A Modern Story

A man, bleeding heavily, lay on the downtown sidewalk of a busy city.  To any casual observer he appeared to be the victim of a mugging. People hurried by him, careful to avoid the spreading blood, on their way to their businesses.

The first to pause was a self-made millionaire who addressed the man as follows: I am sorry for your plight and am in personal pain to see you suffer. However, I am a self-made man who, by hard work and determination, has made my way through life so that I wouldn’t end up where you are. It is unfortunate that you made some bad decisions along the way, but, you have no one to blame for your plight but yourself.

The next to pause was a middle-aged well-dressed woman who said: Poor man! I wish I could help you, but, I have heard about the dangers of blood-born disease and so cannot touch you for fear of catching a deadly disease myself. You will have to help yourself.

A parson happened by who immediately knelt on the ground next to the man and said quietly: Such are the wages of sin. However, our God is a loving God who, if you sincerely repent, will forgive you and welcome you into his heavenly kingdom. I will pray for you.

A conservative politician was next to address the man: I am so, so sorry to see you in such a state. We must all work together to make our streets safer so that this type of thing doesn’t happen to others. I will build more prisons and dictate harsher sentences so that others will not become victims like yourself.

A liberal politician said: We must launch a Royal Commission to examine the root causes of what has happened to you. The Commission will hear from witnesses and experts who will explain why you and others like you are on our streets bleeding. They will make recommendations so that we can better understand what has led to your fate.

  

A holy man, freshly returned from years of meditation, said to him: Do not focus on your pain. It is a transitory illusion. Look only to the present and seek inner peace.

Finally, a police officer saw the man and approached him. He examined the man’s wounds and then used his cell phone to call for an ambulance.  However, due to cutbacks needed to finance additional prisons and Royal Commissions, emergency services had been reduced to one ambulance for the entire city and it was busy attending to others in need of urgent help.

After the man died, the city coroner held an inquest and recommended that emergency services should, in future, guarantee a response time of ten minutes and that police officers be given more training in first aid.

Maniwaki and me....

Yesterday I noticed a small story in the Ottawa Citizen about an apparent murder that occurred in Maniwaki. For those who don't know, Maniwaki is a town in Quebec about a two hour drive north of Ottawa. It is situated on land that legally belongs to the Algonquins of the Kitigan Zibi Reserve, one of the largest Algonquin settlements in existence. I taught at the secondary school in Maniwaki from 1975 to 1982. About half of my students were from Kitigan Zibi and the rest a mixture of French Canadian and Irish. The secondary school was built in the late 1960's when the Quebec government invested heavily in education, believing that all students living anywhere in the province should have access to the same opportunities. Large "polyvalent" ("many streams") secondary schools were built across the province, complemented by CEGEPs (collèges d'enseignement général et professionnel ) at the post-secondary level.


Secondary school ran from grades 7 to 11, followed by two years in an academic program at the CEGEP level to prepare for university entrance, making pre-university education about the same number of years as in other provinces. (Ontario high schools at the time ran from grades 9 to 13.) At the ends of both grades 10 and 11 were provincial examinations in each subject. Generally the exams were set at two levels: the higher one for CEGEP-bound students, and the lower for those who simply wanted a secondary school leaving certificate. As there was no such thing as a province-wide curriculum teachers at individual school geared their own curriculums towards the expected examinations. As the senior English teacher, I set the curriculum for all English courses from grades 7 to 11. 


As in many smaller Quebec communities, the predominant language of instruction was in French, though, if numbers warranted a secteur anglais could be set up. Education, at the time, was divided along religious lines. The predominate religion being Roman Catholic, though the Quebec government, under the terms of the British North America Act of 1867, offered education programs for Protestants, along the lines of Ontario's commitments to its Roman Catholic minority. By the time I started teaching in Maniwaki, the religious lines were blurring because the language issue was taking on much more significance. Public education was formally "deconfessionalized" in 2000. When I was teaching in the 1970's and 80's the eventuality of realigning school boards along language rather than religious lines was becoming apparent. Though most of my students were nominally Protestant, a large number were Roman Catholic. Without the English-speaking Catholics there would not have been enough English-speaking students to justify the existence of the secteur anglais. Students requiring an English secondary school education would have had to travel an hour by bus to the small English secondary school in Low, or, two hours to a secondary school in Hull.


The big change in Maniwaki since I was there was the creation of a native-run secondary school, situated on the reserve. I knew many of the people involved in the planning for this school. In fact, I knew many of the people of Maniwaki and Kitigan Zibi whose names I saw in news stories over the years since I left. One has become a police chief. Another, head of surgery at a large hospital. And yet another was a Member of Parliament for a session. Many entered the teaching profession, some returning to Kitigan Zibi to work in the school there. A few, perhaps a half dozen in all, have died violently, either in auto accidents, or, in one case, murder.


That is the background to the story I read in yesterday's Citizen.  No names were given in the initial story, though the street were it happened was named. I knew that street well. Today's Citizen named both the victim and the suspect. The victim, an 85 year old man, taught auto shop in the polyvalent for the first two years I was there. He nursed my wreaks of cars through crisis after crisis, accepting only a bottle of Scotch at Christmas as payment. The suspect, the man's 50-year-old son, was in my classes for the first two years I taught. I remember him particularly well because he was a bully with a sullen and hostile attitude. On one occasion when I had dragged him to the principal's office by the ear because he had torn up a note book belonging to another student, the principal literally kicked him in the ass. It did no good. Even his father appeared to have no influence on him. Eventually, he disappeared from the school's life before completing grade 8. I've known students like him all my life; they were in my elementary school classes, and I've run into their adult counterparts in my professional careers since. 


I don't know where they come from or why they adopt the attitude that the world is their enemy when they are about 12 years old. But, once set into a pattern of defiance, they seem to get stuck there. Of course, the more they act out, the harder the adults around them are on them. It's likely a self-perpetuating cycle. What I know for certain is that with 35 students in my classes there was no way that I could adopt a plan of action for reaching this kid. He was disruptive, so I had to get him out of the way so I could teach the other 34 students. Life does not resemble a Hollywood movie at all. It might have been nice if some deeply compassionate and understanding teacher took this kid under their wing and set him on the road to redemption, but, this doesn't happen in real life. We try to deal with the problems quickly and get on with the rest of the job.


When I reflect back on my time in Maniwaki, I feel both pride and sadness.  There were some successes, but there were also failures. I don't know how this balances out. But, once when I was in a conflict with the Algonquin counsellor in the school, many of my students approached him to support me (and he eventually apologized), and, at one graduation party a small group of Algonquin students told me that I was the only white teacher they had ever encountered who did not have a trace of prejudice in his body. They laughed and said they knew that all I cared about was getting them through those god-damned provincial exams.

I should have gone to jail…

I graduated university in 1971. In 1971-72 I took the required graduate courses leading to an MA. In 1972-73, while supposedly writing my master’s thesis, I taught a first year level course. By the summer of 1973 I was lost. A long-term relationship had ended and I had no idea where I was headed or what I wanted to do.  There was no way that I could concentrate on my thesis and I badly needed income. So, I applied for every job that a college grad was qualified for. One was at a small publishing company to work as an editor. I would have loved that kind of work, but the owner who interviewed me “regretted” that she could offer me only $100/week. That was roughly $100 more per week than I was currently earning and sounded like a god-send to me, but her attitude told me that she did not expect someone with my qualifications to accept.

I had been applying for teaching jobs. For one, I had a degree and had a year’s experience teaching (I actually gave a couple of guest seminars at McGill as well.) Secondly, schools could hire teachers who did not have their teaching certificate if they could not find anyone else qualified (which is how most “shops” teachers were hired). One day I took a bus from Montreal to Sherbrooke to be interviewed for a teaching job and then spent the night with a casual girlfriend who had just moved there to start teaching. The next morning I took a bus back to Montreal, then another bus to Ottawa, where I caught a local bus to the town of Buckingham, about 30 minutes downstream from Ottawa on the Quebec side. I had been wearing the same clothes for two days in incredible heat and was soaked in sweat.

Nevertheless, the principal of the elementary school seem delighted to meet me. He explained that though his was an elementary school, the students completed their first year of secondary school in the same building (which, in Quebec, was grade seven—13 and 14 year olds). He needed two teachers to cover the secondary program and had already hired a lovely local woman. He told me that he believed that there should be more men teaching in the elementary schools. His was a “confessional” school—which meant it was Roman Catholic. He asked if I had a problem with that. Nope. (It turned out he was Protestant as well.)

Then he ran through the subjects he expected me to teach. Was I comfortable with English composition and literature? No problem. Could I teach basic science? Sure. How about gym and fine arts? I figured I could wing my way through it. How did I feel about teaching religion? He did not expect me to teach the catechism, but thought I could take a page from the Quebec Protestant program: general ethics. “Just talk about abortion and subjects like that,” he told me. And then he asked, quelle université avez-vous assisté?  I got the gist of what he had asked and replied, in my best French accent (which I have been told is similar to Hungarian), université de Sir George Williams. Amazingly he said, “I like your accent” and shook my hand. He then gave me a copy of each of the textbooks I was to use and asked me to start the day after the Labour Day holiday.

I leafed through the books while I had a much-needed cold beer at the local hotel waiting for the bus to take me back to Montreal. A few days before the long weekend, I returned to Buckingham by bus and rented a room in the local hotel. I started to teach on the Tuesday after Labour Day. I had never stood before a group of 13 and 14 year olds before. Nervously, I talked non-stop until recess time. About what, I’m not sure. The cigarette break in the teachers’ lounge was heavenly.

The other teachers in the school, with the exception of my secondary school partner, were elderly women, stiff-necked and judgemental. They never did take to me, a city-boy with a cynical attitude. I eventually found a suitable apartment and tried to settle into the town. Other than a few weekend visits from girlfriends I kept to myself. Still, it didn’t take long for word to get around that I was always high on drugs. Not true. On the other hand, many of the elementary school teachers consumed several beer each lunch hour. They were Irish so I guess that was okay. They knew I was Protestant. In fact one of them went so far as to tell me that I should consider myself lucky not to be teaching in “that Protestant school” on the other side of town because “they didn’t have God over there.”  I spent a couple of nights with a young local woman home for the Christmas vacation. It was a small town. The attitude hardened towards me. In the spring I met a young Irish woman who was related to one of the other teachers. We dated (chastely) for a while until her father phoned to tell me to “stay the hell away from” his daughter. I met her several years later and we remained friends for a while before drifting apart; she had never married.

In any case, I struggled with teaching. I had had no training and no preparation for what I faced in the classroom every day. It didn’t take long for the students to figure out that I was a softy whose bark had no bite. Classes were unruly as I tried to keep order. I used my imagination to come up with what I hoped they would find interesting. When it came to grading the principal sometimes over-ruled me, raising grades for the children of local people with some influence. For one of their art projects I had the students create collages out of pictures they had cut from magazines. When their work was displayed in the gymnasium, the principal called me and my class to the gym. He said something about “we all know that boys and men have a third appendage.” I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. It turned out that one of the students had added a third leg to a male figure. I hadn’t paid any attention to it, but apparently someone had complained that it was obscene. I was chastised for it along with the students.

Taking the principal at his word—that he expected me to discuss abortion and similar topics with the students—I brought the subject up in my “ethics” course. The children seemed to think the subject was hilarious and made so many ignorant remarks that I decided that before I could discuss a topic like abortion, they needed some background so that they would have a better understanding of what they were talking about. So, I taught them about puberty and the changes they were going through, bringing up topics like sexually transmitted disease and contraception. I took a matter of fact approach that I thought was suitable. Apparently not everyone agreed with me. The principal called me to his office and shouted at me, “Do you have an emotional problem?”  After he calmed down he told me that I had one class to sum up the subject and then drop it.  

I admit that I was not the best fit for the school and the age group I was dealing with. I had spent so many years in academia that I really had no understanding of the points of view of “civilians.” I was a foreigner in the town. My wardrobe clashed with the environment. The leather pants that I was so proud of were referred to as “plastic” by the students. I couldn’t fit my knee-high boots under my jeans so I wore them on the outside. I wore a heavy racoon coat in the winter. It kept me warm, but made the locals laugh about the “bear.” I had no friends in the town. People gossiped about the “strange” women that visited me some weekends. The loneliness seeped into me.

But, none of that was “criminal.” Taken in perspective, I was a single young man inexperienced in social settings outside of the life of a university student. If I had stayed, I probably would have matured and gradually melded into the community. But, I had one unforgivable failing: I could not speak a word of French. It was sheer luck that I had managed to understand what the principal had asked me during our interview and so was able to give an answer that made sense. Every single student in my class had a far superior grasp of French than I did. At that point I had had only two years of French in high school in Ontario—and failed the second year. I had no experience with the French-speaking population of Quebec. The only thing I could do—and that’s how I justified myself—was read the textbook faster than the students could. I taught French entirely in English, focused solely on grammar.

As the school year drew to a close the principal told me he was concerned about my French classes. He sat in on one, but, I was so nervous with him present that I could barely speak. He told me to tape a couple of classes. I did—and carefully reviewed the tapes following the example set by Richard Nixon—and recorded noise several times over any mistakes I noticed. I gave him the tapes and next day he told me that he would not renew my contract for the next year “for the good of the children.” I enrolled in the education program at McGill, graduating with a teaching certificate a year later and went off to teach (non-French) subjects in high school for the next several years.

But, many years later I noticed a small story in the Ottawa Citizen about a teacher in Buckingham who had been arrested for molesting students. He taught grade seven at the same school I had taught at. Given the dates mentioned in the story I realized that he was the guy who had replaced me the next year. I felt somewhat vindicated when I read that story because, no matter what I had failed at during my year there, I had never crossed the line—in fact, it had never occurred to me. To me, they were children, even the well-developed thirteen year old girls. I had enough problems with women my own age and just never saw the adolescents as possible “mates.” In fact, the very idea leaves me feeling somewhat ill.

I hope that guy did go to jail—and everyone like him. But, I can’t help but feel that my year posing as a French teacher should be against the law as well. I (and the principal who hired me) should have spent some time in jail. On other hand, I worked with — and my children were exposed to — teachers who were even more unqualified than I had been. When I think of all the damage that teachers pretending to be psychologists did to one of my sons, I feel a visceral anger. And, being a lousy French teacher doesn’t seem so bad after all.

Cats and Us

I just finished reading “The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival,” written by John Vaillant (A Canadian, by the way). Set in the Bikin River valley in Khabarovski Krai, a province in far eastern Russia (near the Sea of Japan). It is, as the title says, an account of events involving a man-eating tiger in this area during the 1990’s. But, it is far more than just a narrative of events. In the book Vaillant explores the complex relationships between man and tiger (and big cats in general).

If we go back approximately two million years, we find our ancestors (homo habilis) living in the African savannah. Other than snakes, our greatest enemies were cats—very large cats—the progenitors of today’s lions, tigers, and leopards (the three main groups of large cats). We avoided becoming victims of the cats by restricting our hunting to daylight hours (cats generally prefer hunting at night), and staying close to a fire at night. At the same time, homo habilis and large cats had a symbiotic relationship. Man—and let’s use this in a very general sense—is not very well equipped for hunting, unlike the cats who are have large fangs and claws, powerful legs, and an intuitive ability to stalk prey. While homo habilis had large jaws and some nasty canine teeth (much like today’s baboons), he was pretty much otherwise defenseless, except for two advantages: the ability to sweat through our skin and the ability to make tools.

Sweat? Yes. Other land mammals rid their bodies of excess heat by panting—rapidly breathing over a wet out-stretched tongue to promote quick evaporation. A result of this is that most mammals cannot run very far in a single burst—they have to stop periodically to pant. People have no such problem. By perspiring through their skin, they can continue to run even as their bodies cast off any excess heat generated. Today in the Kalahari Desert this ability is put to use: hunters simple run their prey into the ground. Eventually the pursued animal will suffer heat stroke because of the constant pressure of pursuers who never give it a chance to stop to cool off by panting.

The other advantage is tools. Going back two million years the only tools we find are simple stones deliberately chipped to create a sharp edge on one side. Not much use for hunting—but very useful for cutting meat and cracking open bones.  That was our only tool for about a million years before the invention of the stone hand axe—and that gave the advantage that it could be easily carried and used for more delicate tasks than cutting meat from sinew. The stone hand axe was it for about another million years. So, for most of our history we used simple stone tools that had limited uses.

Out-running animals to the point of heat exhaustion is pretty useful, but not always practical, especially if you have a large group to feed—or you had moved to an area where it was generally cooler. Our ancestors had to find another way to supplement their high-protein diet and that they did by scavenging. The African desert lions and cave lions frequently left partially-devoured prey. Today’s hyenas utilize that to move in on an abandoned carcass, probably very much like our ancestors did. A quick dash to the carcass and a few swift chops with a hand axe and a capable hunter could recover a fair-sized chunk of meat. The only way we could pull that off is by not angering the cats. There is evidence that humans left part of their kill for the cats, and the cats left part of their kill for the humans. Also, both humans and cats are territorial creatures. As our territories undoubtedly overlapped, some sort of modus vivendi had to be worked out between the two species.

The situation today is that in remote areas like eastern Russia people and big cats (in this case tigers) generally co-exist. As long as people leave the tigers alone and respect their “rights,” tigers will leave people alone and give them their due respect. The problems arise when tigers are hunted (for pelts and Chinese medicines) or crowded out of their territories by logging and similar activities. Vaillant describes the almost mystical relationship between the cats and humans in striking detail and example.

Which brings me to the purring ball of fur on my lap. Today’s domestic cats are descended from small African wild cats. The oldest known association between these cats and humans is a 10,000 year old grave containing skeletons of each. The crude symbiotic relationship between humans and large cats likely became more clearly defined in our relations with the small cats. They would keep the rodent and snake population around human encampments in check and we would provide them with a safe place (near a fire) for the night. I’ve seen it suggested that we never really domesticated cats, as we did dogs, but, rather, our two species simply got used to each other being around. We are all aware, I am sure, of the high regard that ancient Egyptians had for cats.

So reading Vaillant’s book made me look at our little friends in a different light. We are still dependent on each other—our cats and us. They need our attention just as we benefit from their loving attention to us. But, underneath it all, lies the heart of a hunter. Two hunters—actually—the clumsy human one and the highly skilled feline one.

A question for those who are always right...

There is something I have never understood: why is it that many people get angry when they talk about the poor? All sorts of negative words come out of their mouths, such as lazy, freeloading, tax burden, excuses. They usually relate an anecdote or two about someone they knew—or heard of—who was cheating the system. I get the impression that, somehow, they see poverty as an affront of some sort; something that offends them at a visceral level.

Well, as Jesus of Nazareth is quoted as saying, “The poor are always with you.”

So, I am asking: why get angry about the victims of a state that appears to be endemic to civilization? Why not, instead, get angry about the processes that put the poor in the position they are in in the first place and the forces that keep them poverty-stricken?  That, it seems to me, is the only way that any significant changes can be made to reduce the number of those who can’t cope with the demands that civilization imposes on them.

Take this story: I got it from the newspaper today. RB is a 50-year-old woman who suffers from diabetes and failing kidneys, has had six heart attacks, is blind in one eye, has Hepatitis-C, has a badly damaged arm, and needs a walker and a wheelchair to get around. She has a grade three education. She lives on $1,000/month in disability insurance. Three times a week she goes to the hospital for dialysis treatment; each treatment requires her to be immobile for four hours at a time. Add the time it takes to get to and from the hospital and we are talking of about 6 or 7 hours—three times a week.

Did I mention that she sometimes supplements her income by panhandling?

I know, I know. I can hear it now: she should get a job. But, how many jobs are available for a 50 year old partially blind woman with a host of medical problems, no education to speak of, and is unavailable for work three days a week?

Often, when I tell folks about people like this woman, they start spouting a lot of “should’aves.” She “should’ave” done this, or that. Yet, everyone’s life is filled with “should’aves” and “could’aves.” We sure are smart when it comes to looking in the rear-view mirror. And, isn’t hep-C associated with drug use? So, how did she get it? As if to suggest that there are moral reasons for disease (which, by the way, you can pick up during your Caribbean vacation at a luxury hotel).

I really don’t get it. Why should I be angry at this woman if she approaches me on the street asking for “spare change”? It doesn’t matter how she got into the situation she is in: she’s there now. We don’t yet have time travel, she we can’t send her back to grade three and tell her to stay in school. We cannot undo what’s done. All we can do is deal with the present situation and make efforts to reduce the likelihood of others in the future winding up in similar situations.

Of course, that’s called “molly-coddling” and “bleeding-heart” syndrome intermixed with accusations of proposing “tax and spend” as well as probably being a “socialist.” It often escalates to accusations that I am against business and want to tie them up in red-tape, or, perhaps I am a “tree-hugger” who believes in lies like “climate change” and other so-called “scientific stuff” like evolution. After all, what makes me so smart?

I guess I really am stupid, because I still can’t see how punishing the poor, cutting what social services they do have, banning them from street-corners, and condemning them from some self-righteous platform is helping anyone. Maybe someday a political conservative can explain it to me in terms that I can understand, but, I sincerely doubt it; any more than they could convince me that the earth is flat.

Poverty and the Rest of Us....

Every so often I run into someone who is offended by the fact that there are poor and homeless people in our midst and imply that they are simply lazy and content to sponge off of the poor hard-pressed taxpayer. I wish such people would spend a week living in one of the shelters for the homeless and then we would see what happens to their self-righteousness.

I have no doubt that there are people in our midst who are content to live on welfare and have no ambition to do anything else. In fact, I’ve met them. But the overwhelming number of poor and homeless people I have met and spoken with do not fit into that category. Many are embarrassed by their situation; many feel helpless; some are bitter.

So, why is it that some people, who have been blessed by circumstances that have led them to leading fairly comfortable lives, judge those they know virtually nothing about? How many suburbanites have actually held a conversation with an inner-city beggar? If they are among the majority, they will pretend that they simply didn’t see the ragged clothes and sunken cheeks or the pronounced limp. They pretend that the people who do beg on our streets are simply lazy and that they could change their lifestyle if they worked at it. After all, anecdotal evidence tells us that someone once did offer a homeless man a job and the man turned him down. Goes to show, eh?

If people would actually converse with the people who have their hands out they might be surprised at what they discover: that the homeless are just like us.  Hard to believe, eh? Imagine you had lost your job and could not keep up with your mortgage payments, your spouse left you, and perhaps you’ve suffered an injury or a disease. Before you’d know what hit you, you’d be standing on a downtown street-corner with your hand out. What else are you going to do? Crawl into a corner and die? I have met highly educated and professionally-trained people living in our shelters. There are doctors, teachers, engineers, military personnel, accountants—whatever trade you can dream off—who, because of a few bad breaks, are forced to seek shelter wherever someone will take them in.

After all, bad things do happen to good people.

I know that the Christian religion does not accept that: God is supposed to bless the good folks and punish the bad guys. That, of course, leads to the inevitable conclusion that if you are well-off it’s because you are deserving and the homeless are there because of their own failures. They are somehow less worthy than our neighbour in the condo.

There is another very sad and disturbing fact: many of our homeless are mentally ill. At one time they would have been institutionalized and treated, but, governments have discovered that that costs an awful lot of money and who really cares if the government shuts down the local loony-bin?  We didn’t want it there anyhow.

When I was young, I met a lot of ex-military folks who were living on the streets. Mainly veterans of the Second World War and the Korean War. We send young people into dangerous situations and, when they are injured, physically or mentally, they turn into burdens that the taxpayer can’t afford—despite the lip service that we pay to veterans on Remembrance Day.  The rest of the time we wish that the guy missing an arm who can no longer communicate clearly would simply go away; get off our streets; stop messing up the landscape.

Of course there are people who abuse the system. Just as there are salesclerks who slip a twenty dollar bill into their pockets; or managers who take credit for the work their underlings have done; or policeman who take bribes; or doctors who make mistakes; or priests who fondle little boys; or students who cheat on a test. None of us is perfect. But do we judge an entire class of people because of the shortcomings of a tiny minority of them? If I concluded that all salesclerks are thieves; all managers are bullies; all policemen take bribes; all doctors make mistakes; all priests fondle little boys; and all students cheat you would be, quite rightly, outraged.

The poor, my friend, are no better and no worse than anyone else. And, we are in no position to judge anyone until we have walked in their shoes—or, at the very least—talked with and listened to them.

Quantum Memory

In my most recent little essay I talked about how physics and cosmology are on the verge of explaining “everything.” A lesson we learn from studying quantum physics is that we have to adjust our way of looking at history if we are to make sense of it all. Rather than starting from some sort of primal event and following the chain of cause and effect until we get to the present, we must start at the present and work our way back. This has an enormous consequence. Our traditional way of viewing history begs for a prime mover, god, or a guiding intelligence to explain how events that happened 13.7 billion years ago led to us being here and now. Looking at things from the point of view of the present and adopting a quantum attitude the requirement of a prime mover, god, or guiding intelligence disappears. Our presence in the universe here and now is nothing more than one of an infinite number of possibilities. The fact that we are here “proves” that events in our universe have led to our existence.

So, besides chucking out the idea of a god in order to make sense of our existence in the universe, this has consequences for all histories, including our personal histories. It is fairly well established that traumas in childhood can have a negative effect on thinking and behaviour later in life. But I pose this question: what if those traumatic events never happened? Or happened in a different way than what we remember? The problems with human memory are enormous as our brains are constantly rearranging our experiences so that they “make sense.” If I am an unhappy neurotic adult then something must have happened in my past in order to make me this way. Right? Isn’t that how we think? The brain needs to find a “reason” for our present state.

So, there we are in the psychiatrist’s office and he (or she) says, Tell me why you think that you are unhappy? Your brain immediately starts looking for reasonable-sounding explanations.  The psychiatrist, because his brain works the same way, is also programmed to look for events that can be linked together. Well, you answer—your brain finally finding something to latch on to—I never played games when I was a kid. And why is that? Come on, brain, find something. Ah, well, I wasn’t very popular with the other kids. I didn’t get along with them. And so the session goes until you are recalling something nasty that your parents did that made you withdrawn as a child, which led to your alienation from other children and your life-long unhappiness.

Again: what if that nasty event never happened?

Our brains, to repeat a point, are constantly rearranging our experiences and memories so that they form a pattern that we can be comfortable with. Courts of law are learning that the most unreliable evidence being presented in trials is often from eye-witnesses. Suppose you saw someone walking away from a bank and that person seemed to be in a hurry and distressed. You later hear that there was a robbery at that bank around the time that you saw this individual.  Your brain starts to piece together a narrative linking what you remember seeing with what you later learned happened around the same time. Before you know it, you have become a witness to a crime and everything you experienced around that event fits together to link the robbery and the person you remember seeing. But, memory is unreliable and our brains will fill in details in order to make a more complete picture. If the police say they are looking for a male in his twenties wearing a red jacket, by golly, that is exactly what you remember seeing. It must be so, because you witnessed the event and your brain tells you that you “remember” such details.

Same thing with traumatic childhood events. Children often cannot comprehend events, motivations, and consequences. Their brains record the events and start to rearrange things so that they fit together from the child’s perspective. As the child gets older and learns more about how people function that knowledge gets “plastered” over the memory and becomes a part of it. Friends and family have told me about events that I was involved with that I have absolutely no memory of—even events that happened in middle-age. Similarly, I have vivid memories of events that they cannot recall when I relate them. Whose memory is more reliable? Theirs or mine? The answer: both and neither. It really doesn’t matter whether or not a past event really occurred, because what matters is what your brain tells you that you remember.

Try looking at things this way: I am here and now and this is my state. What happened or did not happen in the past is irrelevant. I should focus on how to improve my present state of being. The memories will change and evolve over time, so why look for rational explanations there? Your brain will lead you to believe your memories are accurate, but, they are not. Memories are phantoms pieced together from many different sources and influences and they—even the fact of whether or not you recall them—are a consequence of your present state, constructed by an organ that is obsessed with creating order and “logic” out of the sensory input it receives.

Just something to consider….