Issue 153 Is Online!

search index
of all issues

Search This Site Enter word(s) to search for:

R ecently and quite abruptly, the Canadian attitude to global warming and climate change underwent a sudden shift. An issue that was, only a year ago, simmering more or less unnoticed on a back-burner has suddenly been placed centre table, and it's now a delectable dish that every politician seems to want a piece of.

Perhaps, like me, you're wondering what took so long. It's not as though our leaders have just been informed about the dire consequences of the Canadian standard of life for planetary health and the survival of species, including our own. We've all known for quite a while that many changes, some of them drastic, are needed; but despite repeated and increasingly alarming warnings from the scientific community, our leaders seem to have been seized with a perplexing inertia when it comes to effecting, or even talking about, those necessary changes. Even now, with climate change finally acknowledged as a government priority, politicians seem to have far more appetite for debating the issue than for actually doing something about it.

In her newly released collection of essays, Ursula Franklin poses precisely the question that we must ask vis-à-vis climate change and government policy: "Why things that seem appropriate, useful, honourable, and decent do not get done" (p. 230). Franklin, a retired University of Toronto physicist, first came to the attention of many Canadians in 1990, with the publication of her Massey Lecture, The Real World of Technology (Anansi). But long before that, she was well known in certain circles as an active, articulate campaigner for peace, justice, and women's rights. The Ursula Franklin Reader brings together a number of papers, speeches, and articles, many previously unpublished, on subjects ranging from Quaker history and belief to feminist perspectives on the technological order. Taken as a whole, however, the book offers, as its subtitle suggests, a map that can help us navigate toward a just society.

Although the new collection is, with the exception of a few pieces, only indirectly concerned with environmental issues, I have chosen this theme to foreground my discussion of the book because, like Ivan Illich, who postulated an inverse relationship between social equity and energy consumption, Franklin perceives a fundamental connection between the social and the environmental. In her view, where there are equitable social relations, sane environmental policies will prevail, while conversely, a lack of stewardship of the natural world goes hand-inhand with a failure of social justice. Justice is achieved when basic rights, such as respect and dignity, but also clean air and water, are equally available to all citizens.

For Franklin, it is impossible to talk about justice without also talking about peace. In her lexicon, the two are indivisible, for she defines peace not as the absence of war but as the presence of justice or, more particularly, as "the consequence of a just ordering of society" (p. 114). Franklin further insists that peace in this sense is by definition universal: "either there will be peace for all, and all gain, or there will be no peace, and all will lose" (p. 97). This is clearly an ecological perspective, insofar as it emphasizes the connectedness and interdependence of all people. Whether we are talking about warfare or acid rain, Franklin makes it quite clear that the solutions are necessarily global: "the well-being of this planet and its inhabitants is the only guarantee for the survival of any nation, group, or family" (98). In short, we are all in this together, and our sole hope for achieving a just society is through cooperative effort that improves the quality of life for everyone as opposed to internecine struggles between self-interested parties.

To the questions that inform this collection - How can we create this just society? and, obversely, Why is the just thing, the decent, honourable, appropriate thing, so often not done? - Franklin offers a single response: governance. The answer to the first question is quite simply good governance, which entails making decisions about communities and environments based upon a consideration of the views of all citizens and a concern with maintaining the common good. Good governance, however, is only an ideal; and despite her "obstinate optimism" (p. 206) about the possibility of directing political practices toward the goal of a just society, Franklin, who grew up in Nazi Germany, is deeply realistic about the chasm that can exist between law and justice. Hence, the second question, which requires a much more complex, nuanced response.

According to Franklin, the fact that our government often fails to work in our best interests has much to do with the rising technological order. Franklin defines technology in Ellulian terms, not as consisting merely of hardware and machinery, but as also, and more importantly, entailing practice: technology, she says, is "the way things are done around here." And in recent years, the way things are done has undergone widespread change, with efficient processes and massive bureaucracies superceding face-to-face contact, citizen participation, and dialogue. The result is a civic structure that is, like the technologies themselves, increasingly "anti-people" (p. 277), its operations based upon a perception of citizens as the primary source of problems, and problems as situations that are only amenable to technological solutions.

The cause of a just society becomes even more remote when governments begin to invest in and transfer their operations to information networks, in the process diverting much of the public purse toward "a new scheme that will put us into a stream of mainly irrelevant information that nobody has asked for" (p. 111). Now, given Franklin's belief that justice and peace are by definition global conditions, government appropriation and use of the so-called Information Superhighway might seem to be a step in the right direction. To help us understand why it is not, Franklin, master of the domestic metaphor, asks us to imagine "a plain round cake, cut in wedge-shaped slices that represent states, countries, or regional entities. One slice is called 'Canada"' (p. 175). According to Franklin, customs and social activities, laws and liberties, are located within these vertical slices, and although each slice may share some activities and ideas with adjacent slices, each is essentially self-contained, its identity defined by the boundaries of the slice. For example, proximity dictates that Canada and the United States will be trade partners, and will even share some social customs, but the two countries are otherwise distinct entities, separate wedge-shaped slices in the North American cake. In Franklin's model, movements from slice to slice, largely profit-driven, create horizontal cuts in the cake. Of course, people have always travelled great distances, but today, says Franklin, new technologies increase the ease with which people, ideas, goods, and especially money can travel horizontally from slice to slice. Outsourcing call centre work to India, using the Internet to trade on the Tokyo stock exchange, and other such transactions create horizontal cuts in the pieces of cake. Indeed, there are now so many horizontal cuts that the wedge-shaped vertical slices have started to crumble. And far from attempting to preserve the integrity of the slice that is Canada, our leaders are actually in the vanguard of those forging horizontal paths so that, increasingly, "the most crucial social and political activities are taking place along horizontal segments" (p. 177).

The problem, as Franklin sees it, is that the pursuit of justice, peace, and liberty depends upon the existence of a viable society. But as market-driven governments co-opt the very technology that, used differently, might enable the necessary global connections, and as they conduct more and more of their work horizontally, a sense of civic responsibility to the vertical slice crumbles along with the slice itself. This, says Franklin, is the essence of the new "'techno-fascism,' the anti-people, anti justice form of global management and power sharing that is developing around the world" (p. 73). Canadians are no longer governed, she insists; rather, with the help of technologies of control and compliance, we are now managed and administered for the benefit of others. The implied contract between government and citizens, which stipulates an ethic of care and responsibility, has been broken, and the civic values contained within the vertical slice have been supplanted by the market values inherent in the horizontal cut.

It is a testament to the cogency of Franklin's analyses that supporting examples spring readily to the reader's mind. In fact, as a New Brunswicker, I am struck by how accurately she has described developments in my province during the past twenty years. Since Premier Frank McKenna (1987-97) first proclaimed his intention to use new communications networks to bring the province into the twentieth century, the New Brunswick government has invested millions of dollars in the project of "connecting"- connecting the province to the Information Highway, connecting all schools to the new virtual artery, connecting all households to a fully digitized telephone network. But while all this connecting has taken place in the name of breaking the cycle of poverty and unemployment, thereby creating a self-sufficient citizenry and economy, the result has been anything but a more just society.

This is in part because, from the beginning, the McKenna government constructed information technology as a fetish, rather than as something that could be subjected to public appraisal and control, especially by citizens who were clearly regarded as sources of problems rather than as potential sources of solutions. Given this perspective, it is not surprising that there were no opportunities for the kind of informed public inquiry that attends most highway construction. Rather, any inclination to engage in dialogue about the social consequences of the planned route was disarmed by repeated warnings that, in a highly competitive, technology-driven world, the only risk worth considering lay in the consequences of not immediately steering ourselves onto the Information Superhighway.

The first horizontal cuts in the New Brunswick slice were quickly followed by vast swaths, as McKenna embarked upon a highly publicized campaign to woo high-tech companies from Ontario and elsewhere to the province, with promises of a world-class telecommunications infrastructure, a bilingual workforce, and, perhaps most importantly, attractive government grants and forgivable loans. In the call centres and e-learning enterprises that sprang up in Fredericton, Moncton, and Saint John, New Brunswickers became easily replaceable human resources whose largely rote labour was monitored by control technologies and skilled Upper Canadian managers.

As the province's citizens were increasingly exhorted to become self-sufficient employees of these impersonal and often fly-by-night operations (as I write, yet another Upper Canadian-financed e-learning company has locked its doors, leaving 44 New Brunswickers suddenly jobless), the government began withdrawing the social services that had, it was argued, created a culture of dependency in New Brunswick. At the same time, the language of support changed to reflect the shifting of responsibility onto the shoulders of individual New Brunswickers. For example, the meaning of "income assistance" as it was used in policy documents changed from a system fostering passivity and dependence to one promoting active personal development; and as "social assistance clients" instead of "welfare recipients," New Brunswickers became accountable for their own well-being. These may appear, on first examination, to be positive shifts in meaning, but as Franklin's analysis reminds us, in the social sphere represented by this new lingo, unemployment and poverty were now the result of an individual's personal shortcomings, such as laziness and self-indulgence, rather than social issues requiring government intervention. New Brunswick people were the problem, and information technology and efficient management processes were the technological solutions.

Despite the pendulum voting that is characteristic of a disaffected, disenfranchised citizenry, subsequent governments have done nothing to restore the integrity of New Brunswick's vertical slice. That integrity depends in large part upon a mindful populace participating in an ongoing dialogue, and upon a government dedicated to "the public good and its care" rather than to "the glories of private enterprise" (p. 285). In New Brunswick, we now have neither; rather, we have a government that moves ahead without citizen consultation, making poor, profit-motivated decisions that will severely impact the well-being of the public commons for years to come - including accepting a proposal to build an incinerator to burn toxic American soil in the small northern community of Belledune, authorizing the refurbishment of the aging Point Lepreau nuclear plant, and subdividing the New Brunswick Power Corporation in preparation for the future privatization of this public good. It seems to be a foregone conclusion that the government will in due course sanction Irving's request to build a second oil refinery in Saint John. And because the province's newspapers are controlled by Irving, a company that stands to profit enormously from horizontal cuts in New Brunswick's vertical slice, media critique of such decisions is effectively silenced, while the potential benefits, particularly new jobs for this have-not province, are widely hyped.

The New Brunswick experience offers ample evidence to support Franklin's fear that "when the community and individuals begin to get really hooked on the Internet, ... we are shifted away from what is probably our most treasured possession: the notion of the common good" (p. 233). Having been persuaded that their salvation lies in the Internet, New Brunswickers are dutifully online and too busy surfing to notice that the things that seem just, appropriate, and decent, for both the environment and citizens, are not being done.

But it would be untrue to the spirit of this book to end on such a gloomy note, for the tenor of Franklin's analysis is far from bleak. Rather, while affirming that things are not as they should be, she continually offers hope and guidance for effecting change. And for those weary of hearing, yet one more time, the already stale litany of things that the ordinary citizen can do about climate change - bicycle to work, turn down your thermostat, and make sure the blue box is at the curb every week - Franklin's injunctions will come as a breath of fresh air.

These injunctions boil down to two key recommendations for action. First, Franklin asks that we use language carefully and clearly:

Anyone who has lived under a military occupation will tell you that the resisters often refused to speak the language of the occupier. I think this is a good lesson to remember. ... This particular option of resistance is open to all of us and we should use it. We can analyze the language of public discourse and point out what those terms really mean. It is amazing how much such clarification can help to advance clarity and build a resisting community. (p. 125)

The remarkable clarity of Franklin's own voice is thus an important part of her message and a moral choice, a way of speaking truth to power. As citizens, we too are entreated to be more mindful of the way we use language and more openly critical of the ways in which it is used by our civic leaders. For example, Franklin emphasizes the fundamental difference between talking about "Nature," which is an independent, unpredictable force, and "the environment," which is something we can manage and manipulate, "an infrastructure, like air conditioning, lighting, or paint, that can be adjusted if it doesn't work" (p. 275). Similarly, "political discussions ... about energy can become a kind of camouflage" (p. 271), obscuring the fact that the planet's natural stores are being plundered for personal gain. We should also refuse to accept a public discourse that represents all events as conflicts, or that presents all decisions in dichotomous terms, for "we do not live in the flat earth of an either-or world ... the alternative to nuclear energy is not simply freezing in the dark; the alternative to being a complacent and compliant citizen is not being a social outcast" (p. 97).

Second, Franklin advocates a program of citizen politics, which she defines as "the collective activities of citizens undertaken to effect specific changes in governmental practices or regulations" (p. 280). The overall purpose of citizen politics is not to overthrow government but to improve it, to revitalize it with just practices and principles: "It is clear to me that it will be citizens, rather than governments, who introduce new thoughts, fresh ideas, and human perspectives into this grim and threatened world" (p. 98).

Citizen politics is a central element of the Quaker credo, which enjoins members of the Religious Society of Friends to "Remember your responsibility as citizens for the government of your own town and country, and do not shirk the effort and time this may demand. Do not be content to accept things as they are, but keep an alert and questioning mind" (p. 50). In Franklin's view, citizen involvement in governmental decision-making is increasingly necessary because, as we have seen, governance in a technological society tends to devolve into mere management, driven by market rather than civic considerations. Therefore, "many of the political issues in which we as citizens may have to intervene have a common root, which, in short, is the denial of any standpoint other than profit" (p. 269). Being a citizen politician may be hard work - it entails "fact-gathering, budget critiquing, committee-watching, and meeting with councillors and bureaucrats" (p. 290). But it is, in Franklin's view, only through the efforts of citizens demanding the right to have a say in how their own community and habitat are structured and run that we can move forward with integrity toward a livable future.

"In the end," Frankin writes "it is our lives that must speak the truth" (p. 72). Pacifism as a Map is a testament to Franklin's lifelong commitment to clarity and citizen politics, and her dedication to the cause of speaking truth to power. The world would doubtless be a far better place, in terms of both human and ecological well-being, if, entering into Franklin's spirit of generosity and reciprocity, we all began working together to help ensure that the things that are just and decent and honourable do get done.