It begins, as these things often do, with a sentence that sounds intelligent until one thinks about it.
When Mark Carney tells us that we must “deal with the world as it is, not the world we want it to be,” he is plainly aiming for the tone of hard-earned realism.
It is the sort of phrase that lands well in a speech—measured, sensible, faintly world-weary. One is meant to hear it and nod, as though a deeper truth has been revealed.
But it is not a deep truth.
It is, in fact, a remarkably shallow one.
Of course, we deal with the world as it is. What else would we deal with, the one where we are all Guinea Pigs being pursued by a white Westie named Malibu?
The point of law, politics, and civilization itself is not to deny reality, but to improve it, restrain it, and, where necessary, correct it.
The world “as it is” includes theft, fraud, coercion, corruption, and every other human vice that has ever existed. If that becomes our governing standard, then one struggles to see why we bother with …
