Forgetting that this blog is an Egregious Error

Facebook is launching a new feature called Timeline, that users can presently test in a beta version, that essentially allows you to turn your facebook page into a mini autobiography of your life. I have not yet signed up for the beta version nor am I certain when it will launch to the world at large, but what it got me thinking about was a little deeper about what I wrote about in my blog “The Internet and our Future Selves”, where I explored the idea of the necessity of taking very seriously what we post on the Internet about ourselves and others as it would be recorded for posterity. But aside from the notion of reputation management and our responsibility to our future selves, the concept of recording everything we say and do has implications not only on the way we think but on what we think and what we value. 

The inability to forget has far reaching consequences that was first realized at the dawn of the age of print. For the first time what we knew to be true was not what was passed on orally by others but could be recorded for posterity. Print had a sort of permanence that oral tradition lacked. We now have the permanence of the digital world where everything we do is not only recorded but easily accessible by anyone in the world, and even our facebook is a permanent record of our existence. 

The narcissist in me thinks this is wonderful, for surely my life is of fascinating and unusual interest for the masses and my facebook will continue to be perused long after I am ashes in a tomb. But the realist in me has to ask are there not things that I might rather forget. I have a feeling, that I am not the only one who has held an embarrassing opinion, done something or said something I regret, or generally made an ass of himself; and while I am undoubtedly a better person for all the stupid things I’ve done and the lessons that I have learned from those, I’m not sure I want them recorded for posterity. 

The act of recording things is a very specific and unique act, the adage that history is written by the victors, is not said lightly. For those who record events control how and what is valued by the author, the times, and the audience. I wonder if the great heros of the past would seem as great if they were written about today. the writers of those stories in the past were skilled at leaving out all the uncomfortable bits. 

I am reading Neil Postman “Amusing Ourselves to Death” right now (more on that in a future blog) but he provides an anecdote that fascinated me. He wrote about a sect of believers called the Dunkers who, to make a long story short, were reluctant to write down the tenets of their belief system out of fear that future revelations from the Almighty would change their current beliefs and they did not want to be held back from the new revelation by something that they had previously written down. This speaks so profoundly to the consequences of recording what we think at a given time, it can actually hem us in to an ideology or a thought pattern that an oral tradition does not. Recorded something gives it in an element of truth that then must be defended as it is written. 

It reminds me a bit of my philosophy classes in university where the better philosophers would argue about the meaning of the words while I was interested in the interpretation, but I always lost the arguments because ultimately what was written was what was written.  

My fear is that this blog itself is an egregious error, that by recording my thoughts I will be hemmed in by what I have recorded, unable to extricate myself from a box which I have built for myself. Perhaps in ten years or twenty I will read some of what I wrote and be embarrassed by it, but I can’t take it back, and while I can change my mind I can’t change the past. Perhaps I should be, and to be honest I wish I could be, more like a Dunker, always seeking the greater reveal about life, afraid to record what has been revealed to me so far, in the hopes of greater revelation later on. To write might be the height of egotism and an error of human proportions.  

Beware the Poet!

There is something about this time of year that makes me want to read poetry. Something in the fading of summer into autumn, the coolness in the air makes me nostalgic and want to read verse.  Truth be told I have found only two poets that I really like to read although I have tried others. Pablo Neruda, who writes love poetry like no one else, he profoundly understands that love is not in trite sentimentality but occurs in everyday things. and the second is Robert Frost who seems in every word to capture the feeling you get on a long walk in the country or the woods on a fall day when the afternoon sun is warm but you know that the evening will be crisp and at the end of your walk you will put on a warm sweater and sit by the first fire of the season. Frost to me is autumn. 

Perhaps it is just my nostalgia for the romantic autumns of my youth, I always remember being happiest in the autumn, the weather and the general collective mood always suited me best, the crisp weather, warm sweaters and whiskey by the fire. I even remember listening to the song “Puff the Magic Dragon” and thinking that he frolicked in the Autumnus, which was a place that I imagined where it was autumn all the time, with warm afternoons and cool nights, and the trees perpetually wearing their fall colours, I was disappointed as an adult to learn that the song was actually referring to the autumn mist and was a veiled reference to pot smoke. Nevertheless I still continue to believe that somewhere there is land called Honolee where it is autumn all the time.  

So why write about poetry? It seems anachronistic in our digital world. Is there time for poetry in the computer age, and is there time for poets. I think it would be hard to imagine sitting around with our friends and reading poetry to one another and debating Wordsworth versus Whitman and even if we did we would be unusual and our efforts would likely feel forced rather than a natural compulsion of our human spirit; even more so if we were to tackle any contemporary poets, which to be honest I am not sure I can name any, much to my sadness, (perhaps P.K. Page, or Leonard Cohen might redeem me). Poetry, it seems requires a certain languidness even when it is short, like a limerick or a Haiku (nobody loves a good limerick better than me, something about a man from Nantucket.....). For me anyway it requires time, it is forces me to slow down and relish the words on the page, to think about meaning that is not obviously stated.  I particularly enjoy reading poetry out loud, or having it read to me. I can imagine if I lived in India in at the height of the mogul empire being part of Urdu poetry circles, hard to imagine the same things these days. 

It’s equally hard to imagine a time when poets were considered revolutionaries and incendiary, the words they were the lightening rods of social activism and often imprisoned for the words they wrote on the page. Beware the Poet! Consider the recent 99% demonstrations that have been going on, there is nary a mention of the poets. 

But perhaps poetry is not as far from us as we might think. Facebook and Twitter are now the mediums of social change and we might argue that the 140 characters allowed by twitter is a sort of modern Haiku. Perhaps our facebook wall is a sort of Renga between ourselves and our circles of friends. Poetry is not about form but substance. Similar to the renaissance man who is not about style and from but of substance and character. Poetry is not something we create but something we seek. 

I asked a colleague to read this blog, shamelessly I might add, and after reading it she was both surprised because it was not the image that she had of me, but more relevant she asked me if I was a poet. I never thought about this blog being poetic, it does not follow any poetic form that I know of, this forced me to expand my notion of poetry beyond form and function. The lesson I learned of poetry is not to seek it in libraries or books but to look for it in the everyday to see it in my day to day. Poetry is a state of mind, and an expression of that state of mind, whatever form it takes. My blog doesn’t rhyme but it comes from my soul and hopefully speaks to yours; is that not Poetry? 

Malthus, Calhoun, and the Technology of Urban Design

I was thinking this week about condos, I was showing off my own and pointing out the design elements relative to the majority of condos that are being built in my city right now, which are largely all glass and have as a key design element that they are long and narrow, somewhat like bowling alleys and in the main have only one bedroom, perhaps with a closet masquerading as a den.  Now I am not an architect or a designer, but I have an eye for good design and what particularly interests me is the impact of design on human life and interaction. One of the many quotes that I have often admired from Winston Churchill is, “we shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us”. Churchill recognizes how the design of our buildings impacts our social and political culture and how they shape us into who we are for good or for ill. What culture then do I live in where the buildings we are shaping are ones where people want to live in isolation and what future are we shaping where our primary choice of residence is alone narrow and exposed to the world through floor to ceiling glass? 

All this isolation got me thinking about my grade 10 biology class and a video they showed us when we were studying Malthus, the great granddaddy of population and demographic thought. The video concerned the Rodent experiments by John Calhoun, where he created an fixed space environment with ample food, water, nesting and protection from predators for as many mice as they could reproduce. There were some shocking findings; firstly the rodents never actually reached the capacity that had been provided and once overcrowding set in massive psychological disruption and significant socially deviant behavior occurred and rather than retreating to a place of greater equilibrium, the entire population died off They were not able to recover from the psychological damage. 

In the later stages of the experiment before annihilation of the population there was always something that struck me about the behavior of the rodents, there were some that became very aggressive, sexual deviancy became the norm and the majority of the rodents withdrew psychologically and lived highly isolated lives in the midst of massive population. (I am summarizing significantly the findings of the study, but I think the point is made). This brings me back to one bedroom bowling alleys in the sky, and the not insignificant statistic that single resident dwellings are the fastest growing dwellings in Canada and most of the western world. Part of me has always wondered if we aren’t entering the later stages of of Calhoun world.  

Now if I was a hippy and an “end of the worlder” I would latch on to this study as proof that world is coming to an end in our time, we need only look at the warnings of Calhoun. But I am neither, so I did some further research on Calhoun and found that he felt that his research was misunderstood, in fact most of his research was in the design of better systems to enable healthy population growth in situations of overcrowding. His objective was to demonstrate how over population would destroy the world but rather to show how design can actually make living in overcrowded populations not only possible, but possibly pleasant. What his research highlights is not the end of the world but one that is actively designed. 

For Calhoun there is no “invisible hand” that will always ensure that the world is hovering around an equilibrium, that markets will always be in perfect balance and distribute the goods of the world, both material and psychologically in a perfectly rational way. He is far from a socialist of government control, for it is through the elements of design and systems design that we must regulate our behavior, not through government ownership. But what I think he would argue is that through the design of our living spaces, our urban spaces we shape our future just as Churchill suggested, and to take an active role in such is not a question of ideology but of survival and if we don’t want to be as dramatic as to suggest survival let us say at least a pleasant existence. 

When we decide what condos to build, how to design our cities, our transportation, all of these are decisions about who we want to be as a culture, as a people, we can not leave these decisions to the developers alone to do so is to abdicate our moral responsibility for our role in the human development, for we are not independent of our structures, and human life exists in cities and buildings. The Chinese call it Feng Shui, we call it urban design but whatever you want to call it, it will determine our future 

Reading Dr. Zhivago

I enjoy Russian Novels. I think more than any other writers they simply understood the great storytelling capability of the novel. They are epic in every way, in both page count and narrative, I have re-read War and Peace (Not to brag, I read it first when I was eighteen and I needed to re-read it some years later to decide if I really liked it or whether it was just teenage intellectual pretension, happy to say it was better the second time) and Anna Karenina and will probably tackle the Brother’s Karamazov again soon. If it wouldn’t burden him with a lifelong risk of teasing and having to explain his name I would probably name my first born Alyosha. 

So recently staring at my face in the window of the used book store that I frequent was a very renaissance version of Dr. Zhivago. Now I’ve seen the film and I’ve recently been debating with a friend whether it is a more romantic movie than “Love Actually”. I’m not going to rehash that argument here, but let’s just say watch both and you will might get a glimpse into the difference between romanticism and sentimentalism (perhaps a future post). 

There is, as is typical of the Russian novel, lots going on and I could probably write a book about the book, and Boris Pasternak writes with such poetic ease that I wish he would never stop writing, but I am going to hone in on a particular thought which is not even the main point of his book but helps to develop his theme of revolution and has intrigued me enough to spend some thinking about it. 

The book takes place in the foment of the First World War, the Russian Revolution and Civil War and the gentry have been taken down a significant notch from where they had stood prior to the revolution. Zhivago upon his return to a Moscow in mid-revolution comments on his friends and acquaintances which I will quote at some length

"His friends had become strangely dim and colourless. Not one of them had kept his outlook, his own world. They had been much more vivid his memory. He must have over-estimated them in the past. 

It had been easy enough to do so, as long as the order of things had been such that people with means could indulge their follies and eccentricities at the expense of the poor. The fooling, the right to idleness enjoyed by the few while the majority suffered, could itself create an illusion of genuine character and originality.  

But how quickly, once the lower classes had risen and the rich had lost their privileges, had these people faded! How effortlessly, how happily, had they given up the habit of independent thoughts - which at this rate could never in fact have been genuinely theirs!" 

I am struck by this quote for a number of reasons and I think this blog shares a theme with what BP is expressing. Who are we when we are stripped of the comforts of our existence. Would we still maintain our character? And while we may, or may not, experience upheaval like the the Russian Revolution and our way of life may not come to end in our times, it is a relevant question, because it asks who we are when stripped of the outer circumstances of our lives. 

I have always been fascinated by this idea of true character being revealed in adversity. In the Gone With the Wind I was always struck by the fact that Ashley Wilkes the son of the leading family in the region was destroyed and became a shell of a man when the world in the South collapsed and Scarlett picked up the pieces of what was left and built something new. Prior to the civil war Ashley was educated and measured man and Scarlett was brash and impetuous; when the world collapsed all of Ashley’s learning was unable to help him survive in a new reality, but Scarlet’s spirit caused her to soar and thrive. Similar to Zhivago’s friends, Ashley had become “dim and colourless” without the trappings of civilized southern society. 

Who are we without our iPhones and our gadgets and a corporate world that rewards some pretty unusual behaviour and where selfishness poses as post-modern self-actualization. If civil society collapsed who would we be. I like to think, and admittedly I am blinded by love, that all of my friends have bigger characters than their paycheques, but truth be told none of them have been put to the test to my knowledge, nor have I. Who among us would survive as independent thinkers and who would fade into the woodwork? It’s a scary thought and hopefully none of us will ever have to contemplate it. 

The Value of Air

I was writing a blog on a different subject and I came across this little tidbit about the value of the atmosphere and so I parked that post for next week and decided I would rant about the idiocy of the world we live in instead. A writer, (I believe he calls himself a scientist, although given his claim clearly that word is used rather loosely), claims that the value of the atmosphere is 100 times the world economy. We now know the value of air and it seems pretty damn expensive. 

Have we become so morally bankrupt that we are now putting monetary value on air. Surely someone could come up with a monetary value for water too, pretty soon we will have a price tag for the whole planet! This whole notion is absolutely ludicrous, Let me hold your head under water for sixty seconds and then ask you how much you value air. In fact, I think that this 100 times statistic might need some validation so I am going to write a research proposal to the United Nations for several billion dollars so that I can travel the world and hold people’s head under water, when they come up for air, I will ask them if it is worth 100X, 1000X or 1,000,000X the value of the world economy, based on this sample we should have a pretty good idea what the value of air is, and I will be extremely well travelled. 

The other part of my experiment will be to lead a manned mission to Mars where we can see what a world without air looks like and by comparing it to the earth we might be able to demonstrate the value of air. Perhaps when we are there we will meet some Martians who are interested in buying our air, we could probably sell 10% for 10X the value of the world economy, pay off all the US and European debt, buy Greece so everyone could go on a holiday there, and still have enough air left over to breathe. 

Not to be overly critical of said Scientist, he based on the carbon trading system and based on blocks of carbon dioxide that can be sold and the amount of air in the world he  came up with a value. So there was some math there. But my problem is that this type of thinking does a great disservice to the environmental movement. This notion that in order for things to have value we need to put a statistical number behind a price. The idea that without a price something can not have value does not help the environmental cause, because anyone with a brain cell, understands that such a number is pure and utter nonsense. You can not put a price on the planet because without it we are fucked. It’s not a house where we can just downsize to a new planet when we spoil this one. 

Rather than having a dialogue about how we ensure that everyone has clean air to breathe and that we don’t alter our climate so significantly as to make our planet unlivable, we are having a dialogue about the value of air. I don’t know what the real value of air is, but every time I take a deep breath I’m pretty happy it’s there and I’d like things to stay that way. As long as we are having ridiculous conversations like this we are unlikely to get around to the real business of saving the planet. 

More Hobbies than James Franco

It takes more than presence to be a renaissance man. I read an article this week that got me thinking about this, a commentator, can’t remember his name, was talking about James Franco and the fact that he makes movies, act in soap opera’s, hosts the oscars and at the same time works on multiple post-graduate degrees. The commentator first questions the quality of American education, if someone can truly accomplish all of that then there is a fundamental problem with the quality of education, to paraphrase, most people who work on Phd have a hard enough time going to see a movie let alone making one. So we have to accept that James Franco is either a superhero or he’s just “showing up”. 

This trend of “showing up” is something I’ve noticed in the last twenty or so years where we are surrounded by overachievers who seem to be part of every club, play eighteen different sports, do quadruple majors in university, and still have time to write the great american novel and deep poetry on the side. Most of them are just showing up. As long as they sign up, go to a couple of meetings, they claim involvement and build up their resume. 

I even know someone who applied at Google and was asked to list their extra-curricular activities as pre-screening criteria. As if whether or not they played sports, were on the debating club, and made their own wrapping paper would make them a better employee. Not only that you would think that big companies were smart enough to know that people who show up aren’t necessarily the ones who are going to be the most innovative and the most creative. But we have entered this world of competitive over achieving. 

I used to wonder how these people did all of this, I have a lot of things going on in my life outside of work but most of these people put me to shame. I probably did a bit too much this summer, between rowing, becoming a personal trainer, studying my guitar exam, cooking class, writing this blog etc. and I’ve learned my lesson, I need some more down time (see my previous post). I’m most creative when i have time to meander through my days. But it’s also a function of how I do my activities, I can’t just show up, I have to be fully engaged in what I am doing, which when you have multiple things it can be exhausting. I am not a skimmer, and I am rarely satisfied without deep knowledge. It’s why I always had either As or Cs in school, I couldn’t do just enough to get by, i can’t just show up, do the minimum and get by. I seek deep knowledge. 

Now this begs the question, is this just me and a function of my character, or is it a quality of the modern renaissance man. I think perhaps a bit of both, I think a renaissance man must be a consummate learner always looking for deeper knowledge. And while being a polymath is undoubtedly a quality of the renaissance man, it is more than skimming and being present. It is more than being a jack of all trades and master of none. 

The other side of the coin though of this tirade, is that if you don’t show up at all, then it’s even more impossible to accomplish anything, and sometimes starting with mere presence is better than not starting at all. You can’t create, art, social change, political action if you aren’t there. But there is a difference with this kind of showing up. It is showing up with purpose, with the desire to see and learn if there is something more and with a vision to starting something. Presence is an important part of achieving accomplishments, but it must be presence with purpose. 

So why is this important, other than to make me feel better for not concurrently working on four graduate degrees? It might just be one of the fundamental problems with our world where the people who are rising to the top are the skimmers, the ones with cursory knowledge but where is the deep knowledge that will help us solve the problems we are facing, where are the deep thinkers. We value people who show up for things and create lists of accomplishments. But being a renaissance man is about character not accomplishments, and while multiple interests are certainly an aspect of being a renaissance man it is ultimately about moral fortitude, and there is no degree in that no matter how many you take at the same time. 

In Praise of Idleness

I haven’t written in awhile, and since I never really promised that I would write with any frequency I don’t really need to provide any sort of explanation. I’m not one of those bloggers who starts off by promising to post at least once a week, or any other sort of schedule. But at the same time I do want to write to day about what I have been doing this summer and more importantly about what I have been doing for the last couple of weeks.

I lead a busy life. I work hard at my career and frankly I often give far more at the office than I get in return, on top of that I occupy myself with a lot of hobbies, that are all enjoyable but take up a lot of time. This summer, I took on a few too many hobbies and was burning the candle at both ends a bit. By the end of the summer I was ready for a serious bout of idleness. Which brings me to what I wanted to write about today; Idleness. (Now I admit that neither the title nor the concept for this blog is entirely my own, a much more brilliant essay on this topic was written by Bertrand Russell, you can read it here)

In spite of Russell’s entreaties to society to learn to appreciate the value of idleness in 1932, we have become a culture that is more and more obsessed with work, and filling our lives with endless stimulation and activity. This is both in the way we manage our lives and in the way that we evaluate ourselves and our evaluated in the workplace. We often admire the person who never gets up from their desk, and taking multiple coffee breaks in the day is considered a waste of time, but, and I’ve learned to hide this habit, I find I am my most creative, efficient and do my best work either during or after periods when I am idle. And there are enough studies out there demonstrating that most creative thinking is done in periods of unstructured idleness.

3M is a company that instituted something like this, everyone in the company was given one day a week to just play around and come up with free flowing ideas, there was undoubtedly a lot of idleness going around, but in the end one of the inventions that came out of it was post it notes, how many billions did 3M make on those, so for all the “wasted” time, they got a pretty decent return.

But we are uncomfortable with this unproductive time, people are supposed to work 9 to 5 or more likely 8 - 6 and be occupied with work the entire time, when we see people being idle, goofing off, taking too many smoke breaks, we ask what value they bring, why they don’t have more work. We deride people who seem to be able to leave work at five and take vacations regularly and we wear our own fifty hour work weeks like badges of honour. Yet the evidence remains that idleness might actually help to solve our problems, it may be time to give a quick rewrite to the Grasshopper and the Ant and see if there might not be some wisdom in the Grasshopper spending, if not all of his summer, singing at least a part of it.

It is time, as it was in 1932, to re-examine our Calvinist work ethic, there is much ink spilled these days on work life balance, but yet we fear the consequences of not appearing to be overworked and underpaid. The greatest threat to work life balance is generally perception more than it is actual workload, as I talked about in my last post, it is the enormous amount of non-work or busy work that is being done. I remember a woman I worked with who was always working late and complaining about how much work she had, I never knew what she did until she got let go and I had to clean out her desk, and there all, printed, filed and annotated was every email she had received since she started.

I read an article about a company that recently implemented unlimited vacation time. Now most people think about that and say well everyone would just stop working and get paid. But my suspicion is that most people would actually work very hard and when take the time they needed and that most people end up taking between six and eight weeks of vacation. i would also hazard to guess that they are as productive as companies that limit their employees to two to three weeks of vacation. The funny thing about productivity in a creative economy is that is disconnected from hours worked, but we still haven’t really adjusted to that kind of economy and expect that an hour more of work leads to an hour more of productivity. Some enforced idleness might actually be the remedy that our economy is looking for, (don’t tell the neo-cons or the Gig will be up)

Anyway So that’s what I’ve been doing for the last two weeks, after a very busy summer both with work and fun, I’ve been idle, I can’t actually tell you what I accomplished most days, not much, I read a Russian Novel, (more on that in the next week) or so, hiked a bit, golfed a bit, sat around in the sun, plucked my guitar strings and generally was bored, and it was for the most part delicious and I am returned both with a new zeal for my occupations but a determination to build more idleness into my life.

Sprezzatura: I’m not lazy, it just looks that way.

It’s not easy to be a modern renaissance man, it just looks that way. In Italy during the Renaissance there was a quality that was greatly admired and desired by courtiers called Sprezzatura. This quality in essence was the art of makings thing appear effortless or as defined by the Oxford dictionary a “studied carelessness”. It is a quality that I have cultivated even before I knew there was a name for it, and I have paid the price.

Sprezzatura is no longer an admired quality in the work a day world that we live in, where the measure of day is how hard it was at the office. We are more likely to admire someone who took twelve hours to complete their work day than eight. And we assume that the twelve hour day was inherently fifty percent more productive and therefore the value of that worker to be greater than the one who works eight hours a day. I’ve been in the corporate world long enough to know that this is rarely true. Most of the people working long hours are wasting their time going for coffee, searching Facebook and reading this blog, and creating a flurry of activity at the end of the day. Now this isn’t to say that there are not periods when work is severely demanding and people truly work long hours. But there are also a lot of make work projects and faux-hours being worked, in order to prove value.

But sprezzatura is more than just hours worked, it is also the seeming ease with which things appear to be completed. I have mastered this much to my chagrin and have come recently to the conclusion that I need to make it look as hard as it is. I have always hidden my effort from the world and made my work look easy. The assumption today is that I don’t have enough work or that I am lazy.

It also does not seem to be admired in other facets of life. Now admittedly it is perhaps a function of coming from a german/scots farmer background and growing up in Ontario where the Protestant work ethic is so engrained in our collective psyche that sitting with your feet up is considered a sin except on Sundays for 15 minutes. Effortlessness is equated with laziness where I come from and sitting down and enjoying a drink or a coffee inherently means that you don’t have enough to do and you haven’t worked enough that day. I am forever defending my efforts and my ability to make things look easy.

Whether it is whipping up a four course dinner, getting yard work done, or just piling through a bunch of errands, I am skilled at making it all look easy, much to the disdain of most people I know who assume that I am lazy. But I know so-called busy people who get far less accomplished.

So as part of my modern renaissance I am fighting to bring back an admiration for sprezzatura; work hard but make it look easy, not it’s opposite, for which there is no word, which is work easy but make it look hard. Partly because I enjoy the benefits of sprezzatura: great effort followed by relaxing times connecting with people over coffee and drinks or meals; sitting in a cafe for hours confident that the efficiency required has earned you the right to your relaxation.

Now maybe this post is just a neurotic rant about my own personal experience and the irritation I have when people assume I am lazy, perhaps I am wrong to generalize about the populace as a whole and our attitude to work. But i think our work/life balance is askew in the modern world not because things take more effort but because we value the appearance of effort over actual effort. I also am aware that this is more true in North America than in other parts of the world where people still no how to sit down, or go out Tuesday night, or take a long lunch on Friday’s in July. We need nothing less than a complete rethink of our relationship to work, before we fake work ourselves to death.

Renaissance Men eat Ketchup

I have recently started eating ketchup on my fries. For years I was a mayo on fries guy, it seemed more cosmopolitan, more european which in North America passes for instant sophistication. But I got to reading "What the Dog Saw" by Malcolm Gladwell, which is basically a compendium of essays that he wrote for the New Yorker that he has put in a book to try and milk for a second time. I digress, one of his articles is about ketchup and the fact that somewhat unlike mustard there is very little diversity in the ketchup world, and what diversity there is, is frankly negligible in the face of the dominance of Heinz. Ketchup it seems according to the ketchup experts (yes there are such things) is the perfect blend of stuff that makes it appealing to the masses.

A renaissance man is supposed to, or at least, in my own mind, be someone of refined tastes with a discerning palate and a discerning eye. There is no room for ketchup or other such mana of the masses, it's all foie gras, filet mignon and fine wine. Surely a renaissance man is defined by such exquisite taste?

On reflection though it seems a bit trite to define a man according to his taste in food or any other such taste. It's not that there is anything wrong with enjoying good food, or good wine but to disdain a food as plebian, seems to me in retrospect the height of snobbery and not a little bit phony a la Holden Caulfield. And if a renaissance man is anything he is not a phony.

I am perhaps defining a real man more than just a renaissance man, but I'm reminded of a time when I told a colleague that I was going to make trifle. His response to me was that "real men don't make trifle", and for once I had the right comeback, "Real men do what ever the fuck they want to do". I think the same is true for renaissance men, I go back to one of my earlier blogs where I insisted that the dialogue about what a renaissance man is essentially a moral dialogue and well, it just seems to me that ketchup and trifle are not burning moral questions.

The renaissance man has style there is no doubt, but it is defined by his own tastes, but the true hallmark is his moral fortitude. Nothing should be dismissed because of social pressures or concerns, but as a matter of personal preference, and nothing need be enjoyed because you are told to enjoy it. I remember another story where I was at a wine event put on by work and a woman asked me wether the wine was good or not, my response was to ask her if she liked it, if she did then it was good, and if not well then it doesn't matter what anyone else said. She looked at me with big round eyes as if she had no idea what I was talking about, she then proceeded to turn to the guy beside me and ask him if the wine was good. What is the point going about liking and disliking things based on what other people say? What a horrible way to live.

Now let's not let the pendulum swing too far. Their is merit in listening to and learning from people who study things like wine. There is no doubt that certain tastes are acquired through a certain amount of effort And a discerning palate is something that can be acquired and can be rewarding unto itself; taking the time to enjoy the pleasures of wine, or trifle or 100 different kinds of mustard is not a bad thing per se and starting off knowing nothing and willing to learn is a pleasurable pursuit, but when that becomes a snobbery it is no longer a renaissance trait. As Rudyard Kipling says (I paraphrase) To walk with Kings but not lose the common touch might just be one of the key traits of the renaissance man.

And so I am going to eat my fries with ketchup and i still love foie gras and chateau-neuf-du pape and while these define my tastes they certainly don't define me.

Learning to Listen to Music

I am trying to spend one hour a week listening to music. This is harder than it seems. We listen to music all the time, in our cars, at the office, on transit and in our homes, with IPods and other devices it’s hard to keep music at bay sometimes. But what I am trying to do is actually spend an entire hour just sitting and listening to music. This is hard, we don’t really listen to music anymore, it’s so accessible and so everywhere that it is easy to let music fade into the background.

I try and imagine sometimes what it was like before recorded music and in particular before good quality recorded music. Can you imagine in the 18th and 19th centuries going to see a symphony by Beethoven and hanging on every note knowing that you might never hear this piece of music again in your life, or if you were lucky you might hear it a handful of times. How differently one would listen to music. It would not be the backdrop to the everyday but a true momentous event in life.

If you aren’t a fan of classical music, so be it, but imagine to if you weren’t in the caste of people who had access to the great music of the day in Vienna, Paris and London, what about the musical experience of the every man, in his village. He didn’t get to turn on the radio and toil away in the fields or put on some chill music at the end of a hard day with a brew in one hand. Music was likely experienced in church or was true folk music. Just the everyday song in the field. It can be really hard to imagine a world where you carry 10,000 songs in your pocket and can easily reach for the radio and find a station with something.

WIth recorded music we also created a scale for good and bad singing. These days only a small portion of the population that wants to be on American idol really sing anymore and then of course the ever dwindling churchgoers. But before the age of recorded music everybody sang and saying that someone was a good singer or a bad singer was as silly as saying they were a good talker or a bad talker. People talk, people sing. These days most people are too embarrassed to sing and if you ask most people will know will tell you they have a terrible voice.

So I’m trying to listen to music every week, and I have to admit it’s hard, my mind wonders to other things, and suddenly I realize I missed the song and I try and refocus. I am trying not to make this an intellectual exercise, I realize I could read about how to listen to music, there are books on this sort of things, but i am determined to actually be able to listen for one hour without intellectualizing just feeling the music. Wish me luck.

Black Swan, Uncertainty and Why I write this Blog

Excuse the metablogging

I started writing this blog with the intention of challenging current ways of thinking, I set out calling for a renaissance or a rebirth, I have not even come close. My blog is boring, I know that, and my language is overly flowery and attempts to be dramatically eloquent, I accept that criticism. But in one thing I am feeling somewhat satisfied in the writing of my blog today and it’s thanks to one of my faithful readers, Katy, who in one of her comments on my blog recommended that I pick up the book “Black Swan” by Nissam Nicholas Taleb (NNT). I did so a couple of weeks ago, (I have great faith in Katy) and I finally started to read it this weekend. It has been a long time since I have read something that so strongly resonated with me and with my purpose here. I have found a new intellectual soulmate in NNT and I want to write a thousand blog posts about his ideas (I won’t, but I could). So this blog with it’s flaws has lead me somewhere I might otherwise not have gone, and if for only that then this blog has served one of it’s purposes. Thanks for the recommendation Katy.

According to NNT the world is an uncertain place where outcomes are largely unknown and random and we rely too much on our knowledge. What we don’t know is more important that what we know, and the unknown unknowns are likely to have a more dramatic impact on our lives than the things we know. But we are inherently uncomfortable with such uncertainty and lack of knowledge, and we remain convinced that some expert or some book somewhere has the secret that will explain everything and of course if you can explain everything you can foretell the future.

In an era of unprecedented knowledge accumulation, specialization, and a seemingly endless supply of experts, we should literally be living in an age of uncommon perfection. Except for those pesky things that NNT calls Black Swans which tend to be the things that define our lives. If we think even on our own lives, how many of our life plans have worked out the way they were planned. Our lives are punctuated by random events. Even though in the retelling of said events, we usually make them sound inevitable and the outcome of knowledge that existed. It reminds me of a saying that my father taught me years ago “hindsight is 20/20”.

Knowledge is something I have pursued in my life somewhat relentlessly, I have as you know from my previous posts, two extensive libraries, and I have even called myself a collector of knowledge. It is one of the reasons this blog is boring, it is full of fancy words I’ve learned in books over the years, and theories that I have studied and I admit to a sense of pride when people ask me if i’ve read all of the books on my bookshelf. NNT has just delivered a slap across my face, probably much needed, because it is not about the knowledge that I have, he tells us; this is mere intellectual folly. It is about the knowledge that I don’t; it doesn’t matter how many books I read, or how much knowledge I absorb, it is but a drop in the bucket to the knowledge that exists, and infinitely smaller when you consider all of the unknowledge out there, or knowledge that we don’t know we don’t know. I have wielded my knowledge like a power tool and I realize now that it is like a hammering a nail with a feather.

In university, in philosophy and political theory circles, it is common to have an epiphany after reading Plato’s “Apology” where the new learned realize that they know nothing and are like Socrates, wise, because they are awestruck by all of the knowledge that they do not know. But when socrates becomes aware that he doesn’t know, he is actually describing a particular kind of knowledge, he is not awestruck by the knowledge that he doesn’t know, it is his awareness of unknowledge that makes him wise, it is his willingness to question everything and his realization that despite all of the answers that are out there, be they in the words of the experts or all the books in the Congress library, there is still more questions to be asked. I am perhaps being audacious in attributing empirical skepticism to Socrates, but we know that he arrived at his wisdom by asking questions of everyone and of being skeptical of the finality of the responses.

There is no certainty in our knowledge, which leads us to the realization that there is no certainty in the outcomes of our lives. That’s tough to take, at least for me. I’ve planned my life meticulously and in spite to the fact that absolutely nothing has worked out for me, I continue to be obsessed with the plan of my own life convinced in the theories and the knowledge and the experience I have that my next plan will be the one that comes true. I am not comfortable with uncertainty, but I think if one is to lead a successful life of sorts then uncertainty must be welcomed and one must open oneself to unknowledge rather than rely on theories about how things will work out. It might just be time to let go of the outcomes I think will happen and embrace the ones that come.

How much surveillance are we willing to accept?

I live in one of the safest countries in the world, and probably one of the safest cities and yet find myself in the midst of an election where the party likely to win is doing so based on a plan to build more prisons and reduce crime, in spite of the fact that all the data shows that increased incarceration has no impact on crime rates, and the actual crime rate has been steadily declining for more than ten years. So I get that "tough on crime" plays well with people who care little for data and being tough on people who do bad things always play well with the populace, since the false dichotomy that it creates whereby the other guy is necessarily soft on crime is an untenable position. Moreover in politics it can be tough to take the road of not being soft or tough but being intelligent on crime and creating policy that makes sense based on data not an intuitive sense of justice.

The road I want to take here is to criticize the people who vote emotionally and ignore the data about crime, and it is the easy road; to blame ignorance for the popularity of this argument, but I've learned that while it may be true it is an argument that rarely wins the day and usually causes other people to dig in their heels rather than accept the data. But I've made the argument in other posts, and I think that one of the premises of this blog, is that living by the numbers is actually not very human. The flip side; however, is not to live according to our own unconscious impulses, but to consciously question our beliefs and our emotional responses. When we fail to both understand the data and skeptically consider our own decisions, it is then that we risk unintended consequences.

But I am probably belabouring this point in my posts. What I actually want to write about today is the impact technology has on crime prevention. This has gotten a fair bit of play in the media in the past year with the introduction of the full body scanners at airport security stations and previously photo radar and police surveillance cameras of public spaces caused similar debate. As these technologies get cheaper and cheaper and easier to implement the possibility of using them to reduce crime becomes becomes more appealing. And when we frame the argument in terms of reducing crime, it is pretty irrefutable that we ought to implement them as much as we are able, for the false dichotomy suggests that to otherwise would be to accept increased crime.

Civil liberties groups which get poor play these days argue that it is an infringement of our personal rights and a transgression of our privacy. The counter argument is if you are an honest, law-abiding citizen you have nothing to worry about so carry on and let the authorities go about catching the criminals.

The question, I think we deserve to ask is whether honest law-abiding citizens lose anything by being under constant surveillance and what if, hypothetically, we could make the crime rate 0 or near 0 by putting the entire populace under constant surveillance. While this might seem like some sort of Orwellian fantasy the truth is, the pace of technological advancement is accelerating such that the Big Brother of Orwell's 1984 is becoming a greater possibility and given the popularity of crime prevention a not unpopular scenario. I would argue that similar to 1984 if we submit to constant surveillance we risk losing something of our humanity. The possibility of doing something illicit, even small, is part of what makes life worth living as Winston Smith and Julia discovered in the book. The consequences were obvious.

People are also likely to behave differently, even in honest ways, when they know they are being watched, are we prepared to have our public personas shaped by the presence of cameras. I suppose the popularity of reality TV might suggest that yes we are, but I'm not so sure we would all be so welcome to have cameras following us all the time and what does this say for individual self-expression?

Moreover the irony of all this surveillance is that it becomes a crutch for not spending time and effort on catching real criminals. We are counting on the numbers game, and frankly the stupidity of criminals, for these things to work. The smart ones, figure out ways of avoiding our new surveillance plans, while the honest sit in line throwing out their nail clippers and their hair gel. We want a solution that says we searched x number of million people last randomly last year and it cost us y millions. If we spent the same amount of money catching one criminal people would be in an uproar about the amount of money spent to catch one criminal. But it's okay to spend the same amount to search x number of millions of honest people. Somehow the math seems wrong, even though it represents popular opinion.

As the possibility of more surveillance grows we need to start asking ourselves how much are we willing to accept, at what cost a reduced crime rate, and perhaps there is a minimum level of crime that we are willing to accept as a society that must balance individual self expression and personal freedom with the need to create safety. Before we accept the "tough on Crime" platform, let's ask ourselves at what point is does tough on crime start to threaten honest people.

In Defence of Democracy:

This posting might be a bit more polemic than my other posts and I apologize to my international readers if this takes on too much of a Canadian spin but sadly I live in a country where democracy is more threatened than in any other western nation (see this great summary from Australia). If I lived in any other democratic country in the western world there would have been protests in the streets and we would have been burning our government buildings in protest at the anti-democratic antics of the government, in Canada we are instead prepared to reward that same government with potentially even more legislative power than they had previously. I am not a died in the wool partisan of any ilk, I am known to think that Brian Mulroney, a Conservative, was the best Prime Minister of my lifetime, but I usually vote Liberal or Green so this is not an attempt to support one party over the other, but to ask at what level we are prepared to sacrifice our democratic institutions through our complacency and our financial self interest.

The level of complacency in Canada relative to it's democracy is alarming and, moreover, it seems to be taken for granted, as if it could never come under real threat and any supposed threat is just partisan posturing. Now I don't disagree that the last several years there has been a lot of political antics in the Canadian parliament of a partisan nature, but when the government refuses to report directly to parliament on how it spends its money and on it's policy platforms as well as blatantly lying and forging documents, it is effectively refusing to report back to the people. The role of parliament is to keep the government accountable to the people of Canada. I am not arguing about the efficacy of the institution, only the fundamental role that it plays in our democracy.

If the government is no longer accountable to parliament and by extension the people then who is it accountable to. We have slowly absconded this responsibility to the media which now seems to play the role of official opposition and the role of parliament in protecting our democracy. This is potentially dangerous. Firstly the media has a corporate agenda of profit-making; while there are a lot of great journalists out there, ultimately the goal of media is to make money and support a political agenda that is favourable to corporations. I am not convinced that it is safe to put our democracy in the hands of a few select corporations where we have no say in who is running them or making the decisions on  what is important on our behalf.

Secondly there is always the danger that the media becomes just another arm of the government, it's happened before it can happen again. Maybe not today, but I am not arguing that democracy is about to fall off a cliff, only that it is slowly eroding, if we accept a few small infringements on our democracy today and a few more tomorrow eventually things might happen that we thought never could and it might be harder to get them back than we think. It's a bit like a china cup that falls on the floor and shatters, once it's broken it is difficult to put back together. Putting our democracy in the hands of few select corporations is has risks that we need to be aware of.

Consider also the reason that most people cite for not being alarmed at the erosion of democracy. It's about jobs we are told and the economy and this government is the best one for making jobs and managing the economy. I don't want to go over the top on this one or dismiss the importance of the economy and jobs, but look at fascist Germany in the 1930's it created thousands of jobs and turned the German economy around, but we saw where that got them  Not that we are even close to what happened  in Germany, I am using hyperbole to demonstrate that sometimes there are things that are more important than the economy and jobs. It is a sad state of affairs if we are prepared to sell our democracy for money in our pockets. If we continually do that we might just find we've sold our souls.

Which is the point of this blog which is to inspire good men to good works which is the ultimate renaissance man, to go beyond the pecuniary artifice of everyday and stand for something other than what fills his bank account. Not to be idealistic, because I am not a socialist but a believer that man is greater than the sum of his financial assets and some things, like democracy, freedom of the press have intrinsic value. Ask an Egyptian or a Libyan.

As I said democracy is not about to fall into an abyss in this country, we will not likely find ourselves in a fascist dictatorship after the current election,  but we must not take our democracy for granted or we might just find at some point after a long slow erosion we don't have much of one left and the result might not be the one we were hoping for. We must always be on guard to protect our democracy and fight the complacency that is so easy to fall into or be prepared to suffer the consequences.

Stuff White People Like: The Great Illusion

There is a famous blog that many of you have probably heard of called Stuff White People Like, it's basically a satirical site that pokes fun at a list of things that supposedly all white people like from morning coffee to khaki pants and having black friends. The blog has become so famous that it's now a book, and I believe I read they are working on another. There is no doubt that they are making some sweeping generalizations and if you read the blog you realize they are really poking fun at urban/suburban white liberal-minded people as opposed to all white people in the world. Nevertheless, what makes the blog amusing, as most true humour, is that there is some truth in it. Most of us who have read it can see a bit of ourselves and our friends and families. There is even an online test you can do to see how white you are.

So the first time I encountered the blog I was of course highly amused and had a few good laughs at my own expense, but on further reflection I also realized that there was actually a profound message in all this humour. That our interests, and our likes and dislikes may not be our own and are highly influenced by the media. What is more alarming is that we think we are original thinkers and highly independent but it is an illusion of the grandest proportions, we are really just conforming to a certain way of thinking and building an image of ourselves as independent thinkers.

I forced myself to reread the list of stuff and ask myself which things I really liked as my own and which things I had adapted as part of my image as an independent thinker. As an example I've always said that I liked Vespas (which is #126 on the list). When I thought about it I realized I don't like Vespas, I mean sure I like the idea of driving around Sicily, the wind in my hair, the sun on my face a beautiful woman with her arms wrapped around me while we stop at remote romantic cafes and drink red wine and eat homemade pasta. But really, 99% of the time having a vespa in the city I live in would absolutely suck, especially for me, I'm not that technically inclined and I'm more concerned about getting places than the vehicle i got there in.

As another example take coffee(#1 on the list), I like my coffee and I still do, but I am honest that what I like more than coffee is the ritual of coffee, I can get by quite well with out it, but I enjoy taking the time to relax and enjoy a few minutes with a nice espresso, either with company or even alone. It would be dangerous to reject everything on the list unilaterly so as not to be conformist, but to be the exact opposite is also a form of mimicry.

But aside from these sort of personal likes and dislikes of my own, there is a broader message here about conformity and how difficult it is to actually be an independent thinker in a modern media world. It is challenging to maintain an independent viewpoint. We are inundated with media influences that are shaping our tastes and our opinions. We need to be conscious of this so that we can forge our own identity.

In some ways it is alarming this conformity but how do we have healthy debate about society when we are all conforming to the same norms? When the people who are the influencers and the decision makers are all saying the same thing. Perhaps it is as Francis Fukuyama says that it is the end of history and we are conforming because of the triumph of the western idea. The ideas we have now are the right ones and there needs to be no further debate about society other than to bring the laggards into the western fold.

Perhaps, but I am skeptical. There is in my mind still room for meaningful debate and dialogue about the right way to live and the right way to govern ourselves. We need to guard against this conformity and challenge it. If we truly want to be independent thinkers and move forward as a society we must embrace healthy skepticism; an attitude of questioning our own opinions and ideas, and constantly assessing whether it is something we believe or whether we are just adapting the opinions of others as expressed in the media. This is challenging but if we are to have a modern renaissance we must question ourselves and the conformity that is so easy in a modern media world. It is a challenge but one that is worth doing.

Statistics, Nero and Japan

It's been a wild couple of weeks in the world since the second major world Tsunami in my lifetime hit Japan. However, not only did they have a major Tsunami but it has caused one of the worst nuclear disasters in history and will probably rank as second only to the Chernobyl disaster.  But this is stuff you all know unless you've been hiding under a rock for the for the last nine days. What interests me is what this says about our relationship with technology, the media and ourselves.

Firstly, in spite of the fact that it has been 25 years since the last major Nuclear disaster, it is pretty clear to me that we are still dealing with a pretty volatile and unpredictable technology. While we are able to contain it most of the time there are still significant risks. Apparently the scientific community that we trust today, the way we once trusted the clergy, calls these risks, "high impact, low probability events" which in layman's terms means not likely to happen but if it does, FUCK!. 

Now I don't know enough about nuclear power to comment on it's efficacy, I only just learned what actually happens during a meltdown, but that still seems kind of scary. People are heavily impacted on a regular basis by these so-called low probability high impact events, think car accidents, broken bones, etc.

If we choose to look at it statistically it doesn't sound so bad, there's a 1 in a 1000 chance of something happening, it sounds likely that it won't happen. That's one of the problems with statistics it forces us to ask  the wrong question and give the wrong answer, what is the likelihood that something will happen, not likely, therefore it is safe. We would be better to ask ourselves if we are willing to live with the consequences that an unlikely event occurs; or if the benefits out weigh the risk. Blind faith in the improbability of events can have disastrous consequences, as the Japanese are sadly learning. We learned this ourselves in a much more banal example in 2007 when the financial markets crashed as a result, among a number of things, but a series of highly unprobable events.

Modern education and socialization has taught us that the numbers never lie and that when in doubt we should depend on the numbers in our decision making. Trust the numbers has replaced trust in God as the mantra of modern man, the irony might just be that numbers can be as capricious as an otherwise loving God.

So here we are in the cocoon of our modern technology and the safety of our numbers, and we look to Japan, and how can you not look the media is relentless in its coverage of the unfolding events; we look on and wonder at the resiliency of the Japanese people in the face of such uncontrollable cataclysmic events. We go to work, we seek entertainment and we carry on as though it couldn't happen here for surely our numbers are better than theirs, the probability of such unprobable events is even lower here. I have to admit this week I have been feeling like the Emporer Nero who you may recall apparently took up his fiddle and belted out a few good tunes while the city of Rome burned to ashes around him. Since March 11 I have carried on my life as usual, yes I have followed events, but I've been busy with my self-important life, but it feels a bit as though Rome is burning around me.

I've found this particularly acute because it is Japan, we are talking about one of the seven members of the G7, supposedly in the top economies and industrialized nations in the world. Thousands of its people are now dead and thousands more are huddling in their basements afraid of radiation fall out. Just two weeks ago those same people were trucking off to office jobs and worrying about where their next vacation was going to be. Today, the people of Tokyo, arguably one of the most technologically advanced cities in the world, are worried about radiation in their milk and their spinach. I have to wonder if any of those same people are wishing they had asked some different questions.

Meanwhile the media coverage of the goings on in Japan have been as unceasing as they are for all of these types of horrific disasters, there is no less coverage than there was for Haiti, Indonesia or even 9/11, and I know I am not the only one who finds that the excessive media coverage while on one hand making me aware of what is going on makes me feel somewhat detached from the humanity of what is happening, from the safety of my own home and the comfort of my favourite chair it is easy to be removed from the on the ground suffering. The worst is that with each successive disaster we become more and more media saturated and more and more detached from what is actually is happening. It becomes easier and easier to fiddle while the world burns, as we become more and more desensitized and more and more assured that it statistically is unlikely to happen here.

I don't know that Rome is burning around us, I'm not much of a fatalist, and I am more of an optimist than anything, but I do think if we don't start to ask some of the right questions about the world we want to live in, we might find that we don't get the answers we want.

The Internet and our Future Selves

Back in the salad days of my university years I was told by my professor and my advisor that I should take a weekend, get a bottle of scotch and read Derek Parfit's Reasons and Persons, I still haven't done that, although I did try and read it once, and this might be the year when I do. Nevertheless I think his theory as described is highly relevant to our relationships in a digital world.

The theory itself is fairly abstract, which is why it requires the the intensity of a bottle of whiskey and a dedicated weekend, but in short he postulates on the notion of personal identify and morality. Morality is often defined in the term of relationship and how we ought to treat others. If you think about the harm principle as an example or even the golden rule, they are defined by how what is morally right in the context of relationship. It is predicated on the interactions of different people at the same time, but does not consider the interactions of the same person at different times;  Parfit considers these to be of equal importance and further if it is incumbent upon society to protect different people from harming one another, then it is also incumbent on society to protect the same person from harming future versions of themselves.

Heraclitus foreshadowed Parfit's theory by several thousand years when he suggested that we could never walk into the same river twice. Because the second time we step into the river we are a different person, we bring with us a new series of experiences and new identity. It's like reading a book or seeing a movie for the second time, it always has different meaning for us because we have a different subset of experiences.

So I realize that last two paragraphs are a bit of a mindfuck and has massive ideological implications, but I think there are interesting applications for this is the way we manage our day to day affairs. The crux of the matter is what is our responsibility to future versions of ourselves and how is that responsibility altered or compromised by the digital world where everything we do online has the potential to be recorded online for posterity.

The classic example of this that most of us have considered is the posting of a photo online that shows us in a compromising situation, drunk or doing something stupid and it being seen by co-workers, bosses, family members. The possible harm to careers, reputations, and relationships is manifest especially if the photo is taken out of context. This is the fear that if others post those photos, and conventional morality deals is equipped to deal with this; but what of the people who post those photos of themselves, not uncommon for the generation in their university years right now, who may be harming future versions of themselves, since they will unlikely be able to hide what has been posted online.  What is amusing today may not be so in 10 or 20 years.

In the past as people evolved they were able to leave their pasts behind them, to grow up and join the adult world, (now there is a crisis in North America of adulthood, but that's another post). They would reminisce with their close friends about those silly things they did back in the day, or even allow those things to be forgotten, with little fear that they would be confronted with them at some point in the future. Not so today, our lives are recorded for all to see, and though it is often an image (see my previous post, Whither the Shadow) it is still recorded digitally for the world to see.  This is particularly true even if we evolve our image. For example university kids often want to create an image of someone fun and sexy, versus serious and staid, as we advance in our lives that image may change and evolve, however because of the internet, it is much harder to shed an older image of ourselves.

There is a great story in the Bible where Jesus is rejected by the people in his hometown of Nazareth.

"I tell you the truth, he continued, no prophet is accepted in his hometown"

The reality for the people of Nazareth was the Jesus was just Jesus, that little boy they knew who was the son of Mary and Joseph and grew up in the neighbourhood. They could not fathom the man that he had become. The relevance for humanity of this story is how hard it can be to forge a new identity in one's hometown, it is challenging to rid oneself of one's baggage, of being the snotty nosed kid who used to kick the teacher and get suspended from school, to truly become new one must leave the place where he has come from

How much this is exacerbated as our hometown is now our network of Facebook pages and how much more difficult it is to form a new identity when our old identities are available on the internet for anyone to see, and recorded there for all time. Which brings me back to original point about the responsibility we have to our future selves and the care that must be taken of our present selves on the internet so as not to harm our future selves.

The problem is how can we know what will harm our future selves, and the risk is that constantly worrying about future versions of ourselves will render us hopelessly neurotic and incapable of making decisions. So we can apply the principle of reasonability and say what we should not do things that would harm a reasonable person, but even then, what may be harm for one, may not be for another. For me, not to write this blog was harming my future self, but writing this blog, may come back an haunt me one day. I don

I have to be honest I haven't figured this one out, I never promised I had answers here, but I think it raises a lot of important questions.  For me, not to write this blog was harming my future self, but writing this blog, may come back an haunt me one day. I don't know how to resolve this but I am intrigued by the question. I hope you are too.

The Journey from Lurker to Contributor

In the years BI (Before Internet) it was nearly impossible to be anonymous, let alone be a lurker, at least in the sense that we mean it today. You were either present or you weren’t. While Victorian literature is rife with stories of secret admirers and anonymous messages, the truth usually would out because communities were small and fairly transparent. 

The internet is full of lurkers, people who visit sites, blogs, chatrooms, Facebook, and read or view but never contribute or add any comments. Even Facebook which is participatory by nature encourages lurking. I am confident that there are people who view my photos, see my status updates, my “Facebook Likes” and never comment or add anything to the conversation. I am certain the same occurs with this blog, I have six followers and yet over 50 views a week, so there are at least 44 lurkers on this blog (You know who you are!). 

But this is not meant to judge lurking, I am self-confessed lurker, I have been lurking on the web for years and continue to do so especially on Facebook, but with this blog and writing a few restaurant reviews on YELP in the last few weeks (You can read them here) I have been making the transition from lurker to participator in the modern digital dialogue. 

My first attempts at participation were somewhat furtive and led to disappointing results. I had decided to make use of the comments section on the Globe and Mail’s website and write something that while maybe not intelligent at least thought provoking. The response was, rather than creating any meaningful dialogue, was a barrage of insults and character assassinations.  I never bothered posting again, it seemed the anonymity of the comments section rather than forcing people to think about and stand by their ideas and opinions, was nothing more than an outlet for bias and prejudice, today, I don’t even read them, the comments are usual banal and childish. 

It seems that the anonymity of the internet has made people forget their manners. If only people would heed their mother’s advice that if you don’t have anything nice to say then don’t say it. There is a great quote in Tempest Tost, by Robertson Davies, “ that a true gentleman was a man who even used a butter knife when alone”. Literally I am not sure if using a butter knife makes a man a gentleman but figuratively I think there is a valid point here; that a true gentleman is a man who behaves morally even when anonymous.  This meaning has taken on new life in the post Internet years, where being anonymous is both possible and almost encouraged by the medium.

One of the consequence of this lurking is that it can create an imbalance in what we know about people. As an example I have been lurking on another blog for a few weeks and I feel like I know this person far too well, and I actually know him in person. Now when I speak to him I feel like I know him, but I don’t really and unless he is also lurking on my blog he knows even less about me. It’s created a weird sort of dynamic and makes me feel slightly awkward when I am in person with him. I have even noticed the same awkwardness in other people who I know in person who read my blog, but don’t want to talk to me about in person. 

The reverse of lurker can be even worse. People who participate for the sake of participating. I mean if you don’t have anything to say, don’t say it. Mindless participation is the death knell of chatrooms and newspaper comment sections. 

Saying that, I hope I have something to say, I guess this blog is a test of that. Which brings me back to my main point which was about my own journey from lurker to contributor. To be a contributor is extremely risky especially in the age of the internet and especially when eschewing anonymity. I am exposing myself to ridicule for my ideas, some of them may be crazy, some of my personal revelation that comes out, exposes me on a deeply personal level, and on top of that because the of the nature of the internet it is all saved for posterity. I can never destroy all the copies of what I have written. I can never deny what I have put out there for the world to see. 

Being a writer has always been a risky proposition, it has always been to expose oneself. And when it comes to writing everyone is a critic. I think it’s possible that the internet has potentially made this a riskier proposition but at the same time it presents an interesting opportunity, never before would it have been possible to do what I am doing here. I would have had to seek out a publisher and beg a newspaper or journal to print my musings so there is perhaps a double edged sword here. 

Anyway, for all of you lurkers out there, lurk away, it’s not a bad thing, and when, if ever, you feel like commenting rest assured, I appreciate the inner challenge that that participation represents. 

The Value of a Book

I've had a couple of experiences in the last few days that set me to thinking about books, and the role books play in our lives. I've always been very attached to my books and I am something of a collector of books, I have several editions from the Folio Society that I am particularly pleased with (they even have an entire series dedicated the Renaissance, and a beautiful version of Leonardo DaVinci's notebooks that I would like to add to my collection), but lately I've been wondering about the value of books, the value of personal libraries and this whole industry of book selling.

In the age of the renaissance, and up until at least the middle of the last century, the idea of the average bear having an extensive library was nearly unheard of, or if they did, it would consist of a few cherished items one of which was most likely the Bible. Extensive libraries were the domain of the rich and the clergy.  Nowadays it seems that every middle class, educated family has a library. I have two. I have one in my home and one that is still in my parents house where I grew up.

My parents have asked me (I've yet to comply) to do something with all those books, which is what got me thinking. What does one do with one's books. If this was the early 20th century instead of the early 21st century I would have been able to donate them to schools, or libraries or universities and they would have welcomed them with open and grateful arms. Today they would probably politely decline my gift even though in my collection are some nice books. The fact is there are a pile of books out there in the world, relative to the entire history of humankind and Chapters/Indigo and Barnes & Noble have built a whole culture around buying books.

When you think about getting a book most of us think about buying a book, sure we might go to an independent book store, or even a used book store but we rarely think about going to the library. So we continue this great accumulation of books that at some point will end up in the garbage, (hopefully recycled) since no one really wants a bunch of old books since they have their own collections. Chapters and Barnes & Noble have become the modern library but it costs more than the $5 it would cost to get a membership at the local library and you never have to return your books. So aside from the obvious environmental impact of all these books. I am wondering what is the value of book ownership. There are a ton of books on my shelves that I wish I had borrowed and not bought since I will never read them again.

It is nice to have some books, and there are books on my shelves that I re-read on a regular basis because they are great, but I also have books that I have read once and that I am not likely to read again, and the dilemma remains nobody wants those books and I feel like they cost me too much to get rid of, so instead they collect dust on my shelf until I die and someone else throws them out.

On top of all of this we now have new technologies that threaten to replace the book. We have iPads and Kindles, and e-readers that all make the idea of owning books more and more anachronistic. Now I am told, although I can't speak from experience yet, that all of the technologies for reading are not as user friendly as the book and that while you can read articles it is not as comfortable to read a novel. Those of us with books still have a romantic vision of "curling up with a good book" but the fact remains that reading technology is moving faster than Gutenberg and his first printing press and where we will land nobody knows.

I did have one positive experience with book ownership this weekend, my brother and sister-in-law were here for the weekend, and took the opportunity to raid my bookshelf and borrow a few of my favourites, they couldn't really do that on an iPad but it also highlighted to me that my book shelf is getting a bit too full since I am now creating double rows to accommodate my new purchases and the truth is I don't have anywhere to put any more new books but there is a ton of stuff I want to read. I have thought up a sneaky plan that I may have to start putting to use; I will go into chapters and write down the titles I want to read and then go the library and borrow them. I actually did this once,  and then when i was done I went out and bought the books because they were so good. (Who knew what a genius Robertson Davies was? I still re-read them on a regular basis).

Personal libraries are a reflection of one's character and I have often peered into a friend's book shelf to gain a glimpse of who they are, it's far more revealing than looking in their medicine cabinet. I know what I want mine to say about me and I used to think if my house was ever burning down i would foremost want to save my books, I'm not as sure anymore. There is still a ton of value in what's in the book, but I wonder if it is a technology that is becoming more and more obsolete as we discover new ways to read. I'd like to be reactionary here and say that we must defend the book and get thee to a big box book store and buy some books but I guess as long as people are reading it doesn't matter what technology they are using. We might be entering an age when being a renaissance man no longer requires an extensive library of books, but may just mean having a your digital library at your fingertips.

Technology and the Tyranny of Efficiency

We are used to thinking about our technology in terms of gadgets and scientific enhancements, we are not usually comfortable thinking about technology in moral terms. We are also used to thinking of technology as something that is morally neutral and out of the control of normal human behavior like the weather; something that must be dealt with and integrated into our way of life over which we have no control. It is this view that I wish to challenge and which is why we are in need of a renaissance.

Jacques Ellul was a french thinker who in his famous book on the subject, The Technological Society, discusses how technology shapes the moral condition of humanity, by creating a tyranny of efficiency. He defines technology as any technique that has as its goal the efficient ordering of human activity. As if the most important object of human life is the optimization of efficiency. In a godless world, efficiency has become the new god, the standard by which we measure our lives, our work, our governments our politics and our relationships and all other human activity.

Democratic governments are often criticized for their lack of efficiency in decision-making. The messiness of government is inefficient and surely we cry as a public, there is a more efficient way of doing things. The cult of efficiency has caused us to loathe the machinations of our government but perhaps, I would argue, the inefficiencies of our government are what makes us a human society. Yes there are more effective ways to make decisions but they are not necessarily better.

If we consider our politics as well. the one thing that we seem to judge our politicians on is the efficient managing of the economy. It is the only thing that seems to actually rile people up enough to comment on the politics of the day. Politics has not always been so. The politics of the past had a much stronger moral component, politicians argued more about what kind of world they wanted to live in, today they all agree unilaterally they want to live in a more efficient world, they only disagree about how to get there, and even then less and less. One of the reasons, I think, that our politicians, have become so bland and that our political culture has become one of the personality cult is that there is little of substance to truly differentiate our politicians from one another than their self-created images.

We can take this idea of efficiency down to our own lives as well and the way that we judge ourselves and others. The amount of ink, digital and traditional, that has been spilled over the last number of years on how to better organize our lives and live more efficiently. Everything from how to organize our closets better to how to organize better our relationships, how to accomplish more, as if we need only apply the right technique to an aspect of our lives to make it better, where better is more efficient. The whole culture of self-improvement is about applying the concept of efficiency to our lives.

The thing about efficiency is a measure of our lives is that it requires some sort of measurement. So if it is a diet it is number of pounds lost in a certain number of weeks, it is a certain number of tasks to accomplish in a certain period of time, how to live longer. It all comes down to trying to achieve a certain number either higher or lower than the one we are currently at which we are constantly told is sub-optimal. The ones who win in this life are the ones with the lowest bmi, the longest life, the most organized closets.

But can we measure the value of a human life in years lived, in pounds lost, in the numbers in a bank account, in the number of Gigabytes/second? It seems to me the measure of man is the life in the years not the years in the life. I don't want to be cliche here because I think it can be really challenging to learn how to live especially in the modern world where the promise of technological improvements to our lives are everywhere, it has become more difficult to choose the moral life but perhaps even more meaningful.

I don't wish to discourage people from trying to improve their lives that would seem to be a bit contrary to the purpose here as a blog for the modern renaissance man. But what I would discourage is the attempt to improve ones life by trying to achieve efficiency or get to a number. Live, laugh, love, it is messy and rarely efficient but the it is the moral life.