Taboo, dignity and purpose

A judge from Augsburg, in Germany, has forbidden Gunther von Hagens from showing a couple of corpses having sex in the exhibition opening this month in the city. Von Hagens, medical doctor and Professor, invented the plastination technique, which allows to preserve corpses and display them in different postures, something he has been doing for pedagogic purposes in a number of exhibitions around the world, which bear the title of Koerperwelten. The judge claims the composition with the bodies shows contempt for human dignity.

As it happens, the exhibition has been open during the whole Summer in Berlin, where it raised no controversy, and one has to wonder why this part “shows contempt for human dignity” and other bodies displayed in the same exhibition playing the saxophone or catching a rugby ball do not. Perhaps the judge was influenced by two widespread taboos which play a role here, those of sex and death. However, in this region of the world freedom of expression is a paramount social value, and prohibiting an exhibition is a serious legal decision, which here would only be justified if it actually showed “contempt for human dignity”. It seems this is not the case.

The judge appears not to have taken into account the pedagogical purpose of the Koerperwelten exhibitions, which apparently has not offended the thousands of visitors that attend them each year in different countries and continents, which surely will have different perspectives regarding the representation of death. I attended one of these exhibitions years ago in Berlin and found it fascinating and very interesting. To judge by their attitude, the hundreds of other visitors that day had similar feelings.

In matters of freedom of expression, the rule should be “everything is allowed except…”, and the list of exceptions should be a minimum one, aimed at preserving human dignity, yes, but considering the matter on a case by case basis, and always assessing from an ethical point of view the purposes of the author and the coherence of means and ends. For instance, should we allow the display of explicit images of forced sex betwen adults and children, or of a human execution, devoid of any context? I would say we should not. Should one be free to show those images in, say, a movie, a book, an exhibition, etc., maybe not explicitly, in a meaningful context and with a purpose most would deem ethically acceptable? I would say one should.

I am well aware of the many caveats raised my choice of terms -”ethically acceptable”, “assesing purposes”, “coherence”-, and that this clearly is a moral minefield. However, a liberal system of values -the one we should cherish in our liberal societies- should hold freedom as its highest moral tenet, devising criteria -as morally sound as possible- aimed at making the list of exceptions to this rule a minimum one. Otherwise, it is all paternalism and censorship.

On a final note, I must admit that even the extreme examples I gave a couple of paragraphs before are not very useful to establish the moral boundaries of what we can legitimately display in the public realm. A few years ago, I attended an art exhibition in the P.S.1 museum in New York, which showed an excerpt of an old black and white movie in one of the rooms. In the film we could see a group of white hunters aboard an helicopter, flying above a tropical forest and shooting people with their rifles - apparently, members of an indigenous tribe, who run scared in all directions. Each time they hit one of them, the hunters would celebrate it blatantly. Brutal fictional images, I thought. However, these images became breathtakingly disgusting when minutes after I read the movie was not fictional: it was part of a recovered footage of real human hunting in the Amazon forest in the 70s, hunting for pleasure, as in a normal sport. Perhaps the judge of Augsburg would have censored this exhibition if it had taken place in his city, and for the very same reasons that lead him to censor part of von Hagens´ exhibition, but in doing so, he would have served very poorly the cause of human dignity, for the message the artist wanted to convey when showing this real movie -the radical, unthinkable and utmost inhumanity we could express towards our fellow individuals- reached this visitor deeply, and more so when this message was devoid of any obvious context (just the screen and some brief lines stating it was a real movie). The film itself rendered any description redundant from a moral point of view. Was this bare displaying obscene? Yes, it was. But it made us reflect on something -respect for human life- we carelessly take for granted, and this reflection started in our guts. Nothing short of sheer revulsion could have had such a moral effect.

Photo: Two corpses at the Koerperwelten exhibit in Berlin, 2009 © Koerperwelten.de

Freedom and civic courage

I still have many progressive acquaintances that purport to cherish freedom, but would never criticize autocratic regimes… if they happen to be “leftist”, that is. These people would do themselves a favor if they watched attentively the film The lives of others (Das Leben der Anderen, Germany, 2006, directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck). What would they say then about states that destroyed so meticulously the lives of so many people on behalf of socialism? Would they agree with the claim that building an egalitarian society required spying most citizens, looking at every aspect of private, individual lives, and locking up or eliminating all those over who fell the slightest shadow of a paranoic doubt of disloyalty to the regime, proof of what could often be the mere possesion of a Western newspaper? Perhaps they would try to convince themselves that this events happened long time ago, sidestepping the fact that the terrorist practices of the Eastern European socialist governments against their own citizens were in place until 1989, or that it was a corruption of the true ideas of socialism. But how to avoid linking the millions of lives destroyed by regimes like the former DDR with those being equally destroyed nowadays in Cuba, China or Venezuela, for instance? Those who experienced first hand the fear of the secret police, censorship, and terror at some point in their lives are much more willing to stand up for individual freedom than some of those who were born in a free society, take their liberties for granted, and for whom being progressive is just an empty aesthetic exercise which requires no critical, honest thinking. After all, Nazism and Communism arrived in Germany after decades of constitutional and semi- or fully democratic governments. Those ones that tend to think democracy can defend itself -or worst: that governments will safeguard our liberties, and that it is a task requiring no individual effort on our side- should take the best lessons from this excellent film. On the other hand, and timely related to the film, two days ago the Hungarian President Laszlo Solyom and the German Chancellor Angela Merkel commemorated the 20th Anniversay of the so called “Pan-European picnic”, an spontaneous meeting of East Germans and Hungarians in the border between Austria and Hungary that helped precipitate the fall of the Berlin wall (“Hungary Remembers Picnic That Cracked Iron Curtain”, thanks for the link, J.), and which is the perfect example of the civic courage needed to fight totalitarianism. How many of us here in the Western world would show nowadays the same resolution if our liberties were in danger?

Photo: Das Leben der Anderen, 2006 © moviezkult

A shameful dictator

Our little dictator does not give a damn about life -among many other reasons due to his close contacts with the mafia-, though he says he will do anything he can to keep alive an Italian citizen who has been in a coma for the last 17 years and who had previously expressed his will to be let die if she ever encountered herself in that situation. Our little dictator does not give a damn about freedom, for the same reason, nor has the least degree of respect for others, since he insulted repeatedly her father, accusing him of a vile attempted murder because keeping her daughter alive apparently would be costing him a lot of money. Our little dictator does not give a damn about the separation of powers in a democratic State, since he is willing to reverse the rulings of the Italian Supreme Court overnight -something the parliament cannot do-, to govern by decree, threatening the members of government who do not agree with him, and to change the Italian Constitution also overnight, that is, he is willing to confront any constitutional powers who oppose his decision to keep this individual alive at all costs. Our little dictator does not give a damn about legality, in this case or in any other case, since his self-proclaimed goal is to change Italian political structures in order the government -that is, him- faces no constitutional hurddles to impose its ruling. This comes as no surprise, since he entered politics to change every single law that could get him in jail due to his endless number of illegalities while running his businesses. Our little dictator is a successful man, since he has managed to change all these democratic rules and stay out of jail despite the hundreds of legal processes he has been involved in. Our little dictator does not give a damn about christian morality, since he has publicly acknowledged to have broken every possible catholic principle a number of times, those regarding with sexual fidelity in particular, yet he did not hesitate to always align his policies with the official positions of the Vatican -which does not care at all if he is a sinner, a thief or a murderer if he can help the institution to upheld its power-, Italy having the most regressive social legislation in Western Europe as a result. Our little dictator does not give a damn about women since, among many other reasons, he has repeatedly justified rape, saying happily in recent times, for example, that nothing can be done about it since the Italian women are the ‘più belle delle mondo’.

Shame on our little dictator. Shame on everyone who voted for him throughout these years. Shame on the political parties conforming the so called opposition, which are not able to defend dignity, legality and truth in front of this liberticide who mocks any conceivable kind of freedom and human decency.

Photo © tulipanonero

Procrustean rulers

In my last post in this section (“Let me be multidimensional”), I addressed the issue of the alleged unidimensionalism that characterizes human beings, according to certain proponents of multiculturalist worldviews. Now I would like to take on the governmental attempts to diminish social pluralism. In principle, the fragmentation of societies in a myriad of unidimensional groups I refered to in my previous post seems to be the opposite of the efforts to end up with diversity, but we shall see how they share the same underlaying mechanism.

By and large, political and social leaders do not like pluralism for, on the one hand, it erodes the foundations of their power; that is, their ability to present themselves as embodying or guaranteeing certain core values of the group or nation they lead. Achieving this goal is difficult if the group is very diverse -as the values and traits of its members are likely to be as diverse as them-, and less so if it is more homogeneous. On the other hand, and this is perhaps more important, political leaders whose aim consist mainly in helping guarantee the highest possible freedom to their fellow citizens in every possible realm are the exception and not the norm. Most governments exercise power with a precise agenda inspired by a particular notion of what is morally good or desirable. Bringing about this political agenda -encouraging or even imposing a specific notion of the good- requires a certain degree of moral conformity, something that, in turn, leads to an increased social uniformity. This phenomenon is all too apparent in dictatorial regimes, and much more so in those labelled as “leftist” or revolutionary, and in those based on some kind of religious fundamentalism. The Ukrainian author Adam Zagajewski captures magnificently this idea when describing the efforts of the former Eastern Europe socialist dictatorships to wipe off social heterogeneity:

«The aim of this coup was the complete and ultimate making over of the human collective, also made up of types and forms constantly modified but appearing anew with each generation, as in Tarot cards: we will always find a Cheater, Globetrotter, Gafdy, Drunkard, Proprietor, Tenant, Seducer, Seduced, Pawnbroker, Priest, Artist, etc. Thus the social upheaval planned by the communists assumed that there was something evil and sinful in this variety of types that has existed since time immemorial and the authorities strove relentlessly to produce only three types of man: Functionary, Worker, Policeman». [1]

However, not only dictatorships abhor moral and social diversity. Those of us living in democratic regimes are constantly bullied into behaving in virtuous ways not chosen by us but by our rulers. Democratic governments almost never resist the temptation to remain neutral among different conceptions of the good -thought this should be a central tenet of liberal regimes- and, as a result of this “Fatal Conceit” (in the words of Friedrich Hayek), of this belief that goverments can and should change the world with their actions, we endure ceaseless campaigns prompting us to eat certain food, wear certain clothes, avoid certain lifestyles, and so on. This would be not more than another example of the annoying public intromission in our private lives if it was not by the fact that most of them are mandatory and carry serious sanctions for the law-breachers, distort markets in very important ways and nearly always try to control choices whose consecuences affect no other than the individual making them. The list of examples is never-ending, from governmental attacks on fast food chains to the absolute prohibition to produce, distribute and consume recreative drugs or even take our own life; from which languages we should speak or avoid and what exact words should we employ to refer to other people or describe a variety of social conditions (think of the epidemic of political correctness), to who are we allowed to buy certain services from in basic realms as health, education and labour, and in which terms.

Governments will always try to do away with diversity and pluralism and impose their own moral agendas, and the huge differences existing in this sense between dictatorships and democracies should not conceal the fact that those are of degree and not of substance. [2]

Where is the link here with my previous comments on the purported unidimensionalism that, according to most communitarian theories, defines our social beings and renders our belonging to identity-based groups an ineluctable reality? Both -though not all- governments and identity groups seek to impose homogeneity to a certain degree; both -though not all- usually rely on the belief that there are essential traits in us that makes us natural members or a group or a nation and disciplinedly share a common set of values in its entirety.

Ultimately, these attempts to wipe off the personal qualities that diferentiate us from others and -contrary to what collectivist thinkers seem to believe- allow us to relate to others as free, responsible individuals and bring society into existence-, amount to no more than a strategy to acquire, exercise and maintain power on the part of those social and political elites, rendering us as means and not as ends in ourselves, worthy of respect, privacy and free rein. And it is precisely this procrustean endeavour to make everyone fit in the same bed, at the price of amputating our legs, streching out our arms, or getting rid of our brains altogether, what Stefan Zweig, praising the works of the French philosopher Michel de Montaigne, has masterfully labelled as an error and a crime:

«Il n´est qu´un erreur et qu´un crime: vouloir enfermer la diversité du monde dans des doctrines et des systèmes. C´est une erreur que de détourner d´autres hommes de leur libre jugement, de leur volonté prope, et de leur imposer quelque chose qui n´est pas en eux. Seuls agissent ainsi ceux qui respectent pas la liberté, et Montaigne n´a rien tant haï que la “frénésie”, le furieux délire des dictateurs de l´esprit, qui veulent avec arrogance et vanité imposer au monde leurs “nouveautés” comme la seule et indiscutable vérité, et pour qui le sang de centaines de milliers d´hommes n´est rien pourvu que leur cause triomphe». [3]

Notes:

[1] Adam Zagajewski, 1995, Two cities. On exile, history, and the imagination, New York, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1995, pp. 37-38, trad. Lillian Vallee, originally published in Polish under the title Dwa Miasta in 1991.

[2] For those of you who find it difficult to read between the lines, my argument does not criticize governmental intervention per se, but only in relation to wholly private affairs and in particular realms of social life.

[3] Stefan Zweig, Montaigne, quoted in the introduction to the 2002 edition of Les essais, by Michel de Montaigne, Paris, Arléa.

Photo: George Grosz, The City, 1916/17, Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, Madrid @ abcgallery

Let me be multidimensional

As any other higher education institution in North America, the university that currently harbors me is swarming this week with thousands of new students arriving for the start of the academic year. A walk around the crowded campus allows one to perceive the multicultural, multiethnic nature of this country, as young individuals of all races, languages and cultural backgrounds move around getting ready for classes and the needs of student life. All over the place, one may find official university posts or companies offering a variety of administrative or commercial services or organized groups of students trying to get fellow students involved in a wide range of voluntary activities. Among these, I have not failed to notice an extraordinary profuseness of groups basically defining themselves by means of one communitarian trait or another. Let´s see… we have religious groups (”Ambassadors for Jesus”, “Christian Students Association”, “We are Jewish”, “Korean Campus Mission”, “Muslim Students Association”, “Sikh Students Association”…), national origin groups (“African Awareness”, “Asian Canadian Cultural Organization”, “Bangladesh Students Association”, “Gado-Gado Indonesian Student Association”, “Kababayan Filipino Students Association”, “Persian Group”…), sexual orientation groups (“PrideUBC”, all kinds of GLBT groups…), disability groups, and so on. It is quite common some (though not all) of these groups try to appeal to students as if they were essentially unidimensional beings, whose life lacks any meaning if their overriding characteristics -ideally only one per person- are not nurtured. In other words, what some of these groups are saying is “We are Catholic, or Gay, or Jewish, or Chinese, or disabled, or Muslim, or women, or African Americans, or conservatives, or progressives, or Canadian… and only that. So, if you are like us, you necessarily see the world through that specific trait, and it is only natural for you to join us. We are your (homogeneus) community”.

Somehow, we humans have always tended to surround ourselves with people like us. This seems to be a natural -that is, instinctive- trend. However, it is paradoxical that nowadays that we human beings have cut ourselves off so much from the restrictions of nature (instinct) to embrace a dynamic social life (culture), are lately strongly reproducing those restrictions to an open and fruitful interaction among us by stressing that which is suposedly distinctive in us and that fundamentaly differentiates us from others. It is a sign of our communitarian times that we apparently are valuable as humans by means of belonging to a group (and to that group only), as if one of our many attributes as individuals was clearly predominant over the rest of them. Thus, according to this widespread view, it is nearly unnatural, for example, to be feminist and not to hate men; to be gay and Republican; to be Jewish and support Palestinian demands; to be an intellectual and enjoy American Idol; to be progressive and firmly defend free markets; to simultaneously love haute cuisine and McDonald´s burgers; to be a devout believer but favour a radical separation between church and state; to love your mother tongue and the landscapes that saw you growing up and not being a nationalist; to be Chinese and Spanish and black… In other words, it is unnatural to act differently than the group you supposedly belong to and which gives meaning to your existence.

Why, nowadays that freedom is the paramount social value, cannot we have multiple affiliations and unlimited contradictions? Why -what a truism- cannot we be valued just as individuals, regardless of the many families we may belong to in a given moment? Why is it so difficult to be naturally multidimensional?

Photo: ‘The flickr portrait gallery hall of excellence 2007′ © amsterdamned

Happy birthday, my friend

Today my friend Tom turns eighty-eight. For a variety of reasons, I have seldom contacted him lately, but I did not want to miss out the chance to express publicly my respect, my admiration and my personal gratitude to him. Tom is probably not only the world´s most important expert in psychiatry, psychoanalysis and personal and social behaviour, but also the person who has had the most significant impact on worldwide generations of social researchers, politicians, physicians, and scholars worried about the increasing medicalization of society and the progressive loss of our basic liberties on the medical-political Establishment´s hands. However, forgive me if I do not devote this space to praising his public figure right now. Check out any of the two-million Google search references with his name, or, better still, visit his website, The Thomas S. Szasz Cybercenter for Liberty and Responsibility, if you want to know about his intellectual stature, his dozens of books, and hundreds of articles and speeches. Read his texts. You will realize that, the number of his works being almost immeasurable, what makes a difference is what he says, rather than how many times he says it. I am not going to talk about his magnum opus either. There are many studies, articles and reviews on The Myth of Mental Illness (New York: Paul B. Hoeber, 1961) and the importance of this paramount work in the medical, social, political, and philosophical fields. What I really want to do is to talk very briefly about the Tom I had the pleasure to meet some years ago. Actually, I ‘met’ him before actually meeting him, when I read for the first time Our Right to Drugs: The Case for a Free Market (New York: Praeger, 1992), and became fascinated by the logical strength of his arguments. Then The Myth of Mental Illness, The Meaning of Mind (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1996), and many other of his books contributed to change the way I had thought about personal freedom issues for good. Since I started reading him and, later on, communicating with him, I have never come accross a single book, article, letter or piece of text that has not left me thinking, reflecting, and later wondering how on earth someone could possibly write such a number of masterworks. In 2001, I had the honor of translating into Spanish his book Fatal Freedom: The Ethics and Politics of Suicide (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1999), and a year later I visited him in his hometown in upstate New York. I will never forget how nicely and kindly he greeted and showed us around the amazing national park surrounding Syracuse, his brilliant reasoning in our conversations, and the peaceful atmosphere of his beautiful house in the middle of a forest in the town of Manlius. I have never meet anyone with such intelligence and mental strength, and, at the same time, equally high principles, decency, kindness, and sense of humour.

Dear Tom, I hope you have had the best of birthdays, full with the love of your family, and surrounded by the Spring colors of the amazingly beautiful trees of your place. We do not forget you in this side of the Atlantic.

All the best,

Photo: Thomas S. Szasz, Syracuse, New York, 2002 © www.szasz.com

Loathing counterfactuals

The hatred flowing around in the Spanish blogsphere is astonishing. Deceiving myself, I prefer not to take it as a good proxy of the animosity prevalent in society at large.

The current Spanish Socialist Party government -towards which I have no particular sympathy- seems to be guilty of any trouble happening in this country. This belief leads some people to make nonsensical counterfactual statements, namely, that last Friday´s terrorist attack would have not happened if Prime Minister Zapatero had not been in power. In other words, that he is to blame for the murder.

These ignominious words tell a great deal about he who uttered them, and would deserve no comment. However, many seem to believe this plain lie, which usually comes along with claims that the ETA terrorists and Mr. Zapatero have the same political agenda; therefore, they are political allies. Therefore, if Mr. Zapatero and his dreadful government were not in power terror in Spain would vanish. Therefore, Mr. Zapatero is to blame for any terrorist attack.

To be sure, the current government should have never attempted to negotiate any surrender with these killers, since it sent the wrong message both to terrorists and citizens. The Spanish democracy will defeat them enforcing the law, chasing them, and putting them in jail. Period. But, to be fair, past conservative governments should have not atempted to do so either. The socialists never criticized any Popular Party government for those ‘talks’, neither blamed on them ETA victims of the time. Above all, the Socialist Party never used counter-terror policy as a tool for opposition strategy.

The Socialist government committed many mistakes in its counter-terror policy approach, and then more. But the Popular Party performance as opposition these four years conjured up an image of authoritarianism and extreme intolerance. It did not start when they lost the elections in 2004 because of their ill-managed information approach to the islamic terrorist attacks of those days (i.e.: lying to the citizens), a ‘failure’ they seem they never accepted; it is something running deep inside them and inside some of the social forces they actually represent. It is the idea that political power belongs to them, and to them only, so that lossing it signals an odd event that must be explained by external factors such as conspiracies and weird alliances between terrorists and democratic adversaries.

I am not to approve the Socialist Party populism as of late, or its huge conceit. I have got scores of differences with what the current Socialist Party stands for, but the classist, intolerant, conservative and ultimately authoritarian air of the current Popular Party and, worst still, of many of its followers, their loathing towards anything smelling as ‘leftist’ -a ‘totum revolutum’ in which they seem to randomly mix disparaged elements, from respect to pluralism to gender equality and secularism- really makes me sick. Above all, I cannot understand why so many individuals, with no alleged relation to a political party, display so much hatred against millions of their fellow citizens and the politicians apparently representing them.

It is quite unlikely there will ever be a Spanish liberal party -deserving that name, that is, defender of markets, individual rights and responsabilities, and limited governments, but also secular, progressive, pluralistic and unprejudiced- with a relevant constituency and real chances of arriving to power, and the reason is twofold: the current electoral system prevents its emergence, and the conservative (with both left and right leanings), resentful, vindictive and polarized nature of the Spanish people makes it a nearly impossible task.

P. S.: By the way, the Financial Times editorial comment on March 2 captured well what I think of both Spanish main parties.

Addenda: More on the subject: two cents of common sense, as it is usually the case with Soledad Gallego-Díaz.

Photo: Don’t you be yelling at me, 2005 © Mareen Fischinger

Identity and immigration priorities

1

The Spanish opposition conservative Popular Party (PP) made public last week its proposed measures on immigration policy as part of its program towards next month´s general election. As it is usually the case in Spain, these propositions were welcomed not with the ensuing debates and discussion such an important issue deserves, but with a cacophony of accusations and contempt from the leftist parties, which in turn triggered new accusations and contempt from the PP. Nothing new under the sun…

The new measures proposed by the PP are twofold. First, a legally binding ‘Integration contract’, whose signature will be mandatory for all new immigrants. Among other prescriptions, this integration contract stipulates immigrants will have to respect the law, pay taxes, and find a job -all of this being already in effect-, but also to learn Spanish and abide by the Spanish customs, without further specification on the latter, though party officials hinted at the prohibition of genital mutilation and the equality between sexes, both of which are already enforced. Failure to comply may result in the immigrant being expelled from the country. The party justified the measure on the need to ameliorate the integration of immigrants by way of them adhering to core Spanish values -”which must be clearly stablished by society as a whole”-, thus improving social cohesion. The need for society to decide in which cases should we all be morally and legally bound and when differences and diversity should be respected was also mentioned.

The second measure consists in the introduction of a new scheme to give out temporary visas and working permits based on a ‘points system’, aiming at facilitating the arrival of high skilled and experienced workers. Along with prioritizing immigrants possesing certain skills or having the high capabilities the Spanish labour market is in need of, those individuals coming from countries “with which we may have special or historical links” would also be favored. According to one leading Spanish newspaper the PP would actually like to toughen immigration policy giving preference to foreigners arriving from Latin America -catholic and Spanish speakers- over those coming from the Maghrib -muslim and Arab speakers-. Also, temporary and working visas would be awarded according to the following criteria: (a) Knowledge of Spanish; (b) Professional skills; (c) Knowledge of the Spanish legal system; and (d) Knowledge of the Spanish culture.

On the left camp, the governmental Socialist Party (PSOE) deemed the announced proposals xenophobic, reactionary and discriminating; the socialist Vicepresident considered they favor rejection and racism, and showed contempt for immigrants, for equality and for diversity; and the post-communist United Left (IU) added they were racist, classist and islamophobic, and that the PP abhors diversity and religious pluralism.

Do measures like those proposed improve immigrants integration and social cohesion, as the PP claims, or else they embody racism and contempt for other cultures, as the left asserts? At this point it would be interesting to look at how other countries are coping with immigration and diversity, and one such interesting comparation, if not the most appropriate, is the Canadian case.

Canada has, right after Australia, the highest proportion of foreign-born population in the world (19,8%). In the five years preceding 2006, the year for which we have the latest available figures, Canada’s foreign-born population increased by 13.6% (the equivalent rate for the Canadian-born population was 3.3% for the same period. Immigrants born in Asia and the Middle East made up the largest proportion (58.3%) of newcomers, followed by those born in Europe (16,1%), Central and South America (10,8%) and in Africa (10,6%). In 2006, just three metropolitan areas -Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver- were home to nearly 70% of all recent immigrants. 70.2% of the foreign-born population is allophone, that is, has as mother tongue neither English nor French. If aboriginal languages are included, one out of five Canadians does not have any of the official languages as mother tongue. Regarding religion, in 2001 Catholics and Protestants made up nearly 70% of the population; another 15% has no religious affiliation, the rest was Othodox, other types of Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, Sikh and other, in varying percentages.

Commensurately with this astonishing level of diversity, Canada faces enormous integration challenges, and the country has engaged itself in a ceaseless debate on the core values of its social and political system, trying to stablish what being Canadian really means and what this notion of citizenship, if any, implies for the Canadian legal system. Both liberal institutions granting rights and freedoms, the rule of law, and multiculturalism play a relevant role in this debate, the most important one Canada faces nowadays as a nation.

The current Canadian immigration policy is based on the idea that immigration prompts the country’s growth, its prosperity and its cultural diversity. The system also aims at families´reunion and the protection of refugees. Permanent residence is usually granted according to a point system based on several selection factors, such as educational level, abilities in English or French, working experience, age, arranged employment in the country, or potential adaptability (having studied in Canada, having relatives or having previous work there). Immigrants are also subjected to a proof of funds, that is, they must show they are not going to be dependent on the state after their arrival. Residents and citizens may sponsor relatives to immigrate in the country, and it is worth noting that -on a very progressive note and besides dependent children, grandparents, siblings and other relatives- not only spouses but also common-law or conjugal partners are eligible. Finally, let us mention language proficiency and knowledge about Canadian culture plays an important role, but only when applying for citizenship. Broadly speaking, the system aims both at matching the needs of Canadian labour market with both the skills and flows of newcomers, and at facilitating integration by means of a non-restrictive, non-ideological and objective set of selection criteria, and also helping families reunite.

The Canadian immigration system has worked reasonably well, is the result of successive approaches to immigration and integration policies throughout decades, and commands a high degree of approval among the Canadian population and the agreement of all political parties. Sure, there are challenges and integration issues in Canada, as mentioned before, such as social tensions regarding some cultural practices or the consecuences of a certain degree of permanent low income among recent immigrants, but, overall, the system has worked efficiently and allowed for the great numbers of newcomers mentioned above to settle successfully in the country -access to citizenship is easy, in international terms, as permanent residents may apply for it after three years, and about 85% of those eligible get naturalized- and share the wealth its arrival has contributed so much to trigger.

Going back to Spain, what does the Canadian experience tell us?

It is strongly advisable for a country subjected to high immigration rates to open a public debate on identity issues, as comprehensive as possible and including immigrant groups. Our society, as those of many other countries, is becoming increasingly multicultural, and cannot do without trying to stablish which is our minimum set of core values, those our legislation must embody and protect, and citizens and residents comply with. However, this is not an easy task, and different parties in the debate may feel the temptation to try to impose their views, resorting either to an elusive concept of ‘ancestral national culture’ -empty and dysfunctional in the face of accelerated social change- or to a multiculturalist notion of citizenship, which relativizes values and may lead to a ghettoization of certain groups and entrenched discriminating practices inside ethno-cultural communities and among them.

When making public their immigration policy proposals, the Popular Party spokesmen mentioned the need to address this debate on core values, and rightly so, but perhaps an electoral campaign is not the best moment to raise the subject, which calls for a quiet, comprehensive and long-term reflection, nor political parties should be its (only) stirring agents, as many other social forces, institutions and individuals ought to have a say in the disscusion.

By choosing to bring up immigration and integration issues just before a general election, the Popular Party looks like he is not so much interested in opening a debate on these extremely important questions but on gaining some political advantage by means of playing with the emotions of voters. Also, the criteria it advanced for stablishing priorities among residency claimants seem to be very subjective and hastily assembled, though consistent with a certain conservative notion of Spanish culture, as if its definition enjoyed an overwhelming consent and needed no further discussion, which is just the contrary of the non-biased reflection mentioned above. Whereas having certain professional skills and at least a working command of Spanish may increase immigrants´chances of finding a job and integrating, it is difficult to grasp how favoring certain countries of origin over other countries or regions -out of culture, religion or historical links- will benefit the Spanish economy. This arbitrariness also reveals an static idea of Spanish culture, insusceptible to change and frozen in time, and it sends the message as well that Spain is an open country not for those wanting to come here to live, respect the laws, progress and contribute to its wealth, but only for the ones who will not challenge the supposedly immutable essence of Spanish ‘culture’.

On the other hand, the socialist government and the rest of the leftist parties are wrong in criticizing the stablishment of priorities in the immigration policies and of certain rules newcomers must observe, since it is perfectly legitimate governments choose which people are entitled to form part of their societies, and doing so in a non-discriminating, open-to-all and reasonable manner is a proper way of conducting public policy.

The reaction of the left lays bare the fact it does not really know how to address the identity and multicultural issues we are facing. Or else, worst still, as in the case of post-communist or post-marxist parties and movements, they know perfectly well, following their desire of detonating the pivotal institutions of our open societies. Regarding integration and identity, it is worth recalling cultures are dynamic and are subjected to constant change; they are not ‘stock’ but ‘flow’, to borrow the language of the economic science. However, we must give sound arguments and reasons to defend or criticize the elements making up a culture and, if we care at all for human rights, rule out any relativist temptations, which prevent us from exercising a rightful critique of cultural practices. Let us not fool ourselves: criminalizing genital mutilation and arranged marriage but leaving intact many other forms of abuse in the name of diversity -something post-marxist movements and even a part the socialdemocratic left support- only shows our selfishness and our disdain for the fate of the individuals we supposedly care for. Avoiding a debate on what constitutes the foundations of our freedom -those deserving uttermost respect on the part of citizens, residents and visitors alike- and, moreover, doing so out of a supposed ‘respect’ for the customs dear to minoritarian ethno-cultural groups also being a part of our society, only demeans our legitimacy to speak for the oppressed and the abused in those groups, and exposes the degree towards which we yield to a sort of post-colonial remorse -conveniently transmited through generations-, and also the fact that we are paradoxically shameful about the accomplishments of our civilization.

Far from being an exercise on ‘neo-colonialist’ imposition and ‘contempt’ for diversity and pluralism, to judge by the left´s initial reaction to the Popular Party immigration measures -the point not being how good or ill-conceived they are-, vindicating the very values and institutions that make us all equal before the law and grant us, among many other things, the freedom to engage in the cultural practices of our election or the abandonment of them, is the only way of organizing a multiethnic, multicultural and diverse society for the good of its members. For all of them, current and prospective.

Photo: School friends, 2007 © Woodleywonderworks

On marriage and homosexuals

My fellow bloggist Dhavar has published a post claiming homosexuals have no right to marry. His main arguments are: (1) marriage is a social institution whose goal is reproduction; (2) homosexual unions are not reproductive; (3) the reason some entitlements, such as inheritances and widow pensions, are legally linked to marriage only lays in them being created to allow for the provision of children (nourishment and education); and (4) homosexuals want to be able to marry to missappropriate those funds, towards which they have no rights.

Since I totally disagree with him on this subject, here are my two cents to the discussion.

Firstly, marriage is nowadays not based on reproduction (moreover, it never was, but proving this would lead us to a complex antropological discussion). According to Eurostat, in 2006 there were nine countries in the EU in which the number of children born out of wedlock reached a proportion of 40 per cent or higher (Bulgaria, Denmark, Estonia, France, Latvia, Slovenia, Finland, Sweden and the United Kingdom), and in four of these the proportion was 50 per cent or higher (Bulgaria, Estonia, France and Sweden). In Norway and Iceland, two countries of the region, the figures are 53 and 65,72 per cent, respectively (2006 in the Norwegian case and 2005 in the Icelandic one). In the U.S., roughly 40 per cent of children were born outside marriage in 2005. The Spanish figure for 2006 is wrong in the Eurostat table. According to the Spanish National Statistics Institute, unwed mothers gave birth to a 26,57 per cent of the children born in Spain in 2005, though given the trend, the figure for 2007 should be around 30 per cent. In all cases the figures show an increasing drift without any exception.

In most countries, and certainly in all of the above mentioned, children of single parents enjoy the very same rights those of married parents do.

Secondly, marriages without children are considered everywhere as fully legitimate ones, and they enjoy the same legal status everywhere as well. If procreation was their essential aim, they should be considered defectived or failed marriages, but we do not deem them so, do we?

Therefore, marriage nowadays is not about granting reproduction.

On the other hand, reproduction does not only imply giving birth, but also caring, loving and providing, and both heterosexual and homosexual couples or individuals are equally fit for these tasks. Homosexual couples cannot procreate, but they may bring up as parents a child born of one of the members, or adopted, thus qualifiying as parents. Heterosexual couples may do the same, by the way.

I also want to avoid a long historical account on the development of inheritance as an institution (a ‘pension’ is not even an institution in the proper sense of the word but a public policy choice), so it suffices to say nowadays it serves no such goal as provision for children in the absence of their parents, since in that case, or when family income is below a treshold, welfare state policies may apply.

Nearly everywhere, only spouses, children, parents or some other members of a deceased person´s family (in this order) are entitled to inherit her property, but not her partners or lovers. That is, the family may inherit property paying no taxes, or very few ones, whereas non-family members have to pay much more. Homosexuals who want to marry do not want to do so because they aim to embezzle the rights those people are entitled to by “artificially” becoming spouses, as Dhavar´s convoluted argument goes. They want to be able to marry to publicly and simbolically show mutual love (this reason seems quite strange to me, but it applies just the same to heterosexual marriage) and enjoy the same rights heterosexuals do. Period.

My suggestion here is that fiscal policy should be neutral regarding civil status, that is, individuals, other things being equal, should pay the same taxes whether married, single or in a civil union. Moreover, rights should be granted to individuals per se, not as bearers of a particular civil status.

There are also important simbolic aspects in the right of homosexuals to marry. By legalizing homosexual marriage, society eliminates yet another discrimination form, sending a message out that homosexuals should enjoy the very same rights their fellow citizens do, thus reasserting them as full members of their polity.

I hope to have shown this discrimination is only based in prejudices against a particular sexual orientation and also on atavistic fears, i.e., that society as we know it will just disappear if some supposedly essential institutions do not remain immutable.

The recent amendment to the Spanish civil code, allowing for marriage between individuals of the same sex and adoption by homosexual married couples, only redresses the lengthy legal discrimination suffered by Spanish homosexuals. It was high time.

My comments in the third part above are general and do not necessarily refer to Dhavar, whose post does not seem to contain prejudices against homosexuality per se.

Photo: Pink ad in a street of Saint Petersburg, Russia, 2007 © Loudsoul

Not so modern now

Watching Charles Chaplin´s Modern Times (1936), I wonder how accurately it reflects daily life in the thirties, at least for the average American people. Though it may not be the main argument of the movie -I think it points more toward the confussion and perplexity of the common folk in a whole new social and economic environment-, I guess it gives a rather precise portrait of the difficulties -stagnant unenployment, great numbers of working individuals living in sheer poverty, 12-hour workdays, repetitive tasks in the working line, a biased system of criminal justice- the working masses had to face back then. However, and contrary to what many collectivists would like us to believe, this is not the situation we witness today. At least in the Western world -obviously, in other regions things are quite different, but nevertheless their way out is just the same- knowledge is the main characteristic of labour markets. In developed economies -and let us not forget our modern socioeconomic systems necessarily grew out of the one Chaplin shows in his movie- aiming to produce high value goods and services, and whose markets strive to find out the tastes, needs and desires of a wide variety of consumers, independent enterpreneurs, individually taylored careers, and high skilled, flexible workers are needed in great numbers, and less so massive unskilled work. Paramount among other factors, this development has changed for good labour markets and industrial relations, often blurring distinctions between bosses and subordinates, thus making collectivist forces -trade unions, socialist parties, enemies of globalization, advocates of a much dreamed radically egalitarian paradise, and the like- look anachronistic and out of touch with reality, with all their rethoric of working classes vs. capitalistic tycoons and views of wage earners as common fellows crushed by the whimsical wishes of greedy proprietors. Very seldom tales of good and evil succeed in accounting for a complex world which is best described by its multiple shades of grey.

Photo: Charles Chaplin in the set of Modern Times, 1936 © Max M. Autrey

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