If I could draw people – if I could
draw anything at all, for that matter – I think I’d create a pair of comic-strip
characters who I’d name Ebb and Flo. Modelled both pictorially and editorially
after Herman, by the late Jim Unger, Ebb and Flo would editorialize
current affairs by imagining the effects of the world on the couple as
representatives of the hapless and hopeless among us.
Ebb and Flo would allow me to
characterize our world in subtle ways. They’d enable me to explore the murky
depths of our 21st-century human condition. Obviously, Flo would be
the sensible, stable partner to Ebb’s masculine misadventures.
Take as a sample subject the ironies
that sometimes emerges through the urban-rural divide – especially the ways
that divide reveals itself through political dynamics. Make no mistake, there is
an urban-rural divide, and it gets studied a lot – including by me in
another life – and is often referred to as centre-periphery dialectics.[1]
While this realm of study doesn’t
have a whole lot to do with my characters, Ebb and Flo, it does have a great
deal to do with the ebb and flow of culture. Attitudes, ideas, social mores and
education differ between urban and rural sensibilities, and the ways of the
world in general.
I’ve long been fascinated by an
idea that Western civilization in North America – both urban and rural – tends
to emulate the tides. Supposedly, Europeans (and their influences) encroached
on the Americas from east to west – though I often wish we would consider the
possibility that “civilization” (as we are indoctrinated to call it) actually developed
west to east. To that way of thinking, migrant ancients from what we know as
the Americas resettled and developed Eurasia. Maybe the ancients we have
come to know as indigenous to the Americas were first, people who in their
wisdom declined to migrate across the Atlantic, in favour of the natural riches
they already enjoyed here, preserving their traditional ways to great
satisfaction, advantage and longevity. In that imaginable scenario they were later
(re)colonized when their now “civilized” descendants ran out of room and
resources and sought to reclaim the motherlands – to reclaim their indigenous
inheritance of resources.
If archaeologist Paulette Steeves[2]
is right, and indigenous peoples have called this continent home for as long as
120,000 years, is it not possible that civilization as we know it began right
here? A human tide that ebbed and flowed. Just a thought.
But that thought is not the topic
of this essay but the notion of tidal and human ebb and flow is (the topic).
Accepting the recorded history of
North America, we see that the newcomers (Europeans) arrived on the eastern
seaboard and as we increasingly (and greedily) sought more room and resources
we flowed gradually westward like an incoming human tide.
The first wave or waves populated
and exploited the most desirable lands of this frontier according to the mode
of transportation available at the time. So, starting at the waters’ edge, each
successive human wave accessed and exploited prime lands and locales. They (we)
occupied those prime lands and waters to their limits, and migrants pushed a
little farther westward. Flow, settle, exploit, repeat.
Each wave increased the wealth of
those who were first; they became centres of wealth and power – the front tier
of development. Those who followed had no choice but to exploit the next tier,
sometimes referred to as the back tier. With each wave, and with each advance
and innovation of transportation and communication, successive waves pushed
farther and farther westward until barred from further exploitation by the
Pacific Ocean.
Now what? The edge of the continent
could not stem the continuous flow of westward migration of those who followed
from the east. While picturing this flow, consider the western spread of daylight
and warmth with the globe’s rotation, as though preceding migrant peoples and
prosperity westward.
Continuing with the metaphor of the
tides, imagine for a moment what happens when a pan of water sets up a wave
motion. When a wave has gone as far as it can go it flows back. So do we
humans, which must be very confusing to wildlife that in their state of nature
endure encroachment and all the destructive forces that go with it, followed by
a period of calm as people get settled, and then … we’re ba-ack!
During the recent (2019-20223)
COVID-19 pandemic (or is that panic?) many areas in the east saw a large
wave of people return from the west, an influx (maybe that’s re-flux) of people
seeking to get out of the path of each wave of illness. (Maybe that’s where the
word pathogen comes from.) So, thousands of urbanites wishing to reduce their
exposure flowed rurally, from centre to periphery. The efficiencies and wealth
found at the centre suddenly became less desirable and the sometimes bucolic
peripheral countryside became desirable. People and wealth flowed back like the
water in the pan.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, the
backflow didn’t last for a lot of the panicked pandemic migrants. Initially
caught up in the attraction of calmer waters, a great many urbanites couldn’t
anchor, and they drifted back to more familiar (more urban) territory.
Accustomed to pace and quantity, like so many others, urban escapees couldn’t
handle the peace and quiet. In their wake, like so much flotsam and jetsam, we
rural dwellers are left shaking our collective heads in disbelief and wonder.
Among the things that have bobbed to the surfaced after the flood is our taxes.
Property taxes are pegged to real estate value – perceived value, that is – not
to the services those taxes pay for. Inflated demand, inflated prices, inflated
taxes. But that’s another day’s rant.
~~
Instead, I want to focus just on
the idea that there is an ebb and flow to a great many things. That doesn’t
mean we should favour nihilism – the “what will be will be” or “what goes
around comes around” philosophies of life – because each rise and fall is just
a little changed. We must consider that. Each arc of even the most balanced of
pendulums must decay ever-so-slightly, if imperceptibly.
Have you taken note of recent local
vs global rebellions taking place in some popular European tourist sunspots
(pun intended)? Fed up with waiting in long lines to pay high prices for local
service, small “gangs” of “locals” have taken to disgorging tourists from
outdoor cafés and bars by shooting at them with squirt guns![3]
(Is it bad that I found this to be rather funny?)
Frustratingly, as much as we know
from previous swings of the pendulum – we don’t always heed the fact that
“we’ve been here before.”
Take conflict, for example –
perhaps as a prime example. With all that history teaches us, how can we not
have learned that aggression comes back to bite? Given what we know of
multi-generational trauma, how can we not have learned how to avoid war? How
can anyone ignore the fact that every bullet fired ricochets – albeit
metaphorically – and injures the aggressor?
~~
At the apex of each swing of the
pendulum, the tide turns. History repeats itself. When Franz Kafka was asked
about the seeming hopelessness of his vision for the world, he said: “Oh, there
is hope, an infinite amount of hope, just not for us.”[4]
It doesn’t do anyone any good to perpetuate
conflict. Advance, defend, repeat. We have but a moment, a split second, to
alter that course, to set in motion a revised trajectory. In Canada we are
learning. Through our actions (and inactions) with respect to Indigenous
rights, mental well-being, human health, our changing climate, etc., etc., the
pendulum pauses, if only for a moment.
What I really want to get to is the
spiralling decay of global relations, the inability of our salaried leaders to
cope with the apex of the pendulum of their powers, and therefore engage, like
adolescents, in risky behaviour. Beware the pendulum, it swings for thee.
How can the leaders and commanders
on all sides of conflict not comprehend that every bullet, every injury, every
death comes back to haunt us. I say ‘us’ because in sometimes roundabout ways, all
have had a role to play in this. Each time we pull the trigger, each trauma
inflicted on another contributes to trauma that will fester and foster
retaliation. Even if the immediate cause is long forgotten, the id does not
forget. Remember the adage, “the sins of the fathers who hate.”[5]
Every terror-stricken or orphaned
child is a ticking timebomb – on all sides. If, as I suggest, every belligerent
act is predictably met with defensiveness manifest in aggression, if that is
inevitable, should our leaders not be choosing a different path? To my mind,
every bullet fired is fired against the gunman and against one’s own. As oft
quoted editorial artist Walt Kelly said through his Pogo comic strip, “I
have seen the enemy, he is us.”
Masquerading as civilized, cultures
will forever be on the defensive, dooming this and future generations to be
forever looking over their shoulders, forever suspicious of anyone and
everyone. And I repeat, this applies to all the parties. The pendulum tolls
“for thee.”[6]
Do aggressors think they can defy
the laws of physics by turning back the clock? Like the pendulum, history doesn’t
repeat itself precisely. Beware the folly of pretending it does. The
circumstances surrounding contemporary conflicts are different, but at least
one common outcome is assured: years of trauma that will surface time and time
again, causing more death and destruction without end, amen.
~~
What of my characters, Ebb and Flo?
It’s true that they are still in development, I still have to find an artist to
take up the cause, but everyone is so darned busy trying to just stay afloat. We
just have to wait our turn, we three, and hope that the pendulum keeps on
swinging and that the powers that be can catch it at the right moment and give
us some hope. Everything flows and nothing abides.”[7]
=30=
[1] The rural-urban divide is sometimes debated as
dialectic – a method of determining the interrelationship of ideals in “light
of a single principle” (e.g., black and white). By making logical and
methodological comparisons we can fairly examine two sides of a story or
theory. William, R. 1983. Keywords (Oxford University Press).
[2] Steeves, Paulette, The Indigenous Paleolithic of
the Western Hemisphere (University of Nebraska Press/Algoma University, CBC
Ideas, January 13, 2022.) Link to story.
[3] “Barcelona anti-tourism protesters fire water pistols
at visitors” (CNN Travel July 9, 2024). Link to story.
[4] Kafka, Franz. The Metamorphosis. With a
forward by David Cronenberg (WW Norton 2014).
[5] I am not a believer and therefore do not subscribe to
the notion that the bible is anything more than literate wisdoms, but Deuteronomy
5:9 reads: “punish the children, the grandchildren and the great-grandchildren
for the sins of their fathers who hate.”
[6] “…it tolls for thee” John Donne (1572-1631), English
poet. The tolling of church bells, which signified the death of another human
life, is a toll for each of us, as we are all bound to the same fates.
[7] Heraclitus, ca. 6th C, BC.
