Vancouver

I have arrived. Got a welcoming fit for a king. A king of skids at least. The next adventure begins here and now.

I Could Never

I was thinking about people who say that kind of thing. How the fuc& do they know what they would do? Imagine knowing your future self as well as they do.

Banff

I made it to the Rockies. Since my last post I stayed at a snore filled dorm room in Winnipeg, a big empty hostel in Regina, and then hooked up with an old friend from uni in Calgary. We went skiing at Sunshine on Friday and I lived the well paid lifestyle for the weekend. We even went and played some shinny hockey on Sunday night. I'm just a little sore. The hostel here in Banff is packed with young little party people. Well, on to Nelson. This leg of the drive should be interesting.

Thunder Bay

Just so y'all know, I'm currently driving across Canada from Montreal to Vancouver. I stayed in Sudbury two nights ago and made it to Thunder Bay yesterday. I have seen beautiful and rugged nature but also giant ore smelting smoke stacks and clear cut forest. The cities along the way at a glance look just like any other city in Ontario, too bad I'm not giving myself as much time as I should to explore the elements that make them unique. The snow last night made for some adventure. Before I left I saw this as one long journey but as I continue along I am beginning to see it as a series of smaller journeys. When it was snowing hard and I couldn't see very far ahead of the car I realized that this logic can be applied even further to a scale of meters. I just have to get to the next bend in the road. I just have to be ready for whatever bursts out of the dark and obscured abyss ahead of me. I just have to be.

Only a Part

Hope and fear. They are reactions. They are not meant to be eliminated but understood. Not by thinking about them, not by giving in to them, but by experiencing them. Live in their presence and feel them change. Let them guide you but not lead you. Live in between them without being blinded by them. They are a part of who you are but not all of who you are.

As a means to liberate

I just got my hair cut for the first time in about four months. The woman who cut it asked me what I did which spawned a discussion regarding various things from eating habbits to extinction of species. When I talked about 200 species ceasing to exist on the planet each day she replied with survival of the fittest. When I mentioned our cultures self-centered imperative to destroy its competition she replied with human nature. When I told her that I am spending some time to understand the problem and figure out how I should live my life she told me that she didn't believe there was a problem. That's the problem! Forget George Bush, forget corporations, forget capitalism, forget facism, forget fundamentalism, forget despotism. These all promote ignorance as a means to control. Well the battle needs to be fought at the individual level. Promote knowledge. Promote understanding. Promote learning. Promote growth.

Phased Relations

Considering my new addition of the moon phase thing over there -> I figured I would add this little diagram to get people thinking about those very phases. Voila:

A Couple from GNN

Seed Imperialism?
Corporate Organics?

Understanding Understanding

Are you driven by a desire to remain what you are or to become something more? If you come across opinions or ideas that are contrary to your own are you interested or threatened? Do you feel that arguing against something is the best way to understand it? Do you treat a persons opinion as something new and unique or as an instance of a categorization you have previously considered? Do you treat each encounter as an opportunity to learn or as an opportunity to be right? Are you even aware of how fixed minded you are? Are you afraid to consider the alternatives to decisions you have made in the past? What is learning? What is growth? Do you regret or learn from your mistakes? Do you interrogate in order to classify in your own categories or do you encourage the expression of ideas using their native forms? Do you know how to listen? Do you feel that you have to agree or disagree with everything you hear? Do you ever agree with someone and then state your opinion as if it were identical to theirs? If you've got it all figured out then please by all means continue.

And this

The New Renaissance

Read this

The oil we eat

Sold on Buying it

The term buy is often used synonymously for terms like believe, accept, support, or condone however we rarely seem to realize that the act of buying is also the act of believing, accepting, supporting, and condoning the product we buy, the companies involved in its manufacture and transportation, and the means by which it is made and sold to us.

The term sell is often used synonymously for terms like convince, coerce, manipulate, or indoctrinate however we rarely seem to realize that sales and marketing are tools used to control our opinion. We may acknowledge the manufacturing of need but refuse to admit that we ourselves might be victims of it.

The checkout line and the voters booth are the same thing.
Corporate marketing and political propaganda are the same thing.

All I am suggesting is that we think for ourselves. It's not easy to do when so many of our thoughts were put there by someone else.

If you think that this is just a negative way of looking at the world then I give you this; a glass of poison which is either half full or half empty will kill you all the same.

I saw an interesting quote in the Montreal Gazette today from a song by Les Cowboys Fringants which implies that we live in "un univers ou l'verbe avoir a pris l'dessus sur le verbe être."

Stupid Wisdom

An incident that happened in my father's driveway this morning has made me want to share a little something with y'all. My little brother accidentally backed his mother's car into my car where his intension was to simply start it for her. He evidently didn't know what he was doing. He's not stupid for not knowing how to operate a motor vehicle, he's stupid for not knowing that he didn't know.

Stupidity. It ain't about not knowing anything other than what you don't know. A corollary to this is wisdom being knowing the limitations of your knowledge. Infinite stupidity is thus knowing nothing and believing that you know everything while infinite wisdom is knowing that you know nothing (except that you know nothing (except that you know nothing (except ...))).

Don't take my word for it. I have found that stupidity is best understood by experiencing it.

Choosing to Remember

Last night I was thinking that there is one thing that I certainly know how to do and that is to forget. I'm quite good at it. Forgetting seems less to do with not being able to remember but more with not remembering to remember. Taking it a step further it might be more accurate to say it is a subconscious choice not to remember. Choosing to forget. I forget loss, I forget failure, I forget acting against my values, and I forget personal implication. Sometimes forgetting is more of a rewriting of history. Sometimes the forgetting is so efficient that it happens in real time. Sometimes a choice to forget in the past continues into the present. Sometimes a choice to forget in a previous generation continues into the present. Sometimes entire systems of justification, manipulation, and illusion are built by inducing mass-forgetting. Have I forgotten anything?

How 'bout yours?

My truth is not complicated. It does not require elaborate explanation, detailed description, or incomprehensible schematics. These are tools of deception that often draw attention away from experience and good judgement.

The Fundamentals

If you want to understand them you need to understand yourself. If you can't understand how they are so easily manipulated it is because you are not aware of your own manipulation. If you can't understand their flawed logic it is because you don't see your own flawed logic. Self delusion and ignorance are not isolated in one segment of the popluation, they are the foundation of our culture.

Natural Reason

Reason is a tool of approximation.
Absolute faith in reason is unreasonable.

How we live is far from human nature.
Humanism is unnatural.

Focusing on one part without considering the whole or at one magnification while ignoring all others is unreasonable, unnatural, and just plain foolish.

I Object!

I had a little talk the other day with an old friend of mine on the topic of objectification. Well, the conversation covered a whole lot more but at some point the idea of objectification came up, specifically of women and pornography of course. I wondered afterwards if people really understood what it means. Has the word objectification been objectified? Labeling something gives people an easy way of no longer thinking about that thing. It is basically what our culture does, it is how we think, it is what we see. We categorize, we polarize, we abstract, we rationalize, we "make sense", we try to understand. Objectification is a way of seeing the world that puts a limit on the depth of our consideration. Moments, people, life, and things cease to be unique and fresh but are seen as old and valueless. How else could we live with our unjustifiable daily abuses? How else could we live with ourselves?

The End is the Beginning

Today is the last day of my organic gardening internship and I thought that I would share the little piece of writing that got me the job it the first place. Here it is:

In my philosophy life is a cycle of creation and destruction operating in a continuous equilibrium of growth and renewal. This cycle exists within all of our relationships; with ourselves, with other people, and with the entire eco-system. We exist as a part of an incomprehensible system of incredible complexity. There exists an infinite connectedness of all things in both space and time that must be acknowledged and respected. Humanity possesses what seems to be the unique ability to observe and influence the cycle of life. This ability must be taken as a great responsibility rather than a divine right. We have an obligation to act in harmony with the equilibrium. We have an obligation to support growth and renewal. We have an obligation to oppose the stagnation of our ignorance. We must acknowlede that we are one with the entire universe and our choices must continuously attempt to reflect and refresh that understanding.

That Box is Full of Himself

I live in a box, we all do. I didn’t used to be able to see that box, now I can if I really try. Inside that box are smaller boxes. Sometimes I get inside one of the smaller boxes for a little while. If baffles my mind that as time passes I dedicate myself more and more to the expansion and increased awareness of the main enveloping box and yet continue to keep these other little boxes around. I sometimes tell myself that I won’t get all the way in this time, I’ll use the opportunity to observe the box. These boxes are tricky, they’re not designed to allow those on the inside to be aware of their existence.

I live in many different boxes, we all do. One for every flavor of my ignorance.

I live in one dynamic box, we all do. Sometimes it is huge and all encompassing, most of the time it is small and all too finite.

There is no box.

I forget sometimes that people who have yet to differentiate between themselves and their culture can take criticism of that culture very personally. Like someone insulting a box that you don’t even recognize that you’re wearing.