HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2008-12-11, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, DECEMBER 11, 2008. PAGE 5.
Bonnie
Gropp
TThhee sshhoorrtt ooff iitt
Catch the happiness
Despite its inspiring finale, the recent
American presidential election
campaign carried more than its share
of bummer baggage.
The walking cartoon from Wasilla, for
starters, not to mention the reptilian
Republican mobs chanting DRILL, BABY,
DRILL!
But for me, the snake’s-belt-buckle nadir of
the campaign came when a poll revealed that
23 per cent of Texans actually believed that
Obama is a terrorist-connected Muslim.
“I've been to the same church – the same
Christian church – for almost 20 years”
Obama told a crowd in South Carolina, early
in the campaign.
Still, nearly one in four Texans take it as
gospel that he is Saddam-in-disguise, a closet
Al Qaedaphile who salaams to Mecca in
between daydreams of 72 nubile virgins
moistly waiting just over yonder hill.
Oh, well. No accounting for what people
believe, I guess.
Which brings us to the Jesus Thing. I
understand why people want to believe in God.
Or Allah. Or Buddha, Ganesha, Zeus or
Zoroaster.
What I don’t get is the compulsion to find
physical manifestations of one’s faith in, say, a
cider bottle, an ice cream container or on Wal-
Mart shopping bags.
I’m not making those up. A customer at
Tanners Hall Pub in Darlington, England
recently claimed to see the Son of God on the
foil wrapper of his pint of cider.
Another believer in Utah beheld the image
of Jesus on the side of a three-gallon container
of spumoni ice cream.
And in Iowa City, a shopper swore he could
see both Jesus and Mary silhouetted on the
side of his Wal-Mart shopping bag.
The most unlikely visitation? In Monterey,
California the image of Mary is said to have
appeared in the leg wound of a biker who
flipped his Harley and slid 50 feet along the
pavement.
Mysterious ways indeed. Nurse, check those
meds.
Ah, well. ‘Tis passing easy to make mock of
religious – make that ‘religulous’ -- beliefs –
as Bill Maher has shown in a movie of that
name.
But a new study by two University of British
Columbia psychologists gives secular support
to a notion that the spiritually inclined have
always taken as an article of, er, faith. Namely
that believing in God (or Allah or The Great
Spirit or Your Choice Here) does in fact make
the believer a better person – better as in more
generous, altruistic and honest.
In one experiment, the psychologists
arranged for a group of students to write a test.
The students were not monitored by a human
overseer, but they were told that ‘the
ghost of a dead student’ was known to haunt
the room.
The ‘cheating rate’ plummeted to near zero.
In another study the experimenters placed a
large poster showing the face of a celebrity on
a wall in a commercial bank’s coffee room.
They found that the pressure of “just being
under the gaze of the eyes of that poster”
nearly tripled the contributions to the office
coffee kitty.
Proving, they concluded, that people who
think they’re being watched behave better –
even if there’s nobody physically there to do
the watching.
Makes sense. When I first went to Spain
many years ago the country was still under the
rule of dictator Generalissimo Francisco
Franco. The Spanish people didn’t have a lot
of luxuries – or even necessities – in those
days, but one thing you could count on: every
government office, bank, bodega and
barbershop featured a large, government-issue
portrait of the dour Franco gazing down from
the wall.
The shepherd tending his flock.
But we don’t have to go all the way to Spain
to encounter the Portrait Police. All the
classrooms I sat in from kindergarten to high
school functioned under the gaze of a young
woman in a white dress with a tiara on her
head. Queen Elizabeth II, of course.
I imagine she was up there on the wall to
exert a civilizing influence on the student
rabble arrayed before her – with limited
success, I’d have to say.
Of course, Liz and Franco didn’t have quite
the clout of a genuine God or Goddess – they
were mere humans, after all.
For de facto crowd control, you need actual
deities, according to the UBC psychologists.
Gods, they point out, are all-seeing and all-
powerful.
Plus they’ve got a hammer no mere mortal
judge can claim – the ability to impose eternal
damnation.
Scary.
Not that I’m intimidated, of course. I take
my moral guidance from Woody Allen, who
said: “I do not believe in an afterlife. Although
I am bringing a change of underwear.”
Arthur
Black
Other Views Oh, don’t be so religulous!
Does any of this sound familiar? A
premier tells a prime minister Ontario
is losing jobs and suffering hardship,
because the auto manufacturing industry it
depends on is collapsing, and they need to join
to find solutions.
The province warns the manufacturers are
on the wrong track, particularly in building big
gas-guzzlers instead of smaller, fuel-efficient
cars, which consumers prefer and are buying
increasingly from abroad.
Its industry minister says government will
consider helping, but the manufacturers have
to open their books, so it can monitor their
actions.
The auto heads insist their industry knows
what it is doing, plans real change and can be
made profitable again.
Much of this sounds as if it comes from
today’s newspapers, but it happened in and
around 1980, when Ontario had a similar
economic downturn.
North American car sales had fallen by 25
per cent and Ontario had plunged, as it has
today, to the unaccustomed depth of having
one of the lowest rates of economic growth
among provinces.
Progressive Conservative premier William
Davis asked Liberal prime minister Pierre
Trudeau to join him to help combat what he
called the “serious decline in automobile and
parts production.”
Davis said some considered the domestic
industry’s problems temporary, but he felt it
needed to take more account of the rising cost
of oil and consumers’ growing preference for
smaller, fuel-efficient cars, which mostly
meant imports.
Davis got under the hood of the issue,
because the Big Three manufacturers’
emphasis on continuing to produce
cumbersome gas-guzzlers cost them market
share and helped drive them to the precipice
they are on today.
A report prepared by a committee of the
legislature, which investigated plant
shutdowns, similarly accused the Big Three
manufacturers of sticking to turning out gas-
guzzlers and failing to produce and market
smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles.
It said the industry appeared obsessed with
building the gas-guzzlers, which fewer
consumers wanted and were rapidly becoming
obsolete.
The report warned failure to switch to more
fuel-efficient vehicles would mean doom for
Chrysler, gloom for Ford and a heavy debt
load for General Motors, which is not far from
what is happening 28 years later.
Larry Grossman, an Ontario industry
minister noted for not pulling punches, had
still more criticisms of the auto manufacturers,
saying their world had changed dramatically
and they had to make crucial changes, if they
were to become a dynamic industry again.
Grossman said the industry would have to
design and build the cars consumers wanted,
not those it felt were good for them, and make
a priority of ensuring their quality was
competitive. Consumers increasingly were
turning to foreign-made cars, believing usually
with good reason they were better made.
Grossman said the industry should consider
whether it was paying its senior executives too
much, which has an echo today, when the
heads of the Big Three flew to Washington,
pleading for public money to bail them out, in
costly corporate jets.
Grossman said the industry should look at
whether its labour costs were too high,
because it paid its workers three or four times
as much as competitors in Europe and Japan.
The president of Ford Motor Co. of Canada
Ltd. at the time, Roy Bennett, responded
huffily his company had been in the vanguard
of automotive engineering and intended to
stay there.
He said it was the North Americans, not the
Europeans or Japanese, who developed such
innovations as automatic transmissions,
computer-aided design and manufacturing,
lightweight alloys, electronic instrumentation,
catalytic converters and lubricated-for-life
components, to name just a few.
The car chief promised his company would
soon introduce “a procession of new cars and
new technologies without parallel,” but they
must have lost their way, because it is now
begging for public handouts.
The car manufacturers had the road to
success sign-posted for them, but failed to
follow it. Anything they promise now has to
come with an unbreakable warranty.
Eric
Dowd
FFrroomm
QQuueeeenn’’ss PPaarrkk
I t’s a little difficult to stay positive these
days. Prorogue or coalition, there is no
question that the actions of government
have raised doubts and uncertainty among its
taxpayers and in the country.
The economy continues to slump, the dollar
to nosedive and investments to disappear.
Banks are curbing credit card lending and the
demand for mortgages is slackening. Sixty-six
thousands jobs were lost in Ontario last month
increasing the unemployment rate to 7.1 per
cent. And it doesn’t look as if this trend is
going to change any time soon.
Turn on the news at night and hear that
another suicide bomber has targetted innocent
people, that another soldier has been lost, that
another terrorist warning has been heard.
Even the weather network offers nothing
promising. The message apparently could be
that if the economy can’t bring you down, the
environment will.
Teens are sent to hospital after being
stabbed in a high-end Toronto suburb. A 72-
year-old man died of multiple stab wounds.
After seeing her friend shot, a woman hides in
a bathroom from two gunmen.
Personally, time is passing too quickly.
You’re working harder, partying less,
worrying more. You ache, you’re weary, and
physically things just aren’t ticking along the
way they used to.
So, yes, it’s difficult to stay positive. But
seriously, folks we need to try. A recent
Harvard study claims that happiness is
contagious and can be felt by strangers up to
three degrees of separation away. Emotions
the report said, don’t just pass from person to
person, but from person, to person, to person,
and from person, to person, to person, to
person. And of all emotions it’s happiness that
passes most vigorously.
Unquestionably the attitude of another can
permeate our own outlook. The other evening
I walked into the living room just as U.S.
president-elect Barack Obama was talking to
the governors about designing an economic
recovery package. His demeanor and tone
belied the severity of the issue, and the effect
was calming. His solid, soothing delivery
could ease any fright or panic.
Conversely, for people fearing for lost
income and savings there is a pall of doom
and gloom over this holiday season that is
setting off a chain reaction. Fear for the future
has folks spending cautiously, which does
nothing to improve the economy as the pinch
that businesses have been feeling gets a little
sharper.
Perhaps it’s time to stop making the
mountain any bigger than it already is. We
may not feel particularly positive about the
world around us right now, but what would
happen if we didn’t let it show?
Wouldn’t it help us to stop thinking about
what we’ve lost and think instead of what we
still have?
Self-help guru Ekhart Tolle has espoused
the value in the ‘power of now’and right now
life’s pretty good. I have the best family. I am
healthy, there is a roof over my head, presents
to place under my Christmas tree, food in my
freezer, wine in my cellar. I have books to take
me away and a good guy to keep me
grounded. My house is heated and love from
many quarters warms my heart.
So, I am happy. And will be even more so,
if my happiness makes that three degrees of
separation.
Auto makers ignored advice
Just as despair can come to one only from
other human beings, hope, too, can be given
to one only by other human beings.
– Elie Wiesel
Final Thought