LETTERS TO THE EDITOR – The common sense of ideology

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This article was published 21/10/2024 (196 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The common sense of ideology

In these troubled times (are there any other?), we are bombarded with persistent appeals to common sense as the solution to our shared problems. Pierre Poilievre promises Canadians that he has “common sense plans” to rectify multiple national problems, and the phrase has become endemic to the current backlash politics of “Common Sense Conservatives Fighting for Canadians.” Common sense, they assure us, will prevail in a Common Sense Revolution.

According to David Moscrop, this is “as appealing to the disaffected as it is vapid and meaningless.” Aaron Wherry adds that it is also a “vaguely egalitarian and inherently populist notion that flatters its purveyors and supporters while implicitly disqualifying its opponents and critics.” Indeed, when appeals to common sense become politicized, they derogate those who disagree, and become their own form of “virtue signalling,” a derisive term used by those who want to signal that they have more virtue than those whom they accuse of virtue signalling.

Common sense is purportedly common because it is supposedly shared by all, and sensical because it is supposedly self-evident, needing no explanation. It implies that, though someone may not have extensive knowledge about a topic or even extensive skill in reasoning, everyone has enough of both to master truth. Reality, they say, is not complex.

But obviously, that some sense is common is insufficient to make it true, especially when it relies on a false sense of consensus, that cognitive bias of overestimating the level of agreement people have on issues. Furthermore, common sense varies vastly in time, place, and culture, and because it is entirely subjective, there can be no common-sense definition of what constitutes common sense.

So, the core question is sense that is common to whom?

More specifically and significantly, sense that is common to which ideology? Which system of concepts that makes sense of the world while obscuring the social interests expressed therein? Which coherent set of interrelated ideas (about what is) and ideals (about what ought to be) that explains and justifies the prevailing or proposed distribution of power, wealth, and privilege?

Common sense in Canada today is derived mostly from the dominant ideology of neoliberalism. A product of the Age of Enlightenment, classic liberalism was a political and moral philosophy based on individual rights, freedoms, and equality, as well as private property and free-market capitalism. Contemporary neoliberalism is the reappearance of liberalism after the 20th century social experiments with welfare and communist states, characterized by renewed privatization, deregulation, and globalization.

Ironically and confusingly, it is political conservatives who today are the true neoliberals, those who want to conserve and renew classic individualistic Enlightenment liberalism. That, to them, is common sense.

There is also a related sense of “common.” The “tragedy of the commons” is a dilemma arising from situations in which an entire generational cohort of individuals, acting independently and rationally consulting their own short-term self-interest, will ultimately deplete a limited shared resource, even when it clearly is not in anyone’s long-term interest for that to happen. This tragedy has played out repeatedly on multiple fronts throughout history, most recently and obviously regarding our physical environment.

Yet doing so is common sense in neoliberalism.

And when an ideology becomes hegemonic, it manifests the capacity of cultural values to establish as common sense, systems of meaning that can justify everything from short-term self-interest to its resultant social inequalities. Hegemony is the ability of dominant groups in society to exercise control over weaker groups, not by means of force, but by gaining their consent without their awareness, so that the unequal distribution of power, wealth, and privilege appears to be both legitimate and natural. It’s just common sense.

Just as the neoliberal state is the dominant ideology in Canada, and therefore hegemonic common sense, so too is the welfare state in Sweden, and the authoritarian state in Russia. That is why we need more than simplistic appeals to common sense. We need to gain clarity and consensus on our deepest shared values, and then enact policies that best promote them.

Hopefully those values and policies will promote long-term collective-interest, not the short-term self-interest that leads to the tragedy of the commons. Because that truly would be the tragedy of conservative neoliberal common sense.

Dennis Hiebert

Steinbach, MB

Zwaagstra needs to re-examine single use plastics

Regular readers of The Carillon are accustomed to Michael Zwaagstra’s regular attack on the Trudeau government in his weekly column. We all take that as we want to. It is unfortunate, however, when he takes a lifestyle issue we can all agree on and makes it a partisan issue. I am referring to his contention last week that “Banning single-use plastic grocery bags is stupid.”

Surely we can all agree that the widespread use of single-use plastics is not sustainable. That is, to take a limited, non-renewable resource, in this case, oil, refine it, and use it once, and then dispose of it in the landfill is not sustainable. If the wastefulness of this practice does not catch up with us, it will catch up with our children or grandchildren. Surely concern about this wasteful practice is not limited to liberals but is also a concern of conservatives.

It does not take brilliance to realize that there is more than one way of discouraging the use of single-use plastics. It’s quite irresponsible of Mr. Zwaagstra to suggest that the debate is whether to ban plastic bags or not, or whether this is a federal issue or a provincial issue. Let’s have a real debate about this, Mr. Zwaagstra, even at city council.

Furthermore, Mr. Zwaagstra quotes research that contends a cloth bag needs to be used 20,000 times to be more environmentally friendly than single-use plastic bags. This contention is hard to understand. I don’t have sufficient expertise to compare the environmental friendliness of a plastic bag and a bag intended for multiple uses. I have no idea what the multiple-use bag Mr. Zwaagstra is referring to is made from – perhaps from polystyrene, another plastic. But what about bags made from cloth destined for the landfill. The only energy going into that is the human labour of sewing the bag.

Then Mr. Zwaagstra refers to PFAS as if he knows what he is talking about. Does he really? A quick Google search reveals that these substances are present in thousands of human-made substances including lubricants, food packaging and, yes, some organic straws. What to do about that is a much bigger issue than the banning of single-use plastic straws.

There are several solutions that I prefer to a ban on plastic bags. I prefer to raise the price of grocery bags, whether plastic or cloth, substantially – so much that this price becomes a real incentive to remember to bring a bag. I would like to see city council put a tax on grocery bags of $5 or even more. Having forgotten a bag at home, the alternative to buying the pricey bag is to leave the purchases loose in the shopping cart and transferring them into the car. Shoppers are not stuck.

Another remedy is to insist that the grocery bags be made of recycled cloth. Have you seen how much clothing is discarded by our thrift stores? For a small reward, volunteers at the thrift store would convert that cloth into shopping bags.

And I am sure there are other ideas, all better than simply bashing Mr. Trudeau.

But all of this requires vision and policy—federally, provincially, and yes also locally, Mr. Zwaagstra. We elected you to lead us.

Eric Rempel

Steinbach, MB

Protecting faith communities

I have not read the Bill C-411 but intend to do so in the near future. Right now, this is a response to the article in the paper presented by Ted Falk. The word salad is possibly a little clearer than Donald Trump’s method of communication, but still, it is a language foreign to some of us, including myself. I will try to do my own translation as I see it. That goes as follows:

1. Our Prime Minister a ringleader of an arsonist group that is all about going out to destroy church buildings. He has nothing else to do. Just one question for Mr. Falk. How do you know he is not doing this all on his own? If he is this evil, would he not be able to do this all on his own? We should be able to convince conspiracy spinners and Trudeau haters to believe that story as the new alternative reality. Is good will oozing out of this story?

2. Our Prime Minister hates free speech and religious freedom and therefor leads a hateful crusade against Christians and Jews. Ouch, I hope he did not single you out to persecute you for your belief. Maybe one day you could tell us your personal experience.

3. You are telling us that we have a very powerful Prime Minister. In only nine years he was able to increase the crime rate in Canada by 251 percent. Wow, that is tremendous. Was the reporter you quoted the source of those stats? Do we have evidence of this information? How many corpses were found and how many Christians are siting in jail today due to our prime minister’s crime spree? If your story telling is correct, would you like to introduce us to some of the persecuted Christians and Jews as you describe them? By the way, calling people Jews is probably not accurate. They are Jewish people. The difference between Jewish people and Christians is drastic. One is a nationality the other is a religious organism coming in hundreds of different forms and believes. Which brand of Christianity was the target, and which Jewish people were persecuted? Was it the secular or the religious ones? Comon sense people need more clarity to understand the projection effort. The way some of us see it, it did not land too well with such drastic description of our Prime minister. I have not heard him say such mean things about you, neither would we stand for it. You probably would not deserve such inhumane language. The standard goes both ways. Hypocrisy is to a large degree a religious thing, but not exclusive to religion. We are hungry for a better political discourse that will be uplifting instead of pressing down. I would like to encourage you to do better if you could bring yourself to do so, or perhaps find a better speech writer that understands diplomatic language.

David Kauenhowen

Mitchell, MB