Oh, Dear...

I picked up this morning's National Post (yes, we have a real, honest to goodness subscription now.  Hey, it was for charity. ;-D) and a below the fold, front page headline caught my eye.

Brought to the brink by climate change.

With this being right under the headline and photo about Haiti (which I won't even try to write about right now), I figured, did someone pull a Danny Glover?  Or was it another article talking about how yet another group of people are about to be wiped out by [fill in the blank] because of climate change?  Then I saw the subtitle

Mental duress

Oh, I thought.  Another article about the psychological disorders being blamed on climate change, then?

Well, almost.

It turned out to be an article about one Mardi Tindal, and her mental anguish about the failure of Copenhagen.

And just who is Marki Tindal, that we should know or care about her mental state?  Why, she's the newly elected moderator for the United Church of Canada, freshly back from COP15. Why she was there, I haven't figured out, but she was.  From the article...

Mardi Tindal, the newly elected moderator of the United Church of Canada, returned from last month's climate change summit in Copenhagen with a deep malaise. Not a true clinical depression, but an anxious despair that reduced her to weeping.

Okay, so I can see being really emotional coming back after a big event like that.  But seriously... at this point, I'd be concerned that she's taking on too much.

 

 She was so disappointed by the meeting's failure to reach a binding deal that she broke down in the car one day as her husband drove toward their home church in Brantford, Ont.

If I were her husband, yeah, I'd be worried.  Time to back off and regroup, Honey.  Something like that...

"I simply wept. My tears were quiet, but I spoke through them, and I was being listened to. My husband said, 'There is great power in what you have just said, and it is a powerful message that makes clear why you are weeping.' "

Seriously?  That was his response?  Aside from turning out to be an enabler, do people really talk like that?  I mean, I can understand writing like that, but talking?

"And I said, 'Doug, I'm weeping for the millions of lives that have been lost as a result of what did and did not happen in Copenhagen," Ms. Tindal said.

Whoa, whoa, whoa... hold on there.  Millions of live that have been lost?  When did this happen?  Copenhagen failed, millions of people dropped dead, and it never made the news? 

Right.  At this point, I'm thinking there is something seriously wrong with this woman's mental state.

Go and read the rest of the article.  Come back when you're done, and we'll chat some more...



Ya back?  Cool.

So the article goes on to quote Psychological Magazine and a UK psychiatrist, talking about how all sorts of things, from psychological disorders to the spread of infectious disease, are going to get worse because of climate change.  Then it tells how Ms. Tyndal travelled to Ottowa to personally deliver her letter of lament to the GG, PM and party leaders.  Other MPs will get theirs in the mail.

So here we have a woman who is clearly emotionally and mentally disturbed (and I don't mean that as any sort of diagnosis; just a description of her behaviour and comments as described in the article) who also thinks her mental state is important enough to share with Canada's political leaders.  All of them.

Then she's quoted...

"... the fate of civilization and of millions of the planet's life forms hanging by the frayed thread of inaction,"

Wow.  Who'd have thought that, after all these billions of years, life on earth was so very fragile?

 

Then she compares herself to abolitionist William Wilberforce, and suffragate Nellie McClung.  Oh, and yes!  There it is!  Martin Luther King, Jr.!  You just knew he had to be brought in, too, didn't you?

Mental duress and hubris, all wrapped up in one package.  Interesting combination.

"What if, instead of racial segregation, King had spoken about high greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere?"

WTF?  Seriously? Is she seriously equating gasses that make up 5% of the earth's atmosphere with racial segregation?  Is she suggesting that GHG levels can in any way match the importance of equal rights and the end of racism?

I know there are people out there who anthropomorphize animals, believing that they think and feel just like humans, and should have the same rights we have applied to them (if not more so), but this is the first time I've seen someone do the same with atmospheric gasses.  

Okay, all joking aside...

Here we have a woman who is clearly passionate about her beliefs about anthropogenic climate change.  Passionate to the point that it's effecting her mental and emotional state.  This is something that's on the rise, and particularly evident among children who have become so frightened by the alarmism they're taught in school, many are unable to sleep due to worries, have nightmares, suffer from depression and anxiety, etc.  In Ms. Tyndal's case, she's also a religious leader who is using her position to spread her beliefs.

What I'm wondering, though, is what's going to happen when reality hits?  How does someone with such a mental and emotional commitment to a cause respond to increasing evidence that the position they hold is false?  That they've been lied to and misled?  As more and more evidence of manipulation and collusion emerges; as increasing data is gathered and revealed, showing that AGW alarmism is the biggest manufactured scare in human history, how will people like Ms. Tyndal respond?  

 

What will their "mental duress" be then?

What do you do when the shoe doesn't fit?

 (this is a cross post from my home schooling blog, as I felt it fit here as much as it does there)

This blog post was brought to my attention this morning, and I really enjoyed it.  Here's an excerpt.

 Now, on the whole, I've found unschoolers to be one of the most tolerant, kind, accepting groups of people there are. In my experience it's pretty rare to see an unschooler behave in a way that is blatantly racist or homophobic, and furthermore, unschoolers in general tend to be accepting of a wide variety of personalities and interests.

However.

I've also seen an awful lot of negative attitudes towards religious people, particularly Christians.

I have seen and experienced this myself a number of times, and I just admit, it has left me very jaded about my fellow unschoolers.  In fact, I've found myself frequently questioning the tolerance of the self-professed tolerant, and along with anti-Christian sentiment, I would also include political, geographical and other ideological intolerance as well.



While the writer talks about how few unschoolers there are compared to more regulated styles of home based education, I would say that has a lot more to do with where one lives, and what support groups are available.  In all our moves, I've found the majority of my fellow home schoolers are more on the unschooling side of things than the stereotypical school-at-home style.  If fact, I don't recall ever meeting any hs'ing family in the school-at-home extreme, but I've met quite a few that could be considered "radical" unschoolers.  (Personally, I don't think either extreme is a good idea.)  Most of the families I've encountered over the years tend to fall more towards the unschooling side of things - they have routines and maybe even purchased curriculum, or make their kids do sit-down bookwork at certain times, but are still very relaxed about things. 

There's a general assumption made about the different styles of home schoolers.  School at home types are viewed as Conservative, Right Wing, and Christian (and, by extension, racist bigots) - the more regulated the schooling style, the more to the right their political views, and the more extreme their religion is assumed to be.  There is also a tendancy to view this category of home schoolers as anti-science, as well - young earth creationists and the like.  There is probably some truth to the stereotype (after all, there's a reason stereotypes come about), but I just haven't encountered it personally.  I've only read about them.

Unschooling types, on the other hand, are assumed to be left leaning, more socialist, and have little or no religion at all (agnostic or athiest), to be Unitarian if they're Christian, or Pagan, Buddhist (or at least their version of Buddhism), Secular Humanists, etc. In my experience, the left leaning tendancy of unschoolers leads to a higher number of AGW believers, and greater levels of environmental extremism.

Over the years, I've seen a very strong divide between the home schooling ideologies, and unfortunately, the most bigoted, least tolerant views I've encountered have been from my fellow unschoolers.  I used to be part of a large, active Canadian home school email list.  I finally left it when a troll was allowed to spew his vile unchecked, while those who tried to counter his bile were clamped down on by the moderator.  This, on top of the anti-Christian sentiment and other bigotry I saw allowed on the list was the final straw, and I left a community I'd been part of for almost a decade.  Sadly, I am seeing similiar intolerance within our local community as well - especially when it comes to topics such as AGW and environmentalism.


We are an unschooling family.  Not out of ideology, but because that's what worked with our older daughter, and we just kept it up with our younger.  Quite simply, our attempts to school-at-home, even slightly, were failures and set the girls, especially Eldest, back considerably.  My definition of unschooling, however, is very broad, and I think a lot of unschoolers would disagree with me.  I do not, for example, have any problem with sit down bookwork, or using a curriculum, text books, etc.  To me, these are just tools and methods to be used or discarded, based on need.  Some families simply do better with a more regimented schedule, and some kids need a more orderly learning style.  As far as I'm concerned, as long as the methods are used because they best suit the child, not because of external beliefs on how education "should" happen, it's still unschooling.  I know teens who have chosen to go back to high school.  As far as I'm concerned, they're still unschooling, because it was their choice to use the school system as an educational resource.  If a family is unschooling because the parents decided that this was the "right" way to educate children, but ignore that their individual child actually thrives better on something more regulated, I cannot think of that as actually unschooling.  It's still a method that's forced onto the child, regardless of that child's needs or desires.  The key, to me, is that the methods used are suited to the individual child, even if the parents don't necessarily think it's a good idea.



We are a Christian family.  I am an ex-Catholic, but not anti-Catholic.  Over the decades, as I've looked at different religions, belief systems, and the different types of Christianity, I find I still have greater respect for Catholicism than any of the others.  I would, in fact, still consider myself catholic, as the word means "universal church," and therefore really encompasses most, if not all, the Christian faiths.  I respect people who follow different faiths, even if I don't agree with them.  What I've found, however, is that there is a very strong anti-Christian sentiment among unschoolers, and that tolerance for Christian faiths (except, possibly, Unitarianism, which I'm not sure is even a Christian faith at all) is very low.  Secular Humanism and environmentalism are frequently the religions of choice (and yes, I consider both to be religions, every bit as dogmatic as the "fundamentalists" they often profess to abhor), but any religion that can be viewed as opposite to Christianity is acceptable.  Heaven forbid this bias or religious double standard is pointed out, though.  On the email list I mentioned before, people were supposed to be welcome to discuss their own beliefs, but in reality, people who expressed their Christian sentiments would be accused of proselytising.  Christian bashing was allowed, but if anyone pointed out that that's what was being done, there would be a great outcry of how it wasn't really bashing, and besides, the bashers were right.  Point out the double standed, and there would be another outcry, denying that there was one at all.  It got very tiring.


I used to consider myself an environmentalist.  Growing up on a subsistance farm, it was kind of hard not to be aware of the environment.  Of course, going through the public school system, I got some of the indoctrination that was increasingly becoming part of the curriculum at the time.  I am a strong believer in responsible environmental stewardship.  I cannot, however, call myself an environmentalist anymore.  What passes for environmentalism today has become a religion.  It's assumed that if you're "green" you are against capitalism, and that you agree with a long list ideas, whether it's views on global warming, the use of DDT, or that humans are a blight on the planet.  Responsible environmental stewardship has been co-opted by a political ideology that I find very disturbing.  Here, the political left/right divide is very strong.  Among environmentalists, I see the word "conserivative" used as an accusatory insult a lot, and it's assumed that if one is "green" they are also "liberal."



I am not a Darwinist.  Now, to many, this automatically makes me a Right Wing extremist, a religious quake, a young earth creationist/ID nutbar who denies science and evolotuion.  They would, of course, be wrong but, like environmentalism, Darwinism has become dogmatic.  Part of the problem is that most people things evolution = Darwinism, and it doesn't.  Even what people think of Darwinian evolution doesn't have much to do with what Darwin actually said or, according to his writings, believed.  It turns out there are all sorts of alternative theories of evolution out there, and Darwin's is not even close to answering the problems of evolution.  Unschoolers, in my experience, have been the most viscious in attacking anyone who dares question Darwinism, and no matter how much one tries to point out that there are alternative theories that are very bit as legitimate, they insist on calling those who disagree with them as religious, anti-science, anti-evolution, Right Wing nutbars.  It's not quite as bad as, say, disagreeing with AGW, but it gets pretty close at times.


Politically, I tend towards libertarianism, but I'm not a Libertarian (when I looked into the local political party, I found them to be a bunch of anarchists).  While a lot of my views can be considered conservative, others are considered liberal or socialist.  I find the definition of Classial Liberal fits my views very well, but it doesn't seem to exist any more.  This leads to all sorts of confusion in conversations.  When I mention I am an unschooler, I've had other unschoolers assume I am also Liberal, or Green.  When I mention my views on AGW, people assume I'm Conservative.  What I mention my thoughts on Darwinism vs evolution, I've found myself dismissed as a religious nut.


So where do I fit?  I've never been one to put labels on people, but there is a purpose to categorization.  I don't seem to be a square peg trying to fit into a round hole.  I seem to be more like a dodecahedron trying to fit into a pentagon.  Only one side fits at a time, but that leaves 11 other sides that don't fit anywhere.

Happy New Year!

May 2010 be a year of health, wealth, joy and success!