Nature and attention I've been spending the past weeks trying to focus on studying attention, so this excellent post in Cognitive Daily was particularly well-timed. It suggests that Nature acts as a more effective location for a study break (i.e., a time to renew attention) than human-made environments. While, as the post mentions, this is hardly new to those who have spent any real time with Nature, it's a welcome, scientifically justified reminder. For a society that moves further and further from the deep harmony that is woven through the sounds, sights, and smells of Nature and replaces them with the blackberry-buzzing, horn-honking, straight lines of the city is a distracted society in more than one sense.

No piece on attention would be complete without a William James quote:

"And the faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention, over and over again, is the very root of judgement, character, and will. No one is compos sui if he have it not."

  ¶ 11:22 AM 0 Comments

  Not too late for Canada, yet...

“We, to-day, of this generation, are seeing the last of the free trappers; a race of men, who, in passing, will turn the last page in the story of true adventure on this continent, closing forever the book of romance in Canadian History. The forest cannot much longer stand before the conquering march of modernity, and soon we shall witness the vanishing of a mighty wilderness.

And the last Frontiersman, its offspring, driven back further and further towards the North into the far-flung reaches where are only desolation and barrenness, must, like the forest that evolved him, bow his head to the inevitable and perish with it. And he will leave behind him only his deserted, empty trails, and the ashes of his dead camp fires, as landmarks for the oncoming millions. And with him will go his friend the Indian to be a memory of days and a life that are past beyond recall.”

- Grey Owl, in “The Men of the Last Frontier”

Grey Owl, a Scot posing as a Native Canadian, canoed and hiked deep into the wilderness first as a trapper and then as one of Canada’s first environmentalists. He was one of the first to capture an essential part of the Canadian character. He understood that Canadians are offspring of “Nature as it was since the Beginning; all creation down the eons of unmeasured time, brooding in ineffable calm, infinite majesty, and a breathless and unutterable silence.” From the First Peoples to the leaf on our flag, Canada and Canadians are intimately tied to the vast spaces and wild beauty, the ‘infinite majesty, and breathless and unutterable silence’ that is our first, our natural heritage.

And yet, today Canada ranks as one of the worst environmental performers in the OECD. Our current government held back global climate negotiations in Bali, we supply some of the dirtiest oil in the world, and we consume ridiculous amounts of water and energy. Our government has demonstrated time and again that they will maintain a strict head-in-sand policy when it comes to the environment. Instead, they play short-term politics with our heritage and our future, and make great show of a little regulation and a lot of big cardboard cheque handovers that make for good press conferences but bad policy.

And while the current government plays a poor imitation of the American “if we say ‘Liberal Tax’ enough, eventually it’ll sound true” game, the clock ticks, and Canada’s future fades with it. While we are focused on lobbying American policy-makers to import the oil that’s created one of the only manmade objects visible from space, other countries are implementing the policy frameworks that will make them the leaders whose trash we’ll have to carry in the next decades. When climate change and other environmental challenges become too big for even the most oil-funded of our leaders to ignore, we’ll be left with the aftermath of capital projects that are no longer viable, and with a long list of products to buy from the Swedes.

If we do not put policies in place now that will incent development of ‘green’ technologies, we won’t develop them! Instead, we’ll be left buying our wind power turbines, our solar panels, and all of the thousands of supporting and offshoot technologies from countries that have put these incentives in place. Cutting a cheque for R&D here and there is not a systematic policy, it’s a one-time project that creates no incentive to invent for a market that still favours bitumen over the sun. The Conservatives of all people should know the value of a free market, and should put policies in place that incent what’s wanted, disincent what’s not, and then let the market do its thing.

So, as has been proposed (although communicated poorly) and supported by many people from economists to ecologists, the way forward for Canada is to put a price on carbon and reduce income tax. This will be revenue-neutral for the government, will reduce the centrally-planned and unpredictable nature of a cap and trade system, and will create a cost on what we don’t want (carbon), while further removing inefficiencies from what we do want (income).

If we create the right incentives, Canada will be in a position to supply the natural resources that will continue to be in demand, but will also be able to lead in the high value added industries that will transform those raw materials into useful, green, sustainable products. We will remember that Canada’s vast resources are not just under the ground in the form of oily sand, but also in the wind and sun of our skies, in the clean water of our lakes and rivers, and in the ingenuity and ecological mindset of our people.

Grey Owl was a visionary in many respects, but I hope he turns out wrong. With intelligent policy, popular support, industry commitment, and the vitality of its people, Canada’s natural heritage can be more than ‘a memory of days and a life that are past beyond recall.’ The world is undergoing a shift, and it seems to me that there are few people more equipped to lead it than those who have spent their lives hiking the Rockies, paddling the Great Lakes, staring into the starry prairie skies, and admiring the brilliant autumn red of the maple leaf.

  ¶ 6:17 PM 0 Comments

  The Windmill Movie The Windmill Movie has a disproportionate relationship between the two hours watching it and the mind's grappling to make sense of it thereafter. While watching, it is fragmented, grating in the precipitous drops from moments of beauty and clarity to a dull, annoying grasping at coherence. But following those two hours the mind is left with a sense of irresolution, of an assortment of moments that made a wholly unsuccessful attempt at a story. So the mind churns and churns, and The Windmill Movie sneaks into the consciousness days later, when following one's own precipitous drop from a moment of beauty, it asserts itself. This time, however, it is no longer a movie, but a view of life as beautiful and halting, as a question with no answer.

The Windmill Movie Official Trailer from Alexander Olch on Vimeo.

  ¶ 6:42 PM 0 Comments

  A movie camera in a psychiatrist's office If you're up for a melancholy evening, Confessions of a Superhero is surprisingly beautiful.



(you can find the full film on Hulu)

Having been recently doused in readings and class discussions about the effects of inserting oneself into a person's life for ethnographic purposes, it was uncomfortably intimate. I couldn't help but find the movie-makers' invasive approach ethically questionable. That said, it's a movie, not a dissertation, and this almost reckless insertion of the public's eye into four peoples' private lives is, in some ways, the fulfillment of their dreams of celebrity.  ¶ 3:20 PM 0 Comments

  Washington's missing J street Washington DC's core has a lettered street name system. And if you take a look at a map, you'll find that it's missing the J. However, K-street, the location of many of Washington's big lobbyists has a new and exciting challenger in J Street.

As I mentioned in a previous post written just after a visit to Israel and Palestine, I think the real obstacle to a peaceful resolution of the conflict is the internal divide between the progressive, wise, intelligent parts of both Israeli and Palestinian society and their violent, fundamentalist counterparts. I certainly haven't done large representative samples, but in my conversations with people on both sides of the conflict, I've found that the positions of both Israel's and Palestine's progressive elements are not so irreconcilable. J Street is a tremendously exciting example of leadership from Jewish Americans to represent the substantial portions of the Jewish diaspora who do not support the settlements, believe in a two-state solution, and favour an engaged, non-violent approach to regional conflicts.

I know I have taken a very critical view of what's happening in Israel and the Palestinian territories (including a couple posts ago). This has been hard not to do after that intense week there in 2006 and what I've read about the history and current state of the conflict since. However, I do think that there is a real possibility for a resolution of this conflict, and this type of leadership from an incredible group of very experienced Israeli and Jewish-American leaders is the type of thing that could shift the structure of the Israel lobby in the US. Uniting the forward-looking elements of Israeli society can give voice to those millions in Israel and the diaspora for whom Israel is a land the promises much more than this current state of fear and violence.  ¶ 2:31 PM 0 Comments

  Living on the island... For a few years now, my brother has been living on Vancouver Island, just off the West Coast of Canada. Aside from a couple trips (including a bicycle trip from Vancouver to Mexico, which he completed wearing sandals and staying with people ranging from a Marine veteran of the infamous Mogadishu skirmishes who's now an Anarchist forest dweller, to an old lady with a spare bedroom), he's spent most of his time on the Island. The last time we spent any serious time together was when he came to Europe and we hung out in Amsterdam and Budapest, so a trip out to the Island to see Colin and his life was long overdue.

After some time in Vancouver with Eileen (during which I was reminded that Vancouver is a city sent from the Gods to remind humans that it is possible to live in a multicultural paradise with beaches a short walk from downtown and some of the best skiing/climbing/hiking/kayaking in the world right on your doorstep), I hopped on the ferry. The ferry ride was one of those deep breaths during which I tried to summon all the strength and energy I could, knowing that on the other side of the Straight of Georgia lay the whirlwind of adventures that is Colin's life. Sure enough, immediately upon arriving, I came to a backyard where Colin and friends were in the midst of a bluegrass jam. That evening Colin and all played an open mike. It was beautiful to watch the people in the pub as a bunch of young guys walked up on stage, equipped with guitar, banjo, and washtub bass. As they started playing feet tapped, backs straightened, and faces smiled without exception. Old men looked over with refreshed eyes as they heard the music of their parents generation played by people of their children's.

The rest of my time on the Island was filled with the series of such earthy and yet sublime moments. We went sailing to a smaller island where we partied on a beach and then slept in a big white tent on a property filled with old multi-coloured buses. I met Colin's friends who are surfers, musicians, students, and all wonderfully beautiful people. I sat in a big second-floor studio on a Victoria street watching a bluegrass jam and lost myself in the soaring dance between the mandolin and the fiddles. I saw Emma Jean - the boat that my brother brought from the brink of sinking to a proud, clean, white, alive ship that's just itching to find itself free on the waters again. I met the shipbuilders that have come to respect Colin for his skill and determination, and a sailor for whom Colin is a rare, understanding friend in a world hostile and isolating. I learned to surf up in Ucluelet, and sat with Colin and immense Time on an isolated beach rimmed by rugged rocks and blown coastal spruce, looking out into the dauntingly vast Pacific.

After a visit with Frances and Annika, and toward the end of my time on the Island, my parents arrived from their hike in the Canadian north and we spent some wonderful time together as a family at a bluegrass festival, surfing, and just hanging out in a harbourfront cottage.

Those few weeks were vivid, full, the experiences so immediate and real. It was a bluegrass song, with the exhilarating, celebratory banjo playing as we rode a wave straight into the sun on Long Beach in Tofino, and the high lonesome sound of a long fiddle note as the reflections from the water painted a soft sunset glow on the boats in the quiet Sydney marina. It was seeing my brother on stage playing the guitar, radiating joy and laughter.  ¶ 9:45 AM 1 Comments

  If this is how peaceful protests are treated, how does this end? If there is another factual side to this story, would be good to hear it.

  ¶ 3:58 PM 3 Comments