By Peter Christensen

Op-Ed Commentary

Yesterday we were driving into Invermere, well, we weren’t driving, Yvonne was driving. I was riding shotgun and lookin’ out the window toward Mt. Nelson when just north of the big tent on the Reserve I saw a spike bull elk just off the highway with its head up laying on its forefeet and looking west. Behind it was an unkindness of ravens feasting on the entrails that had been knocked out of it by a truck.

The conspiracy was busy feeding but all were looking toward the back end of the injured elk.

I couldn’t help but think of the conspiracy of Liberals waiting to feast on their fallen leader. Ruthless, they are. Once the stench of his unpopularity filled the news the comrades began to feed.

Thirty thousand years ago, humans recognized a new part of their nature: reason. They began to combine observation with knowledge to generate new knowledge. This fully modern behaviour is studied and verified by archeologists who verify the use of artifacts from long ago. Representational art, self-ornamentation artifacts, musical instruments and burial rite relics unearthed and dated are presented as evidence of working imaginations.

Unlike evolutionary models that propose that humans are purely instinct driven animals that evolved gradually, creation stories have definite timelines that give groups of humans’ social purpose and a sense of territory. Common stories draw families together into tribes and enable them to survive in a harsh and violent world.

Five-thousand-year-old creation myths explain the origins of the universe and of humanity and came into being. Five-thousand-years is not a long time when one contemplates evolutionary models that show humans made tools 2.4 million years ago.

Territories are shaped by geophysical character and familial ties however grand mobility and migration in the physical and cultural sense challenges modern notions of what constitutes territory. Social media activists do their best to keep us territorial, and misinformed, however it is a fact that 8.5 million people fly somewhere every day. People are on the move!

‘Evolution’ is a notion that humans are bound to the forefront of an endless journey; ‘Creation Stories’ say that humans can escape the cycle of birth and destruction, that bloodlines and stories can protect legacy, and in this way humans can live forever. But as Bob Dylan sang, ‘the times they are a changing.”

Unprecedented migration of cultures (people) and ideas, driven by the desire for improved living conditions and enabled by economic strategies, are breaking open cultural eggs and scrambling human genes. The times are changing, we all feel it.  Instant translation of languages, migration and rapid communications confront aged notions about territory, belief and culture. Present-day societies are as likely to be bound together by ideas as by blood.

Modern stories explain how ideas can work for the benefit of expanding populations and territories. Some stories offer a world vision; the hard part is how to fit humans into intersecting and overlapping social identities, after all, stories are not flesh and blood!

Ironically, the more ‘left-wing’ ideas become, the more they resemble extreme ‘right-wing’ ideas. The more ‘we’ are drawn to cultural noise the more we enable either peaceful action and improved living standards or we endorse disaster.

We Canadians try to ride the middle. We are social democrats. We believe market driven economies can produce the wealth that pays for social benefits.  That said, founding stories about exploration, war, construction, accomplishment, choices, democracy, law and more recently guilt and recognition bind Canadians together.

It’s when political parties forget that they are first in business for Canadians by putting themselves ahead of the good of the nation that we are in trouble. That is the Liberal story.

Opinion leaders and their followers know that certain kinds of cultural noise can make use of blindly held views about territory and ‘family’ to produce cohesion. However, when a politico and their party’s stories no longer ring true, such as was recently the case with Justin Trudeau and the Liberals, they produce division and discord. New stories are needed, not just a new face to front failed strategies.

Justin Trudeau and his Liberals lost the confidence of the Canadian people. He and his Liberals put themselves ahead of the good of the country. Their selfishness is embedded in their story. It is particularly sad when a defrocked leader puts his party ahead of the good of the nation by suspending parliament during a time when cohesion is desperately needed. It’s a strategy that has failed again and again.

Donald Trump and company are expert at keeping ‘the news’ cycle focused on themselves. Being outrageous is a strategy that we will get used to and it will eventually become ordinary, if we meet his machinations head on with honesty and fortitude.  We have been made weak and a target by politico’s who put themselves ahead of the good of the nation.

Societies are bound together by myths and stories: countries, provinces, counties, cities, villages and districts. Each of these cultures or categories have responsibilities but they are also tied together by a common bond, by belief that they will tend a common culture. There are those who cannot accept a new story. Justin Trudeau and the Liberals believe that if they lose power then let the whole ship be lost. What disappointment!

– Peter Christensen is a Columbia Valley-based writer and poet

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