"A cult is a religion with no political power." Tom Wolfe - "All religions are true. The important thing is to reach the roof. You can reach it by stone stairs or by wooden stairs or by bamboo steps or by a rope. You can also climb up by a bamboo pole." Ramakrishna

A couple months ago I read a book by the Christian author, Brian McClaren, called A New Kind of Christianity. If you were here around Easter then you already know how I feel about organized religion . If you weren't we'll cover it again below, or you can check out past posts. Let's just say that, uh, I'm, uh, less than supportive and slightly more than critical. But just a bit... 

I stay sort of up to date on stuff because I have a vested interest. You see, both of my parents actually still believe hard. My Mom, who is slipping very steadily into an as-yet quaint stage of Alzheimer’s where she remembers everyone but doesn’t make many new memories, was raised in a very strict evangelical church and taught to feel guilty for everything very thoroughly. My Dad is a more serious Christian. Not a ‘check Christian because I went to Sunday school’ kind of Christian, but a real, post-denominational, quasi-fundamentalist, ‘new’ version Christian. 

Still as mentally spry as ever and a retired teacher, my Dad spends part of his time teaching at his church and has been actively involved in leadership. So as much as I'm glad I escaped the black hole, I'm still invested through them. 

Dad and I end up talking about Christianity a lot because, well, I was once one too, one of those zealous Christians that now, like a former drug addict that volunteers as an advocate for rehab and clean needle programs, likes to keep up on the latest lingo and thoughts. The friendly and mostly civil debate can be both vigorous and stimulating, and when a new perspective comes along that aspires to boil Christianity down to the stuff that the bible character Jesus was trying to promote (say, as opposed to the neo-old testament hellfire and brimstone funda-wingnut crap that passes for modern Christianity), I perk up. McLaren's book represents the possibility of that kind of re-imagining.

I don’t hold Christians' beliefs against them. People have a right to believe in whatever they believe in. As much as I’ve grown to despise organized religion in all its forms those who succumb to it are, in my opinion, victims not monsters, even the pastors and priests, all victims of a manipulative belief system on steroids. Organized religion is a form of meta-generational abuse that has been inflicted on all of us whether we count ourselves as believers or not. The permutations and implications of religion are scattered throughout our culture everywhere like impurities that weaken steel and concrete: Where they are, the foundations are cracking and the girders are sagging. 

Those who do believe, whichever religion of the book they believe in, generally find this perspective insulting. I get that. What they usually don't stop to think about upon a close reading is that I respect honest spirituality when I see it. I'm a Ramakrishna guy, and I don't give a crap which staircase you want to use as long as the sincere intent is to get to the roof. The problem I see with most religions is that they get all caught up in decorating the living room and kitchen instead of helping people get to the fucking roof.

Jesus was, if you read the NT and Apocrypha right, a very progressive, radical guy for his time. He was a peace-nik, an activist, and in many ways a sort of antecedent syndico-anarchist. The Jesus I read about would not have liked the thought of having his social movement turned into the very kind if institution he was rebelling against. If there was a historical Jesus, he was the social leader and socio-theological rebel rather than the ‘guy most likely to posthumously lead a cult’ that the modern church makes him out to be. 

But that’s an opinion, shared by others, also backed by some substantial proofs to support the logic behind the opinion, but still an opinion. I happily own it.

McClaren’s written his book well, in a very easy to read voice (which made getting through it much less of a chore for me). In places it was an actual pleasure. To be fair, I’m no trained theologian, so offering a detailed academic perspective on McClaren’s non-academic book is not something I’d try. That’s my disclaimer. But he is trying to view things from a different perspective and I’ll give credit where credit is due. His perspective sees Christianity clearly for at least most of the obvious evils that it has perpetrated and perpetuated over the last 1800 years or so. I say 1800 years because pre-Constantine, Christianity was not a catch-all phrase. Before Constantine leveraged that ‘new’ new belief system as a way to try to hold the Roman Empire together, Christianity was essentially a bunch of fairly organic and separate sects, considered by many a cult, by others just a social movement. After Constantine though... then it became an institution.

McLaren tries to re-imagine the Christian faith as a narrative that extends forward as a promise from Genesis instead of a history seen through the philosophical duality of the Greco-Roman tradition. He suggests that the narrative and themes change from this perspective, and he thinks that the change of perspective also changes the ‘nature’ of the god we’ve been exposed to, one that is loving and kind and redeeming in spite of the massive carnage evident in the Old Testament storyline and in the blood on the hands of all ‘people of the book’ in the AD part of the time line. I buy it to a degree, but only to a degree. I think that his line of thought still makes some egregious mistakes about whether religious institutions can be redeemed in any way, or whether there’s an actual, ‘new’ anything in Christianity (as opposed to a new veneer glued on over some very old mythologies that repeat and repeat down through the ages and cultures).

More than anything, I appreciate that he’s trying. He seems very earnest and sincere, just as I though Obama was in The Audacity of Hope (that is a back-handed compliment in case you had any doubt). But fill one hand with intention and the other with horse shit… Well, you know how that goes. I appreciate what he’s done on one level because, from my perspective, I think he makes thinking for one’s self more permissible within an institution that worships group-think to the same astounding degree as, say, the other two ‘religions of the book’. I believe that kind of permission will allow more people to make it to a place where organized religion is no longer necessary.

You see, I have no quarrel with faith (whether I think it’s accurate or not). It’s the religion, the institution, that’s the problem. If somebody wants to believe in Jesus as god, or Allah, or Jevovah, or Gaia, or animal spirits, or Santa Claus, or the Easter Bunny, or nothing, or Joe Pesci for crying out loud… I don’t care! Now, if you want to make that belief a rigid system and use it to control other people or impose your beliefs on them, to exclude others from your 'in' crowd - well, now we have a problem. I believe that, regardless of the faith, system, or whatever you want to call it, it’s the institution that is faulty. That institution makes a directed practice out of fostering that 'our way or the hell way' dichotomy. It pits people against other people intentionally when the truth is that we're all in this together. 

Whether that institution is a church, a government, a judiciary, academia, science… whatever; When any idea, even a good one, is allowed to become an institution that is exclusive of other institutions or ideas or people, then that institution unfailingly becomes more interested in self-preservation than maintaining integrity to the values that were its genesis. I’ve said that very thing before and I’ll say it again because it’s true.

So I read McLaren’s book in the pursuit of understanding what’s happening or what might happen for folks like my Dad who still believe hard. I consider McClaren's position and argument a half measure (at best), but it’s a half-measure in the right direction. For that reason, and for his sincerity, I applaud him. If people read it and develop a faith that is less controlled and more free; if it leads people into a dialog that questions the status quo (and it seems to be doing that), then that’s a good thing.

If people read, ask, find a new perspective and, from there see their way to real freedom… well that would be even better.

‘The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a dictatorship you don't have to waste your time voting.’ Charles Bukowski

I was reading the news and came across the following stories about an activist being tried for hanging a banner, a brave whistle blower from the US military being court-martialed, and another activist turning himself in to face charges relating to G20 activities that seem, on the surface of them, spurious at best. In each of these cases there seems to be an intent  on the part of authorities to prosecute to a level that is punitive simply for the sake of retaliation, simply because these people have questioned the status quo and are thereby considered threats worthy of harassment.

The case of Mr. Manning and the accusations of leaking military video footage to Wikileaks seems particularly hypocritical to me. In any other industry other than the US military or government, Manning would be protected under US whistleblower laws. Why is it that the government and military feel they should be held exempt? (Of course, corporations feel that they should be held exempt too, but that’s another blog). I would think that they should be held to higher standards than any business. After all, they are supposed to be serving the people of a given country rather than the government of said country, are they not?

And in the case of both activists we have individuals who work tirelessly not only to support worthwhile causes, but who do so while also upholding some of the cornerstone rights upon which our ‘free’ societies are based; the right to protest, to show dissent and to question the actions of our governments and institutions; to hold accountable those in whom we have entrusted our civil liberties (because the mainstream media isn’t going to be doing it any time soon). Yet they are specifically targeted as dangerous individuals. Remember when we were up in arms about how China curtails rights; how Tiananmen was an aberration and a prime example of how the West was better than the East, democracy so much more free than communism, ‘us’ so much better than ‘them’?

I no longer believe that our politicians have anything even approximating our best interests in mind. When one does come along that actually stands for anything, stands for the people they represent and for concepts and morals that are universal, they too are singled out and driven into the mud. Libby Davies should be held up as an example of a politician that still actually stands for something. The rest just seem to bend over for anyone. Instead she’s criticized, threatened, demonized. Frankly, I’d take one of her over the whole lot of the rest of them.

And that ‘rest of them’ are the ones that have co-opted the police, those supposedly sworn to serve and protect us, and turned them into a pseudo-military force enlisted to preserve the plutocracy’s hegemony at the cost of our rights and liberties. This just will not do.

It prompted me, in a thread earlier today, to ask this: “I wonder at what point individual police officers, who might be 'nice people' and all that (and I know several), become responsible for the fact that they choose to remain working for those politicos and in support of obviously compromised institutions? Where does their moral responsibility begin and their job end? "I was following orders" hasn't been a valid excuse for 65 years or so now...”

That’s my question right now? At what point do people that are in positions to support our downhill slide ask, “Is what I’m doing wrong?”  When we look back twenty or fifty years from now, will we be looking at those who served on task forces like the ISU and be asking them “How could you?” in the same way that someone must have asked that guardsman at Trent State that question. How does a cop go to Toronto, beat up a bunch of unarmed protesters, and then go home to the wife and kiddies and look them in the eye? What has to take place in that mind to think that that’s an okay thing to do?

These are people after all, the politicians, the cops, the corrupt jurists and lawyers. Ostensibly they have the same DNA as us, the same propensity for humanism, for empathy, for decency. How do they ‘get there’, that place where threatening people with cameras is okay, and where threatening detainees with rape is appropriate? Hell, I know a few cops and, from what I’ve seen of them, they’re salt of the Earth, regular people that have to do an often incredibly difficult job going after real criminals, people that live with the nightmares of what they’ve had to bear witness to; of man’s inhumanity to man. The ones I know are great people doing a shitty job. And yet, they could very easily have been among those at the G20 smacking people with batons for no good reason, splitting their eyebrows open with shields just because, stomping seated protesters on the back with their boots in support of ‘leaders’ that don’t much care about us at all.

It tempts me to hate them for that. It takes an act of will to hate the system instead and realize that they are victims of it too, albeit willing ones. I’m just left wondering how much slack those individuals should get. When do they stop being unwilling employees or good soldiers and start being criminals themselves?

'I think a hero is an ordinary individual who finds strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles.' Christopher Reeve

Like a lot of people here in Canada, I spent a fair bit of time keeping an eye on the G20 Summit in Toronto last weekend, and the road show that invariably follows it around. Occurring as it did over the days leading up to the anniversary of our national independence on July 1, the events that occurred in Toronto were cast in an especially ironic light. Anyone watching, listening or reading the news coming out of TO in the days leading up to and through the summit had to be struck by the grotesque largesse of the preparations and their associated costs. Anyone with a heart had to be dismayed by what they saw the police doing in the aftermath of the vandalism that took place on Saturday. Hopefully, we were looking close enough to notice more than just that vandalism and the 'reaction' to it, because there was certainly more to the story than the mainstream media was purporting, especially here in Canada. And while there were some good stories to come out of the weekend, a few reminders of what it is we hold dear and why we fight for our freedoms, it was a sad week for international diplomacy and a sadder one for Canadian civil liberties.

I'm not going to go into detail regarding what happened over the weekend. Suffice it to say that, as always, the mainstream media didn't cover the whole story. Frankly, I'm surprised that they covered as much as they did. No, to get to a closer semblance of the truth I spent time monitoring the alternative news sources online, looking for the stories that the infotainment industry doesn't cover, sharing little pieces with friends on the social networks, and I know that the truth is still something that you have to look for as much in between the lines as anywhere else. I'll also say this: While I don't support the Black Bloc tactic as a strategy (I think it misses the point, detracts from the primary messages, and provides too much of what the Security Forces are looking for as justification for their brutality), I don't blame them either. I believe that the Black Bloc provides the Police with their best opportunity to infiltrate and act as agent provocateurs. I think there's a better way, that when we adopt the piggish and brutal tactics of our enemies, then we become as bad as them. I think that's what Gandhi and King taught, and that works for me.

I was, in turns; profoundly moved by the courage of activists and discouraged by the actions of the police; frustrated by the Black Bloc tactics and nauseated by the actual violence perpetuated by the ISU; shocked by the callous brutality of too many of the security force and encouraged in small ways when I saw some of them obviously finding their duties distasteful; horrified by the suspension of civil liberties and enraged by the cavalier attitude with which the ISU went about flouting their disdain for those legal rights guaranteed under the Canadian Charter of Rights; outraged at ISU lines charging a peaceful demonstration the moment they finished singing O Canada, and buoyed by video of two courageous demonstrators trying to stop the cruiser vandals or another making a looter drop the item he was about to steal. It was a weekend of ups and downs.

The vast majority of protesters were peaceful and loud yet the ISU rained down their violence primarily on these people. Over 900 arrested over the G8/G20 and over 700 released without charges – that says something. The conditions in the detention center were by many accounts horrible, and by some utterly horrifying, including threats of rape and cavity searches completed by ISU of the opposite sex and isolation of those 'identified' as members of the LBGT community. The 5-meter rule, a supposed amendment of the 1939 Public Works Protection Act that was secretly re-enacted by the Ontario cabinet, was touted by the police as a special temporary power granted them to tackle the extra security threat. That 5-meter law turned out to be a lie that the TPS Chief Blair chuckled about, but what it really means is that thousands of illegal search and seizures were completed over the weekend without probable cause.

The phrase 'Police State' was bandied about quite a bit, and if you read the stories, watch the videos, see the pictures, you might be inclined to agree. This was a disgusting display of arrogance and near-fascist hubris on the part of the Federal and Provincial governments and the ISU.

We should be ashamed. Lots of us are - of our country, our political 'leaders', our police forces. It was a very sad weekend for civil liberty in Canada.

It was also an amazingly empowering weekend to watch too. In spite of the brutality, the lies, the suspension of rights and the illegal detentions, there were still thousands of people willing to continue the fight. And the numbers grew as the weekend went on when regular folk saw what was happening and joined the protest. It carried over into the new week too with thousands more participating in solidarity marches in Hamilton, Quebec, Montreal, Winnipeg, Regina and Vancouver.

This is the way it works. Even when the politicians and police think they've tricked us into looking bad, they forget their own ability to make themselves look worse. Their abuse doesn't make people cower in fear; it makes more people stand up. Just like fighting un-winable wars in Iraq or Afghanistan, their hubris creates more enemies than it oppresses. And a tipping point will come in time.

I like to hope that the tipping point will occur peacefully when enough people open their eyes and see the world for what it actually is and decide, goddammit, that there must be a better way. Sometimes, though, I despair that the odds of a peaceful resolution to all of this will remain slim. And then I see someone stand when it would be easier to stay down, choose peace when violence would be expected, be courageous when it would be easy to run away, and I remember why people fight for these things: because they matter and because we know they do.

I'd like to think that we can aspire to something better than the world we live in because I see individuals doing it all the time. But I wonder if we'll hit that tipping point in time. Mostly we seem bent of self-destruction, like in the parable of the scorpion and the frog – it seems to be our nature. But I see the good too and think; maybe we can hold on long enough, yell loud enough, stand firm enough to get us through to that magic point where the sane outnumber the insane and we can actually start in a better direction.

Anyway, links are below if you missed it. It's not a comprehensive list, but it'll get'cha started if you're so inclined...

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN2724231020100627
http://www.newkerala.com/news/fullnews-120259.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_bloc
http://g20.torontomobilize.org/node/173
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=784lay9401U&feature=related
http://www.straight.com/article-331174/vancouver/black-bloc-smashes-windows-causes-mayhem-toronto-g20-meeting
http://videosift.com/video/Toronto-G20-the-Shape-of-things-to-Come
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/G20/2010/06/26/14525911.html
http://www.torontosun.com/news/g20/2010/06/27/14534051.html
http://current.com/news/92515480_video-compilation-of-police-violence-at-toronto-g20.htm
http://www.blogto.com/city/2010/06/police_trap_g20_protesters_at_queen_and_spadina/
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/toronto/story/2010/06/29/g20-chief-fence571.html
http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/statica/2010/07/g8g20-communiqué-journalists-attacked-police-g20-protests
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/06/29/g20-oiprd-reporters-complaint.html
http://jezebel.com/5575356/g20-journalist-threatened-with-rape-violence-in-jail
http://www.straight.com/article-332050/vancouver/vancouver-protest-planned-show-solidarity-g20-detainees-black-bloc-activists
http://toronto.mediacoop.ca/photo/g20-solidarity-rally-and-protest-against-polic-repression-g20-protests-montreal/4006
http://mynews.ctv.ca/mediadetails/2886697?collection=742&offset=0&siteT

Good coaches teach respect for the opposition, love of competition, the value of trying your best, and how to win and lose graciously. Brooks Clark

I read this article on Truthout yesterday about how the nature of sport in the modern world, what we as a culture consider to be the intrinsic value of play and sport activities, has changed so dramatically over the last century. Mr. Lapham makes subtle and beautiful allusions describing how our appreciation of sport has transformed into an allegory of how we see life, war, business as things that require brutal competitiveness and that exist only to provide us a clear answer to the questions “Who is the winner?”, and conversely, “Who is the loser?”

I found the article encouraging because of the way it resonated with many thoughts I've had over the last six weeks as I've watched highlights of (there's no hockey on TV in the UK for less than an arm and a leg) the NHL playoffs (hockey is the last team and professional sport that I have any affinity for) and as I've spent countless hours in deep conversation with my Dad and others in the course of my travels (the subject of another post on another day).

I can't say what Lapham said any better, but it triggered a cascade of thoughts that I was compelled to try to amalgamate here before they slip away. So, as I sit in the Schiphol Airport here in Amsterdam waiting for my connecting flight back to Vancouver, I figured it was as good a time as any to get back on the horse and throw out a lite blog entry ;).

Lapham struck a chord because the way I've been feeling about sport and competition has changed substantially over the last three or four years, moving from rabid nationalistic support and home-team fervor through something like a conflicted continued support to, finally (I think), a general distaste for what our culture considers 'serious' athletic competition and sport-business. Mixed into that general evolution are things like a rapidly changing perspective on nationalism and a growing disgust with our infatuation with the cult of fame and our slavish devotion to living vicariously through our 'most famous' as a way to escape from the drudgery of our rat-race lives. How we worship athletes and our favorite local and national teams, and the way in which we often turn into (drunken) idiots in the process, all the while not only justifying said idiocy but glorifying it, has finally pushed me to the edge (and over it) of supporting professional and international sport altogether. It is, to me, a symptom of our decline rather than something to be lauded. Whatever it once might have been, or could have been, at this point in history it generally shows how little we've aspired and how much we've grown to prize winning at any cost.

And I think that's a sad little comment.

I should say, I still love hockey. I can even respect the other sports as games to be played, although my real love is saved for the game on the ice. As Mr. Lapham so eloquently says in his piece, the real beauty of athletic endeavor is in the dance, the kinetic orchestration of will, body and aptitude that can elevate even us middle-aged guys to a level that, although obviously more rarely and never to a height achieved by professionals, approaches a poetry of motion. What Lapham called “Einstein's equation made flesh.” It can also, in the right environment, also bring out the best in people in terms of 'sportsmanship' and respect, even as it so notably can bring out the worst in us.

As an example, let me offer the following short comparison:

The last time I had the opportunity to play hockey competitively was four years ago. That year I was able to play in two leagues simultaneously; a competitive commercial league and an 'old-timers' over-35 league. Both leagues were well run, well-organized and were more than not populated by people that loved the game and played for the joy of playing.

The commercial league was, naturally the more competitive of the two leagues, full of young hotshots, ex-major junior players and even a couple ex-NHL players. All were past their very best years of playing hockey, but it was a fast game with no official contact allowed, something like watching an all-star game if only in terms of the flow and lack of ability to defend assertively in the absence of body checking.

It was really fun hockey and played at, for me anyway, a very challenging pace. And while the violence was toned down in recognition of the reality that we all had to go to work the next day, the degree of competitive fervor was high and, for some, extreme. There were occasional fights, lots of 'incidental' contact, and no doubt that the point of playing was first and last to win. Sometimes, occasionally, that drive reached 'win at all costs' intensity. When my team won, I'd feel exhalted, especially if I'd played particularly well. If we lost, no amount of mature cajoling in the dressing room could get us out of our funk, and if I played poorly in a losing cause it affected sleep.

The old-timer's league was also pleasantly competitive but in a very different way. While there were still some ridiculously talented players playing O-T, including both of the ex-NHL'ers in commercial league, there was also a majority of players that fell into the mediocre-at-best category, and even a few true ankle-benders that, at the 'ripe old age' of somewhere over thirty-five, had decided to either start playing, or start again after twenty or thirty years sabbaticals.

Subsequently, the spirit on the ice was dramatically different. Everyone still wanted to win, but it was a motivation secondary to the joy of simply playing a game we all loved, of moving smoothly (or not) over the ice, sliding gracefully (or not) to make a save (as a goalie, I have to admit that this was my favorite part), passing crisply (or not) and hitting our target on the fly, making the right play at the right time to either prevent or score a goal. If someone took a potentially nasty spill, tripping backwards over the blue line for example, or maybe losing an edge and going into the boards, the game usually just stopped to make sure that the aging warrior was okay and hadn't done any damage. Incidental contact was rare and was also capable of prompting a stoppage if two players didn't manage to avoid each other while crossing the space of the neutral zone. These stoppages were often, in the absence of injury, accompanied by generous amounts of friendly ribbing and much laughter. And it really was laughter shared with the embarrassed party, not at his expense.

The result of the game wasn't incidental, and there was a pleasant amount of team and personal pride on the line, but when the final buzzer sounded everyone was smiling every time, win or lose. Nobody had so much to prove, to themselves or anyone else, that the outcome of the game mattered enough to provoke questionable play, or a lick once it was time to get off the ice and start cracking the beers. The game wasn't being played at its highest level, by any means, and I freely admit it... unless we're talking about the highest level of sportsmanship, class and jubilation. In that case, I'd argue we were playing at international levels.

I had the most enjoyable season of my adult life playing in both leagues that year, but walked away from it and into a new job that precluded playing consistently for the next two years. Last year was the life-inversion year so again, no play except for a few noon-hour pickup games last winter. And I've missed it horribly. But even if I could play organized hockey again, I'm not sure I'd want to anymore (unless I could find another O-T league like the one I described) because that season also left me with a few bad tastes in my mouth too.

That commercial league, as I said, was punctuated too many times by reminders of what competition can do to us, of what sport has turned into in these times of professional excess into something that disturbingly resembles, to one degree or another depending on the sport, something that is more Romanesque than post-enlightenment in nature. While I loved the level of skillful play, and was fortunate to play on a team full of more mature players with good perspectives, I saw how the need to win can corrupt people, including myself, more than a few too many times.

I see the same, only more so, in the actions of professional athletes. We all do, and we talk about it all the time. The guy who dives too much and makes an idiot out of himself, or the one that seems to hit people from behind far too often, or the one that is too sloppy with his or her stick, or elbow, or kicks. The ones who seem to have personal parameters regarding how far they will go to win that either just slightly, or grossly, seem to transcend the bounds of the rules and even simple common decency and respect.

I remember the first time I struggled through Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Frankly, I found most of it boring to read, but the premise behind it, the foundational philosophy I read about in the introduction constituted, for me, an epiphany of sorts. If you've read it you may know what I'm talking about. I loved Covey's assessment of self-help literature as it evolved through the twentieth century and his analysis that, at some point, the focus of human self-development had changed from something internal designed to create character and integrity, to something external that was designed to make a person more cosmetically appealing while concurrently teaching skills that could be used to manipulate others. That observation was, in its time, a revolution. Sadly, it wasn't one that caught on. Rather, it was subsumed into the ongoing and current shallow concept, and the idea of developing integrity and character just became a catch-phrase that people used to add a veneer of validity to their cosmetic and manipulative skill development.

It stuck for me, perhaps because it was something I was already interested in, a path I was already chasing. I often think about why it is that the concept of character and integrity development hasn't seemed to stick in much of society. I wonder why we still consider winning to be something to god-awfully important that we're wiling to sacrifice our values, corrupt out integrity, and tarnish our reputations. I wonder why bigger, better, faster , more is more appealing than honesty, integrity, loyalty and respect. I wonder why we prefer relativistic ethics over a more solid morality. I wonder why we prefer the easy so damned much. Having lived both lifestyles, I can honestly advocate that the character path is, while perhaps less immediately gratifying at times, dramatically more satisfying in the long run, no matter how brief a distance I can hope I've been able to travel down that path.

Lapham has it right of course, even he he's so subtle at alluding to it. How we treat each other, how we treat sport and play, business and politics, is a symptom of the age, of our de-evolution from the ideological and philosophical aspirations of the enlightenment (and I fully recognize that there's no such thing as a golden age of anything, so bear with me a bit here) into the pragmatic relativism of the industrial age. We exchanged high meta-philosophy for a lower commercial pragmatism, high aspirations for low ambition, and it's filtered into most if not all aspects of modern life.

What we possess these days is often more important now than how we got it or even if we actually own any of it at all. The title and wage we earn is the higher priority over integrity and honesty in getting there. The famous people we base our media cults on are worshiped for their wealth and excess rather than their character and actions. When we find someone to adore, whether in sport or entertainment or politics, our love for them as they ascend is only eclipsed by our vilification of them when they inevitably fall. Our glee to see that toppling is viscous. We live for it the same way we live for the expulsion of our most hated Survivor player, or the cat fights on America's Next Top Model, or Simon's insensitive vitriol during the auditions of whatever talent competition he happens to be judging. And we haven't even talked about delighting in the violence of sport, perhaps best exemplified by the gratuity of MMA at the moment (and I love martial arts too, but pro MMA has as much to do with true martial arts as the NHL has to do with pure hockey).

Can we really try to deny that we're near the bottom of a pretty slippery slope? Do we need the emperor to toss bread into the crowd for the spectacle to finally be complete? Or are air-catapulted T-shirts enough and raffles for free pizza enough?

A TED.com talk I watched and posted this week was made by Sir Ken Robinson who talked about the need for a revolution in the way we do education from our manufacturing-based, assembly line, mechanistic approach to something that was more organic, something that would strive to create the right environment for learning and let the students then grow more as they would, according to their strengths and desires and at their own appropriate pace, whether faster or slower (or more likely both depending on which area of study they were engaged in at a given moment). I couldn't help wishing that we, as a culture, a species, would perhaps learn to apply that concept more to the way we do just about everything. I found myself daydreaming of a world in which not everything was driven by money and profit, where people could pursue the best version of themselves just because, without having to ignore or suppress the pursuit of aspirations, goals and dreams so that they could compete with the guy next door's house or car, or the watch that the guy in the next cubicle had, or the dresses that our friends were wearing to church in the Sunday morning fashion show, or the percentage our company's stocks had risen in the last year compared to our nearest competitor, or the size of our ridiculous bonus was while we presided over the collapse f our industry or the largest spill of crude oil into the ocean that has ever occurred.

So now, seeing things from the perspective I see them from no, I'm able less and less to derive enjoyment from the seemingly more benign aspects of this culture in decay. Hockey isn't ruined for me, but I think that professional hockey is. Same with IIHF stuff – nationalism, even in the form of supporting the home team, is just ugly. I was already over every other pro sport, so I think I'm done. I'll still play if I can find the right group of guys with the right attitude about the game, in fact I look forward to it because I know that they're out there.

Yes, I'm being kind of judgmental. More so, I feel pretty morally safe in doing so. If you step back long enough and, just for a second or two, take the red pill and see things the way they really are, I think it's actually pretty fucking hard not to agree. If you can, congratulations. I'm not sure what for, but congratulations.

As for me, I'll play the way I'm trying to live – focused on the game and the joy of it rather than the drive to dominate and conquer. I'll try to play with as much grace as I can coax out of these aging bones and reach for those moments of transcending grace no matter how ephemeral and fleeting they might get. I'll play with respect and a commitment to experiencing the joy of sharing that respect. I'll enjoy the journey, strive to be the best version of me that I can be and let the destination take care of itself. And I'll hope that those of us who feel the same way, about sport and life, continue to grow in number until we can gently topple the old statue of greed and avarice, and leave the pedestal empty for a change.

After the dead horses — John Quiggin

John Quiggin, perhaps my favorite economist (okay - he is my favorite, but only because I can't think of another one that I'd say I like) makes an interesting case on Crooked Timber regarding the need to continue an open dialog on what to do in the void created by Rightest hegemony and agnotology (yes, I learned a new word today).

E-readers vs. books

Interesting article at The Grist under the Ask Umbra banner. Of most interest to me was the bottom entry on the sustainability metrics of e-readers. Short story even shorter? E-readers are a break-even measure once you've read around 100 books... Big reader? Then it's a good idea.

Unless you're like me and will use the e-reader (that I don't have yet) to read everything and then also buy the hardcover or TPV of the ones you REALLY, REALLY HAVE TO HAVE FOR THE LIBRARY WALL!!!

When I get one, I figure my break-even will be around 125-150...

The other good news is that paper books, hard or soft cover, are actually not so bad for the environment, even trees, as you might think, although the industry is still actively evolving (perhaps not as quickly as we'd like) to address it. Book (paper and digital) = good (but can be better!).

File under good examples...

The AP is reporting today that Tibetan Monks have walked to the earthquake zone in Gyegu in Yushu County, Qinghai province, China to assist rescue efforts by using their bodies in place of heavy equipment. Video shows them tying themselves in a chain to rubble to move it out of the way.

That's right, Tibetan monks - they whose country is occupied, people repressed, beliefs suppressed, rights utterly ignored - those Tibetans. They walked to help. A CBC Radio report quoted a monk as saying that politics were irrelevant. That "this is about life".

I can't think of a more poignant example of what to do. The circumstances only make it more so.

And in spite of the purity of the gesture, I can't help but wonder if the act will make any impact at all on the Chines government that has oppressed the Tibetan people and occupied their country for the last sixty years.

‘I wanna hang a map of the world in my house. Then I'm gonna put pins into all the locations that I've traveled to. But first, I'm gonna have to travel to the top two corners of the map so it won't fall down.’ Mitch Hedberg

I’m leaving on a trip in a few days to the UK with a five day stopover in Vancouver on the way. I’ll apologize now to the 1.3 people that may or may not have fallen asleep at the computer when I wrote about it before, because I’m going to write about it again.

When I started my life inversion process a little over a year ago travelling was one of the things that I really wanted to include in the new life. I wasn’t sure exactly how that was going to dovetail into the minimalist schtick that I wanted to imbue the new version of me with, but I knew that I wanted to see a bit more of the world, see a few new things, maybe learn a new language or two. I wanted to rediscover the vagabond in me.

Still didn’t know what that was going to look like though…

Last June, when I went to my Grandmother’s 90th birthday party/family reunion, I was talking to my Dad who happens to live in the UK. I’d never visited him there even though he’s been across the pond for around twenty-five years now.

For the previous ten years I’d used the “I don’t have any time” excuse fairly effectively, but part of the inversion included not making any more excuses. That resolution, combined with the flexible schedule of trying to be a writer, pretty much fucked up the “no time” doctrine. The other natural concern in regards to long trips would naturally be money, and the inversion, including it’s divestment of material goods and accompanying embrace of minimalist sentimentality, also naturally includes a lower revenue stream.

So I could have claimed poorness, but that would still be an excuse.

What to do? I cashed in some RSP’s. Yes, I know… sooo irresponsible! Not to me though. Not anymore. I cashed in the RSP’s, freed up a bit of cash and made plans, for real.

My decision was validated (if you believe in that sort of thing) this spring when my Dad had a coronary arrhythmia. Nothing serious, but enough to prevent him from flying in May when he and his wife were suppoed to go to Africa together. (It's a big visit to one of her sons and couldn’t be canceled altogether, so she planned to go and he planned to stay back). My timing fit perfectly into their schedule allowing her to go and him to not be alone. That’s either a grand coincidence or serendipity – and I don’t really care which one it is.

The trip also works on a more selfish level: I get a nice base from which to start an exploration of Europe and the UK. The itinerary is humble this time: England, Scotland, a bit of France and Belgium. Hopefully, after I sell the novel and actually consider myself as employed as I ever wish to be again, I can go back and do some more hopping. I’m looking forward to Scotland more than I allow myself to admit most days.

In the crossing of the Rubicon of Hadrian’s Wall there is, for me, a romantic sense of going home.

But no expectations… really.

The trip is about exploration of a primarily internal landscape, my emotional topography, as I see places that have only existed in pictures and my imagination, and as I seek to complete repairs to a relationship that has been in a certain state of disrepair and renovation for a very long time. So much to do.

And, yeah, I still have to finish editing the manuscript so I can have something worth talking about in a query letter. Which reminds me…

Still no news on the AHF front...

It's been two weeks since funding for the Aboriginal Healing Foundation was cut off. The last real news was that reaction to the news had inspired a last minute debate and subsequent talks.

Since then? Nada from Ottawa.

The story isn't dead yet though. The Winnipeg Free Press ran this story last week. Today B.C.'s Houston Today ran this follow up.

Mr. Harper, I don't think we're going to forget about this, or the Afghan Detainee issue, any time soon.

How about you just give in and do the right thing?

‘Every quality, taken to extremes, becomes a weakness.’ Paulo Coelho

I’ve spent a good portion of the last week reading blogs, news and alternative news sources. It’s triggered a bit of introspection along the lines of Mr. Coelho’s quote above, and from that introspection I felt the need to try to clarify a couple thoughts.

The Easter post, part satire and part anti-religion rant, raised more ire than I usually manage to provoke (or at least that I’m aware of). Most of it arrived via my FB link or by private message/email than here in the comments, but I was ready for it. There’s no way I wrote that without an intention to provoke.

But I’m also not one that relishes contention most of the time. I have to feel pretty strongly about something to not look for a win/win solution that’s inclusive. I do recognize, however, that I, like everyone else, have the ability and propensity to become too enamored of an idea, an ideology, a quality in ourselves that we consider one of our strengths, a political position, a religious doctrine, a scientific or academic school of thought, etcetera, etcetera. It is not an affliction that is unique to any one demographic or another. Even those who cherish science, objectivity and reason above all (while pointing at emotion, empathy and metaphysics as foolish self-delusions) things can become entrenched in those concepts to a degree that excludes other valid possibilities. We are all susceptible to the dynamic.

I think we find it attractive because sometimes the journey gets tiring and we just want desperately to believe that we can find that one internal or external position that will allow us to stop exploring. That place where we can say, “I’m finally here”, and that, in that place, we’ll find some rest. But that concept is, I think, mostly an illusion - a mirage.

For sure, there will be, and should be, times when we rest for awhile, but the journey never really ends. We may find refuges and oases at times, and we probably need them when we get there, but the real challenge is knowing to move on after we’ve had that rest instead of trying to settle in as if we’d ‘arrived’.

That was one of my thoughts. The other involves the concept of synthesis as opposed to extremism.

In my first year of under-grad studies, while I was taking all of those ubiquitous survey courses, I was struck by the trend in each discipline for schools of thought to develop around specific approaches, discoveries or styles. Each new paradigm would be based on the ground gained by the one before it, and yet the new paradigm ended up being branded as contrary to the one prior, and a mutually-exclusive dynamic would rear its ugly head resulting in temporary stagnation. This process would continue, spawning school of though after school of thought, until some bright person would come along and try to form a synthesis of all the best aspects of these “disparate” schools of thought.

I always gravitated towards the synthesis concept more than any other one school because, well, it just made more sense. Concepts of amalgamation tend to be more open and dynamic. Constructed on the assumption that ideas that have come before have something to contribute, and that a combination of ideas can be more complete than any separate component can be, the synthesis perspective tends to be (in theory) perpetually inclusive in design, always looking for the next bit of discovery or revelation that will help fill in a bit more of the picture.

I hold pretty strong ideas regarding the nature of institutions whether they are religious, social, bureaucratic, educational or political. I doubt that this disclosure comes as a surprise if you’ve read anything here or know me. I liken any institution to trying to make one specific wave permanent…

That said I also realize that my position on institutions is hardly ultimate or inviolate. We need institutions like laws and courts and representational democracy in a pluralistic society with high population density. I recognize that multiple perspectives are required in a system so that debate can occur; that the progress of ideas occurs through the process of exploration, disagreement and discourse; that diversity is a good thing. I like those ideas. I just don’t like the manifestations of those ideas that we are currently working with and under. If we’re open enough, I think that we’ll be able to evolve past them, but we have to be open to the evolution and not fight it so much.

I wish, sometimes, that it was easier for us as a species to remember and practice that cooperative approach of synthesis. I wish we’d save “you’re wrong” for really special occasions and look for what’s right more often, even if we can only see a little piece in the larger whole. I wish we’d look for a middle path of symbiosis instead of investing so much energy in trying to steer left or right. I wish we’d include instead of exclude. I wish we didn’t need a “them” in order to simply be “us”.

And I hope that I’ll never forget that in front of my own mirror is the best place to renew this wish.


As a side note, I like the idea of this:

Obama: Drilling, nuclear and what might actually help.

I have little doubt who is benefitting from Obama’s plans to expand drilling in NA waters and start building nuclear plants. Could somebody get the prez a pair of knee pads?

With all of this supposed commitment to greening the American power grid, why turn to more oil and start up the nuclear crap again when there’s so much potential available power from geothermal with no GH emissions post-construction? Make the NA auto industry retool with all that bailout money and start putting out electric cars using an infrastructure like Mr. Agassi’s (see below).

Think of all of the R&D and infrastructure development involved with this. Think of all the jobs it would create. Think of all those battery patents the big three have been buying up for the last three decades! They could finally put them to use!

AHF Update - No news is bad news as the PMO stalls and hopes we all forget.

Still almost nothing new on the AHF front other than continuing calls for renewing the funding by the likes of Murray Sinclair, a Manitoba Court of Queen's Bench justice, Charlene Belleau, manager of the Assembly of First Nations and Robert Gruben, chair of Tuktoyaktuk's Community Corporation. As mentioned in a couple of the links above, Federal Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq is stating that programs still exist under the purview of the federal government, but community leaders and critics point out that these aren’t community based programs. The AHF was lauded, even by Harper’s ministers, as being both efficacious and efficient, and the community-based approach helped create a level of accessibility and trust that programs run under the auspice of the Federal Government will never be able to achieve.

I’m left wondering which of Harper’s favorite health care private contractors are benefitting from this…

Obama talks to American Indians while we wait for word on the PMO's response to the AHF funding issue

It's still a politician talking, don't forget, but it will be interesting to compare the tone of Obama's remarks to what the PMO comes out with this week in regards to the AHF funding issue.

‘But He loves you. He loves you, and He needs money! He always needs money! He's all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, somehow just can't handle money! Religion takes in billions of dollars, they pay no taxes, and they always need a little more.’ George Carlin

Easter is magic to me, simply magic.

And not in that wonderful, let’s-all-celebrate-family-and-the-death-and-resurrection-of-Jesus kind of way. I mean, really real magic in a Las Vegas kind of way. We’ve all seen magicians pull a rabbit out of a hat, but pulling a painted egg out of a rabbit’s ass in plain site of a guy hanging on a cross is a pretty cool trick, you gotta admit.

And that whole Jesus thing, that’s a David Copperfield-quality bit of misdirection in and of itself, if ya ask me. The ability of the church to turn a pagan holiday into a Christian one always astounds, doesn’t it? Always brings down the house. I can almost hear the fourth century Bishops puzzling it out:

Scene I, Act 1
Date: 325 AD
Setting: The Council of Nicaea

Christian Sect Leader One (CSL1): Okay, that’s the Winter equinox covered, and we can do that reverse-psychology thing with the fall solstice…

Christian Sect Leader Two (CSL2): …I love that Halloween thing – the irony kills me…

CSL1: …and the crucifixion/passover timing is a natural. But how are we going to tie it in with fertility rights so the pagans buy in?

CSL2: Hmm… Eggs?

CSL1: Say wha…?

CSL2: Eggs, I said eggs. They represent fertility and reproduction and profligation.

CSL1: Profligation?

CSL2: Sure! “…All your eggs in one basket”, and “ You can’t make an omelet without…” Eggs will sub-consciously encourage more extravagant offerings. We’ll give them eggs, which we can leverage for next to nothing, and they’ll feel obligated to give back.

CSL1: Brilliant.

CSL2: (Beaming) Thanks!

CSL1: I think we still need a spokes-model though. Eggs are decidedly un-sexy by themselves and, well, the dead and bloody Christ-on-a-stick thing may work for guilty manipulation, but we need something to keep people from slitting their wrists.

CSL2: Hmmm, good point.

(crickets)

Constantine: I like bunnies. They’re fuzzy and soft and taste great with eggs. And they fuck a lot, which kinda ties in with the fertility thing.

CSL1 and CSL2: (in unison) Bunnies it is.

This level of sophisticated illusion has always awed me. We celebrate this holiest of Christian pagan-holiday-conversions with a holiday on the day Jesus died, a big meal on the day that the Saviour would have been in hell, the disciples all mopey and trying to figure out what to do next (at least the entrepreneurial ones would have been), and then head back to work to celebrate his resurrection which made so much profit possible! *sniff* Heart-warming!

Here’s to bunnies and eggs, religious manipulation and all things commercial and profitable! Happy Easter!

Trying to follow the AHF story in the impenetrable cone of silence and a tidbit on the Conservative committment to transparent government

First, this is the closest thing to new news I could find this morning on the AHF issue. Call me cynical, but I sense a stall tactic from the Tories…

On the subject of stall tactics, I ran across this very tangential article on Brian Leiter’s, ‘Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog’ that happened to mention Conservative legal counsel and former Canadian Supreme Court Justice Frank Iacobucci in a less than flattering light for his apparent role in curtailing free speech at York University in Toronto. Followers of the Afghanistan Detainee Documents issue here in Canada will recognize Mr. Iacobucci’s name – he’s the ‘independent counsel’ that Harper mandated to vet documents for the Conservative administration and decide what could be released without compromising 'national security'. All of this charade in contravention of Canadian Parliamentary law. One might infer by Mr. Iacobucci’s employment affiliation, not to mention his involvement with this York U freedom of speech issue, that expectations regarding the level of transparency he will bring to the detainee issue might be compromised.

I promise to get back to quotes soon…