts each chapter with a list of quite frightening statistics that make one wonder... who is running this show?

In Chapter 1, Ayers looks at the Military and the "What if" of disarmament. A few figures. In 2014, the US spent $609 billion dollars on the military. The US military has 587 bases in foreign countries. There are a grand total of 0 foreign bases on US soil. The US was the #1 global arms dealer in 2015. From this, we get the sense that the US spends a lot of time and money on the business of war. And make no mistake, war is a business. We might believe that having the US as the world's powerhouse keeps the world safe... but Ayers would say that is simply not true. It actually makes the world unsafer and fosters more violence around the world. The US has a long history of interfering in the domestic affairs of other countries and of supporting right-wing subversives. This would obviously be in reaction to the Soviet Union promoting left-wing radicals... so by default, the US then takes the other side. Ayers would argue that the US, with its ongoing "war on terror" is in a state of permanent war. He quotes John Dewey who said, "All nations, even those professedly the most democratic... are compelled in war to turn authoritarian and totalitarian". Yup... that's true. Saw it with Great Britain during the Second World War. But... what happens when a country is in a state of permanent war? He has a list...

• omnivorous national security and surveillance
• abrogation of privacy and civil liberties
• wide us of mass incarceration
• banality of torture, domestically and internationally
• undermining of tolerance everywhere.

We just have to look at the US to see... yup... they are there. Ayers also argues that the US is a war culture... they say that they come in peace (Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan, wherever) but it always ends up as a war. A former Marine Corps Major General, Smedley Butler, famously said that "war is a racket" and had three proposals to limit war:

1. strictly limit all military forces to a defensive posture
2. hold a referendum of those who would be on the front lines before any military action is taken
3. take the profit out of war by, among other measures, conscripting the captains of industry and finances as the foot soldiers in any impending fight

Well... that might do it... And, Eisenhower did offer a warning about the military-industrial complex. War is a lucrative business... Ayers does envision a different world, a world where... What if... warriors were transformed into teachers, caregivers, farmers...

I'm a natural sceptic so I kind of look at this and wonder... yes, but. what about China and Russia and all those other countries who we, in the West, have to keep at bay. Is it too much to dream of a day when the lion lays down with the lamb and swords are beaten into ploughshares? Perhaps this virus will teach us that the time for empires and imperial policy, be it British, American, Russian or Chinese, is over. That we are all united together on this planet and need to start working together instead of competing with each other...

The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry - Part 2 of 2

2020 Reading Challenge - Day 183

July 2, 2020

Book 52 - The Little Prince
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1943)
 Part 1 - page 51-91
Reading Time - 30 minutes

There has always been one line in The Little Prince that stands our for me, a line spoken by the Fox - "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye". I think that sums it up quite well. And if all I take away from The Little Prince is that line... well, I think that's quite a bit.

After visiting several planets with their individual inhabitants, lastly that of the Geographer, the Little Prince, arrives upon Earth. But Earth is very different from the tiny planets/stars he has been visiting, as are the inhabitants. His first encounter is with the Snake who promises that "whomever I touch, I send back to the earth from whence he came"... an obvious allusion to death. He then meets a flower, finds an entire garden of roses, making him a bit sad that his own special flower on his planet is quite common. And then... the Little Prince meets the Fox who begs to be tamed. According to the Fox, "one only understands the things that one tames" and that "Men have no more time to understand anything." He tells the Little Prince, "If you want a friend, tame me...". This taming business, according to the Fox requires time and patience.  And the Fox reminds the Little Prince that "you become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed"...

The Little Prince has a few more encounters and then we, the readers, catch up with the narration of the Aviator... ultimately watching as the Snake bites the Little Prince so that he can return to his star/planet. And when, six years later, the Aviator looks up at the stars, he thinks of the Little Prince and his sheep and wonders... did the sheep eat the rose or... did the Little Prince manage to protect it.

There is a message here... that we, who tend to look at things, with a superficial eye, do not really know them, understand them or cherish them. We do not see what is invisible to the eye because we do not love the things we gaze upon. We have not tamed them... or been tamed by them... because we have neither the time nor the patience to just gaze in wonder. For if we did gaze in wonder at anything, a stone, a flower, a star, a tree, a snake... we would see it rightly with our heart... and could no more destroy it than we could destroy ourselves. At least... that's my take on it...

The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry - 1 of 2

2020 Reading Challenge - Day 182

July 1, 2020

Book 52 - The Little Prince
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1943)
 Part 1 - page 1 to 50
Reading Time - 30 minutes

I have read The Little Prince several times over the last few decades and I always read it with fresh yes. It is a charming little story, deceptive in its simplicity. Every time I read it, I think I might come closer to the meaning at the heart of this fable... and every time I fail!

Oh sure, there are truths within it that I get... that we adults have complicated life to a ridiculous degree... that we focus on things that are not important at all... and yet I always leave the book wondering... But what does it mean!!??

In the first half of the book, we meet the Aviator (narrator) who tells us how his faltering plane landed in the desert far from civilization. And how he met the Little Prince who asked him to draw him a sheep. The Aviator, not being the best artist, offered several sheep to the Little Prince who rejected them all. With a bit of a flippant attitude, the Aviator then drew a box (with holes) for the Little Prince and told him the sheep was inside the box. Excellent!! During the course of their conversations, the Aviator peaces together the story of the Little Prince and how he came to leave his tiny Little Planet with its three volcanoes... and a precious new flower. The new flower was a bit demanding and the Little Prince headed off on a voyage which took him to several different planets. We aren't told how he managed the trip... that is not important! He meets a number of characters - a King, a Geographer, a Tippler, and others... and takes away important lessons from each.

I read a few articles about The Little Prince... one author said it's a story about war (it was published in 1943). And that the Little Prince's precious flower represents his wife... That explanation seems like... and adult explanation. Because we adults desperately want to know what something means... but as soon as we pin it to the wall, dissect it and say "Voila - this is what it means!"... we have lost it. That, I think, is what the Little Prince would say... asking about the meaning of the book is an adult question... and is not important. Can we just enjoy the story as it is? Without attempting to dissect it and squeeze a deeper meaning out of it?