On democracy: a connect the dots feature
This feature is going to be the first instalment of what I call "connect-the-dots." It is the result of following up on story ideas for features that, for one reason or another, turned out to be duds. But, as someone once wisely said, if life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Waste not, want not.
So, in the spirit of wasting-not and thus wanting-not, I decided to do an experiment. Could I connect all the data I collected from feature duds together into a different, yet cohesive argument? Could I "connect the dots" of unrelated topics? Could I find some basic theme underlying these disparate subjects? Let's find out.
The freelance reporter who couldn't speak
Imagine being given the opportunity to interview a globe-trotting freelance reporter whose specialty was going to war-torn and dangerous countries like Mozambique and Haiti. What kind of stories he could tell, I thought.
The best thing about him that I learned before the interview was that he was among the few reporters to get into Chechnya and see the situation firsthand, as Russia continues to have a virtual lockdown on the country. Rumours were flying about the situation in Chechnya, especially the one concerning atrocities committed by both sides, but there was no actual data forthcoming. The only way the freelancer could get in was to get smuggled in.
So I arrived at a Tim Hortons in breathless anticipation, and sat down with the freelancer. He was a slight man with glasses who talked with a soft-spoken but insistent voice. It was the kind of voice that didn't change in emotion as he shifted from talking about mundane trip details to the sight of human corpses, bloated and rotting in the sun.
But as the conversation progressed, it soon became apparent that although he had seen a lot of shit, he couldn't tell me a story that I could parlay into a feature on its own. It was like he had no sense of how to tell a complete story - from point a to point z - and it was very frustrating. I felt like a boy standing outside a candy store window with no way to get at the goods.
For example, he was the first reporter ever allowed to go to the top-secret Canadian military base called ALERT. This base is the most northern community in the world, located at the northern tip of Ellesmere Island. And what did he say about it? He described how he could not smoke outside the buildings, but rather he had to smoke inside - the only government buildings in all of Canada where one was forced to smoke inside. The reason? They had spilled so much fuel on the permafrost, which then gets trapped in the ice, that one spark would blow the whole place sky-high.
Interesting, no? But imagine a constant thread of intriguing snippets of information - and no causal thread to form an overall narrative. There were tantalizing glimpses of his experiences, like droplets of rain suspended in the air, going nowhere. And no matter how many questions I used to boost his engine, there was no budging this guy. He wasn't going to tell me anything that I could parlay into a feature-length story.
But then our conversation turned towards the nature of democracy. This move was prompted by my question of what made him so interested in going to war-torn countries.
His response was that he was interested in how human beings acted under extreme conditions. In other words, he wasn't a reporter per se. He was an explorer of the human condition.
In more colloquial terms, the man was an adrenalin-chaser. Some people jump from airplanes. Other people ski down mountains with specially designed helmets in order to go faster. Some people like to wrestle crocodiles. This freelancer reporter went to war-torn countries to check out the situation.
"I am fascinated with people who are prepared to die for what they believe in," he commented over the ruckus of high school kids swarming the Tim Hortons like bees on speed. Pushing up his glasses and wrinkling his nose as if something itched, he added, "Because I don't see that conviction here in North America. Sometimes some of the ideas that people are prepared to die for in other countries, seem kind of cracked to me. But it fascinates me."
He continued, describing the living conditions for many of these countries: corrupt, dirty, poor, and ultimately Hobbesian.
"You look at Africa ... you look at Angola, Ivory Coast, the ongoing battles in Sudan ... you look at Afghanistan - it's just going to fall apart. Because the whole country is riven into territories controlled by warlords. And the warlords just don't care about what the UN says. They just don't care. And the world is becoming more and more like that."
As he was talking, my mind started contemplating the obstacles that stand in these countries' ways. I mean, what was the problem? How hard is it to grow the democratic spore in the socially dynamic environmental lab?
"I don't know if I have conclusions. But in many parts of the world, to only eat one meal a day, to own a shoddy uniform, and a half-working rifle, to live in a trench, and work eighteen hours a day - which is the life for many of these rebel armies - is a step up for these people, not a step down. To me, that says a lot, because if this is what people consider to be a better life, then they are not going to disengage from that life."
I asked him if he thought there was something fundamentally different about our conception of life that results in a democracy; something that other countries don't possess.
"That's a good question," he replied. "North American society is primarily the offspring of Britain, which is pretty ancient itself. The only thing we have in North America is that we are new. And we have no cranky neighbours. Chechnya is a tiny republic, and there are about six others right beside. And these six tiny republics are in a space about the size of the distance between Winnipeg and Brandon. These same six republics have been there for hundreds of years. And for reasons inexplicable to you and me, they hate each other."
He went on to confess his puzzlement as to why, when studies have shown that democracies cannot work in conditions of mass poverty, idealists still make attempts to import democracy. He believes that a democracy needs a large, scared, and conservative middle class in order to give stability. "You need a large, bulky middle class that is inert, that does not tolerate extremism on one way or another, and just sits there, like a petrified mass," he pithily stated. "Unless you have this large middle class, you cannot have a smoothly-running democracy."
I wondered afterward whether he preferred the war-torn countries, with all their horrible reality, to the tuft-dressed dream of western civilization.
The Chinese student leader who wasn't there
The advertisement read: "Dr. Feng Congde. In the Aftermath of Tiananmen: Between Modernity and Tradition." Below that was a sub-caption: "Dr. Feng Congde was one of the student leaders of the 1989 protests in Tiananmen Square."
It's not everyday that a student leader from Tiananmen Square was going to be speaking, I thought. It would probably make a good feature.
But during the talk, Dr. Congde hardly discussed Tiananmen. The whole talk - as much as I could gather - was his belief that China was behind the western world spiritually. The price of communism was China's divorce from its rich religious past. Without this connection to some spiritual guidance, Dr. Congde explained in his hesitant English, China would not be able to advance as a society.
In essence, Dr. Congde believed that spirituality was a fundamental ingredient that the Chinese need in order to form a viable democracy.
The strange thing about Dr. Congde's talk was that for the first hour and a half, he rambled on spirituality to the point that I became confused as to whether I was attending a political talk, or was in some strange brainwashing session for religious conversion. When he referred to Tiananmen, he did not condemn the Chinese government at all. Indeed, he seemed strangely disconnected from the whole situation.
And in fact, that's what he was. When prompted during question period to talk about Tiananmen, he explained that he was as far from being a heroic leader as possible. He was a student leader by default, not by choice.
His story read like an absurd comedy gone horribly awry. He was working on his Masters thesis, he explained, and the computer he was using to write his thesis broke down not once, but twice. So in his spare time, he wound up at a student protest meeting, somehow got elected as leader, and before one can say tao, he was in the midst of the Tiananmen 'fiasco'.
And that's how he described Tiananmen: a fiasco.
"We were not prepared for what happened ... we knew we wanted [democracy], but we didn't know what it was," Dr. Congde explained, dressed in a white traditional Chinese garment worn underneath his Western overcoat.
There was constant in-fighting among the students, Congde recalled. Students who disagreed with the leaders formed their own splinter groups because they believed that democracy was about freedom to choose what to believe, which Dr. Congde and the other leaders, in a moment of irony not lost on them, had to crack down on.
"I think the big problem with the Chinese and their beliefs about democracy was that we thought everybody could decide ... so when someone felt he had a better idea, they just formed another group. So we took our own forces to overthrow them."
Dr. Congde didn't expect Tiananmen to blow up the way it did; he was just fighting for a little bit of democracy on the campus. In their naivety, the other students believed that their show of defiance would spread across the country.
"I was really afraid that, [though] the students were not violent and had no arms ... [if] the whole country moved like [Tiananmen], [and] there was no strong force [to contain it], like the communist army, the whole country would go into total anarchy ... which would be even worse ... which is what we didn't want."
He concluded, "We should move [towards democracy], but little by little."
However, the implications of his talk intrigued me. Congde spoke a lot
about Confucianism, its relation to how Chinese think differently than
Western people, and its philosophical and spiritual forebears. But as I thought about it more, was Congde saying that China could not have a democracy in our traditional, western-defined sense of the word? For that matter, if Confucianism was a significant factor in forming the Chinese cultural and social backbone - especially in how it emphasized the importance of respect and obedience to one's elders - how could it jive with democracy's sense of individualism and freedom of expression?
So I asked him if it was possible for China to have a democracy, and this is what he said:
"Every person agrees that an airplane is better than a carriage or a bus ... we [the Chinese] all want it. But if we have no airport prepared, that would be dangerous, even catastrophic. The theory that many Chinese right now use against democracy is that, what if a democratic system is introduced in China ... [what would be] the result? Chaos ... and [then] Japan might invade us. So if we have no airport prepared, that would be quite dangerous. So for me, it is not a matter of transplantation. Each person is different ... but that doesn't mean that we can't use [the western idea of democracy]. Look at Taiwan. I think Hong Kong may eventually become more democratic. But more importantly, [China] should prepare this airport."
Vroom.
The diversity strategy that no one could name
A few weeks ago, I attended a conference on diversity issues. The goal of this conference was to train young people to spread the value of diversity and tolerance in a multicultural society such as ours that contains many different ethnicities, religions, and beliefs.
The problem was that I couldn't get any of the young people supposedly trained in diversity issues to state exactly how they would promote diversity.
I talked with Nathan Allen, a young black man at the conference.
"I grew up in a white suburban neighbourhood, and being the only black family for a couple of years ... you know, you just grew up with it. We weren't too bugged by it; we had friends, and the other people in the community accepted us ... but once you go outside the community that knows you, you get stereotyped by the retail stores, by police, by certain government programs. You get watched when you go into restaurants or when you walk down the street. And you get pulled over just because you are black. So I had a couple of racial confrontations. They weren't positive at all. I don't want my younger brothers or the younger generation to go through that. Even though it is getting better and better everyday, some of these stereotypes persist."
"Do you think this conference is giving you the tools to combat these stereotypes and racism?" I asked.
"It is connecting us with people, it is giving us tools, it is giving us the opportunity to vent and to talk about issues that get swept under the rug by the government. Coming to this conference has not only opened my eyes but also given me resources to deal with these issues and carry on."
Everyone agreed that stereotypes, prejudice, and lack of education are stumbling blocks to overcoming ignorance of diversity. "It is more of an aging problem," Allen added. "The older [people] get, the more they get stuck in their ways. By the time we get older, these problems [of diversity] should be obliterated."
There was a lot of talk of "being given resources" and "tools" to promote diversity. But what were the actual tools these kids were going to use to combat racism?
I tried an example to prompt a more specific response. "I'll give you an example: you are trying to talk to someone who is totally racist. Do you think that this conference has given you any tools to convince that person that holding these racist views is not right?"
"I don't think in that way, [in] one on one confrontations with a racist person ... we [will be able to] stop the cycle with them, but [we will] with those people who will listen, who might not have known what the issues were," Allen responded.
In other words, the promotion of diversity was not intended for people set in their ways, but for people who were just ignorant, and who would be susceptible to subscribing to stereotypes that may lead to an intolerant attitude towards someone perceived to be different.
Vanessa Leschyshyn, another conference goer, clarified, "[Take for example] aboriginal issues ... we don't hear the specifics of the reserves and how bad the conditions are. We heard a girl from Thompson talk about it and give the real side of it, and so I had a better understanding [of aboriginal issues]. I could make a better judgment concerning the situation."
But how is this different than what has been done before? Ignorance, everyone knows, is the foundation of hate and prejudice. But how would these preachers of diversity spread the gospel any differently than what religious organizations, anti-hate groups, and government programs have attempted to do in the past?
I hoped that talking to Rida Abboud, a project officer in diversity education with the United Nations and one of the people who organized the conference, would give me some specific information on what these "tools" to promote diversity would be.
"The primary purpose of this conference is [to address the issue] that young people feel disconnected from each other," Abboud explained. "Young activists need to network. And there is really no networking institution available. This program is to bring young activists together in their regions and to network. [This program is for] young people who are active already and have a knowledge base, but who want to pursue their action-oriented lifestyle, if you will, further. But [this program] most importantly [offers an opportunity to] network, so they can exchange ideas with other experts in the room."
"What do you see these people doing out on the street in order to promote diversity?" I tried, in vain, one more time.
"We have given tangible tools; we have given a kit and we have given resources; but what we really hoped was that the experience and the knowledge and the expertise that was in the room was going to be shared and spark some discussion and ideas. And we also are creating a network, via e-mail, of all [the members of this conference]."
"So there is nothing concrete you teach these people here. They come up with their own ideas on how to promote diversity," I attempted to clarify.
"We talked about diversity; we talked about what is not diversity, and we talked about what needs to happen to promote diversity," Abboud ducked and weaved. "For example, [we discussed] curriculum change; to teach teachers on these issues and to look at the history that has been erased from history books."
"What if someone raises the criticism that diversity is good, but you are not really teaching diversity? You are just teaching how to put pressure on people to conform to what you think is diversity?" I finally asked, getting to the crux of how I saw the affair.
"Well, our intentions are to open the door to a multitude of diverse opinions and experiences. When we said diversity, you can't hit the hammer on the head in two and a half days. But what we hoped to provide was a place for discussion and dialogue, a safe place for that, and to provide resources through written but also guest speakers, and again recognize the diverse experiences of the people in the room," Abboud answered.
Then she dug out the dirt. "The best we can hope for is that we lit the match, and fires will burn later on. The most amazing thing is seeing the conversations after the conference. We are hoping for that dialogue, that maybe while young people have not dived into issues, are at least aware that they will go home and maybe read that newspaper article about the issue, or think twice about comments where someone says aboriginals get paid twice as much as other people in this country." She concluded, "We are trying to open the door to self-knowledge and self-reflection."
A question: is there such a thing as 'ethical propaganda'?
Connect the dots
In the end, we have a freelance reporter who believes the world is going to hell in a hand basket, and who also believes democracy is nothing more than the result of a scared bunch of people who solely hope for the dream of living a long, boring, numbingly unchanging life. We have a former Tiananmen Square student uprising leader who actually wasn't a leader, and who believes democracy needs a spiritual component to work - although the numbers of people who practice spirituality in our democratic society seems to be plummeting like so many dead birds. And finally, we have a diversity strategy program funded by our government that trains young people to put pressure on other people in the ironic goal of greater freedom for all.
While I am tempted to connect the dots myself and come up with a common theme to all these narratives - namely that democracy seems to be less about the freedom of the individual, and more about the paradoxical power of the majority to protect the freedom of the individual - I don't think it is my place to give a conclusion, but rather offer a challenge.
Can you connect the dots?