Petition to Remove Churchill Street Name

[Right To Left]

6 hours ago, Zeitgeist said:

Rousseau is a key figure of Romanticism.   Much can be said about that movement and its antecedents, but I mentioned authorship because many books from the medieval and earlier periods don't have known authors as the identity of the author wasn't considered nearly as important as it is today.  Identity itself is a fairly modern idea which relates to the focus on self and private space.  It's not a coincidence that the field of psychology started during the height of Romanticism.

The noble savage comes from the idea that "Man is born free but is everywhere in chains".  It's an idea about the natural state of people versus the corrupting forces of society.  However, as many commentators like Northrop Frye have convincingly stated, the first thing people do when faced with the ravages of nature is protect themselves from it by creating a human world.  That's civilization.  It includes the arts, sports, literature, fashion, and everything that we call culture.  It includes the human world that humans value  

While there are ancient stories across cultures that describe a kind of precultural humanity that lived in harmony with nature, following instinct without question (Garden of Eden before Adam's eating of the apple from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil), that Fall from Grace, whether true or fictional, has been our reality since time immemorial.  Religion promises a return to harmony, but if you're an atheist or agnostic humanist like a growing number of the population, and perhaps even if you're religious, or if you studied comparative mythology/religion, you know that ancient beliefs correspond to a time when people had much less scientific knowledge. They experienced natural forces such as lightening and floods as supernatural phenomena.  That's why the gods in ancient religion are nature gods (thunder, sea, etc.).

When I started reading some of the research in anthropology and sociology many years ago, to try to figure out answers to all the big questions, I discovered that there was a consensus of opinion that mythical stories handed down through oral tradition for generations had greater symbolic meaning going beyond the characters and stories themselves. So one scholar (I forget who now) noted that our "Garden of Eden/Adam and Eve" myth of an ideal early life destroyed by making bad choices is found among every society and culture that transitioned from hunting and gathering to permanent settled farming, gives the clear indication that leaving the garden was not a desired goal, but something forced upon them....like by an angel wielding a flaming sword!  An expulsion from paradise to as the Genesis account says: By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground; are found among all farming societies around the world in one form or another; while non-agrarian cultures...even those like the Inuit bands of the Far North, who lived precarious lives dependent on successful hunts, with much of their free time devoted to making clothing, tools and makeshift shelters for protection from extreme weather, don't have anything similar to stories like being expelled from the Garden. 

The point being that for every society that has gone down the road of civilization, the Fall From Grace is a mythologized explanation of how the journey started and was felt to be necessary. But it's not until the so called enlightenment, that some writers are telling us that the Fall is not a loss, but the new beginning of something wonderful and miraculous....and we're still waiting for evidence for that beyond the shiny new gadgets!

Edited February 18, 2021 by Right To Left
to divide in two parts

[Right To Left]

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The bottom line is that we can't undo the knowledge we have gained, nor would most people choose that.  We need to use the tools developed by civilization to protect civilization from challenges like pandemics or flooding/desertification due to climate change, etc..  Basically we need to use science and human ingenuity to solve our problems.  We have to be careful that when we impose carbon taxes, regulations, and other strategies to fight today's challenges, that we don't destroy civilization and the developments that best position us to meet challenges.

To bring the conversation back to Churchill, the reason we keep landmarks like Roman or Napoleonic arches that celebrate victories which may have hurt people is because history is instructive and artefacts are precious insights into the past.  In the case of brutal dictators and highly offensive symbols, it's going to happen, quite justifiably, that those people and the ancestors of people who were oppressed will seek to remove such items   

Churchill, however, in his historical context, was a great liberator and defender of freedom relative to the forces he fought.  Failing to recognize that and our indebtedness to that fight shows great disrespect for a whole generation of Canadians and Canadian allies who fought Nazism.  

 

We need more than knowledge and tools to survive the ravages of looming climate changes. 

Square one would be to start with a clear, concise reason why or how our species started a slow, gradual increase in atmospheric carbon levels for several thousand years, and then all of a sudden 150 years ago, everything started spiraling out of control, as carbon levels keep rising faster and faster each decade, too fast for our planetary biosphere to sequester enough carbon to bring it back to what apparently was the desired range by the majority of living creatures on earth -- between about 180 and 300 ppm CO2.

Without human animals setting brush fires for hunting and farming, we likely would still be in the Pleistocene Era and be undergoing another drop in carbon and a new ice age by now...since past interglacial periods were very short. But instead, the foot is on the accelerator, freeing up more carbon into the atmosphere, and we are already entered into the quickest mass extinction of life in the entire history of our planet!

I wish more books like this obscure, barely noticed historical account of the effects on climate caused by the shift from water power to steam-powered machines beginning in 1820's England. The author - Andreas Malm, builds a case making the unalterable conclusion that the shift from water to coal-fired steam engines was not about cost, or efficiency and certainly not about safety or cleanliness, but because the leading 18th century capitalists hated the lack of complete control they had over their plant workers, when they had to locate their mills near good sources to build waterwheels needed to power the mills, and be forced to pay more money, if or when they couldn't get enough locals to work in the mill. Coalfired steam engines on the other hand, could be located anywhere, and that meant putting them together with other dirty coalfired industries and having the added bonus of having lots of recently landless peasants to work the mills for whatever wages the bosses offered.....no negotiating! 

https://www.amazon.ca/Fossil-Capital-Steam-Global-Warming/dp/1784781290

So, just as the "clearing of the commons" which started in England and has traveled around the world, including Africa today, where the last large populations are being subjected with expulsion from the land to work in new urban hellholes while foreign Big Ag concerns take over the land to produce cash crops mostly for export, it is and has been a total fraud to portray the changes to modern society as being all about blind, natural economic forces, rather than being forced on populations by minority wealthy profit-driven interests, who don't give a damn about the consequences to people or the environment!

As for Churchill, what can I say! He was a richly rewarded tool - a servant of his empire and global capitalist imperialism! My kind of military hero worth honoring would rather be someone like Smedley Butler, the US Marine officer who ended his military career at the rank of general, and had stacks of medals to wear on his uniforms, but ended with a memoir called "War Is A Racket" in 1938, acknowledging that all of the fighting and sending young soldiers to die in the foreign wars of his time (the Philippines, Cuba, not sure about WWI) were no more than being a hired mercenary for wealthy US capitalists who wanted governments changed by force to install the compliant regimes that were good for business! 

https://www.americanswhotellthetruth.org/portraits/major-general-smedley-butler

[Right To Left]

On 2/7/2021 at 10:15 PM, Michael Hardner said:

Why ?  You have one mob taking down Sir John A. statues and another one storming the capitol dressed as buffalo and demanding organic meals in jail.  Everything is terrible, despite your apparent need to blame part of society for it.

You got to admit, that Q Shaman guy is at least good for entertainment if nothing else!

 

[Michael Hardner]

48 minutes ago, Right To Left said:

You got to admit, that Q Shaman guy is at least good for entertainment if nothing else!

What part of it ISN'T entertainment ?  What part is governance anymore ?

[OftenWrong]

10 minutes ago, Michael Hardner said:

What part of it ISN'T entertainment ?  What part is governance anymore ?

The parts where they order you what to do.

[Michael Hardner]

42 minutes ago, OftenWrong said:

The parts where they order you what to do.

Oh

[OftenWrong]

11 hours ago, Michael Hardner said:

Oh

Exactly. It's actually very simple. Called a Basic Dictatorship, but Canadian style, with a friendly grin.

But if you ever pull that veil off... oye vatto. You don't want to know what they're gonna do to you...

Edited February 19, 2021 by OftenWrong

[Zeitgeist]

So Toronto is going to take up the cause of erasing history including names of former Prime Ministers (and Churchill, who initiated the defeat of Hitler).  It seems that the standard for all historical figures (if white) is perfection by today’s standards.  Perhaps it’s time to revisit the narratives of past Indigenous chiefs to see whether they too were perfect.  Black leaders too.  I know Martin Luther King, whom I admire, had affairs.  I guess we’ll need to make sure that the Perfection Inquisition Committee is composed of races proportionally reflecting the racial diversity of Toronto.

Yes I’m being sarcastic, but these kinds of absurdities are taking place.

https://apple.news/A6nL3XJ6AQ_OKR6Fi4Uv5IA

Edited July 7, 2021 by Zeitgeist

[OftenWrong]

6 hours ago, Zeitgeist said:

So Toronto is going to take up the cause of erasing history including names of former Prime Ministers (and Churchill, who initiated the defeat of Hitler).  It seems that the standard for all historical figures (if white) is perfection by today’s standards.  Perhaps it’s time to revisit the narratives of past Indigenous chiefs to see whether they too were perfect.  Black leaders too.  I know Martin Luther King, whom I admire, had affairs.  I guess we’ll need to make sure that the Perfection Inquisition Committee is composed of races proportionally reflecting the racial diversity of Toronto.

Yes I’m being sarcastic, but these kinds of absurdities are taking place.

https://apple.news/A6nL3XJ6AQ_OKR6Fi4Uv5IA

Yes it's how the new regime will move in and make sweeping reforms, comrade. That's the way to do it. First you demonize people from the past and make the former heroes into absolutely despicable villains.

Only the new nations is absolutely just, and good.

These days would make Orwell proud of his book.

You are not being sarcastic.

Edited July 7, 2021 by OftenWrong

[Guest]

I can't imagine Antifa putting up with any of this.

[Zeitgeist]

Interesting passage on Sir John A in Martin Globe and Mail article:

“Though John A. Macdonald is being condemned today, the governing of Indigenous peoples in his time was admired so much in Washington that Congress sent a commission to Canada to do a study. Its report in 1870 noted the absence of Indian wars and how the Indigenous population was faring so much better in health and increasing in numbers.  Macdonald authorized the creation of residential schools, which were intended to assimilate Indigenous children by separating them from their families. Enrolment at residential schools was not compulsory under Macdonald, who was often criticized by Liberals of the day for being too lenient towards Indigenous people.“

[taxme]

On 2/18/2021 at 6:07 PM, OftenWrong said:

Exactly. It's actually very simple. Called a Basic Dictatorship, but Canadian style, with a friendly grin.

But if you ever pull that veil off... oye vatto. You don't want to know what they're gonna do to you...

Our British heritage and history is slowly being eliminated. From statues of British Queens being toppled in Winnipeg. The removal of our first PM of Canada Sir John A. from the ten dollar bill and to having his statue removed from in front of the steps of the Victoria legislative building. Now British streets named after people like Churchill to be gone.  

The french socialists from quebec are really doing a fine job of trying to destroy all things British in English Canada. Sadly, the English speaking people of Canada just sit by and watch it happen. 

A book written many decades ago called "Bilingual today, French Tomorrow", and the words that were written in that book, are starting to come true where it said in that book that one day Canada will become and be seen and known as a french speaking socialist country. Canada is well on it's way to becoming that country. While the rest of Canada goes bilingual, Quebec stays unilingual french speaking only. Believe it or not. ?

[RedDog]

I was recently banned from FB for three days for posting a 70 year old quote by General Douglas MacArthur.

We're not going to make it are we?

[Michael Hardner]

6 minutes ago, RedDog said:

I was recently banned from FB for three days for posting a 70 year old quote by General Douglas MacArthur.

We're not going to make it are we?

If you were banned because of the age of the quote or the source, then we aren't.

On the other hand, you know, I get the feeling you are leaving something out here.  ?

[RedDog]

9 minutes ago, Michael Hardner said:

If you were banned because of the age of the quote or the source, then we aren't.

On the other hand, you know, I get the feeling you are leaving something out here.  ?

"Sooner or later we'll have to fight the Chinese" - Gen. Douglas MacArthur.

I posted this following a previous comment from another concerning Chinese meddling in the affairs of other countries, internet hacking and the potential of intentionally leaking Covid 19.

I was banned and they were not.

[Michael Hardner]

28 minutes ago, RedDog said:

1. "Sooner or later we'll have to fight the Chinese" - Gen. Douglas MacArthur.

2. I posted this following a previous comment from another concerning Chinese meddling in the affairs of other countries, internet hacking and the potential of intentionally leaking Covid 19.

3. I was banned and they were not.

1.  Ah, ok.  Well that's just a marketing decision on their part.
2. Makes sense.
3. You insulted customers, I guess.