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Category: Non-Fiction Page 2 of 6

The cover to the book "Tragedy in the Commons"

Tragedy in the Commons by Alison Loat and Michael MacMillan

The cover to the book "Tragedy in the Commons"Title: Tragedy in the Commons: Former Members of Parliament Speak Out About Canada’s Failing Democracy
Authors: Alison Loat and Michael MacMillan
Publisher: Random House Canada
Format: Print
Rating: 4 out of 5
How I got it: I borrowed a copy from the library (but this is worth owning)

A few weeks ago, fantasy writer Mishell Baker came to Canada on a birthday trip. Like many speculative-fiction-adjacent people in Toronto and Ottawa who knew about her visit, I looked forward to meeting her and giving her a taste of Canadian hospitality.

My particular brand of said hospitality involved showing her the Toronto Reference Library. It also involved bombarding her with information about Canada’s parliamentary system and how it differs from the presidential system set up in the US.

Once I finished my educational blitz, I realized with a bit of pride that I actually knew quite a bit about Canada’s political system. But I also recognized later on that given the challenges the world is facing right now, “quite a bit” isn’t the same as “enough.”

Well, if you want to understand Canadian politics, who better to ask than Members of Parliament? And if you want the gritty, painful details that current politicians won’t tell you, who better to ask than former Members of Parliament?

That’s the idea behind Tragedy in the Commons. In 2011, Samara Canada, a civil society non-profit focused on increasing democratic engagement in Canada, interviewed dozens of MPs who had either retired or been voted out of office. What they have to say about how Canada’s federal government works, for good or ill, is extremely eye-opening.

A number of issues cropped up repeatedly during these exit interviews. Some aren’t that surprising, like the idea that most of these former MPs entered politics with reluctance. Our culture values power while simultaneously shaming people for openly wanting it; many politicians reconcile this problem by claiming that they had to be dragged into politics against their will.

Other issues are more unexpected, like the fact that many MPs “freelance” by choosing a political topic to turn into their niche, like prisons, employment insurance, or railway safety. On its face, such a development makes sense, but it also leads to politicians being territorial when others show an interest in “their” turf.

However, what I found most startling — and depressing — about the anecdotes collected in Tragedy in the Commons was that when these MPs entered office, they were given little support to do their job effectively. In fact, in many cases it felt like party politics actively conspired to keep them from exerting any real power. (Ok, maybe it’s not that surprising, but seeing how petty the party leaders seem to be is somewhat dispiriting.)

For example, here are some things I didn’t know until now:

  • When MPs enter office, they get little on-the-job training. No one is there to “onboard” them with lessons about parliamentary procedures or advice on hiring staff and setting up a constituency office.
  • There is no official job description for an MP. Some throw themselves into constituency work, while others deal more with policy, but the result is that there are no agreed-upon metrics for evaluating an MP’s performance.
  • MPs have almost no choice about what committees they are assigned to, and party leaders do not take an MP’s prior expertise into account when filling committee spots. For example, the late MP Andy Scott had plenty of experience in literacy and skills training, but he was initially assigned to a health committee rather than one for human resources.

I know that we should be wary of treating government bureaucracy like a business, but this lack of accountability surrounding how MPs do their job sounds ridiculous. It’s a waste of human potential.

So Canadian politics is dysfunctional. What’s surprising about that?

Well, nothing. But isn’t our apathy the problem? Democracy crumbles when citizens feel disenfranchised. Look at what’s happening in the US. If the stories in Tragedy in the Commons make us indignant, shouldn’t we take advantage of this indignation and actually use it to make government better?

Of course. These stories have value.

The value of Tragedy in the Commons lies not only in the anecdotes related by these former MPs but also in the context the book provides on how Canada differs from other parliamentary democracies. For instance, Canada appears to be the only one where party leaders are chosen by party members (ie: regular citizens who pay membership dues out of pocket) rather than Members of Parliament. Paradoxically, the fact that a party leader isn’t chosen by their fellow politicians gives them more power because it makes them harder to depose.

This in particular was one of the big puzzle pieces that the book put into place for me. When Stephen Harper was PM, I heard so many anecdotes about how he had centralized more political power in the Prime Minister’s Office than nearly any PM before him. Tragedy in the Commons is valuable in that it actually defines what such centralization within party leadership has entailed, such as greater control over caucuses and the ability to sign party candidate nomination papers.

Put plainly, the way Canada’s political structure is set up, the Prime Minister has an awful lot of power. While Harper had autocratic tendencies, he doesn’t hold a candle to what Trump is doing. Which means that unless we implement more checks and balances in Canada’s political system, we’re pretty screwed in the event that we elect a Trump-like demagogue to power.

Based on what I’ve read of the MPs in Tragedy in the Commons, I hope we’re up to the task. Canadian politicians interviewed in the book stated a deep distaste for political theatre, and a willingness to work together and focus on policy. It’s up to us as citizens to hold current occupants of the House of Commons accountable to these problems and give them support when they attempt to resist party machinations.

The cover of Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, translated by Gregory Hays

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, Translated by Gregory Hays

The cover of Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, translated by Gregory HaysTitle: Meditations
Author: Marcus Aurelius
Translator: Gregory Hays
Publisher: Random House, Modern Library Classics
Format: eBook
Rating: 4 out of 5
How I got a copy: I purchased it from Kobo

I need to admit something: the books I’ve been reading so far are not for pleasure. I’m not hoping to enjoy them and escape from the world for a bit.

I’m using them as armour and weapons.

Staying strong and being hopeful while fighting for change is a form of armour. Understanding history and trying to find patterns behind past political movements in order to know what to expect is a weapon.

So is learning equanimity and steadiness, the art of how not to let change throw you off-balance. And that’s why I just read Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.

The circumstances surrounding how the Meditations became public knowledge are happenstance. Marcus Aurelius originally wrote these notes as a form of solace and guidance while wearing the heavy mantle of Roman emperor; during his military campaigns and time at court, he wrote down his thoughts so that he could keep Stoic philosophy front and centre in his mind. They were not intended for public consumption, and the repetitive, disjointed nature of the passages within the book are ample proof.

How his writing reached the wider world is a mystery. But when it re-entered the historical record in the 10th century and was published more widely in the 16th century, Meditations by Marcus Aurelius became a seminal text for many political leaders due to its focus on living a life guided by self-restraint, justice, austerity and detachment.

I went with the Gregory Hays translation because some basic research online revealed it was one of the most readable and highly regarded versions. Looking back, I have to say it was an excellent choice.

I should note first off that the Hays version has an extensive introduction placing Marcus Aurelius and Stoicism in context, with commentary on his childhood, education, and ascension to the throne, as well as on central concepts of Stoic thought. The introduction is probably about half as long as Meditations itself.

Throughout reading the book, I was struck by several things in particular.

One is that Stoicism’s focus on detachment, humility, and accepting the will of nature/logos has a strong similarity to Buddhist thought. Or at least, it bears a strong similarity given my extremely basic, extremely Western understanding of Buddhism. For example:

And if you can’t stop prizing a lot of other things? Then you’ll never be free — free, independent, imperturbable. Because you’ll always be envious and jealous, afraid that people might come and take it all away from you. Plotting against those who have them — those things you prize. People who need those things are bound to be a mess — and bound to take out their frustrations on the gods. Whereas to respect your own mind — to prize it — will leave you satisfied with your own self, well integrated into your community and in tune with the gods as well — embracing what they allot you and what they ordain. (Book 6, section 16)

From my extremely untutored perspective, this sounds very similar to the Buddhist conceit that desire (“those things you prize”) is the source of suffering (“you’ll always be envious and jealous, afraid that people might come and take it all away from you”).

On the other hand, Aurelius says quite often that the source of our unhappiness lies in our perceptions and willingness to believe that we’ve been wronged:

External things are not the problem. It’s your assessment of them. Which you can erase right now. (Book 8, section 47)

This to me, sounds an awful lot like the kind of thing Stephen Covey talks about in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People — specifically the sections on proactivity vs reactivity.

Connecting those two books and authors may be valid, but it makes me feel skeevy somehow, because the contexts I associate with each of them are so different — the noble, long-dead philosopher king vs. the epitome of corporate self-help gurus.

Speaking of kings, one of the other things that I really had to come to terms with in Meditations by Marcus Aurelius is that, to modern readers, Aurelius’s words are imbued with a high amount of unexamined privilege:

Don’t let your imagination be crushed by life as a whole. Don’t try to picture everything bad that could possibly happen. Stick with the situation at hand, and ask “Why is this so unbearable? Why can’t I endure it?” You’ll be embarrassed to answer. (Book 8, section 16)

I mean, yes, it’s important to stay strong and try to withstand hardship. But, as a Roman emperor, Marcus Aurelius had resources available to mitigate the worst things that could happen to him: the most competent administrators, the best food, the highest quality medical care. So much of his advice focuses on agency and action, but, given the time and place in which he lived, he had an exceptional amount of latitude to exercise his agency in the first place.

Try telling an Indigenous protester at Standing Rock to accept destruction with tranquility and see how far that gets you. The people who do that with a straight face either don’t understand the risks involved or aren’t negatively affected by said destruction. In other words, they just wouldn’t care.

Despite these challenges reading Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, what I connected with most strongly was the sense that it was written primarily for private use. The thoughts within are intimate, personal. Aurelius’s thoughts are not polished, but the fact that he returns to the same ideas so often — justice, restraint, impermanence, mortality — is evidence of just how thoroughly they occupied his mind. In a way, it reminds me of my own existential scribblings from high school. And anyone who can remind me of that aspect of my teenage years without making cringe deserves to be read.

The cover to "Fascism: A Very Short Introduction" by Kevin Passmore

Facism: A Very Short Introduction by Kevin Passmore

The cover to "Fascism: A Very Short Introduction" by Kevin PassmoreTitle: Fascism: A Very Short Introduction
Author: Kevin Passmore
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Format: eBook
Rating: 3 out of 5
How I got a copy: Purchased from Kobo

I know I’ve probably said this before in other Books & Tea posts, but I’ve led a pretty happy, easy life. Family who love me. Solid middle-class upbringing. Good education. Relatively few hardships, except for the sudden death of my father as a teenager.

In other words, I got dealt a pretty good hand by fate. And that’s made me complacent. I’ve been the beneficiary of a political system designed to look after my interests by virtue of my being born white, straight, able-bodied and middle-class in Canada.

With the way things are going in the world, that kind of complacency is becoming increasingly dangerous. Which is why I decided to read Fascism: A Very Short Introduction by Kevin Passmore.

I keep on reading that the Trump administration is facist. But all my life, I’ve never really understood what that word meant — it always seemed like a shorthand for something bigger. I was hoping that Passmore’s book would help me get a grasp on what it actually means, and understand the expanded version of the shorthand explanation.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get as much out of this book as I hoped I would. The entire thesis can be summed up as this: fascism is so complex and took so many different forms in the first half of the 20th century that there is no simple, easy definition we can point to.

Very helpful, Mr. Passmore! A non-answer like that, throughout the entire book, was exactly what I needed in order to begin to come to grips with the times that we find ourselves living in right now. Knowing that this term is way too complex to pin down, even though everyone around me seems to have done so handily in the public discourse without your learned exposition to guide the way, makes me feel super well informed and prepared for the times ahead!

Before I let my bitterness go any further, I should say that part of my inability to appreciate this book stems from my general lack of knowledge about the politics and history of the early 20th century. Yes, I understand the big brushstrokes — WWI, WWII, the New Deal, etc — but the finer details of political movements are not something I’m familiar with. So all of the factions and regimes and betrayals and appeasements, the names and dates and locations, washed over me without leaving much impact.

will say that I found the second half of the book, which deals with fascism’s intersection with social issues like race, class, and gender to be far more interesting and approachable than the earlier parts getting into the names and dates and details.

However, I think my problem is that I really wasn’t looking for an academic treatise when I bought Fascism: A Very Short Introduction. I wasn’t looking for a painstaking deconstruction of Weberian vs non-Weberian modes of thought.

I really just wanted a dictionary/instruction manual. What is fascism? What are its most common traits? How do fascists gain power? Most importantly, what can be done to fight it?

These are questions I’m still struggling to answer. I think I’ll have to find less academic sources of information to guide me.

Hope in the Dark by Rebecca Solnit

hope_in_the_dark_coverTitle: Hope in the Dark (3rd edition)
Author: Rebecca Solnit
Publisher: Haymarket Books
Format: eBook
Rating: 4 out of 5
How I got a copy: The publisher gave the eBook version away for free in mid-November

When I saw Arrival last November, it floored me because its central message — that despite knowing how dark things can get, it’s still worth it to create something, even if that creation gets destroyed — was antithetical to my own emotional state at the time.

Specifically, I wrote this:

When I look at the world, at the mass die-offs of animals and the climate change tipping point, I ask myself this: is having a child irresponsible? Am I doing them a disservice by bringing them into a world so close to the edge through no fault of their own? What if they grow up and hate me for having been alive now, when things were good, and for my complacency in not working hard enough to make things better for them?

In the shadow of the election of Trump, these questions have intensified. What if I have a kid, and then a huge war starts? How can I protect them?

In Arrival, the protagonist knows the awful truth about her unborn child’s impending death, yet soldiers on anyway because that pain is commingled with love. And that hope has absolutely floored me, because I wonder if I am that brave.

I’m still not over that sense of fear. I still don’t have any answers. But Rebecca Solnit’s Hope in the Dark is helpful — it shines a light and shows proof for some optimism.

The history and timing of Hope in the Dark‘s publication is a bit curious. It was first published in 2004 in the immediate aftermath of the Iraq War, re-issued within a few years of Obama’s entry into the White House, and then re-issued again in the spring of 2016.

Thus its initial publication traces out the timeline of an arc of hope — from despair over the meaninglessness of the Iraq War, to jubilation over the election of Obama, to eagerness for that positive change to continue.

Then Trump happened. Now, at a time when it’s so easy to despair, this book feels more necessary than when it was originally published.

Hope in the Dark traces the success of various activist causes over the past five decades, from nuclear disarmament to the rise of the Zapatista movement. Solnit’s argument is simple: hope, rather than being a luxury that activists can ill afford, is actually key towards the success of the progressive movement. Moreover, small, incrementalist victories are as important as big, media-friendly ones.

Hope is social glue. Disasters bring it out in force. Two of her key examples of this are based off of American catastrophes: Hurricane Katrina and 9/11. When the towers fell, people in New York and across the country scrambled to help, whether it involved actually digging through wreckage, pulling people up from off the ground to help them run away, or donating blood. When Katrina receded, people from across the country travelled to New Orleans to try and rescue people stranded on roofs, in houses, on the streets. What else is hope than the idea that you can help despite being in danger?

The mainstream perception of activism is that it has to go big or go home. I know that I’ve thought this — that the only acceptable victory is total victory, a complete vanquishment of evil. But small acts are just as valid. You may not be able to drain the entire city, but you can pull a child off a roof into a boat. You can donate blood. You can talk to a stranger and build a connection and make them feel less alone.

This realization is one that I still haven’t quite gotten through my skull. In the past two months, I’ve been in a near constant state of fear. I have done small things to try and allay that fear, but my actions haven’t been very systematic, as they haven’t been focused on one overarching goal. Instead, it feels like there’s a new, ever-more-urgent political issue demanding my attention every day. Sign this petition. Call that politician. Read About Situation X in the U.S. that is About to Get Royally Fucked Over and Signal Boost for the Cause, Even Though I’m Canadian and Can’t Do Anything About It Myself.

It gets exhausting, especially without a strategy. It feels like trying to bail out the ocean with a thimble — the ocean will always win.

Hope in the Dark, as well as Solnit’s writing online and her Facebook posts, which I now follow, are constant reminders that this effort isn’t pointless, even if it is small. We’re bailing out not the ocean, but a boat. Sure, the boat is huge, and it may be increasingly listing to one side, but it possible to right things if we’re capable and dedicated enough.

This is a hard lesson to remember. One of the things I do to overcome this is write down everything that I’ve done to advance some cause — every petition I’ve signed, every mailing list I’ve joined to stay on top of issues, every public consultation that I’ve contributed my thoughts to, every donation I’ve made, every politician I’ve called and left a voicemail for. Eventually, over time, the list gets longer. It gives me some solace, even if it’s temporary and it feels like there’s so much more left to do.

I haven’t written about the book much. I recognize that. But I believe that in documenting my own attempts to recognize the value of hope, I’m staying true to its message. Hope is not a form of foolishness or naiveté. Like bread and muscle and breath, it’s essential to our continued survival.

Taraji P. Henson in Hidden Figures

Hidden Figures, Not-So-Hidden Meaning

Vivian Mitchell: You know, despite what you may think, I don’t have a problem with y’all.
Dorothy Vaughan: I know. I know that you believe that.

I was lucky enough to get tickets to an advance screening of Hidden Figures last night. The movie is, for those not in the know, the story of the black women at NASA whose mathematical computations were crucial to America’s success in the Space Race. The astronauts may have had all the glory, and the engineers may have had movies like Apollo 13 made about them, but the black women who actually did the grunt work — crunching the numbers to ensure that the rockets launched and landed safely — never got their due. Until now.

Hidden Figures is based on a book of the same name by Margot Lee Shetterly, and looks at the lives of three of the women profiled in the source material: Katherine G. Johnson (played by Taraji P. Henson), Dorothy Vaughan (played by Octavia Spencer), and Mary Jackson (played by the Afro-futuristic hip-hop queen of my heart, Janelle Monáe).

Even though they each bring something different to the table, all three women face the same challenge: living in a world where people refuse to acknowledge that how they treat you is a problem.

Dorothy is the head of the women’s computing department, and struggles with being given the responsibilities of management without the concomitant job title or pay raise. Her foil is Vivian Mitchell, played by Kristen Dunst as the middle-management embodiment of White Feminism — that is, the kind of white woman who’ll only give a black woman respect when she wants something in return. Pragmatic, mechanically-minded, and forward-thinking, Dorothy instantly recognizes that the new-fangled IBM computers in the office are the way of the future and strategically positions herself and her department so that they can take advantage of this new technology, rather than risk unemployment through automation.

Mary is a member of Dorothy’s department and gets assigned to the engineers assessing the aerodynamics of the capsule that will house John Glenn during orbit. After encouragement by one of her coworkers to study to become an engineer, she has roadblocks thrown in her way (by Vivian Mitchell, no less). Outspoken and canny, Mary convinces a judge to give her special permission to attend the required classes, which are held in a white-only school.

Finally, there’s Katherine. She’s another member of Dorothy’s department, but her keen mathematical prowess lands her a coveted yet extremely stressful spot as part of Al Harrison’s (Kevin Costner’s) team, who are directly responsible for plotting the launch window and trajectory of John Glenn’s orbital mission. Katherine may have a gift for analytical geometry, but her colleagues at NASA view her as nothing more than a glorified calculator confirming already-verified numbers.

All three women face systemic barriers towards career advancement and respect. Dorothy isn’t getting paid what she deserves. Mary is denied an opportunity that’s available to her white male colleagues by default. In perhaps the most blatant example, Katherine’s ability to work is seriously impeded by the lack of a “coloured ladies” washroom in Harrison’s office: she must walk half a mile across the NASA campus to relieve herself. Since her workload is so heavy and her deadlines are so tight, she’s forced to take her math with her into the bathroom in order to finish her tasks on time.

Of course, no one else in the office really cares except when they notice that she’s away from her desk for an inordinate amount of time. That’s the beauty of privilege: that people in power don’t realize something is a problem for you until it becomes a problem for them, too.

And because it’s so easy to ignore problems until they inconvenience those in power, people have a vested interest in ignoring the fact that they’re hidden in plain sight. That they’re built into the system itself.

The movie illustrates how systemic these barriers are by showing that nearly every white person in the film is complicit in their maintenance. A white librarian tries to shoo Dorothy away from the math and computer books in the library because those are in the “whites only” section. (Dorothy, in a canny act of disobedience, manages to smuggle a book about Fortran programming into her purse before the librarian notices.) A white coworker immediately mistakes Katherine for a cleaning lady and gives her a trash can to empty when she first reports for work in Al Harrison’s office. “Coloured only” bus seats and water fountains are in plain sight.

One of the movie’s chief virtues is that it doesn’t hide that truth. Everyone takes part in racism, even if no one explicitly uses the N-word.

However, despite these admirable attempts to illustrate how everyone is complicit in a broken system, Hidden Figures is still a Hollywood film, and thus gives in to certain conventions.

For example, when Mary is encouraged to become an engineer, she initially brushes her coworker’s words aside by saying that as a black woman, there’s no point in her trying. It’s impossible, she says. So what, he replies, I’m Jewish and my parents died in the Holocaust, yet we’re both here working on getting a man into space. Nothing is impossible! Considering that Mary’s interlocutor has less than a dozen more lines in the entire film after this, his dialogue is a bit on the nose; it’s clear that he’s here only to fulfill that particular beat of the script.

Other parts of the script are also predictable. Do we have a scene where Katherine gives rise to her frustration and in a cathartic burst of rage berates her boss because there’s no bathroom nearby she can use? Yes! Do we have a scene where said boss, chastened and enlightened, does something dramatic and symbolic by taking a crowbar to the “coloured ladies” bathroom sign as a way to desegregate the campus? Yes! Do we have a scene where Katherine has to prove her mathematical worth at the very last minute, with little time to spare, in order to make sure that John Glenn doesn’t die in space? Yes!

On top of that, the movie’s treatment of the mathematical work itself is all surface-level: Katherine writes quickly on chalkboards while her colleagues look on in awe and amazement. People discuss using the “Euler method” to solve a tricky problem from a new perspective. However, there’s no explanation of how the math works; it’s treated as something magical, rather than practical. It feels like the movie is so caught up in burnishing the legacy of these women that they’re wiping away all of the sweat. All biopics do this, of course, but that sweat, that humanity, is what I really want to see.

Despite this, there’s one final thing about Hidden Figures that I’d like to note, and it’s about costume design.

Hidden Figures is the story of three women of colour fighting against systemic oppression. Even if there is no single antagonist, those forces manifest themselves in the white people who control and undermine them in different ways — the man who doesn’t want Katherine to join military briefings or claim co-authorship on papers, or the woman who refuses to value Dorothy’s labour.

All of their costumes fall within a very narrow colour scheme: black, white, grey, perhaps a brief flash of pastel rose or peach. Those colours are muted. Faint.

But the black characters? The black characters are literally people of — and in — colour. They wear mustard yellow shirts and bright pink lipstick. Their clothes are army green. Seafoam. Indigo. Sapphire blue. Chocolate brown. Plaid, even! They pop against the screen; they radiate vitality and community.

Most importantly, look at the outfits that Katherine wears when she’s at work, and how she is positioned relative to her white colleagues. Her skirt suits and dresses are teal, magenta, indigo, garnet. They are bright loci of colour within an astringent, moon-grey landscape. There’s another name for those colours: jewel tones.

Wherever Katherine sits or stands, it seems she is perpetually in the centre, flanked by those pale faces and shirts. It’s almost as if the movie is saying that if space exploration is the epitome of human endeavour, the crown achievement, then Katherine is the jewel set within that crown’s brow.

Update, Jan 7:

One of the things I really don’t address in my review above is how much time the movie devotes to happiness, and not just struggle. You see black characters having fun together, drinking, dancing, playing cards, and attending potlucks. But other reviewers do talk about this, so I also wanna point you in their direction:

Katherine Johnson’s Amazing Work — and Romance — Take Flight in Hidden Figures – Jenn Wattley, Heroes and Heartbreakers

I Want to Take My Womb Out of Retirement and Give Birth to a Black Daughter So That She Can See Hidden Figures – Ijeoma Oluo, The Stranger

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