Morality: Who Decides?

Vancouver's successful project in harm-reduction, Insite, has saved lives.  35% fewer overdose deaths in the infamous downtown eastside of the city, following decades of tragedy as addicts succumbed to the unpredictable potency of heroin purchased illegally.  Doctors, judges, politicians with compassion, residents of the east Hastings area, criminologists, sociologists and those who object to the criminalization of addicts, all applaud the project.  The federal government has reluctantly suspended the Criminal Act so research could be conducted on the safe injection site project, while simultaneously calling it immoral. 

Just a minute here....  saving lives is immoral, but sending young people off to kill other young people is o.k. because the invading force always has the moral advantage, I guess.  Oops, not when it is the other country's army that is invading us.  This moralizing stuff gets tricky. 

Did Bradley Manning have it right when he decided getting the truth out about atrocities and lies at the highest level of government?  Oh, I guess not, because he is facing life in prison.  But, he is getting much support from others who made similar choices, and he reportedly is steadfast in his belief that it was the right thing to do.

Whistle-blowing is rarely rewarded in any material sense, and can, in fact, cause the blower a lot of anguish, so what drives someone to make the decision?  That is a personal and individual thing, but for some the internal dissonance is unbearable, and the resolution of the dilemma is to spill the beans, and damn the consequences.  Those consequences can be loss of job, of friends, family can turn against you, and in the U.S. this can mean life imprisonment or the death penalty.  If the blower is firm in their belief that they did the right thing, sometimes the satisfaction that comes with "doing the right thing" compensates for other consequences.

Moral development and cultural norms go hand in hand, along with family values (I mean the values your family instills, not the values Conservative governments spew).  Interesting the way conservatives tend to frame their values as the only "family values".  Our morals develop through experience at home, in the community, at school, through activities and entertainment we are exposed to.  Spirituality is wound into all of those, I believe, rather than sitting apart from other experience.  Genetics probably play a role not yet understood. 

Kohlberg presented his ideas on moral development, and Carol Gilligan contributed her feminist version, with variations following.  My interest is in the idea that moral decision-making develops through stages as do other types of development, not necessarily at the same pace as chronological development or physical maturation.  The feminist/masculinist conflict/comparsion isn't the key interest for me.  The idea that individual morality develops along with the capacity for more abstract thought clarified much for me.  Some remain stuck on following the rules regardless of the rationality of the rules and some will break the rules if they believe that is the right thing for the common good.  Some just follow their gut, inner voice, intuition or their version of god(dess) communicates the "right" path in some way.

So, I believe Tony Clement put his foot in his mouth when he loudly proclaimed that providing a safe injection site for heroin addicts is immoral.  He didn't realize that so many intelligent people saw his statement as ludicrous, perhaps he thought he would score political points with his strongly held views.  Perhaps it didn't occur to him that heroin addicts are someone's son, daughter, sister, friend, mother or father?  Perhaps he forgot or never realized that people who struggle with addiction, trauma, poverty, and prejudice are individuals that deserve love, support, and dignity.  Perhaps it is his moral development that is lacking.  Good luck with that, Tony.

Get Tough on Crime?

Once again our esteemed leader, Prime Minister Harper, is making uninformed decisions such as insisting that we need to get tougher on crime.  It doesn't seem to matter that in fact our crime rate overall has gone down in recent decades.  So, he wants to increase spending, dump useful programs like prison farms, and put more people inside, at the taxpayers' expense.  Never mind that we already spend more than ten times as much per inmate as we do per student in our schools here in Canada.  That's right.  Even though we know what good fiscal and social policy a strong education system is, even though prisoners themselves know that what they need is education, counselling, and job skills, our federal government still wants to put more people inside, and build more prisons to house them all.  Of course they are often fathers, and their families are often then dependent on taxpayers as well.

Here are some astounding facts about the direction Harper is taking us:
http://www.suite101.com/content/canada-spends-more-on-prisons-than-schools-a363996

...and the reality about how much crime there is in Canada?  We don't need all these expensive prisons!!  Put them to work in the real world, paying back in some meaningful way!

http://www.suite101.com/content/how-much-violent-crime-occurs-in-canada-a365657

Japan's tragedy, west coast next?

Sometimes it seems like we live in an idealistic bubble here on the west coast of North America.  We share the Ring of Fire with Japan and New Zealand, who have been devastated by earthquakes this year, and we are shaken regularly, although not in a big way for a long time.  Since last week there has been a resurgence of interest in this topic, as I have seen by the upsurge in clicks on my recent article: 
http://www.suite101.com/content/earthquakes-on-vancouver-island-bc-a358492 

I predict that this interest will die down again as Japan recovers, and we will go back to our usual complacency here in "lotus land".  For example, our schools here in B.C. are far from earthquake proof, according to this article:
 http://www.canadianconsultingengineer.com/issues/story.aspx?aid=1000207691

A 1.5 billion dollar program was announced in 2005 which was intended to bring B.C. schools up to new seismic standards by 2020.  To date, 121 out of 750 schools have been brought up to date.  Every day, parents send their precious children to schools that cannot adequately protect their children from the inevitable "big one".  The Vancouver School Board is worried about the pace of retro-fitting old schools in the city; 900 million has been spent so far.

How is it that in this free, democratic, peaceful, human-rights based country......that our children are not our number one priority?  That immensely wealthy corporations spend as much on bonuses as B.C. spends on making their schools safe?  Where are the corporate donors in this situation?

Check out what Dambisa Moyo has to say in "How the West Was Lost"....  she has the courage to confront western democracies for their hypocrisy.

Another situation that has remained under the radar of B.C.'s environmental groups for decades, and that is the nuclear danger sitting just across our southern border - Hanford Nuclear site in Washington state.  The U.S. Dept. of Energy is working hard, finally, to clean up the horrific mess left by 68 years of plutonium production and storing of dangerous nuclear waste.  Read about it in my article:
http://www.suite101.com/content/nuclear-waste-dump-in-the-pacific-northwest-a358901

We need to send Japan our aid in whatever form we can, and work hard to protect ourselves from a similar disaster.  We are not as prepared, either through government services or through our own efforts.  Lobby local and provincial governments to step up to the plate, volunteer on disaster prevention and support committees, and get ready in our own home and work environments so that we can take care of ourselves when necessary.  This will take the load off officials when the time comes.  And it will.  Just ask First Nations people about their oral history on the west coast.  Entire villages were wiped out in the 1700's.

Here's the info:
http://www.quakekare.com/?gclid=CNW2tp_S2KcCFRphgwodsSmIew

While B.C. parents and school boards scramble to protect their children by trying to get schools updated to current seismic standards, the federal government goes ahead with 18 crime bills without thoroughly investigating or disclosing the actual cost of implementing these questionable bills.  They say Canadians need protecting from dangerous criminals, but the crime rate has been dropping for decades, and they have closed progressive prison programs such as prison farms.  Their insular approach to legislation could mean contempt of parliament.  Follow Kady's blog for up to the minute news from Ottawa, and check out this report:
http://www.thehilltimes.ca/dailyupdate/view/102

 

News gets through

These days I find myself looking to Al Jazeera English for up to the minute news from around the world.  Realizing that American news has biased us toward this news agency, I searched out some history and current information, only to discover that journalists from Canada and Britain are heavily involved with Al Jazeera.  I wrote an article for Suite101 summarizing what I had discovered, and predictably, there was an angry post from a reader prophesizing the "Islamification" of Canada.  I do believe Canadians are able to read diverse perspectives without becoming Americanized, Catholicized, Paganicized or otherwiseified. 
Here is a link to my aricle:
 http://www.suite101.com/content/al-jazeera-in-canada--a-welcome-voice-a345965

Noam Chomsky is an American with another take on North American culture, one which sees global dominance as an American quest.   This book was written a few years ago, but Noam's perspective on current affairs can be found on his blog:   
http://www.zcommunications.org/blog/noamchomsky

Bute Inlet threatened!

Bute Inlet is a spectacular and relatively unspoiled part of the British Columbia coast.  Recent applications to for hydro generating and water-bottling projects could destroy the pristine nature of the area.  Environmentalists have been concerned in Canada for a long time about the lack of regulations around selling our water, and activists are pressuring for more protection for this intact watershed.  Check out the information on the Friends of Bute Inlet web site and lend them your voice!

The following photo is taken from Hoskyn Channel near the community of Surge Narrows, looking northeast toward Bute and Toba Inlet - this link takes you to my new article about "The Bute" .  This mountain peak is locally known as The Cowboy Hat or Mt. Doogie Dowler.



Ian McAllister has honoured the Coastal Wolves and the Great Bear Rainforest of British Columbia with his years of research, his books, and his amazing photography.  Supreme patience and devotion to the animals of the rainforest, threatened by development, tanker traffic, and logging.

These books are a treasure.

My articles on animal conservation and eco-tourism in B.C. can be found at http://www.suite101.com/ .  Links to research and web sites of interest are included for Pacific Coastal wolves and Mexican wolves, the most endangered of the Grey Wolves.

I took this photo early on a summer morning, summer of 2010, low tide on Maurelle Is., one of the Discovery Islands in British Columbia. 

Here is a book that has touched many womens' souls.  Clarissa Pinkola Estes embodies 'duende'......  read this book, learn to howl, and find your pack.

While in southern California recently I learned more about the plight of the Mexican Wolf, almost hunted to extinction, so I wrote an article for Suite101 about these wolves.  This Mexican Wolf lives at The Living Desert in southern California, part of a breeding program with the goal of re-establishing a healthy population in their original territory.