Todd Reynolds and the helplessness of stupidity.

Yesterday, Todd Reynolds decided that it would be an acceptable idea to tweet his rather narrow thoughts on gay marriage rights. His comments obviously inspired a shit-storm of backlash on twitter and off. Let's set aside for the moment that someone else's marital status can't possibly affect his life. Let's set aside accusations of latent homosexuality, and red-neck sports fan stereotypes. This is a man who very publicly made bigoted comments, refuses to see their bigotry and staunchly stands by them in the face of mass outcry. He believes that he is standing up for his opinion. That he is not afraid to say what he thinks. That he is championing God's vision of what is right. That God is on his side.

There was a guy who attended my high school that we had nick-named The Hawk. The quintessential nerd; this guy was tall, gangley, pimply, with slicked-over hair and thick glasses. One day he wore a t-shirt to my public high school that said, "Let Jesus into your heart" on the front. On the back were a bunch of flames, and it said, "Or you will burn in Hell". I sat behind him in English, so I had forty-five minutes to stare at the back of his shirt and wonder about it. I was fairly timid at 17, no where near as confident in my opinions as I am now, and this guy scared me.  It took til the end of class for me to ask him, "Mark, do you really believe that?"
He gave me a judgemental, withering stare. "Yes, I do."
Forgive the juvenility of my next question. "But what about people in, say, some small town in northern China who could live their whole lives never having heard of him?"
I will never forget his answer, or the utter conviction with which he said it. "If God loves them, he will find a way to reach them."
"And if he doesn't?"
"They will go to Hell."
I was too shocked by this to ask any more questions. I've thought about the Hawk a lot over the years. I'll never forget him. He is the face of fanaticism for me. The face of The Crazy.

I am not a religious person. I'm what you'd call an agnostic. I behave the way I do based on other factors, none of which have anything to do with belief in an afterlife. God has no bearing on what I believe is right and wrong. My gauge is how things affect humans. Therefore, I spend an awful lot of time thinking about humans and their actions. I almost never understand anything anyone does, but not for lack of trying. I'm pretty sure at this point that most people are trying to do the best they can in most situations, and that they would consider themselves 'good' people. Few people are openly malevolent. They find ways of justifying their actions, and they use all sorts of strange things in order to do so. If they fail to do so properly, they will often react with anger and defensiveness. Rarely does a person decide to research further into the question. But maybe it's not their fault.

Education is profoundly important to brain development. The first two stages take us from infant and past toddler to an actual developing person.  We enter concrete operational thought between the ages of 6 and12.  This is when a child begins to form a sense of the world around him or her, based on observation and experience. It is a substantial move up from the infant mammalian brain to a fully human brain, but it is only a foundation on which to continue development. A child or adult who thinks only in concrete operational thought will focus on only one aspect of a situation to the exclusion of other relevant factors. That is to say - no bridges or connections are made between one situation and another. Analogies are lost on them.

Around the late teens, humans are in a position to move into formal operational thought. This is the level of brain development that allows them to think critically - to assess what is before them, process it and form conclusions. In order for a human brain to fully reach potential, that human must be actively engaged in the critical thinking process throughout his or her twenties. This is the real benefit of university, regardless of subject. I studied visual art. It was rubbish, but I learned to think.

Now, here is the part that makes me feel so utterly helpless when it comes to people like Todd Reynolds and The Hawk: only 17% of the population reach formal operational thought. 5% reach the final stages, 2% reach post-formal, and less than 0.01% complete the process.

Less than 0.01% of North American humans are able to think properly.

I want to believe that if someone quite clever sat down with Todd Reynolds and explained to him that he is in fact a bigot, and explained, in a patient and logical way why he is, and how he got that way, and how gay marriage can in no way actually affect him, and how he need not feel the potent wrongness that he does about people who would otherwise have no problem with him at all, that he would be able to see reason. But I can't believe it. Because Todd Reynolds has access to all of that information already, and chooses to ignore it. The truth is, Todd Reynolds is stupid. And as hockey wisdom tells us: you can't teach fast and you can't fix stupid. 

Tonight's Election

Well, it's not perfect. But it's hard to decide a realistic 'perfect' outcome. Our system seems flawed. I heard/read it a lot tonight: It's the left's fault for splitting the vote. Balderdash. There is only one right-wing party and several left. Not all those left parties want the same things. They are different parties for reasons. The Cons pooled together to form the cons we know today, but I genuinely don't believe that we have to create a two party system in order to feel fairly represented. So incredibly far from it. We can clearly see how a two party system does not serve the United States. Why on earth should we emulate their broken examples? There are many that Harper wants to take on, privatizing health care and lying on the news to name only two. I do not mean to offend my American friends. American people are lovely. But facts are facts - truth is not protected or even required on American airwaves, and health care in America is beyond any sane person's very worse horrific night terror.

Forgive me for not wanting that sort of thing in Canada.

We don't ostensibly vote for our Prime Minister, but we still do. We call it strategic voting. We don't vote for people, we vote against them. Over the last seven years, there have been four elections and the popularization of social networking. Our obsession with the internet has led to the development of tools to keep tabs on the other guy. There are websites into which one can type one's postal code to discover if it is a hotly contested riding or not. Whether it is okay to vote with one's heart, or if one should apply one's vote strategically to keep the unwanted candidate out of the PM position. These tools were pushed via Twitter and Facebook, and against Stephen Harper. However, it did occur to me as I perused them that they could just as easily be used to help Harper. There seems to be an assumption that Conservatives are not connected online, and that is patently untrue. Tonight those fears were validated when I read that right-of-centre Libs voted for Harper to keep Layton out. As if anyone really believed he'd get in. I have been an NDP supporter for years, but I freely admit that I have strategically applied my vote against the Cons, and never seriously envisioned a major NDP presence any time soon. I voted for NDP in the last election, because my overwhelmingly Conservative riding was sure to swallow it. I voted NDP this time, because walking around my neighbourhood, I was delighted to observe, based on lawn signs, that Andrew Cash showed a very realistic chance of winning. Not to mention it was low-risk, since the incumbent was Liberal and this riding has voted solidly Liberal for over twenty years.

So, with some consideration, a Conservative majority with a Liberal opposition would be worse than our current situation. It's true that Harper does not respect Canadians, or the law, or Parliament, but Ignatieff aided and abetted him on many occasions. I want to believe that the NDP, and tenacious Elizabeth May will not. They do not like Harper, they stand nothing to gain by abetting him, and they don't believe in his policies. I'm really glad May is in there. I'm sorry to see Duceppe go. I am staunchly anti-separatist. I love Canada in all its diversity - I don't want to lose the French, I want to please them enough for them to be okay hanging out with us. Sounds like an abusive relationship, doesn't it? Be that as it may, Duceppe is smart, a good politician, and the cleverest of all the candidates. I can't explain his fall from popularity, because I can't pretend to understand Quebec. Maybe the French think the NDP will please them enough to keep hanging out with us. Dare to dream.

I still think we all have an individual responsibility to keep the Conservatives in check. They may have a majority of seats, but 60% of Canada did not vote for them. We need to seriously examine electoral reform (something both Layton and May support), we need to keep close watch on Parliament to make sure they are transparent in their dealings, we need to hold both Parliament and the media accountable to us, and we need, more than anything, to take personal responsibility for protecting what makes Canada Canada.

Don't give up.