On This Earth Day....

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(Logic-Stoopid Ratio: 10:0 Mood: Erudite)

On this Earth Day, I am tired of the bullshit.

I am tired of the endless debating, the statistics for and against anthropogenic(or human-caused) climate change, the wringing of hands over policy, and the occasional chirps from the peanut gallery on all sides of this topic.

I'm sick of the sophistry, for which the left, centre, and right of the political spectrum all share the guilt.

Most of all, I'm tired of the lack of common sense over this whole business coming from everyone who fails to see the one big, undeniable common-sense rule that we as a species are breaking: you don't shit where you eat.

That's right. For all the complexities, vicissitudes, paradoxes, hyperboles, dialectics, red-herrings, and other big, hard-to-pronounce words and terms that swirl around all talk of the environment like twister jetsam, the relationship between each human being and his or her planet boils down to simply not taking a crap in the same place where we derive our nourishment.

In a comment to a video link of Michael Jackson's "Earth Song" on my Facebook wall this morning, my colleague, friend, and vitriol-supplier Julius Parente implies that I am against "progress". I have accurately cited our definition of "progress" as a major factor as to why we are ingesting our own waste on a daily basis. This is what he and other political conservatives like him do: they engage in creative wordplay, redirecting your attention away from the issue for the sake of forwarding their own agenda.

And what is that agenda? That, too, boils down to simplicity: conservatives want the freedom to shit wherever they want. They don't want to make the lifestyle changes, because even if it's killing us, it's preferable to having to give up one's SUV.

They argue that jobs will be lost, economies ruined, lifestyles destroyed, entire civilizations pushed to the brink of collapse, masses made homeless, civil liberties taken away, and the world generally coming to an end.....if we choose as a species to obey our common sense and not shit where we eat.

To take a page from Aaron Sorkin, this is what conservatives are good at: "making you afraid of it, and telling you who's to blame for it. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you win elections."

But it's not just conservatives. Socialists and liberals all have their agendas, their own ideological axes to grind, and they've helped to discredit a legitimate movement by inserting their own pre-existing desire to tax the hell out of you and give more power to the state, in the name of environmentalism. Nowhere do you find room for individuals or businesses to do right on their own: the state is mother, the state is father.

Shame on you. You've given the right wing bullets to shoot at you, because you didn't know when to keep your ideological fly zipped when a far more important challenge, one that is beyond politics, knocked on your door and said "what up".

This is too bad, considering that the one thing the centre-left does do well, at its finest, is encourage everyone to aspire to more than what we are now, to become better, and to make political decisions that manifest those high ideals. Were it not for these progressive elements, I would still be a second-class citizen based on my skin colour, women would still be shackled to their stoves and beds, non-Christian beliefs would still have "occult" status in the minds of the majority, and society would be a lot less great than it is now (to say nothing of homosexuals and Jews...watch now, as they distract us away by stating that I accused them of anti-Semitism. I deal in facts, not ideologies, bro).

Conservatives are good at appealing to inertia, and the baser, cheaper, bigoted, lazy, close-minded elements of the electorate. The voters don't have to think, don't have to spend money, don't have take responsibility for anything other than keeping a job and not suckling at the government teat, don't have to sacrifice. With conservatives in charge, nobody has to work for progress, and certainly not the government.

To my friend, I am not against "progress", Julius: you, and all those like you, are, in fact, the ones who hate progress.

You work against progress every single time you imply a false dichotomy between "trees" and "jobs' to avoid talking about facts, knowing that on a level playing field, you will lose a fact-based discussion on the environment each and every time.

You work against progress every time you cite the political hypocrisies of the other side as the reason why you're not trying to do better yourself.

You work against progress every time you thumb your nose at the messengers who bring you the truth, simply because of the political colours you think they fly, or because you don't like them personally.

You work against progress every time you present junk science as fact to the genuine seekers of knowledge, aiming not to educate, but to convert.

And you work against progress when you close minds to the possibilities that simply changing existing industries, institutions, and practices to be more harmonious with the surrounding environment while maintaining our standard of living can bring a future greater than the grim invention your colleagues have concocted to scare citizens back into being okay with eating, drinking, and breathing in their own waste.

You want to know what progress is? I'll tell you.

True progress means using your brain. It means looking back at nearly half a millennium of industrial development as a necessary and vital stage of our growth as a civilization, and changing how it operates now so that our technology and standards of living don't continue to contaminate our air, our water, our food.

True progress means recognizing that the technologies have existed for nearly half-a-century that do not destroy ecosystems and climates, and all it takes is for us to implement them.

True progress means recognizing, and encouraging, the integration of green technologies into the economy for the sake of sustainable job creation and growth, and thus recognizing that "trees" and "jobs" are not mutually-exclusive.

True progress means recognizing that the well-being of other species in the food chain that we currently dismiss as unimportant or irrelevant can, in fact, be key to our own survival, especially if our current practices are killing them.

And true progress starts by doing what's right, even if it's not easy at first.

I'm done talking to the peanut gallery, since peanuts generally don't have much to contribute to a conversation in real life.

Instead, I will appeal to your common sense, reader. Outside of scientific data and methodology, which can and has been tampered with to suit ideological agendas of all sides, everything about the following is undeniable and incontrovertible:

The planet created us.

The planet provides our basic biological needs to simply live.

Thus, we have a vested interest in sustaining the healthy functioning of the planet.

Of all species, ours is the dominant one, in terms of our power and ability to alter the world.

Of all species, ours is the only one that is aware of all global systems at once, how they interact, how they affect us, and how we affect them.

If six billion individuals produce even one unit of anything into the surrounding environment, that amounts to six billion units of that "anything' being put into the surrounding environment.

We know that many of the products we emit are toxic.

We know that those toxicities end up in the same land from which we grow food, in the same waters from which we drink, and in the air that we all breathe.

We know what we are doing.

We know what it does to the systems that sustain us.

We know what it does to our bodies and our homes.

We do it anyway.

And we can choose to stop.

A Native American saying states that "no tree has branches foolish enough to fight amongst themselves". In the end, this is not a matter of choosing sides, because we are on the same side: the side of life. Things like money and jobs and houses matter, of course, but they are part of the larger whole.

Currently, that whole is not harmonious with all of its parts, and that's where our work lies: creating harmony between our everyday lifestyle and the planet itself. If you want to discuss how best to go about that, then great: speak your mind, but don't deny the fundamental facts about what we are doing and what effect it has on this world. Don't ignore the inconvenient truths. And don't lie.

"Every day on this planet, by definition, is Earth Day: today's just the day we notice everything we've lost along the path of "progress", and hope for the things we can yet save." This was my status update today on Facebook.

Progress has led us here, this is true, but if we humans, outgrowths of the Earth itself, stop fighting amongst ourselves over the very entity that sustains us, then progress will also lead us out. We can redefine progress.

And on this Earth Day, as with every day, I wonder when we're finally going to start.

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My name is Jody Aberdeen and I am the President....(this one was for you, Mr. Sorkin).



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Avatars

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(Logic-Stoopid Ratio: 9:1 Mood: Smartypants)

With Avatar coming out on DVD, I'm surprised to find that most people don't know about the word itself.

The avatar originated as a Hindu religious construct, thousands of years old. It means "descent", referring to the physical appearance of a deity in the flesh, having descended from heaven to Earth. It is essentially an interface, or representation, if you will, of an aspect of divinity in daily life, for the purpose of interaction between mortals and the gods.

In 2010, we - as in Western civilization - have appropriated the term to mean a representation of a real person in another medium, like wearing a diving suit while exploring the ocean. Mostly, we apply this to computers - i.e. your chosen MSN or Facebook profile pic is your "avatar" within that environment, and users interact with you via that representation - and, of course, in the film Avatar, which makes literal usage of it, creating bodies that act as the medium of interaction between the research scientists on Pandora and the Na'vi people.

Purists hate it when we Westerners appropriate terms from other cultures for our own usage, but I've always felt there's a creative aspect to appropriation, a synthesis of ideas to create a new way of seeing an old concept. And we all use "avatars" every day, although many of them are as much a show for our inner selves as they are for others in our daily experience of life.

Your personal avatar represents who you want to be as much as who you are now (or who you think you are). I suspect that out of the ten or so Hindu avatars that allegedly walked the Earth, their devotees were as much looking to create in themselves the qualities of the particular gods that were made manifest in the flesh. With Facebook in particular, profile avatars express complex feelings that words cannot, while ensuring that the outsiders know it's you who they're looking at.

Then, there's life itself, especially when you're a teenager...

Most teenage boys' hero worship involves hockey players and quarterbacks, or martial artists. Not so much me: mine were all fictional characters on TV.

In Grade 9, I had transferred out of French Immersion and was starting out with a new group of peers. Given that I wasn't terribly popular before, and that I didn't want to have the same level of bullying recur at the new place, I decided to reinvent myself. So, I chose this guy...



I never completely grew out of the noble, upstanding, fish-out-of-water and terribly polite Mountie, but Due South's Constable Benton Fraser served the purpose of reinventing myself as an overall "nice guy", someone who you could be friends with and who would be nice to other people. Someone with a sense of order, Canadian, decorum, a quiet, polite hero. The nice guyishness has stuck, though I find it somewhat disturbing that ultimately he's almost undone by a woman two seasons in...oh well.

I also had small periods of time when I used to see things through this eyes of this science fictional character... Of course, Babylon 5's Captain John J. Sheridan was far more badass than I ever could have been in high school (or even now), but the idea was to teach me to build up some backbone, become someone who would fight for principle, even if, for me, the weapons came in the form of words. Plus, he was "The One" of Three people who had a destiny to change the course of the galaxy. He brought different races together, commanded fleets, saved Earth from dictatorial rule, and created an Interstellar Alliance between them. And they made a line of plush teddy bears named after him, in at least one episode, anyway....

Of course, university changed a few things, and when I joined Phi Delta Theta in second year, I realized I had to start looking towards the type of future that I wanted to be, and the man I wanted to become. And when I became Chapter President, a time that coincided with the release of my all-time favourite movie trilogy, suddenly this figure appeared from the shadows to claim his rightful place as my new avatar...



Now, choosing Aragorn as my avatar wasn't merely my usual delusion of grandeur acting up. Rather, I wanted to feel that I was someone who was headed to great things, that I could serve the Greater Good, help others, the realization of the "destiny" that I had started to feel I had in high school. From him, I learned courage, character, healing others, love and dedication, and fellowship. This especially became true after my buddy and pledge brother Michael described me as "the heart, and the butt, of the Chapter" (the guys didn't let me get away with taking myself too seriously. They still don't. That's what lifelong friends are for.)

Today...well, I've come back to reality. I'm not going to be a Mountie, a Captain, or a King. I'm 29 years old with less than half a year to my thirties. I'm single and not completely loving it. And I'm still getting this writing career off the ground. And though I may still have some greater destiny in store for me, I'm not nearly as sure of anything anymore, except that life will be what it is whether or not I like it, and it's all in how I approach it. I'm in between the guy who is looking for it all, and the guy who has it all. As such, it's appropriate that my avatars waver between these two (I'm tempted to photoshop them into a hybrid)...

Ted Mosby is a romantic, a dreamer, an overthinker, and a creator of his own destiny. We already know his show, How I Met Your Mother, has a happy ending: what we want to see is, well, howit all went down.

The other guy, Richard Castle, is where I hope to be in a few years. A successful writer, artist, and badass. A father, and yet despite having been married (and divorced) twice, he still has the ability to fall in love, as the on-screen angst with Kate Beckett will attest. It's the success that appeals to me, one that I look forward to so much.

As I said, the avatar represents as much who you want to be as who you are right now. I'm pretty happy when I see my Facebook friends shuffle around their profile avatars: they capture us at our best, even if they don't always bear our faces, they show who we would like to be. They express how we're feeling, what we're looking for, so much more symbolically and powerfully than words.

Whichever avatar you choose, make sure it says something about the characteristics within you that are now rising to the surface like lava bubbles, or the abilities you feel you need to attain by summoning the power of your chosen figures.

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Logic vs. Stupid

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In assessing the withertos and whyfors of any major life change, functional people will inevitably find themselves weighing matters on the Logic vs. Stupid scale.

This paradigm, which I and my new friend (and two-person break-up support group sponsor) Pam stumbled upon during her three week tenure at my office*, is pretty simple: we all live life according to the Logic-Stupid scale.

Case in point: diets. Diets tend not to work, not because the science is shoddy or the meals are unreasonable, but because they're too damned logical. It's simple: consume better quality foods in smaller portions more frequently, and you'll lose weight and stay in shape. So simple, so logical. And yet, how often do people fall off the wagon and find themselves at Mandarin, chowing down on crispy Chinese chicken wings....(mmmmm.....crispy Chinese chicken wings....). Inevitably, the Stupid kicks in.

Funny part is, the scale is weighted towards Stupid. You can live a totally Logical life - like those who used to say it was impossible to be in love with two people at once, persons who then, well...you get the idea - and then completely fall towards Stupid, but if you're already terminally Stupid, it's pretty damned hard to shift over to Logic. Hence, why the city streets of the planet find themselves trod upon by the feet of thousands of terminal Stupids.

And by Logic, don't let images of Mr. Spock and Data fill your mind: I don't mean that you express no emotion or are a cold fish. I'm talking about pure life functionality. You can be the biggest goof-off out of your circle of friends, doing crazy things like, say, waking them up in Vegas to the strains of Katy Perry on your BlackBerry after two hours' sleep...but you are still capable of basic courtesies, can hold a job and pay bills**, and maintaining even elementary standards of health and well-being.

And also not breaking hearts needlessly. It seems stupid that so many amazing people - who, in the paraphrased words of Hedley, are not perfect, but they keep trying, because that's what they said they were going to do from the start - have had their hearts broken time and time again by complete douchebags, when what they deserve, each and every time, is the highest possible happiness, a level of love and joy that befits the effort, energy, and yes, Logic that they put into their relationships.

But I can understand the appeal of Stupid. Too much Logic can lead to life making a little...too much sense. This is especially true of people who pride themselves on functionality a little too much ("pride goeth before a fall"), which is why it's almost always those fundamentalist right-wingers who get caught getting serviced by a gigolo in the confessional.

A little bit of Stupid isn't bad, because Stupid provides the seeds of adventure, excitement, danger. Stupid is the source of all thrill issues everywhere. And as long as you're not hurting someone else in the process, Stupid adds sugar (and spice) to life.

What's the ideal Logic-Stupid ratio? Who knows? It's up to you. I'd think if you made a career from extreme sports, you'd need to be closer to Stupid just so you wouldn't freak out and break your neck. On the other hand, if you're just looking to be happy, and you've already got it - a great job, fulfilling relationship, amazing health - then maybe you should consider sticking with Logic.

So, ask yourself, where do I fit on the Logic-Stupid spectrum? That's my thought for the day, on this cloudy Easter long weekend.

(*which did lead to three weeks' worth of my stuff not getting done around the office...worth it, though. Pam is awesome: I'm in her fan club on FB)

(** and while we're on the subject, to one of my out-laws, who was talking smack about me to my ex about how much "growing up" I have to do and who may or may not be reading this, I may have had a period of being job-to-job, but I consistently paid the bills on my own place since 2001, supported your kin through her teacher's college attempts and launch of her business by giving her a place to sleep and food to eat, and moved heaven and earth to provide for my household while she was in it. So you and your high horse can both chew on that, hopefully one after the other. I'll let you decide which of you gets first bite, but I have my preference).

Bright Lights City Set My Soul On Fire

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Ah, Vegas!

My first trip ever, and it was incredible! I didn't even do half the things that I could have done, but what came about that was memorable. My last vacation was to Upstate New York with my ex-wife, which happened in the same year we were married, and just after our honeymoon (weird: our first and last trips took place in the same year), but that's all I'm going to mention about my ex in this blog. Suffice it to say, this was just what I needed.

Depending on the trip, I generally come back different in many fundamental ways than I was before. Much of the time, it involves a slight accent change and less money - indeed, I've had both from this trip - but a few things stand out as personal highlights for me (and I will refrain from mentioning my friends, except for Michael who celebrated his 30th during the trip - Happy Birthday, dude!) as being pretty transitional moments:

The Lap of Luxury. We got rooms at the Wynn Las Vegas at significantly discounted prices, and it's a good thing, too: I don't think I could have afforded both the trip AND the room. Sidney Poitier wrote in his first autobiography that once you have certain luxurious experiences, you can never go back to the old routine. My service level expectations have definitely changed from this: I'm already noticing how cheap everything is back home, and oddly enough, I'm finding I have a problem with it. Price is no longer the main consideration: what's changed now, moreso than ever before, is how much I value the object of my purchase. If it's worth the money, the money ceases to be an obstacle as long as my basics get paid.

Writing at the Terrace Pointe Cafe I'm an early riser, especially on trips - I can sleep when I get home, sort of - and so on Sunday morning, as the other guys slept the sleep of the righteous, I got up and headed down to the Terrace Pointe Cafe in the lobby, got a seat by the window, and scribbled some more pages for my novel over coffee and raisin bran. My reasoning: all metaphysical. If you practice your craft surrounded by the very luxury that your work will bring in the future, you'll create a connection that will bring you back to that place through your craft. And plus, I needed a cheap bowl of cereal after days of high cholesterol and equally artery-clogging prices.

Blush Man, oh, Man, if I'd just had $1,000 more bucks to spend on bottle service... I don't know what I loved about Blush, it was just an incredible atmosphere and location. And young, high maintenance girls that are nice to look at and dance with, though I'm leery of connecting with a rich twentysomething chick who has a trust fund. Oh well, Blush is officially on my list of favourite sites in the world.

Rocky mountains . Went to bed, looked out the window, and saw nothing but Treasure Island and the Trump International all lit up, with the city vanishing into the black horizon. Woke up, pushed the buttons to open the curtains - I told you: uber swank! - and there are suddenly massive mountains on the horizon! I've always been fascinated with real mountain ranges, and this was the first time I've seen them out west.

Westernmost point. I'm pretty sure the Aquarium at Mandalay Bay, Las Vegas, Nevada represents the westernmost point I've ever reached in my life so far.

The Buffet Kobe-beef meatballs. Five kinds of ceviche. Gourmet sushi. Every breakfast food known to man. Prime Rib, Lamb, and flank slices, all you can eat. Shrimp the size of my hands. And gourmet desserts. Options for unlimited champagne pours. All you can eat. 'Nuff said.

Perspective Last but not least, it was a trip to get away from problems for a few days. A time to reflect on real priorities. A chance to enjoy things and just go with the flow. To party, and to chill, with people you care about. And to restore your energy. I feel different and better from my time in Vegas, and we'll see how different I am as the days progress.

Oh, and I ate 70 Chicken McNuggets. They were on sale, $50 for ten bucks. And they said the dollar parity was a bad thing...

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Village

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I woke up from a dream that's recurred to me in some form or another for the past few years. I'm crossing the street from my old apartment to go to campus, backpack in tow. It's September, and the weather's still nice and warm, but cloudy, and as I enter Westdale Village, I find it is bustling with hundreds of people.

Then the "village" becomes an actual town square, bustling with students, professionals heading off to work in Toronto and downtown Hamilton, and merchants and store owners selling their wares. It feels Medieval, with stone-paved walkways old stone and brick buildings that line the walkways like walls. and historic plaques here and there commemorating one event or person or another. As I walk, I run into people I know everyday, say hello, and then find my way across to the main square, where I turn left and see a path to the campus. I turn to head in that direction, knowing that I'm going the right way, and I wake up.

I've never lived in an actual tribal village - Westdale is the closest "village" I've experienced - , but the dream and its variations have these primal qualities attached to them that say to me that it doesn't matter if I lived in one: we all did at one point. The vast majority of the history of human experience is that of the small village of no more than, say, a hundred or two hundred people at most. We are genetically accustomed to it, much as our bodies still retain other patterns from our primitive past, like the ease with which the body stores fat, and the difficulty involved in burning it off; our fear of heights, etc..

I'm not talking about anything as esoteric as reincarnation, though I don't doubt the likelihood: I'm talking about genetic memory, passed on through blood and DNA, that suddenly runs smack dab up against advanced 21st Century mass living.

In Medieval Times, the village was the basic settlement unit for much of the European population. You typically didn't go further afield than one square mile, knew everyone within, and your whole life, from cradle to grave, took place within that square mile. You ate whatever local produce or game was around, you drank and bathed in the local water supply, you picked your mates - or had your mates picked for you by Mom and Dad - from whoever was available in the area, and you either built a new house or lived in your parents' old one in the area. You could read the same story for the populations of India, much of Asia, Africa, and elsewhere in the world.

It seems like such a sheltered existence, one that didn't have much in the way of individual privacy - individual rights being a relatively modern invention, only three hundred years old in 2010 - and that turned people into xenophobes, encouraged ignorance and superstition, and probably a lot of tyranny from the local government. And yet, it gave people something that we don't often have today: a sense of connection and belonging, a community of people whom we know and who know us very well.

It's why I like downtown areas of old cities, like Burlington, or not-so-old "designed" villages like Westdale, that retain qualities of those traditional villages: one or two main streets, central areas where people can meet and sit and talk, a few central pubs, the occasional street festival or outdoor farmer's market.

The way we design cities in 2010 isn't terribly conducive to creating communities, and while it takes far more than sound urban planning to create a sense of community in any given area, it certainly doesn't help when what we typically get are cookie-cutter properties and McMansions that insulate their owners from wanting to connect much with their neighbours, where we see almost the exact same Big Box Shopping Plaza in every city, where you can't get anything you need without having to drive there (and public transit is just awkward).

It's why so many people feel lonely. We all miss, on a genetic level, that feeling of the "tribe". I'm lucky to belong to a great "tribe" of friends who are, in many ways, more family than family (and I have family, too, whom I'm also blessed to have an hour away), but, in typical 21st Century fashion, we're scattered across distances that far exceed the Medieval square-mile of lifetime experience. We don't see each other daily, and though we talk and text, it's not the same as real human contact. And as I enter into the distinctly postmodern concept of singlehood, I find myself looking for that connection.

It's why, I think, so many people become codependent in relationships. We know that many couples isolate themselves from the group - the guy stops going out with his buddies, the girl stops spending time with her girlfriends - and they do everything together. For a while, all is love and sex and magic, and you're okay with that.

But at some point, the desire for community kicks in, even though you don't recognize it for what it is. It's this feeling of loneliness even when you're with your loved one, that longing for a collective connection that one person simply can't provide. But you expect them to provide it to you, and so you feel terribly alone when you don't get it. When all you can get is the attention of the other person, if you're not careful, you can find yourself addicted to what he or she has to give you, even though it's not enough, and that will put your relationship in danger.

There's a popular trend in pop psych circles today: "I'm okay on my own". That may be true, we can be "okay" alone: we can function, we can wash, clothe, feed, and shelter ourselves. We can hold jobs. And yes, we can do many things that are best done on our own, like painting a canvas or writing a book.

But that's just being "okay". What if you want "extraordinary"? What if you're looking for more than just an ordinary life? Or what if you simply want to belong somewhere?

It's not a weakness to have these needs: only our highly individidualistic society would make you feel like it's something wrong. Individualism has its advantages, of course, and I'm glad that we're talking more about free individuals creating new communities as opposed to communities stifling the ambitions and rights of individuals. And I'm not a Luddite: I love technology and can't imagine living in a better time than now.

But we crave collective belonging, it's in our blood, in the invisible fabric of our dreams, and we should not be ashamed to need community. That's not codependency, it's interdependency.

And though my ethereal vision of the village near my old alma mater is nowhere near the reality of the very laid back, very cozy Westdale where my ex and I spent much of our twenties, it still carries with it the overarching feeling of home, of a place that I belong, and a village that all of us, in our 21st Century condos and daily commutes, are trying to get back to in real life.

That's why I think so many of us dream of the village. It's not only an archetype, but a memory, and an awareness of our common desire to find community, and to finally go home.

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