lonpalmer

Dustin Sayers wrote on the Belleville Neighbours Facebook page:

Figured out what I’m going to do once I get out of the woods. So sooner the better. I’m giving away everything I was gifted to live outside as soon as I’m out of the woods. Same week I get a place I’m going to go hand out the stuff I was gifted to the homeless community. The bed, the BBQ, the tents, whatever I can give to help someone live better and hopefully bring joy to their life for a little while! Within the next couple weeks I’ll be going around handing out stuff to the homeless and giving back to the community! And yes I’m going to document it all not for praise or to make myself look good just to see peoples reactions and hope to bring joy and smiles to some peoples lives that are down on their luck ! Wish you all the best ,take care !!!

I make no judgement about Dustin or his motives. I dig have a look at his Facebook page later on, but it did not tell me a lot. So let’s say he’s a good guy.

I commented: Great! More homeless in tents! Just what we do [should have been “so] desperately need!

Liz Schillings McLennan replied: Lon Palmer A most unnecessary comment, and frankly, a cruel one.

I get that. On the surface, it does sound a little negative – but one must go deeper, and I will . . .

I also looked at her profile. Again, who can make judgements based on a Facebook profile, but my intuition was she is an intelligent, principled person . . . I degree.

I answered: Liz Schillings McLennan disagree – I have seen so many complaints about the homeless on this page that when I see homelessness being enabled, I feel compelled to say something. The homeless need help – badly – but enabling them does not help them – that is, to my thinking, the crux is the problem; nothing will change until people and. Especially, politicians recognise that distinction. They haven’t managed it in Toronto (which I fled two months ago) where the problem is getting worse and worse despite – actually because of – all the enabling that is going on. Belleville, apparently, seems bent on going down the same sad road – which, ultimately, does not help, but harms, the homeless. The homeless deserve genuine help.

Donna Gaudet also answered:

Lon Palmer And how exactly are you helping? Maybe we can follow your lead.

I liked that. Her point of view is clear, even though it is expressed with some subtlety. I respect that. (I also looked at her profile, but saw nothing helpful, not even a picture).

I thought about this. Seemingly reasonable people were disagreeing with me, and with reasonable points. I felt that I had to address them, and the whole issue is a critical one.

So I replied: Donna Gaudet to answer that question well – and it is a very good question – will take a little time and thought, and so. Rather than give a facile answer, I will give it the time and thought it deserves and post it later today.

And this, on my blog, is “later today”. I will link it in my reply.

I have seen homelessness increase exponentially over the decades in Toronto, which I left two months ago, and I understand from the residents in Belleville, my new adopted home, that it is increasing here. Obviously, what they are doing in both Toronto and Belleville (and elsewhere) is not helping since the problem is only growing worse.

That is what is behind my initial Facebook comment.

To be involuntarily homeless is a terrible thing – I’m not talking about people who voluntarily live in vans, skoolies or RVs and have resources. I am talking about people who, for one reason or another can’t help it and lack adequate resources to care for themselves. Sometimes, their difficulties are essentially financial. Others have mental health issues, including being off their meds and addiction. It is a terrible situation to be in. I think that is self-evident. Their health and overall well-being usually decline. Usually, I believe that there are many contributing factors, many not of the homeless person’s own making. It is, to use understatement. “hard”. They deserve help.

I think that Liz, Donna and I agree on that.

Where we seem disagree is on how to help them.

To simplify – but I hope not oversimplify – the difference between our positions is Left vs Right, and that difference of approach plays out in many other areas, as well, but I will try to stay focused on homelessnes.

It is said that both the Right and the Left, seeing a drowning man, want to help. Neither is more or less compassionate, but they take different approaches. If the man is 100 feet offshore, the conservative with through him 50 feet of rope and yell, “Swim for it; it’s good for you.” The liberal, on the other hand, with throw him 200 feet of rope but forget to hold on to the end.

That’s more hyperbole than genuine analysis, but it contains a kernel of truth. The right tends to emphasize self-reliance (which the disadvantaged are not always capable of) while the left emphasize assistance (which is not always of a sort that the disadvantaged person actually needs).

I refuse to personalize this disagreement. I choose to believe that most people, on both the Right and the Left, genuinely care and want to help but disagree on the means because I choose to believe that most people, irrespective of their politics, are fundamentally and inherently good (aside for the small minority of selfish authoritarians on the right and self-loathing virtue signallers on the left).

And responding to Donna, who asked me what I would do, here is my answer.

Personally – as in “in my own personal actions” – I would not give the homeless money. I would and do talk to them. I would and do give them food on occasion. I have given away clothing and other commodities. I generally do not give them money unless I am certain that it will go to food or some legitimate purpose because I know it sometimes goes to drugs.

That, of course, is not the full solution; that must come from our institutions, which are not providing it.

Involuntary homelessness, as I said above, is a terrible thing. We should do everything we can to end it. And offering greater resources to the homeless, for them to use in their homeless condition, does not end homelessness – it ENABLES it. How can that possibly be a good idea.

But that seems to be the approach, both in Toronto (with its burgeoning homeless bombers) and in Belleville, which seems to be going down the same path. Everywhere, I hear people in Belleville saying that they are unhappy with the growing problem of homelessness and addiction. I have had people tell me, “Don’t go downtown after dark”. How can that be a good situation? It’s not.

As a side note, I’m not worried about going downtown because I know how to take care of myself – I’m not talking physical self- defence; I’m talking about being reasonably street smart. I won’t go into the details except to say that most people who get into problems usually have a hand in it.

We should do everything we can to eliminate homelessness.

Unfortunately, most homeless people will tell you that they would rather be on th street than in a shelter -b at least in Toronto (I don’t know the situation that well here yet). And from what I have heard, I don’t blame them. The shelters in Toronto sound pretty bad. They get beaten and robbed and otherwise mistreated.

The answer is to clean up the shelters: make safe, properly supervise them, do whatever else is necessary to make them viable. Do a proper study and find out what will work, implement the recommendations, and use the facilities, arresting vagrants if necessary.

If you think that is somehow unfair to the homeless, think of how unfair it is to have so much of the population afraid to go downtown or (as in Toronto) take their children to the parks (some of which are taken over by the homeless, often in tent cities, and littered with needles, garbage and feces – all of which are unprotected crimes).

Yes, the homeless deserve compassion, but so do the citizens, including their children.

But getting them into proper shelters is only the beginning.

(Before I go further, I think that the police should have some discretion, so that if they know someone is harmless to themselves and others and their homelessness is temporary, they can turn a blind eye. And I think that discretion in all aspects of this system is important because these are people, and strict rules will not adequately cover all circumstances.)

At the shelters, the homeless should not only be safe and comfortable but given genuine and meaningful help. Addicts should be detoxed – voluntarily or otherwise because their addiction harms them and, indirectly, others. Counselling should be available. Charities should be encouraged to provide opportunities. Public works should use them (voluntarily) if possible – probably over the adamant objections of the unions.

In short, measure should be brought in that have been proven to work. What we are doing here in Belleville, Toronto, and in the Democrat districts in the U.S. only make the problem WORSE. Some elements of the Left continue to advocate that path, virtue signalling like mad, and call those who seek to reform the situation “heartless”, but what is truly heartless is to keep going down the path that makes things worse.

Homelessness is too serious a problem to continue to address it ideologically – we must be pragmatic.

We must pursue strategies that actually make things better.

As I wrote in my last post, I have started up this blog again after several years away from it. I’m glad to see that I’m getting some readers. I’ll try to say something worthwhile. I’m aiming to post once a week, probably on Sundays. And I will try to find something universal – not just a diary.

The obvious thing to write about at this point is the differences between Toronto and Belleville, and what that can mean to a person – not just me, but anyone.

It is also obvious that a person is heavily affected by their environment: where they live and the company they keep . . . even the colour of their room. Apparently, Baker-Miller Pink paint has been used in prisons, psychiatric wards, even the change rooms of visiting teams to relax and subdue people. https://www.yourtango.com/self/why-prisons-are-painted-baker-miller-pink-mind-control

But I digress . . . sort of.

How much more important is your general environment. The answer that I am finding is “very”.

I have found the recent upheaval in my life stressful and saddening, but at the same time, I am finding this new city relaxing. It’s a little confusing. But I think I made the right decision coming here.

The people are unquestionably friendlier, more open and helpful, and themselves more low key and relaxed. They are a good influence. And all of that makes it a lot easier for me, being fundamentally an introvert.

I know five or six of the bus drivers by name, and we talk for the whole trip – they help me figure out the city, among other things. When I played a local open stage, it was twice or three times as easy to get to know people. And they listened! Even to the least accomplished singers. In Toronto, they talk through (and sometimes over) most of the performers. It was wonderful! Even people on the street are so helpful! They listen to my questions, give fulsome answers, wait long enough to make sure I understood, and then wish me a “great day” or something similar. Striking up a conversation with someone at the bus stop is no big deal. And EVERYBODY thanks the bus driver, who says something nice to them, when they get off at their stop.

The whole tone is very different, and it rubs off – I feel better, despite the shit storm that my life is right now.

The people who run the hotel are great.

There are some homeless and drug addicts in the downtown who are being enabled by one of the churches and the left-leaning city council, though not as badly as in Toronto. IT’s sad to see, and I fell uncomfortable around them, but it’s only a few blocks, and I don’t have much reason to go there at night.

The weather, of course, is nice, and I’m near the lake in my motel. I cross the road, walk through a very large graveyard, and sit on a bench overlooking the water, reflecting or writing (usually journaling or music). It’s relaxing and puts things in perspective – the cemetery deserves and will receive a blog of its own sometime soon.

For me, the big lesson is how important your surroundings are: the people you know, the place you live (home, city, country). Robert Malone’s theories about mass formation psychosis during covid comes to mind (but if you’re interested, use duckduckgo.com to search it up, not Google, which directs you to articles arguing against it – big tech suppression of ideas).

Be selective what company you keep – it has a huge influence on you. Make your nest as conducive to your well-being as you can. I am discovering that these things matter more than I every realized.

Religions are simplistic so that the masses can follow them.

Eastern and Western religions are simple in their own ways.

Eastern religions tend to revolve around the idea that the ego is an illusion, the only reality is Oneness, and the only way to reach that is through the inward journey. Western religions, the mirror image, revolve around the idea that the individual soul is real, it’s goal is a happy destination (Heaven), and the way to reach that is to obey the will of the Creator (God), so the “answer” is all “out there”.

I think that the reality is both simpler and more complex.

The Oneness, the All-Soul, to be complete, experiences separation, and that each if its separate manifestations – us – is real (otherwise, it cannot experience real separation). Therefore, I am both the individual reality of Lon Palmer and a part of the Oneness – both are real. Why have I never heard of a religion that expresses that doctrine? (Please tell me if you know of one).

It’s been years since I wrote a blog post, but I feel like it today, and, as I’m about to tell you, it’s all about me.

Bear with “me”.

I know how it sounds – selfish – but, as they say, in any meaningful discussion, you must define your terms.

So who/what is “me”?

“Me”, to “my” way of thinking, is the deepest, most authentic part of what I am, below the delusions, complexes and everyday obligations my fellow humans put on me. It is not my superficial thoughts, my neuroses, much less the customs I grew up with. It is, put succinctly, my spirit, and it is not something that “I” have; it IS “I” or, as I wrote earlier, “me”. I will use the pronoun in that sense for the duration.

Doing so, I will write, with confidence, that the only important things to me are the things that I want, the things that are important to me.

And what do I want?

I want the best, for myself, the people I love, and the rest of creation.

How selfish is THAT?

Deep down, in our spirits, I think that’s what we all want.

Personally, I don’t think that surgical masks are of any use in this so-called “pandemic” – they changed the definition a little while back or Covid would not qualify. And the CDC put out a study in 2018 that showed masks do nothing to halt the transition of influenza, so I’m sure they don’t stop Covid, either, both being viruses. But I wear my mask in the stores and in the subway because I know how upset some people would be if I didn’t: elderly passengers with comorbidities, for example – I don’t want to upset them. So I wear the mask, even though I don’t like it. I do that for them because that is what I want.

So, yes, it’s all about me.

I think I’m a good person, and deep down, I think we all are. And if we all live from that deepest most authentic part of ourselves – our spirits – our wills are healthy and we can simply do what we want to do.

“Good people do not need laws to tell them how to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws,” including the people who make and enforce the laws, as we see all around us.

Quietly enter into communion with your soul, listen, act, and you will always do the right thing – because it’s what you want to do.

You may wonder why I put “racism” inside quotation marks. That’s because most of what is called racism actually isn’t. Let me give you an example. A Jewish mother wants her son to marry “a nice Jewish girl.” For one thing, “Jewish” is not a race; it’s a religion. And even Semitic Jews are essentially the same race as their Arab Muslim neighbours. Every once in a while, some politician from Quebec calls criticism of its draconian language laws from English Canadians “racist”, which is even sillier because French is simply a language.

Actual racism is the idea that one race is superior or inferior to another based solely on their respective skin colours. Now THAT’s racist. Also, it’s ugly, and it’s evil, but I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about what activists and others have done to expand the definition.

Down at the Toronto District School Board (for which I used to teach), they define racism as “racial prejudice plus power”. The mischief in their definition is in those seemingly innocuous last too words: plus power. You see, because white people have all the power, they are the only one capable of racism – which is ridiculous, and itself a glaring example of racism. That, too, is ugly and evil. Let me explain:

Whole generations are being raised with the implicit, and sometimes explicit notion that only white people are (or even can be) racist. This is drummed into them in both the curriculum and themed assemblies – I’ve seen them. In one assembly, an outside group presented a series of seventeen skits – yes, I kept track – were presented that illustrated racism, sexism, homophobia, and other forms of intolerance. I sought to keep track of the perpetrators, but really there was no need. In the end, I saw that the composite evil doer was the straight, white, able-bodied, English-speaking male – without a single exception. How’s THAT for stereotyping.

And so, a new stereotype of supposed evil is being created and pushed by the schools.

In only a few decades, whites will be in the minority in Toronto. How will that non-white majority look at, and treat, the white minority after being brainwashed into seeing them as the enemy?

Not well – obviously.

And just as obviously, this is not a reality that white people would have chosen for themselves back when Trudeau the Elder changed our pro-European immigration policy to favour non-whites.

So would it, now, be racist to revisit that decision? To go back to favouring English-speaking Europeans?

My opinion?

No!

And let’s dismantle all forms of hate-producing political correctness while we’re at it.

A few years ago. I went to the British Show, and I was amazed at the attendees. I was used to getting jostled on the TTC and other places where there are crowds, but not there. Not one person bumped into me the whole time I was there. Not one. Why? I think it was for two reasons. Firstly, the British tend to be a very polite people (lager louts aside) who put considerable stock in things like personal space. Secondly, I think we were all conscious that we shared something – a common identity – and that produced more polite behaviour.

So why not do that for a whole society? A homogenous, unicultural society. (By the way, the concept of “uniculturalsim” is so foreign to our society these days that even the spellchecker choked on it.)

Why not? Because some people would consider it racist.

People get along better when they have things in common, the more so the better. Diversity is NOT our strength; it creates barriers of non-understanding – a cultural Tower of Babel. And we can see it playing out in our society. If you’re old even (like me) to remember what things were like in the 50s, and you’re intellectually honest enough to admit it, you know that it’s true.

Racism, actual racism, is evil.

Preferring to have something in common with your neighbours is not.

 

Sometimes, it’s hard to resist temptation. Satisfying that addiction, taking a bite of that cake, giving into anger . . . We know it’s not a good idea, but we want it . . . or do we?

On some level, we obviously do, but we humans are complex, multi-layered beings, and not all of our parts exist in harmony – that’s what it means to be conflicted, and it happens all the time.

When faced with  such a conflict, when different parts of the glorious creature that is me, in all its conflicted glory, I try to go deep. I try to sit down, take a deep breath, and think, “What does my heart want? What does my soul want? What does the deepest part of Lon Palmer want?”

Or as the Spice Girls sang, “Tell me what you want, what you really, really want . . .”

Yes, that piece of chocolate cake would give me some profound tongue-entertainment, but what would it do for my my waistline? For my health? For my wish to live a natural life, which helps ground me and feel physically, emotionally and spiritually in balance?

Yes, that’s assigning profound significance to a piece of chocolate cake, enough little things can add up to something big. As my mother once told me, “Watch the pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves.”

So that’s what I try to do. When I want something that I feel won’t be such a good idea, I try to think, “I know that, at level, I want this, but what does the deepest part of me want?” In other words, “That do I want?”

Sometimes, it works . . .

 

And not just Toronto, but Canada, and the whole of Western civilization, but let’s start small . . .

Toronto is becoming more and more crowded. “Affordable housing” is becoming the oxymoron of the 21st century, not only here but in other major urban centres in Canada. I have a house, but I couldn’t buy one now – I would be priced out of the market. And traffic . . .? It takes longer to get everywhere, and it will only get worse.

And why is all this happening?

Immigration.

And yes, it’s THAT simple. It’s all supply and demand. Too many people are coming to Canada, and they all want to come to Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal. From those cities, people move to the suburbs in search of housing, and the problem spreads like metastases. People have to either a) make or inherit a LOT of money, b) move out (i.e. be driven out of their own birthplace), or c) become perpetual renters, forever forgoing the dream of home ownership. Meanwhile, the roads become increasingly clogged.

We’re told that we NEED immigrants to “grow the economy”, but what use is that when you can’t afford to own your own home? Isn’t that a gigantic DECREASE in our standard of living? And why, exactly, do we need the economy to grow at all, especially with these devastating side effects? Edward Abby said, “Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.”

And how is Toronto handling it? Very, very badly.

First of all, we have become a “sanctuary city” for refugees, where even phoney refugees are receiving full social services with no questions asked and no reporting to federal authorities. That’s aiding and abetting criminals, if you think about it. And it’s attracting them in record numbers, growing our population even more.

The city is also badly mishandling the transportation file, dithering about building subways and waging a disastrous “war on the car”. The resulting increasing gridlock is costing billions.

But there are things we can do about it. These problems can still be fixed – IF there is the will to embrace the obvious solutions:

1 – Decrease immigration. Ask the Feds to slash the number of people allowed to enter the country. And the Feds will do it, seeing as Toronto votes almost solidly Liberal.  Supply and demand will take care of the rest. Housing prices will fall, streets will unclog, and the city will become liveable again.

2 – Incentivize remaining immigrants to spread out through grants and services.

3 – Make the TTC work. Lengthen subway platforms to accommodate longer trains. Put more busses on the road, including British-style double deckers – enough so that people could sit down rather than stand like cattle going to slaughter. Build more subways, including the Downtown Relief Line. Slash TTC fares. Taken together, these measures would make public transit irresistible for many people and get a lot of cars off the road. Yes, it would cost a fortune, but not as much as the lost money to the economy due to increasing gridlock.

Are these solutions rather obvious?

But politicians are stupid, including Mayor John Tory.

At least Rob Ford wanted to build subways . . .

Does anyone recognize this?

It’s a telephone table, a relic of a bygone age. I inherited it from my parents. A telephone (of course) sat on top, and that little shelf right underneath that is where those big, fat yellow and white pages sat – the telephone books.

I can’t remember the last time I got a telephone directory, but it was several years ago. Does anyone still get them?  They came to the house once a year, but I haven’t gotten one in ages.

My ten-year-old god-daughter looks at me strangely when I tell her about the telephones back when I was her age: big black clunky things with rotary dials – but they never broke. Once, I forgot to hang up the phone after talking with a friend – long story – and when I got to his house, I had to turn around and walk home to hang it up because they could not make or take any calls until I did: a call was not over until the person who initiated it hung up.

By the way, this is me at “about her age”:

We only had black and white TVs and received only six channels clearly, which bewilders her completely. And again . . . that look. I’m sure that my father, from whom that telephone table came, knew it well.

He was born in 1908 – over a century ago – and the world was a much different place.

By the way, this was him when he was probably about a year old:

They had no television in those days; they used an icebox! There was no air conditioning: when it got insufferably hot one summer, tens of thousands of people camped out on the shores of Lake Ontario because that was the only place where it got cool enough to sleep. When his father got a car, he taught the old man how to drive because Bampa couldn’t figure it out. My father was underage, according to todays standards, but you didn’t even need a drivers’ licence in those days because there simply weren’t enough cars on the road to be bothered with them.

His father, my grandfather, was born in 1880! Nearly a century and a half in the glorious past. That’s in the closing days of the Wild West, about a generation after the Civil War. No radio, and certainly no cars.

This is one of my few pictures of Bampa:

And this is me, probably about the same age as he was in the above picture, in a “selfie” (emblematic of our age), taken with an iPhone 6, which he would probably not have been able to conceive of and my god-daughter could not conceive of being without:

As far as that goes, I don’t remember reading of anything like it in Jules Verne (who wrote From the Earth to the Moon fifteen years before Bampa’s arrival on the planet, so I can’t even call it “the stuff of science fiction” because it would have gone beyond that.

Admittedly, my parents had me a little on the late side, but even so, we are living in times when the pace of change has literally outstripped the imagination of writers of science fiction.

Look what’s happened in just three generations!

I don’t look down on anyone anymore.

Oh, I used to. It was easy. Being tall made it easy. I kid, although being 6′ 2″ in my youth made it easy to watch parades.

On a superficial level, some are taller, and some are shorter; more or less handsome, endowed in one fashion or another . . .

My own flavour of vanity consisted of feeling smarter and more creative than most.

Mea culpa.

But those criteria and most others by which we may feel superior are superficial. At a deeper level, there are no such distinctions. We are immortal beings with a bit of God or a bit of something that is very like God at our centres. “Made in the image of God” is the expression used in my own religion.

So how is anyone to feel superior? Or inferior, for that matter.

Some Eastern cultures practice greeting others with hands in the prayer pose over the heart chakra (the seat of the soul), saying, “Namaste,” literally meaning, “Bow to you,” or more loosely, the god in me greets the god in you.

Is there any room for superiority or inferiority in that way of looking at things?

I am a minister of communion at my church. I hand out the consecrated wafers to the line of congregants with the priest and two other ministers of communion to the lines of congregants. I see the look in their faces: the longing for God, for peace, for acceptance, for love that they feel or hope will come to them with communion. I see their vulnerability. And it is humbling because it is the same vulnerability that I feel.

They are like me, and I am like them, irrespective of their superficial individual strengths or weakness.

I have met all sorts of people, high and low in their circumstances, from the crown princess of Rumania to a street alcoholic, and honestly, they’re all just people, people with a bit of God at their centres.

And so, feeling above or below anyone feels ridiculous to me.

And it’s not humility on my part. I am not a self-effacing man.

Maybe I just don’t want to feel ridiculous . . .