Free will and determinism are polar ideals that have little to do with reality. Since neither is what it seems, their traditional opposition is misleading, if not meaningless. Determinism is a modern version of fatalism: the belief that human beings have no control over the course of events, including their own behaviour. In the modern sense, it is the idea that every event has a knowable cause.

The word determine has several meanings, however. It can mean to cause an outcome or state of a system. Or it can mean to ascertain what that state or outcome is. Finally, it can mean to insist to have one’s way (to “be determined”). The first sense represents an objective view, in which things inexorably happen whether anyone is looking or not. The second represents a subjective view, in which someone must perceive and interpret what is happening to “determine” what that is. The third sense merges paradoxically with will: your will is then as free are you are determined to be!

In physics and philosophy, determinism implies a power of things or events over each other. As Hume pointed out, we jump to that conclusion when one event follows another in time; but the supposed causal power involved is a metaphysical assumption. What we actually see is events happening in succession. On the other hand, in equations that express how things happen over time, the relations between variables are set by definition. This is convenient for predicting the future (or past) of simple systems that can effectively be idealized, as though they were machines. It works because the idealization corresponds closely enough to the reality. But it is the equations that are “deterministic,” not the natural systems they describe.

Modern determinism poses a problem for free will. Chemical events in your brain, for example, determine your behaviour and even your thoughts and feelings. In times past, however, free will for humans posed a threat to divine omnipotence. For, if God was omniscient and all-powerful, then the course of events must be both fixed and known in advance by God, leaving no room for human will. But then people could not be morally accountable for their actions.

Neither determinism nor free will exist absolutely in the abstract ways traditionally thought. What exists is the subjective experience of trying to assert will over resistant objects and opposing wills—and the experience of frustration when not succeeding. In particular, we try to assert willpower over our own bodies and their impulses. It then often seems that the body has a will of its own—which indeed it does.

What, after all, is will? The body is a self-defining, self-maintaining, self-activating organism, not an inert object like a rock or an atom. It does not simply react to outside causes, but acts on its own energy and initiative, on its own behalf. What better definition of will? On the other hand, what one casually calls one’s “self” is a psychological agent that evolved to serve the interests of the body. Its specialized job is to monitor the body’s sensory input, motor output, and internal workings on a high but isolated level. For this self to be privy to the will asserted by the body on lower levels would be as impractical as it would be for a CEO to micro-manage the affairs of a corporation.

There are conflicts of will, requiring negotiation, amid upper and lower management and labour. We can find ourselves trying to override the body’s biological programming, or the social programming it has learned—which seem “automatic” when we cannot consciously control them. In some spiritual traditions, the self is admonished to master the body like taming an animal or learning to drive. But mastering the body seems more like negotiating with God than like animal training, and not at all like controlling a machine. Whose will shall be done?

In an age which values certainty, it may seem odd to extol the merits of not knowing. Yet it is precisely because of the deep need for certainty, in a time when that is increasingly elusive, that the question must be asked: how do we know what we think we know?

Certainly, we can be led astray by emotion, but reason too can mislead. Formulating propositions that are supposed to be either true or false suggests that things can be known with definite certainty. We are trained in school to answer true-or-false questions on exams. But only statements are true or false, never reality itself. At a given moment, it may seem reasonable to suppose that either it is raining or it is not. But when you step outdoors and feel a single drop of moisture on your face, is it then raining or not? The question may only matter if you are trying to decide whether to take your umbrella. The point of certainty is to decide a course of action.

We are all familiar with the maddening limitations of public surveys, which ask you to rate your agreement with various propositions. Such “multiple choice” questions are also familiar from school days. Expanding the number of categories beyond two may seem like an improvement, but the crucial fact remains that all categories are artificial. In the case of surveys, our replies are used by others to make decisions that matter—to them, and potentially to us. While such information may reflect how people actually think and act, haven’t you wished you could give more nuanced answers? In some ways, the survey is an apt metaphor for our own internal thought processes. We poll ourselves to decide some issue that could require action. But then we tend to think in words, which means in either/or terms and forced categories.

The essence of digitation is formally known as the law of excluded middle: there is no ground between ‘on’ and ‘off’. But these are categories designed to force the issue, to artificially create the certainty upon which to act decisively. (“Either you are for us or against us.”) In many cases this serves society well. It’s why digital files can be copied without error. Even if we cannot predict the weather perfectly, digitation enables us to send spacecraft millions of miles to rendezvous with a precise location. Yet, no plan or calculation ever corresponds perfectly to reality, which can surprise us because it is always more nuanced than we think. Probability and statistics help to compensate for this limitation of thought in relation to the naturally ambiguous real world. Yet, even they deal with events that are presumed either to have happened or not. Reason depends on categories and operations that are clearly defined—putting reality aside. While thought aims at certainty, it also presumes it.

Certainty is a state of mind, not a state of the world. We hope to feel certain when action is required, since being wrong (or failing to act) can have dire consequences. Yet, however right we feel, mistakes are possible. Sometimes it is better to do nothing than to act prematurely. In some situations, it is wise to doubt what the situation actually is, because the reality is never as clear and simple as we think or others say. Psychologically, however, it is very challenging to remain in doubt, since it goes against a fundamental requirement to feel settled and decisive. A different skill is required.

I do not envy people in positions of authority who must make weighty and timely decisions. Errors of judgment often involve false assumptions and poor information (such as rumor). An underlying problem is knowing when to trust one’s mind and one’s information. Though not always possible, deferring judgment makes time for self-examination as well as further examination of the data.

Everyone recognizes that the organization of a brain can affect how its owner experiences and behaves in the world. We can begin to glimpse how the brain as a “mechanism” can be wired-up to produce behavior. It is not so easy to see how that gooey blob sealed in the skull creates the simulation of the outside world we call experience. It’s hard to imagine why there is consciousness at all in a purely material universe.

I think there are two reasons for this. First, because our understanding of the material world is grounded in the ideal of simplicity. (Perhaps if biology rather than physics had been the paradigm science the situation would be different.) As it is, the picture we look for is a causal account that proceeds from the subatomic level right through to the collective behavior of human bodies. Brain science, assisted by the metaphor of computation, has done a lot to fill in gaps of increasing complexity, but is still in infancy.

The other reason is more subtle, and has engendered endless bickering among philosophers ever since Descartes. The problem posed by consciousness is not a gap in our understanding of how behavior is produced but a gap between the concept of behavior and the concept of experience. You can observe what I do, for example, but you cannot in the same way observe what I feel. Your brain is simply wired up to your senses and not to mine. The closest we have come to bridging the gap is to monitor brain states correlated with reported feelings (and even to produce them experimentally by stimulating the brain). But a “brain state” is still a description from the outside, from a 3^rd-person point of view. It does not reveal what it’s like to be in that state from the subject’s point of view. The problem is to explain in objective terms how there comes to be such a thing as subjective experience. To explain scientifically how matter can mind.

There is no brief answer. But I believe the current definition of science stands in the way. For, the commitment of science to a 3^rd-person viewpoint excludes the subjective by definition. As a corollary, agency is excluded from nature, which is considered fundamentally passive and inert. Whole organisms are agents. But at the neuronal level, processes are considered from the biologist’s or chemist’s point of view and are not considered to have a point of view of their own. We should look in this intertidal zone for answers. In particular, the organism’s own internal logics and strategies (not just its “organization” from the scientist’s point of view) give rise to what it’s like to be that organism.

The problem of consciousness concerns meaning from divergent points of view—the meaning to the experiencing creature as opposed to the outside observer. This is obviously related to empathy and the challenge to take others’ experience seriously. So, it’s not just a technical puzzle for academics but a basic social and moral issue. It’s also a personal source of wonderment: to grasp the miracle of one’s own consciousness, the buzzing show of experience produced by the brain and body.

Vetting information is like shopping for shoes. When confronting any source of information, just as when shopping, it’s advisable to know what your purpose is. When you turn on the news, for example, do you ask yourself what you hope to gain from that experience? What do you want to be informed about and why do you wish to keep “informed” at all? What will you do with that information? Are you at the mall to pass the time, to window shop, spend money and just hang out—or do you need a new pair of shoes because the old ones are falling apart? Could you manage barefoot?

Rational shoppers will make their way directly to the shoe outlet and not be distracted by bargains on neckties. And they don’t just stay at home with worn out shoes because they hate shopping. Sift what you can from a source of information, to find what serves your purpose, which you are clear about. Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water: don’t reject the source, or the whole, because of some detail you dislike. On the other hand, be critical and vigilant against illogic, inconsistency in arguments, and “facts” that may be false, suspicious, or misleading. At the same time, understand that an idea presented might have its own merits if approached differently or in a different context. Ignore sales pitches, and seek the shoe within your price range that meets your needs and is truly comfortable. Shop around.

Beware reification and generalization. “Shoe” is a big category. Don’t shop for work boots or dance shoes in a sporting goods store. Language shapes, and often misleads, thought. A shoe that you have to “break in” may break your foot. You shouldn’t have to struggle to get into it or out, or have to convince yourself it feels ok. If the shoe doesn’t fit, you don’t have to wear it! Supposedly objective facts are always someone’s claims, made for their own reasons. Does the salesperson get a commission?

Be alert to gimmicks. If you are in a high-end athletic footwear store looking for a plain canvas tennis shoe, the tacit assumption may be that you have lots of disposable income. Fifty models of running shoe each have their competing “unique feature” that will not make you run noticeably faster. Try to identify the intent behind the information that puts its best foot forward. A gimmicky feature is designed to increase sales, not necessarily to provide real benefit. If the sales pitch annoys, insults, or intimidates you, don’t take it personally—but don’t buy it.

Make your own connections. Don’t naively accept claims proposed, which are likely biased. Do your homework. Learn what you can about the history of footwear, how and where shoes are manufactured, what makes for quality and durability, the social and ecological policies of the manufacturer. Look for the big ideas behind the details and see how they relate to your present understanding. What are the long-term effects on your posture of different kinds and qualities of footwear?

On the other hand, keep an eye open for significant details that might call your present views into question, or might support a different idea. (Science deliberately looks for details that falsify its pet ideas.) If you have a favorite trusted brand, try to find fault with it. If a particular pair of shoes you are trying on seems perfect, are there nagging hesitations that might lead to future regrets? Be open to indecision. Uncertainty can be unnerving, but may be better than a hasty or wrong decision, an uncomfortable shoe, wasted money. Don’t be afraid to leave the store empty handed. There will always be more shoes—and news—to try on.

James Clerk Maxwell is best known for predicting the speed of light from equations that bear his name. As a mathematical theorist, he was also interested in statistical mechanics—the theory that explains the behavior of gasses in terms of the motions of molecules (in contrast to thermodynamics, which describes visible behavior in terms of heat flow, volume, pressure, and temperature). The Second Law of Thermodynamics was a hot topic in the 19^th century, since it seemed to imply that the universe is dissipating toward an ultimate “heat death.” It says, basically, that the overall amount of order in the universe cannot increase, that the efforts we make to extract useful energy and create local order always result in more overall disorder or useless energy. There are no perpetual motion machines and no free lunches. This has implications for the limits of efficient computation.

Long before computers, Maxwell was suspicious of efforts to prove the 2^nd Law using statistical mechanics. He devised a thought experiment to express his concerns. Imagine a container of gas with a central partition. A hole in this partition allows molecules to pass from one chamber to the other, so that pressure and temperature would equalize over time. But imagine also a clever little fellow inside who “effortlessly” operates a frictionless hatch, placed over the hole, in such a way as to admit only fast-moving molecules, one way into one chamber. With no work invested, this would eventually create a higher temperature or pressure on one side than on the other. Work could be extracted from this difference in a repeatable cycle (e.g., by moving a piston)—apparently contradicting the 2^nd Law. Physicists have long debated the implications of this seeming paradox, trying to exorcise Maxwell’s demon or prove whether the 2^nd Law is inviolable. It’s still unclear whether it should be thought of as a precise matter of principle or as only true on average, and how it might apply to the cosmos as a whole.

Thought experiments are always idealizations, contrived to explore a crucial issue in situations where many variables would actually be in play. Maxwell’s “demon” is a disembodied intelligence whose physical properties are disregarded. The demon and the hatch are massless and require no energy to move. The demon defies a law of physics by evading physics in the first place. The challenge of the thought experiment is to understand the exact nature of the crime.

Life is a process that creates local order using energy. If the 2^nd Law is unconditionally true, then just by existing we contribute to the overall increase of entropy. On the other hand, since the universe is still in a relatively ordered state, it must have begun in an even more ordered state, for the 2^nd Law implies a running down with time. Where did that initial order come from? The ultimate demon, God? Or, is it possible that order arises naturally, without or despite a growing total of disorder?

Actual experiments too are idealizations. So are laws of physics, which not only summarize experimental results, but are often supposed to cause those results. Maxwell’s Demon points to general questions about the role of theory, idealization and physical law. Do natural laws pre-exist the universe, guiding its formation, or do they simply tally what we see? Do they even describe reality, or merely human conceptual systems? Such questions reflect the awkwardness with which we embrace our ambivalent status as both physical and mental beings. Like Maxwell’s Demon, we are ambiguously participants and observers, standing at once inside and outside the system of the world—hoping always for a free lunch.

I’ve been enthralled by outer space movies ever since boyhood in the fifties. Over the years, I noted with interest the shift from invasion themes, inspired by the Cold War, to close encounters of a friendlier kind. I took that as a good sign, psychologically and politically. Then there was the dis-aster genre (literally “from the stars”), in which the hero saves the day (even the human race), often from troubles brought on by male techno hubris in the first place. Sometimes that very moxie turns the tide—for example, turning away an approaching asteroid.

Lately, we see films in which no hero is able to save humanity or the earth from impending doom. If film is a sort of cultural dreaming, what does this portend? Does it indicate a growing cynicism about the prospects of technological civilization, the destruction of society by corporate capitalism? Does it reflect a millenarian despair and fatalism, even a let’s-just-get-it-over-with-already death wish? Does it simply mean that movie audiences know more about the universe since NASA and Hubble? Or does it betoken a maturity that is willing, beyond comforting hope, finally to face up to the utter fragility of all things, including planetary life? Does it admit that enough is enough, and that for all of us collectively, as for each of us individually, there can indeed be an end? Perhaps all these and more.

The title of a recent disaster film, “Melancholia,” is a clue. The premise involves the filmmaker’s observation that depressed people are calmer in the face of threatening events than their pollyanna counterparts. (While that doesn’t mean that depressives are more in touch with reality, certainly being in touch with reality can be depressing.) In the film, the threatening event is the destruction of the Earth by collision with a rogue planet, looming visibly closer by the minute. That’s pretty depressing—but no more so, really, than the knowledge that the sun will engulf the earth in five billion years. The difference is only a considerable future in which to put fate out of mind, or in which to try heroically to do something about it. Yet, how many people are preparing now for the sun’s demise? It’s only a matter of time!

Still on the invasion theme, now the source of paranoia goes beyond humanly controllable factors like the bomb. Nature itself is out to get us. But guess what: it always has been! We live by grace on a narrow ledge in time, between asteroids, supernova outbursts, and other catastrophes. We survived the Big Bang, saber-tooth tigers and ice ages, only to face ultimate dissipation (as it now seems, with accelerating cosmic expansion). Whether the dream ends by fire or by ice, with a bang or a whimper, depends on your time scale. But invasion, of course, comes not only from outer space. We have regular epidemic movies too, not to mention real epidemics and people who refuse to stay dead. Both nature and the unconscious can really get under your skin! The anti-heroine of the film believes that life is unique on earth—and evil.

To be sure, we are under siege by invisible forces: biologically by every form of microbe, and psychologically by every form of unknown. Our bodies have had evolutionary time to cope with biological attack; yet, we seem to be creating uncertainty faster than we can deal with it. In the brief reprieve between natural and man-made disasters, we erect our meager defenses: personal relations and routines, family, career, science, religion, entertainment, our very sociability, and the whole of what we call culture and civilization. The film is about facing up to inevitable loss of the whole house of cards. The thing about reality, of course, is that it happens whether we face up to it or not. There is no miracle ending.

The classic Mind-Body Problem concerns how consciousness (‘mind’) can be produced in a material system such as the brain (‘body’). That remains a mystery to this day, though much has been written about it. There is another, closely related question, perhaps as elusive. That again involves the relationship between thought (‘mind’) and natural reality (‘body’). In particular, what are the limits of analysis, theory, scientific model-building, and simulation in regard to the complexity of nature? Thought and theories, like machines, are artificial constructs, finite conceptual systems, perfectly knowable in essence. There is no guarantee that nature corresponds to human definitions or models, which are always simplified idealizations. Whatever the relationship of map to territory, it is not one-to-one.

The philosophy of mechanism trades on the effectiveness of simplified idealizations, which are themselves a sort of conceptual machine. It has produced our technology and modern understanding of the universe. However, this very success has brought us to the brink of ecological collapse and perhaps self-destruction. Getting too smart for our own good raises again the question of the relationship of mind to matter, but in a different sense. The question is not how consciousness could arise in a physical world, but how it can sustain itself there if it is it inherently self-destructive. In other words, is there something self-contradictory about consciousness—and thus about us?

Indeed, we are full of contradictions. We now admit to being part of the natural world—animals——yet resist this status. The whole drive behind technology and mastery of nature—as behind religion—is to not be part of the natural world. We build houses and cities so as not to live in the wild, build theories to not be bewildered, imagine spirituality to not be brutes. Mind consists of ideas, which stand as literally ideal in stark contrast to material reality. Rather than saving us, however, this antagonism between thought and reality could kill us. Consciousness does not fit well within the scientific world, in whose terms it resists explanation. Could it also render us unfit to live in the natural world, alien to it? If so, that leaves the apparent option of living within a completely man-made world. But that is a contradiction in terms, since even outer space is still part of nature, along with the matter of which any environment must be made.

Some post-humanists advocate migrating to cyberspace—that is, to upload your consciousness to a supercomputer, where you can live disembodied and be finally liberated from the constraints and messiness of biological existence. Except that this supercomputer, upon which cyber-life would depend, must be an actual physical machine, perhaps as subject to breakdown as other machines. You would no longer depend on the health of your physical brain and body, but would (like the “world” you would live in) depend on the untroubled operation of a computer in the real world, over which you would have no control and to which you would entrust your life. Or, perhaps mind will triumph over matter to create a more perfect body for itself, over which it has control we can scarcely now conceive. Murphy’s Law and the 2^nd Law of Thermodynamics render all bets off. Still, we are the creature with a foot in two worlds, and there seems no going back.

Money and monogamy are two of the world’s oldest institutions. Are they connected? Monogamy is an equalizer, which serves to distribute men’s sexual access to women in patriarchal society. Without it, a few wealthy and powerful males could monopolize the gene pool, to the great chagrin of other men. Hordes of young males driven by sexual frustration render society unstable. Monogamy is like democracy: one person, one vote.

Despite huge disparities of wealth today, a man can effectively “have” only one woman at a time, just as he can “have” only one body and one life of his own. It is not a moral issue, but a practical social one. In a sense, monogamy is a principle of fairness that compensates for other inequities. While there is no moral reason why you should be loyal to one person only, there are economic and emotional reasons. Love is no more exclusive than sex, but we must live realistically within our means.

Money, in contrast, aggravates inequality. It serves ultimately to concentrate the distribution of wealth in ever fewer hands. It is hard to steal or swindle someone out of their harvested crop or the things they have made by hand. But as soon as that crop or artifact is exchangeable for cash or other symbolic widgets, institutionalized theft becomes inevitable and even invisible. Money is so portable, anonymous, and abstract that swindling (politely called investment or profit), has become the normal way of life, the very basis of capitalist economy.

Money represents material and social assets, the value of goods and services, including access to women. A man may have genetic assets to bargain with. He can also bargain with money. In other words, money can represent the value of persons as well as of things. There is no limit to what one can own as personal property, except (now by polite and legal convention) other persons. Yet, marriage is a form of contract resembling roughly mutual ownership. Laws pertaining to it essentially regulate the disposition of property, including children. The world might be better off if a monogamous relationship applied not only to people but to material possessions as well. For example: if you could “own” only one house, one car, one tv, one share in a corporation, etc., just as you can have only one spouse, one body, and one life.

Besides quantity of assets, there is a range in their size and quality, or in the market value of shares. Yet the worth of these things to an individual is relative to physical needs, which are standard issue for human bodies. You may have a thousand times more money than your neighbor, but you cannot eat a thousand times more food or sleep a thousand times more soundly. Your gourmet meal could cost a thousand times more but cannot taste a thousand times better. Your exotic car cannot go a thousand times faster or be a thousand times more comfortable. Even if your fancy wristwatch could tell time a thousand times more accurately, how would that serve you? You pay exponentially more for diminishing returns.

Your lover cannot be a thousand times more attractive than other sexual partners. Monogamy has a sobering effect within dizzying patriarchal, capitalist, consumer society. As they say, money can’t buy you love. It can buy you sex, of course, and influence over the human gene pool (as it did notably for Genghis Khan). It can also buy you power, the deference of others, and influence over society. Yet, aside from its objective effects on the world, the subjective worth of power for the individual is relative to psychological need, which is also fairly standard issue. Having a thousand times more power cannot make you feel a thousand times more important or worthy. In compensation, neither is it possible to feel a thousand times less secure if you are poor.

Aristotle had cautioned against the kind of active probing of Nature on which modern science is founded. He doubted that setting up artificial conditions, under which to observe the reactions of natural things, could produce a true understanding of their real nature. Knowledge of things as they are in their own right could only be achieved through attentive observation. Tampering, in what is now known as ‘controlled experiment’, would instead produce freakish departures from reality he called “monsters of nature.”

But such tampering is how we achieved mastery of the planet. The whole of our civilization could be considered a controlled experiment, in which we ourselves, along with our fellow creatures, figure as the guinea pigs. Overfed, overcrowded and over stimulated, drugged and domesticated like the species upon which we feed, have we not ourselves become Monsters of Nature?

And have we not come to this pass particularly through our treatment of animals? Industrialized food production involves moral as well as chemical pollution. The horrendous practices of slaughterhouses and other treatment of animals is shocking.

Like the citizens of a fascist state, we don’t want to know what goes on in the hidden concentration camps that feed us. But we pay a price for the illusion of being well fed. Hence, the convenience culture is literally malnourished in the midst of overabundance. Similarly, we do not know what goes on in the hidden corridors of power; we are to our masters as the beasts we raise for food are to us. And to quote Tolstoy: “as long as there are slaughterhouses there will be war.”

Is humanity still acting out an age-old revenge against Nature—for the humiliations of being embodied in squishy, smelly, vulnerable, mortal flesh? We’ve done our best to replace the wild with a hard-edged world of our own design. But we haven’t escaped the moral dilemma of being obliged to eat other creatures in order to exist, to kill others of our kind. On the contrary, our guilt has been compounded by systematically punishing the victims for our need. Killing is no dilemma for natural carnivores, but industrialized slaughter must be problematic for a self-conscious omnivore imbued with a moral sense. It will be increasingly a technical dilemma as well, as our ability to maintain wasteful food production wanes with diminishing resources.

With all our technological prowess, one would think that morally and ecologically responsible food production would be a research priority. The ultimate moral exoneration would be to free humanity entirely from the food chain! If, emulating plants, we could manage to produce what we need directly from sunlight, water, air and minerals, we might finally achieve the freedom from beastliness only dreamed of in religion.

We know that history repeats, if not exactly. As Hitler invaded Austria, and as Putin invaded Ukraine, is Canada in danger of an American invasion? Has Canada been getting a free ride at U.S. expense, as Mr. Trump accuses? How independent can we be? Now we scramble in the face of a bully’s threats.

I was fortunate to immigrate to Canada in the elder Trudeau era, when the border guards were literally looking the other way. In fact, I “landed” in Quebec City, about as far away as I could get from ubiquitous American culture. At the time, the perceived threat there was from “les Anglais.” I knew better even then.

I write this on the 60th anniversary of the modern Canadian flag. Having grown up compulsorily saluting the Stars and Stripes every schoolday morning and public event, I now believe national flags should fly over federal buildings, not on domestic doorsteps and at used car lots. I was happy to find that Canadian flag-waving seemed to be confined to hockey victories. The very lack of national self-consciousness still seems a charming relief. I still don’t know all the words to “Oh, Canada.” After all, “Mon pays, ce n’est pas un pay, c’est l’hiver!”

All this laxness and diffidence may have a price. Canadian “socialism” and other quirkiness was tolerated under the American economic and military umbrella. That tolerance depended on a degree of liberalness and respect for differences in the U.S., which can no longer be taken for granted. Can Canada’s friendlier, politer, and more relaxed ethos can scarcely compete with current Yankee intensiveness? Can we preserve a relaxed domestic calm while threatened from below? In game-theory terms, the optimal strategy to deal with bullies is “Tit For Tat”—do unto others as they do to you—at least when bargaining from a position of relative strength, in recurring interchanges. The cautionary note, however, is not to antagonize the bully when you are not in a position of strength. Bravado can backfire.

So, while keeping calm and clear head, we ought also to get stronger and less dependent on the U.S. On one level, that means strengthening our military: not only against China or Russia, but against the U.S. itself, which has ten times our population, wealth, and military strength. The U.S. would not fail to defend itself by “defending” Canada—that is, by occupying it. So, think Ukraine, and the type of military technology that midgets can use against goliaths. Secondly, Canada can cultivate other alliances and trade partners. It could join the European Union. Still in transition from being a resource-based economy, we can strive to be more self-sufficient, less dependent on trade at all.

Perhaps the harder challenge is to keep our identity by not rising to the bait of the aggressor, sinking to their level. Women have faced this ancient problem for millennia. Ethnic groups and small countries have faced it in the shadow of empires. Democrats and liberals now face it south of the border. How can quiet reason prevail over aggressive ranting? Well, two ways: by remaining unrattled within; and by remaining steadfastly united without. We may have to become more nationally self-conscious of “Canadian” values, in order to stubbornly preserve them. To the degree that being Canadian intentionally resists a precise definition, that may seem paradoxical. Yet, however nondescript and un-American Canada may seem to the current U.S. administration, we can know those qualities to be the very strengths worth standing for and defending. In its modest way, Canada can continue to endorse genteel and humanitarian values at a time when the triumph of global capitalism entails a world-wide political shift to the right.