Radio Show - April 29 By the People - News

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Apr 29 show

Henry Brooks Adams believed that “Images are not arguments, rarely even lead to proof, but the mind craves them.” Henri Frederic Amiel believed that the natural liking for the false had several causes, one being “the predominance of the imagination over reason, which affects the understanding.”

The Globe and Mail’s weekly national bestsellers list includes two titles dealing with the expansion and subsequent collapse of societies: Ronald Wright’s “A Short History of Progress” and Jared Diamond’s “Collapse”. Both authors write about the ecological collapse of Easter Island and the consequential disintegration of its society. Diamond asks, “What did the Easter Islander who cut down the last palm tree say while he was doing it?” At that stage the question was irrelevant – a case of too little too late. Why did Easter Islanders not see the emerging disaster while there might still have been time to prevent it? The question today is why are we, with the benefit of our vast knowledge and science, doing to ourselves exactly what Easter Islanders did to themselves a millennium ago?

The way in which ideas are formed is what gives character to the human mind.” This is a quote out of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Emile. Emile is about the education of boys, but the premise applies to democracy’s character as much as it does to the human mind.
In less than two months we will be voting on a proposed new electoral system. This system evolved from an idea developed by the”Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform,” a body of randomly selected volunteer citizens assembled to look at the way our provincial legislature is elected. Not much attention was paid to the Citizens’ Assembly when it was formed and while the group learned about electoral systems. Their public meetings, though, were well attended, and many citizens made presentations ranging from naïve to expert. Finally, just a few weeks before the referendum, public discussion is picking up.

The debate on same sex marriage, the right of people to get married without regard to their anatomy, is at one time perplexing and indicative of the status of tolerance in our democracy.
The only reason for the state to be involved in the question of marriage is if the union is to have the status of a legal contract between parties. Who should get married and to whom is a question that has precious little to do with sex. It is a contract to do with commitment and respect. I will argue that, compared to the legal obligations the contract entails, sex is a secondary consideration at best. Under our laws an adult person may be as sexually active as he or she may wish to be, married or not, with one or more partners, simultaneously or consecutively, same or opposite sex. From the point of view of the law, sexual activities between willing adults are okay. Obscenity laws impose a few restrictions to be sure, but obscenity laws are not concerned with what is being done by whom and with whom, so long as the activity is done more or less out of public view.