The Art of the Impossible

Vaclav Havel constantly asserted during his tenure in politics that we need to replace a politics of fear with a politics of trust. What would he think of Canada at the moment? Current reality reveals that an opposite process is actually taking place: citizens are growing increasingly suspicious of both their governments and economic systems. When a finely-tuned harmony exists between a health market economy and a wise government, society takes a deep breath of optimism and expands both its economic and social capabilities.What are our economic capabilities at the moment? We have our largest deficit in history, triggered by an economic meltdown of financial systems that had lost the power to govern themselves. The figures are so confounding, and the ability for the average person to understand a marketplace populated with conglomerates, multinational corporations and venues, like the media, dominated by only a few owners, that Canadians are showing difficulty accepting something so self-serving and elitist.And what of our social capabilities? Escalating poverty, backwards movement on pay equity for women, a marginalized aboriginal community, a healthcare system slowly coming unglued - these and so many other issues are nipping at the heels of our perceived peacefulness.Its only natural that these two driving forces stand in competition to one another. Both have displayed voracious appetites and frequently find themselves at odds with one another. And yet Canada has been one of the most successful countries in the world at getting the two to live in co-existence and mutual benefit. It still is, but it's slipping. The post-war years lulled us into thinking that a prosperous free-market would automatically result in progress, and for a time few would have argued the point. Yet the current economic and social realities in this country are inexorably convincing us that the market, left to itself, will not automatically result in a higher well-being for its citizens.Anthony Simpson, in his book The Money Lenders, concludes: "Communities feel a renewed fear of money, as a mysterious disembodied force. Money has become far more abstracted from ordinary people, as its masters control them through cryptic messages on screens. These communities see big money appearing once again with its old faces of greed and aggression that threaten their settled societies."Could he not just as easily be referring to our present political climate? We depended on our political leaders, despite their partisan bent, to cooperate in ways that brought about a balancing act in society. But now the political establishment goes through endless hoops to get your vote, in the process ruining the rugged kind of symmetry that made this country manageable. Presently we have political brokers who look out over the broad Canadian landscape, seeing it as extensive enough to pit one region against another in their effort to maintain political power at all costs. It's a cheap exchange and it cheapens all of us. Will they ever come to terms with their own limitations and stop being so calculating and self-serving? Unlikely at present. But they must be made to come to terms with the constraints placed around them by their own constituents which formed the reasoning for electing them in the first place. They were selected to build communities, to create jobs, to protect our environment, help the homeless, make Canada big again. What happened to those constraints?To quote Havel again:

Let us teach both ourselves and others that politics ought to be a reflection of the aspiration to contribute to the happiness of the community and not of the need to deceive and pillage for political purposes. Let us teach both ourselves and others that politics does not have to be the art of the possible, especially if this means the art of speculating, calculating, secret agreements, and cynical maneuvering, but that it also can be the art of the impossible, that is the art of making both ourselves and the world better."