"I Do Not Look Like Myself"

At it’s very heart modern society has reduced itself to a series of contracts – pre-nups, warranties, sales promotions, mortgages, and on and on. Democracy itself is more built upon ethics, values, trust, performance, excellence, compassion, inclusion, and virtue. Societies function best when the latter guarantee the protections of the former by reason of integrity and civility.Now there’s a word – civility. It seems to be everything that our modern political structure is not. It’s always as if our conduct is one word, one verbal shot, one demeaning slur away from bursting the bonds of decency and pulling us down to our basest instincts. It’s a valuable lesson as old as history that when the character of a people and their leaders decline the achievement of a good society is all but impossible. It’s as the Crow people used to say when they used for “loneliness” a word that literally meant, “I do not look like myself.”There’s a reason why this is true with us at the moment: I don’t look like myself because I don’t look like you. Canada was once made up of a citizenry that believed social justice, economic opportunity, and a good society were our ultimate guarantors of any future freedom or prosperity – they guaranteed our individual pursuits. But the rampant individualism of the last 25 years, coupled with some unsound financial practices that promote inequality, have reduced us to competitors – as consumers, immigrants, employees, business operators, students, or patients. We compete for resources that have been on the decline for years. Consequently, with our historic and social compact fraying, we have become a people of contracts – deals made to keep us from destroying one another. In times previous it was our good name and virtuous character that guaranteed our ability to live together and produce. Of course, there were financial and social contracts, but they were enforced by integrity and not law alone.The real life in our communities is built in the gaps between all these contractual arrangements. In an astonishing variety of ways, citizens are busy accomplishing remarkable feats of community building, Despite a governing corporate mindset that pays better wages to those who compete over those who show compassion, or exalts victory over virtue, plundering over prosperity, or excess over education, these citizens plug away at another paradigm that puts community over individual pursuits. They create the rich texture that can transform a city into a good city. The problem is that those who attempt to run our society for their own purposes pay little heed to these unnoticed builders of community.We forget that the Greek terms, “civil,” “civility,” “civilization,” or even “citizen,” all derive from the word for city. Where we live is supposed to determine our conduct, refine us, educate us, empower and inspire us. It hedges in our more animalistic pursuits in favour of our more civilized characters.  Over time such terms mean little to us, but they did have meaning and we must rediscover them if we are to rebuild our democracy and ourselves.The lifeblood of the city is its citizenry, and perhaps no skill is more important than a civil and polite discourse that draws others to the table and keeps them there through a spirit of inclusion. When citizens meet that challenge, only then can the vital work of civilizing a community begin. The shenanigans in Parliament at present have had a two-fold effect – alienation from the political process and/or an emerging desire for a kinder society, where words are used to build as opposed to dividing communities. The great work of government can only be accomplished through compromise, and that ability depends more on strength of character than merely political power.What do you make of the recent news that Campaign Research Inc. had not only spread mistruths about MP Irwin Cotler in Montreal but has used a centralized phoning system to impose their dubious practices on ridings across the country? Political partisanship is bad enough, but to it is now added the professionals who care not a whit about your community or mine, but who delight in dividing it so that some degraded political prize can be won. When the firm's principal partner Nick Kouvalis spouts that, "We're in the business of getting Conservatives elected and ending Liberal careers. We're good at it," we quickly understand that our communities have become test labs for Machiavellian pursuits. Being good at ending careers is hardly the stuff with which to build communities, sounding too much like Wall Street. Is this what we want in our cities or towns? Kouvalis merely adds fat to the fire when he boasts his firm has made "tens of millions" of calls into the places we live. The telephone, under professional political hands, has become one of the great dividers of our citizenship.We must begin the process of remaking ourselves as citizens, so that we care more about our communities than winning. Parliament is in steep decline because power is achieved by division and a lack of maturity among its members – hardly an example for community renaissance.My community is not a commodity; nor is it up for grabs to the highest bidder. It is full of a robust and smart people who occasionally permit themselves to be divided by others with devious intent. Launch a politics that brings them together in the democratic art of compromise and they will respond with vibrant actions of citizenship that can restore the country. They are citizens above all, and their realization of that truth will present a better path for our future.