Do societies have a tipping point?

The changeeverything.ca website had a poll on environmental change and tipping points which got me wondering if societies have a tipping point. Is there a point at which the imbalances within a society become so pronounced that a massive rebalancing with its attendant “natural disasters” is unavoidable?

At this point in considering this question I am not exactly sure what such a rebalancing would look like, but it would undoubtedly be chaotic with a frightening potential for violence.

In previous generations there was the promise and real opportunity of improving ones life, especially for your children. This current generation will be the first generation getting less from their parent’s generation than their parents received form the grandparent’s generation. Where once the future held the promise of the stars, for current and future generations it now promises only a shrinking world and increasing competition for evermore scarce and costly resources.

There are also the far-reaching economic, environmental and sociological effects of climate change being bequeathed to the future.

A fair and balance society would have the flexibility to deal with and adapt to the changing world, to the stresses and strains of a diminished and diminishing future. Unfortunately our society and social structure has become imbalanced as never before in our history as a nation. What is it that leads me to conclude our society is so out of balance that we, as a society, need be concern about redressing the balance before anarchy erupts in the form of class warfare?

The wealth of the nation has become concentrated in the hands of a small percentage of the population and that concentration continues to increase.

Upward mobility is fast becoming a concept of the past except for a lucky few who in effect “strike it rich”. Prior to this time hard work and effort held out the promise of an improved economic situation. In Vancouver today there is an entire group of workers who even though working full (or over) time cannot afford housing the city they work in. This is also holds true in Abbotsford where I am aware of those forced to live homeless by hard, cold economic reality. Their housing and other choices narrowed and complicated by the fact they are working full time.

Other working people find themselves being ground down into homelessness and poverty by groaning debt loads. Yes a portion of that debt burden is often the result of poor money management, but all to much of it stems from the onerous cost of housing.

Despite our pretence of being a classless society we are becoming a class society – an economic class society.

I. The privileged moneyed class whose power is a function of their control over the wealth of the nation.

II. The operating class, those whose education, skills and talents are needed for the operation of society and by the moneyed class.

III. The working class, the drones who perform the day-to-day labour required to run society. Kept in a kind of debt slavery but their large, sometimes overwhelming debt owed to the moneyed class.

IV. The throwawayclass. The boogeymen and women whose spectre is used to keep the workers in line. Increasingly these days the very real fear of falling into this class serves to drive and distract the working class drones.

Just a few decades ago the distribution of people from poorest to richest was more of a continuum: poorest .................................................richest.

The above continuum held the inherent promise of an ability to move upwards (or downwards) along the continuum. During the past few decades this continuum, with its promise of moving up the continuum, has begun to break-up and form “economic planets” around points I – IV above. Like the planets of our solar system these “economic planets”, or classes, are separated by wide distances with their current orbital trajectories taking them further away from each other over time.

The old adage “The rich are getting richer and poor are getting poorer” has never been truer. Except that currently “the poor” has expanded to include the working class, not just those living in poverty. Even the most basic shelter has become so costly that our streets are being inhabited by people working full time, even overtime, but still unable to afford shelter.

The middle class as we knew it is an endangered species having all but disappeared. Along with this many are facing the disappearance of retirement, facing the need to continue working or face the real risk of a descent into poverty, homelessness and finding themselves joining the growing ranks of retirees depending on the Salvation Army and their local Food Bank for their daily bread.

We have become a society of economic classes with the differences between these economic classes growing. As the separation between the classes grows the economic fairness, indeed the fairness of our society itself is decreasing at a faster and faster pace becoming more pronounced and in your face day by day.

How much unfairness can our society contain before it begins to come apart at its seams, along the splits between the classes? At what point does society have lost so much cohesion that it begins to fly apart?

At a time when circumstances in the world are placing increased strain on Canadian society, when we need to pull together as a society and country as never before, we are becoming less of a society – indeed in many ways less Canadian.

These increasing internal and external stresses are beginning to tear at the fabric of our society, pulling us apart. If we sit around ignoring this reality because it is uncomfortable and unpleasant we will find our society has become uncivil to the point where a form of civil war between the classes inescapably breaks out.

A rebalancing of the economic class structure we have allowed to be born will be uncomfortable, especially dealing with wealth concentration where the wealth of Canada needs to be spread more fairly throughout all levels of Society. Will we achieve this rebalancing in a Canadian manner or wait until chaos erupts? How close are we to the societal tipping point? Have we passed the point where we can have any control over the rebalancing of economic and societal fairness? Is economic warfare between the classes now inevitable?

Community = ???

During this past week, first at a tele-learning session and then at a planning session for Vibrant Abbotsford, the word community was bandied about. I began to wonder about several questions: does community always mean the same thing or does it take on varying meanings depending on usage or context, even when it is the same person using the word; how much difference in what they mean by community is there between different people, even when they are speaking about the same set of circumstances or conditions; how many of those who use the word community have actually stopped to consider what they mean in using the word community; are any of cities of those groups affiliated with the Vibrant movement actually living in a community in more than a geographical sense?

We develop learning plans to learn about the extent and character of poverty, attitudes towards poverty and the assets available to reduce poverty all in our communities. Are we failing to ask the most important question of all: do we live in a community or just a collection of buildings and people in a convenient geographical spot? Is not the existence of community fundamental to any poverty reduction?

In writing www.homelessinabbotsford.com I have asserted that Abbotsford is not a community in more than a geographical sense. That in fact Abbotsford is the most unfriendly and unwelcoming city I have lived in, having lived in many major Canadian cities including Toronto. I have advanced the argument that the behaviours of the numerous churches make a major contribution to the lack of community in Abbotsford. In a city that prides itself on the number of churches within its boundaries, this line of reasoning has caused some members and leaders of these organizations to be less than happy with me.

Why do I make this assertion? All these churches provide focal points for their members to form separate groups (cliques) turning inward and away from their fellow citizens in an exclusionary way. With the large number of churches in Abbotsford, this behaviour of turning inward to focus on a single church based group and exclude ties to non-members, makes these churches a major barrier to Abbotsford becoming a Community.

For is not Community rooted in interconnectedness? Organizations or practices that discourage widespread connectedness in favour of exclusionary small circles of people with barriers between them and others contribute greatly to Abbotsford’s failure to become a Community.

This interconnectedness, this sense of Community is not something that exists only in our past as suggested by all those who long for “the old days, when neighbour helped neighbour”. It thrives in our smaller towns and cities and exists in some larger municipalities which have the required citizen behaviours.

At one point I was mixed farming on a farm 50 kms outside Boyle, Alberta. As a small town of 3 - 400 Boyle was the booming metropolis for the region and the Postal delivery center. Less than two weeks after I arrived on the farm, without ever having been into Boyle itself, a letter from a great aunt of mine addressed simply to James Breckenridge, Boyle Alberta arrived without delay. What made this noteworthy was that in order to get delivered the address should have the rural route #, the location box number and the individual post box number within the location box.

Without me ever being in Boyle itself the postmistress was aware of my arrival and location because of the interconnectedness of the Community. Note that the “community of Boyle” encompassed hundreds of square kilometres and the widespread farms and ranches within that area. Community then is not defined by a neat centralized geographic location but by the interconnectedness of those who form or make up the Community.

I tend to get strange looks when I say that perhaps my favourite city to live within in Canada is Saskatoon, which is admittedly a little chilly in winter. For me this coolness of temperature was more than offset by the warmth of the Community. I suspect that a contributing factor is that many residents are from farms or rural communities and still have ties to those farms and communities. You also have a large University of Saskatchewan student population comprising a significant percentage of the City’s total population.

I drove into Saskatoon with a pickup truck full of clothing, music and books knowing no one in the City. Yet from the time, shortly after arrival, I found a place to live I felt connected to the City. My landlords were from a farming community and made me feel welcome, even part of the family. Considering my mental health issues this feeling of connection says a great deal about the welcome they extended. It also says something about the feeling of connectedness throughout the City that I felt and still feel a connection to the City.

The difference between Saskatoon and Abbotsford lies in interconnections. Saskatoon also had many sub-communities from Boy Scout troops and churches to the University - itself made up of many sub-communities. Yet Saskatoon, a City of similar size to Abbotsford, is a Community for the reason that its citizens are connected to the Community itself. In Saskatoon the subgroups by and large have and encourage connections to other groups, neighbours, neighbourhoods and the City itself.

In Abbotsford the subgroups by and large are exclusionary denying connection to others outside the subgroup with the result Abbotsford is comprised of a series of unconnected sub-groupings of people living in a geographical location with that geological location being the only commonality they share among the different subgroups or cliques. This lack of interconnectedness means Abbotsford requires leadership if it is to become a Community; leadership and vision to bring about the changes and interconnectedness to be a Community.

If Community is a result of interconnectedness is there another major factor we need to be aware of and take into consideration? Yes, the fact that this interconnectedness is not achieved without effort or cost.

I have heard people in Abbotsford speak covetously of those days when if a barn burned down all the neighbours turned out help rebuild. “Those were the good old days when community meant something” they rhapsodize. Then turn around and say “Oh I cannot help there or do that because I do not have time or that’s my movie night or I’m to tired or No I cannot miss MY TV show or …” As if community is state of nature requiring no effort to acheive.

Community is not about it being easy or requiring no effort or sacrifice. It is not all about you but about the Community. When they speak longingly of a community where neighbours turned out to help rebuild the barn, they ignore or refuse to see the sacrifices the neighbours made in order to help. The chores of the farmer from the neighbouring farm do not magically disappear or do themselves. After helping raise the barn he has to go home and do his own chores, putting in the long, extra hours it takes to make up the time he gave to help his neighbour.

We are losing our Communities not to growing complexity of society or growth in population and city size, but to our own concern for and centeredness on SELF. The more it becomes all about ME, the less connected we become to each other and our communities. We are losing our Communities to our own selfishness.

So why is this idea of Community so important? Because poverty reduction is going to require a willingness to make sacrifices for others in the Community, whether in volunteering one’s time, a willingness to pay slightly more for goods so that stores can pay living wages or perhaps a willingness to call upon companies you own stock in to pay as much attention to their employees and the communities they operate in as to the bottom line.

There remains another very important aspect of considering what community is/means. As noted in the second paragraph of this discussion paper, learning plans are about assessing the readiness of the Vibrant communities to undertake poverty reduction. Does it not follow that an integral part of any learning plan must be and examination of what we mean when we speak of Community? That we need to make a careful consideration of whether we live in a Community or merely occupy a geographical happenstance?

There are major implications that flow from the assertion made that in fact we live not in Communities but in collections of people whose commonality is, for the most part, limited to the position – the latitude and longitude – they occupy. If, Then. If interconnectedness and Community are vital to achieving the changes needed to affect poverty reduction on the micro or macro level; then we must bring about and sustain Community to accomplish anything, including poverty reduction.

In assuming a state of Community Vibrant Abbotsford and other Vibrant communities may well be doomed to endlessly spin their wheels, getting no traction for change because this fundamental assumption is, at least in my mind incorrect. While formulating and executing a learning plan is a necessary component of bringing about the changes needed for poverty reduction it is not the most crucial aspect. In fact up some circumstances the learning plan could prove useful but ultimately dispensable

I assert that the indispensable requisite condition is the existence of Community whether at a single geographical location or nation wide. It follows that any effort to effect poverty reduction requires this state of Community to exist at the level the attempted poverty reduction is being made. Therefore it is imperative that while Vibrant Abbotsford is following its learning plan it must also be bringing about a state of Community in Abbotsford. If not Vibrant Abbotsford will find itself with a completed learning plan but lacking a Community to make use of the knowledge flowing from the learning plan.

I would also assert that a careful consideration of the question of Community is a vital undertaking for all members of the Vibrant initiative, including Tamarack. Else we risk finding ourselves knowing at least some of the changes we need to effect to reduce poverty, but unable to bring about change because the essential enabling condition of Community is nonexistent.

Who are the/what is homeless?

We throw the term homeless around without stopping to think about exactly what the word homeless means. The way we view the homeless issue, the policies we design to deal with the issue and the effectiveness of these policies in reducing homelessness and its related social ills is directly affected by the definition of homeless. Defining homeless incorrectly will disguise the cause of these social ills resulting in misdiagnoses, with the result that your course of treatment or action will have no effect, may in fact worsen or perpetuate these ills.

Let’s frame this in terms of something we all have experience with: the common cold. Colds are viruses but many people run to their doctors demanding antibiotics to “cure” them in the mistaken belief antibiotics will cure a cold. The antibiotics have no effect on the cold, but as we have learned to our grief using antibiotics in this way has led to the development of super bacteria which many of our overused medications no longer affect.

If we look at the common cold as to what its true nature is, a virus, we know that frequent washing of hands and an awareness of how viruses spread is effective in combating the common cold. Similarly we need to define or see homeless in a way that reveals its true nature before we can begin to “cure” it.

Stop and consider for a moment: what is meant by homeless and of far more significance what should be meant by homeless. The definitions below are from Webster’s dictionary. Unfortunately for both the homeless, who remain homeless, and the taxpayers, whose money is wasted in ineffectual manners, politicians and policy makers focus on or use “sleep in the streets, parks, etc.”

Homeless: adj. having no home; without a permanent place of residence.**

the homeless: those typically poor or sometimes mentally ill people who are unable to maintain a place to live and therefore often may sleep in the streets, parks, etc.

The result of this is programs and actions such as the current focus on outreach programs designed to get the homeless into housing. Get them a place to stay and you have success right? Wrong. Placing somebody into housing when they are “unable to maintain a place to live” is a pointless exercise. It gives the appearance of doing something and taking action but accomplishes nothing. The only real things this type of approach, getting someone into housing for a month or two before the true nature of their illness causes them to lose their temporary housing, achieves is to waste the resources expended while allowing the homeless to multiply.

The important parts or concepts in the above definitions are “without a permanent place of residence” and “unable to maintain a place to live”.

The first portion “without a permanent place of residence” allows us to better see and appreciate the scope and the progress of this social ill. In many ways the visibly homeless are the tip of an iceberg of homeless. With a fluid, moving population that is motivated to remain out-of-sight and out-of-mind of the authorities it is impossible to count this population with any accuracy. This is reflected in the recent assertions that the actual number of those without shelter is 4 – 5 times the “official” numbers. Before we get bogged down in a fruitless, since you will never be able to count the homeless accurately enough to determine the actual number of “outdoors” homeless, arguments let us consider an important and very large group most fail to consider in their definition of homeless.

This group would consist of those with a place of residence but whose place of residence is without permanence. There are several residential treatment facilities in the Abbotsford, BC area. Among these clients some will be returning to family, jobs, homes etc. However a significant portion of these people have no permanent place of residence to return to. Are they not effectively homeless? Once they are out of treatment they are on their own and on the streets.

Think about the growing population of those who have lost their jobs, cannot afford their rent and will in the near future be evicted. Or those who cannot afford to pay their debts will soon face foreclosure and being on the streets. Do not forget those with mental health or addictions issues that will soon see them on the street. Consider the plight of the working poor who even though employed full time cannot afford the sky-high cost of housing in the Lower Mainland. Are not all these groups of people effectively homeless?

The object of this thinking exercise is not to run up the homeless count as high as possible. Rather it is to frame the true extent of the problem facing us. The Homeless population is growing and in looking at homeless in its most broad terms we can see the potential for a tidal wave of homeless pouring onto the streets, swamping the system with the potential for crime, violence and an escalating crisis.

This looming social crisis with its inherent possibility of disaster demands that we take effective action to begin to reduce the homeless population. We can no longer afford the practice of continuing to repeat, over and over, policies and programs that have demonstrated they do not work in the hope that by some miracle they will work THIS TIME. That is an insane way to behave and while this is normal government behaviour we can no longer, as a society, allow government to practice this insanity. The cost, the potential for disastrous consequences, has become too high.

We need to look to and consider the second point that flows out of the definitions for direction in creating an approach and programs to avoid the potential disaster. The second “unable to maintain a place to live” points us at what it is, the virus as it were, that we need to focus our efforts to affect a “cure” on. Sticking them into housing over and over and over again will accomplish nothing unless we address what it is that renders them “unable to maintain a place to live”.

Our programs must therefore be designed to allow the homeless to make the changes they need to make in themselves in order to be able to maintain their housing on a permanent basis. We know that this population has problems and issues that render them “unable to maintain a place to live” such as addictions, mental health challenges, behaviour problems, personal issues etc. We need to acknowledge that these are not easy difficulties to deal with and frame our terms of reference in a realistic manner.

The most important, overriding feature is the need for a realistic view of the time and support that is required to accomplish what must be done in order for the homeless to bring about the personal changes they need to make in order that they will be able to “maintain a place to live”. Only once they are capable of functioning in a manner permitting them to have a home on a permanent basis will they cease to be homeless.

My personal experience with mental illness and pursuing mental health has taught me just how much time, effort and support is required in this change/journey. Unless we begin to design our programs to address the homeless based on the reality of the critical need to invest time and support to bring about the needed personal changes the numbers of homeless will only continue to grow and accelerate until they spiral out of control.

We like to claim to be an intelligent species. If we wish to remain masters of our own fate on issues such as the homeless we need to stop business as usual and start acting in an intelligent manner on this and other pressing social, environmental and economic issues.