Brain, Muscle, Fat - In That Order

Following recent coverage of the US and Canadian elections, I feel moved to write a brief dialectic. A major shift in our collective priorities seems called for if are to free ourselves from the economic malaise and brutal militarism that is the natural outcome of certain aspects of the North American way of life. Our culture is rooted in a shallow, and often meaningless, form of hedonistic consumerism, which offers little promise of real fulfillment or concern for greater goals.
I was lucky enough to find myself seated across from Jack Layton a month ago in an airport lounge. After five minutes of trying to think of a question worth asking him, we ended up having a pleasant and meaningful conversation about a variety of things related to sustainability, including his former involvements with the Toronto Cycling Committee through which he knows my dad. He also gave a good answer to my question about the NDP's strategies for growing environmental awareness across Canada by funding community-level advocacy. It was a good ten minute conversation, by the end of which I had renewed confidence that despite being a political animal, Mr. Layton has a genuine passion for the environment and sustainability...and space exploration! Hahaha :) (He said as he was taking his seat on the plane, quite out of the blue, that he's reading a book about the Apollo project.)
So, here's my dialectic on the shift in priorities that I see helping us kick the habit of exploiting the wealth of nations less powerful than ourselves. This is part of addressing "security issues" that are of such importance to our US counterparts, and restoring Canada's good name in international circles as a peacemaker, leader on the environment (and now sustainability), and a country that not only contains enormous wealth, but generates prosperity beyond its borders.
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Canada needs to maintain its sovereignty. How do we do this? With economic and military power? Perhaps. Certainly this is the strategy pursued by those nations with the highest degree of sovereignty around the world, i.e. the G-8. How then do we increase economic and military power? We increase economic power by improving productivity while reducing consumption. This gives a net benefit to our country, while benefiting our trading partners and countries in which we're involved in humanitarian work and peacekeeping as well. It's no good to be highly productive if we then go and consume an equivalent amount of resources to the income we've generated. By doing so, we increase global inequity and miss opportunities to direct surpluses into investments for the good of society.
Instead, we should focus on funneling those resources into wealth creating enterprise -- investments in knowledge creation (education), culture, technology, particularly information technologies that give people access to the information needed to improve their own lives and make better decisions. We should dwarf the significant value of our natural resources with a culture of wealth creation that will garner the respect of powerful nations and individuals around the world.
We should have access to, control over, and actively be developing technologies and intelligence that allow us to carry out effective warfare, not the sloppy "death from above" tactics being increasingly relied on in Afghanistan. When you deprive civilians of their human rights, you harden their culture against you. The reality is that there are people, subcultures, in this world whose ideas do not deserve a voice. I am referring to organizations or structures that promulgate hate, such as terrorist organizations, or to borrow a historical example, Apartheid. For good reasons, these are always in the minority, and so we should not be forced into dialogue with them because we're incapable of overpowering or outsmarting them. Overpowering a terrorist subculture can often be done more effectively through diplomacy and appealing to the better judgment of moderates than through firepower. Improving the the quality of life of people in foreign nations is a much better way to secure our county than living a lifestyle that necessitates their exploitation. Power is a measure of knowledge. If we lack the knowledge to achieve our aims, we have only ourselves to hold responsible.