A string of primal intentions and one of lonely grace; music that awakens the mind to a state of concerned wonder. Voices that flow from eyes and sounds in parallel; a city highway, wind and a car starting up.

An indoor lemon tree that died but was reborn; dead branches pointing in erratic directions due to a mix of light seeking and human displacement; dried up and lonely leaves hanging from the top; renewal and death both at the lower end; a whole made up of many conflicting states. Sorrow, but not abandon; life, but without vigour. Is this tree a symbol? It is to me, but its meaning lays not in words, its meaning lays not in the coherent, the rational, nor anything indirectly communicable; it lays in a sight and human perception.

The scratching of guitar strings and a voice of abandon; erratic and confused, overtaken by the vibrations of its soul; melodies that fall apart into a mess of emotion; rhythms that change as unpredictably as one’s moods; harmonies that make up wholes of void and discord; beauty in the pain of an isolated junky.

Fragments of perception in a context from which flows experiences that are shaped by the external and crafted by the internal. A state of contemplation, a blackness that is savoured, a satisfaction perpetuate, emotions perceived as quiet winds intricately textured.

Experiences non-linear; the progress of emotions from one state to another; an existence throughout which every minute the mind is pulled in distinct directions; errant contemplation.

When speaking of the private sector, different people tend to imagine the thinking of private sector CEOs in different ways. This leads many to see corporations as evil — the more eloquent ones will say that they are disfavourable to human interests. Too often, people will rely on caricatures and abstractions when CEOs at the top of corporations are real people with concrete problems. Here is Ryan Air’s Michael O’Leary with some very typical CEO-speak:

Is this kind of thinking favourable to human interests?

Does the nature of funding (private or public) and the existence of competitors have an influence on whether a CEO will follow this kind of thinking?

-Dussault

[Sri Lankan civil-war refugees aiming for Australia, knowing that they will not be welcomed by the government.]

I am left unconvinced by the case for controlled immigration, but that is the reality in most countries. This implies that there are quotas and discrimination in terms of movement into Canada. However, if we are to have immigration subject to such control, if we are to limit the places allowed for the foreign-b0rn, then we are left with three major ways by which we can choose those who do come in: we can have a wholly “first come first serve” approach, allowing doctors, refugees and simple labourers in the same line; we can give places to those who benefit us the most); or to those who need it the most. In reality, we end up using all three of these approaches in the compromise over the control immigration.

When it comes to those whom we allow it because we deem them to be in need of our help, different countries define eligibity using different standards, but always it is implied that we should give asylum to those who need it the most — assuming  that we want to create the most benefit with the quotas we are forced to work with.

Yet, some seem to disagree. From the BBC:

The Home Office has been accused of telling gay and lesbian asylum seekers to avoid persecution back home by keeping their sexuality secret.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees [UNHCR] claims the UK is turning international convention “on its head”.

[...]

“Would we have asked a Jew to hide in the attic to avoid being sent to the concentration camps?,” [a UNHCR spokeswoman] told the BBC.

Though I have no doubt that the persecution of the LGBT community is to be opposed, there are people in far more dangerous situations, such as (historically) those Jews the spokeswoman mentioned. If we take just about any country where the LGBT community suffers government discrimination — sadly, the list is long –, we can find many groups of people that are more at risk or that suffers in the present, rather than if they act in a certain way (it is possible to be chaste, but it is not quite possible to change one’s ethnicity). It is particularly hard to be homosexual or transsexual  in such countries — I have no doubts about that –, but what if homosexuality stood out in a crowd, like ethnicity can? To compare the Holocaust to what the LGBT community experiences is a stretch, since homosexuals are not actively sought for nor are they treated so harshly.

When one makes comparisons, it is only sensible to take something that is comparable in most respects so as to not create distortions. The problems of the LGBT community stand on their own, they do not need comparisons to the Holocaust — comparisons made more for the sake of emotional imagery/media attention than rational discussion. By simply comparing their situations, the spokeswoman relieved herself from the need to create a reasoning that stands on its own merits (the fault is perhaps on the BBC if it distorted the focus of her explanations). “We must do this with the LGBT because we should have done this with the Jews under Hitler” is not very convincing.

Quite simply put: if we are to limit the amount of places we give to asylum seekers, then those who come in should be those groups which suffer the most. Considering the percentage of humans which fit in the “LGBT” tag and considering the suffering that seems to be inflicted on the community (something that is, I admit, impossible to clearly measure), it seems that only a minority of LGBT will end up suffering intolerably. The rest, it seems, manage to hide it — some Jewish communities did the same. It is a sad fact that a homosexual in hiding is alone, while at least minority cultures have a community to help them out, but that is still nothing in contrast to the many slaves, neglected orphans, war and rape victims etc. So many people live in fear knowing that those who want to kill them can find them without any difficulties  — they are more deserving than those who can manage to go by without worries as long as they act normally. I know that “act normally” is easier said than done, but it is far easier than hiding one’s skin, gender, name etc. The desire for sex is not like that for eating, for we can live without sex and it can be replaced with other things that satisfy us in profound ways (such as arts, learning and friendship).

All of the above only matters if we believe in quotas, but there are those who ask: why not just invite them all? Well, xenophobia is in large part to blame. Then there are arguments based in economics, but they are at best murky. I believe that the flow of immigrants should be made smooth so as to not create major disruptions, but as long as things are regular and we assure that unemployment remains stable, there is little to worry about. Those who come in want work, so, at first, they do take up jobs, but they spend this money and create work for other people. Imagine a simple economy made up 50% of farmers and 50% of artisan; if the population doubles, then there will be twice the need for food, so half of these people will need to go into food (since one citizen produces food for two in this society) and the other half will offer services to the farming half in exchange for food. There are more details to this example, but I think it illustrates the absurdity in the belief that immigrants come here and “steal our jobs”. There are other ideas as to what would happen if we allowed open immigration, but, because immigration has been controlled for as long as transportation has been so easy, there is no hard evidence as to what would happen if Western countries opened the gates to Africa, South America and Asia. (I recommend that you research this matter in more depth, but I will leave this issue here).

The most compelling arguments have to do with the design of tax and welfare system: without citizenship as we know it, anyone could come in and profit from our social services at our expense. I can sympathise with those who believe this to be a problem, but even if this concern is justified (IF), then it should be noted that there are ways by which we could redefine the role of citizenship: we could allow anyone to come in and work, without visas, and, after they have shown some commitment to the country in terms of paying taxes, we could allow them to obtain access to the services their taxes fund. “Commitment” could be defined in many ways: perhaps after a person has been paying taxes for a certain number of years, or perhaps as soon as they can prove that they have paid taxes for a month. There are many ways by which this could be achieved and I will not explore this here, but it is clear that we can do this if we want. So, there is little substance to arguments from those angered by the possibility of people benefiting from a health-care system they do not contribute their share to.

I believe that most of what we are left with is ignorance and prejudice , but some good arguments can probably be made in favour of quotas on immigration; those I know, however, are too weak to justify such a serious limit as a limit on the movement of peoples.

-Dussault

She sat on a chair, with her hands folded on the knees which she had raised to sustain her chin. Her eyes were closed, as if burdened by a weight which she resisted with quiet contemplation. There was no smile on her face. Her teeth were clenched and her lips quivered; signs of a profound and difficult emotion. Suddenly, she straightened her back, took a deep breath and tightened a fist which she gently bit into, as if to comfort herself, like a young girl holding her father’s hand through the darkest and coldest of places. Her eyes opened and she scrambled in search of pen and paper for her to scribble upon.

Sentences were spat out sporadically, sometimes with eyes tightened as if looking at a city on fire, and other times with her mouth slightly open and the same frown that soldiers discover when they stumble upon a massacre; the emotion was different, however, as it stood free of a subject. Her facial expressions changed, and so did her moods, but her sentences all symbolised those moments when she felt the rise of those most difficult of emotions:

“Life, it slowly leaks out of my soul, burning the ground which I spit upon and stare at in disgust. The dust which I breathe and the lethargy that defines; I cringe and I spit upon the kitchen floor, I scream in agony and I bite my lips and bleed.

“There is no truth in existence, except the moods which infect our souls and strangle our hearts. There is no beauty in life except the decadence we experience and the dirt that we must learn to savour. Then why must we live, if not to create.

“My rush of thought deadens, leaving me cold and empty upon a chair which grows increasingly uncomfortable. Thus I move to my room, lay down quietly and hope to die, even if only for a few instants.

“I close my eyes, but they agitate, my muscles grow tense and I scream again; my eyes open. There is an anger within me and I do not know from where it flows, but it is there for all to see, if only in those most precious of times when the pain resurfaces like a sickness that will not go away. It overwhelms my soul, like a drug which one loves and hates, like those moments when a painful emotion captures us like no other and we write.

Her friends looked on in compassion, but they knew her well enough to spare her their concern. When the scribbles of her pen quieted down and her face offered a subtle smile of solid satisfaction, Safi gently shifted his chords so as to evoke those emotions we experience when a new sun slowly but steadily invigorates our lives. She trembled still under the influence of difficult emotions, but she was now free, with words written down to capture the beauty and meaning which she had experienced.

Safi’s music progressed towards ever brighter emotions, and her smile widened, with those large, glimmering eyes of hers staring at him with warmth; he understood her like only the closest of friends do. He did not distract her as she focused on those emotions which she had to face, but when it was time to turn the page, his music changed as if to guide her towards a more joyous day. She stood up and smiled, with light shining beneath her eyes — eyes which she then closed as she laid her back against a wall, inspired, expired, sat down and inspired once again.

On the floor ahead of her was a cherry-wood box covered in a Klimtesque pattern of ancient browns and modest yellows, formed into strings of shapes and a background of squares. Along the sides of the box’s cover grew sparse, irregular flowers of a minimalistic design. There was a thin green line for the stem and a dark, blood red for the head. The composition was memorable.

Adeline took this box and separated its two parts so as to form a ritual to shift the mind. She took the flower bud, crumbled it into her left hand and poured the results into a leaf of rolling paper which she had picked up with her right. After distributing the results, she filled the empty left end of the joint with tobacco. She rolled and rolled, carefully slipped the bottom end of the paper inside, licked the top end and rolled again. She placed the left end of the joint on her soft lips, picked up a lighter, puffed and puffed and closed her eyes. She swallowed up the smoke, reopened her eyes with a smile that spoke of resolution. She took a long deep puff and meditated it away. Then she passed the joint to Safi, put away the paper and laid back, with eyes untroubled. She expired.

Safi took a long and heavy puff, his eyes tightening up as his lungs filled with smoke. His mouth opened into a smile and, along with a wink, his thumb and index pinched together such as to describe perfection. He was that kind of character, with a beret he had bought and a captain’s coat given to him by the friend to whom he passed the joint.

-Dussault

A few days ago, we sat in front of the mirrors from the apartment speaking of beauty. It is clear that your facial characteristics deviate from the norm and it is true that, at least upon first impression, people tend to judge such deviations in a negative manner (1). The word “ugly”, however, is clumsy and best reserved for times when we must be minimalistic in our use of words, such as with jokes and when we do not have the time to be as precise as we would like. This aside, however, the word is only of use for those who wish to insult and those too simple to appreciate beauty in its most subtle forms. Such people are of little interest to you; if they cannot appreciate you, that is their loss. Those who do appreciate you, however, are able to look at a face with such a depth that what matters most of all is the way the face reflects the soul. Have no doubts that your soul is one of the most beautiful and interesting ones that a person can meet. This will be true as long as you allow the full manifestation of the traits that define your individuality — the traits that give you a beauty that cannot be compared.

-Dussault

SIR,

You called me or my argument close-minded. That was inappropriate on your part. As was made clear by how you pointed towards me while referring to unidentified theorists, you made the mistake of attaching the conclusions of others to my own. There are few conclusions which I believe to be my own; I enjoy playing with arguments which lead to drastically different conclusions. Yet, even if this were not the case, you were mistaken in thinking that you could skip steps in my argumentation, thinking that, because it began like those free trade advocates who claim that all countries should instantly implement free trade, it ended with a similar conclusion. I believe that protectionism can be justified, but this does not matter; what matters is that the way I justify this is surely different than whatever justifications float in your head; we are all different, so when we each consider such complex matters with depth, we all form interpretations that are as unique as our minds; by considering the way others interpret things, we can get. I am not writing this letter to speak of my ideas on free trade and protectionism, for that is a subject to be dealt with once the groundwork has been prepared and an effective discussion can be built. You called me close-minded and I must disagree; I am always interested in new ideas and I expect to find them even in people whom I am tempted to underestimate, for they take angles that are, on some issue, unlike any angle I have considered. I do not underestimate you and you should not underestimate me; do not call me close-minded, for that is simply not true.

“Is it true about me?” is the question you should ask yourself. Though I have generally seen you as open-minded, this is not how you have presented yourself today: you refused to give me the benefit of the doubt, assuming that because my arguments began like “them” that they would end like “them”. There are perhaps a limited amount of ways by which we can explore any specific issue, but when we carefully listen to the strings of thought that others develop, we find that what might have seemed predictable is not really so; we each shape arguments in our own way, diverging from the routes others have taken. I have concluded this by trying to predict what others are about to say in such conversations and, when considering the proposition: “is it the same as my prediction?”, I could only conclude that there were significant differences. So: I am my own individual and I expect to be treated as such, not tagged with a label and discarded because you arrogantly believe that you understand all lines of argumentations that flow out of those you tag with this label. This was probably not a conscious approach on your part, but it is precisely what was done.

If you wish to be introduced to new ideas, you must not let people speak only until you have heard enough to box them up, but until you know enough to see how they differ from what you have heard previously — until you have had a specific issue to smoothen out. Of course, there are those who only parrot the words of others; and then there are those who are not interested in delving deeply enough so as to allow themselves to go beyond the thoroughly explored. However, to assume that everyone is as such is close-mindedness; this prevents you from reshaping your thoughts in novel ways because you behave as if you have heard it all and, because of that, make yourself blind to what is new. I do not expect you to be wholly close-minded — you are obviously an intelligent man and have certainly experimented with various thoughts throughout your years –, but  close-mindedness was the source of this conflict and I am quite confident that it was from your part.

Your response offered little basis to support your claim that I was wrong, since you merely attacked the arguments of others, not my own. You told me to identify my assumptions, and when I noted that I had already done so in as clear a fashion as I could have (I began with two stressed IFs), you simply told me to consider these assumptions. When I noted that I had, you committed the naturalistic fallacy, assuming that the descriptive is prescriptive. If the politics you described were indeed for the best, then that must be justified. What you did, however, was try to place the burden of proof on me. It is fallacious to suggest that protectionism is ideal because international trade has always been subject to protectionism

(I am not sure that this use of “always” is perfectly justified, but even if it is, it is only because we spoke of international trade, not all human trade; though there is protectionism between Quebec and Vermont, there is very little between Quebec and Ontario and none at all between Montreal Island and la Montérégie. Why we draw arbitrary lines to say that free trade between Quebec and Ontario is good and yet free trade between Quebec and Vermont is bad, I do not know; if nationality is the issue, then it should be noted that Quebec and Ontario are different nations — should that be cause for taxes on cars etc transported through the border?).

I am done laying down my primary concern, but not my only one: do not think that your mind’s road is wholly traveled. I suspect that this is the mistake that differentiates old men who’s mind is as fresh as ever and those who allow it to stagnate; this is the mistake that differentiates those who read to confirm their beliefs and those who read to challenge their beliefs (and do note that different point of views can be listened to merely to confirm one’s own beliefs, rather than for the sake of understanding the root cause of incompatibility). Hopefully, you are part of the former.

Perhaps I have extrapolated too much; we were, after all, in a classroom setting, preventing us from digging into each other’s ideas as deeply as we could have were time not an issue. However, if this constraint was what led you to be so hasty in dismissing my ideas and giving a predigested response, it is something that you should have stated. Instead, you pursued the thread that I had pulled upon, proving that you had not simplified my position because of the setting, but because of your mistaken assumption that my ideas were the same as the “they” you spoke of.

-Dussault

“Settling an Argument” by Norman Rockwell

A few weeks ago, I wrote:

Last night, I was on the campus of the Université de Montréal (UDM) and met a student, obviously bright yet heavily intoxicated, who repeatedly declared that “la vie c’est d’la marde (life is shit)”. I listened as he repeatedly stated this claim, along with supporting claims such as that “the only reason we don’t all kill ourselves is that we don’t have the guts”. These seem childish even, but he proved his intelligence through earlier conversations and I could not help but conclude that his claims were not the mere ramblings of a man who has lost his capacity for reason, but conclusions which he supported even with a sober mind. My general observations suggest that what alcohol diminishes is not the ability to make propositions which correspond with one’s sober mind, but the ability to clarify the rational basis on which these conclusions have been founded. So, I assumed that a significant part of him did believe that “life is shit” and I had to say: “I disagree”.

The discussion (if I may call it that) which followed was not constructive since, though he let me begin my sentences, he repeatedly interrupted me a few words in. I do not blame him, since drunkeness increases impulsivity and seems to diminish people’s capacity to listen to others, and the fact that I had so drily disagreed with him might have created some undue tension. My disagreement was purely intellectual and I had assumed him to be capable of debating over a proposition without the interferences of ego. A person who cannot listen cannot discuss, so I put an end to this pointless exchange. However, since his belief that “life is shit” seemed to be a conclusion — a conclusion which I find heavily flawed –, I feel the need to attack it in writing.

One of the first things to keep in mind about this proposition is that it is presented as an objective representation of reality. He did not say “ma vie c’est d’la marde (my life is shit)”, but “la vie c’est d’la marde ([the] life is shit)”. Thus, from his perspective, life, as we all experience it, is shit.

It is difficult to disagree with a proposition with elements left undefined. So, each word must properly be understood. For one, it seems clear that he did not speak of “life” as biologists define it, but as the “universal condition of human existence“. “Universal” could not have been “general” because he spoke in absolute terms and disagreed immediately when I spoke of my own life as not being shit. As for the meaning which he injected into “shit”, it is made clear by his claim that “the only reason we don’t all kill ourselves is that we don’t have the guts”. Life, it seems, is not an experience worth living; the pleasure we experience is not worth the suffering; we live merely because some force within most prevents us from following the rational course of action (suicide). He spoke of this experience as the only reality, rather than choosing modesty by speaking only of his experiences with life, leaving others to share with him their own.

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The essence of democracy lays in the assumption that a society is best served when power is entrusted to the common people. This is perhaps why democracies have been most successful when those who are defined as the “common people” have a fair amount of free time, allowing them to consider political matters; when they have access to reliable information concerning the issues the society faces; and when they are all tied to each other with a bond strong enough to resist man’s natural temptation to use force when disagreements arise.

In the past, there was much doubt as to laypeople’s ability to consider political issues in a rational manner. With advents in education and communication, it has become more difficult to under-estimate people’s ability to reason for themselves, free of overly successful manipulation. Even if the common people do not consider the issues from a thoroughly objective and rational manner, they are seen as being at least capable of making decisions as to what is good for them. Since decisions in a democracy are fueled by a consensus that must be supported by at least a significant part of the population, the whims of individuals lose influence in favour of decisions which will benefit a large proportion of society – and perhaps the whole of it.

Even when we decide upon such a system, there are many details to be considered as to how our democracy should be designed. One of the primary issues deals with the centralisation of power and there is a whole continuum of possibilities to consider here: on one end, there is autocracy, with one individual being granted absolute power; and on the other, there is absolute democracy, with the whole of society involved in every single decision. As we try to understand which point upon this continuum would be ideal – ideal, at least, for a specific society – it is important to consider the various problems that can arise as we increase or decrease the centralisation of power.

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I have come across an organisation that calls itself “Non aux hausses! (No to the increase of public funds)” and have looked through its website. It seems that its members seek to improve the well-being of the poor and middle class by ensuring that the public services they use are not made more expensive. “The government’s greed can be satisfied through other means “, one would expect to hear. Yet, is the issue quite as simple as they present it: as a choice between hurting the poor or helping the rich?

Hoping to answer this, I did look through their website and have found their specific demands, but I have not found that which I deem the most important: the supporting ideas behind these demands. I am not one to attack conclusions directly; rather, I attack the way in which they are justified. Policy changes have a major impact on society and it is important that we do not implement them unless the arguments behind them are solid. So if an organisation wishes to advocate change, it must show us how its most thoughtful members were convinced that these changes were indeed for the best. This is not what I found on their website.

Now, to quote some of their suggestions:

# Adopt a more progressive tax system.
# Add at least one more tax bracket for the highest incomes.

I must ask: what basis do they have in claiming that this is right? It is nice to make suggestions, but I suspect that they have not tried to look at how our economy would be affected — because when the economy hurts, it is the poor and not the rich who suffer the most.

When the costs of a business increase — because of extra taxes, higher minimum wage, greater regulation and so forth — some businesses that were profitable will no longer be so, creating a loss in the economy for certain activities — activities for which there is not enough demand to justify the effort, with only meager profits to support the owners. When the owners shut down, the employees go home and start looking for a new job or, if it is the whole sector that is struggling, they go back to school so as to satisfy a labour shortage in another sector of the economy.

It is amusing that “Non aux hausses!” proposes changes which will lead some businesses to close, ultimately hurting those they wish to protect.

# Reduce or even abolish tax exemptions (that only benefit the rich)

When it comes to certain sectors of the economy that cannot survive because of the extra burden imposed by taxes, the government can create tax exemptions so that the activity still exists. Though this is open to the influence of lobbies and corruption, if the government organisation that decides this is objective, then it is quite clearly for the best: the basic idea is that it is better for the activity to exist and the government not be able to tax it than for the activity to simply not exist because the government taxes are too much for that particular business. Again, this is about more jobs and a more interesting economy, with a greater variety of activities.

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I was exchanging some words with a friend, after I had mentioned an article. He suggested that the article “could easily be Israeli propaganda to legitimize a new attack on Gaza.” I tried to explain that such information seemed contrary to Israeli interests — that if Israel wants to publish propaganda, it should write something that is more advantageous to itself –, that the newspaper that Haaretz used as a source was owned by a Saudi who has been accused of funding Hamas and seems quite unlikely to start publishing Israeli propaganda, and that the source that this latter paper used seemed credible and, if it was a lie, could easily have been denied by Hamas. Then the conversation became about whether Haaretz was trust-worthy. This lead me to write a letter that was much longer than our previous exchanges and is perhaps more suited to this website than through the medium we were using:

Haaretz is a well-respected Israeli newspaper which I have been reading for some time. I can tell you that, especially in contrast to other voices coming from Israel, it is favourable to Palestinian interests, though it does not, of course, neglect Israeli interests. Just read about Gideon Levy, who is an editor for Haaretz that regularly publishes pro-Palestinian articles. Haaretz does, however, publish a diversity of view points, so there will be one extreme with Gideon Levy, but also a variety of op-ed articles that speak in favour of Israel’s interests. To suggest that it is a mouthpiece for the Israeli government to publish propaganda, however, seems like no more than ignorance as to what the paper actually publishes.
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I have seen both teachers and books describe neoliberalism as an ideology in opposition to government intervention in the economy. Its adherents tend to be vilified as zealous believers in the invisible hand and this definition of neoliberalism is then used in a straw man argument, with neoliberalism clearly shown as false due to the many examples of how the invisible hand does not always guide private interests in favor of the common good.

Any just definition of “neoliberalism” must be compatible with Milton Friedman’s ideas, since, as far as I can tell, he has been the one most widely described as a neoliberal, even though he did not identify as one (as few if any “neoliberals” do). Thus, we should probably consider what he had to say about government intervention in the economy:

“[T]here are only three major grounds on which government intervention is to be justified. One is “natural monopoly” or similar market imperfection which makes effective competition (and therefore thoroughly voluntary exchange) impossible. A second is the existence of substantial “neighborhood effects,” i.e., the action of one individual imposes significant costs on other individuals for which it is not feasible to make him compensate them or yields significant gains to them for which it is not feasible to make them compensate him–circumstances that again make voluntary exchange impossible. The third derives from an ambiguity in the ultimate objective rather than from the difficulty of achieving it by voluntary exchange, namely, paternalistic concern for children and other irresponsible individuals.”

-Milton Friedman, “The Role of Government in Education.”<http://www.schoolchoices.org/roo/fried1.htm>

Even if we assume that these are the only conditions under which government intervention is to be justified, it is possible to allow a great variety of interventions, including tobacco taxes (the “paternal concern” clause), radical environmental laws (due to neighborhood effects), public companies (in cases of natural monopolies) and so forth — all while respecting the limits of government intervention as stated by the best known “neoliberal”. Thus, it seems ridiculous to claim that neoliberals are opposed to government intervention in the economy.

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When trying to consider the problems of the future, we have to keep in mind that several assumptions are always at play. Still, it is interesting to think of problems we may very well face somewhere in the future. I do not believe that we should be too precocious in trying to attack these issues — we have to deal with problems that are real and current, rather than waste our energy on the fancies of our imagination –, but, with all of this said, it remains an enjoyable intellectual game that may have implications for policies in the near future. So let us begin:

It is possible that, one day, we will achieve something akin to immortality, where age is no longer a threat to the well-being of our bodies and death no longer broods above our lives as a guarantee of our end. This is quite clearly the ideal that we move towards when we invest in medical research. Even before the advent of science, the possibility of immortality excited the imagination of cultures throughout the world. Yet, what would happen if we turned this dream to reality? It might be in fifty years or it might be in fifty-thousand years, but, with a few assumptions, it seems almost inevitable.

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I tend to believe that philosophical differences boil down to differences in terms of values, of which none is better than the other since they are essentially assumptions about the nature of our world. The conflict between primitivism and liberalism serves as a fine example:

When I speak as a liberal, one of the most wonderful things about this world is the number of choices we have. In this modern world, our economy is so advanced that millions of people can live within the same, relatively small, area. These technological advances are the natural product of a liberal economy and one of the advantages is that I, as an individual, have access to so many different people that I can easily find specific types of people and thus associate with a human subculture of my choice. This allows me more freedom to shape my life how I want it to be shaped. Yes, we are all limited by external factors, some of which are imposed by our society, some of which are imposed by reality, but, in the end, we have greater control over our lives than we have ever had. We are not limited to a few sources of food, to the people in our village and to “survival” as our main job.

However, this perspective conflicts with another: yes, it is true that we can now shape our social surroundings with more ease than before, but this may destroy the natural balance of personalities that we may find in villages. In the past, just like we do not choose our family today, we did not choose anything about our social surroundings. We were born in a random village and that’s where we grew up and died. Even nomads would usually remain with the same group of humans. What happens in a modern, liberal society is that — if I am to use such crude language to describe people — “intelligent” people will leave the “village” to form a subculture with like-minded people, leaving the village without “intelligent” people. The same goes for different personality types. Thus, while this may be of benefit to “intelligent” people who crave interactions of a certain level, the village gets deprived of its share of “intelligent” people. The same goes for its natural chiefs, natural shamans, natural strongmen etc and it is, in the end, wholly abandoned as we are all stratified by liberalism and its efficiency. People who work in factories tend to frequent people who work at jobs of a similar nature. The same goes for people who work in law, in the arts, in farming and so forth.

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We have to be careful when reading the news, because many articles are misleading at least in one way (though the mistakes are usually innocent). Statistics are too often without context and, without easily accessible sources, they’re difficult to verify. Here’s an example of potentially flawed statistics:

Not even one in five 18- to 24-year-old French speakers says a university degree is essential, compared with two in five English speakers, according to a survey by the Association for Canadian Studies, based in Montreal. Two in three young people whose first language is not English or French see a degree as critical. So who is likely to be left behind in the economy of the future?

We have to be skeptical when a survey is distributed to two different linguistic groups. In this case, the definition of “essential” is entirely subjective and it is quite possible that, though “essentiel” and “essential” share the same etymology, they do not mean precisely the same thing in both languages.

My understanding of the word is irrelevant since this is the kind of question that can vary significantly from individual to individual, but it is still possible that the average definition of the word varies between Canadian English and Quebec French. This “definition” I speak of would be the assumption after “this is essential to [...]“. Essential to be happy? To be rich? Or perhaps to survive? To be healthy?

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At 32%, what is marketed as the world’s strongest beer has just been released. As per its label:

This is an extremely strong beer; it should be enjoyed in small servings and with an air of aristocratic nonchalance. In exactly the same manner that you would enjoy a fine whisky, a Frank Zappa album or a visit from a friendly yet anxious ghost.

Beautiful. I’m interested in how this plays out in the political arena. Though a case can perhaps be made for controlling drugs that are unsafe to use, it is clearly a sign of incoherent policy-makers to allow drinks that are significantly above 32%, but not beer. At 30 pounds ($50) the 330ml bottle and with marketing that tells us how it’s made to be savoured, the customers are certain to drink it at least as responsibly as they would drink whiskey, and probably more so than the Jack Daniel’s that gets chugged at college parties. And yet, the same company was previously challenged for having too strong a beer. It won, but that was with a 18.2% beer; now that they have almost doubled the strength, there are some things left to unfold.

But even if it might be used in irresponsible manners that are not possible without such strong beers on the market, is it really the responsibility of government to protect us from our own choices? This is where the problem of self-ownership arises: can we talk of “self-ownership” and if so, to which degree should this exist? Alcohol laws are an example of the government intervening against people who wish to trade alcohol, for the sake of protecting the consumer from his own choices. It is almost universally accepted that it is righteous to use force against someone who uses undue force towards another, but what about when the person harms no one, except perhaps — just perhaps — himself?

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