When we look back on the previous few days of turmoil it is tempting to feel that events are spinning faster and faster: the announcement of Canadian military action; the senseless deaths of a soldier in Quebec and a reservist in Ottawa. Now comes the moment of rhetorical strangeness, with Canadians at the eye of a storm of opinions. In the midst of all these media voices and citizen questions, the highly qualified members of our Federal Government will need to decide what their response to our situation will be. As a bureaucracy they represent the best of our skills: leaders and planners drawn most often from the highest ranks of academic achievement. Educated at the finest institutions; intellectually capable in every field; and able to call on the highest possible rank of advisers – as an organization, our Government is the most formidable mechanism for thinking in the country. And it is precisely this element that holds them back from coming to grips with this world of alienation and disaffection that leads to “radicalization”.
As a whole, they are simply too good at what they do to understand lives that never managed to engage with society. Commentators and Government statements are telling you that the Ottawa shooting is a means to a political end, and that the purpose of the Parliament shooting was to somehow affect democracy itself. I believe it to be simpler than that: it’s the final tantrum of a life mired in despair and paralyzed by lack of power. Early this morning the CBC showed a fascinating glimpse of his struggle with addiction and homelessness. Those who have never experienced the implacable despair of being closed off from the world simply can’t understand how failure can drive a person. When is the last time a senior adviser to the Prime Minister ever failed to meet his rent? Or been unable to find work? When is the last time anyone in an administration felt the despair of having nowhere to sleep?
Governments always hire the highest capacity people they can find, and rarely break that mold of excellence. Consequently as an institution, they cannot understand failure. Failure as the inability of a life to ever fully realize itself, being closed off from possibility, falling further and further outside of society until any extreme form of thought that promises relief from rage, hate and disappointment seems palatable. This is the fullness of failure: being driven so far by shame that you fall into any way of thinking that tells you that the fault lies in the world, in the country, in our leaders – in anything but ourselves.
When you examine major events happening around the globe you see a common thread: explosions of anger and sentiment from those that feel powerless, coupled with Government surprise. Our authorities were shocked when unhappy Russian citizens supported the militaristic actions of their President. They seemed shocked when new armies or militias of disaffected fighters spring up in Syria, Libya, or Nigeria.
We even see this closer to home in a far more glib reference: in Government and media disbelief that Rob and Doug ford still get a significant proportion of the populations’ votes. The Fords are said to get votes in spite of their many gaffes and failures, but the reality is that they get votes precisely because this quality makes them appealing to people who dislike the political class for the endless possibilities of their lives. All other serious Mayoral candidates are experts from an educated class of experts, part of a machine that only comprehends excellence.
If the Canadian government wants to understand and anticipate the world we live in right now, it needs to start hiring viewpoints that differ from individual excellence: different levels of education, of achievement, of possibility. Without this it will always be surprised by the next failure.
