10 Hated Things

Ten Things I Hate, Part I

By John Taylor; 2009 April 07, Baha 18, 166 BE

My old writing tutor, a non-Baha'i who read my long handwritten letters for over a decade, used to tell me that my good writing takes place when I am angry and my most brilliant material only comes when I am furious. This is embarrassing for an attempted Baha'i. I am supposed to respond to goodness and light. I am supposed to ignore what is bad and look at the bright side. But airy-fairy virtues like niceness and far-off ideals like godliness just do not light a fire under my muse. Looking back on my life, I see how right she was. My best ideas were and are a direct response to my slow burning fury at the stupidity, the pig headed injustices that are messing up the big three: myself, the human race and the planet we live on.

I awoke this morning with a thought. It was the title of today's essay: "Ten Things I Hate." It seemed like a good idea, especially since it would be hard to find a topic easier to write about. I hate so many things. But where to start? Hey, why not today's newspaper? So I picked up this morning's Hamilton Spectator and decided to go through the articles that anger me in the order I find them, starting with the lead headline, "Quake in L'Aquila Reverberates in Hamilton." It seems Italian Canadians are worried about relatives in Italy, who may have been killed or hurt by the earthquake there. I hate that.

Things I Hate, Number One; Disorganization

We put the lion's share of our money and technological smarts into making killing machines and we leave basics like shelter and housing to tradition, or, at best, to random, ad hoc change. We go on living -- and dying -- in the same vulnerable structures that we have for thousands of years. My anger at this has fuelled my ideas about the way dwellings should be built -- what I call mound housing -- and, more to the point, how we should re-organize our families and neighbourhoods.

Things I Hate, Number Two; Lack of Hygiene

"Cleaning Standards Urged for Hospitals." Outbreaks of disease are prompting calls for provincial standards of cleanliness in hospitals. I hate filth, as we all do. If hospitals cannot stop disease and standards do not work, we have to rethink the whole idea of hospitals. But this is only a sign of inner filth, as it were. We have to get rid of filth from within, be paying attention to inner cleanliness, to prayer, meditation and reflection. Periodic pauses should break up activity, followed by physical cleanliness. So I guess even more than lack of spiritual hygiene, I hate free riding, the lazy idea that I can put off basics like cleaning, praying and organizing housing to the point where they have been de-prioritized completely.

Ten Things I Hate, Number Three; Lawlessness

Headline: "Building permit rules to tighten." This article reports that home building companies are starting to build their houses before getting the proper approval from the city. I hate this on so many levels that I cannot count them. What are private profiteers, glorified land speculators, doing building homes anyway? They have no interest in the long term quality of the product. Resident co-operatives, along with the governments, schools, faith groups and other institutions that will serve them, should plan, pay for and supervise all construction. Housing is wasteful garbage for the same reason that our automobiles are garbage, because we refuse to put responsibility into responsible hands. Ralph Nader said it all when he testified against corporate freeloaders and outright criminals in 1967:

"The requirement of a just social order is that responsibility shall lie where the power of decision rests. But the law has never caught up with the development of the large corporate unit. Deliberate acts emanate from the sprawling and indeterminable shelter of the corporate organization. Too often responsibility for an act is not imputable to those whose decision enables it to be set in motion." (quoted in Phil Edmonston, Lemon-aid, Used Cars and Trucks, 2009-2010, Dundurn Press, Toronto, 2009, p.17)

Ten Things I Hate, Number Four; Overcentralization

"Hamilton Backs Away From Plastic Bag Crackdown." The ubiquitous plastic shopping bag is a visible environmental issue that gets people's attention. I know that because we end up discussing it endlessly at our Philosopher's Cafe meetings, even though we know that more serious problems are being ignored. But in a way it is indeed important. As the article says, both individuals and local authorities do not have the power to stand up to corporations who find it convenient to dump mountains of packaging on our heads.

Lately I was watching a movie set in the Sixties, and a character doing kitchen work opened up a garbage can that was a recycler's dream. It was all organic. You could toss it on a compost heap, no problem. I look into our kitchen garbage bag and see guilt staring back at me. I try to take the time to buy straight produce and sort out plastic packaging for the recycling bin, but the garbage still ends up 90 percent plastic.

This infuriates me.

What are we doing buying our own food anyway? Why not have the same coops that house us take care of our diet too? Our capitalist system insists that we be consumers, that we make a thousand decisions a day, bribed by ten thousand advertisements a day, but there is no real need for any of that. I would eat better, eat less, eat more environmentally friendly if my neighbourhood kitchen bought food straight from my neighbourhood farmer and served me just the amount of food I need, chosen by a professional dietitian. It is crazy to accept the way things are when we could do so much better, so easily, if we would only think.

Ten Things I Hate, Number Five; Inequality

I hate it when there is not a trace of international news until page seven of a newspaper. That is a bonus thing I hate.

"Afghans Reworking Rape Law," A7

Anyway, I do not want to talk about the disgusting details of this proposed law permitting marital rape in Afghanistan. You can read about it yourself. But what I hate most of all is the lack of a code of universal human rights on every level of government, everywhere there are people. If government is for the people, how can governments rape the people -- in this case, quite literally?

The reason angers me deeply: we are on a permanent war footing. Why? Because of a negative feedback loop. We accept an imbalance between the sexes, men make decisions based on testosterone, violence breaks out, and fear, and that is an excuse for more injustice, more violence, more fear, and so forth. A government should not be able to call itself a government unless it is doing all in its power to reverse this slippery slope to war.

Okay, here are five things I hate and already I am running out of gas and have to stop. I will do the remaining five another day. Besides, I have to give this newspaper back to my father, who will soon wake up and start looking for it. I hate it when I steal things. At this point I could change the title to "five things I hate," but I hate lies and betrayal; plus, I have learned the hard way to pay close attention to my muse. If she says I must pick ten things to hate, then ten things it is. The headlines will have to come from another source, but there will be five more.

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John Taylor

email: badijet@gmail.com
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