A Reflection on Politics, Anarchy, and the Big Boat
Why Did I Write 25 Political Essays?
I meant to write about meditation, but the world kept intruding. The 2024 U.S. election. The 2025 Canadian election. Gaza. Tariffs. Trudeau’s exit. Carney’s arrival. Poilievre’s surge. Climate breakdown. The chaos of it all demanded clarity. I wrote to make sense of it. And now, with the elections concluded—Trump in the U.S., Carney in Canada—the series finds its natural end. The world keeps turning. I return to other subjects, other rhythms. Before I go, I ask: what did I learn?
Strategic Voting and True Values
A common thread runs through every essay: the need to reconcile political events with personal values. I’ve voted across the spectrum over the decades. Conservative as a young man, NDP as an idealist, Liberal as a family man, Green when hope flickered. If I could have voted in the U.S., I would have chosen Kamala Harris in 2024. A strategic vote, a form of harm reduction in the face of Trump’s authoritarianism. In 2025, I nearly voted Liberal for Carney. But confident in his win, I voted NDP. Voting closer to my values felt right.
Each election, the choice becomes harder. Every party drifts right, defending capitalism, pipelines, or wars. The Green Party imploded. The NDP waned. The Liberals caved. Even policies that once signaled climate ambition now serve economic survival. Strategic voting, as I argued in The Most Consequential Election, becomes a feedback loop that reinforces the very compromises we lament.
The real culprit may be the structure itself: political parties. They stifle adaptive coalitions, enforce compliance, and block cross-party problem-solving. Consensus politics, as practiced in the Northwest Territories, offers an overlooked model. Electoral reform remains vital. Trudeau’s broken 2015 promise still stings. A major plank, quickly abandoned when he couldn’t dictate its shape.
Anarchy, Mutual Aid, and Trump-Style Wreckage
Disillusionment with party politics led me to revisit the original meaning of anarchy. Kropotkin called it mutual aid—not chaos, but community. It imagines self-governing collectives grounded in cooperation and trust. Real-world examples exist: co-ops, care circles, Indigenous land stewardship. They work, especially in mature, local contexts. Absent that maturity, however, anarchy can collapse into opportunism. Still, it holds a hopeful edge—the belief that people, given time, might evolve toward it.
Trump-style anarchy is something else entirely. It wrecks for gain, not for community. As I explored in Disentangling from Globalization, Trump’s tariffs tore through the structures that held global trade together. A wrecking ball to NAFTA, the WTO, and the thin agreements that kept capital flowing. In their wake, an opportunity emerged. Space to rethink, to pause, to fall back and begin again with intention. A healthy fallback. A chance to re-anchor regional economics.
Globalization and the Colonial Continuum
Globalization promised connection but delivered dependency. As I argued in Holding a Globe in My Hands, it hollowed out local economies, prioritized scale over soul, and turned human beings and ecosystems into “externalities.”
That said, globalization is not without merit. It helped reduce extreme poverty, extend life expectancy, spread medical access, and connect cultures. Trade and cooperation across borders are not inherently exploitative. At its best, globalization fosters mutual learning, mobilizes resources to respond to global crises, and allows for economic uplift. But these benefits have come at a steep cost, especially when justice and sustainability are sacrificed for efficiency and profit.
The 1988 FTA marked Canada’s surrender to the logic of scale. Since then, our sovereignty has eroded—not through conquest, but through contract. Capital flows. Supply chains stretch thin. Culture dissolves into monoculture. The story of globalization is a continuation of colonialism, as I noted in Disentangling from Globalization. Different tools, same results.
Still, a window remains open. Tariffs, oddly, provide it. They interrupt the trance of inevitability. We can choose again. But this requires more than policy; it demands a cultural shift.
The Evolutionary Strategies: Billionaires and Bodhisattvas
In the film Lucy, Professor Norman describes life’s two strategies: immortality or reproduction. In hostile conditions, life seeks self-sufficiency. In nurturing ones, it reproduces. Billionaire consciousness, as I described in Billionaire Consciousness, is the first strategy—self-sufficiency for the few, fueled by detachment, power, and technological escape. Mars colonization. AI. Genetic extension. It is not merely greed but a survival strategy for elites.
But kings do not coexist long. And what becomes of the rest of us? Servants? Batteries? Expendables?
By contrast, climate consciousness is the second strategy—a big boat for all. The Buddhist metaphor of the small and big boat applies here. The small boat seeks personal liberation. The big boat carries all beings to safety. Anarchy and billionaire consciousness paddle alone. Climate consciousness builds something broader, rooted in interdependence.
Climate Consciousness: The Big Boat Strategy
Climate consciousness is not just a moral appeal. It is a systems perspective. Where globalization sees the world in terms of supply chains and cost efficiency, climate consciousness sees a living whole. It does not reduce people and ecosystems to “externalities.” As I wrote earlier, mainstream economics treats everything outside the transaction as irrelevant. Climate consciousness dissolves that illusion. It sees the atmosphere as shared breath, the forest as common lungs, the ocean as circulatory system.
This consciousness doubles down on diversity, equity, and inclusion—not as slogans, but as design principles for resilience. It recognizes that marginalized voices often hold the wisdom needed to restore balance. It prioritizes circular economies, renewable energy, ecological restoration, and community-based planning. It understands that sustainability is not a technical problem but a cultural one.
Climate consciousness says: we are not isolated bubbles. We are nested within one another, within each other, and within the Earth. If billionaire consciousness is escape and control, climate consciousness is reciprocity and care. If globalization is scale and abstraction, climate consciousness is rootedness and attention.
Climate Before Capital
In Climate Change is More Important than Tariffs, I argued that climate is not just another issue. It is the issue. Fires, floods, heatwaves—they’re here and compounding. The economy feels urgent, but the climate is existential. Our window for action narrows with every delay.
Carney, a global climate leader turned political centrist, offered credibility. But as I expressed in I’m Not Clear on the New Liberal Climate Strategy, his scrapping of the carbon tax signaled retreat. Poilievre offered no real strategy at all. The Liberals were not what they used to be, as I noted in The Most Consequential Election.
Meanwhile, the far right had called out the wolves. Progressives, I wrote, must do the same—not to mimic destruction, but to disrupt apathy.
Small Is Big
Some argue that Canada is too small to matter. But we are among the highest per capita emitters. We are a G7 nation, a signatory to Paris. We punch above our weight. And as I shared in Personal Responses to Our Difficult Times, every response matters: local mutual aid, spiritual grounding, informed dissent, cross-partisan listening. Quiet politics, rooted in relationship.
Climate consciousness isn’t just ethical. It is ecological. As James Lovelock taught, Gaia adapts. It seeks balance. The Earth will respond, with or without us. Our choice is whether to align with its rhythms or resist until collapse.
Conclusion: The End of the Series, The Start of Something Else
This concludes the political series. I wrote these essays not just to inform others but to clarify my own view—to know where I stand and why. I return now to meditation, to the quiet disciplines that steady the mind. But climate consciousness remains. It is not separate. It is the ground.
Politics pulled me in, but not away. It brought me here, more resolved, more rooted. There is still a future to write.