Death By Freezing:

Question: When Is An Ideology Worth Dying Or Killing For?

Oct 01, 2024

Oaxaca Food. Music: Herbie Hancock — Cantaloupe Island.

I wrote 'Death by Freezing' in the mid 1990s. I was prompted to put it into my blog in Blogspot back in 2008. At the time I blogged it in part because someone posed the question "Collapse of Capitalism?" in an on-line discussion group. I wrote an extensive response, within which I refered to my essay. Here is the link to my response to the query: “Collapse of Capitalism?” (I’ll revisit it and see if it might become a companion piece here in Substack.)

I have created an audio of this as well, for those who prefer to listen than read.

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Death By Freezing — Audio

Guy Duperreault

October 1, 2024

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And I found myself referring back to this work in recent weeks in my writing and elsewhere. So I have felt that it is time to put it into Substack. And for me to revisit it with having added thirty years of experience since writing it. (I will edit and format it for my Substack style. The original is still on Blogspot.)

It was interesting for me to revisit my young man’s economic condemnation. I think it holds pretty well. And more than that, I can see hints in it of my dim perception of the advancement of both the left and right ideologies into extremism and/or rigidify. And, it turns out to have a nice bridge to my current extended examination of ‘morals’, ‘morality’ and ‘moralism’ because I now see that ideology and moralism are basically indistinguishable.

And is this a weird synchronicity? I took a break to drink my cleanse juice and while doing that I listened to the beginning of a discussion between Andrew Wilson and Tim Pool. (I don’t know either of them.) It was about ‘rights’, such as human rights and ‘inalienable rights’, whatever those are. Wilson argues that rights don’t really exists because the society, with or without the consent or direction from government, suspends them whenever the moral sentiment changes — that is my paraphrase, because Wilson doesn’t use the word ‘moral’. Interestingly enough, Pool does though, at 4:14: a ‘right’ is “an intrinsic moral function”. And Wilson challenges him immediately! Excellent, because as soon as the word ‘moral’ enters the argument, it is not inalienable, of course. It simply means whatever serves the purpose of the day to enable the moral person or group to disengage from expressing compassion or being compassionate. From that they are free to use moral force to manifest whatever has become acceptable and expedient. Wilson references the experience of the Americans of Japanese descent during WWII as an example of their ‘rights’ having been suspended at the drop of a hat or the drop of an invented for-the-day moral expediency.

When I wrote ‘Death by Freezing’ I hadn’t clearly seen the connection, then, to what I was writing and compassion: now it is clear. Something to keep in mind is that the religions I reference in this essay are both using the morality of their religion, their ideology to disengage from human compassion. And both use form and action to disseminate that into the society as being a ‘moral good’.

If you are curious here’s the 26 minutes of the rights debate as reacted to by a reasonably interesting commentator: “Andrew Wilson Stumps Tim Pool In Debate About Rights!”. Here is the full 2hr interview: “Tim Pool Sues Kamala Harris For President, Defamation Lawsuit Filed w/Andrew Wilson | Timcast IRL”.

Anyway, here is my thirty year old self struggling with economics as religion and the shadows he was projecting. Lol! Shadow work seems to be an ongoing undertaking!

Death By Freezing

Question: When is an ideology worth dying 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.

I became conscious of this thing alive in me and in Canada when I examined my intense reaction to two books critiquing Canada's current economic policies and the media.

Linda McQuaig. Music: Nicholas Payton — Cyborg Swing.

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 I reread 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 on top of the politicians’ dissembling.

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! Canadians and the USA have normalised them and so they have become invisible.

While the professor was surprised to learn of the existence 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 p70-1). For McQuaig, they were removed from her unconscious normalisation of them as an expression of our economic truth.

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 spiritual writer and actress Shirley MacLaine. MacLaine was canoeing on a river in Thailand 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. (p140-1, 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 of such deaths every year. MacLaine ascribed to the Thai parents' behaviour religious belief. In North America such an act of religious belief 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. Ie., the religion of economics. It might “make a small item in the press”.

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 — wimpy finger pointing and some "heartfelt" head shakes and muttered "isn't-that-a-shames" from the media from time to time not withstanding. It is curious that recent laws make the owners/managers increasingly responsible for the environmental wastes/toxins they create, but not the employment toxins downsizing and outsourcing, 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 that accepts, with an almost complete "lack of reaction”, another Canadian's death by freezing?

I suggest that it is an ideological faith in an Economic Truth or, perhaps, as Economics as Truth. Ie, religion.

Read the Oxford Dictionary’s definitions of "ideology" and “religion” (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 — or perhaps simply the singular way to a complete life — as if it were some kind of god or that god’s destination. The lives of people have become less important than acceptance of the Truth as dictated by this indifferent or even cruel ‘god’ via that god’s managers. It uses circular logic to rebuke all criticism that suggests that it is not working as well as advertised. In a country as wealthy as Canada, the nearly total acceptance of and indifference to homelessness, let alone its justification by people driving expensive BMWs, is a madness little different than that of the French aristocracy who, after they ‘lost’ their heads in delusion of wealth, had them cut off.

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 in the name of integration as a moral justification for the government shutting down those places of last resort for some in order for the government to cut costs/deficits. By my action I revealed my unconscious adherence to the religious 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 most of North America perhaps, 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 of 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 that kills.

To whom am I responsible? To my self, to my family/community, or 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.

Greed is Good, Boesky’s Phrase and Consequences. Music: Miles Davis John Coltrane — So What?

The popularity of the phrase, ‘greed is good’, which is in direct conflict with the mores of every religion on the planet except our economic one, was popularised from the movie Wall Street. The director, Oliver Stone, adapted that idea from a business class speech given the infamous thief of the 1980s, Ivan Boesky. From the movie, the religion of economics is given voice:

“I am not a destroyer of companies. I am a liberator of them. The point is, ladies and gentlemen, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms – greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge – has marked the upward surge of mankind and greed, you mark my words, will not only save Teldar Paper but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA. Thank you” (This Day In Quotes).

To the extent that the corporate world and its chosen ideals of free markets and globalised 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 metro-Vancouver 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 do — 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 an invisible religion which gives me the "moral" and emotional sanction to garner to myself as much of the wealth of Canada as I can, even at the expense of my 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 sleeping under cardboard boxes: 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 because we continue to bow down to our god of good economics and their deacons and bishops of businesses, banks, and the governments who help to enrich them.

What truly frightens 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 institutionalised?
Is the size of organised 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 criticise 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 government’s?
Why does the media criticise 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 criticise the business community for unscrupulously ripping off or financially raping the public in the first place?
Why are not excessive multi-national corporate profits criticised for being a tax on the community, given that such corporations are loyal only to the community of share holders and not the community at large?
Are not monstrous “Lee Iococan" wages for a few in fact a tax on the many?

Question: 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.

Once, when I was younger than I am now, this scared me. But I fear it no longer for it is what it is. Now it saddens me, ideology's seeming irrepressible power to dull intelligence, foster ignorance and blinker perception. (Wow! Do not those words of the 1990s foreshadow the popularity of the extreme progressive liberal ideology that we see made manifest in their attacks on language, common sense, denial of sexuality while advocating for the premature sexualisation of young children, and their insistence on mutilating children’s sex as ‘good’ thing.)

References

Definitions from The New Oxford Shorter Dictionary. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993:

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 organised Church) as a standard of spiritual and practical life, the expression of this in worship, etc. (my emphasis.)

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 (my emphasis).