Absent

Hola all. Just a note to explain my sudden dropping off the edge of the earth behaviour, and set the expectation that I will be off for a while yet.

I neglected to do any of the 'goodbye toronto', 'goodbye mckinsey', etc... posts that I had wanted to (and still will - expect very anachronistic posts over the next months) do. Instead, I:

- Finished these couple years at McKinsey on a great note, said goodbyes and see-yous to some wonderful, brilliant people
- Watched the entire first season of the Sopranos over a few days
- Bought a harmonica in the key of C (on the recommendation of my brother Colin), and started pretending to learn to play it
- Packed up and moved (thanks to Mike Torrance, without whose help I would still be carrying boxes to the elevator)
- Realized that, due to a month of needing a car in a remote town, I needed to buy a car
- Bought a car (a 98 Subaru legacy station wagon - oh yeah), in order to not fully drop off the carbon footprint map now that my life of two flights a week is coming to an end
- Said goodbye to the city for which I have developed an unhealthy infatuation, promised to return as soon as possible, started missing it before I'd even left
- Returned to aforementioned city after being turned back at the border due to strict prohibitions on carrying in futon mattresses and books, said goodbye once again, and successfully passed customs
- Went to an absolutely incredible conference hosted by Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, regained my hope in our future, became proud to be human again
- Found an absolutely awesome apartment in Cleveland in a classy 100-year old building, overlooking the city (it is on Overlook Drive after all). Thanks to Araz Najarian, whose ability to remember the unique features of each apartment we saw was in direct contrast to my inability to even remember how many apartments we saw
- Drove to Atikokan, Ontario (think middle of nowhere - sorry Dad), spent a few days at the cabin with Saeid and Karim (friends from McK) where I spent my childhood summers. We had a rocking time, and by rocking I mean cooking over a wood stove, and chatting about religion until a dangerously late 11pm before having a nice long sleep
- Spent the past week with my Grandfather (amazing man about whom epic poems should be written) and Grandmother Boland

Now, after a final couple days at my Grandfather's, I'll be heading out for a week at the cabin with Arthur where I will have to be prepared to understand evaluations of the existentialist implications of the cogito, and such. Then to the wedding of Roi and Andrea, and a reunion with a bunch of wonderful friends from all over. Then, out home to visit the family, and to Vancouver Island to hang out with my brother on the sailbout he's been refurbishing (as my parents go hike the Chilkoot Trail). We'll spend some time as a family together, before I start the move to Cleveland.

All to say, I may not be blogging for a while. Staying in a town where the only public computers are in the employment office (I suppose I do look pretty unemployed right now), at a cabin without electricity, and on a sailboat are all not very conducive to blogging. But, I'll take some notes and will look forward to rejoining the online world periodically between now and August.

Hope everyone's enjoying their summer/winter/seasonless time, and catch you soon...

Atlas Shrugged

After a long and arduous three years, I have finally managed to read Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged." After having the book suggested to me by a few people I respect, I decided to pick it up, knowing that it would likely represent a worldview that rubbed against my own. Atlas Shrugged is a kind of cult philosophy novel a la Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (that's where the similarities end between these two books) - a novel with a philosophical message, or at least a novel with philosophical content. As such, it should be judged both on its literary and its philosophical merits.

Atlas Shrugged as a novel

I once saw the book described as 'libertarian porn', which about sums it up. The grand strokes of the plot were interesting, the suspense moderately sustained, and the characters memorable, but all of these lacked even an intimation of subtlety. Aside from a very few characters who changed as the book evolved, most were about as black and white as Rand's philosophy. The scenes were almost always melodramatic, with characters in the extremes of agony or ecstacy with a regularity that made it tiresome. Rand did have a talent for describing the processes of peoples' thought in an interesting and insightful way, but after about 500 pages of incessant and relatively repetitive crack character psychoanalysis, I thought my head was going to explode the next time I read some expression along the lines of 'in the grayness of a thought half-recognized but denied'. Overall, an entertaining book, insightfully written, but that should have been 300 pages, not 1000.

Atlas Shrugged as philosophy

I must admit I thought when I first picked up the book that I might enjoy the novel in spite of the philosophy. Instead, I think I appreciated the philosophy in spite of the novel. Rand's arguments were often based on caricatures more than logic (which I thought was incredibly ironic given her purported rationality - everyone who embodied her philosophy was strong, responsible, good-looking, energetic, while everyone didn't was weak, evasive, ugly), however in the end I think she presented a relatively coherent worldview. Her critiques of 'looters' and those who praise weakness and, she argues, death, are interesting, and I think have something of value to add. More than anything she created an aesthetic of self-reliance and cherishing life and the self that is memorable, and has an emotional attractiveness if not an absolute logical justification, but what is ethics if not subjective? (I'm sure Galt would have a good reply to this last line)

Regardless, there is a reason why this book is flying off the shelf these days, as governments take over some of the largest businesses, and an ethic of charity prevails. Rand understood capitalism, understood the importance of the free market and the ways in which money as a medium of fair exchange, combined with individuals' self-interests can create an efficient system. As the ideological foundations of the free market system start to get challenged with more confidence than we've seen in decades, Rand's message has relevance in the debate.

So pick it up, or at least the Coles Notes version ;-)

A new journey in sight...

So just yesterday I made a call, and accepted an offer to spend the next four years of my life here:

In other words, I'll be doing a PhD in organisational behaviour at the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University. The Weatherhead OB program was the first in the US to offer a PhD in organisational behaviour, is ranked as the #3 OB program in the world by the Financial Times, and has been the source of a number of advances in the field, including experiential learning, learning styles, resonant leadership, emotional intelligence, managerial competencies, the organisational dimensions of sustainability, intentional change theory, and appreciative inquiry. It has a focus both on positive organisational change, as well as on sustainability, and is a research school with a practical orientation. And get this - they're going to let me spend four years learning about what I'm interested in and researching what I'm passionate about (they were all very eager and supportive about my otherwise twighlight-zone sounding interests in the area of the impact of meditation on leadership capabilities).

Anyways, I'll be finishing this phase of my time with McKinsey in a few months, will take some time off, and then will start learning from some incredible faculty and peers, and begin my time as a student, researcher, and scholar of leadership and human systems, which is kind of awesome if you ask me ;-)

yippy!

(A huge thank-you to all of those who encouraged and supported me in taking these steps, in particular Ante Glavas, a current PhD student at Case who was my first introduction to the school, and has been a mentor and friend since.)

He called it

The empire had ruined them economically by the havoc it made of public wealth, by the wholesales financial swindling it fostered, by the props it lent to the artificially accelerated centralization of capital, and the concomitant expropriation of their own ranks. It had suppressed them politically, it had shocked them moraly by its orgies, it had insulted their Voltairianism by handing over the education of their children to the freres Ignorantins, it had revolted their national feeling as Frenchmen by precipitating them headlong into a war which left only one equivalent for the ruins it made - the disappearance of the empire.

- Karl Marx, in "Civil War in France"

I have yet to see a better summary of the current state of affairs.

One recessionary sigh of relief

Years ago, when a junior and high school student in Calgary, I would often walk through Fish Creek Park - a gorgeous provincial park that used to be the outer limit of the South side of the city. It was my childhood playground, and I saw it in different ways as the years passed. From a magical place filled with snow-covered Narnias to an archeological site to a bike-racing track, a wilderness adventure site, and then a place to party with friends before the age of majority. Eventually, it became a sanctuary for reflection and peace. I would hike up the other side of the river valley, through some smaller trails, and end up at a wooden fence. Behind me, the park and the city. In front, an expanse of prairie skies and farmers' fields, with the mountains in the distance. Many decisions and personal challenges were aided by a sit on that fence and a stare into the openness.

One day, after coming back from living away for a while, I walked up that same hill to the fence. Instead of the open skies, however, I saw a near-finished suburban community. One of those that define the shape of cities all over North America, with the perfectly circular man-made ponds, the six house designs replicated ad nauseum, the large roads and big driveways soon to be filled with SUVs. Instead of blue skies and prairie grasses it was pastel stucco and lawns far too green for an arid climate like Calgary. It was a hundred kinds of bad.

Well, today I drove out to the end of a gravel road that has become the replacement for that fence, half-fearing a repeat of the earlier violation of my luddite-like sentimentality. To my relief, however, Calgary's exploding suburbs have not yet reached this point, and I stood looking over snow-covered fields, smelling the dry grasses and seeing the familiar Rockies in the distance. And, thanks to the recession, I think this view might be safe for a while. An article in the Atlantic takes a geographic view of the recession:

But another crucial aspect of the crisis has been largely overlooked, and it might ultimately prove more important. Because America’s tendency to overconsume and under-save has been intimately intertwined with our postwar spatial fix—that is, with housing and suburbanization—the shape of the economy has been badly distorted, from where people live, to where investment flows, to what’s produced. Unless we make fundamental policy changes to eliminate these distortions, the economy is likely to face worsening handicaps in the years ahead.

Suburbanization—and the sprawling growth it propelled—made sense for a time. The cities of the early and mid-20th century were dirty, sooty, smelly, and crowded, and commuting from the first, close-in suburbs was fast and easy. And as manufacturing became more technologically stable and product lines matured during the postwar boom, suburban growth dovetailed nicely with the pattern of industrial growth. Businesses began opening new plants in green-field locations that featured cheaper land and labor; management saw no reason to continue making now-standardized products in the expensive urban locations where they’d first been developed and sold. Work was outsourced to then-new suburbs and the emerging areas of the Sun Belt, whose connections to bigger cities by the highway system afforded rapid, low-cost distribution. This process brought the Sun Belt economies (which had lagged since the Civil War) into modern times, and sustained a long boom for the United States as a whole.

But that was then; the economy is different now. It no longer revolves around simply making and moving things. Instead, it depends on generating and transporting ideas. The places that thrive today are those with the highest velocity of ideas, the highest density of talented and creative people, the highest rate of metabolism. Velocity and density are not words that many people use when describing the suburbs. The economy is driven by key urban areas; a different geography is required.

The imperative of seeing the shadow

I have, recently, been trying to understand more clearly why it is that I feel it's so important that people recognize their dark sides. I find that some of the current ethos' approach to life is a willful march into blissful ignorance. When our commitment to positive thinking turns from 'I will welcome the challenges the world throws at me, take responsibility for my own existence, and make the best of any situation' to 'If I think positively and exclude the negative aspects of reality from my awareness, then conditions themselves will become positive', we are trading constructive self-reliance for panglossian delusion. Also, for many, recognizing the darker sides of our own nature is one of the first steps on the path of self-discovery.

In "The Undiscovered Self," by Carl Jung, I found the following a clear explication of the broader importance of individually confronting the darker aspects of our psyche:

Since it is universally believed that man is merely what his consciousness knows of itself, he regards himself as harmless and so adds stupidity to iniquity. He does not deny that terrible things have happened and still go on happening, but it is always "the others" who do them. And when such deeds belong to the recent or remote past, they quickly and conveniently sink into the sea of forgetfulness, and that state of chronic woolly-mindedness returns which we describe as "normality." In shocking contrast to this is the fact that nothing has finally disappeared and nothing has been made good. The evil, the guilt, the profound unease of conscience, the obscure misgiving are there before our eyes, if only we would see. Man has done these things; I am a man, who has his share of human nature; therefore I am guilty with the rest and bear unaltered and indelibly within me the capacity and the inclination to do them again at any time. Even if, juristically, we are not accessories to the crime, we are always, thanks to our human nature, potential criminals. In reality we merely lacked a suitable opportunity to be drawn into the infernal melee. None of us stands outside humanity's black collective shadow. Whether the crime lies many generations back or happens today, it remains the symptom of a disposition that is always and everywhere present - and one would therefore do well to possess some "imagination in evil," for only the fool can permanently neglect the conditions of his own nature. In face, this negligence is the best means of making him an instrument of evil. Harmlessness and naivete are as little helpful as it would be for a cholera patient and those in his vicinity to remain unconscious of the contagiousness of the disease.

Fear

This past autumn, I learnt to lead climb. In contrast with 'top-roping' (where the rope is already threaded through a clip at the top of the wall, and, when you fall, you are immediately caught by the rope), lead climbing is when the rope is tied to you and your belayer, and as you climb up you have to attach the rope to the clips on the way. The implication being that you are held up only by whatever clips you have already put the rope through. If you've climbed past the last clip, and you fall, you'll drop twice the distance between you and your last clip. The falls (which can be 20 feet or more), in combination with the warnings about 'factor two falls', the dangers of having your leg between you and the rope, pushing away from the wall, or your belayer having too much rope out, etc., makes it a bit of a scary proposition.

After this past sesshin (meditation intensive), I returned home with a vast sense of freedom. I felt empowered and confident that everything would be unconditionally awesome. My mind found ways of sustaining this sense. I read Dharma Bums, a book that speaks to the freedom we have to shape our lives regardless of social convention. And then, this flowing freedom which I knew was not only our path to happiness but an inherent attribute of who we are most fundamentally was subjected to the loud, jarring, irrational interruption of fear. As a screaming piece of interference in the sound system would interrupt an otherwise beautiful piece of music, fear was this completely out of place, unecessary, ugly constraint on my freedom.

Fear is truly the largest constraint on our freedom. Although adaptive in some occassions, it is more often than not simply the voice of social or behavioural convention, the small, weak voice of "I can't", "I shouldn't", and most insidiously "it doesn't really matter" chattering away at the deeper, more powerful sense of empowerment and possibility. Fear is our habituations undercutting our aspirations.

And so one of our challenges in life, one of the trials we must face to earn the freedom that we've had from the beginning, is that of facing and overcoming our fear. And so we return to the wall. There's a number of different ways of summitting this peak. First, there's doing it over and over again until you're not afraid anymore. So I climb up, clip in, and fall from the clip. There's a small, one-foot fall. Then I climb a bit above the clip, and fall a few feet, and so on until I literally have my face in front of the next clip, and am six feet or so above the previous one. I could easily clip in, feel safe, and not have to take the fall. Everything in me is shouting just to clip in and be done with it. "Oh, you don't have time to do this, your belayer wants to climb too, why don't you just stop and go down?" and "Maybe there's a better way, what if you just keep climbing and eventually you'll get over it." and "Don't you like bouldering more anyways?" I have to search for the smallest gap in this incessant fear-voice to just let go with my hands. A second later, and fifteen feet or so further down, the rope catches and I stop falling. Everything is fine, and eventually, after enough falls, I am sure that my mind and body will realize that there is nothing to be afraid of. The advantage of this strategy is that I feel like I'm directly confronting the beast, and the disadvantage is that I wonder if, by focusing on the fear, I'm not transcending it.

There's also the strategy of proceeding as if there is no fear. In this case, I simply climb up, keep clipping in, and ignore the fear voice altogether. So I'm fifty feet up, and my arms are tired. It's late in the day of climbing and although this is a climb I know I can do, it's near my limits given my strength and the fact that I'm leading and so have to have the stability to clip every few moves. Now I'm a few feet above my last clip and there's a few more feet to go. There's a couple tiny holds and it will be a serious balancing act just to make it. The thought of falling is somewhere in the back of my mind, and my heart starts racing, I can feel the fear starting to expand throughout my body. I either succumb to it, or, in suppressing it, become incredibly focused on the task at hand. Everything in the world dissapears, and there is only the toe onto the tiny hold, the hand up to the crimper, the flag with the left leg, the reach, and, finally the clip. Safe, exhale.... Ahhh..... The advantage of this approach is that pushing the fear out of my mind creates an immense amount of concentration, and I become more familiar with the feeling of climbing without fear, and learn that it is indeed possible. The disadvantage is that I wonder if suppressing the fear is just ignoring the problem, just not facing the beast but sticking it into a darker and darker place from which it will surprise me at some later point.

In any case, I am certain that either of the above is far more empowering than the alternatives. I could simply climb easier routes, or boulder, or just use the top-ropes that are on most of the climbs in the gym. There's a hundred ways I could have just as much fun for now, without having to go through the heart-pumping, nerve-jarring experience of being a ways above the last clip, and looking down. But if I did this, then I am sure I will perhaps unoticeably, slowly, but very certainly suffocate in the small cell that I will have built for myself. I will never taste the freedom of being able to go out with friends to a large granite cliff, spread out my rope, attach the clips to my belt, and be the first one up.

Indeed, it is those who are able to conquer their fear who lead, in climbing, and in life. For, as Emerson said, "God will not have his work made manifest by cowards."