"Death By Freezing" 1

Article by Guy Duperreault

Question: When is an idealogy worth dieing or killing for?

Answer: When it is invisible.

I thought that I had rejected ideologies which kill, but I was recently shocked and
embarrassed to discover that I had unwittingly accepted one which does just that. (And,
quite likely so have you.)
I became conscious of this thing alive in me (and Canada) when I examined my
intense reaction to two books critiquing Canada's current economic policy and the
media. Reading Linda McQuaig's Shooting the Hippo: Death by Deficit and Other
Canadian Myths and The Wealthy Banker's Wife: The Assault on Equality in Canada
was an emotional roller coaster! I felt despair, anger, bitterness. I wanted to write
letters everywhere — but did not. I wanted to hide my head under the covers and wait
for a perfect Sunday morning — but re-read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
instead. I wanted truth and broad integrity from my politicians and news people — but
got media endorsed political and economic double-speak.
The intensity of my reactions surprised me because I have for various reasons
long since stopped trusting the integrity of most political and economic rhetoric,
especially that disseminated by the corporate media. So, after I had cooled off a bit, I
asked myself why I had taken McQuaig's rhetoric so much to heart. Why were her
words not just empty rhetoric to me?
To begin with McQuaig's writing and subject appeal to me: I root for anyone who
powerfully questions the integrity of the media's presentation of economic "truths."
McQuaig does this exceptionally well. However, despair and anger are not the
reactions I associate with a confluence of ideas! So what was going on?
The seed of my understanding begins with McQuaig's interview of a Swedish
sociology professor about food banks. McQuaig wanted to know how Sweden handled
them, but was surprised at how difficult it was to convey to the professor what food
banks were, despite the professor's excellent command of English. When McQuaig
eventually made herself understood, the source of the communication problem was
determined: food banks do not exist in Sweden!
While the professor was surprised to learn of the existance of food banks in
Canada, she was shocked to learn that Canada has "homeless people." The professor
asked McQuaig where, in such a cold country, they slept. McQuaig described shelters,
overpasses, steam vents, etc., and added that a few do not, in fact, survive, and that
such a death "makes a small item in the press." In the process McQuaig experienced
"anew the horror of what [she] was saying" (Wealthy 70-1).
I mulled over this exchange, unclear as to why it seemed central to my emotional
upheaval. Eventually there bubbled from my unconscious the memory of another
death, an infant's death, in Thailand.
I had read about it several years ago, in Don't Fall Off the Mountain by Shirley
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Article by Guy Duperreault

MacLaine. MacLaine was canoeing on a river near Bangkok. About 200 feet from her
she saw an infant of about three months fall from its parents' canoe. She wrote: "I
strained my eyes to find the child. Its parents heard the gurgle and turned around.
Neither made a move to go after him. The child disappeared. With static expressions
they watched their baby drown. I could see that their lack of reaction was genuine. I
was stunned. I had learned that many Buddhists will not interfere with what they believe
is preordained fate. But to witness such as thing was staggering. This death was the
will of God.... To a Buddhist, death is only another form of life. Life and death are not
viewed in terms of individual people — it covers a broader philosophical spectrum. Fate
is their religion. The fate of the drowned child was not to be interfered with. It was
accepted." (140-1:my emphasis)
MacLaine was shaken by the manner of that infant's death in a foreign country.
Yet the reality for MacLaine and most other North Americans is that we witness and
participate, dispassionately, in many scores or more such deaths every year. MacLaine
ascribed to the Thai parents' behaviour religious belief. In North America such an act
could lead to charges of manslaughter or criminal negligence, as it has with some
Christian Scientists or careless parents. On the other hand, a homeless person's death
by freezing, for example, is shrugged off and ascribed to Economic Fate and the
personal failure of the individual. In this instance, like the Thai parents in Thailand, such
a death brings with it little more than "static expressions." And because Economic Fate
is our religion, there is not any retribution nor, sadly, even the notion of retribution —
whimpy finger pointing and some "heartfelt" head shakes and muttered "isn't-that-a-
shames" from the media not withstanding. (It is curious that recent laws make the
owners/managers responsible for the environmental toxins they create, but not the
employment toxins downsizing, for example, creates.)
The minimalist reaction by the public and the press to a death by freezing in
Canada is no different than that of the Thai parents' reaction to their infant's death by
drowning. However, whereas the Thai parents were living their Buddhist faith when
they "accepted" their infant's fate, what faith are we Canadians living which accepts with
an almost complete "lack of reaction" another Canadian's death by freezing? I suggest
that it is an ideological faith in Economic "Truth."
Read the Oxford definition of "ideology" (see below) and it is plain to see why I
say that our faith in modern economic principles has become ideological. It is being
huckstered from all media outlets as THE saviour, as if it were some kind of god. The
lives of people have become less important than acceptance of THE TRUTH as dictated
by this cruel god. It uses circular logic to rebuke all criticism which suggests that it is
not working as well as advertised. (In a country as wealthy as Canada, the tolerance of
homelessness, let alone its justification by people driving BMW's, is a madness little
different than that of the French aristocracy before they lost their heads.)
At the time I was reading McQuaig, I was "presented" with an opportunity to put
money in the can of a beggar who had hanging from her neck a terse sign describing
her troubles and need for money. (She looked like someone recently "let" into the
community from some kind of care home.) By my action I revealed my unconscious
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Article by Guy Duperreault

adherence to the ideology of Economics: with a static expression I did not part with
"my" wealth. I "let" her face the consequence of her economic fate and personal
choices alone, and thus mirrored exactly the Thai Buddhist parents inaction: if she was
to drown then, like the infant in a Bangkok river, that would be her fate — her Economic
fate.
The Swedish professor's reaction mirrored MacLaine's in that what in Sweden is
unthinkable has become in Canada (and North America) an acceptable "truth." The
professor saw a Canadian's death by freezing as the consequence of a chosen course
of (in)action in the same way that MacLaine saw the Thai infant's death as the result of
a chosen course of (in)action. (There is bizarre irony in the comparison between
Buddhist faith and Economic faith: monastic Thai Buddhists beg as their sole means of
support.)
And so I came to understand my reaction to McQuaig's books: my rage and
despair at the media and the body politic was my way of avoiding personal responsibility
for holding, unconsciously, an economic ideology which promotes an emotionally cold
and isolating society. My anger at politicians and the media for manipulating me with
misleading reports on the importance on the deficit, or downplaying the significance of
record banking profits, for example, while extolling upon us the virtue of hearts
hardened to the cries of fellow citizens, was at least equally anger at how my
unconscious beliefs contribute to both that hardened heart and suffering. I was angry
because I had unconsciously bought into an ideology which kills.
To whom am I responsible? To my self, to my family/community, to my country?
I think the answer is to all of them, since I am a significant part of them all. However,
today's "pundits" of economic "sense" and "truth", i.e., the wealthy bankers, corporate
agents and their government and news media mouthpieces, are verbally pummelling
me in ways which seem designed to displace all complex feelings and thoughts of
responsibility for community and country with a simplistic and cold notion of personal
economic responsibility to be selfish.
To the extent that the corporate world and its chosen ideals of free markets and
globalized corporate capitalism come to be held as truths by me, is the extent to which
my community and my emotional connection and empathy for all members of my
community can be sacrificed and displaced by the mandated "truth" that corporate and
personal greed is good for the economy. Notice that this widely accepted phrase does
not read "... GOOD FOR PEOPLE"! For example, the "pundits" say that the wealthy who
bought up and built over the lands of the Lower Mainland were good for the economy —
and they probably were, but just about every "working" person I know is poorer for it as
Vancouver housing prices now take huge percentages of disposable income.
Government debt continues to increase at about the same rate, it seems, as the banks'
record setting profits — profits which are at the expense of disposable income as
consumed by service charges and bank's interest rate spreads.
It seems to me that once I have accepted greed economics as an idealistic
conviction it becomes a religion which gives me the "moral" and emotional sanction to
garner to myself as much of the wealth of Canada I can, even at the expense of my
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community and country. From there it is a microscopic step to ignore or fail to see the
poor, the homeless, the sick and the dying behind my back door, let alone those in the
next neighbourhood: I can, like the Thai adults, with "religious certainty" sit impassively
and watch members of my family drown. And it is an even easier step to come to
believe that corporations do not have a long term economic responsibility to their
community. Religious belief in Economic Fate has become our indulgence and excuse.
But perhaps worst/best of all it blinds us to the "reality" that most North Americans are
increasingly impoverished while the few are becoming increasingly wealthy.
What truly terrifies me, and angers me, is that this makes me in kind, if not in
scope, no different than those in Germany who distanced themselves from the Jews as
they were marched from their homes to meet their fate.
I have not come to terms, yet, with this discovery in my self and my community.
It brings a strongly felt ambivalence and raises in me many questions as I re-examine
some of the "truths" I once accepted with little question or thought. At what point does
"personal responsibility", which has many obvious benefits and strengths for the
individual and community, become a poisoned ideal which impedes the ability to see
that the community is dying because of the lack of communal effort and sense of
Communal Responsibility? How can I be charitable without that charity destroying both
me and the other by becoming institutionalized? Is the size of organized charity a
compensation for the lack of economic largesse? Who benefits most when a strong
sense of community is sacrificed for an ideal of personal greed? Why is it that huge
corporate profits do not have a corresponding reduction in unemployment levels and
poverty? Why does the business community descry government presence, then
criticize it for its inability to create jobs or educate us "correctly"? Is it not truly the
business community's responsibility to its "grass roots" community to create jobs and
educate its workforce, rather than the governments? Why does the media criticize
government programmes when they are abused by unethical and destructive business
practices, such as the high tech industry grants of a few years ago, but do not equally
criticize the business community for unscrupulously ripping off the public in the first
place? Why are not excessive multi-national corporate profits criticized for being a tax
on the community, given that such corporations are loyal to the community of share
holders and not the community at large? Are not monstrous "Iococan" wages for a few
in fact a tax on the many?

Why do we accept with relative equanimity a death by freezing but feel outrage
when a child dies as the result of religious belief or government "error?" Answer: we
are ideological. And it scares me.

REFERENCES

MacLaine, Shirley. Don't Fall of the Mountain. Toronto: Bantam Books, 1988.
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McQuaig, Linda. Shooting the Hippo: Death by Deficit and Other Canadian Myths.
Toronto: Viking/Penguin Books Canada Ltd., 1995.

McQuaig, Linda. The Wealthy Banker's Wife: The Assault on Equality in Canada.
Toronto: Penguin Books Canada Ltd., 1993.

The New Oxford Shorter Dictionary. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993. Page 2538.
Definition: religion.

(3) Belief in or sensing of some superhuman controlling

power or powers, entitled to obedience, reverence, and
worship, or in a system defining a code of living, esp. as a
means to achieve spiritual or material improvement;
acceptance of such a belief (esp. as represented by an
organized Church) as a standard of spiritual and practical
life, the expression of this in worship, etc. [My emphasis.]

Definition: ideology
(3) A system of ideas or way of thinking pertaining to a class
or individual, esp. as a basis of some economic or political
theory or system regarded as justifying actions and esp. to
be maintained irrespective of events.
New Shorter Oxford, 1993.