foge ¢, The herald, Frigay, December 23, Wy

TER RACE/KITIMAT

daily herald

General Oftlee - 635-6357
Circulation - 635-6357

Published by
Sterling Publishers

GEN. MANAGER - Knox Coupland

EDITOR - Greg Middleton
CIRCULATION- TERRACE. 4635-6357
KITIMAT OF FICE - 432-2747 .
Published every weekday at 3212 Kalum Street,
Terrace, B.C, A mamber of Verified Circulation.
Authorized as second class mall. Registration number
1201, Postage pald In cash, return postage guaranteed.

NOTE OF COPYRIGHT

The Herald retalns full, complete and sole capyright In
any advertisement produced and-ar any editorial or
Photographic content published in ithe Herald.
Reproduction Is not permitted.

EDITOR'S
JOURNAL

BY
GREG
MIDDLETON

A lot of people were just as happy to see it go. The
police aren’t going to mourn the loss of the Seven Seas
Restaurant, a victim of a fire over the holiday
weekend. Some members of the Terrace detachment
of the RCMP were openly jubilant. ;

To the police, the Seven Seas, a Chinese food place
that opened late in the evening and stayed open until
nearly dawn was just a trouble spot. It was where
what was left of the human remnants which stumble ,
out of the Zoo at closing time went, That the Seven
Seas stayed open to feed the late night crowd meant
that the trouble makers, the thugs and vandals who
can drink every night until 2 a.m. were on the street
longer.

The eating place was also a problem for the police
because the owners were not capable of dealing with
some of their rougher clients. Had a patron or two a
weekend been beaten senseless and left in the alley to
be quickly and quietly picked up by the wagon the cops
would have been happier.

The police don’t like to go into a restaurant and deal
with unruly or reluctant to pay customers any more
than they will willingly go into a pub. The drill is that
you are to police the place yourself or the heat will be
applied to the establishment itself in the way of noting
numerous minor infractions until business is taken
care of inside by the operators.

The couple who ran the Seven Seas wwere at an
added disadvantage because of their English was not
good enough for them to feel confident going into court

to get a prosedution. The police become hesitant to, ..
help if they know they won't get their prosecutions. . ...
I don’t think you can blaine the police for not more’-"

actively dealing with the problems at the restaurant.
The RCMPare, after all, contractors who must show
results in order to justify the money the government
bodies spend on each detachment, If they can’t get
convictions for the time they put in, there are no
statistics to warrant staff and budget increases, It is
the marks on the graphs that count in Victoria and
Ottawa. . .

That the local gendarmes here could have gone a
long way toward dampening the trouble in the
restaurant by taking their breaks there, showing the
colors, is an obvious answer. You cannot, however,
tell someone where to take their coffee breaks or eat
lunch. I suppose the officers didn’t want to face their
regular clients over a meal,

While the local law enforcement officers could
watch and cheer, the fire department had to put a
blaze out and possibly even save a building they would
sooner see go to the ground.

Infact, it would be safe to say the feeling is that itis
a shame the whole block didn’t go and by some
miracle take the buildings on the other side too, They
are all part of the original wooden frame structures
that were the start of downtown Terrace.

For firemen, buildings like these are potential death
traps. The wood is old and so, so dry. They go quickly.
The walls fall down unexpectedly, sometimes on
firemen.

While the dealing is going on now to see if the
building can be written off so the owner can demolish
it and put in another up with more apartments up-
stairs, the couple whoran the piace are going to return
home from a holiday to find their home and their
livelihood gone.

The Chinese Canadian couple who ran the Seven
Seas were, while they had their difficully dealing with
some of the rougher patrons and had trouble keeping
waitresses because of the hours, very good to me. I'll
miss them and their cooking, if they do not reopen
elsewhere here,

The food at the Seven Seas was simple,
Americanized Cantonese cooking. While it was
nothing fancy, it was as good as you can expect to find
this far from Vancouver or San Francisco, where the
ingredients for really good oriental cuisine has to be
purchased.

Gary Ng wouldn't split his prawns in half the way
many places do, even though that could double his
profit. He spent his off hours experimenting with
recipes. I spent a Sunday afternoon with him just
trying to find a better batter, one which would stay
just a bit crisper in sweet and sour sauce.

Helen would occasionally bring me a coffee from the
restaurantif she saw me in the office working early in
the morning while she and her husband cleaned up
before going to bed.

While the condition of their customers was
sometimes less than adequate for simple tasks such as
ordering areal, Helen had a great deal more patience
than you or I would probably have, provided there was
no bad janguage.

The restaurant had to institute a policy of paying
when you order because so many of the local toughs,
the same white trash that break the beer bottle and
windows in the area, would sneak out without paying.

I don't think you will see another restaurant open
after midnight here.

Il's a shame, but it seems the only way to make this
a decerit place to live is to clear the streets at dusk.
That, however, means you and [ have to stay home
loo.

CONNECTIONS

Technolo

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AEN

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ti:

This is the fourteenth of a weekly, fifteen-part
general interest, non credit, educational series on
technology and change, called Connectlons, offered hy
the Open Learning Institute.

In this article, philosopher Bertram Morris,
emeritus professor at the University of Colorado,
discusses the ethical dilemmas posed by technology
that many critica regard as dehumanizing.

By BERTRAM MORRIS |
Modern technology has had a revolutionary impact

upon society, upon nature, and upon human beings |

themselves,

Technology today has presented us with an un-
precedented range of material goods and degree of
control over nature, Yet the sheer power let loose by
this technology with insufficient respect to human
needs has created new ethical dilemmas of ends and

‘means and raised new questions about freedom,

justice, and peace in our world.
To what ends will we use the new powers of
technology, and what values will guide. us in our

choices? . woe

EARLY VS. MODERN TECHNOLOGIES .

The question of how humans can come to terms with
nature has troubled them since Adam and Eve had to
fend for themselves outside the Garden of Eden.
Technology, primitive in the beginning, provided the
indispensable means to secure food, clothing, shelter,
and fuel, "
But the necessities of sustenance were not all of life,
Myth and story and ritual gave meaning to these
primitive technologies and relief from an arduous
existence. By inventing gods — fire gods, rain gods,
sun gods, and other deities — and by interpreting their
arts, such as that of the blacksmith, in terms of divine
gifts — in such ways myth provided primitives with
peace of mind and explanations for those happenings
of life beyond himan control. ;

Modern technology relies not on myth but on science
and rational engineering methods. The result has been
more effective inventions for meeting social and
political demands. The machine, the steam (and in-
ternal combustion} engine, the hydraulic (and
atomic) generator, vaccine and antibiotics, lasers and
“smart weapons,” and the computer are among its
products.

However, science, in replacing myth as the
rationale for technology, has not produced a com-
parable value system, one that really makes us feel
comfortable in the world.

REVOLUTIONARY IMPACT

In ifs reliance on science, modern technology differs
from primitive technology both in its revolutionary
impact upon all aspects of society and in its stand in
relation to nature.

The methods of providing food, drink, clothes,
shelter, and fuel are revolutionary — and abundant ~~
from soft drinks to polyester to freeway motels.

Goods have never been so profuse; people have
hever moved about so.much and so far; leisure has
never been so widespread; education never so
available; and a world of people never so closely tied
together. .

Madern technology is responsible for the creation of
mass society — a society of large-scale industry,
massive transportation, worldwide commerce, and a
multitude of cities,

The results of technology show also on nature.
Atomic bombs, strip-mining, asphalt roads, in-
discriminate use of fertilizers and pesticides ~- these
and other techniques have taken their toll on nature.

Mountains have been levelled, the countryside has
been Industrialized, water has turned green, the air
brown — all this and more on a worldwide scale.

In consequence, nature has increasingly become an
artifact, a creation of man — or if net man-made, at
least man-modified,

But the effects of technology go even further: they
show on man himself. While modern technology offers
new options, a new spirit of doing things, a challenge
to old ways of life, it also offers countless hazards and
perils of life physical and spiritual.

Thus technology, by its very power, creates tragic
dilemmas. These dilemmas are questions of ends and
means, among which we may single out the crucial
ones of freedom, justice, and peace. Together, they
constilute the humanistic dilemmas of technology.
FREEDOM AND CHOICE

Freedom appears to be the legacy of the new
technology. Our range of choices is endlessly
multiplied by the technology that underlies our tools,
our goods, our livelihood.

But this freedom may be more apparent than real.

Our cheap pleasures, our reliance on gadgetry, our

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luxuriant excesses still have to be paid for according.
to what David Lilienthal called ‘‘nature’s remorseless
arithmetic.” The price includes pollution, destruction
of the environment, depletion of limited natural
resources.

We exert our technological power not only on nature
but also on ourselves. The tools we use and the
machines we operate make us tools of our tools and
robots of our machines. Inexorably-moving assembly
lines give us little freedom of choice — or satisfaction
from work... .

Ironically, we become prisoners of our work, of our
baubles, of our debilitating fantasies about them.
Increasingly we work not just for the age-old
necessities of food, clothing, and shelter, but for
luxuries — the color TV, the fancy car, the larger
house —- which now seem necessary for happiness.

In course; do we not lose our authentic freedom?
The dilemma we face is that of how to enjoy the fruits
of technology without losing the freedom that is
initiated within us. Can technology feed this freedom
or does it simply dissolve it?

Freedom is to be measured not by the number of
options one has but by the meaning they give to life.
JUSTICE :

Should freedom be limited?

If one is to be free, should not all be free? This
question turns out to be one of justice — namely, that
we fashion technology to make available real op-
portunities for all, not just more for the rich or the
powerful.

Ii our technology denies some of us equality, not just
‘in a formal sense but concretely, then it is a poor
thing. A life that concerns the whole society, not one of
ease or mediocrity — this is the sort of justice
technology needs to serve. It is a technology that is
reconcilable with justice —and with an intelligent and
compassionate, an exacting and exciting existence —
which is its own justification. ;

Technology does not make inevitable SST’s, gas-
puzzling cars, and techniques of mind-medifying
behavior, whether chemical, biological, or electronic.
Technology is not irreconcilable with justice,
technocrats are, The difference lies in those who place
private goods and the goods of special interests ahead
of the public good. Conflict is the result, at home or
abroad. .

PEACE AND POWER

Thus, our most far-reaching moral problem is the
tragic dilemma of peace versus naked power. This
was first clearly posed by the Greek poet Aeschylus in
the 5th century B.C. in his mythical tragedy,
“Prometheus Bound.”

Aeschylus contrasted the immoral, warlike and
deathmaking force of the omnipotent deity, Zeus, with
the peaceful practices of Prometheus, who gave
mankind fire — the knowledge of technical crafts and
other arts that make life livable, make memory
memorable, and distinguish waking vision from idle
dream. These ends hold good for guiding us as they did
for the ancient Greeks. ~

Technology is at its best today when it contributes ta
the arts of civilization. It does this through the ad-
‘vancement of the practical arts, such as those that
revivify cities, purify air and water, rationalize
transportation, employ solar energy, and invent an
architecture measured to the human dimension.

Complementing the practical arts are the arts of
expression, the song, the colored shapes, the dance, in
their endlessly creative forms that supply the kind of
vitality 10 a modern culture that myth did for
primitive times.

How to establish these new arts, consonant with the
new technology for a new age — this is the dilemma
that technology faces in a world of turbulence,
despair, and discontent. We need a genuine culture in
which humans become an integral part of the
seamless web of nature.

The destruction of this web is conflict, whether
between nations or between groups of a single society.
Only the arts of peacefare can combat those of war-
fare, and in the process make technology a fitting
expression of human well-being.

NEXT WEEK: In the flnal article in the series,
Melvin Kranzberg of the Georgia Institute of
Technology explores the problem of assessing and
directing technology in a democratic society.

AROUT THE AUTHOR

BERTRAM MORRIS is Emeritus Professor of
Philosophy a¢ the University of Colorado, where he
taught for thirty years. He has written numerous
journal artictes and several books, Including “The
Aesthetic Process,” “Institutions of intelllgence,"*
and “Science, Folkiore and Philosophy."

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OTTAWA OFFBEAT
BY RICHARD JACKSON

7

- Ottawa, -No friends, all the news isn’t bad.
From the great Professor G. Northcote Parkinson-
yes, the very one, -that world renouned author of the

_ law that has become so globally immutable that it has
~ taken on his name-has come in these dark days of
world crises, oil ‘shortages, inflation, rising taxes

some great goodness.

So good it is as to more than make up for everything.

What can it be?’ :

Well you should ask!

Would you believe that the good Professor Northcote
Parkinson has calculated it scientifically that by early
in the next century-+scarcely 20 years from now--we
shall ‘alk of. us ‘be on the public payroll.

Every last mother’sson and daughter, an employee
of the all-pervading stale.

Everlasting security:

Never to worry again. ; ;

The learned profegsor-very probably more widely
‘known than any other resident of the- groves of
academe—has been travelling the world lecturing
captains of industry) government manipulators and
other. policy and dekision makers on the shape of
things to come. . | |
Among other alace} he was in Montreal from where
this intelligence reaches us all. f

He might have served humanity-or at least Canada-
-better had he chosen, instead, to make Ottawa his
Canadian stopover... : -

To be brutally frank about it, he wasn’t making his
journey for the good of mankind exactly, but more
accurately to celebrdte, as the British call what we
.know as promotion, ‘the publication of the twenty-first
edition of his famoug and still best-selling ““Parkin-
son’s Law.” |

It contains an updated assessment of the law and the
state of the world it inévitably will bring about.

In his Montreal appearance he also drew a parallel
between the meaning and application of the law in.
Britain andin Canada. == -

The Professor begins by emphasizing that in 21
years nothing has changed.

And his famous First Law: “Work expands to fill the

time available for its'completion” is as timely as it
was when first it crossed his fertile mind.
- “Prime Minister Margaret. Thatcher is finding it
more difficuit and incréasingly impossible to wield the
axe on the ever-expanding bureaucracy,” he said,
“but I wish her well’:
* ¥ou could wish Prime Minister Jo¢ Clark no less in
his determination to render the fat'from the body
bureaucratic. oy

“In Britain we now have over a million civil ser-
yants, and if they go on increasing at the rate of the
last decade, by early ifio the next century,"--but 20
milestones down the road of time--'everyone will be 2
public servant. :

Don’t laugh. Britain has only twice the population of
Canada, and we havea shade more than 500,000 civil
servants,.just.about half the number of theirs.

' So the populations ang civil serviee bodies between
‘the two balance almost perfectly in proportion. -

There we are then, eatly in the twenty-first century,
all working for the public service. All with indexed
pensions. Everyone with automatic annual in-
crements as raises are politely called. Everybody
with a week for Christmbs and a week for New Year's-
-a holiday schedule being given a loosely give-or-take
introduction this year--and all figuring when it’s our
turn to go on strike.

Don'tlaugh, Just look around you. Think. And figure
out if you'll still bé arowid to see the bubble-headed
bureaucratic fun. ir

LETTERS TO
THE EDITOR

Thailand and speaks the
language fluently.

Besides shipments of
‘donated foods and
medicines, CARE has
provided 400 hospital cots
and three CARE -MEDICO
nurses for the IRC Ward at
Sa Kaeo camp. Nurse Marge
Dollack of Peterborough,
‘Ontario arrived there from
Afghaniatan, Octoeber’-24th
and after working for’ 16
‘hours a day for weeks has
‘kent a tape recorded
message in which she
describes the appalling state
_ of the mothers and children
racked with malaria and

Dear Sir:

- May Ttry to dlapel some of -
the confusion that appeary
widespread on the efforts to
provide rellef to Cambodian’
refugees, . _ :

Although I can say ver:
little about the situation
within Kampuchea itself
where UNICEF and the
International Committee of
the Red Cross are directing,
the effort, I do have {irst-:
hand reports from CARE’
workers in Thailand which.
testify to the high degree of
co-operation paisting bel-
‘ween various agencies:
and organizations, dysentery ond thousand
ministering to the sick and’ Ootiones in ik ete be with
hungry in the refugee: hardly enough spa te for the

mps. ; ", .murses to move between
wonere is an actively fune- them, 40,000 people alread

on councll called the: : ,000 people already
Commie for Coordination, mote camps and another

Services to Dlr 000 ex: slagger
Persons in Thailan ren into Thailand by the ne of
SDPT) which meets at Jegst: te month, there la work for
once a week and allocatés all theinternational agencies

responsibilities to par-! there and need for all the
ticipating agencies. *! funds that can be collected to
_ purchase appropriate food,
Leadershl in _ca-. clothing, medicines, shelter

‘ordinating thesa activities. and transportation. CARE

comes from the United! has already distributed 6000
Nations High Commissioner , basic need kita to thoae who
for Refugees (UNHCR) and) have had to leave all their
the International Committee , possessions behind and has
for the Red Cross (ICRC). | delivered 45 tons of Infant
For example, CARE hap foods with another 80 tens on
been given the reaponstbilit | its way.
for providing and servicing If readers would like to
supplementary high: help, please send donations
nutrition feeding stations in , by cheque or money order to
three refugee camps andhaa CARE Canada Fund for
already aasigned ex: ; Cambodians, 1312 Bank
Derlenced CARE workers for l Street, Ottawa KIS 5H7 or
es. These in- | the agenc a.
clude Brian Wolff of Ed: | Bency af your choice
manton, Aselylant Country
Director in Kenya, who spent
three years with CUSO in. .

Yours sincerely,
Thomas Kines,
National Director.

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