Bregmata

This is the best summary of what’s going on on Parliament Hill I have yet to find.

First off, I’m going to grumble again about my hosting provider. It seems they’re “100% uptime” guarantee uses a different sort of math than the one I studied in school. It’s closer to 97% by my calculation, and they don’t even update their status page.

Anyways, on to todays topic. The election.

I watched the leaders’ debates last week. I am exposed to paid political messages on television and radio. I receive print literature from candidates in the neighbouring ridings (none in my own, hmmm…) and I read various statements form candidates in the local weeklies. Each and every time, the message is the same.

They tell me not to vote for the other guy.

Nobody wants to tell me what they stand for, what they would or will do, what they think about issues. Nobody wants to tell me why I should vote for them. They, one and all, tell me what their opponents stand for, think, and would do and why I should not vote for them.

It’s just stupid.

And still the pundits are surprised by how cynical the voters have become.

Try, just try, giving me something to vote for instead of to vote against. I’d rather standa a chance of getting what I want rather than not getting what I don’t want.

I watches the Election 2008 Leaders’ Debate on television last night.

I was incredibly disappointed.

The participants engaged in constant ad homined attacks, particularly on the Prime Minister. The media pundits loved it, just as they loved it when there was just unintelligible noise when everyone was talking at the same time. I do not recognise either situation as debate.

What I was hoping for was for each leader to articulate their party’s policies, and for some sort of discussion on the relative merits and faults of these policies. What I got was a bunch of kids calling names and trying to get the last word in edgewise, accompanied by obvious and sordid attempts at image manipulation.

I feel the world was left a little worse after the debate rather than a little better.

Two things happened last week that are related in an important way.

First, my eldest child started high school.

Second, a federal election was called.

Now, you might not see much of a relationship between those two events. I’ll explain.

The first thing my daughter learned when she walked through the doors of the school was that trust is contemptible, and the second was that honesty is not valued. First impressions are very important, and set the stage and tone for everything else that follows. The first lesson was that all students had to buy locks for their lockers from the school so that the school administration would know the combination for the lock so that they could invade the privacy of a student at any time (this, trust is contemptible). The second lesson was that all students must pay mandatory fees — illegal under the Education Act of Ontario (I can give you clause, paragraph and sub[aragraph if you want, only I don’t have it to hand at the moment). By the schoold administration telling the student that such a fee is mandatory when it is in fact illegal re require such a payment simply teaches the lesson that honesty is not valued.

On to the election. The first thing that I heard on tge radio after the writ was dropped was a panel with representatives from the three most powerful parties all bemoaning the fact that the electorate is cynical and acts negatively when personally canvassed.

Well, nobody should be surprised. Cynicism is rampant in our society, and grows stronger as time passes. Its roots are in the first lessons we learn in school (no trust! no honesty!) and reinforced by what we see our authorities do every day. Election campaigns that focus on ad hominem and ipso dixit arguments, policies rooted is cynical mistrust and dishonesty, and spin, spin, spin.

I am starting to think cynicism is the biggest sin there is out there. It’s a vicious circle that feeds on itself.

We can stop it. We would start by demonstrating trust and honesty at all levels, especially and including institutes of education and governance. We’re not all criminals (schools don’t need penitentiary-style lockdowns). We’re not all children. We’re not all in it for ourselves without regard to others.

Is there some way to design institutions with appropriate checks and balances so that they become self-correcting to keep trust and honesty as the default state?