Puffed wheat or porridge?

This is the golden age; is it asking too much to expect a renaissance?

by Kevin Potvin <kpotvin@republic-news.org>

The fact is, we live in just about the best time and place that ever existed anywhere on the planet. Where the problems are is in what we collectively choose to do with our common good fortune.

I hardly mean to ignore the homeless, the addicted, the battered and the neglected. Nor do I sweep aside the contaminated waterways, the clear-cut slopes, the fossil fuel economy, or the disappearing species. I am also not blind to the drain of bureaucratic waste, the suffocation of business by top-heavy regulation and taxation, the erosion of resources through public debt, and the interminable conflict among that infinitely vast parade of special interest groups.

These are all serious problems and each are worthy of consideration as we think about throwing a vote to the party best expressing concern about one or another of them in the May 17 election. But none of them really make you go “Yeah!” do they?

No, they don’t. If each of the NDP, the Liberal, and the Green party platforms were a person and you woke up to find them sitting around your kitchen table on Sunday morning, what would you think? There’s one going on about torn-up health workers’ contracts, another moaning about the disappearing wild salmon, and the third one shaking his head and crying about declining foreign investment rates. You’re likely to sneak back to your room and slip out the window and go out for breakfast alone.

If it’s true that desperate times call for desperate measures, then it must also be true that great times call for great measures. Take the 16 th Century Renaissance in Europe, for example. There were a great many problems then with the environment, with barriers to trade and business, and with people not getting enough to eat. But the business and political leaders seemed to sense that theirs was a unique time offering unique opportunities to do some great things.

No doubt there were accountants and other stern and always correct people around who frowned on excessive and unsustainable spending on that magnificent architecture, exquisite statue, or awe-inspiring painting. But there were also visionary and inspired leaders around who shushed the accountants and the naysayers long enough to gather together the right people and the adequate money to pull off projects that still make us stagger back on our heels 500 years later.

They didn’t have popular voting for those leaders then, but the process was still very much the same. Proposed leaders today, just as then, first need to gather the support of the economic heavy hitters and the well-connected elite, and they need to show aptitude for managing the public purse, settling disputes, and bringing along, or following, public opinion, and knowing when to do which.

Here we are in a country we take for granted will rank at the very top of any kind of world survey of good places to live, and we live in the city that is easily regarded as the best city to live within this country. We also know that, despite good and serious reports from around the world detailing the many shortcomings of our era, that this period of time is probably the pinnacle of human experience. Yes, I know not everyone here is getting their equal share of the goodness, but the vast majority of us who are getting our share are living better, more healthy, engaged, cultured, fulfilled, connected and happier lives than any segment of any population anywhere on the planet has ever experienced. Complain if you will, but look around first.

We are also the richest. Yes, I am aware of single mothers, basement apartments and broken down buses. I also know that, with a skidoo in the garage, a sailboat in the driveway, three cars on the street, a 4,000 square foot house, a quarter acre of property, a retirement fund, college funds for the kids, Mexican vacations every year and a slush fund for casual stock trading on line over the home-office computer, the average Coquitlam household still moans about the utter impossibility of making ends meet.

It’s the Liberal Party that’s to be ashamed for validating that self-flagellating sentiment and building a winning party on it rather than addressing this social ill and steering the energy into more productive and social goods. But the NDP is no better, building a party on the equally ill-founded urge to flagellate others for the crime of enjoying life and wanting something more out of it, or at least for allowing that image of themselves to predominate. The Greens come closest to the mark by at least showing some willingness to dream a bit near the edge of the possible. But they hold back too, everybody holds back. No one presents a vision.

What I wanted in this election, and what nobody is offering, is a plan to do something with the resources, the energy, and the money we have that will make me go “Wow!” or to at least try. Our society right here and right now is in every way the same as Italy on the eve of the Renaissance. We have wealth, we have peace, we have security, education, and health, and we have an urge to make art, show expression, and revel in joy unmatched by almost any other society at any time since Italy in 1505. And we’re squandering it on petty self-absorbed battles about tax rates, ballet lessons, and retirement funds.

I’m not calling for the raising of new cathedrals, the sculpting of new statues, or the mixing of new painting colours. That would just be copycatting. What I do expect however is our own renaissance that marries the big money of the merchant class with the most wild-eyed and far-seeing of the inventor, science, and art classes, brought together and put to work by the most energized and inspiring of the political class. I want someone to come out on that stage and with words and hand motions alone create a vision of the future so fantastical, so bracing, and so wildly impossible that we all shoot up out of our seats and make it happen. I want a renaissance.

But alas, here we are confronted with the May 17 ballot filled up with the strictly bush league. Don’t ask me who I’m voting for, I don’t know. I understand why porridge, corn flakes, or puffed wheat make better choices, but how come steak and eggs aren’t even being offered? And who are these pale, boring people limping round my kitchen table weakly holding up their universally gray choices for my breakfast? I suppose I must settle for one, but I choose none.

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