Advancing Civilization

It suddenly dawned on me yesterday that I might be getting anachronistic. Once a year I smoke dad's old pipe as a way of remembering him. Sitting on the porch swing, I recalled the smell of that pipe when I was a boy, listening to him as he expounded on some of his war experiences and why he enlisted in the first place. There were many reasons, but his favourite topic was about what Canada would add to the world. Lester Pearson was his friend, so perhaps he came by it honestly.I say "anachronistic" because it struck me that I may no longer be relevant. Growing up, I understood that my country had more to offer the world than just a successful economy or a peaceful co-existence. My father believed that the world was progressing, marching onward, and Canada should never be embarrassed at living beyond itself to advance civilization.The Liberal party summoned its greatest efforts at following that paradigm. At some point in the post-war years, we stopped looking so much at the world and realized that the world was looking a lot more at us, at our successes. Suddenly we were growing up, knowing that we could move civilization ahead by being a progressive society that put human rights, citizen advancement, economic health, and creating a productive environment for investment. We took on social programs and a sound business model because we knew we might even change our world by example.Some say we are living in a post-democratic world and maybe they're right. Lester Pearson used phrases like "make the world better through democracy." Now it's almost as if we are fighting just for our own essential democratic values at home. We have elections that nobody can figure out, a citizenry disinclined to vote, parties that have lost their underpinnings, a media struggling for its sober objectivity and a corporate world becoming increasingly global. A contemptuous government goes on to win a majority. People end up voting for candidates they neither saw nor knew. I hardly know what all this portends, but it's likely taking us away from empowering democracy.The freedoms gleaned after World War Two have sufficiently filled us and left us stuck in place. I'm reminded of Rousseau's saying that "liberty is a food easy to eat, but difficult to digest." Perhaps we lack the maturity required to make the democratic experiment advance in this country. We definitely seem to lack the sense of alarm or urgency that could better prepare citizens to engage in the overall process. Indeed, we have become so successful that we might be witnessing the same kind of hollowing out of the citizen that we are seeing in the political realm. Benjamin Barber, writing in Harper's Magazine, maintains that modern democracy has devolved into two principal forces: tribalism and globalism. He sees them both tearing the citizen apart, as people divide into camps on the one hand while being pressed into homogenization by globalization on the other. I liked this when I first read it, until I started to think more about it. To be sure, there are regions, faiths, cultures, languages, values, that could easily pull us apart. But that would mean a more engaged citizenry pulling at the seams. Yet, in the main, that's not what's happening. Globalization is making us homogeneous, but so is our domestic life. We seem incapable of rousing ourselves to greater exploits, let alone to advance civilization.The links between our citizens and institutions are fraying as economic preoccupation fills our collective life. As long as we're paying the bills, securing the things we desire, we don't seem all that preoccupied with the welfare of others - at home or overseas. Economic factors have become such a dominating feature of our national life that they become the barometer of our existence. This has always been true to some degree, but of late it has become an inoculation against greater civic and national action. Our deficit and debt are significant. A shoddy environmental record is curtailing our productivity. The new jobs of tomorrow have yet to materialize in great enough numbers to propel us into the future. Great social challenges - healthcare, aboriginal justice, poverty, to name a few - remain unresolved. But it's okay; we're fine - right?For Liberals, in disarray and desperately trying to find a space on the political map, there is the hope that a re-engaged citizenry will hearken to its policies on offer. But it's going to take far more than that. As long as we continue to present programs that take care of people without demanding their sacrifice, we will be just like the rest. Our political system is now designed to foster self-interest rather than cooperation and as a result those great aims that lie beyond ourselves, like advancing civilization, remain not only unattained but unimagined. The attainment part will require power to enact; the imagination portion is something we can partake of now, involving citizens so that they feel strong, involved, and meaningful again.