Well, last Thursday one of the older men, Lembit Joselin, called me and invited me to play chess with him and his friends on any Wednesday between 10 in the morning and two in the afternoon. I can hardly wait. I want to meet those guys, I want to shake their hands and I want to sit down and get clobbered by them because they are experienced and skilled chess players and I have not played chess since I was twelve and lived in a Displaced Persons camp in Oldenburg, Germany. Actually that is not completely true. I did spend some time playing chess when I was in jail in the Young Offenders Unit of the Oakalla Prison Farm in Vancouver, British Columbia. In jail? What? What? It's true. I was in jail, from three in the afternoon until twelve midnight, for about six weeks, as a Correctional Officer because that was the best-paid job I could get in the summer of '56. It was also a very easy job. I did not have a uniform or a gun and all I had to do was spend nine hours a day with thirteen young offenders who were serving 'two years less a day' for various offences. My job was to talk to them and to improve their social skills. Most of them were poorly educated, they could hardly read and write, they had limited vocabularies and, because of that, they were tongue-tied and shy. So we talked and played baseball and watched movies on Friday nights and talked some more. Whenever the Four Lads sang "Standing on the Corner, Watching All the Girls Go By" on the radio, everybody sang along with them and everybody got very loud and boisterous when the Four Lads got to the line "Brother, you can't go to jail for what you're thinking!" And when the singing stopped, we played chess. And because my convicts hardly knew the rules of the game, I beat them all. And they thought I was a genius. 'Ainstein', they called me. In fact, I've never been more appreciated in any job I've ever had since. And most of my young offenders wanted to look me up when they got out, and I have this feeling that if I had played my cards right, I could have easily gone into crime or politics in British Columbia. So I want to make it perfectly clear that even though I was the Chess Champion of the Young Offenders unit of the Oakalla Prison Farm, I am no Paul Keres. By the way, my father knew Paul Keres, the Estonian Chess Champion and Grand Master, and my father was a pretty good chess player himself, among other things. After the war, when we lived in the Displaced Persons Camp in Lübeck, my father took part in the chess tournament that was organized by the camp officials and he won. He won every game. I still feel proud of the old man! When my parents lived in Toronto, they moved to an apartment on Broadview and Danforth because my mother wanted my father to walk to the Estonian House and play chess on Wednesdays from 10 in the morning until 2 in the afternoon. And, he did, according to my newest friend, Lembit Joselin, whom I haven't even met yet. I know we are going to be friends, because we will meet in trust-building circumstances. We will play chess, both of us will play by the rules, neither of us will cheat, and once a feeling of friendship starts to develop and grow between us, it is less and less likely that we will become enemies. It's quite simple, really. To have friends, you have to be a friend. What is harder is making a friend of an enemy. I have some ideas about that. Let's define, for purposes of discussion, that an enemy is someone we don't trust. Why don't we trust some people? Sometimes we don't trust them because they are untrustworthy. Sometimes they are criminals. What we have to do then is hand them over to the criminal justice system and make sure that they are given fair trials and fair sentences and various opportunities to mend their ways. Within reason, of course. And while this does not always happen, we know that some people do straighten out. They feel guilty, they sincerely want to pay their debt to society and they turn out to be honest, hard-working, compassionate citizens. And some of them will stop being your enemies and become your friends. And then there are people we don't trust - and people who don't trust us - even though we hardly know each other or have not even met - because we have been warned about each other. When we finally have a chance to get to know each other, it is virtually impossible for us to be completely open minded. Our survival instincts tell us to watch out, to be on our guard, to be on the lookout for various character flaws we have been told about. It is very easy to make enemies in this kind of atmosphere. But that is not our ultimate aim. Our ultimate aim is to find ways to interact with people on 'level playing fields' so that the process of turning our enemies into friends can begin. How should we define a 'level playing field'? Well, chess is a game that is played on a level playing field. Chess is not a game you can win because you know how to play politics. Pairs skaters in the Winter Olympics, who skate on a level skating rink, have been claiming for years - rightly or wrongly - that the judges are unfair, biased and crooked. In chess, there are no judges or referees. Chess is played out in the open, where everyone can see every move that is made. It does not matter if your opponent, in real life, is a crook or a liar or a skilled backstabber or an intriguer who has gone and told everybody that YOU are a crook or a liar or a skilled backstabber or an intriguer. None of these things matter when you sit down to play chess - it does not even matter if your opponent is in jail. All that matters is that you play the game according to the rules. In real life, a 'level playing field' is an open society. A democracy, where nothing happens behind closed doors, where everyone has equal rights, where the opposition parties are not put in jail when they speak their minds and where no one has the right to tell someone else what to think and what to say - and what not to think and not to say. Of course, the right to speak does not give anyone the right to lie. So that's all there is to it. No matter what our initial prejudices and backgrounds, when people prove themselves to be just and trustworthy in an open society, then, as Humphrey Bogart says to Claude Rains at the end of CASABLANCA, we may well be looking at the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Just the beginning, mind you. Because some people - the hardened criminals - can never be trusted. And that is why democracy is a system that essentially assumes that you can't just trust people. You have to keep your eye on them. And when they manage to knock you down, you have to do what the song says, 'Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again!'
How to Make Friends of Enemies
Eestlased Kanadas | 13 Feb 2002 | Ain SöödorEWR
I am about to be beaten. I am looking forward to it. A few weeks ago, when I wrote about THE RISE AND FALL AND RISE OF THINKING, I said that while thinking may not be as popular as it used to be, people still play chess in the Estonian House on Broadview, although most of the players are, well, older men.
Well, last Thursday one of the older men, Lembit Joselin, called me and invited me to play chess with him and his friends on any Wednesday between 10 in the morning and two in the afternoon. I can hardly wait. I want to meet those guys, I want to shake their hands and I want to sit down and get clobbered by them because they are experienced and skilled chess players and I have not played chess since I was twelve and lived in a Displaced Persons camp in Oldenburg, Germany. Actually that is not completely true. I did spend some time playing chess when I was in jail in the Young Offenders Unit of the Oakalla Prison Farm in Vancouver, British Columbia. In jail? What? What? It's true. I was in jail, from three in the afternoon until twelve midnight, for about six weeks, as a Correctional Officer because that was the best-paid job I could get in the summer of '56. It was also a very easy job. I did not have a uniform or a gun and all I had to do was spend nine hours a day with thirteen young offenders who were serving 'two years less a day' for various offences. My job was to talk to them and to improve their social skills. Most of them were poorly educated, they could hardly read and write, they had limited vocabularies and, because of that, they were tongue-tied and shy. So we talked and played baseball and watched movies on Friday nights and talked some more. Whenever the Four Lads sang "Standing on the Corner, Watching All the Girls Go By" on the radio, everybody sang along with them and everybody got very loud and boisterous when the Four Lads got to the line "Brother, you can't go to jail for what you're thinking!" And when the singing stopped, we played chess. And because my convicts hardly knew the rules of the game, I beat them all. And they thought I was a genius. 'Ainstein', they called me. In fact, I've never been more appreciated in any job I've ever had since. And most of my young offenders wanted to look me up when they got out, and I have this feeling that if I had played my cards right, I could have easily gone into crime or politics in British Columbia. So I want to make it perfectly clear that even though I was the Chess Champion of the Young Offenders unit of the Oakalla Prison Farm, I am no Paul Keres. By the way, my father knew Paul Keres, the Estonian Chess Champion and Grand Master, and my father was a pretty good chess player himself, among other things. After the war, when we lived in the Displaced Persons Camp in Lübeck, my father took part in the chess tournament that was organized by the camp officials and he won. He won every game. I still feel proud of the old man! When my parents lived in Toronto, they moved to an apartment on Broadview and Danforth because my mother wanted my father to walk to the Estonian House and play chess on Wednesdays from 10 in the morning until 2 in the afternoon. And, he did, according to my newest friend, Lembit Joselin, whom I haven't even met yet. I know we are going to be friends, because we will meet in trust-building circumstances. We will play chess, both of us will play by the rules, neither of us will cheat, and once a feeling of friendship starts to develop and grow between us, it is less and less likely that we will become enemies. It's quite simple, really. To have friends, you have to be a friend. What is harder is making a friend of an enemy. I have some ideas about that. Let's define, for purposes of discussion, that an enemy is someone we don't trust. Why don't we trust some people? Sometimes we don't trust them because they are untrustworthy. Sometimes they are criminals. What we have to do then is hand them over to the criminal justice system and make sure that they are given fair trials and fair sentences and various opportunities to mend their ways. Within reason, of course. And while this does not always happen, we know that some people do straighten out. They feel guilty, they sincerely want to pay their debt to society and they turn out to be honest, hard-working, compassionate citizens. And some of them will stop being your enemies and become your friends. And then there are people we don't trust - and people who don't trust us - even though we hardly know each other or have not even met - because we have been warned about each other. When we finally have a chance to get to know each other, it is virtually impossible for us to be completely open minded. Our survival instincts tell us to watch out, to be on our guard, to be on the lookout for various character flaws we have been told about. It is very easy to make enemies in this kind of atmosphere. But that is not our ultimate aim. Our ultimate aim is to find ways to interact with people on 'level playing fields' so that the process of turning our enemies into friends can begin. How should we define a 'level playing field'? Well, chess is a game that is played on a level playing field. Chess is not a game you can win because you know how to play politics. Pairs skaters in the Winter Olympics, who skate on a level skating rink, have been claiming for years - rightly or wrongly - that the judges are unfair, biased and crooked. In chess, there are no judges or referees. Chess is played out in the open, where everyone can see every move that is made. It does not matter if your opponent, in real life, is a crook or a liar or a skilled backstabber or an intriguer who has gone and told everybody that YOU are a crook or a liar or a skilled backstabber or an intriguer. None of these things matter when you sit down to play chess - it does not even matter if your opponent is in jail. All that matters is that you play the game according to the rules. In real life, a 'level playing field' is an open society. A democracy, where nothing happens behind closed doors, where everyone has equal rights, where the opposition parties are not put in jail when they speak their minds and where no one has the right to tell someone else what to think and what to say - and what not to think and not to say. Of course, the right to speak does not give anyone the right to lie. So that's all there is to it. No matter what our initial prejudices and backgrounds, when people prove themselves to be just and trustworthy in an open society, then, as Humphrey Bogart says to Claude Rains at the end of CASABLANCA, we may well be looking at the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Just the beginning, mind you. Because some people - the hardened criminals - can never be trusted. And that is why democracy is a system that essentially assumes that you can't just trust people. You have to keep your eye on them. And when they manage to knock you down, you have to do what the song says, 'Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again!'
Ain Söödor
Well, last Thursday one of the older men, Lembit Joselin, called me and invited me to play chess with him and his friends on any Wednesday between 10 in the morning and two in the afternoon. I can hardly wait. I want to meet those guys, I want to shake their hands and I want to sit down and get clobbered by them because they are experienced and skilled chess players and I have not played chess since I was twelve and lived in a Displaced Persons camp in Oldenburg, Germany. Actually that is not completely true. I did spend some time playing chess when I was in jail in the Young Offenders Unit of the Oakalla Prison Farm in Vancouver, British Columbia. In jail? What? What? It's true. I was in jail, from three in the afternoon until twelve midnight, for about six weeks, as a Correctional Officer because that was the best-paid job I could get in the summer of '56. It was also a very easy job. I did not have a uniform or a gun and all I had to do was spend nine hours a day with thirteen young offenders who were serving 'two years less a day' for various offences. My job was to talk to them and to improve their social skills. Most of them were poorly educated, they could hardly read and write, they had limited vocabularies and, because of that, they were tongue-tied and shy. So we talked and played baseball and watched movies on Friday nights and talked some more. Whenever the Four Lads sang "Standing on the Corner, Watching All the Girls Go By" on the radio, everybody sang along with them and everybody got very loud and boisterous when the Four Lads got to the line "Brother, you can't go to jail for what you're thinking!" And when the singing stopped, we played chess. And because my convicts hardly knew the rules of the game, I beat them all. And they thought I was a genius. 'Ainstein', they called me. In fact, I've never been more appreciated in any job I've ever had since. And most of my young offenders wanted to look me up when they got out, and I have this feeling that if I had played my cards right, I could have easily gone into crime or politics in British Columbia. So I want to make it perfectly clear that even though I was the Chess Champion of the Young Offenders unit of the Oakalla Prison Farm, I am no Paul Keres. By the way, my father knew Paul Keres, the Estonian Chess Champion and Grand Master, and my father was a pretty good chess player himself, among other things. After the war, when we lived in the Displaced Persons Camp in Lübeck, my father took part in the chess tournament that was organized by the camp officials and he won. He won every game. I still feel proud of the old man! When my parents lived in Toronto, they moved to an apartment on Broadview and Danforth because my mother wanted my father to walk to the Estonian House and play chess on Wednesdays from 10 in the morning until 2 in the afternoon. And, he did, according to my newest friend, Lembit Joselin, whom I haven't even met yet. I know we are going to be friends, because we will meet in trust-building circumstances. We will play chess, both of us will play by the rules, neither of us will cheat, and once a feeling of friendship starts to develop and grow between us, it is less and less likely that we will become enemies. It's quite simple, really. To have friends, you have to be a friend. What is harder is making a friend of an enemy. I have some ideas about that. Let's define, for purposes of discussion, that an enemy is someone we don't trust. Why don't we trust some people? Sometimes we don't trust them because they are untrustworthy. Sometimes they are criminals. What we have to do then is hand them over to the criminal justice system and make sure that they are given fair trials and fair sentences and various opportunities to mend their ways. Within reason, of course. And while this does not always happen, we know that some people do straighten out. They feel guilty, they sincerely want to pay their debt to society and they turn out to be honest, hard-working, compassionate citizens. And some of them will stop being your enemies and become your friends. And then there are people we don't trust - and people who don't trust us - even though we hardly know each other or have not even met - because we have been warned about each other. When we finally have a chance to get to know each other, it is virtually impossible for us to be completely open minded. Our survival instincts tell us to watch out, to be on our guard, to be on the lookout for various character flaws we have been told about. It is very easy to make enemies in this kind of atmosphere. But that is not our ultimate aim. Our ultimate aim is to find ways to interact with people on 'level playing fields' so that the process of turning our enemies into friends can begin. How should we define a 'level playing field'? Well, chess is a game that is played on a level playing field. Chess is not a game you can win because you know how to play politics. Pairs skaters in the Winter Olympics, who skate on a level skating rink, have been claiming for years - rightly or wrongly - that the judges are unfair, biased and crooked. In chess, there are no judges or referees. Chess is played out in the open, where everyone can see every move that is made. It does not matter if your opponent, in real life, is a crook or a liar or a skilled backstabber or an intriguer who has gone and told everybody that YOU are a crook or a liar or a skilled backstabber or an intriguer. None of these things matter when you sit down to play chess - it does not even matter if your opponent is in jail. All that matters is that you play the game according to the rules. In real life, a 'level playing field' is an open society. A democracy, where nothing happens behind closed doors, where everyone has equal rights, where the opposition parties are not put in jail when they speak their minds and where no one has the right to tell someone else what to think and what to say - and what not to think and not to say. Of course, the right to speak does not give anyone the right to lie. So that's all there is to it. No matter what our initial prejudices and backgrounds, when people prove themselves to be just and trustworthy in an open society, then, as Humphrey Bogart says to Claude Rains at the end of CASABLANCA, we may well be looking at the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Just the beginning, mind you. Because some people - the hardened criminals - can never be trusted. And that is why democracy is a system that essentially assumes that you can't just trust people. You have to keep your eye on them. And when they manage to knock you down, you have to do what the song says, 'Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again!'
Eestlased Kanadas
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