Oxymoronic Acquiescence

On Everything

2009-06-01T23:14:00.000-07:00

There are some nights when I am overcome with an overwhelming sensation of relaxation and calm, and I just know everything is going to be all right with the world. Depending on how you were trained, schooled, or your beliefs, you probably have a different explanation for why this is. Science will tell us that we some how trigger a release of excess serotonin in our brain, which gives us an emotional high. Religion will attribute this same sensation to a divine power flowing through us. We will tell ourselves that we are in love or that we feel the love of our friends and family, and politicians will tell us that this feeling is exactly why we should vote for them. The thing is that every one of those answers is correct and valid. The thing we are describing is a feeling: it is a personal experience and interpretation of the world around us. Who cares what we call it, changing its name doesn’t make it any less real.

Everyone wants to be right. I understand this want, in fact, there are times I’m sure that my friends and loved ones would say I view it more as a ‘need’ than as a desire. Being right makes you feel important, it makes you feel validated, and fundamentally it makes you feel alive. No one wants to feel like their life has no meaning, and being right is how we can see our life directly impacting another person. It is a cheap and fleeting rose-coloured lens through which to view the world.

The problem occurs when our feelings of right directly oppose another person’s. Or, put more painfully, when one person’s beliefs directly hinder or conflict with another’s: Science Vs. Religion or Progress Vs. Nature (to name some well traveled examples). Do you allow an indigenous culture to continue their traditional hunting patterns even if the species is endangered? What if the tribe was binding young women’s feet or sewing their vaginas shut, is it ok then? When do the needs of the many really out weight the needs of the few?

As a society, nay, a species, sooner or later we are going to have to stop dodging these issues and actually tackle them head on. We are going to have to step out side of our comfort zones and actually be ready to be wrong. More than that, we are going to have to accept the fact that everything we know now may be proven totally and absolutely erroneous one day, and people are going to look back at our ‘modern’ society and remark, “what were they thinking”?

Being wrong is not a fun sensation; in fact it can be downright humiliating. It can also be extremely freeing. If you are not afraid to be wrong then you can throw out a far-fetched idea that seems absolutely absurd and maybe it will be the thing that changes the world. To get to this place however we have to be willing to accept other people’s opinions as well. People’s feelings are not stupid, they come from exactly the same place our feelings do and are often triggered by the same reasons. The only difference here is the language used to describe them. There will be some points that we will never be able to agree upon, and in the end one side will simply have to acknowledge that for the betterment of the human race, a practice will have to stop. I do believe however that these instances are far fewer than we are willing to admit, and that we often stop listening as soon as key words leave someone’s mouth.

We need to learn to get beyond the words being said and into feelings that caused their saying. This is where the core ideas are held, and where ultimately both sides will have to make sacrifices. Once we get to this place we have to have the courage to be wrong and to allow ourselves to say whatever comes to our mind. Only then can we determine how humanity can work with our planet to create a future worth living in. These decisions will not be easy and may cause initial hardship, but lasting change has never come easily, and it is a better way to feel alive.

Mind numbing disbelief: Or how the NDP lost an easy election

2009-05-13T21:22:00.000-07:00

Does anyone remember the 2004 Presidential election in the US? The country was divided by the War in Iraq, and all of the voices of dissent on the left were uniting together to vote a democrat back into power. It seemed all of the stars were aligning for once and there actually wasn’t going to be a vote split. Then something went horribly wrong: Bush won again, and the left cried out in fear and agony over what would become of their country.

Clearly the BC NDP party is not are not students of history. Or for that matter, even recent memory. The NDP disregarded what actually worked in the Obama campaign – honestly and integrity – and instead tried to sling mud and flip-flop on every issue they could. We, as voters, didn’t know what the NDP actually stood for, or how they planned to fix our current problems. Instead, all we heard was how they were going to reverse everything the Liberals did while they were in power even if it made sense. They attempted to get a social media campaign off the ground by creating twitter accounts for their MLAs, but they didn’t actually respond to anything you sent to them. Even Oprah can figure out how to work twitter, and if you can’t manage that, am I really supposed to believe you are capable of running a province in an economic recession?

Now here’s where things get particularly telling, most people I know didn’t actually want to vote for the Liberals. They HATE – yes full capital letter HATE – Gordon Campbell. I, and most people I know, wanted nothing more than to oust him. What the NDP just didn’t seem to get was that all we needed to know is what they were actually planning to do. We just wanted to hear well thought out, innovative ideas. We knew Gordon Campbell screwed up all over the place, shoving that down our throat was just insulting our intelligence. And in the end I just couldn’t vote for the NDP… I just couldn’t do it. No bone in my body could imagine Carol James in power, the thought made my physically ill.

In my mind, the most important thing about a party leader, Canadian, American, doesn’t matter, is that they inspire hope. They have to look like they genuinely care about the world, and have the guts to make the tough decisions. I have to feel like I am in good hands. Actual policy work can be done by advisors, brilliant MLAs and civil servants, but the leader HAS to inspire the people he or she is leading. Not once during the campaign did I feel that from Carol James. I don’t feel that way about Gordon Campbell either, but at least I know he’s not to be trusted. So, in the end, I voted Green and the NDP candidate in my riding lost to the Liberal by 800 votes. For those keeping score at home the Green candidate got 1300.

Yes, in the last election the NDP faced a vote split that the Liberals didn’t because there is no conservative party in the province. But most people I know wanted to vote NDP and simply could not bring themselves to do it. It was the NDP’s election to win and they completely blew, what in my mind, should have been an easy victory. Now it feels like 2004 all over again, and all we can hope for now is a better 2013.

So you want to save the world...

2009-03-31T21:22:00.000-07:00

ello my non-existent lovelies,

They say tone means much in this lavish world of dots and dashes that we all spend far too much time living in so let me invoke the spring zephyr to whirl me into the zeitgeist of your collective unconscious. Potential run-on sentences and smug post-modern self-awareness aside, I feel the need to rave about the daze we currently find ourselves in.

The world is going to hell in a rather distastefully purchased Prada handbag and, we, being the good Millennials that we are, are actually stepping up to do something about it. Much to the shock of the previous generations we are engaged and in tune with the world in ways and numbers never been seen before. And this is a wonderful phenomenon that shouldn’t be discouraged but it does need to be directed. It seems now that everyone I know is working for a non-profit, myself included. Every day on Facebook I get invited to fundraising events that my friends are throwing for their cause and dutifully attend to support them, but in the back of my mind I can’t help but think, yes, but what about “my cause”?

Now don’t get me wrong, this isn’t some new-aged-social-responsibility-pissing-contest we’ve all engaged in. Having ‘a cause’ isn’t just the best new single’s bar in town – although on a side note it isn’t half bad - it comes from a real place and a drive to change the world because we don’t have another choice. If we don’t change it now we won’t be able to later; that message has been clearly etched in our head from masturbating to an inconvenient truth until we chaffed.

The problem is that social responsibility is going to become the new green-washing as anarchy activism becomes the new black. The result of course is that we get death by pilot project, or in this case charity burnout. No one will want to give any more because it doesn’t seem like it is actually doing anything, which is fair, because it probably won’t be.

I may not have done very well in my microeconomics class, but I seem to remember a theory about marginal value going down the more businesses enter the market. The more non-profits that get in the game the less money there is to go around, and it’s not like the pool of money to draw from is going to get magically bigger. We are not, after all, the US Federal Reserve.

So now then, my fellow riled up bedmates who now wish to bludgeon me with a blunt object because I’ve popped your ability to sleep at night, what shall we do? Well, for starters, we have to actually dig deep and do our research. I know it feels like we are already giving more time than we have by volunteering in record numbers but that actually isn’t enough. We need to take a step back and ask ourselves why are we actually volunteering? What does this non-profit tangibly contribute to the world, and is the non-profit itself sustainable? We need to stop creating new non-profits just because we can, and only create them when we must. Make no mistake, I am not simply advocating that we go out and join the biggest organization, many of them are bloated and would be more useful to us if they folded, but we actually have to look behind the curtain to see truth.

In some cases, we also need to not join with non-profits. This is not to say we should do nothing, but there are many advocacy groups and governmental organizations that could use the skills and tools that we bring can bring them. After all, if the end goal of this movement is to change the world for the better someone is going to have to write the new laws. Someone is going to have to get the message out to the public as to why this is in our best interest, even if it means knocking on all the doors in your neighborhood.

So, you want to change the world, that’s great, come help us out. But don’t do it blindly, do it because you know in your heart that you have to, and do it with a group of people who are actually going to create a better sustainable future for us all.

Insomniadic Ramblings on art and non-profits

2009-03-18T20:44:00.001-07:00

Being someone who works in both the arts and non-profit sector I often find myself examining the issue of funding: mainly how to enough to get enough to actually do something. Let me state right at the outset that I hate the idea of asking people for money, it brings up a bitter taste in the back of my mouth. I’m not sure if it is just my pride, or if it’s that I hold what I do in high enough regard that I feel like people should simply want to support a worthy project or cause, but it serves as a major stumbling block.

Where I am actually going with this is the seemingly precarious super structure that surrounds the art / non-profit sector. It is supported almost entirely from within the community itself. This is great for fostering a tight-knit group of inspired people; the only problem is no one in the group actually has any money. Instead, the little money that gets infused into the sector via grants gets spread around to everyone by events like opening galas and silent auctions. It is actually a fairly clever way of circumventing the system in order to keep more non-profits afloat and doing great work. It does however have the fatal flaw of being unsustainable as little new money is being injected via patrons outside the social circles and government funding is being cut back.

At first the obvious solution then seems to be to just appeal to a broader market. If the product is more marketable or more mainstream more people will want to come out to the various events and the process can begin to snowball uphill instead of down. The major issue with that ideas is that not only is it trying to defy physics, it also fails to take into account climate change. By this I of course mean that no one has any money right now.

Now, this is actually quite a shocking idea. I mean I know that I don’t have any money, and I’m used to that. It’s been that way since I’ve started my adult life so the current crisis doesn’t feel much different. Further to the point, I have always seen myself working in the arts sector so I never really expected to have much, but in the back of my head there was always this idea of a middle class that was actually doing ok. In the back of my head if I was really hard up for cash I could pander to the mainstream, only now, it seems like selling out isn’t actually an option because there is no one to sell out to. The middle class was floating on plastic boats made of imaginary numbers and the invisible hand of the market suddenly became a bitch slap backhand.

So where then does that leave the arts / non-profit sector, where will we find our answers and salvation? Luckily, at least in the case of the arts, salvation is the last thing it is ever going to need. It will innovate because it has to. The arts will not cease to be because there is no money; in fact it very well might thrive because of it. If space is too expensive, bring-your-own-venue will become the hottest new buzzword and communes the newest living arrangement. This idea also has the benefit of needing less heat as more bodies in a tighter space can double as a furnace. Art cannot and will not die because it is what fuels the soul when it needs refueling.

As for the actual non-profit sector on a whole, this seems less clear. Oddly enough people seem to be giving more even though they have less. It is almost as if a renewed human spirit of giving and understanding is rising from the ashes of dysfunctional macroeconomics. The real question is if this is a false hope or not. People keep thinking things are going to get better but what if they do not. I for one think people will keep giving; it’s just that what we give will change. People will give what they can and although it will not be much it will feel like more. Perhaps it is simply time for a paradigm shift of what is actually important and what we actually need. If this is the case than once again the arts will flourish, it will cheer us up when we need it, and provide a hard mirror when we begin to think too highly of ourselves. With this in mind it can come as little surprise that I will continue to work with both the arts and non-profits as they seem to be two of the few business ventures that are actually adjusting fast enough for our ever-changing world.

Raising money to ride to break the cycle

2009-01-22T12:32:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone,

As some of you know I am going to bike ride 4000km across Europe this summer (from Amsterdam to Istanbul) with Global Agents for Change to raise money and awareness for micro credit.

One of my jobs for this trip is that I raise $4000 to contribute to the group fund and clearly I am going to need a little bit of help here. I know that $4000 seems like a lot of money at first, but I am always claiming that I know everyone worth knowing so this is a good way to put that to the test. If everyone I know is able to spare a little money to donate I would have no problem reaching my goal. Consider it a belated birthday present to me, except that you don’t need to worry about me wanting to take this gift back to the store.

I’m going to give everyone a link now where you can donate online (you can also give me cash or a cheque made out to Agents for Change).

Just hit the give now button and it will go to my fundraising efforts.

http://www.pincgiving.com/campaign/rtbtc_europe_rider__chris_walts

Also, please let me know if you do donate so I can send you a personal thank you note!

Now, for those detail orientated people, let me go into some of the specifics. Global Agents for Change is a group of social change catalysts that support sustainable solutions to global poverty and inspire youth to create a better world.

I personally have been working with them for about a year now helping out with various aspects of their communications committee (Check out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgglcT0iZOU).

One of Global Agents for Change’s big goals is to create the worlds biggest youth managed microcredit fund: they’ve raised over $91 000 already, and this tour and the Mexican one the total sure surpass $300 0000.

For those that don’t know, Micro credit is small trust based loans to the working poor. The reason this idea appeals to me is that it has a built in sustainability to it as once the loans are paid back the money can be put back into the system again. So a one time donation can continue to help people in need multiple times over.

As for the bike ride itself; the exact route is still being finalized but the totally distance will be about 4000km (basically riding from Vancouver to Toronto). Part of what I will be doing on this trip is hoping turn out fairly frequent written blogs (ideally about once every 3 days) as well as a video blog each week. If you want to keep track of our progress there should be lots of information being put up on the Global Agents for Change website as well as possibly on twitter through www.twitter.com/globalafc and www.twitter.com/chriswalts

I don’t want to write too much more as I feel like I am starting to ramble but please feel free to ask me whatever you want, I’d love to talk to anyone about it more!

Thank you again to everyone,
Chris

Not with a bang nor a wimper

2009-01-04T11:07:00.000-08:00

This story is not set in some far away time or place that could be, it is about the here and now. It comes about not because evil won a war, but instead because humanity failed to understand and listen. It is amazing to think that in a time where information was so vast, knowledge so deep, and facts so glaring that such a simple thing could be forgotten, and yet simplicity in its most basic necessity is so elegant and pure that it is often glanced over as mundane. It is almost amusing the think that the straw that finally broke humanity was not a physical strike, or even an environmental catastrophe as we had all been mongered into believing. Instead, it was the human psyche that broke beyond repair. We lost our belief in belief and our hope for a better tomorrow.

The deathblow struck first the downtrodden and meek, then the weak willed, and after the masses had been laid low the remaining had little to do but succumb to the pandemic.
As to how this happened, the answer once again is as simple as the problem: there was more bad news than good.

It is easy to blame the media for an event of this nature as they were the ones feeding us despair on a silver spoon but ultimately, we still choose to gorge ourselves on it. We could have found alternative information sources, we could have scavenged for ourselves, but that would have required us to open our shutters and use our voices to speak with our neighbours, which seemed far too bothersome of a thought.

It was fear that kept us shackled to our keyboards and pleasureboxes. The fear however was not the one propagated to us by the media. We were not truly afraid to listen to the world because it may have hurt us. Instead, we were afraid to listen because the results of listening would have demanded action. If every person simply listened to the actual physical world around him or her, they would have had no choice but to take action

First belief was lost, and once that was gone hope shortly followed. Without hope and belief people simply lay down and died as they are just as precious to us as water and sunshine.
A great silence fell over the earth for the first time in millennia and planet earth could finally get a full night’s sleep, yet Mother Nature was not happy. It’s true the human’s were a troublesome lot, but they always had that glimmer of potential in their eye. No teacher wants any student to fail, no matter how much of a troublemaker than are, especially one with as much potential as humanity. If only humanity had listened when she was trying to teach it a lesson.

If anyone is still reading you probably think the ending is weak and possibly simple. Perhaps it ends too soon, too sharp, too sudden breaking up what seemed like a promising future and a glimmer of hope. I am not going to disagree with you, but instead, going to challenge you to listen. What needs to be changed here isn’t the ending but the entire story itself.

The State of our Arts

2008-11-07T10:48:00.001-08:00

Over the last few months I've seen a lot of 'Art': film, theatre, paintings, advertising, and almost none of it has moved me in any way. It isn't that the art was bad, it is simply that the 'Art' was unfulfilling. Art, at least at its best, holds a mirror up to the world and allows us to see that the emperor isn't wearing any clothes. It warms our heart, chills our soul, and ultimately brings us closer together making us more human. Somewhere in this instant society we have lost the purpose behind Art. We now only create small letter 'a' art. This art simply access our pleasure center, jerks us off, and then makes us pay ten dollars for its time. I have to wonder when Art changed to art and who is to blame. I am not saying that some good Art isn't being made, but if an Artist masturbates in the forest and there is no one around to see it, is it Art? Somewhere along the way 'Art for Arts sake' lost its audience and then the artists took over.

Before I go much further let me define artist. An artist is someone who attempts to create Art without actually understanding any of the theory behind what they are doing. The understand the tools of the trade and are actually extremely competent in utilizing them, but they do not know why this makes an audience feel a certain way. The result of this is audience experiences the thrill of art without actually gaining any of the deeper insight of Art.

The question that then needs to be answered is what do we do now. This is up for debate, and I will offer my thoughts in a moment, but first let me say what we must not do. We cannot blame the audience. It has never been the audiences mandate to dictate Art. Instead, it is the Artists responsibility to bring the audience into the world of ideas that they wish to discuss. To often have I been to shows where this simple fact is forgotten. I believe that many Artists feel that as soon as an audience walks into a room they sign a contract saying the Artist can do whatever he or she wants. This is wrong. As the audience beings to experience the Art before them the contract begins to be drawn up. In short, the Artist needs to prove their worth before the contract is signed. The contract essentially stipulates the rules of the world for the duration of the work. As long as the rules are followed the audience will follow the Artist anywhere he or she wishes to take them. This is where the true Art takes place.

I'm sure some people will argue that this approach to Art slows the avant guard as it does not allow for Artists to take giant leaps forward with extreme risks. I disagree entirely. I think this approach allows more people access to the world of Art, and thus widens the avant guard by stretching it laterally as well as forward, creating a higher overall area of Art. To insist that the avant guard be inhabited by a select few is not only elitist but also seems to defeat the overarching goals of Art to hold a minor up to the world.

Art is a unique form in that is it not only how we make it but also why we chose to make it. In the end, both of these ideas need to be working in harmony for it to be successful. Success is measured by each person individually, but if the goal of Art is to help change the world then it is much more likely to reach that goal if it plays to a full house.

Not voting is part of the problem

2008-10-15T08:56:00.000-07:00

I was reading the post Canadian election results on cbc.ca and one of their lead stories was that only 59.1 percent of Canadians voted in the last election: a new record low. One of the first user comments I read I believe is quite telling of this phenomenon, ‘I didn’t vote because there is no difference between the Liberals and the Conservatives, it’s like voting for the worse of two evils’. This of course was met with the standard response, ‘If you don’t vote you can’t complain”, but I don’t think that is a valid retort anymore. What we should say to people who don’t vote is, “If you don’t vote you are part of the problem”! Politicians count on people not voting, they actually want people to not vote, why? Because it makes their job easier, they don’t have to care about as many people and can tailor their message to the fewer number of people that do vote.

Let’s look at some numbers to illustrate my point; the Conservatives won only 37.63 percent of the popular vote, the Liberals 26.24. the NDP 18.20, the Bloc 9.97, and the Greens 6.80. For the time being lets forget about the fact that the Bloc can win 50 seats in the house of commons with only 9.97% of the vote while the Greens get none with 6.80%. I think it’s pretty safe to assume that a good chunk of the 40.9% of people who voted probably wouldn’t have voted Bloc so that leaves the other 4 parties. I could be very wrong in this assumption but I feel that many of the 40.9% probably wouldn’t have voted Conservative, they may not have even voted Liberal, they seem more likely to have voted for a candidate that they knew wouldn’t get in. If either of the two leading parties knew that extra 40.9% was voting they would need to court that share of the vote in order to keep power, they would need to broaden their policies to something more people liked which would effectively make them less evil. So, by not voting you are actually further perpetuating the problem with the system. Working the argument even further, by not voting you are actually hurting the system even more because even parties receives money for each vote they get. This is to give smaller parties a leg up in future elections and help them build a solid base.

The Morning After

2008-08-30T10:05:00.000-07:00

I think I know why I often get so upset when I’m partying. It has very little to do with the alcohol itself and more to do with the fact that I’m chasing the high of previous party memories. I have in my memory the perfect party nights; nights where you feel absolutely invincible and totally in tune with the life force around you. It’s the memories that you wouldn’t trade for anything. To get to that state is almost pure serendipity and often I think I try and force it. It just doesn’t seem nearly as often anymore that the people I am partying with are on the same page. Perhaps it is just life starting to pull everyone in their own different directions now, we no longer all have the same singular set of experiences to draw from as everyone is starting to more off towards bigger aspirations. For a while though it just felt so perfect, it felt like we were the only people in the world who got it. We may not have been directly changing the world but we were all living our lives. We were creating the memories we will continue to reminisce over well into our elderly years and we knew it. Now I suppose people are old and our youthful idealism is starting to dim. I’m not sure if I am just hanging onto the past or if having seen just how powerful people actually can be when their vision is united I feel I must keep trying to get back there to steal ideas for the future. Maybe I refuse to grow up and see the world through adult eyes but given that they are the ones that got us into many of the messes the world is currently in I don’t think I’m entirely convinced they will be able to solve all of the problems. There is something so innocent and pure about a child saying “well why don’t you just do x to fix the problem”. Adults always explain the answer away with long convoluted well-worn ‘truths’ but I think the answers are more simple then we want to admit. I think that’s why I don’t want to lose track of my inner child and why I keep trying to push people back towards the days of lore. There was something there if only for a moment that was real and true. So maybe I am a dreamer, or just a party kid at heart, but I think it’s more than just chasing the high of wanting to be reliving memories. I want to be constantly creating new ones, it’s how you make history.

Accruing positive change

2008-07-04T15:03:00.001-07:00

Common sense is a tricky thing to find some days, and I think quite wrongly named as it is rarely common. I think what common sense should be called is the key that allows you to access a universal truth that you often miss because it is too close to your eyes. It’s the good old adage about not seeing the forest for the tress. You know there is a wall in front of you but until you have the words to describe it and the image identified you can’t comprehend how to get around it.

I think some people shy away from common sense because the trust almost always comes at a cost: change. As soon as you’ve been told something new and accept it, you must change the way you perceive the world and this thought can be terrifying. It’s how ideas can move mountains and inspire nations. The true may set you free, but the next question is always ‘then what’, and that’s the one that matters most. ‘Then what’ is the truth that blinds. Like looking at anything bright however if we squint at first and then slowly open our eyes we are actually able to perceive the image before us slowly and steadily. This is how we must access our universal truths.

There is of course also the age old debate about whether leaders, the ones who help us find our way to the truth, are born or bread. I for one would like to think they are shaped. Everything in life that you come in contact with shapes you in some way, leaders simply react positivity to the change. If this is in fact true then anyone can become a leader, they simply need to shift the paradigm of their perception. Simple is rarely actually that however, and with every passing day the change required becomes exponentially greater. Luckily, like Newton stated so many years ago, the opposite is also true. The more often you tap into common sense the easier it becomes: the light naturally is less blinding. Consequentially the change required is also smaller and easier to incorporate into your daily life.

Change then is most easily accessed by children but this should come as no surprise. Most people I know can single out a handful of mentors without whom they would not have even seen the door to common sense. Interestingly, most also can list a certain point or two in their life where they were forced to make a difficult choice. Despite the immediate consequences they choose to listen to their common sense and do what they felt was right. The result is often painful at first, akin to the pains of growing up, but the result is someone who they are proud to say they have become.

Although we can look to our children as our future, and the hope of a better time, in the end it is the here and now that is the only thing that can be affected. Each and every one of us must look to ourselves as a person who can actively effect change. The moral of the story here is that every day we are faced with choices that we chose to ignore because doing so is easy. But, if we instead chose to listen to what we know to be right, our common sense, our universal truths, then we would all be on the road to self betterment and positive change. A road that only gets easier after the first step.

Technological Determinism: or the kids are alright

2008-04-23T10:56:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading an article in a recent Maclean’s Magazine mocking the new Dodge Caravan. It smugly says, ‘with this new car long family trips are a blur, you don’t even have to talk to your kids anymore’. Now my first knee jerk response is that the article was fairly well written and I actually agree with its main point, technology = bad as it can destroy family dynamics and the need for social contact. It also apparently means you don’t need to build ‘puts-hair-on-your-chest’ character by staring out the window for hours on end.

I personally experienced many family trips as a child. My younger summers were spent with my two brothers and parents in a Pontiac Firebird (seats 5) with no air conditioning. We trekked all over BC in that car and it doesn’t take much to bring back memories of my dad saying “If you don’t stop punching your brother I’ll turn this car around…” Personally I blame all of my misbehaving on the heat… The heat issue was fixed in my teen years however as we got an air conditioned mini-van. This also meant that being the oldest I often got the entire back three person seat to myself. I was bigger, so I needed more room to stretch my legs. Still, the trips were long and although portable gaming devices were around, they could only hold my interest for so long, so I either read books, or more commonly just looked out the window. A shrink might say you could blame my over active imagination on staring out a car window for hours on end imagining lots of fun creatures, or more often a cool ninja running beside the car doing tricks and fighting bad guys to keep me entertained.

So, as you can see, my first response to the ad campaign was the same as the writers: ‘character building’ uncomforts as child are funny as an adult and in many ways define who we are. Clearly then by buying this car we are robbing our children of the ability to be creative. The second these words came out of my mouth a shiver was sent down my spine: have I really become I conservative technological determinist? Does that mean I can no longer shout proudly “Damn the man, say the empire!” I want a progressive future full of forward thinking, as long as my children, if I have them, can grow up the same way as I did. Is this my equivalent to walking to school in the snow uphill both ways? On a side note, I actually did walk to school almost every day, although because I grew up in Victoria it didn’t snow much.

Thankfully, upon second thought, I can redeem my liberal soul.

I think often we get so caught up trying to make the world a better place that we sometimes forget to remember the consequences of our actions. This can be a bad thing at times because the past gives us the knowledge to reframe the future. Change however, like death and taxes, is an inevitable feature of life, and it cannot be stopped but it should also not be feared. Everyone is a product of their past, the good, the bad, and the learned mistakes define who we are. Because of this, it is frightening to think of a changed past as that would radically change our identity. Generally, I think most people like who they are, and want their children to grow up to be similar to themselves. At the very least they hope that their kids hold similar core values to be true, and want for them to have the same opportunities to succeed and grow.

In reality however, the next generation will inherit a drastically different world. They will have different toys, different friends, and face different challenges. Hopefully the world will be cleaner. Hopefully there will be less war, and poverty. A person will be a person regardless of race, religion, skin colour, or even affinity for a particular sports team. Because of this, because of everything we are now doing, children will not grow up in the same environment as we did. It cannot be helped, but that is not a bad thing. It is progress, and it is what makes us human.

I have one last thought before I close for today. Change for the sake of change can be just as bad as fearing change. Progress needs to be shaped, it needs to be molded, and its foundations need to be sculpted from the past, both the good and the bad remembered. As a parent / future parent of children and ideas don’t be afraid to turn off the TV, the video games, and your Ipod, and talk. The kids are alright, and will continue to be alright, but that doesn’t mean they don’t need some help, guidance, and love to become something everyone can be proud of.

Give me a real cause

2007-06-24T11:10:00.001-07:00

The times are a changing, or so said Bob Dylan. Since Dylan sang these words times certainly have changed. How much of it has been good and how much it has been bad is up for debate, but change has certainly happened. Politics have of course naturally changed with the times, some overt, and others seemingly underhandedly. Strangely however what has not changed is the political activism. By this I don’t mean that political activism should have vanished, quite the opposite, but political activism still appears, at least at face value to be stuck in an odd 60s hangover. I recently attended a talk on sustainable development in Vancouver and I was somewhat awestruck by what happened during the question and answer period: instead of asking the speakers questions – one of the speakers was ex-premier Mike Harcourt – many of the audience members simply offered up harsh critiques of current political issues. To this Harcourt, who seemed to know the perturbed by name calmly politicked he way around their rants and little actually discussion seemed to happen.

This experience left me with a very odd feeling as I travelled home on the bus that night and it still lingers with me today. I wonder if all of these political rallies and outcries do any good? Does storming the steps of parliament with 20 000 people make any difference? Do by standers even care about the droves of people waving signs and yelling out for change during rush hour? It certainly does manage to annoy a good number of people

The news, for its part, loves to cover these events, especially when five people get a little unruly and knock over a garbage can, but the image portrayed doesn’t help “the cause”. Protesters complain that we are engaged in a meme war and that the people, or “sheeple”, are being manipulated and brainwashed into not caring… I’m not so sure I agree anymore.

I think most people are good people. I think most people want to do the right thing and actually care about the planet. I am also starting to think that protesting as we know it is dead, or at least needs a serious overhaul. I wasn’t alive in the 60s, or even the 70s for that matter, so my knowledge of what actually happened during that era is based purely on what I’ve read and seen, but the impression that I get from protests back then is that people were protesting to make the sheeple aware of what was actually happening in the world. The government was lying to them, this was wrong, and they had to be shown the light. It seems that the idea of a government lying to its people was a new concept. This was shocking, jarring, and having these facts exposed was enough to stir up the general populous and shake the system.

This simply isn’t the case anymore. Politicians have gotten smoother, slicker, and more importantly most people except to be lied to. No one expects the new prime minister to keep his election promises, so it is no surprise when he doesn’t. People have grown apathetic because all they hear and read is the bad. Voting in an election is simply choosing the better of two evils. Yes we can blame the media for only showing us the bad things, and for underscoring it with non-diegetic music to manipulate our emotions, but that doesn’t change things. Pointing out what is wrong isn’t enough anymore. Simply shouting “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore” won’t work. We know that the flaws exist, everyone does, so now is the time for action. This action isn’t taking to the streets however; we don’t need to setup anonymous e-mail accounts and plan a rally at the art gallery. We can’t be the activists that wear granola and smoke pot. This isn’t about peace love and harmony.

Instead we need to each do our part and enlist others to do the same. We need to recycle and talk to our neighbours. We need to eat organic and support local where we can while getting out and exercising. We need go to school and learn not just that sustainable develop is needed but how it is possible and how to make it happen. Our mantra can’t be “challenge everything”, it isn’t important that we have been lied to; we need to get past this. Now is a time for solutions.

We need to find ways to help the problems. We need to find ways to help each other. This isn’t easy or simple, this isn’t an angered knee jerk reaction, but is the only way to make things change. If you are mad great. I’m mad too, but let’s do something productive about it. Let’s run in the next municipal election, or if we can’t, then let’s find someone who thinks like us and see if they will. Then we can vote for them and change can begin to happen.

I’m not saying that we don’t need watchdog groups. It’s important that we hold our government accountable, but let’s hold them accountable by showing them someone who is going to do what needs to be done if they don’t. That’s a cause I can get behind.

A moment to remember

2007-04-18T00:39:00.001-07:00

It’s been a while since I’ve taken up my keyboard soapbox to ponder the ways of the world, but it’s been a long grueling last couple of months. It becomes ever so easy to get buried under your own troubles that you can almost forget the world exists outside of your personal bubble. To some extent this can be forgiven, after all if your basic needs aren’t met then it becomes next to impossible to think of others; but where does that line get drawn? Where does your ability to pay the rent or finish that assignment on time take priority over someone eating? It’s a difficult question, and one I am certain I don’t have the answer to, but I’d like to reflect on it for a little while because I think in some small way that might help do it justice.

I just finished watching Spike Lee’s “Do the right thing” and while the trip back to the 80s was amusing it still is somewhat shocking how little things have progressed. Actually, that’s not a fair statement, many important steps have been made to make the world better, and it is far far far to easy to get caught up in the negative things, but the problems still haven’t been solved.

I wonder if the problems would get solved faster if we focused more on the positive. If people saw every day the steps that were being taken to make this world better. I wonder what sort of shift in the overall mass perception of society would occur if we head more stories about the good. Would we be able to walk around in the dark without fear? Now here is a point of contention, because I can already hear people saying “If you walk around alone at night you are asking for trouble”. I’m not suggesting that we walk around with naive blinders on. Bad things clearly do happen to good people, and if you place yourself in situation where something bad happens you can’t be that surprised when it does, but at the same time, when does it become a self fulfilling prophesy? How much will the fact that a 65 year old women got brutally beaten and mugged today at 6am when walking to the skytrain make someone think twice about taking public transit tomorrow? People need to be safe, but we need to believe that the person walking down the street beside us isn’t going to mug us as well.

I think the internet is an amazing medium, and I know that most people can’t even begin to comprehend its potential. It’s incredible that people can just type to someone they have never met and become friends. You don’t know how attractive that person is, you don’t know what race they are, sometimes you don’t even know where they live, or even their real name and yet its possible to open up your secrets to them. Maybe it’s because you will never meet them face to face that it’s easier, it seems less judgmental, but what if that person you are talking to was your neighbor? What if that person was the person standing next to you on the bus? As wonderful as it is to have an amazing intellectual connection via words, wouldn’t it be that much better when you could touch them? Look deep into their eyes and feel a connection that reminds you what it’s like to be alive. We have so very few moments of pure happiness, so very few times that we watch the sunrise after having been up all night. And yet these are the moments that we will remember till we die. When we are sad it’s the memory of our first kiss, the smell of a spring rain on concrete, and knowing what it’s like to be held and wishing that you could live in that split second forever that warm our hearts.

We can’t forget these things. We can’t allow ourselves to forget the wonders of the world simply because we are being bombarded we images and sounds of destruction and hate.

I’m writing this because of the 65 year old women who was beaten this morning, and because of the shooting at Virginia Tech. I’m writing this I don’t know how to process these events any other way. I don’t know any of the people involved, I mean I’m sure we could play 6 degrees of separation and I’d be connected, but that’s beside the point, I wasn’t there and there is no possible way I can comprehend what happened. The scope of these events can’t even register in my head because I don’t know how to process the information. It’s wrong and horrible, and a tragedy, and things like it happen around the world in thousands of places every day and there is probably nothing I can do to stop it. The worst part is everything begins to blur together. The images and meanings jumble together to create a giant media scramble and I’ll have already made a joke about it tomorrow. And you know what, others will laugh at that joke because they can’t possibly comprehend it either, and it’s not wrong, it’s not bad, it’s not cold hearted, it simply is.

So in honour of those who I don’t know and never got the chance to meet, other people who like myself spent summer nights stargazing and talking about what they wanted to be when they grow up, I write this: I will remember all of the good things in life because it is only by doing this that anything worthwhile will change.

Stepping out of the crowd

2007-01-14T00:42:00.000-08:00

We all are Time Magazines people of the year! Yes, I realize this is a little dated news now but allow me my observations, I’ve been busy. I am all for united we stand divided we fall. In fact I know nothing would be accomplished without it. In fact, I am certain the reason that the positive change that is happening in the world isn’t happening as fast as it should is because we are not as united as we should be. That there are actual forces holding us back and trying their best to keep us apart.

Still, “our” movement doesn’t have a face… I’m not saying we need a martyr here, but lacking someone to hold ourselves up to aspire to seems detrimental as well. There are those dark nights where we question our beliefs, where we think that we are truly alone in the world, or at the very least that we are the last sane person, and it is moments like that a figure head would be handy. We could say, no, THIS person feels the same way, and if they do others must as well.

The reason this popped into my head was a conversation I was having in regards to generational theory. The current generation (I want to shoot anyone who calls it generation “next” or generation Y), it seems now called the millennial generation seems to be a double edged sword. In theory it is the generation that is supposed to change everything, the one with all of the ideas and all of the potential, and on the other side it’s a generation that has had every minute of every day scheduled to the point where they will go out of their way to purposefully fail just to see what it feels like.

I understand this feeling, I’ve been their before. It often reminds me of a line from the Goo Goo Dolls Song Iris “you bleed just to know you’re alive”. The idea of failure seems comforting because it’s a decision you’ve made for yourself. It’s one you can own, and at the same time it creates a sensation that actually feels real. In our current age of over stimulation a real feeling seems a rare commodity.

This is what makes me wonder about the need for a leader. I know the idea that as long as we fight within the system we will never truly be free, but some things seem more basic than that. Where I’d like to believe that one day 5 million people will show up on the steps of parliament and demand a change, it just doesn’t seem plausible that it will happen. Like communism, on paper it seems wonderful; in practice the human spirit proves something quite different.

The problem is the leader needs to come from within the generation. S/he needs to understand the technology in front of us, AND why teenagers like emo rock. They need to speak from their heart but across blackberries, ipods, myspace, and in person. It needs to be someone who has downloaded music via torrents. They also need to be literate, read actual books, play sports, and understand art. They need to be worldly but grounded in their community, and not be afraid to knock on their neighbour’s door and ask them to come out and play a pickup game of street hockey. Most importantly they have to be willing to stand up on their own against all of the adversity and temptations of the world. They will be alone for a good while, and their ideas will fall on deaf ears.

This person almost seems a mythical as the unicorn, and yet sits inside each and everyone of us. We can feel it in our hearts. What is wrong with the world needs to be fixed; there is no doubt in our mind. The hard part is just taking that first step in trying to do something about it. Saying your name and what you think knowing there will be a disagreement. Are you willing to be that person? The world is waiting…

Everything Needs a Beginning

2006-12-21T22:03:00.000-08:00

Everything needs a beginning, and this it appears, is mine. As to what this beginning entails is far from being written, and as much your guess as it is mine. Regardless hopefully it will go somewhere.

This blog has been created in response to a book I just read: Confessions of an Economic Hitman. The reason this book has prompted me to write something isn’t so much the book itself, although it is very good and I do recommend that you read it at some point, it more of a germination of ideas and a feeling of general frustration.

I look at the state of the world today and like most people understand that, well… to be kind, it’s pretty fucked up. I think you would have a hard time finding someone who doesn’t think the world is fucked up. This then begins to create a series of problems for me. One, that someone, or a group of people would actually go out of their way to shape the world in this way (despite what you think of global warming it is difficult to argue that humanity has had NO effect on our environment). And two, that despite knowing this I do very little to change it. The second point is what particularly bothers me. I mean, I can’t change the past, what has happened is of course done, so all I can do is accept the state that the world was in when I was born. From that point onwards however, or at least from the point where I really started to come into a consciousness my actions, I have the ability to affect change.

So the question then becomes what do I do? Well… I do own a car, but I try and take the bus at least a good chunk of the time. I try not to leave the lights on when I leave the room, and turn the water off when I’m brushing my teeth. I recycle, don’t eat red meat, and try and buy organic when my budget will allow it. I hold the door open for people and offer help when someone looks lost. All of these little things help right? I mean, without them the situation wouldn’t be getting any better right?

Well, I’m sure without all of those little things it would indeed be getting worse it appears that in the grand scheme it really isn’t making it any better either. This doesn’t mean I’m going to stop them, but it means I need to find something else to do as well. I think I’m beginning to think our mindset is wrong. We’ve been told that by all doing our small part we will help, this allows us to sleep at night. The problem is we have forgotten to do our big part as well. We know that what our politicians are doing is wrong, we say it to each other all of the time, how then is it that they can keep doing it? Why do we have to pick between the better of two evils? How have we been lead to believe this makes sense? Yes, I’m sure leading a country is a difficult task, I’m sure many people couldn’t do it. In fact, I’ll be so bold as to say most people couldn’t, or wouldn’t want to do it. But that can’t, it simply can’t, mean that the only people who can do it have to make choices that are NOT in our best interest. Why then are these people in power? WHY? Ok, yes they have connections, they have money, but they are still voted in. We still have to say: yes we agree that you should do this job. We know you will serve our collective best interests. If we don’t think they are the best person for the job then we have to say so! We have to do something. There is no way for the government to turn on its own people. It cannot use our soldiers against us, they are part of us, they are our brothers, our sisters, our fathers our mothers.

I refuse to believe we can do nothing. I also think that the time before action happens is wearing thin. Someone will happen because it must. We have a chance to dictate what that action is if we are willing to take it.

I certainly don’t have all of the answers, and I have never been a fighter. But something tells me that one way or another, very soon we are not going to have any choice.

So, in hopes if inspiring others, and just as much to affair it in myself I have started this blog. I don’t know where it will end up. For now it is just my thoughts, hopefully it will turn into more.

JFP