Recently, I read the book “Humankind” by Rutger Bregman and my faith in humanity was somewhat restored (read it, it will do you wonders). According to the author, every day people are quite amazing.
Bregman’s position is that we humans are naturally kind and our species has evolved so that we may love and be loved. And yet…if this is true why are so many bad things happening?
The problem seems to lie with our leaders OR more pointedly with the levers and incentives of leadership. And by leaders, I mean a small number of people with inordinate amounts of money in positions of power in business and in government. Looking around and just listening to 5 minutes of the news I struggle with the decisions that this tiny group of people are making and am appalled at the repercussions of such decisions.
Does anyone play the long game anymore? Does anyone think beyond the next quarter, or the next election? Do they consider the human being standing right beside them? It doesn’t seem like it. Can they not see the fundamental damage inflicted on our kids? our planet? and the folks who struggle? They must see it. Do they care?
Much of this is happening because of a handful of people who already have a lot and want more – more money, more power. Hey, Jeff, Elon, Mark, Vladimir, Donald, Doug, Danielle and the rest of you selfish, power hungry fools… we’ve reached our Network moment.
“I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore”. In fact re-watching that scene, everything the Howard Beale character says in his speech from 1976 is still true today – Russia, unemployment, pollution. (We’ve included the full text of the speech below.)
Why are we so stuck?
We’re educated. Canada is THE most educated country in the world, according to World Population Review, with over 56 % of having completed post-secondary education.
We are nice. Canada is always among the friendliest people list, and we are certainly considered polite.
But somehow, lately, it feels like we have taken our ball and have gone home.
Is this how we want to live? Is this the country we want? -the province we want? – the city we want? Add to all the uncertainty the systemic excision of human connection from virtually every living experience – self check-out, automated chat bots, endless numerical options for service – and it feels like we are sitting home alone. Some of us have a ball…more and more of us do not.
I don’t think we can legitimately “other” ourselves from our cousins south of us anymore. We have to park that smugness. Afterall, how can we claim to want inclusivity, then refuse to have the most basic accommodations for people traveling in wheelchairs? How can we claim to love our children, then refuse to make significant changes to emission laws?
We say we would lay down our lives for children, but then we vote for governments who will underpay teachers while regulating their pronouns. We support organizations who vote against waving a rainbow flag that allows all kids to feel part of a community. What is the thinking there? Is it that we believe Jesus will be upset? Have kids not struggled enough with social media and a 24-hour news cycle? and the horrible long lasting effects of Covid?
And finally, how can we spend buckets and buckets of treatment money to keep people alive longer and eliminate care that is needed for an aging body and mind.
Scene: “Hey! Great news Dick, we can radiate your 89-year-old prostate, but you will have to sit in your Depends alone as you age in place – waiting for the single, weekly supervised shower you can get from publicly provided community health.”
The good news is you can buy wonderful care from amazing agencies. We work with them all the time. They have stepped in to fill the public void and have worked hard to build reputable businesses that will assist you. You can also choose to move to a beautiful retirement home. But you must be able to afford it. Private care, through an agency, has a minimum 4-hour shift per day at roughly $45/hour. That is $180/day. If you need that care every day, that comes to $65,700 a year and there can be HST on top of that. So, Dick, I hope you used that long life of yours to save your money – because here – my friend – is where you are going to spend it. Of course, the government will not come out and tell you that– they will wait for you to figure it out on your own. Afterall, it could cost them your vote…so…
Is the hope to get to where the USA is – with their private hospitals for those who have money? Did we look at people going bankrupt because they have appendicitis and think: Hey! That’s a good model, let’s do that. Don’t get me wrong, I understand the imperative to free up hospital beds, operating rooms, and ER hallways – but is moving patients to private clinics the right answer? Just today I heard a story about a woman having cataract surgery being upsold “better” lenses while in the OR…what? So that says to me: you spend more money…you get better care.
Please clarify things if I have completely missed something or if there is some good coming out of all this. Please educate me on the plan here. Did we not realize that boomers were eventually going to get old? Did we think that humans evolve out of the need to receive care? No, we just stopped electing people who care for others, and we stopped questioning the structure.
For now, I’ll leave you with a turn of phrase from Bregman’s book – it is not the more you have the more you give – but rather the more you give, the more you have.
Speech from the movie Network (1976):
I don’t have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It’s a depression. Everybody’s out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel’s worth, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter.
Punks are running wild in the street and there’s nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there’s no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV’s while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that’s the way it’s supposed to be.
We know things are bad – worse than bad. They’re crazy. It’s like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don’t go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, ‘Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won’t say anything. Just leave us alone.’
Well, I’m not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don’t want you to protest. I don’t want you to riot – I don’t want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn’t know what to tell you to write. I don’t know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street.
All I know is that first you’ve got to get mad. You’ve got to say, ‘I’m a HUMAN BEING, God damn it! My life has VALUE!’ So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, ‘I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!’ I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell – ‘I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!’
Things have got to change. But first, you’ve gotta get mad!… You’ve got to say, ‘I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!’ Then we’ll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: “I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!”
