The challenge in life is to figure out what is
important.Trite, I know, but a place to start. If you are lucky,
your family will pound the essentials into you at a young age and
the rest will more or less play out reasonably. That doesn’t
account for bad luck or the injustice fate throws our way, but it
does account for how we face these challenges.
If you are less lucky, you will be denied the
youthful pounding, but will meet a friend, lover, classmate,
teacher, or someone else who impresses you sufficiently to change
your direction.
If you are even less lucky, you will find none of
the above, make numerous wrong choices, run off the road any number
of times with considerable damage to yourself and others.
If you are plain damn unlucky, you will never
figure out what is important and live most of your life careening
out of control, not making much difference to anyone or anything
(or alternatively, creating a considerable amount of havoc) and
will die wondering why you were here in the first place.
To me, what is important, is to be conscious and
accountable. The purpose here is drawing a parallel between
personal development and community development. A conscious parent
wants their children to be prepared to take responsibility for
themselves, to make a mark in their chosen field if possible, and
with luck, lead a purposeful and engaged life. Personally, I don’t
think there is much difference between what you would wish for
your
children and what you would wish for the
community you live in.
For many years, (at least 30), I have felt my
community (Northern Ontario) has received very bad parenting. Mum
and Dad, being the province and federal governments, have
frequently been neglectful but, far more importantly, have never
tried or encouraged us to be conscious and accountable. In fact,
the system, such as it is, is specifically designed to keep us
unconscious and unaccountable.
The disaster is not the loss of our young people,
which is terrible, or the depopulation, which makes it difficult to
run cost-effective municipalities, nor is it the debilitating
impact of the softwood lumber fight, or the crippling cost of
energy.
The disaster is that we are still not conscious
and accountable. To be conscious you must have the capacity to
study, to research, to analyze, to propose alternatives and to
manoeuvre around reasoned priorities. To be conscious is to know
your circumstance and understand what action will provide the
outcomes you desire.
There is almost no capacity in Northern Ontario
for us to think about what is important to us. There are no think
tanks, research groups, co-ordinating bodies or legislative
capacity to do anything. We are headless. We are unconscious.
Additionally, we are not accountable. We are in charge of not much
of anything. What we get we beg, borrow or steal from other levels
of government. Sometimes we win. Sometimes we lose. We are never
ever accountable.
I made a speech to FONOM (Federation of Northern
Ontario Municipalities) this past spring on just this topic. Of the
200 or so politicians in the room at the time, I have heard nothing
and seen nothing.
This week I found out I wasn’t entirely alone.
Gerry Lougheed Jr., an extraordinary community activist in Sudbury,
agrees Northern Ontario should be a master of its own destiny.
David Robinson has been driving Rick Bartolucci crazy for months on
these topics and yesterday, I spoke with Liveo Di Matteo, a
professor in the department of economics at Lakehead University,
who is a fully subscribed member of the Conscious movement. Without
me knowing, Liveo has been calling for a regional government for
Northern Ontario for a number of years.
And so I am not alone. Just in a very small
group. Anyone else out there think we ought to be conscious and
accountable? Drop me a line.
