Olympics time

The Beijing Olympics have been subjected to a level of politicization not seen in recent years. The stories in the news are all too often about one protester who set up a banner, reporters who weren't given access to a certain area, this internet site being blocked or that head of state making a comment about Tibet. Now, these are all very real issues. The ethnic cleansing of Tibet, the issues of political prisoners and human rights in China, the freedom of the press are all things which we should take incredibly seriously. But I'm becoming convinced that the Olympics is just not the time.

Often, when sitting around over a coffee or watching the news, I'm struck by the absolute ridiculousness of many of the conflicts taking place in the world. Our propensity to needlessly fight each other would be comically stupid if it weren't so destructive. We demonise another culture, country, religion. We fight over resources, or blow each other up for one stupid reason or another. It's incomprehensibly childish, ignorant, idiotic for a species that has enough problems without large scale organized homicide. And the next step of such reflections is often the thought that we need more times when we can simply meet each other as humans. When the labels are removed and we celebrate the incredible brilliance of our species. When an opening is created, a moment of quiet when our natural propensity to love and take care of one another, to strive and make jokes and dream and imagine - when all these things that make us human can flow naturally.

It may not be perfect, but the Olympics is probably the closest we've got to this dream. It's a time when people around the world marvel at how high we can jump, how fast we can run or swim, the beauty of dance, the talent of football, and most importantly, the incredible precision and athleticism of curling. But really, it's a moment that happens every couple of years where millions around the world are both proud of our countries and cultures, and meet each other in an environment where, yes, there is competition, but that occurs in a largely harmonious way and brings out the best in all of us. Politicizing the Olympics is tempting for one particular cause or another, but it compromises that one chance we have to create a little oasis of sanity, a place from which clearer thoughts can spring.

So as the Beijing Olympics opens, I'm looking forward to the new records we're sure to break as a species, an opening ceremony that's bound to remind the world of the immense depth and beauty of Chinese culture, and athletes wearing all colours reminding us of our immense potential as humans and humanity. I'm looking forward to those moments when two people who have just run a long and strenuous race, giving their all to get just inches ahead of each other, meet each other with gasping lungs and tired muscles on the other side of the finish line, and embrace.

Persistence Hunt

Many of you may have seen this video before, but I just had to share:



I think about how, when one pursues something for an extended period of time with an eye to mastery, the conscious and subconscious mind and the body start demonstrating capabilities that before would have seemed unimaginable. The climber that is able to lift themselves with a few fingers that are barely stuck into a small crack, or notice how a subtle shift of the waist can make all the difference in reaching the next hold. Or the musician that notices subtle differences in notes and rhythm that most of us could not even hear.

And in this case, these hunters are engaging in what just might be the oldest of continuous human pursuits. For tens of thousands of years their culture has been practicing this art. And not only doing it for enjoyment or irregularly, but to sustain their lives. The subtlety of their awareness, the mastery of their body, the depth of their concentration is at a level that is hard to imagine. Running for hours in the desert heat, being able to put oneself in an animal's mind and reliably track their path. And the sense of relationship with the animal that speaks to a very deep awareness of their interdependence. This is the mastery that not only speaks to that which is most excellent about our species, but also that which is most hopeful.

ps - thanks to Mike Torrance for the link!

Ode to Toronto

As someone who grew up in Calgary, I may be ostracized for what I am about to say. One of the things Calgarians are trained at from birth (along with bullriding, singing country music, and loving oil), is to harbour a deeply rooted and resolutely uninformed disdain for Toronto. But I must admit that I absolutely love this city.

Perhaps most noticeable is its multiculturalism. Known as one of the most diverse cities in the world, it has 79 different ethnic populations, speaks 100 languages and dialects, and 49% of Toronto's current population was born outside of Canada. It has the usual large Chinatown, Little Italy, and Greektown (all of which are amazing), but also has a Korean area, a Sri Lankan area, Estonian, Russian, Brazilian, Portugese, and Lebanese areas, and on and on. You name it, it's here. Heck, there's a little area that has a bunch of Tibetan shops and restaurants! And if you go into, say, the Tamil Sri Lankan area you find street signs in Tamil, shopkeepers greeting in Tamil - it's a little Jaffna in Toronto.

On top of the ethnic subcultures, there's also subcultures of every other kind. From the trendy rich of Yorkville to an area where you find incredible graffiti and hip hop culture in a whole bunch of backstreets. There's a wonderful symphony and opera, but also a lot of live music of all different sorts in bars and clubs. This weekend a jazz festival, last weekend a hip hop festival, and on and on... One of the best film festivals in the world, a hockey club that never wins but always fills the house, a basketball team, an 'American football' team, and an enormously popular soccer/football team.

On Wednesday I was walking home from dinner with a friend. On the way I passed a whole bunch of people who I guess meet at this park and practice/play with hula hoops. I then went through Kensington market, a wonderful hippie area with a bunch eclectic restaurants and thrift shops - some vegetarian, a few latin, a shop with cheese from around the world, a wonderful Persian rug store run by a few guys who could not be more passionate about their rugs. Then past a Vietnamese Zen Buddhist temple, skirted by the craziness of Chinatown, and on to a street full of used book stores, great little restaurants and fair trade shops, and a tea store full of at least a hundred different teas. Watched a man playing a contraption made of a large hollowed branch with a number of offshoots and an electronic synthesizer (describing this would be a post of itself). Finally, past some fraternity and sorority houses just north of the beautiful, old, UofT campus, and through a community of large brick houses with gorgeous towering trees and flower gardens of every kind. And this in just a half hour walk.

And as if this weren't enough, despite the size and diversity of the city, it's at least somewhat maintained its friendly Canadian-ness. People are generally nice and smiling, and it doesn't feel like it has near the harshness of a New York or London. And in just a few hours from the center of the city (as I did a few weeks back), you can be in a canoe in a pristine wilderness lake watching a moose swim by.

Sure, it has its downsides. Despite the fact that Toronto has incredibly fresh air as compared to almost any major city I've been in, the air in Calgary is almost that of an alpine field in comparison. Calgary's proximity to some of the most beautiful mountains and some of the best skiing in the world is hard to beat. A five-minute walk from where I grew up I could be in a park that is known to have bears and even cougars visit now and then. It is not too uncommon to have deer tracks on my front lawn, and all this in a city with a booming economy (when oil prices are high the city giggles), Olympic sports facilities, and an arts scene that is getting much better.

But Toronto... Toronto is a city that weaves itself into you, until the city itself becomes an object of affection, as would a complex piece of music or the slow subtle harmonies of nature.

Climbing

All through my life I've enjoyed and excelled at, and benefited from a variety of sports, but rarely all at the same time. There are some that I've enjoyed at but knew I'd never really be great at (such as American football or yoga), others I've been relatively good at but haven't enjoyed a whole heck of a lot (running), and more that I knew were really good for me but always felt a bit forced (visiting the gym, for example). I always just unconsciously assumed that this was just the way it was. Recently, however, I've stumbled upon a sport that gives a wonderful feeling of just totally fitting. Climbing.

Over the past months, it has become a somewhat over-the-top obsession. To the point that when I walk down the street I look at building and trees and think of how to climb them. The world has suddenly become far more three-dimensional than it ever was before! When I get to the climbing gym I'm like a little kid trying to change as fast as possible as I just can't wait to hit the walls. I enjoy it tremendously, and feel like it's this whole other space that's carved out of reality where I just zone out of everything else, zone into the holds and ropes and my climbing buddy, and go vertical. The same body type that led to a premature end to my football career (as in, before I ever even tried out for a high school football team), is suddenly a gift on the climbing wall. And the type of workout just feels so natural, so integrated and balanced, that I often feel like I'm floating afterwards. The people at the climbing gym are so relaxed, friendly, and yet the type of people that are willing to push themselves. Everything just totally fits.

And perhaps the greatest lesson my recent love affair with climbing has taught me is that there is indeed a place where enjoyment, excellence, and extrinsic benefit converge. If in sports, why not in all things?

(countdown: 24 hours until the next climb...)

The perils of political correctness

(politically correct note: much of what follows will seem offensive at first, so if you don't have time to read the whole thing, you might want to skip this post ;-))

I started listening to an interview today on a great Canadian public radio series. In the introductory montage, there was an excerpt from an interview with an advocate for the homeless in Calgary who said something to the effect of "Our language determines how we see people. I work very hard not to refer to those without a place to live in Calgary as 'the homeless'..." As I listened I had one of those moments of anxiety that are familiar to many who live in societies where political correctness is the norm. "Uhoh... I'm in trouble. I've been using the wrong word - it must be insensitive, perhaps even downright prejudiced. What's the right term??"

This constant game of catch-up is a feature of public discourse in Canadian culture. The usual rationale for such change is a definitional or linguistic one. As the gentleman above argued, the language we use indeed shapes how we see the world. The message here is that by changing the words, we can change how we perceive certain groups and perhaps alter our approach towards them. While this is certainly true in some cases, it seems to me that the change in terms often reflects a flight from accumulated connotation rather than a definitional clarification.

Let's take the example of the change from 'Indians' to 'natives', then 'aboriginals', and now 'first peoples'. The change from Indians to natives is a definitional clarification. People living in North America when European explorers/invaders/settlers arrived were certainly not Indians. (This, we're told in grade school, was an error stemming from a miscalculation of the circumference of the earth.) Natives has a very different meaning from Indians, and changing the word moves us to a more accurate view of reality.

However, the subsequent changes in the term applied to first peoples are not definitional changes. Check a thesaurus and one finds that native is a synonym of aboriginal. And first peoples is a term that describes the idea of being native or aboriginal. So why change these words? These changes are less due to the way in which language affects our view of reality, and much more due to the ways in which reality (or our perceptions of it) affects our view of language. These changes are a way of running away from the accumulation of connotations to a particular term.

A connotation, in this context, is a meaning that is acquired by a term that is not explicitly indicated by the term's definition. To continue with our example, the term 'native' has, in Canada, acquired a number of connotations, many of which are unfortunately negative. Due to a long and complex history of social exclusion, aggressive cultural assimilation, health problems, economic subjugation and then dependence, and a variety of other issues, Canada's native populations suffer rates of poverty, substance abuse, homelessness, imprisonment, and child mortality much higher than the overall average. Over the years, the word 'native' has acquired these connotations. And so we change the term not because it means something that is untrue, but because we have attached to this term stereotypes and ideas - and perhaps even realities - that we wish would go away.

On the one hand such changes do have value. They refresh our view such that we can perceive groups in a way that will allow us to treat them differently. But, despite the ethos from which political correctness has grown, perceptions only go so far to create realities. Should these realities not change, we can continue to create one term after another, and they will each be dragged down by the connotations they will acquire. Political correctness is valuable when it can refresh our views of reality, but dangerous when it helps us ignore it.

The most chilled protest ever

Walking down Avenue Road towards Bloor street today, past the Park Hyatt, the Four Seasons, a Rolls Royce dealership, and other such gathering points for Toronto's rich, I smelled marijuana smoke. I passed it off as nothing more than a bit unusual for that part of town until it started getting stronger and stronger, and became matched with the sounds of a lot of people.

As I came to Bloor Street, I witnessed something very strange. Hundreds of people marching, flags waving, even a parade float - all protesting laws against marijuana use. But what was strangest was that, in a country where marijuana is still illegal, these people were smoking openly, and the police were standing by, stopping traffic and closing down one of the busiest streets in Toronto so that the protest could continue. Water pipes, joints, even a massive cloud of marijuana smoke coming from the float. There were amused and supportive smiles and shouts and car horns honking from passers by. And of course some people not so supportive - I saw a couple women covering their mouths with scarves as they walked by - I suppose not wanting a second-hand-high.

It raised a quandry for me. On the one hand, I tend to agree that marijuana legalization makes sense. It seems awfully strange to be imprisoning someone for the sale or use of a substance that, in all dimensions that I'm aware of, causes far less social, physical, and psychological harm than alcohol. And I think the 'entry way drug' argument certainly lacks rigour. Alcohol could just as easily be labelled an entry way drug to marijuana as marijuana is labelled as such for harder drugs (and more than just stoners consider alcohol a 'harder' drug than cannabis). Making the drug illegal only leads people to interact with the networks that sell other illegal drugs in order to purchase it. It is always a bit funny for me (until it becomes sad at least), to hear someone state proudly 'I don't do drugs' only to see them four shots later being loud and agressive, eight shots later trying to coordinate their limbs as they seek to mate with anything that moves, and twelve shots later frantically trying to find their way to a toilet to expel the poison in their system.

But, despite this, marijuana is still illegal. In a liberal democracy, we tolerate and encourage dissent but our law making processes are the means by which we effect systemic change. Allowing illegal activity to happen (ie - the police standing by and observing hundreds of people smoke up) seems to circumvent or nullify the laws, and weaken the channels by which we manifest our collective will. Who makes this decision? In which cases is it okay to suspend enforcement of the law? Does this strengthen or weaken the power of civil disobedience? Is it okay to create small moments in time when society can experiment or express itself in a way inconsistent with the law?

Although I am fine with this particular instance of suspension of the law, I am not sure how appropriate it is to create a precedent for police to stand by and observe - even protect - the outright violation of the law. The protest could just as easily have happened without the marijuana use (although perhaps the attendance would have been a bit less!), and escalated forms of civil disobedience, when met with the enforcement of the law, would perhaps have made an even stronger point.

New Orleans

Just got back from a wonderful weekend in New Orleans. Would love to share pics, but it seems my camera (which I dutifully brought) was out of batteries.

In any case, thought it necessary to write some testament to the wonderfulness that was the weekend in New Orleans. A city that most in our generation probably associate with the devastation of the hurricane Katrina and the various social, economic, infrastructural, and political issues it raised, it is also a beautifully diverse and enjoyable place. As a disclaimer, I must admit my experience of the city was certainly very isolated from the poverty and crime that form the experience of many of its inhabitants (there were six deadly shootings this weekend alone). I want not to underplay this, but instead to remind of the positive sides of the city, and there are many.

For one, the warm southern hospitality. As I got off the main drags and into the communities, I was greeted with many friendly 'howdys' and 'hellos'. The city is an interesting mosaic of French, Spanish, and English colonial, as well as true Southern US history. The grand classical architecture of the old government buildings flow comfortably into the warm pastels and lush gardens of the French quarter. It reminded me of Amsterdam in its stark contrast between the no-holds-barred partying in the bars and strip clubs of Bourbon street with the quiet beauty of just a couple blocks away.

The food was absolutely wonderful, with one caveat - make sure you specify that you don't want your seafood deep fried, unless you're more interested in oily batter than the taste of the food. Servings are described at some restaurants by their size; "The seafood platter is this [demonstrating with hands] big, the onion rings are this big..." And the music was great as well, whether it was the amazing karaoke of the crowded, full-of-crazy-partiers Cats bar, or an incredible jazz group in a listening room of the Snug Harbor jazz bistro.

I spent some time just sitting in the shade of a tree smoking a cigar and drinking an espresso in the courtyard of the Ritz Carlton. Some time walking through Bourbon street, enjoying the party, or observing the hundreds of people decked out in full pirate's dress (swords, accents, and strangely fitting clothing included) who had congregated for a pirate's convention. And some time just walking the quieter streets in the further reaches of the French quarter, enjoying the fragrance of flowers, peering into courtyard gardens, and stumbling upon a small house with a beautiful flower garden in front. There were stained glass hangings in the window with various meditative imagery. A sign above the door said "Lost Soul's Tavern". A lady was dropped off in front, she walked past me, and without even making eye contact said "For troubled souls only." She opened the door, greeted her dogs, and closed it behind her.

I suppose there is something for everyone in New Orleans.