Howard Rotberg on his new book, Exploring Vancouverism: The Political Culture of Canada’s Lotus Land

by Howard Rotberg

I suppose I am a bit unique: after a first degree in the history of cultures and ideologies, I transferred to Law School and became an expert on real estate development law.

Then after practicing law for twenty years, I sold my practice to divide my time between developing affordable rental housing in Ontario for low income working people (under government inducement programs that exist in Ontario) and writing books, both fiction and non-fiction, on the theme of how ideologies and value systems affect our policy choices.

Four years ago I met a lady, now my wife, who is a Professor of Urban Planning at U.B.C., and she persuaded me to move to Vancouver. We decided that I could still commute to Ontario one week every month to continue my affordable housing development.

So, when I arrived here in Vancouver, I arrived with a set of interests, values and cultural understandings that are unique to my background, to my religious beliefs, to my upbringing in a small Ontario manufacturing city, and to all my education and experience.

Two things absolutely amazed me, when I arrived in Vancouver and took a look around: Firstly, there was no understanding of the need to have government inducement programs such as I have been involved in, which give financial incentives to private sector and non-profit developers to replenish the supply of affordable rental apartments, both for singles and for families.

Second, and this I found even more amazing, there was little understanding of how Vancouver has a unique culture that inhibited the development of social justice programs for workforce housing such as exist in huge numbers in the United States, and moderate numbers in the Rest of Canada.

Instead, I saw a self-absorption and a narcissism that focused more on our latest position on somebody’s list of most “livable” cities, than on ways to help disadvantaged poor people or even moderate income young families who are shut out of the housing market, in this, the most expensive city for housing in Canada.

How could people promote their province as the “Best Place on Earth” (an official provincial slogan) when thousands of mentally ill homeless people roam the streets picking up bottles and cans to redeem for seven to ten cents each, and still others are eating out of the garbage?

To me, the answer to why Vancouverites had such a different understanding than me was the concept of ideology. To me, Vancouver has its own ideology; to be sure there is diversity in Vancouver, and therefore many different cultures and ideologies, but there was one ideology that was affecting many of the policy areas in Vancouver and that ideology, I came to understand, was the ideology of Lotus Land.

But when I asked people if they knew what “Lotus Land” referred to, I was shocked that so few actually understood much about the concept and where it originated. Perhaps one person in ten knew that the concept had something to do with a “laid back” west coast lifestyle, or acceptance of soft drugs like marijuana, or emphasis on beauty and tranquility rather than other values. But, when it came to understanding the origins of the concept, I found fewer than one in a hundred who knew that it came from the great poem by the distinguished British poet, Alfred Tennyson, called “The Lotos Eaters” (he used the Greek spelling of “lotus”).

What can Tennyson’s poem teach us about the cultural “foundation” of Vancouver’s ideology, which I call Vancouverism?

The “Lotos Eaters” by Tennyson, is, for me, the central metaphor of Vancouver’s culture. Citizens of Canada, the United States and beyond, who literally or figuratively have tired of their “roaming”, have come to the shores of Lotos Land, with the freely available drug of the lotus leaves, the beauty and tranquility of the beaches, and a harvest of lumber, minerals or the modern day valuable commodity, real estate.

The mariners were fighting in Greece and are described first in Homer’s Odyssey. When they are swept overboard in a storm, and land in Lotus Land, Tennyson has the mariners happy to stay in their island paradise, and reject their previous lives by stating that they take “no pleasure” from a war against evil.

If Vancouver is just a lotus land, and just the geographic end of the line for those who would seek to roam, and for those in the rest of Canada who would seek to run away from their pasts, their families, and their memories, Vancouver is bound to fail at anything more worthy than the pursuit of pleasure and the pursuit of appearances.

In Vancouver the appearances are so deceiving: a beautiful city full of creative people hides a massive institutionalized system of criminality, (primarily in the drug trade and in so-called “white-collar” crime like investment and stock fraud), a system of shoddy workmanship in housing construction (the “leaky condo” fiasco), and a system of favours for the rich and powerful to the detriment of more modest income people - especially a system that protects the interests of wealthy older property owners to the detriment of the provision of affordable housing for younger people and our workforce.

In the poem, the mariners of Odysseus see a land "in which it seemed always afternoon" because of the calm and peaceful atmosphere. Coincidentally, this land has a gleaming river flowing to the sea, three snow-capped mountaintops, and shadowy pine growing in the vale. (Interestingly, Vancouver has a great river flowing to the sea – the Fraser River, and three snow-capped mountains – Grouse Mountain, Cypress Mountain, and Mount Seymour, and the lodgepole pine is the most widespread tree in the province!)

“Mild-eyed melancholy lotos-eaters” bring the flower and fruit of the lotos. The mariners who eat it feel as if they have fallen into a deep sleep, hardly hearing their fellow mariners speaking to them, hearing only the music of their own “beating heart(s)”.

Although they dream of returning to their families in Ithaca, the lotos makes them tired of their wandering, and they all say, “we will no longer roam.”

After their ingestion of the lotos, they now question why man is the only creature in nature who must toil. They state that everything else in nature is able to rest, but man is tossed from one sorrow to another. They argue that mankind’s “inner spirit sings, “There is no joy but calm”; in other words, that tranquility and calmness offer the only joy.

So, here in the land of the Lotos-Eaters, after imbibing the lotos, the great mariners of Ulysses negate all the great values of life, stating that the only joy comes from calmness.

Of course, Tennyson intends us to be somewhat shocked by this position. Tennyson, schooled in the stories of the Bible, was no doubt intending that this poem be linked to the story of Adam and Eve and their ejection from the Garden of Evil for eating the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. With Tennyson’s knowledge of Bible, he knew that biblical commentators held that this “life of toil” was for the purpose of rectifying the fallen universe, or as it is sometimes stated, to “repair the world”.

So, Tennyson’s mariners, in repudiating a “life of toil” and refusing to combat “evil”, by instead partaking of the fruit of the lotos, are in fact repudiating the Biblical essence of the human mission in history, which is to repair the world.

In Lotus Land, the centre of white collar crime and drug distribution and gangs, we, the ideological heirs of the mariners, cannot be bothered to “denounce” evil. Instead we revel in our ideology of “tolerance”.

For the young, the Lotos in Vancouver is represented, on the one hand, by the proverbial “sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll”, and on the other hand, by Tennyson’s description of watching “the crisping ripples on the beach”. There is also, in common with youth elsewhere, something of a worship of “pagan” body art.

For the old, the Lotos in Vancouver is the way its moderate climate and natural beauty make it (along with Victoria and the cities of the Okanagan Valley) the ideal retirement destination for upper income Canadians. The large demographic group called Baby Boomers (born between 1946 and 1964) started turning 60 in 2006, and hence there will be a large group of new retirees looking at retirement to British Columbia in the next 15 years.

Thus, retirement to fancy condos, luxury yachts, and private golf clubs will give Lotos-toys to those who have earned them, so that the terrible thoughts of our meaningless existence can be held at bay.

Is it any wonder that the Vancouver Sun rarely has any international news or world issues on its front page? The front page is given over, almost exclusively, to local issues. In a
world in crisis, with culture wars and daily terrorist massacres, the denizens of Vancouver appear preoccupied with the local, preoccupied with the Lotos.

In this, they are closer than they believe to the young, who have a certain segment who are so obviously addicted to sex, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll and the beaches. For the young, we may consider that it has been forever thus.

But the young in Vancouver face a very uncertain future in terms of secure employment and affordable housing. The Lotos can offer an escape, albeit temporary.

Again, Tennyson explains how Lotus Land contains an inherent disregard for the welfare of the next generation. The entire Vancouver Model has been so unwelcoming to all young people, not only those who wish to start families, and need bedroom space more than they need high end finishings, but also those just starting their careers who need something affordable somewhere close to where they work, and those who need quality, affordable daycare.

Tennyson’s mariners, while acknowledging that it is “sweet” to dream of child (and wife), quickly conclude, (while sitting eating the Lotos fruit, and taking in the Lotos beauty) that they will not return to Fatherland, wife or children. The mariners so quickly and without any pangs of conscience decide to abandon their children. They feel no obligations to their children; in fact, as narcissists, the only regard for their children, is the “sweetness” that thoughts of them give to the mariners themselves.

Abandoning all notions of good and evil, abandoning the notion of “toil” for the purpose of supporting a family, the mariners, self-centred druggies and esthetes that they are, see all of life through their Lotos-coloured glasses. Lacking empathy for even their own children they see no joy in anything but calm and beauty.

Believing not in an afterlife, believing that nothing they can do with their lives will have a lasting effect on the future, they conclude that all things are to be taken from them and simply become part of a “dreadful past”.

This is such a depressing view, compared to those who live to “toil”, live to create good in the world, live to create social justice, and live to repair the world and reestablish the paradise that was lost by Adam and Eve.

Instead of aspiring to the spiritual paradise of Adam and Eve, before their fall, the Lotos-Eaters accept a facsimile thereof. But the paradise of the Lotos is meant for slumber and calm only. Life is only viewed from the material viewpoint: after consumption of material things, such material things are gone, leaving only a dreadful past.

That other approach will say also that what lasts is what we create of lasting value. And one of the most important things we create is our own children. Teaching them well, and by instilling in them good values, gives each of us a little bit of control over, a little contribution to, the future well-being of the world. But to abandon them to better enjoy our own experiences of beauty and the other goals of the Lotos, is to demonstrate a moral failing of the highest degree.

So for our young people, I have written Exploring Vancouverism: The Political Culture of Canada’s Lotus Land. It is high time that someone with a knowledge of land development explains how the lack of affordable housing in Vancouver, and the lack of rental or owned housing for young people is the result of conscious policy decisions, not just market forces.

In the book, I explain in detail, how our local politicians, in cahoots with developers and local media, dependent on developers’ advertising dollars, have used Lotus Land culture to create a place stacked against young people and in favour of yuppie baby-boomers with their real estate wealth.

That is Lotus Land. And we need to care about it, in order to create social justice for our young people, our lower income working people, our disabled and our young families. It is time.

Exploring Vancouverism: The Political Culture of Canada’s Lotus Land (CanadianValuesPress) is available at Duthies, Book Warehouse and UBC Bookstore, or can be ordered at Mantua2003@Hotmail.com