Pour un Canada plus authentique

Dave Pollard ne cesse de réfléchir sur How to save the World. À la veille du premier juillet, sa réflexion, inspirée par John Ralston Saul et Hugh Brody, pourrait s'intituler How to save the Canada. Je partage cette vision d'un Canada authentique qui reviendrait à ses valeurs indigènes; cette vision demeurera cependant utopique tant que le Canada anglais gardera sa mentalité de conquérant (lire mon commentaire et la réponse de Dave Pollard à ce sujet) : pour être encore plus authentique, cette vision du Canada devrait également inclure les 'valeurs fondatrices' dont il a été beaucoup question lors de la Commission de consultation sur les pratiques d’accommodement reliées aux différences culturelles (Commission Bouchard-Taylor).

« [...] this country could be great, and its people could be models for the rest of the world at a time when sustainable, responsible, humble models are so desperately needed.

Author (and spouse of the former governer-general) John Ralston Saul explained in a TVO podcast last month why our legacy offers us some clues of how we could be great. Highlights:

• [Citing First Nations playwright Tomson Highway] "Language is given form by mythology." Highway believes English is the language of the head, French the language of the heart, and indigenous languages are those of the body, the instinct and the senses. Today 45 of 53 indigenous languages spoken in Canada are disappearing, taking with them the original, and in Saul's view the authentic mythology of this country. In the absence of an authentic mythology and native language we are not a nation, and we cannot address the unique problems and imaginative possibilities this land presents.
• We are, in fact, one of the few affluent countries in the world that are not monolithic, rational nation-states. By default, we are therefore a civilization of minorities (he did not use the word 'tribes' but that's what came to my mind as I listened). That is not a bad thing, but it requires us to stop following the US/European models and create our own. To create that model, we need to stop wasting the time of the leaders of Canada's 1.2 million aboriginal people in land claim disputes and allow them to guide us. The shared collective unconscious of our land is buried in their languages and we need them to interpret it for us.
• Despite ruthless and persistent efforts to get Canadians to embrace Anglo-American myths and values, many of the indigenous values remain strong in Canada, for pragmatic and physical reasons. They comprise the unconscious Canadian mythology, which is very different from that of the US and UK (and often really annoys Americans and British people who do not understand or appreciate its subtleties). Elements include:
1. an appreciation and respect for complexity and ambiguity
2. a patience to discuss, debate and negotiate as often and as long as it takes
3. a willingness to allow truth and knowledge and consensus to emerge
4. an aversion to cultural coercion and monoculture (the melting pot)
5. recognition of the importance of striking the balance between individual and collective rights and interests
6. a preference for adaptation over imposing will, as a strategy for dealing with change
7. a preference for egalitarian, flat structures over hierarchy and rank

What would a nation that accepted this as its authentic mythology be like?

A few years ago I wrote about Hugh Brody's book, The Other Side of Eden, an anthropological study of indigenous peoples, and it contained some clues. If our nation adopted an authentic indigenous mythology, and accepted this as our innate culture, in addition to entrenching the seven elements Saul notes above, we would:

8. learn by doing, by experimenting, by practice, not by being told what to do by bosses, experts, 'leaders' or parents
9. abhor dishonesty and revere candid and complete sharing of knowledge
10. adapt to the land and physical reality of living here, rather than changing it
11. appreciate that we belong to the land, not the other way around, and conserve it and steward it for future generations and all-life-on-Earth
12. learn and adopt useful terms from all native languages
13. embrace an oral culture, including learning when to speak, when and how to listen
14. become master story-tellers
15. learn the arts of analogy and inductive reasoning
16. respect all forms of life as sacred
17. appreciate the value of facilitation, consensus and conflict resolution
18. leave it up to individuals to act responsibly after a discussion (rather than setting out an explicit 'who will do what by when' follow-up action list) -- this would revolutionize how meetings occur
19. listen to experts' stories, but discourage them from proffering unsolicited instruction, advice or opinions -- let the story convey the wisdom
20. trust our instincts and our subconscious to guide us as much as our intellects
21. be generous with our possessions, to encourage reciprocality and engender trust
22. respect women as full equals
23. acknowledge and respect uncertainty, unpredictability, qualification, nuance and imprecision, and resist oversimplification, false certainty and false dichotomy
24. encourage and enable the development of self-esteem, self-confidence and self-sufficiency
25. stress the importance of strong, autonomous communities

These 25 qualities are already somewhat recognizable in the national character of Canadians. It's almost as if we can't help ourselves, as if this is just part of the way we are. For nearly two centuries we have sublimated and denied these characteristics, but they are still part of us, instinctive, coded somehow in our DNA. While a minority of my readers are Canadian, I find that when I talk about these qualities they seem to resonate much more strongly with Canadian readers than most others.

I am no longer idealistic enough to advocate the systematic breaking up of Canada into small self-selected communities; in a globalized world that's no longer feasible. But there are ways in which this national character, this authentic mythology of our nation might be institutionalized:

• We could teach it in schools, as an integral part of Canadian history: This is who we are and what makes us different from people of other nations.
• We could celebrate it during Canada Day, since right now what we celebrate on that day is dubious (the confederation of our country according to Anglo-American principles, ignoring the legitimacy and primacy of the First Nations who already lived here)
• We could legitimize Canada's indigenous languages and work to protect and extend them
• We could abolish the useless Canadian Senate and replace it with a self-selected council of aboriginal leaders whose views on all matters of public policy and cultural development would be actively sought and listened to
• We could strive in all our activities to become and be seen as the world's most accomplished and articulate story-tellers
• We could teach and encourage entrepreneurial business skills and formation, to make our society and economy more resilient and less dependent
• We could devolve power and authority as much as practical, not to massive provincial, regional and city governments, but to local self-governing communities, and give these communities as much autonomy as they can reasonably handle

Instead of dysfunctionally trying to make our country in the image of others, we could just allow our nation to evolve to be what it is intended to be. And we could stop pretending to be what we are not, and instead become models for the rest of the world: masters of complexity, subtlety, adaptation, story and attentiveness to what we know, without the need for laws, governments or rhetoric, to be right. »

David Pollard, What Canada could be

La culture citoyenne

« La culture est menacée. La culture québécoise est menacée. Il y a une sorte de guerre qui a été déclarée contre cette culture. (...) Quand je dis que la culture est menacée, ce n'est pas la culture comme une rubrique de journal -- c'est-à-dire que ce n'est pas juste les artistes, les travailleurs de la culture qui sont menacés (on est à Radio-Canada qui est menacée; solidarité à tous les artisans de Radio-Canada aujourd'hui!) --, c'est une menace contre la culture comme expression citoyenne, c'est la culture citoyenne qui est menacée parce que le pouvoir politique aujourd'hui au fédéral est contre tout ce que le Québec représente comme société progressiste. Et je suis persuadé que ce n'est pas en nous divisant, en allant chercher quelques petites concessions par ci et par là que nous allons protéger cet acquis extraordinaire du Québec collectif; c'est en créant un mouvement qui se défait de cet obscurantisme qui règne à Ottawa. Je voudrais terminer avec une phrase (que j'ai copiée à quelqu'un) qui est très pertinente : "La culture, dans le sens le plus large, est comme un parachute : quand on n'en a pas, on s'écrase." »

Patricio Henriquez, au Gala des Jutra. Récipiendaire du Prix du meilleur documentaire pour son plus récent film Sous la cagoule, un voyage au bout de la torture

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« Si j’étais toujours enseignant, je m’empresserais de coller ce texte sur la porte de mon local, pour qu’il serve sans cesse de rappel aux élèves:

La culture est quelque chose de dynamique — vous en faites partie — vous disposez de moyens de communication extraordinaires — servez-vous-en! — communiquez avec les gens qui s’adressent à vous, à travers les médias, les livres ou autrement, quels qu’ils soient — interpellez votre entourage— posez-leur des questions — demandez qu’on vous explique — donnez votre opinion.

Je crois que c’est seulement de cette façon que les technologies du numérique — et que la culture, dans un environnement numérique — pourront devenir des outils de liberté et de solidarité; et non pas seulement de nouveaux vecteurs de la société de consommation. »

Clément Laberge

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« [Important] questions are not only the key to great research, they are key to all sorts of doors that, in our world of imaginative poverty, would otherwise remain closed, unexamined. [...]

Great questions are opening, not narrowing. They smash dichotomies rather than funneling people into them. Great questions are an invitation to great conversation. Many great questions start with "What if...?" And, perhaps most important, great questions tap into things that people care about. Great questions + passion = a recipe for moving forward, energetically and enthusiastically. [...]

What's holding you back from doing what you want to do, intend to do, love doing? What important question could you ask yourself about that challenge that might change everything?

Want to save the world, and yourself? Start by asking the right, smart, creative, provocative, important questions. »

Dave Pollard

Comment 'la crise' nous touche personnellement

Dans mon blogueviseur et ailleurs sur le Web, on parle peu de la très médiatisée crise économique actuelle. Comme si on voulait l'occulter. La conjurer. Ou simplement l'oublier. C'est pourtant, de mémoire d'homme de soixante-six ans, un événement dont l'importance et la signification risquent d'égaler l'attaque indicible des tours jumelles du World Trade Center, l'invasion sauvage de l'Irak par les Américains, la chute du mur de Berlin et celle de l'URSS... pour ne mentionner que ceux-là. Preuve : les gouvernements paniquent aujourd'hui comme ils l'ont fait au lendemain du 11 septembre 2001 en investissant massivement pour sécuriser le système; cette fois-ci cependant, l'argent public servira à sauver le système financier (dont dépend le système économique qui assure au politique sa stabilité). Mais nous, les contribuables qui n'avons d'autre choix que de payer les pots cassés par ceux à qui nous confions notre sort en toute confiance... En quoi cette crise nous touche-t-elle?

Le sujet a inspiré à Pierre Foglia une de ses chroniques les plus 'songées', La mort, encore. Extraits :

« Si les grands de ce monde, et les petits tout autant, avaient conscience de leur "finitude", s'ils avaient à l'esprit que tout cela va finir, si nous avions tous notre mort imprimée en relief dans notre cerveau, il me semble que, au lieu de s'engueuler pour savoir s'il y aura ou non une vie après, on se dépêcherait de s'organiser pour qu'il y en ait une avant.

« Me semble que tout serait différent si la mort comme issue certaine et scientifique à notre aventure était, en permanence, partie de notre vie. Morbide, vous croyez?

« Me semble au contraire que cela nous ferait le pied plus léger. Plus aventureux. Nous rendrait moins pressés de tout, sauf de plénitude. Moins portés sur la vitesse. Moins portés sur la possession et le pouvoir. Moins dépendants des systèmes. Plus légers, je dis bien. Au moment de prendre de grandes décisions ou d'entrer dans un débat l'écume aux lèvres, en pensant à la mort nous viendrait cette petite formule magique qui chasse la brume et déleste le cerveau de ses idées de plomb: what the fuck?

« [...] Cette crise est liée à notre incapacité de penser en dehors des systèmes. En dehors des formules consacrées comme «expansion durable», qui induit une idée hyper-convenue du progrès. Notre incapacité de penser en dehors de formules comme «une demande suffisante», qui induit l'obligation de la consumante consommation.

« Liée aussi à notre incapacité de penser en dehors de la seule certitude scientifique de notre vie: la mort.

« Je déconne? Disons que j'explore cette liberté, cette légèreté, cette envie de prendre des risques (what the fuck), cette envie d'inventer qu'aiguillonne la certitude de la mort. Cette envie de créer plutôt que de suivre le sillon qui mène de la crise de 1932 à celle des années 80 à celle d'aujourd'hui.

Dave Pollard s'est demandé quels changements (majeurs!) cette crise devrait avoir sur nos comportements individuels, selon les scénarios qui risquent de s'ensuivre : What's next for the economy?

What Might Happen Next	What You Can Do Now
Deflation (continuous price drops) for manufactured and luxury goods/services, stocks and housing	Defer buying such goods Learn to haggle (marchander) -- don't pay list Don't be suckered by "sales" and "limited time offers" Don't be suckered into getting back into the market(s) anytime soon
Inflation (sharp price increases) for staple goods (food, energy) and land; Agricultural crisis in 2009	Grow your own, using permaculture Make meals from scratch Invest in solar, wind, geothermal, insulation Practice energy conservation Prepare to spend more of your income on these items
Spike in personal, corporate and government bankruptcies; Tight, expensive credit for most	Pay off debts and avoid new ones Don't buy extended warranties If you must buy, make sure it's durable
Wage deflation (annual pay cuts)	All of the above Create your own sustainable Natural Enterprise Invest in know-how (carpentry, home repair, sewing, cooking) Create your own entertainment instead of buying it Learn how to buy used, wisely
Spike in pension plan insolvencies	Don't depend on your pension If it's a defined contribution plan, reconsider plans to retire
Health care crisis (increased demand + cuts in funding)	Get fit Learn to self-diagnose and (within reason) self-treat Eat healthy Practice preventive medicine
Collapse of Chinese economy	Create local markets Pledge to buy local Make your own
Infrastructure failures	Learn not to rely on the grid, Internet, or phone system Be prepared to bike or walk if public transport fails Develop carpool networks Figure out how you can work from home even if the utilities are offline Don't live in the suburbs Strengthen your local community networks
Education crisis (cuts in funding)	Learn to teach yourself, and unschool your kids Collaborate with community in education programs

Gilles Beauchamp se questionne sur la lucidité dont font preuve nos dirigeants politiques avec leurs solutions à coups de milliards : Quelles infrastructures?

« J’ai peine à avaler ces solutions qui nous incitent à agir vite, maintenant, en jetant des milliers de milliards dans la machine… pour éviter qu’elle ne se bloque… remettant à plus tard les transformations structurelles qu’il faudrait faire ! Pourtant, n’est-ce pas maintenant, alors qu’on est prêt à injecter de telles sommes (qui auraient fait s’étouffer tous les capitalistes il y a quelques mois), qu’il faut en profiter pour amorcer les changements qui étaient, même avant la crise financière, devenus urgents : modes de transport, d’urbanisation, de consommation… Quelle folie ce serait que d’investir le principal de notre marge de manœuvre dans une structure de production désuète…

« Investir dans des infrastructures, oui, mais pas celles d’hier !! Investir dans le transport collectif, la densification urbaine, la formation, les infrastructures de communication et de production énergétique propres… pas dans le pavage des autoroutes et la construction de ponts qui sont des supports à l’étalement urbain et à des comportements dont nous devrions consciemment soutenir la rétraction. »

Dans un autre billet sur le même sujet, il précise :
« ...on ne se surprendra pas que les villes proposent des projets liés à leurs missions : parcs, voies publiques… Mais le développement de places en garderie, de services aux aînés, la formation de techniciens dans des domaines en manque crucial… ce n’est pas ce qu’on entend habituellement par des “infrastructures” mais c’en sont vraiment pour les sociétés d’aujourd’hui. »

« L'éducation bénéficiera-t-elle de la crise économique? » François Guité croit que malgré la réussite du système actuel (!), elle suscitera de nouveaux modèles pédagogiques et des pratiques plus efficientes :

« Il y a de fortes chances pour que cette crise économique précipite le changement en éducation. Et pas seulement aux États-Unis où elle s'annonce plus grave qu’ailleurs. En plus de leur résilience, les Américains ont l'avantage d'avoir un système d'éducation très décentralisé qui se prête bien à l'expérimentation.

« Du besoin et du laboratoire éducationnel ainsi créé naîtront de nouveaux modèles pédagogiques. Peu importe comment le Québec résistera à la crise économique, et malgré la réussite du présent système, elle n'aura d'autre choix que de s'inspirer des pratiques les plus efficientes. »

Pour tenter de comprendre un peu mieux 'le système' qui nous mène en 'va comme je te pousse'... quelques articles du Monde diplomatique :

• Le jour où Wall Street est devenu socialiste :
  

  « Les autorités s’inquiètent non sans raison des précédents que crée chacune de leurs interventions et de ce que les banquiers privés pourraient se laisser confortablement aller à la faillite sachant qu’au dernier moment il « faudra » leur sauver la mise, comme on l’a déjà fait pour Bear Stearns et Fannie-Freddie. La morale s’offusque de ces facilités ; on resterait difficilement placide au spectacle de la finance arrogante et enrichie quand tout va bien, se réfugiant dans le giron de la puissance publique, qu’elle traite ordinairement d’aberration soviétoïde, pour quémander protections et exceptions. » (Frédéric Lordon)

• Penser l'impensable :
  

  « Pendant trente ans, la moindre idée d’une altération quelconque des fondements de l’ordre libéral afin, par exemple, d’améliorer les conditions d’existence de la majorité de la population s’était pourtant heurtée au même type de réponse : tout ceci est bien archaïque; la mondialisation est notre loi ; les caisses sont vides ; les marchés n’accepteront pas ; savez-vous que le mur de Berlin est tombé ? Et pendant trente ans, la "réforme" s’est faite, mais dans l’autre sens. Celui d’une révolution conservatrice qui livra à la finance des tranches toujours plus épaisses et plus juteuses du bien commun, comme ces services publics privatisés et métamorphosés en machines à cash "créant de la valeur" pour l’actionnaire. Celui d’une libéralisation des échanges qui attaqua les salaires et la protection sociale, contraignant des dizaines de millions de personnes à s’endetter pour préserver leur pouvoir d’achat, à "investir" (en Bourse, dans des assurances) pour garantir leur éducation, parer à la maladie, préparer leur retraite. La déflation salariale et l’érosion des protections sociales ont donc enfanté puis conforté la démesure financière ; créer le risque a encouragé à se garantir contre lui. La bulle spéculative s’est très vite emparée du logement, qu’elle transforma en placement. Sans cesse, elle fut regonflée par l’hélium idéologique de la pensée de marché. Et les mentalités changèrent, plus individualistes, plus calculatrices, moins solidaires. Le krach de 2008 n’est donc pas d’abord technique, amendable par des palliatifs tels que la "moralisation" ou la fin des "abus". C’est tout un système qui est à terre. » (Serge Halimi)

• Les disqualifiés :
  

  « A la télévision, à la radio, dans la presse écrite, qui pour commenter l’effondrement du capitalisme financier ? Les mêmes, bien sûr ! Tous, experts, éditorialistes, politiques, qui nous ont bassinés pendant deux décennies à chanter les louanges du système qui est en train de s’écrouler : ils sont là, fidèles au poste, et leur joyeuse farandole ne donne aucun signe d’essoufflement. Tout juste se partagent-ils entre ceux-ci qui, sans le moindre scrupule, ont retourné leur veste et ceux-là qui, un peu assommés par le choc, tentent néanmoins de poursuivre comme ils le peuvent leur route à défendre l’indéfendable au milieu des ruines. » (Frédéric Lordon)

• La tourmente financière vue d'un paradis fiscal :
  

  « Mais, quand il s’agit des banques, la règle de l’OCDE ne s’applique plus... Après le renflouement de Citigroup et l’annonce par Washington, le 25 novembre, d’une nouvelle perfusion de 800 milliards de dollars, les sommes mobilisées par les seuls pouvoirs publics américains pour soutenir l’activité ou garantir des actifs avoisinent 8 500 milliards de dollars. Une fraction aboutira sur les comptes d’établissements domiciliés dans des paradis fiscaux. » (Olivier Cyran)

Atomes crochus

Les motivations de nos relations interpersonnelles avec les autres sont complexes. Tellement complexes que c'est un sujet rarement abordé. Dave Pollard, en osant le faire ouvertement, touche quelques cordes sensibles...

« I have often said that we love who we imagine others to be, and not who they really are, because, after all, we can never really know who other people are (my recently-divorced friends in particular tell me this). So it is possible that I am subconsciously exaggerating (or even inventing) the qualities of people who I find lovable, and under-estimating those qualities in people I do not, and imagining wilder creatures to be more complex, present and graceful than they really are. I suspect I am not alone in this, and that while other people's "top 5 desired qualities" lists -- exceptional intelligence, great emotional strength (and self-knowledge), deep emotional sensitivity (and perceptiveness), articulateness (extraordinary ability to communicate or self-express orally, in writing, or non-verbally through art or some other medium), and great imagination (or creativity) -- undoubtedly vary (great bod, good sense of humour, attentiveness, generosity, appreciation and good personal hygiene would probably be on many), most people probably imagine the objects of their affection to be other, and more, than who they really are. How else can we explain the desire of so many women to "improve" their men (make them more who they imagined them to be before they got to know them better), and the propensity of so many men to avoid any meaningful conversation with their partners that might shatter their illusions?

« The lessons for me, I think, are obvious. I need to be more open to the qualities of every human I meet, less judgemental (though I am getting better at this, except when my usually-accurate instincts get in the way), more attentive, and less carried away by my imagination. If I were to do this, I might find almost everyone lovable, and that would certainly make me more appreciative, more positive, more optimistic, better company (for most), and more present. I might possibly learn to be humble, or even graceful. »

Dave Pollard

Unschooling ou l'école de la vraie vie

« [...] our education system attempts to impose order (in a very complicated way) on a complex system (a large number of young learners). Instead of allowing them to learn, it attempts to 'teach' them in a highly controlled and inflexible way. It also prescribes 'curricula' which attempt to tell people in what order, and using what tools, processes and media, they should 'learn'. The result is that learners are brainwashed to believe there is only one correct 'order' to learn things in, and that they need to be 'taught' in order to learn. As a result (from lack of self-confidence and lack of practice), they lose the innate capacity to learn, the ability to decide what to learn, and the ability to decide how best to learn things. The complicated system makes the situation much worse.

« A complex approach to education would provide only the minimal amount of structure to encourage the recapture of these lost capacities. Eventually every learner would decide what was important to learn, and self-direct the way and pace they learned it. More importantly, they would learn by being shown, by observing, by exploring, by enquiry, by discovering, and by doing/practicing, not by being told. That means the whole community would have to become partners in the learning experience. The benefit would be that the learner would acquire much deeper capacities much faster, and be more able and more willing to give back much more to the community from which she learned. This is the essence of 'unschooling' (as contrasted to 'home schooling', which often merely moves the same dysfunctional processes from the school environment to the home environment). [...] »

Dave Pollard

Le vote de la méfiance

Comment interpréter les résultats du vote d'hier au Québec? Selon Élections Canada : 38,9 % des Québécois n'ont pas voté et 23,3 % (38,1 % de ceux qui ont voté) ont choisi le Bloc Québécois. C'est donc 62,2 % des 'ayant droit de vote' qui n'ont pas voté Canada. Ces chiffres, selon moi, montrent bien notre méfiance collective envers les partis politiques canadiens quant à leur volonté et quant à leur capacité de respecter les aspirations des Québécois manifestées lors des deux référendums, d'être intégrés à part entière dans la fédération canadienne.

Mais il y a bien d'autres réactions aux résultats de ces élections...

Stéphanie Demers : « ... la grande nouvelle de ces élections est l'apathie électorale. Nous n'avons pas franchi les 60 % de participation. [...] Mais comme je suis optimiste (naïve ?), je vois aussi les brèches. Je vois les ouvriers des territoires des secteurs primaires et industriels de l'Ontario et de la Colombie-Britannique résister aux mécanismes de leur exploitation. Pourquoi n'est-ce pas un enjeu au Québec ? La question nationale a-t-elle obnubilé la question des disparités ? Les croyons-nous encore liées, dans nos sensibilités de peuple longtemps traité comme citoyens de seconde classe ? »

Morgane (en commentaire) : « C'est peut-être tordu comme vision, mais l'actuel gouvernement minoritaire va agir à la façon d'un majoritaire et aucun parti ne se mouillera pour l'empêcher en ce sens. Surtout pas de nouvelles élections ! Ce qui, d'une façon ou d'une autre, se traduira par une perte considérable de nos acquis sociaux et culturels. Et aucune possibilité d'en vouloir au Canada dans son ensemble et de s'opposer à une culture canadienne différente de celle du Québec, puisqu'il ne s'agit que de l'opinion d'une partie de la population. »

Joseph Facal : « ... de deux choses l’une : en votant à répétition pour le Bloc, ou bien les Québécois se montrent collectivement incapables de lire correctement leurs intérêts depuis plus de quinze ans, ou alors ils sanctionnent l’incapacité des partis fédéralistes à répondre à leurs aspirations. La première hypothèse est une manière polie de les traiter d’imbéciles. La deuxième est une autre façon de dire que la question nationale du Québec demeure un problème qui attend sa solution. Si tant de Québécois votent pour le Bloc, c’est parce qu’ils sont mal à l’aise dans le Canada d’aujourd’hui. Oui, le Québec est plus isolé que jamais. Et oui, la situation du Bloc est franchement bizarre. Mais il ne faut pas confondre la cause de la maladie avec ses symptômes. »

Michel Dumais : « Ce qui m'attriste le plus dans cette élection, c'est le taux de participation. Ou plutôt, le taux de non-participation. 42% de canadiens se sont abstenus de voter. 58% de taux de participation. 6 points sous le seuil historique de 64%. Ça me tue. Que personne ne vienne me dire qu'il y a un gagnant ce soir, quelle que soit son allégeance politique. Avec 58% comme taux de participation, nous sommes tous collectivement perdants. »

Jacques Ducharme : « Allons-nous vers une glaciation politique? Deux "minoritaires' de suite et je pense à la souplesse du "triumvirat"... Subirons-nous un méchant mélange d'ambitions personnelles tel Pompée, César et Crassus, d'il y a? L'altruisme des gens sensés et de pouvoir imiteront-ils Octave, Antoine et Lépide? L'homme étant l'homme, je n'ai pas beaucoup d'assurance sur l'avenir. « Mon » Canada est simplement souffrant.

Dave Pollard : « Such a colossal waste of energy, time and money ($300 million, just to run the election). The fact that the turnout was a record low really says it all. It really shows how dysfunctional our electoral system is. And the fact that Canadians fell for Harper's Bush-inspired character assassination of the Liberal leader, and Harper's falsely smearing the idea of a carbon tax as an "additional tax burden" (the scheme is revenue neutral and would only punish polluters and gas gulpers) was really disappointing -- it demonstrated how depressingly effective negative, dumbed-down campaign advertising can be. Ugh. Here we are, again, in the same place. »

Mario Asselin : « ... en regardant de plus proche le fait que 40,9% des électeurs ne soient pas allés voter je me suis posé une question: «À quand une campagne électorale où les politiciens se promèneront d’assemblée en assemblée pour écouter et échanger, davantage que pour parler et demander d’écouter?» Ça n’arrivera pas de sitôt. Ce n’est pas dans les moeurs. Tout comme ce n’est pas dans les moeurs en enseignement encore. C’est comique d’ailleurs, parce que le taux de décrochage et le taux d’abstention ont l’air d’évoluer pas mal dans le même sens. Mais bon, ça doit être un hasard… (...) Je crois vraiment aujourd’hui, qu’au moins 40,9% des électeurs en ont ras le pompon d’écouter et qu’il y en a bien davantage qui aimeraient plus d’échanges, voire que les politiciens se la ferment un peu plus! »

« If we stop caring, we are lost. »

« My experience suggests that some of the greatest challenges to doing 'good' work are knowledge and learning related:

• Most people are ignorant of how the world really works.
• We live in a world of great imaginative poverty, with a dearth of practical ideas about how to make work, and our world, better.
• Our conversational skills are abysmal.
• While we learn mostly from conversation, from being shown, and thenceforth from practice (all collaborative processes), our learning institutions, programs and systems deprive us of all three, and instead force us to try to learn from reading, listening, and being told (all individual processes), after which we are expected to be 'expert' without any real practice.
• This individualized approach to knowledge leads us to depend on 'experts', 'executives', 'managers' and 'consultants' and build systems that are hierarchical and support a cult of leadership, instead of drawing on collective knowledge, collaboration and community and building systems that are egalitarian and cooperative.
• We are propagandized to be competitive and to lack empathy for others, which deprives us of the will and opportunity to work and learn collaboratively and to share knowledge with others.

« One could speculate on the reasons for the emergence of such dysfunctional learning systems. My thesis is that they have been created to keep the majority, in our horribly overcrowded world of growing scarcity, from challenging the power and wealth of those at the top of the hierarchy, i.e. to create obedience and learned helplessness, stifle imagination of better ways to live, and ensure ignorance of dangerous (to the elite) knowledge.

« How might the application of connectivism help us deal with these challenges? It seems to me there are five possibilities:

1. Refocusing Social Tools: Just as Knowledge Management is now shifting focus and attention from collection to connection, social media need to turn their attention to enabling more, more effective, more informed, more valuable conversations. They need to help us identify 'the right people' (to live with, make a living with, love, and talk to) and then connect with them in real time in simple yet powerful ways that mimic, as much as possible, face-to-face conversations. They also need to help us make these conversations and meetings and social interactions more effective -- bring more clarity and context, reach consensus, enable stories to be told and remembered, capture non-verbal communication, and pick up from where we left off at the end of the last conversation -- keeping us connected, all the time, everywhere.
   
   
2. Showing Us How the World Really Works: Take learning out of the classroom and into the real world. Visit real workplaces and communities with real needs, and interact with people with different perspectives. Base learning on conversations, not lectures. Let us witness what is happening -- show us instead of telling us. Trust us to draw our own conclusions -- we don't need written examinations to try to assess what we've learned. Let the learning be collective, the result of us experiencing together, instead of studying individually a world away from the subject we are studying.
   
   
3. Emphasizing Practice Over Mastery: In complex systems, the very idea that one can achieve expertise, mastery, is arrogant and dangerous (just look at what the 'experts' have wrought in the US financial markets). The pursuit of excellence is a lifelong and humble apprenticeship towards getting ever better. We need to enable and encourage practice of the capacities listed on the mindmap above, and other, more specialized capacities that fall within areas where we have a Gift or a Passion. We all need to practice imagining, and conversing, and critical thinking, and story-telling, and collaboration. We need to find ways to become much better at these core competencies of living in the 21st century.
   
   
4. Rebuilding Learning Institutions Bottom-Up and Community-Based: Our learning institutions are not responsible to the needs of our communities, largely because they are too far removed from those communities, and to some extent because our communities are so fragmented and confused (and lied to) that they no longer know what they need their members to know. The reconstruction of the educational system therefore needs to be a partnership in which those whose work it is to teach can help those in the community understand what is needed and what is possible, and in which the members of the community can then empower the 'teachers' to provide for those local needs and to realize what is possible. Thence the whole community becomes the place of continuous learning for all its members.
   
   
5. Creating a Society of Caring: Perhaps more than anything else we need to smash the systems that encourage and tolerate indifference, cruelty, selfishness, fear, greed, anomie, cynicism and uncaring. Our political systems, our educational systems, our economic systems, the corporatist workplace systems, and the mainstream media (both information and entertainment) bombard us with messages that the world is harsh, that only the strong (should) survive, that we must compete or fall behind, grow or die, take or be taken, and that since nothing can be done by us as individuals there is no point is even learning how terrible the world us. This is dangerous propaganda, driving us to defensiveness, distrust, hopelessness, fear and anger, and wearing away our natural inclination to care for others and to want to do whatever we can for the good of the community, the planet, the whole. We must fight it by showing what is possible and by confronting the propagandists and telling the world the enormous harm their dishonest, violent, manipulative messages convey. If we stop caring, we are lost. »
   

Dave Pollard

La prochaine révolution?

« It is a recognition that the vast majority of actual work that gets done in organizations, the vast majority of value actually created, is the result of bottom-up decisions, workarounds and changes (often hidden from management for fear of retribution for violating official policies) made by the thousands of individual workers on the front lines. Those of us who have worked with large organizations recognize that they are substantially incapable of innovation, and that they drive their mavericks, bright thinkers, and imaginative people out, while absurdly over-rewarding (and over-punishing when things go badly) their senior executives. The potential 'facilitated re-democratization' of previously hierarchical organizations could reverse this brain drain and reverse their creative stagnation, to staggering effect.

« [...] As our world enters a period of unprecedented challenges and uncertainties, the success of these people to spread this new way of learning, decision-making and acting could well be pivotal to our economy's and our civilization's ability to cope, improvise and perhaps even survive. (...) The world needs these revolutionary facilitators, these artful hosts, and thousands, millions more like them, self-organizing, connecting, smashing learned helplessness, corpocracy, hierarchy, bureaucracy, and inertia.

« While this list is probably incomplete, here are the qualities and capacities I recognized in these amazing people:

• a thirst for truth, and an insistence on speaking the truth and being honest to a fault
• extraordinary perceptiveness, attentiveness, and presence
• intellectual and emotional sensitivity
• an almost erotic level of passion and energy
• total dedication to their chosen practices, pursued as lifelong practices, through which they seek only to get better (i.e. no expectation of mastery)
• great instincts
• wonderful improvisational skills
• a love of aesthetics, and not inconsiderable artistic and creative talent (my sketchbook yesterday was my struggle to keep up, as they all seem to be able to draw brilliantly)
• a high level of self-confidence, but never arrogance (in fact, humility)
• a desire to be of use and service to others, and the courage to do that anytime, anywhere (though when I asked them they said it was the only thing they could conceive of doing that would have meaning for them, so it wasn't courageous at all)
• exceptional communication skills -- oral, written, and non-verbal
• delightful imaginations
• great trust and respect for each other and for others who are, like them, dedicated to unselfish pursuits
• an aversion to power, and the use of power, and aversion to hierarchy and the cult of leadership
• great intelligence, knowledge and curiosity
• a subtle and gentle sense of humour, sometimes self-deprecating, never cruel or demeaning of others »
  

Dave Pollard

Être bien connecté : tout est là!

« With a lifetime's practice I've learned to keep in mind that I am only a complicity, a space through which stuff passes, and that my purpose is to touch the right stuff in just the right way as it passes through, in a way that brings meaning and joy and value to myself and to others in my social networks, my communities. To do this I use a particular process (sense, self-control, understand, question, imagine, offer, collaborate) to address each issue, project, decision, and challenge I face each day.

« Much of this process is social, and it is conducted with members of my communities, my social networks. In fact deciding who to include in which networks, which networks to participate in, and how, and which people to invest time in and seek conversation with (and perhaps even which to trust and love) is probably the most important type of decision I make each day. »

Dave Pollard

Avec l'âge vient la paresse?

I think it is in our nature to be lazy. We work, most of us, only if and when we think we have to (though a number of our civilization's guilt trips and propaganda techniques can make us feel we have to when we really don't). Liberals and conservatives alike deplore lazyness (through they don't agree on what that is). We are told that we get out of our lives (and relationships, and communities) only what we put into them. Loitering in many places is criminal behaviour. Idleness is "the devil's workshop", we are told. We are indoctrinated to believe that a good marriage (or equivalent) takes continuous hard work. That anything worth doing is worth doing well. That time is something we 'invest', carefully and diligently, to generate an optimal 'return', or else it is 'wasted'. And a person who does not keep busy is described as indolent, a word that, tellingly, originally meant incapable of feeling pain.

Despite the propaganda, I think we (and all creatures) are inherently disinclined to do hard work. All this industry is, after all, responsible for most of the pollution, global warming, suburban sprawl and much of the other environmental destruction that is desolating our Earth. The words conservative and conservation both mean to keep things unchanged, leave things as they are.

So I was initially inclined to chalk up my boomer cohort's growing work-fatigue (and my own) to lazyness. But if that were so, we wouldn't have worked so hard, on so many ambitious and ultimately largely fruitless causes, when we were younger. My aversion to taking on responsibility and new commitments is a relatively new personality quirk. When I was younger I wanted more responsibility (because with it came authority) -- "power to the people" meant responsibility as well, and we were ready.

It's not that I've become more irresponsible or noncommittal. I still care just as much. I thought to ascribe it, then, to getting older, to having less energy. I used to love to flirt, but damn it's hard work. And if you're not careful, you end up with the object of your attention, some way-too-young-for-you thing, expecting more from you, and then when they open their mouth and say something really boneheaded and your eyes roll back in your head and you run for the hills and say to yourself "Whew, dodged a bullet there". Whereas if it had happened twenty years earlier, well...

David Pollard, Are We Boomers Getting Lazy, or Are We Just Getting Old?