HAPPY AND EQUAL

                                                                      HANNS F SKOUTAJAN

Are you happy? A recent poll of some 130 countries has placed Canada in 6th place of happiness.  Number one is Denmark. Having visited the famous Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen, which opened in 1843, with its amusement park of great rides and eating and drinking places I can vouch that Danes are a happy people, particularly their children. But that is not the only or primary reason  for the Danish being in first place in happiness or for any of the people in the top 5.

In The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett make the point that egalitarian societies are invariably happier people. And Denmark, and indeed all of the Scandinavian countries, are societies that stand out as free and equal.

Our neighbour, the people of the United States, have ebbed and are now far down the line of happiness, 16th, along with Greece, Spain, Portugal  and Italy. When compared with Canadians, who share so much with our southern cousins, the US who prides itself for its freedom and democratic ethos , is nevertheless a far less egalitarian society.

“If the United States  was to reduce its income inequality to something like the average of the four most equal rich countries ( Japan, Norway, Sweden and Finland)  the proportion of the population feeling they could trust others might rise by 75%.... rates of mental illness and obesity  might similarly be cut by almost two thirds, teenage birth rates could be more than halved, prison populations might be reduced by 75% and people would live longer  while working the equivalent of two months less a year.” So argue the authors of the Spirit Level. Equality and the resultant happiness   affect every facet of our lives.

Surely it is a worthwhile goal to aim for  rather than following slavishly  in the footsteps of our neighbour.  We are a happier people precisely because we have been less successful in building as unequal a society as has America. We are, however, well on the way of adopting and emulating their ways.

The United States prides itself as being a beacon of democracy for the whole world, in Biblical language “ a city on a hill” and indeed many throughout the world still admire the United States and would give anything to live there. Unfortunately many who have  immigrated have found it a less than happy experience.

Milton Friedman,  of the famous Chicago School of Economics, the prophet of capitalism,  admitted that he was not fond of democracy.  He states “one of the things that troubles me  very much is that I believe a relatively free economy is a necessary condition for a democratic society. But I also believe that a democratic society, once established , destroys a free economy.”

For Friedman and his disciples, many of them in Canada, a free economy trumps a free society. In that economy the gap between the rich  and the middle class, to say nothing of the poor,  has spread exponentially over the last thirty years. 

Writing in the CCPA Monitor, the monthly publication of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives is an article by Joseph Stiglitz, a former chief economist of the World Bank, that states that “The International community must face reality. We have an unmanageable, unfair, distortionate global tax system that is pivotal  in creating the increasing inequality that marks most advanced countries today.”

In the same issue Murray Dobbin,  a B.C. -based writer on economic, social  and political issues writes, “Capital in its drive for complete freedom from community and society, has outsmarted itself.  In  Canada the largest corporations are now sitting on some $700 billion that they can’t invest in productive activity because demand  for their products by cash-strapped consumers has flattened, 7% of them are unemployed and 14% of youth are unable to find jobs.

Nevertheless advertising continues to dangle goods before the eyes of consumers who can acquire them only as they max-out their credit cards and live in deep and unrelenting debt.

The result is an unhappy society, a divided citizenry estranged from  one another by their inequality. They have become beholden to the powers of mega corporations many of whom have jettisoned their Canadian work force in favour of cheap labour in third world countries.

What is required, Wilkinson and Pickett affirm is “ a society which knows where it wants to go.... coupled with the urgent task  of dealing with global warming. In all these settings we must speak out and explain the advantages of a more equal society.”  and thus  a happier people. It can be done, indeed it has been achieved in those countries that precede us in the happiness poll. They are a measure of the possible.

I encourage you to read the above quoted book, The Spirit Level as well as subscribe and read  the CCPA Monitor to become people  who are informed and value democracy  and equality more than did Milton Friedman. 

SQ 14/09/2013

Other writings can be found at MYQUEST and SKOUTAJAN’S PAGE    

THOSE FALLING LEAVES

Hanns F Skoutajan

It’s not real, the colours that are now emerging along the city avenues and throughout the countryside.

Many years ago when I was  a student in Germany my parents sent me a bundle of prints by the Group of Seven. I decorated my room with these paintings and invited my fellow students to my chamber turned art gallery. 

“Its not real,” they remarked,” the colours are too bright and undisciplined.” Used to the more classical traditions of art  they were skeptical of the work of Canadian painters. One would have thought that Van Gogh  and the Impressionists would have prepared them for something more lively.

My family came to Canada and settled on an abandoned farm in northwestern Saskatchewan. There was little of fall colour there. Poplars haven’t  a very imaginative nature. A few years later, after the war’s end my father sold our quarter section of dirt and bought a brand new, post-war Chevy that allowed us to peruse the eastern Ontario countryside where we had come to live. Thus in the fall of 1947 we first experienced the colours    that exploded along the banks of the Trent River and the plethora of lakes of Hastings and Frontenac counties. We had never seen anything like it, but we knew that it was very real. This, our new homeland was a land of colour.

We have a few more weeks to marvel at our environment before a blanket of snow covers and warms the ground for another season. For five falls I enjoyed the campus of Queen’s University  in Kingston where the colour of leaves in Macdonald Park mingled with the grey limestone buildings on the Old Ontario Strand. Now living in Ottawa across the river from wonderful Gatineau Park I cannot help but be reminded of our precious heritage.

In the last chapter, indeed, the final paragraphs of my book Uprooted and Transplanted, I briefly describe my arrival “back home.” I and a group of expatriates who had fled the Nazi take-over of our Sudeten homeland 50 years earlier, were coming to the end of our nostalgic visit to our land of birth.

“Our plane wings its way over Europe and the Atlantic Ocean. Time stands still as the sun hovers just above the left wing of the jet for quite some time. By mid-afternoon we had crossed the sea and were approaching land and descended to Robert Stanfield International Airport in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

“As we skim over the tree tops  short of landing I behold the glory of the autumnal colours. We are home  where new tasks await us  ‘ to stand on guard‘ as the Canadian national anthem  has it, to be a socially responsible people in a land where all too often      we forget  that, like our natural resources, humans are precious. Let’s not abandon each other.”

No other time than the autumn are we made aware of the wealth of our natural environment. The rich red of the maples  that mix and blend with the green and panorama of other vegetation, the shimmer of the waters of lakes and rivers and the autumn sky, cannot help but enthral us. We have a few more weeks to marvel at nature’s annual  miracle. 

‘To stand on guard’ sounds rather militaristic but it is much more than that. It means striving to keep our waters clean, protecting our trees from the developers shovel and our air pure from contamination by industry. 

Each evening I observe a groundhog feeding on the plants in the park behind our home. Its his too. We share our land not only among us humans but with all living creatures.

The spirituality of our First Nations people is much more closely linked to their environment than is found among western religions for whom the environment is something to be exploited,  except perhaps among the Franciscans whose patron St. Francis after whom the new pope has called himself. Hopefully he can awaken Christians to a greater appreciation of the beauty and sacredness of all creation.    

“Balance” is the name of the game. My fellow students in Germany  who admired (? ) the art of A Y Jackson, Tom Tomson  and J E H MacDonald  failed to notice   that there was a balance on the artists palette. Later on coming to Canada they sense that this riot  of colour was very real indeed. And its coming soon, Enjoy! Preserve! 

SQ O8/09/2013

Also see MYQUEST