Power in society needs more attention

Mick Lynch, right, faced bizarre questions in TV interviews

"Power isn't something you're supposed to talk about in polite society." 

That stirring statement comes in an article taking a quick look at the power play at work in society, especially between ordinary working people and their representative organisations such as unions, and those big business and its followers like the media and financial industry.

The article was by Australian journalist Gareth Hutchens who noted the treatment meted out by the media to the leader of British rail workers who went on strike for three days late last month.

Two of the TV interviews the union leader Mick Lynch had to endure can be found here, and here.

Hutchens concludes from what transpired that the interviewers did not want to get to the central issues affecting the working people whereas Lynch wanted to explain why his workers needed to strike to force their employer to improve their pay and conditions, and that workers had to assert whatever power they could muster by a show of solidarity in withdrawing their labour in the face of their employer's refusal to enter into negotiations based on good faith.

Hutchens finds Lynch's experience has wider implications:

What's this got to do with Australia?

Here's the point.

When Mr Lynch did so many interviews in quick succession last week it reminded us, in real time, how certain voices are usually suppressed in the daily conversation, and what tactics are employed against them when they do find themselves on air.

If Mr Lynch had given three interviews over six months we may not have noticed them, or noticed how he was being treated by his interviewees.

But since he gave so many interviews within 48 hours, it compressed time.

Suddenly, here was someone who spoke clearly, in simple language, who was fighting for pay rises for working people, and who made a laughing stock of the media elites trying to put him in his place.

And it exposed how parts of the media work.

We saw how successive interviewees goaded him, ridiculed him, and condescended to him, with one asking Lynch to confirm that he wasn't a Marxist.

And what was Mr Lynch's crime? Ostensibly, his planned train strikes were going to be disruptive.

But there was clearly another dynamic at play.

Mr Lynch was comfortable talking about power, about who wields power in the labour market and who doesn't, and apparently, some people find that unnerving.

Power isn't something you're supposed to talk about in polite society.

A further application to the Australian scene can be made, Hutchens writes, by considering the attitudes expressed by economists discussing the rise in the national minimum hourly pay. He says:

Some of them dismiss questions about whether or not a higher minimum wage increase would be just, or equitable, or necessary, for being "normative" and therefore beyond the expertise of economists.

They say they prefer to stick to the question of how a specific increase in the minimum wage will impact inflation, employment and growth.

But that's a cop-out, isn't it?

Economists deal in value judgements all the time, whether consciously or not.

Think of how prices are set.

Prices are rarely set by a pure interaction between the demand for a good and its supply.

The "price" of many things, especially when talking about the price of labour (i.e. hourly wages), also reflects how much power is held by different groups in a market. 

The experience of Australia in arriving at a point where the setting of a minimum hourly pay rate became law says a lot about how power is wielded in society. Hutchens states that the matter is "wrapped in questions about what constitutes a 'living wage', and that relies on value judgements".

He continues:

Some politicians and business groups hate the idea of a minimum wage. Others like it. But after a protracted political struggle over decades, our institutions enforce and maintain one.

Or consider the question of the necessity or otherwise of jacking up interest rates to pull inflation down.

If it's agreed that large increases in interest rates could cause damaging job losses, but it's decided that it would still be warranted to lift rates to get inflation back down, isn't there a value judgement being made?

And who's making those judgements? Economists. 

Even in annual wage negotiations, value judgements are asserted all the time.

Over the last decade in Australia, when inflation was low, plenty of workers were told during wage negotiations that there was no point increasing their nominal wages by much because it wasn't necessary — inflation was so low.

And now, with inflation rising, workers are being told that this also isn't the time to increase nominal wages by much — because it will make inflation worse.

You can't win.

One of the interesting things about listening to Mr Lynch's contribution to the public debate in the UK is how familiar some of his observations sound about the state of modern labour markets, including where power lies, and who makes the decisions. 

The principle of what is just, or equitable, or necessary must be given more attention in considering the welfare of working people, meaning attention to where power lies in society's relationship, and how that power is exercised.

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Women will thrive without abortion, but work needs to be done to renew society

Cherilyn Holloway, founder of Pro-Black Pro-Life...condemns 'the shedding of future generations'

Denise Burke, a woman at the centre of the latest Roe v. Wade abortion decision, gives strong reasons why women will thrive in the post-Roe era. 

As a senior counsel, she was part of the legal team that argued the Dobbs case before the US Supreme Court leading to its declaration that there is no constitutional right to abortion.

Writing at The Hill news website, Burke clears away some of the myths that have clouded society's understanding of how abortion affects women. She starts this way:

Nearly 50 years of abortion-on-demand has incalculably harmed women and their families. And now we have the opportunity to right the wrongs that Roe wrought.

Truth was one of the first casualties of Roe. To secure and advance their radical agenda, abortion rights proponents repeatedly and brazenly misled Americans. We must advance a comprehensive, life-affirming agenda, while correcting the falsehoods still being peddled by abortion supporters.

Many claim that abortion does not kill a baby, but simply terminates a “clump of cells” or a “potential life.” As the legislative findings supporting Mississippi’s law protecting life after 15 weeks’ gestation recognized, an unborn child’s heart begins beating by six weeks, the child begins to move about in the womb at eight weeks and all of his or her basic physiological functions are present by nine weeks. Anyone who has ever viewed a pregnancy-related ultrasound recognizes its striking images as a living, developing human being. 

 Abortion rights advocates imply that women are not strong enough or capable enough to manage motherhood and a job, school or other interests. But Americans never fully believed this. In a 2018 Marist poll, 52 percent of respondents acknowledged that in the long run abortion “does more harm than good,” while only 29 percent believed that it improves a woman’s life.

They also argued that American women wanted unrestricted and unregulated access to abortion paid for at taxpayer expense. This bold assertion purposely ignores that many vulnerable women only reluctantly “choose” abortion after the financially incentivized abortion lobby convinces them that abortion is their only choice. 

It is worth dwelling on this matter of "choice". A letter to the BMJ (the British Medical Journal) from a British doctor and colleagues makes manifest how it is mostly poverty that pushes women into deciding to abort their child. In other words, if Planned Parenthood and like organisations had mobilised public opinion to institute policies to reduce poverty the practice of abortion would have faded away. The doctor's BMJ letter tackles the catchcry of abortion as a "women's right to chose":

However, the evidence has consistently shown that the vast majority of women request abortions due to a lack of financial resources. A Guttmacher Institute study reported that 73% of women cited this as the motivating factor for abortion. Under these circumstances there is no way abortion can be called a “choice”. Indeed the Guttmacher Institute went on to expressly state in the wake of their study that:

“Qualitative data from in-depth interviews portrayed women who had had an abortion as typically feeling that they had no other choice, given their limited resources and existing responsibilities to others.”

It is in many ways an affront to suggest to women, who are compelled to have an abortion out of poverty and an inability to afford childcare; that they have "chosen” their abortion. It is sadly ironic that in the same issue that the BMJ calls for greater socio-economic diversity in medicine(6), it then only engages in the abortion debate from the vantage point of the privileged.

As the journal recognises, doctors tend to come from affluent backgrounds and thus can fail to empathise and relate to women who literally have to “choose” between abortion and sufficient financial resources to survive or continue the pregnancy with a precarious and uncertain future.

This may be inconceivable for the privileged but the evidence suggests that this is a reality for many, if not the vast majority of women who seek termination of pregnancy. 75% of women requesting abortion in the US are in poverty or in the low income bracket. The poorest 12% of women account for almost 50% of abortions and the poorest 30% for 75% of abortions.

Abortion cannot be a solution for poverty; thereby surreptitiously allowing those in authority to abdicate responsibility of tackling socio-economic inequality. 

Burke highlights another myth:

Proponents of abortion tout it as beneficial to women’s health, often hiding evidence that the procedure carries significant physical and psychological risks, and that these medical risks increase as the pregnancy progresses. This lie continues today as these proponents aggressively market dangerous chemical abortions to American women. A 2009 Finnish study revealed that complications were nearly four times more frequent after chemical abortions than surgical abortions. 

Rather than abortion, American women need laws that protect them and their families. They need more social and financial support, better access to life-affirming care and the perceived ability to say “yes” to life.

A 2005 study from the pro-abortion rights Guttmacher Institute found that more than 93 percent of abortions were motivated by social and economic concerns. Other studies have placed this number at nearly 97 percent. 

The Supreme Court has given state legislatures permission to protect the unborn and promote a culture of life. But this historic decision won’t end the circumstances that drive women to seek abortion. Some women will still fear that abortion is their only option. These women need financial, material and other resources, as well as the unequivocal life-affirming support of American churches and social agencies.

The pro-life community must seize this opportunity to demonstrate that abortion is a false answer to a real difficulty, that choosing life is the answer and that pro-life policies going forward will set the conditions for women and their babies to truly flourish. 

Another myth, one that Burke does not mention, is that of abortion being a "right". Courts and governments have made abortion available to their populations, but they have not recognised a "right". Rather, they have granted permission for those who abort to escape penalty. An equivalent to the "right to abort" is the slave-owners' claimed "right" to own certain humans; for the "owners" to decide on the fate of another human. 

Burke's argument comes through clearly - the majority of women who seek an abortion don't want to destroy their child. That large majority resort to the ultimate act act of abortion because they carry the burden of poverty, with all the life-complicating factors that poverty brings with it. 

All women should unite in ensuring that society makes it possible for all babies to thrive in the womb and out of it, no matter whether the mother is a "party-girl", or is a woman wanting a career, or someone in perilous financial circumstances. This kind of campaign will entail drawing up that "comprehensive, life-affirming agenda" that Burke urges. Such policies would involve fresh support for education, the reining in of corporate power, and the overthrow of bland individualism for the beauty of solidarity. 

In a second article from The Hill website we read:

Cherilyn Holloway, founder of Pro-Black Pro-Life, said her heart grieves for the women who feel they are being attacked and their rights stripped away. However, she also said she feels a sense of responsibility to her community now.

“I feel an overwhelming sense of responsibility and opportunity to do more work in these communities to uplift the Black woman in a way that she feels liberated through the community that’s around her and not through the shedding of future generations,” Holloway said.

Holloway said her organization focuses on community and letting women, especially Black women, know that abortion is not their only option.

“The idea that more Black women are going to die because our maternal mortality rate is so high … we’re not saving more Black women by allowing them to have abortions,” said Holloway. “No Black women should be dying in childbirth.”

That’s why she’s focused on combating systemic inequities, like implicit bias in the medical community and economic inequity. 

There's a lot of work to be done by way of creating a just society to enable the lives of children of all ages, and their parents, to flourish.  

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Life in the womb…spectacular! pic.twitter.com/i2HxzlfZdY

— Obianuju Ekeocha (@obianuju) June 21, 2022

Ethical state of fertility industry under scrutiny

The instinctual imperative to know our family connections

Technologies relating to birth such as sperm donation and in vitro fertilization are the source of psychological distress and physical suffering, a fact which needs to be considered when weighing the value to society of the various elements of what has become the booming fertility industry.

For a start, children of sperm donors have a big lack in forming their personal identity, given reports such as this one from Australia, which opens with... "After years of desperately searching for their sperm-donor fathers..."

The two women at the centre of the report were, indeed, desperate in their search, which took years of independent research and the tortuous process of exploring all possible sources of information about their fathers. Fertility clinics were, at best, uncooperative.

Having children of their own intensified their desire to learn more about their biological heritage.

Both women turned to science — and an American direct-to-consumer DNA testing company and database — to continue the search.

So-called ancestry databases allow people to compare their own DNA against other publicly available genetic profiles to help them find blood relatives and to build a family tree.

In the cases of Kate Drysdale, 30, and Kerri Favarato, 39, it allowed them to identify their biological fathers even though neither man had registered a DNA sample on a consumer database at that time.  

Soon after giving birth to her daughter, Brisbane-based Favarato spent five months of painstaking work piecing together her family tree after finding on a database a fourth cousin — a woman she shared great, great, great grandparents with.

"It was exhausting and really hard work but I needed it to be done," she said.

"I was so sick of going through the process of trying to find information and getting the door slammed in my face.

"I just went: 'This is my chance, I have to do this'."

By this stage, Favarato had already spent about two decades looking. 

Her detective work paid off and she located her biological father, who greeted her warmly.

Five years on, they have what Favarato describes as an "undefinable" relationship with "reasonably regular" contact.

They visit each other's homes and she introduces him to people as "my biological father".

"He doesn't call me his daughter or anything like that," Favarato said.

"We don't have the same relationship that I have with the dad who raised me. It's not like that, but it's an undeniable connection.

"We just don't bother labelling anything. It is what it is." 

Kate Drysdale has known she was donor-conceived since the age of seven:

By then, her mother and her non-biological father had divorced and he was no longer in their lives.

"My legal father and my mother disagreed as to whether or not I should be told. She'd always wanted me to know.

"She has a social work background. She understood the importance of knowing one's identity." 

It was torturous getting the information she desired so strongly. However, with successes and failures in turning up information along the way, she achieved finally her goal.  

"I always thought I looked like my mother until I met that man. He is the male version of me, just 21 years older."

Drysdale and her biological father are both employed in the social science field, but more important to her is his personality.

"I had a negative view of what a father was growing up," she said.

"It's just really nice to find out that he is a positive, empathetic, kind human being that thinks about the world and wants to have a positive influence on it.

"So it's nice that that's the personality that I come from."

Meeting her biological father took years of trauma and heartache. 

"I experienced many months living in a state of near panic that I would not get any information or would ultimately be rejected by the person I had been searching for for so long."

The trauma has led to Drysdale making submissions to a Queensland parliamentary committee inquiry into matters relating to donor conception information.

She wants all donor-conceived people to also be able to access identifying information relating to donors and donor-conceived siblings, regardless of when they were conceived.

Drysdale would also like to see the birth certificates of donor-conceived people include a notation indicating they are donor conceived, with contact details for how to access further information.

Given that some people source donor sperm, eggs or embryos from overseas, she is also calling for a ban on the importation of reproductive tissue if the international clinics involved cannot be held to Queensland standards.

Another sperm-donor child, now in her thirties, similarly wants higher standards for the fertility industry, according to a second report related to the Queensland official inquiry:

Eleni McIlroy has known her whole life she was conceived through sperm donation. But when she talks about her experience, her eyes still well with tears.

She does not blame her parents for the challenges she has faced as a donor conceived person – instead, the ever-growing assisted reproductive technology industry has earned her ire.

McIlroy has had a loving upbringing and said her parents' honesty about her conception has spared her much of the trauma other donor conceived people have faced.

But her heartache began when she embarked on an investigation into her biological origins, discovering the fertility clinic her parents had engaged had intentionally destroyed records.

"There are no records of how many siblings might've been created for me. So, I will never know.

"Some [donor conceived people] get told they have three siblings… and feel that they can stop searching… and then four years later, another three pop up."

One amazing piece of the puzzle has been the response by her biological father's family to McIlroy's approach for information about him.

McIlroy reached out to her donor's family. They said they did not "see a version of events where my donor could have possibly consented" to donating his sperm at the time.

"So how do I deal with that?"

"How do I deal with the fact that he might not even know he was a donor?"

She has shared her story to put pressure on lawmakers to crack down on the assisted reproductive technology industry.

 McIlroy has pleaded with the Australian Capital Territory government to act to ensure others do not have to suffer the same lack of belonging and closure she has experienced.

"You're always looking for something that indicates to you where the truth is but it's impossible to figure it out," she said.

"An embryo grows into a baby which grows into a human being which has rights."

Of like mind is Helena Seagrott, who began volunteering as the lead representative for Donor Conceived Australia in the ACT after she discovered two years ago that she was sperm-donor conceived.

She found out that her biological father had donated sperm once or twice a week for five years when a medical student. He was paid $10 for each donation. Seagrott says:

"There's eight of us so far, but counting, and I expect for the rest of my life… to get the random email: 'You've got another half sibling.'"

Seagrott, 38, has two children of her own with a third on the way, and has become dedicated to ensuring the assisted reproductive technology industry undergoes legislative change to become more ethical.

"Currently there is no counselling provided by the governments or clinics, and what we're finding is that people do need that support."

She has called for a national, independent support service staffed by professionals who have been trained to deal with the complexities faced by donor conceived people. 

To see from these women such expressions of concern about a lack of ethical procedures in this area relating to human life is disturbing. They also highlight how there is an instinct in each person that demands full connection with forebears and siblings in order to achieve mental balance and inner peace over one's identity, and confidence when it comes to forming close relationships.  

💢  See also The pain of contraception

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Miracles – 'they occur more often than we realise'

Joanna Watson...there's always a purpose to life events. Photo: Source 

They don't have to be wildly dramatic events, but sometimes they are. Often they are events where the outcome could have gone another way, with serious consequences, but they didn't. I am talking, of course, about miracles, which I define as God's action in the here and now to preserve our life, and to achieve so many other purposes.

I consider it due to God's protective action that my car carrying my wife and my niece and her husband on one occasion was not struck by a heavy vehicle when I made a stupid mistake while driving. I got confused at traffic lights where I waited to make a turn across a highway. When the traffic going straight ahead started to move, I thought I was supposed to make my turn as well. There didn't seem to be separate traffic lights.

When we started across the four-lane highway a lorry came on quickly but it slowed so I moved out into the lanes to clear it. But I could not see what was on the other side of the lorry. This is where the miracle occurred. The next lanes were clear! If the lanes beyond the lorry had been occupied, we would have certainly been struck, with injury to life and limb much more than a mere possibility. 

When a busy road has a clearing in the crucial few seconds for us to cross in front of the oncoming traffic, I think I am justified in crediting God for this miracle, saving us from a serious accident.   

That God is still in the miracle business is the message Englishwoman Joanna Watson wants to share. As well as describing her own experience, she has collected accounts of wonderful experiences of others. 

Of her own case, Watson writes:

Strictly speaking, I could be dead.

While on holiday in the USA, the car I was in plunged over the edge of a mountain. It hurtled down about 50 metres into pitch-black darkness, flipped and ended up on its roof. Upside down and held in by my seatbelt, I fractured my spine in two places.

Put simply: God saved my life.

In the immediate aftermath of the accident, God provided for all my medical, physical and spiritual needs. In a series of incredible ‘God-incidences’, he brought help through a succession of strangers – including a doctor and a Christian – orchestrating exactly who needed to be there in my moment of need.

And in the months that followed, as I found myself encased in a back brace and heading slowly towards recovery, I was acutely aware that things could have turned out very differently. Today, I am alive, walking, and here to tell the tale.

The awareness of God active in her life, led Watson to take stock:

Surviving a near-fatal car accident changed my life. It led to a redirection in my career and a relocation. But, over the subsequent years, it also led to more miracle stories – of provision, protection, healing, and even resurrection – landing in my lap. 

I published ten true tales of miracles in my book Light through the Cracks: How God breaks in when life turns tough (Malcolm Down Publishing). United by a common theme, they all reveal how ordinary people have encountered God in extraordinary ways in the midst of tough times; how God has broken into some very dark and difficult situations; how he has brought his light in through the cracks.

Cancer disappearing without trace. A man defying death, multiple times, following life-threatening injuries incurred in a head-on road collision. A baby born prematurely, only to confound the medical predictions about his prognosis. Cash appearing out of nowhere to keep a church from closing. A teenager seeing her chronic debilitating illness disappear in an instant. Plus the full story of my own car accident.

Not all of these stories have happy endings. I don’t sanitise or sugar-coat any aspects of them; they are written as they really happened—raw, real and messy. But, in the middle of each one, God showed up for us when we were praying in utter desperation, not knowing what the ending would be.

The reality is that our unchanging God is still in the miracle business today - not just in the dim and distant past or in some far flung part of the world – but here, at home, in the 21st Century. He is still supernaturally performing acts that shouldn’t be able to happen according to the laws of nature or science. They are relatively rare, but they occur more often than we realise.

Miracles are possible because God is at work in the spiritual realm as well as the physical realm; in the extraordinary, as well as the ordinary. He heals through medicine, but also miraculously. He provides financially through a steady income, but also out of thin air. He expects us to heed warning signs, but also sends angels to protect us from danger. He speaks through the Bible, but also through dreams and visions.

These things don’t happen routinely and are impossible to predict in advance; they are always about God, never about us; and they always have a purpose.

Read Watson's article in full here. 

A last thought: Any study of miracles comes to the conclusion that our hearts have to be big enough to appreciate what has happened; our eyes have to be clear enough to see the source of our deliverance; we have to be free enough from distractions to be able to acknowledge the other party involved, and to be able to express our gratitude. Finally, we need to have a prayerful attitude to life so that we are open to the world in all its dimensions. 

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Anti-woke LGBTQ+ group forms in Denmark

Some in the LGBTQ+ community are waking up. The following is a Google translation of a statement from the Danish Rainbow Council, which finds some organisations which purport to represent the gay and transsexual groupings have gone far down the path to fallacy. See the original statement here.

[[[[[[[[[[[[[

Press release

New anti-woke, pro-human association for lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transsexuals in Denmark.

Copenhagen, Thursday 9 June 2022

“There has been a serious, existential threat to all of us—and to the continued wellbeing of lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender people. The LGBT world has, catastrophically, created the threat itself: An ideological gender extremism that in recent years has attacked everything from the rights of biological women, to the mental well-being of our children. The extremists deny established science, and subjugate our freedom of speech—the phenomenon is called ‘wokeness’. In the Danish Rainbow Council, we call it madness. The fight against this ‘politically correct’, deeply intolerant ideology will be the next big value struggle. It's not just about LGBT people—it's about all of us. About you. About your children. About lies and about truth. And about which human vision Denmark should be driven by in the future. ”

           —Marcus Dib Jensen, transsexual, chairman of the Danish Rainbow Council.

The Danish Rainbow Council was recently founded by a group of gays, lesbians and transgender people who have long felt a growing concern about the influence of extreme gender activism, so-called wokeness, in the Western world—and in Denmark. Wokeness today challenges the well-being, common understanding, and basic, cherished freedoms of our society.

Our association is a cross-political, anti-woke alternative to LGBT + Denmark, which a few years ago was taken over by extreme gender activists. The organization thus dedicates itself today to the spread of e.g. the ideology of the innumerable sexes. They believe that gender and sexuality are solely so-called 'social constructions'—something we decide for ourselves, biology unnoticed. LGBT + Denmark, therefore, works actively for both more and younger children to be able to change gender, just as they also seek to limit the biological women's rights in sports and remove the right to women's safe-spaces in the public space etc. 

Wokeness is particularly hard on children and young people, who are mentally more vulnerable than ever. They are influenced by the extreme gender ideology they are constantly bombarded with from all sides. Things have now become so unreasonable that it can and will erode the support of heterosexual citizens for the rainbow cause. This is understandable, but by its very nature very dangerous for us. 

The cohesiveness of Denmark is under pressure because all the knowledge and experience we have gained in modern times, in subjects such as biology, medicine, didactics, pedagogy and ethics, has been kicked into a corner—without a fight—in favor of a radical gender ideology, that emerged a few years ago at elite American universities. It is an extremism that has gradually infiltrated all walks of life with deeply intolerant ideologies so that many feel great fear of speaking out against them.

All this we will simply no longer accept as rainbow people—not in our name. Enough is enough!

The Danish Rainbow Council is a forum where you can express yourself confidently if you do not want the woke extremism to triumph over humanity, reason and science—and everyone is welcome to fight the battle with us, regardless of party color and sexuality.

However, it is us rainbow people who must take the lead in the battle—because if we do not dare to do so, we cannot expect others to fight. 

On our facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/DanskRegnbueraad) and via this video link (https://vimeo.com/718174107) you can e.g. meet our chairman, Marcus Dib Jensen, and read about the association's attitudes and the political goals that the Danish Rainbow Council will work purposefully and hard on getting implemented in the Folketing [Parliament].

Let us conclude, for those who are a little in doubt: There are only two sexes. It's a biological fact, and it should be completely uncontroversial to say—but it's suddenly no longer the case. The intolerance, the cancel culture and the politically correct madness, we hereby challenge through our new association.

We want to rid society of extreme, socially harmful, ruthless gender ideology and restore humanity, tolerance, reason and reasonableness, for the benefit of all—not least Denmark's many rainbow citizens.

Here we are. Our struggle begins today.

Yours sincerely

Danish Rainbow Council

CONTACT

Jesper W. Rasmussen

Media contact & vice chairman

Email: presse@danskregnbueraad.dk

M: +45 3137 5547 

]]]]]]]]]]]]

If you are wondering why this blog gives so much attention to matters relating to sexuality and transgenderism, the reason is that the ideology that has erupted in this area of life is an extremely corrosive agent affecting individual wellbeing and therefore the psychological health of society as a whole. 

This ideology, which extends the philosophical bounds of Critical Theory, aims to be generationally transformative, expressing the extremism that the Rainbow Council identifies, removing the family from its special category of protection, and instituting unrestricted self-invention as a new domain for uncritical respect, and in that regard, pouring condemnation on any scientific scrutiny of matters of importance to the shape of human society.

It is not only women who are threatened by such a brutal mindset. In addition, by way of permitting full-scale paedophilia, children are in line to be incorporated further within the sexual hedonistic movement beyond the confusion already sown among the young over sexual identity. 

Transgender ideology and its coercive companions must be fought, and it's great that allies such as Danish Rainbow Council are now joining in the formation of a united effort to protect the vulnerable.

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Fina gets the science right, say top swimmers

Cate Campbell in sizzling form at the Tokyo Olympics. Photo Source

Fina, the International Swimming Federation, voted at the weekend to stop transgender athletes from competing in women's elite races if they have gone through any part of the process of male puberty.

It means that transgender American college swimmer Lia Thomas, who has expressed a desire to compete for a place at the Olympics, would be blocked from participating in the female category, the BBC reports.

The decision was welcomed by former Great Britain swimmer Sharron Davies and Australia's four-time Olympic gold medallist Cate Campbell, who both refer to the scientific reality of the differences in male and female bodies.

The new policy, which was passed with 71% of the vote from 152 Fina members, was set during an extraordinary general congress at the ongoing World Championships in Budapest.

Fina members received a report from a transgender task force made up of leading figures from the world of medicine, law and sport.

Campbell, 30, told the congress before the vote was taken that she knows first-hand what it means to feel being an outsider. Her family migrated to Australia from the southern African country of Malawi when she was nine years old and one way the family integrated into their new community was through sport. 

"We see you, value you and accept you," Campbell said [addressing transgender athletes].

"My role, however, is also to stand up here, having asked our world governing body,  to investigate, deliberate and uphold the cornerstone of fairness in elite women's competition.

"And it pains me that this part of my role may injure, infuriate and, potentially, alienate people from an already marginalised [transgender] community.

"Believe me, I have wrestled long and hard with myself, with what to say and do. I am aware that my actions and words, no matter what I say, will anger some people — whether they are from the [transgender] community or from the cisgender female community.

"If inclusion is one of the cornerstones of sport, then the other would be fairness, fairness in regards to competition, especially elite, professional competition.

"The incongruity that inclusion and fairness cannot always work together is one of the reasons why it is so difficult to talk about this topic.

"Usually, they are terms of absolutes which work together, yet science now tells us that, in this issue, they are incompatible."

Campbell will later talk about how the reality of science must stand in judgment of "feelings" about perceived rights. She continues, providing insights into the world of competitive sport:

Unlike in community or amateur sport, in elite sport, winning and losing goes hand in hand with politics, money and power.

Creating a place where men and women can come up against the best of their contemporaries and battle it out — down to 100ths and 10ths of a second. This battle, this standing up and comparing of wills and physique is what draws people to watch sport — to see who can squeeze the very last ounce out of their bodies and minds and emerge victorious. Without fair competition, sport in its elite sense, would cease to exist.

Usually, inclusion and fairness go hand in hand. To create a place that is inclusive, is to create a space that is fair. Transgender, gender-diverse and non-binary athletes' inclusion in the female category of elite sport, is one of the few occasions where these two principles come into conflict.

The incongruity that inclusion and fairness cannot always work together is one of the reasons why it is so difficult to talk about this topic.

Usually, they are terms of absolutes which work together, yet science now tells us, that in this issue, they are incompatible.

I stand before you, as a four-time Olympian, a world champion and a world record holder. I stand before you, as a beneficiary of fair, elite competition. Yet my job today is not to explain the nuances of Fina's transgender policy. Nor is it to defend the conclusions reached by medical and legal professionals of much greater intellect than mine.

My role is to stand before you, as an athlete who has enjoyed many, many years in this sport and who hopes to continue to enjoy a few more years. To stand here and tell the transgender and gender-diverse community that we want you to be part of the broader swimming community.

We see you, value you and accept you. My role, however, is also to stand up here, having asked our world governing body, Fina, to investigate, deliberate and uphold the cornerstone of fairness in elite women's competition.

However, I am asking everyone to take a breath, to absorb before reacting. Listen to the science and experts. Listen to the people who stand up here and tell you how difficult it has been to reconcile inclusion and fairness.

That men and women are physiologically different cannot be disputed. We are only now beginning to explore and understand the origins of these physiological differences and the lasting effects of exposure to differing hormones. Women, who have fought long and hard to be included and seen as equals in sport, can only do so because of the gender category distinction. To remove that distinction would be to the detriment of female athletes everywhere.

The creation of this policy did not stem from "feelings", what we "felt" was the right thing to do. The policy was created with the inclusion of medical professionals, legal professionals, athletes, coaches and people from the transgender community. It is a policy that pays attention to inclusion, but prioritises fairness.

Ultimately, this not about winners and losers, it is about investigating and developing a policy which accurately represents the science and draws a line to protect the fairness of the female category distinction in elite sport.

Not community sport, not amateur sport — elite, professional sport. I want the broader swimming community to be a place of safety and acceptance for the gender-diverse — and I call on all the federations sitting within this room to examine your own policies to ensure the world of swimming remains inclusive.

It is my hope that young girls all around the world can continue to dream of becoming Olympic and World Champions in a female category prioritising the competitive cornerstone of fairness.

However, it is also my hope that a young gender-diverse child can walk into a swimming club and feel the same level of acceptance that a nine-year-old immigrant kid from Africa did all those years ago.

 The BBC's report states.

Fina will also aim to establish an 'open' category at competitions for swimmers whose gender identity is different than their birth sex.

British swimmer states 'They've done the science'

Sharron Davies states:

Four years ago, along with 60 other Olympic medallists, I wrote to the International Olympic Committee and said 'Please just do the science first' and no governing body has done the science until now.

That is what Fina has done. They've done the science, they've got the right people on board, they've spoken to the athletes, and coaches.

Swimming is a very inclusive sport, we love everyone to come and swim and be involved. But the cornerstone of sport is that it has to be fair and it has to be fair for both sexes.

"Sport by definition is exclusionary—we don't have 15-year-old boys racing in the under-12s, we don't have heavyweight boxers in with the bantamweights, the whole reason we have lots of different classes in the Paralympics is so that we can create fair opportunities for everybody.

So that is the whole point of having classifications in sports and the only people who were going to be losing out were females—they were losing their right to fair sport."

What did the panel of experts say?

Dr Michael Joyner, a physiologist and leading expert in human performance

Testosterone in male puberty alters the physiological determinants of human performance and explains the sex-based differences in human performance, considered clearly evident by age 12.

Even if testosterone is suppressed, its performance enhancing effects will be retained."

Dr Adrian Jjuuko, an activist, researcher and lawyer

The policy emphasises that no athlete is excluded from Fina competition or setting Fina records based on their legal gender, gender identity or gender expression.

[The proposed open category] should not become a category that adds to the already existing levels of discrimination and marginalisation against these groups.

I see this policy as only the first step towards full inclusion and support for the participation of transgender and gender-diverse athletes in aquatic sports, and there is a lot more to be done.

Dr Sandra Hunter, an exercise physiologist specialising in sex and age differences in athletic performance

By 14 years or older, the difference between boys and girls is substantial. That's due to the advantages experienced due to the physiological adaptations in testosterone and the possession of the Y chromosome.

Some of these physical advantages are structural in origin such as height, limb length, heart size, lung size and they will be retained, even with the suppression or reduction of testosterone that occurs in the transition from male to female."

Summer Sanders, of the US, former Olympic and world champion in swimming

This is not easy. There must be categories—women's, men's and of course a category for trans women and trans men.

Fair competition is a stronghold and staple of our community—this approach safeguards the integrity of the existing sports process in which millions of girls and women participate annually.

Duty to die: the hidden assisted-death imperative

Medical experts weigh the cost factor. Photo: Vlada Karpovich

News reports from around the developed world pop up regularly about the slippery slope that is euthanasia, also known as assisted suicide, among other terms. Canada is a good example of how slippery that slope is, with people telling how they don't want to die, but they cannot get the care needed to stay alive, to lessen their suffering, even though medical palliative care is now at a very advanced level.   

 The first report is from an experienced journalist, not someone likely to be fooled by a begging case.

A report [on June 9] by Penny Daflos for CTV News Vancouver concerns a chronically ill woman in her 30’s who was approved for [the Canadian government medical assistance in dying programme known as] Maid but who has been unable to obtain the medical treatment that she needs to live. “Kat” wants to live. Daflos writes that Kat had an easier time accessing death care than accessing health care. Daflos reported:

The chronically ill woman is in her late 30s and lives in the Lower Mainland, but given the sensitivity of the subject matter has asked us to refer to her by the pseudonym of “Kat.” She has applied to Fraser Health and been granted a request for Maid – even though she wants to live.

“I thought, ‘Goodness, I feel like I’m falling through the cracks so if I’m not able to access health care am I then able to access death care?’ And that’s what led me to look into Maid and I applied last year,”

Kat has been struggling to access health care. Daflos reported:

A decade ago she received a diagnosis of Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS), a genetic disorder where the body doesn’t produce adequate collagen, essentially the glue that holds together connective tissues, skin and our internal organs, sometimes leading to complications and always resulting in significant pain.

As a result, Kat has been on opioids for years and says that’s interfered with finding a replacement for her family doctor, who moved away years ago. She’s been seeing nurse practitioners for several years, as well as a revolving door of rheumatologists, neurologists, psychiatrists and other specialist doctors, none of whom are experts in EDS.

[The regional Fraser Health Authority], who are the same health authority that defunded the Delta Hospice Society and expropriated their buildings for refusing to participate in euthanasia [update here], approved Maid for Kat but is not working to obtain the medical care that she needs. Daflos reported:

Fraser Health’s Maid documentation includes a summary noting that the “patient has an extensive medical chart” and that “there were no other treatment recommendations or interventions that were suitable to the patient’s needs or to her financial constraints.”

Daflos continued:

Kat’s disability and poverty are two of the key concerns raised by advocates warning Canada is moving too broadly and too quickly in expanding access to Maid.

Initially, applicants required a terminal illness in addition to suffering physically, but now physical suffering is the only requirement. Legislators are now hearing arguments from various groups about the next phase of the Maid program, which would allow those suffering mentally to apply for medically assisted death.

Two British Columbia families have pleaded for more scrutiny of the process and acknowledgement of wrongful deaths to protect those who are most vulnerable.

"It is imperative that these safeguards ensure vulnerable people are provided care as a first option, not death," said Alicia Duncan, whose mother’s Maid death in Abbotsford is now the subject of a rare police investigation.

Further instances are reported:

In 2019, Alan Nichols died by euthanasia in Chilliwack BC. Nichols was not dying but deeply depressed. His family begged the doctors to re-assess Alan based on the fact that Alan had been living with chronic depression, but they refused (Link).

Donna Duncan, from Abbotsford BC, died by euthanasia in October 2021. Donna was not terminally ill, but rather she was injured from a car accident in February 2020 and was living with post-concussion syndrome. Due to the COVID protocols, Donna did not receive adequate rehabilitation and her symptoms persisted until she decided to seek out death by euthanasia to escape her suffering. 

 Other such cases have been reported in the Guardian: 

After pleading unsuccessfully for affordable housing to help ease her chronic health condition, a Canadian woman ended her life in February under the country’s assisted-suicide laws. Another woman, suffering from the same condition and also living on disability payments, has nearly reached final approval to end her life.

The two high-profile cases have prompted disbelief and outrage, and shone a light on Canada’s right-to-die laws, which critics argue are being misused to punish the poor and infirm. 

The Guardian report tries to "balance" the concerns about Canada's rush to impose what are regarded by the woke as progressive policies, but supports the key concern:  

Jocelyn Downie, a professor of law at Dalhousie and expert in end-of-life policy, said there are extensive guardrails in the [Maid] system to protect Canadians.

“You have to meet rigorous eligibility criteria. And being poor and not having a home, or a home that is suitable for you, does not make you eligible,” said Downie. 

But she said that the cases do highlight societal failures [...].

“Listen to what people living with disabilities have been asking for years,” she said, pointing to investments in accessible housing and transportation.

Instead of fighting over the law, which lawmakers are unlikely to repeal given a string of supreme court cases upholding the right to physician assisted death, Downie said a greater emphasis should be on disability supports and services and mental health supports.

“The reality is, it’s a small number of people who qualify for Maid. But investments in mental health and disability resources would go so far to help so many more people live their lives.”

In late April, the British Spectator ran an analysis of the euthanasia programme with the headline: Why is Canada euthanising the poor? The writer* points out that of the organisations advocating for the disabled almost none supported the series of Maid legislation, with the latest law extending the programme to the mentally ill. 

In fact, cost savings in health expenses have featured in official figures, according to the Spectator:

Despite the Canadian government’s insistence that assisted suicide is all about individual autonomy, it has also kept an eye on its fiscal advantages. Even before Bill C-7 entered into force, the country’s Parliamentary Budget Officer published a report about the cost savings it would create: whereas the old Maid regime saved $86.9 million per year – a ‘net cost reduction’, in the sterile words of the report – Bill C-7 would create additional net savings of $62 million per year. Healthcare, particular for those suffering from chronic conditions, is expensive; but assisted suicide only costs the taxpayer $2,327 per ‘case’. And, of course, those who have to rely wholly on government-provided Medicare pose a far greater burden on the exchequer than those who have savings or private insurance.

In 2016, Canada passed a law allowing assisted suicide only for those who suffer from a terminal illness whose natural death was ‘reasonably foreseeable’. The Spectator reports:

It only took five years for the proverbial slope to come into view, when the Canadian parliament enacted Bill C-7, a sweeping euthanasia law which repealed the ‘reasonably foreseeable’ requirement – and the requirement that the condition should be ‘terminal’. Now, as long as someone is suffering from an illness or disability which ‘cannot be relieved under conditions that you consider acceptable’, they can take advantage of what is now known euphemistically as ‘medical assistance in dying’ for free.

Soon enough, Canadians from across the country discovered that although they would otherwise prefer to live, they were too poor to improve their conditions to a degree which was acceptable.

Not coincidentally, Canada has some of the lowest social care spending of any industrialised country, palliative care is only accessible to a minority, and waiting times in the public healthcare sector can be unbearable, to the point where the same Supreme Court which legalised euthanasia declared those waiting times to be a violation of the right to life back in 2005.

Many in the healthcare sector came to the same conclusion. Even before Bill C-7 was enacted, reports of abuse were rife. A man with a neurodegenerative disease testified to Parliament that nurses and a medical ethicist at a hospital tried to coerce him into killing himself by threatening to bankrupt him with extra costs or by kicking him out of the hospital, and by withholding water from him for 20 days. Virtually every disability rights group in the country opposed the new law. To no effect: for once, the government found it convenient to ignore these otherwise impeccably progressive groups.

Since then, things have only gotten worse. A woman in Ontario was forced into euthanasia because her housing benefits did not allow her to get better housing which didn’t aggravate her crippling allergies. Another disabled woman applied to die because she ‘simply cannot afford to keep on living’. Another sought euthanasia because Covid-related debt left her unable to pay for the treatment which kept her chronic pain bearable – under the present government, disabled Canadians got $600 in additional financial assistance during Covid; university students got $5,000.

When the family of a 35-year-old disabled man who resorted to euthanasia arrived at the care home where he lived, they encountered ‘urine on the floor… spots where there was feces on the floor… spots where your feet were just sticking. Like, if you stood at his bedside and when you went to walk away, your foot was literally stuck.’ According to the Canadian government, the assisted suicide law is about ‘prioritis[ing] the individual autonomy of Canadians’; one may wonder how much autonomy a disabled man lying in his own filth had in weighing death over life.

Canada’s lavishly subsidised media, with some honourable exceptions, has expressed remarkably little curiosity about the open social murder of citizens in one of the world’s wealthiest countries. Perhaps, like many doctors, journalists are afraid of being accused of being ‘unprogressive’ for questioning the new culture of death, a fatal accusation in polite circles. Canada’s public broadcaster, which in 2020 reassured Canadians that there was ‘no link between poverty, choosing medically assisted death’, has had little to say about any of the subsequent developments.

Next year, the floodgates will open even further when those suffering from mental illness – another disproportionately poor group – become eligible for assisted suicide, although enthusiastic doctors and nurses have already pre-empted the law. There is already talk of allowing ‘mature minors’ access to euthanasia too – just think of the lifetime savings.

The articles quoted here, first, make a clear case in refuting those who would hazard to state that slippery slopes are always a fallacy.

Secondly, we see principles opposed to each other, those that support death over life, that do not recognise the nobility of the human person despite poor health or a high level of disability, compared to principles that give rise to a generous community response in meeting the needs of fellow members of society, that encapsulate a vision of the human person as a noble entity in all instances. 

This is the choice members of society must make personally, and in teaching their children how to truly show respect to others, even when the elites in society manage to impose their agenda on a society that has lost its way.

💢 *The Spectator article is written by Yuan Yi Zhu, who is a senior research fellow at Policy Exchange’s Judicial Power Project and a researcher based at Nuffield College, Oxford.

💢 See also Journey to death should go all the way

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Abortion: what both sides do agree on

The reality of what an abortion destroys...a cluster of cells like all of us

Screaming down those who we think are wrong on the matter of abortion is self-defeating because it is an attack on our own right to free speech. To then argue that some speech—or the carrying of banners—is a form of violence in itself, and therefore is not worthy of respect is, again, undermining our own right to say what we regard as the truth.

In each society, the free flow of information and opinion—but not hate speech—is vital for the good health that is, the proper functioning of the corporate body, the community, in which we live and derive our well-being.

These thoughts arose a few days ago when I came across an argument relating to abortion, an argument dealing with what are often barbed slogans or catchcries that show the lack of thought by the person doing the declaiming.

That the fetus is not a person, that the fetus is simply part of  the mother's body, that the fetus is just a clump of cells, that abortion is a woman's right—all slogans that are more fashionable than factually true.

So let's look at some of these slogans, using for the sake of convenience, information on the website of the American organisation, Students for Life. The specific information we are using is available in full here:

Is the fetus a person? 

“Personhood” refers to the legal recognition of human beings in all stages of life—beginning at biological conception—as human persons having full natural and civil rights. Personhood is controversial to those who advocate abortion, for they view preborn humans as mere “clumps of cells” with no legal rights. All of us in the pro-life movement are for the full, legal recognition and protection of personhood for all human beings. It does not matter if these human “clumps of cells” are an embryo, toddler, adolescent, adult, or elderly person [My emphasis - BS].

What is unquestionable

Scientifically, abortion advocates cannot deny that a fetus (which is a Latin word meaning “young one”) conceived by two humans is anything other than a human. To do this would be to deny the fundamental law of biogenesis.

They must also admit that the new human is alive. A human zygote, embryo, fetus—all stages of pre-born life—align with the very definition of the word “life”, which is: “The condition that distinguishes animals and plants from inorganic matter, including the capacity for growth, reproduction, functional activity, and continual change preceding death.”

Abortion supporters have been trying to convince Americans that personhood laws would outlaw hormonal contraception because it can destroy a “fertilized egg,” not a human being. Yet, a fertilized egg is a human embryo. In fact, 95% of biologists, including pro-choice ones, agree that human life begins at the moment of fertilization—when the sperm and egg unite and create a genetically distinct human being. [Go to the linked article and read the study that provided this statistic about the scientific agreement on the start of each person's life as a human being.]

Dirty work at the crossroads 

Nearly 60 years ago, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists changed the definition of pregnancy to begin at the implantation of the human embryo into the mother’s uterine wall, not the moment of fertilization—conception—when a human life is formed.

This definition of pregnancy was carefully changed in order to allow a “cover” for IVF, cloning, stem cell research, hormonal birth control and birth control devices, and other reproductive debates. It’s conjectured that this decision was also in the interest of making sure Christians and other pro-life Americans would buy birth control without concern about its morality. The effect has been devastating and today, many Americans now confuse the moment of a person’s creation (fertilization) with that of when the embryo implants into the mother’s uterine wall a few days after (implantation).

Both sides agree on a key point

Abortion supporters often admit that science says the embryo or fetus is a human being. They just refuse to accept that the human being in question is a person with rights. Even the most ardent abortion proponents, such as Princeton philosopher Peter Singer, admit that science proves life begins at conception, but choose to deny personhood to these most defenseless of human beings.

As pro-lifers, we believe that a human being obtains personhood, inherently, at the moment of creation (fertilization/conception).  We know there are dangers when the state decides if a group of human beings are persons or not. Think back to slavery and the Holocaust – both of these cases displayed an instance in which the state determined the "level" of personhood afforded to certain groups of human beings.

We know that the size, level of development, environment, and degree of dependency of a human being should never determine whether or not that human receives personhood status.  So, yes, all pro-lifers are for “personhood.”

Personhood laws

Personhood laws that could be passed in the future would recognize that a human being becomes a person at the moment of fertilization. For pro-lifers, it seems like there would be no hesitation to vote “yes” on these bills. However, the debate rages among those in the “mushy” middle, and pro-abortion activists: would personhood laws ban birth control and IVF? 

If personhood laws pass, hormonal contraception will not be banned.  It is true that manufacturers of the birth control pill indicate openly that the pill is capable of causing early abortions by preventing implantation due to an artificially thin endometrium.  All evidence suggests this is true, therefore we oppose their use. However, if and when hormonal contraception is proven to destroy a human embryo, the state legislature would have to assemble all available evidence that it destroys a human person, and then pass concurrent legislation.

Other mislabeled “contraception” drugs and devices that have scientifically been proven to cause abortions, like [the morning-after pill] ella (www.ellacausesabortions.com) and IUDs, would be banned under this legislation, for part of their purpose is to destroy the human embryo. However, whether or not these would be banned immediately is anyone’s guess. The Legislature would have to pinpoint an instance in which one of these “contraception” methods worked as an abortifacient before this would happen.

If a personhood law were to pass, it is likely that a majority of IVF practices would be banned. Currently, many IVF practitioners take multiple eggs from a mother, create multiple embryos with the father’s sperm, and then implant 2-3 back into the mother, freezing or discarding the rest.  Learn more about IVF here. 

The most chilling notion that has been expressed recently about abortion is that even if the fetus is a human being, the mother should still be permitted to kill that being should she think some disruption to her life would occur by carrying the baby to full term. More horribly, some women go so far as to claim they have the right to kill the baby even after the birth.

I hope the argument presented here is useful in informing your understanding about what abortion involves. The ideas here are rarely aired in the mainstream media, which is besotted with the permissive stance of those who illogically claim rights in areas of life where there is no scientific, factual or moral basis for destroying life that is human. Fundamentally, rights cannot be invented for the purpose of shirking a responsibility to a fellow human, no matter the age of that "clump of cells", a topic of some sensitivity for me personally, being a member of the baby boomer generation!

Ω See full photo Mart Production at Pexels

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Social warfare demands fresh perspectives

A pair of colliding galaxy clusters about 2.8 billion light years from Earth. Credit: NASA

We need a way of clearing our eyes and mind of the clutter of these turbulent times, says a connoisseur of the riches of the creative world, American Maria Popova. 

Popova would agree that every era in history has its trials and tribulations but from time to time there are peak moments where something deeply transformative occurs, or where the struggle for change foments turbulence that shakes the foundations of a nation, a society or a group of both. This is one those times when the members of many societies feel threatened by those wanting to impose a "new world order" on them.

The turbulence of the present time observed in WEIRD societies in particular, is caused by the rise of a new style of thought that disavows the open-mindedness and readiness to compromise that makes possible the fraternity of a healthy society and the balanced functioning of democracy. The acronym stands for Western, educated, industrialised, rich, and democratic.

Instead, there is a rigid adherence to a thin ideology, that for the time being, has altered politics, economics, religion and literature. What we know as Wokeism is all very disturbing because its underpinning ideology, termed Critical Theory, arose as a Marxist-inspired movement among German academics in the 1920s but which soon moved its centre of study to the United States. (See here and here).

Popova has been producing over many years an online newsletter called The Marginalian, formerly Brain Pickings. Having survived a difficult year personally, and being an observer of the anguish in the wider society, she offered her enthusiastic readers some reflections on how to survive when the world around them is in deep trouble.

Most Western citizens would perceive the trouble in their societies as being provoked by the elitist Critical Theory movement, which is a scourge for society not because of the criticism of social structures and the identification of oppression, but because of the manner of promoting social change. Liberty, fraternity and equality are being undermined by the moral deregulation of society on the one hand, but on the other, the imposition of a set of moral invigilators, high on sanctimony in that a distorted world view is at odds with a sense of the nobility of the ordinary person. 

With academia influencing education leaders, and denizens of the media, especially of the mainstream media, the corporate sector quickly fell in step.

Popova, who migrated from Bulgaria, writes in the aftermath of her year confronting multiple difficulties:

Through it all, I have found solace in taking a more telescopic view — not merely on the short human timescale of my own life, looking back on having lived through a Communist dictatorship and having seen poems composed and scientific advances made under such tyrannical circumstances, but on far vaster scales of space and time.

For perspective of how minor and temporary our troubles are in the larger scheme of things, Popova contemplates the Voyager mission NASA launched in 1977 "with the scientific objective of photographing the planets of the outer solar system, which furnished the very first portrait of our cosmic neighborhood". She continues:

Human eyes had never before been laid on the arresting aquamarine of Uranus, on Neptune’s stunning deep-blue orb, on the splendid fury of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot — a storm more than threefold the size of our entire planet, raging for three hundred years, the very existence of which dwarfs every earthly trouble.

Jupiter's Great Red Spot, a raging storm three and a half times the size of Earth captured in 1979, by Voyager 1. Photo: NASA/JPL

As well as exploration, Voyager had "another, more romantic mission", says Popova:

Aboard it was the Golden Record — a time-capsule of the human spirit encrypted in binary code on a twelve-inch gold-plated copper disc, containing greetings in the fifty-four most populist human languages and one from the humpback whales, 117 images of life on Earth, and a representative selection of our planet’s sounds, from an erupting volcano to a kiss to Bach — and [a] Bulgarian folk song.

Bulgaria is an old country — fourteen centuries old, five of which were spent under Ottoman yoke. This song, sung by generations of shepherdesses, encodes in its stunning vocal harmonies both the suffering and the hope with which people lived daily during those five centuries. You need not speak Bulgarian in order to receive its message, its essence, its poetic truth beyond the factual details of history, in the very marrow of your being.

To capture the environment from which such a song erupts, Popova attaches this photo of a Bulgarian sunflower field:

Popova comments: 

Carl Sagan, who envisioned the Golden Record, had precisely that in mind — he saw the music selection as something that would say about us what no words or figures could ever say, for the stated objective of the Golden Record was to convey our essence as a civilization to some other civilization — one that surmounts the enormous improbabilities of finding this tiny spacecraft adrift amid the cosmic infinitude, of having the necessary technology to decode its message and the necessary consciousness to comprehend it.

But the record’s unstated objective, which I see as the far more important one, was to mirror what is best of humanity back to itself in the middle of the Cold War, at a time when we seemed to have forgotten who we are to each other and what it means to share this fragile, symphonic planet.

When the Voyager completed its exploratory mission and took the last photograph — of Neptune — NASA commanded that the cameras be shut off to conserve energy. But Carl Sagan had the idea of turning the spacecraft around and taking one final photograph — of Earth. Objections were raised — from so great a distance and at so low a resolution, the resulting image would have absolutely no scientific value. But Sagan saw the larger poetic worth — he took the request all the way up to NASA’s administrator and charmed his way into permission.

The "Pale Blue Dot" is a photograph of Earth taken by Voyager at a distance of 3.7 billion miles (6 billion kilometers) from the Sun. Photo enhanced: NASA/Caltech

And so, on Valentine’s Day of 1990, just after Bulgaria’s Communist regime was finally defeated after nearly half a century of reign, the Voyager took the now-iconic image of Earth known as the “Pale Blue Dot” — a grainy pixel, “a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam,” as Sagan so poetically put it when he immortalized the photograph in his beautiful “Pale Blue Dot” monologue from Cosmos — that great masterwork of perspective, a timeless reminder that “everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was… every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician” lived out their lives on this pale blue dot. And every political conflict, every war we’ve ever fought, we have waged over a fraction of this grainy pixel barely perceptible against the cosmic backdrop of endless lonesome space.

Popova has a fitting way to conclude her article, "In Praise of the Telescopic Perspective: A Reflection on Living Through Turbulent Times":

In the cosmic blink of our present existence, as we stand on this increasingly fragmented pixel, it is worth keeping the Voyager in mind as we find our capacity for perspective constricted by the stranglehold of our cultural moment. [...]

I don’t think it is possible to contribute to the present moment in any meaningful way while being wholly engulfed by it. It is only by stepping out of it, by taking a telescopic perspective, that we can then dip back in and do the work which our time asks of us.

I can only add that my wish is that those who are so enamoured of the Christian principles of justice, respect for the poor, weak and marginalised—as in the history of Christian care of the sick, of widows and orphans—should respect the whole body of Christian teaching and act in the spirit of love and empathy, not only for those suffering but also for those who are seen to be the antagonists. My plea is that advocates of the application of Critical Theory social activism absorb Popova's cosmic perspective in the spirit of communion that Martin Luther King displayed instead of thrusting Marxist diktats on a society they no longer understand.

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Pay inequality highlights broken world of work

But with a will, there's a way to limit gross inequality. Graphic: Reuters

We don't have to be slaves to our job. Working pay and benefits are something that we have the power to change, even though that power has to be gained in a struggle of wills between self-interested managers and investors, and those who actually produce the desired outcomes. In this struggle the government also has an important role.

The matter to remember is that working people are agents of their own destiny, as history bears testimony. US economist Dora Costa notes:

The length of the work day fell sharply between the 1880s, when the typical worker labored 10 hours a day, 6 days a week, and 1920, when his counterpart worked an 8-hour day, 6 days a week. By 1940 the typical work schedule was 8 hours a day, 5 days a week.

“That I should be so lucky!” might be an employee’s response to such figures, but overall reductions in work time came with increases in vacations, holidays, sick days, personal leave, and earlier retirement. Making this possible has been increases in productivity and the political adoption of regulations that limit working hours. 

A data-crunching organisation comments:

As the economists Diane Coyle and Leonard Nakamura explain, the study of working hours is crucial not only to measure macroeconomic productivity, but also to measure economic well-being beyond economic output. A more holistic framework for measuring ‘progress’ needs to consider changes in how people are allowed to allocate their time over multiple activities, among which paid work is only one.

The insight that employees are to a large extent agents of their own destiny with regards their working life is important to appreciate as more than 3000 employees of 70 British businesses begin a trial of a four-day work week. 

Second, the results are just out of the massive CEO versus employee pay gap in the United States. In the set of companies examined, the gap grew last year to 670 to 1, compared with 604 to 1 the previous year.

In my post last month,Economy of Communion - people before riches, I showed how business leaders are increasingly following their consciences and structuring their operations to benefit their employees more equitably, but also to recognise the needs of their community. 

This is done by rejecting Milton Friedman's principle that a business had a responsibility only to its owners, that is, the investors, an idea popular with managers, who tap into that source of selective wealth-building through share-related remuneration. 

However, with the multitude of resignations besetting companies and the appeal of home working for many people, it is clear that businesses have to look afresh at how to shape their business practices to show respect for the human, personal, family needs of employees, going beyond the myopic focus on output. Output, yes, but as always, in all areas of life, balance is key to success. So we mustn't forget the need to "sharpen the saw".

The gig economy is also a growing factor in the lives of many families. Thorough scrutiny of this sector needs to occur to ensure that the workers are not exploited, the many generating wealth for the few.   

So let's use the statistics just out from the US Institute of Policy Studies to see how gross inequality is occurring in the world's biggest economy. 

As the Guardian reports, the institute ...

... found the wage gap between chief executives and workers at some of the US companies with the lowest-paid staff grew even wider last year, with CEOs making an average of $10.6m, while the median worker received $23,968.

[T]he average gap between CEO and median worker pay jumped to 670-to-1 (meaning the average CEO received $670 in compensation for every $1 the worker received). The ratio was up from 604-to-1 in 2020. Forty-nine firms had ratios above 1,000-to-1.

At more than a third of the companies surveyed, IPS found that median worker pay did not keep pace with inflation.

This news report has illuminating information about how the gap continues to widen:

The report, titled Executive Excess, comes amid a wave of unionization efforts among low wage workers and growing scrutiny of the huge share buyback programs many corporations have been using to inflate their share prices. US companies announced plans to buy back more than $300bn of their own shares in the first quarter of the year and Goldman Sachs has estimated that buybacks could top $1 trillion in 2022.

Share-related remuneration makes up the largest portion of senior executive compensation and as buybacks generally boost a company’s share price, they also boost executive pay. Senator Elizabeth Warren has called buybacks “nothing but paper manipulation” designed to increase executive pay.

The report found that two-thirds of low-wage corporations that cut worker pay in 2021 also spent billions inflating CEO pay through stock buybacks.

The biggest buyback firm was home improvement chain Lowe’s, which spent $13bn on share repurchases. That money could have given each of its 325,000 employees a $40,000 raise, according to IPS. Instead, median pay at the company fell 7.6% to $22,697.

Americans are concerned about what is going on, perhaps another cause of public alienation from traditionally respected institutions:

“CEOs’ pandemic greed grab has sparked outrage among Americans across the political spectrum,” said report lead author Sarah Anderson, director of the IPS Global Economy Project. She cited one recent poll that showed that 87% of Americans see the growing gap between CEO and worker pay as a problem for the country. 

Political action and resurrecting unions are key to answering the wealth grab the IPS report highlights.

But action in other directions is also necessary. To give more attention to the well-being of employees  as a counter-balance to the drive for output and therefore profit is also essential as the evidence mounts of  the loss of a sense of solidarity within society. 

This gives us reason to look more closely at innovations such as the four-day work week, where personal well-being is central to its operation. To cite one completed trial:

In 2018, New Zealand estate planners Perpetual Guardian entered their 240 staff into a four-day-work week trial, resulting in 78% of them saying they were able to better manage their work-life balance. 

As for the British trial just starting:

More than 3,000 workers across 70 companies are starting a four-day week today, on full pay, in the world's biggest pilot scheme, as the nation struggles with more job vacancies than staff available. 

The programme is being coordinated by campaign group 4 Day Week Global, think tank Autonomy and academics at Oxford, Cambridge and Boston College in the US. 

There are a range of businesses and charities taking part, including the Royal Society of Biology, hipster London brewery Pressure Drop, Southampton computer game developer Yo Telecom, a Manchester medical devices firm, and a fish and chip shop in Norfolk. 

Staff will be given 100 per cent pay for 80 per cent of their time — but they have made a commitment to produce 100 per cent of their usual output.

The team of researchers involved in the new pilot will study each company and assess the impact on staff, including stress and burnout, job and life satisfaction, health, sleep, energy use, travel.

They will also look gender equality, with the four-day week thought to benefit women, who make up a higher proportion of part-time and flexible-hours staff.  

The wider view of what employing people is all about comes through in comments by organisers of the trial:

Joe O'Connor, the chief executive of 4 Day Week Global, said the [United Kingdom] is at the crest of a wave of global momentum behind the four-day week.  

'As we emerge from the pandemic, more and more companies are recognising that the new frontier for competition is quality of life, and that reduced-hour, output-focused working is the vehicle to give them a competitive edge.   

'The impact of the "great resignation" is now proving that workers from a diverse range of industries can produce better outcomes while working shorter and smarter.' 

It's not just small businesses that can cope with the organisational demands of a four-day work week:

In August 2019, Microsoft Japan implemented a four-day week giving their 2,300 employees five Fridays off in a row.

The company said productivity jumped 40 per cent, meetings were more efficient, and workers - who were also happier - took less time off.

Nine out of ten employees at the company said they preferred the shorter working week and other benefits, including a 23 per cent reduction in weekly electricity use, and a 59 per cent decrease in the number of pages printed by employees, which were also welcomed by employers.

This kind of empathetic arrangement of employees' working week stands in contrast with the stance taken by the Chinese tech entrepreneur Jack Ma, who at least advocated if not imposed on his employees that they have a 9-9-6 routine. That meant a 9am to 9pm daily attendance, six days a week, a total of 72 hours a week.

According to Wikipedia, "A number of Mainland Chinese internet companies have adopted this system as their official work schedule. Critics argue that the 9-9-6 working hour system is a violation of Chinese Labour Law and have called it "modern slavery". It added that "9-9-6 was deemed illegal by China's Supreme People's Court on 27 August 2021".  

The court spoke out based on the court action employees took against their companies:

 “We are seeing a strong trend towards encouraging people to use the court system to go after tech companies. We think civil litigation will increase,” said Kendra Schaefer, head of digital research at consultancy Trivium China.

Collective action in support of the common good is needed to provide a balance those enjoying power derived from wealth and political influence.  

💢 See a White Paper on the four-day work week here 

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