Keep it to yourself

A number of blogs that I follow push back (most recently here) pretty hard against a type of personal activism that ends up creating a structure a moral evaluation with no sense that effective change is produced or even possible.  What do I mean by this?  I mean simply that personal activism can be a therapeutic response to the guilty conscious of privilege.  There is nothing new in that statement and many of the blogs that I follow outline and develop this a more thorough manner.  However, I though it might be helpful to outline a few simple guidelines for how to discern this reality.

1. If you believe your action has direct connection to effective change, then outline the network of relationships that demonstrates this, so as to help enable others to participate.  So the personal practices of reducing and recycling are good but I personally do not know of the statistics that relate the basic difference between the personal recycling of material goods and the inherent production of corporate waste in producing our goods and services.  Therefore, in our current structure I do not actually know if increased recycling will actually make a dent in the realities of environmental damage.  So reduce, reuse, and recycle but unless you can articulate a well-informed understanding of how that effects change in the environment in relationship to all the other variables then just do as a base-line practice and nothing more.  The same is true for alternative or ‘guerrilla’ gardening.  These practices can be fun and meaningful but can they address global issues of starvation?  Should they function as anything more than a ‘good habit’?
2. Be honest that ‘fair-trade’ products represent a sort of premium or ‘luxury’ brand.  They are not bad.  They are simply out of reach for many people to consistently have access to.  The result of creating a morally elevated status for such products is that those who are the most vulnerable in our society will actually have guilt heaped on them (in addition to the prevalent social stigma of being poor).
3. ‘Symbolic’ gestures are only powerful if they register or gain traction in the face of those in power.  In my Mennonite culture there is an emphasis on ‘simple’ or humble lifestyles.  This basically means that people are not supposed to be ‘flashy’ with their money.  So a family can have a cabin, an RV, snowmobiles, a boat, etc. but if another family occasionally goes out to a fancy restaurant or purchases a piece of ‘abstract’ art they are deemed frivolous or ‘materialistic’.  Simple living is fine, not having flashy things is fine, but there should be no moral scale here.  The only time a particular way of living has symbolic power is if it is actually taken note of by those in power and disrupts the flow of power.  Otherwise, go ahead and do it but drop the implicit or explicit pretense of righteousness.

The result of not following some of these guidelines is, I believe, the very real possibility of insulating ourselves from the possibility of actual change because we are already the change we want to see in the world.  So, again, to repeat there are all manner of good and relatively equivalent (I did not say neutral) ways of living (because in many instances we do not actually know the good or harm we do).  This is not a critique of particular practices as such, rather I am concerned about the moral structure that gets developed around these practices that serve to sanctify and pacify our privileged guilt while condemning those in our midst outside the privileged ability to attain this sort of personal social-piety.  Sure we will condescend to acquit the poor from such guilt but it will be done not from solidarity but from ‘on high’.  And to be clear it is not only those without material means who struggle to attain this sort of personal social-piety but the reality is that it is a lot of work to be consistent in this area.  Many people with mental illness or with children with disabilities or with other significant stress in their life will find it hard attain this piety and will only have more guilt/shame added to their lives as they already have difficulty achieving the other salvation narrative of the ‘American dream’.

So is this another expression that functions to insulate my own position?  I am sure there are elements of self-protection here.  But I do want to offer this as a sort of confession.  For most of my adult life I have lived in the ‘less-desirable’ areas of Canada.  I have, for the most part, quite enjoyed this experience.  I have, however, also held it up as a sort of implicit model of ‘faithfulness’.  And for the most part the practice has been selfish as it has kept me in touch with certain social realities that we tend to ignore.  But functionally there has been no more method in this approach than the baseline hope of being a ‘good neighbour’.  Being a good neighbour will look differently in my neighbourhood than it will in other neighbourhoods but it is also no more righteous (and I am not convinced I have lived up to this in my context in any event).  While I need to take down my lifestyle as a model of personal piety this is different than articulating the manner in which neighbourhoods are formed and maintained (which I have articulated here and here).  This articulation can be a framework in which possibilities for effective or symbolic action can be developed.  This becomes a participatory and collaborative expression rather than a personal posture of living in the ‘hood is more righteous than living in the ‘burbs.  My point in all this is simple.  There are many good things to do in the world but for the most part keep it to yourself.  If it is an effective or truly symbolic act then it will speak for itself.

So what am I missing in my thinking or on my list?

An uneasy neighbourhood

[I threw this up at a few other sites where I post so I thought I may as well post it here]

A skeptical rant

A while back I started to occasionally cruise the local atheist/skeptic sites from around Winnipeg.  It was an interesting cultural experience.  It made me think of what some non-religious folks might (possibly) experience when they encounter  particular church cultures.  What I am thinking of primarily is the seemingly unconscious maintenance of a certain in-house mindset that helps support and perpetuate a larger view of the world that is not held by popular culture.  This was strikingly impressed on me in a recent post at Winnipeg Skeptics entitled, Top Ten Reasons Why Being a Skeptic is Fulfilling.  Now there really is nothing to criticize here as the post is about a subjective experience, that is, being fulfilled.  However, the experienced fulfillment strike me as either unhealthy or simply generic and so confusing in terms of its being unique to skepticism (though I did admit the author did not claim uniqueness for many of the reasons).

First is the prescriptive nature of the post.  Here are a few excerpts,
As a skeptic you love science
Through your skeptical endeavors you have found your social conscience, a sense of camaraderie and have made friends for a lifetime.
I feel bad for the poor skeptic who remains unconvinced of the current employment of science as an effective means to address human well-being and in so doing finds him or herself ostracized from this fraternity for such contrarian views.

More than this defining of what a skeptic loves and will experience is the nature of the claims.  So take the full sentence of the first reason skepticism is fulfilling,
As a skeptic you love science and know that the scientific method is the best method mankind has ever invented to understand who we are, how we got here, and how we can improve our lot in this universe.
Okay I will grant the how we got here but who we are and how to improve our lot, really?  I’ll leave a comment over at that post and wait for some elaboration because I don’t even know where to start on that claim.  But more to the point.  This post is about fulfillment.  Skepticism is fulfilling because it is the best.  How is it the best?  It is the best not because of demonstrable realities but because it is fulfilling for this individual.  It provides a subjective condition which the author enjoys.  Shouldn’t there be reasons to be skeptical about that?

Here is number two,
You know that reality is a puzzle and that it will take a lot of effort to understand it. At times truth goes against what seems to be common sense. You have discovered that the struggle to understand reality reveals truths that are, at times, deeply profound. That knowledge will keep you searching the for the truth for the rest of your life.
That may well be true of skepticism but I am going to go ahead and say that is true of anyone who is semi-conscious or attentive to life.

The author goes on in number three,
You possess a willingness to learn accompanied by a willingness to change, that’s why your skepticism makes you a better person.
How does a willingness to change make anyone better?  There is simply no relationship here.

Number four,
I have only ever met one group of people who cheer when they have been proven wrong. Skeptics. Especially those who employ scientific skepticism. You may be bold when you ask those annoyingly tough questions, but underneath it all you are humble enough to know when you have discovered the truth. After all, evidence is evidence and that’s good enough for you.
This is about as laughable as the Christian radio station that claims to only use ‘safe’ language. Hmmm, agreed upon in-house rules are cheered upon when followed by one another?  Strange.  I am still waiting for evidence of things like, say, the above claim about how science is the best mode of ‘improving out lot in life’.

Bizarrely perhaps this post reminds me of certain strands of pentecostalism.  The nature of these claims reminds me of the pentecostals who tried to show me the fulfilling nature of speaking in tongues.  They just wanted me to try it and if I opened myself to it I would see its value.  I tried.  I did not see.  I have the same feeling about these models of skepticism/atheism.  They continue to strike me as so profoundly lacking as an overall approach to life.  It is almost as though the author knows this and instead simply tries to amp up the volume to create a kind of Prosperity Gospel for skepticism.
Do this and you will end up fulfilled, isn’t it wonderful.
Sure, the author of this post is someone who apparently was an Anglican Minister and now an enlightened skeptic so I guess I should forgive him the zeal of conversion but these expressions strike as so terminally unfulfilling that I can’t even begin to wrap my head around them.  I want to be clear that author does admit that “You understand that being skeptical on it’s own just doesn’t cut it.”  But this is followed quickly about an apparent openness to letting others ‘prove themselves’.  I think most people with any familiarity to this discussion knows how this goes.  Two sides with differing foundational logics attempt to ‘prove’ something and surprisingly no one is convinced.

As I reflect on this post, which I was originally going to scrap, what remains most impressing is this notion of hope.  Why should there be hope in this?  I am guessing there is hope because of this author’s experience.  This all strikes me as somehow strange.

The problem of presence

It would seem that a work or ‘the works’ of a particular philosopher cannot be complete without addressing the question of presence.  Do we have access to some-thing?  This was first impressed on me when I was introduced to philosophical hermeneutics and the question of meaning.  This question seemed stretched to its logical conclusion in the work of Derrida who denied our ability to capture or lay hold of meaning explaining that the nature of language is to remain in motion always being deferred in relation.  Kierkegaard picks up this question in Practice in Christianity when raising the question of ‘reflection’.  He criticizes the pastoral movement in his time that encourages ‘reflection’.  I think this marks a shift in this thinking away from earlier formations of developing ‘inwardness’ as the arena of faith.  Or at least he is developing a corrective or preemptive claim.

To reflect means, in one sense of the word, to come quite close to something which one would look at, whereas in another sense it implies an attitude of remoteness, of infinite remoteness so far as the personality is concerned.  When a painting is pointed out to one and he is asked to regard it, or when in a shop one looks at a piece of cloth, for example, he steps up quite close to the object, in the latter instance he even takes it in his hands and feels it, in short, he gets as close to the object as possible.  But in another sense, by this very movement he goes quite out of himself, gets away from himself, forgets himself, and there is nothing to remind him that it is he that is looking at the picture or the cloth, and not the picture of the cloth that is looking at him.  That is to say, by reflection I enter into the object (I become objective), but I go out of or away from myself (I cease to be subjective).  . . .

For Christian truth, if I may say so, has itself eyes to see with, indeed, is all eye; but it would be very disquieting, rather quite impossible, to look at a painting or a piece of cloth, if when I was about to look I discovered that the painting or the cloth was looking at me – and precisely such is the case with Christian truth.

Kierkegaard is interested in contemporaneousness with Christ.  And it took me a little while to realize is how dramatically this must be distinguished from historical knowledge of Christ, that is reflection on Christ.  There are of course many questions to be asked about this distinction but it always pushes for, better or worse, is a subjective engagement.

As I was writing out this quote I was reminded of a recent art installation I happened across as my wife and I were walking in our neighbourhood.  The installation was inside the new Plug In Institute for Contemporary Art.  It was created by Lani Maestro and entitled ‘her rain’.  The installation was sparse and what I would call ‘conceptual’.  Below is a picture of one of the works that made up the four room installation.

This neon light filled a room accompanied by second mirrored piece which ran ‘NO BODY LIKE THIS PAIN’.  The works throughout the installation are ‘unframed’.  They are meant to immerse the space they inhabit which include the subjects and subjectivities that move past them.  What I appreciate about this installation is that it makes it difficult to both take it seriously and remain objective about the pieces.  One has the option of dismiss the installation as being ‘artsy-fartsy’ rubbish but one can hardly ‘admire’ it or ‘reflect’ on it in the Kierkegaardian sense above.  One moves through it and must make a subjective decision about it.  It is bodily but not framed and so it opens itself to touch other bodies.  It is subjective.  This word has been so maligned that I think it is time again to slowly build up its intended place, which is not only a place, but also and primarily its impact.

Reflection on a brief occupation

I visited Occupy Winnipeg today.  With nights already dipping below freezing I had one initial question on my mind.  The answer is yes.  They are preparing for winter.  I only spent about hour at the site chatting with a few individuals.  After biking away, alone now with my impressions, I came to the confession that it is and would be quite easy to mock this local expression.  My conversations were peppered with grasping sentiments about being connected to something larger, vague allusions to support from people with power, comments about getting good press, politically correct placating, bitching against the Man, and some straight-up bullshit.

I would not be surprised if the greatest immediate need this expression fulfills is to have egos rubbed both for people who are valiantly braving the cold in support of justice and also for others who can bring a pot of hot chili and bag of sweaters to feel good about supporting the cause.  Why do I say this?  Do I say this to discredit them or the expression?  I call this a confession simply because it is being honest with my perception and experience. I do not want to create from nothing hopes and notions that do not relate to reality.

And this initial step of confession is important, for myself in any event.  It is important because of the presence of another element I encountered.  What troubled me reflecting on the ‘spirit’ of the people there were the resources  being drawn upon for hope.  One person talked about being connected to something epic another sensed the significance of what was happening, others appealed to the power of vague traditions.  Some dropped ambiguous allusions to the ‘lawyers and doctors’ connected to their cause.  One even said the provincial government ‘supported them’.  In fairness, there was also clear acknowledgement that this is, at the local level, starting from scratch.  They are not even beginning.  They are trying to figure out how to begin.  At this point they are gathering.  And it is a diverse and motivated gathering.  And this I support.

I have struggled with the banner of ‘We are the 99%’.  Perhaps it really is the best possible rallying cry to bring these diverse groups together.  But I struggle with it because of those who do not even factor into the equation.  I am thinking of two experiences I had in the last two days.  One was witnessing a person steal three boxes of diapers (no small accomplishment and no doubt accompanied by no small amount of nerve or desperation).  The other was seeing a neighbourhood kid I have gotten to know riding around on the sidewalk with a bike that had a flat tire and no seat.  Both events stirred that experience of not knowing whether I would laugh or cry if I were to express my emotions.  It is almost comedic in its tragedy and definitely tragic in its comedy.  It is the refuse and rejection of our society.  For me it was encountering the ones that do not have a place holder in the calculation of percentages.  In both instances the people involved were First Nations females.

If there was to be some hope that I took from visiting Occupy Winnipeg it was that there were a number a First Nations women present (a relatively high proportion in a small overall number).  As I stood there not really instigating any conversation one of them simply poured out her life dramatic fashion.  I have experienced enough to call this a dramatic telling not to question whether or not it is factual but to recognize that tragedy  has become one of a limited number of modes of communicating that some people seem capable of engaging in.  But it appears at this site the unrepresented and uncounted are finding some sort of representation.  And that is a good thing.  When my church gathers to occupy our sanctuary I have not encountered the drawing out of the unrepresented.  This is not such a good thing.

Counter tagging

In an earlier post reflecting on my experience trying to learn the language of tagging in my back lane I made the passing comment about wanting to create my own tags that might, at least for an instant, give some fence-sitting kid pause.  Well it looks like someone beat me to the punch.  A couple of tags have shown up down my back lane that look to be from the same individual.

I have to say that I actually quite like these tags.  When I thought of doing one I considered creating some expression of care; some sort of ‘I love you’ sentiment.  It seemed so ridiculous to me.  Why would such a sentiment scrawled on a dumpster mean anything?  In thinking about a tag I was always assuming myself as the subject.  In these tags, however, symbols prominent in First Nations culture create the orientation for the text.  I do not assume to know what some First Nations youth might associate these images with but so far as spreading constructive images I thought these were not half bad.

The super and sub human

So if you are interested in pondering the absurd then have a look at what a local 54 year old grandfather just accomplished.  Just a few highlights;

1. Cycled 6,055 km in 13 days, nine hours and change.  This stands as the fastest coast-to-coast cycling across Canada.

2. Breaking this record included an injury part way through (which required a 15 hr break!).

3. His pace demanded cycling a minimum of 20 hours a day.

These facts do not compute in my brain.  Through the medium of long distance cycling Arvid has raised over 1.5 million dollars.  His charity of choice is an organization that works with street kids in Kenya.  So why I am about to transition to some critical comments related to this story?  First a couple of qualifications.  No criticism is intended towards Arvid.  The fact that he found an expression that allows him to generate this type of support for what I will assume is a great cause can only be commended.  I also assume that other perspectives than the following could be taken (such the need of extreme behaviour to draw attention to extreme situations),  I want, however, to take a step back and ask one question and make one observation.

Why can herculean feats raise this type of money?  Is there not something bizzare or even perverse about the need for someone to perform at super-human levels to draw funds for those living in sub-human conditions?  I will go out on an unsubstantiated limb and venture a guess in saying that the vast majority of Arvid’s support comes from the corporate sector in which donors can only ‘win’ from their association with Arvid.  Arvid becomes the super-hero logo on their chest which invigorates the public imagination.  While Arvid remains out of the average person’s reach the corporation gives the public access to this imagination by acquiring their brand while also associating the average person with helping ‘the poor’ (this is the power of the corporation not Arvid) on the other side of the world.  This leads to my observation;

The owners of Palliser Furniture in Winnipeg created some ‘incentive’ for Arvid saying that if he broke the record they would present him with a check for $50,000 at the finish line.  Now I will also venture a guess in saying that Palliser would have donated the money regardless.  However, the scenario again focuses on some implicit value in this herculean accomplishment.  The money is not worth donating directly to street kids in Kenya, that is, bringing the conditions of a group of people’s life up to a minimally acceptable level.  Or to put it another way, the money is not worth donating to someone who simply demonstrates the need and effectiveness of the situation and organization represented.  Instead the money is worth wagering on the possibility of achieving the never before achieved.  When given the choice between bringing others up to a minimum level on the one hand or extending our reach beyond the maximum the choice is clear (though we are supposed to believe that the two work together).

To again be clear.  I have nothing but respect for Arvid’s accomplishments.  To have inspiring figures in various fields and expressions is part of the beauty of human nature.  What I am drawing attention to is the structure around extreme expressions like Arvid’s.  The amount of global economic resources that could be available from the world’s most wealthy is staggering.  And yet it is the folks without such resources that are required to enter the super-human before investors find enough ‘value’ to throw their tax-deductible donations at so they can still receive a return on investment.

A thorough, no, a systematic beating

Heading into Canada Day tomorrow I am about half finished Geoffery York’s The Dispossessed: Life and Death in Native Canada.  I have known about this book for probably about 15 years and the cover alone has haunted me for almost that whole time.  While I have known about most of the areas covered in Canada’s relationship with the First Nations people what I was not prepared for was to realize the layering and interrelatedness of injustice and abuse this people has faced at the hands of the nation of Canada.  At nearly every intersection of contact First Nations were ploughed over.

Take the basic orientation of the relationship.

You are a damned people in need of our salvation.

You are in the way of us establishing ourselves and appropriating these rich and virgin resources.

What did these two motives result in?  The attempted reform and actual fracturing of an entire generation in residential schools that wrought profound personal and social devastation.  First Nations people are ‘granted’ reservations.  I was not aware that many reservations leading up into the 1960s found significant economic models of sustainability (through traditional practices, crime rates were low and substance abuse at a minimum.  But then in instances like Manitoba a hydro dam project unfolds in which a reservation receives peanuts for their land and false promises for their future and then their way of life is literally drowned.  So in the future band leaders may want to take legal recourse but due to educational, financial, bureaucratic and prejudicial limitations they lack their own resources and cannot afford to hire someone so they are screwed.  Some entire reservations were relocated three or four times in the course of a decade due to the government’s growing awareness and desire for particular resources.  The shift is always with less opportunities and resources at the next site.  And if a reservation is not relocated then mining and extraction companies would descend and kill off traditional sources of food and contaminate water supplies.  If an individual or group wants to start a small business they would be unable to mortgage any property (reservation land is not their property) as an operating loan and they must jump through extensive bureaucratic hoops in order to receive funding that should rightly be theirs in the first place.  And if they did get permission they often lived in a place with inadequate electricity to power an significant machines.  I did not realize the web that this created or more accurately how thorough, how systematic, a beating this group of people has received.  And the blows keep coming.

It is hard to imagine this sort of abuse and then we expect them to find their proverbial ‘boot-straps’.  Really?  Would I want to bend-over in the midst of a dominant culture that has expressed such consistent deception and hatred?

This book was published in 1990 and I do not know how many things have changed at the level of government support and bureaucracy but many of the same stories still surface in the daily newspaper.  Insanitary conditions, displacement,  land-claim stalling, death by housing fires, suicide, violence and the list goes on.  To enter into this situation is at the very least to be overwhelmed as an entire culture has been continually overwhelmed at the hands of a political force that has never made a sustained expression of support and faithfulness to a people.

In as much as anyone wants to ask them to take responsibility for their lives those of us having received the privilege of this land must ask and express what our responsibility is.

A call for global everything specialists

I hate feeling at the mercy of other specialists.  I am not thinking so much about my occasional visit to the doctor’s office.  I am thinking particularly of the specialists who trade in information about the state of the world, the whole world that is.  How does one become such a specialist?  How does one negotiate the perspectives coming from the humanities, social and natural sciences as well as economics?  All this to say that I have been sitting with an article from last Saturday’s Winnipeg Free Press in the back of my mind for the last couple of days.  It is an op-ed piece entitled “The world is not running out of natural resources” (May 28) by Brian Lee Crowley.  As the title suggests the article outlines the false notion that there is an imminent crisis in global resources.  The main thesis of this position is that most accounts do not take seriously the ongoing capacity for humans to innovate and change course when necessary.  This is the reason why past prophecies of collapse and destruction continue to miss their mark.  This thinking reflects the first half of the article.  I suspect this sort of voice is necessary to counter the type of mindless hysteria that may actually serve advertising firms more than other ‘good’ causes.  But even here I really have no good idea.  I trust soundbites and articles such as these.  It is in the second half that my reservations begin to intensify.

The second half of the article makes a dramatic shift to the economic in stating that since 1800 global economic product has increased 50-fold and “this increase in human wealth has improved the state of humanity throughout the world.”  This is of course patently false as I think it could be argued that it has not improved the state of the First Nations community in Canada (I will not try and speak beyond my borders).  His point however is proved by statistics.  Yes, I suppose statistical improvement is difficult to deny as it has the power to ignore the cost of the marginal who literally do not figure in.  I am reminded of Kierkegaard’s thoughts on statistics near the end of Stages,

With the help of statistical tables one can laugh at all of life. . . . After all, a person can shut his door on the poor, and if someone should starve to death, then he can just look at a collection of statistical tables, see how many die every year of hunger – and he is comforted.

Sorry.  Off track.  As Crowley begins to conclude things really come off the rails in my mind.  Crowley holds wealthy nations as the beacon of what direction the world should be moving in.  “The richer countries become, the cleaner their environment.  So economic growth is the key factor allowing us to reduce most of the problems facing humanity. . . . [T]he right human institutions, such as private property, the rule of law, contract, incentives and human intelligence all work together reliably to solve those problems.”  Is it just me or should it be hard to make such statements (at least without some gag-reflex kicking in).  I have no doubt that I would be quickly silenced under the statistical ‘facts’ that Crowley would load on me if I tried to refute this thinking.  And again, I have little hard evidence with which to enter this conversation.  However, take the statement of correlation between wealth and environmental cleanliness.  Is this not simply a matter of a nation’s ability to bring in and then off-load undesirable content and processes such as manufacturing, recycling and disposing of the junk wealthier nations desire for temporary pleasure?  Can Crowley continue to say these things under the tenuous economic conditions that still (seem to) exist in the US?  Is it possible to speak of an ‘improved state of humanity throughout the world’ by statistics?  Seriously, I am no expert.  Does it even make sense to enter this argument using the same methodology?  I mean Crowley moves from the natural sciences to economics to existential well-being without any necessary transition, they are all seamless in his conception.  Is this just the worst of ‘ivory tower’ thinking that does not live alongside those whose lives have gone from okay to shit while some larger global trend tracks in a rising graph according a ‘human well-being index’?  Again, I don’t know.  Any global everything specialists out there that can help me?

At the corner of comedy and tragedy

About ten years back I was the caretaker of an apartment block that a church had renovated to provide low-rent stable apartments in Winnipeg’s West End.  The visionary and work-horse of this and many other projects was the late Harry Lehotsky.  I can still remember coming back to the apartment one evening seeing two facing peering out of what should have been an empty basement suite.  I went to check it out and there was Harry and the superintendent who oversaw all the blocks.  They were on a ‘steak-out’ of sorts waiting to see if . . . well I can’t remember what they were watching for . . . something suspicious I am sure.  We chatted for a while and in the course of the conversation we talked about why people would want to intentionally live in a neighbourhood like this (the caretaker before me was murdered).  Harry said a few things but I remember one line being, “It’s part carnal and part spiritual.”  Some people may not resonant with that statement but I do.  In addition to the (preventable) hurt that I see this neighbourhood there is also an allure a particular drama that is not performed (much) in the suburbs or the country.  I suspect some of you recognize this drama as well.

I don’t know very much about the classic categories of comedy and tragedy but this is my take on them.  Comedy exists to the extent that it can flirt with the boundaries of destruction and meaninglessness while tragedy is destruction by meaninglessness or meaningless destruction.  There is a sort of dramatic attention that humans give to both comedy and tragedy.  I find these elements both amply present in the West End and most ‘inner-city’ contexts that I have experience; two recent examples.

We were out for a walk when I saw a bike pass us.  Well that was a first a glance.  It was an adult riding the bike . . . with another adult riding on the handle bars . . . with a bottle of alcohol in his hands . . . in the middle of the street . . . going the wrong way down a one-way.  Once I put all those things together I had to pause in amazement at the seemingly unconscious achievement performed by these men.  Really I am almost afraid to ask what more they could have added to the comedic but nearly tragic performance?  All I could think was something to the effect of there goes trouble.

The second scene could have been taken out of a Kids in the Hall sketch except, well, it wasn’t.  I was walking back to my house more or less keeping my head down and as I approach our gate I looked up and saw a man walking towards me.  He was walking with purpose and determination, with some agitation perhaps.  There was a sort of dullness in his appearance.  His clothes were a little worn and maybe had not been cleaned recently but from the top of his head was the unmistakeably pure colour of blood red.  This only seemed to be partially bothering him.  I was a little shocked Holy geez man are you okay?  I asked.  He was a little disoriented.  I got him a towel and told him to put pressure on where it was coming from.  I drove him to my intended destination of the hospital but as we approached he said he lived close by and asked to be dropped off there.  I didn’t argue.  As he left the car I realized afterwards that his disorientation and pain had crystallized into vengeance and anger.  I suspect that his next stop was not the hospital.  Tragic.