To the Future

At its very abstract, the concept of future indicates what has yet to come. Future is something that prompts the individual to ask “how will I live?” This is a topic that is a central curiosity to most people that I know. Many of my friends and colleagues fully admit that they lack any sort of firm answer to this question. Only the most delusional and foolish are the ones that think they have it all planned out.

Yet both kinds of people have imaginings, illusions, fantasies, wonderings – they conceive possible future chapters of their own stories. Not only is this done by the individual about her own life, but so do we project our imaginings upon others.

We’re typically much more certain about the futures that we fantasize for others than we are about our own self-regarding daydreams. Atheist and preacher meet and condemn one another to a horrid doom, never doubting that this is the fate that will befall the other. The bachelor and the husband are sure that the other will live out a storybook, if stereotypical existence based on their current circumstances. The question of “how will I live?” is a mystery – the question of “how will she live?” is one of certainty. But both projections of future have little likelihood of unfolding exactly as imagined. However, there are certain points in the lives of human beings in which choices are made which will sway your future into someone else’s projection for it. How frequent or infrequent these choices are, I’m not entirely sure. I am on the cusp of those sorts of decisions.

Alas, the humanist in me wants to ask “how will we live?,” but that’s a question for another day. It’s an unfortunate truth that my own fate is the one I will ponder first – with about as much certainty as I ever have.

Nazi Environmental Policy

I guess that most Canadian politicians haven’t heard of Godwin’s Law. If they did, I suppose that they’d care more about the fact that they have been making new (Internet) legal precedent over the past few days.

A few days ago, our old friend Elizabeth May (who honestly just seems to be a really nice, though somewhat misguided lady) compared the new Conservative environmental policy to Chamberlain’s appeasement of the Nazis before the Second World War. Now, according to Godwin’s Law, she has already lost her argument by invoking a comparison to Nazis. Sorry, Liz, but the law is the law.

However, in an unprecedented turn of events, the Stephen Harper has managed to make the comparison even worse, thus adding a new clause onto Godwin’s Law. Somehow, the Prime Minister (along with numerous very sensitive Jewish groups) have managed to turn “appeasement of the Nazis” into “the Holocaust! I hate JEWS! Graaagh!”

Therefore, I hereby propose to modify Godwin’s Law by adding in the Politics Clause:

• Whereas, therefore, furthermore, incongruously when the response to the original invocation of a comparison of an argument to Nazis, Hitler, or Nazi Germany is further escalation of the invocation of the Holocaust, both sides lose. Rocks fall, everyone dies, argument over.

Were May’s comments a rash? Yes. Harper’s political spin of attempting to portray May as insensitive and/or an anti-Semite? A wee bit ridiculous. Unfortunately, in our House of Commons, May’s comment will be used as a repeated jeer against left-wingers – for at least the next week.

What seriously disturbs me, however, is the frequently-heard assertion that Nazis, Hitler, the Second World War, or all things German equal the Holocaust. Growing up in a predominantly Jewish area, I’ve been raised with a fair amount of Holocaust education (never forget and all that jazz). My high school even offered a Holocaust and Genocide Studies course, which I eagerly took. The main thing that I took away from the course was that the Holocaust, like genocide in Rwanda and Darfur, was characterized by international indifference – for the most part other countries simply ignored it while it was going on.

Early in our relationship, I discovered that my partner (who grew up in the rather-whitewashed suburb of Whitby) always thought that the Allies went to war as a response to the Holocaust. Apparently, this was a pretty common misunderstanding among those who came out of their schools, where education about the Holocaust consisted of a day of grade ten history class.

Unfortunately, this was not the case. Simply put, Europe was afraid of Nazis. That’s why Chamberlain committed history’s greatest blunder by continual appeasement. By the time war were declared Nazi militarism expansionism was something that threatened all of Europe. The British didn’t want lovely little book-burnings and goose-stepping parties to interrupt afternoon tea. The Jews didn’t quite have a monopoly on being able to say that Nazis were bad. Germans were invading countries left and right, and the Allies didn’t want to be next. When push came to shove, as the Evian Conference demonstrated, most national leaders simply didn’t give two pennies about the Holocaust until after the war, when the entirety of such horror was revealed. Canada itself denied immigration to most Jewish refugees fleeing from Europe. There weren’t many good guys.

The Holocaust was a horrible consequence of the Nazi regime, but it had little to do with the war itself and more to do with administration of occupied territories – which fell to to the Wermacht and more to do with the SS. Most of the folks fighting in the army, while brainwashed by Nazi propagnda, wouldn’t have been able to carry out the acts of atrocity that made up the Holocaust.

The Nazis did a lot of really, really, really, bad things. The Holocaust was one of them – but it wasn’t all of them. To instantly relate the Nazis to the Holocaust not only diminishes every other atrocity committed by the Nazis, but is poor and simplified historical thinking. Of course, when used as political fodder, comparisons to Nazis or the Holocaust just end up becoming Godwin’s Law.

Also, is John Baird scary, or is it just me?

The Trouble of Communication

Two of my roommates just came in from a rather boring, complaining about their professor’s “loss of zeal” since the beginning of the course. I’m sure many of us have suffered through many a boring, unengaging lecture where one side drones on and on, and the other frantically trying to make meaning of their professor’s words by transcribing what they can onto paper or computer-screen. Half of the time, all the things we need (need?) to know are projected on a large screen behind the professor, causing us to care more about lecture notes than what our supposed enlighteners are saying. Is this the way to the True Enlightened Knowledge© that was promised to us at the start of our undergraduate degree?

My first year Canadian History professor once looked at us with sincere, pleading eyes and said that we were bound to learn more discussing important things with our peers at a pub over a few beers than we would ever learn in an overcrowded lecture hall, scribbling down disjointed ideas. Perhaps it is appropriate then that he first introduced me to Harold Adams Innis, the famous Canadian economic historian, thinker, and all-round academic bad-ass whom Innis College is named after. I’ve been reading a lot of Innis’ The Bias of Communication lately, one of Innis’ last works. Innis was a political economist for most of his career, the man who brought us the brilliantly simple Staple Thesis. At the end of his career, Minerva’s Owl took flight and he began to pioneer the field of media theory, which would later be taken up by Marshall McLuhan.

Much of The Bias of Communication is concerned with domination of the Written Tradition over the Oral Tradition in modern culture – particularly in Innis’ immediate surroundings: the University of Toronto. In context, Oral versus Written is not simply speaking versus writing. To Innis, the lecture as we know it today was part of the written tradition. Our crammed lecture halls foster little interaction or discussion – the professor is often the only person engaging in communication. She’s typically the only one speaking. In this sense, going to a lecture is analogous to reading a book – one person gives his or her ideas to many, for them to indirectly process and interpret. To Innis, the Oral Tradition is oral discourse between intelligent human beings and their students.

 Here at U of T, many of us never even speak directly to our professors. Our classes are increasingly more mechanized – with websites, slide shows, videos, textbooks, and drawings increasingly taking presidence over human thought and discussion. The English author Cyrus Redding wrote over 150 years ago, during a time when universities were considerably smaller and there were far smaller classes, yet he still lamented that education was apt to become “merely the art of reading and writing, without training minds to principle of any kind, and destitute of regard for virtue or even decency.” Innis is apt to agree – I took that quote from The Bias of Communication. 

 True discussion is rarely utilized at our school. Only a handful of courses have the often-mocked “participation mark,” and even then, it makes up a tiny percentage of the final grade. Yet what does this lead to? Half-empty classes and even fewer raised hands. Tired faces staring at a figure who is often staring at the wall behind the crowd. Tutorials – the oft-hated attempt to keep oral dialogue in universities – typically consist of ten sullen faces and five people who regularly speak. Yet some of the most respected figures in human history – such as Socrates – taught and learned orally. Discussion allows for thinking on one’s feet, it allows your ideas to be more fluid. You can be interrupted, you can rephrase, reformulate ideas and concepts. Occasionally, your mind can even be changed on a subject that you may have thought was rather clear-cut. It allows us to interact as human beings, think critically, and it sharpens our minds. Many of the people coming out of this university will sound brilliant on paper or website, but lack any ability to have intelligent oral discourse. Intelligent discussion won’t move past comments on our great Canadian weather.

 Yet this doesn’t have to be the case. Obviously the blog of one simple student will change very little, but next time you happen to have a question or a point in class, raise your voice. Don’t just state your idea – listen to those of others. Refine your ideas. Have intelligent discussion. Yet write as well. One tradition of communication doesn’t preclude another. The horribly structured essays we know of today aren’t the only way. To steal an idea from one of my professors, Rick Salutin, the Jewish Talmud is written in a way that it includes intelligent ideas and commentary from numerous Rabbis stretching back to classical times, each one building upon the ideas of the last.. Group work can be the same.  Maybe you can even get to know your class, even if it’s one of the five of you contributing to a discussion.

 With the current ever-growing size of the university system, it doesn’t seem logistically feasible to have face-to-face dialogue in the classroom as we have in the past. Even in Salutin’s course, where he attempts to run the class as a discussion, it is difficult to have a true oral discourse in a room with one hundred-odd people on two floors facing one direction and one man facing the other. Yet perhaps we don’t have to fully lament the end of the Oral Tradition at schools. If, somehow, smaller classes with greater back-and-forth, evolving discussion prevail and raise the percentage of our participation marks, maybe we can have a balanced system of higher education. True Enlightened Knowledge© might even find it’s way into our vision.

Little Sitcom, Big Aspirations

I made sure to watch the much-hyped Little Mosque on the Prairie tonight.  My initial predictions turned out to be true – it was an average single-camera sitcom that used mainly the jokes you would think of – white folks being terrified that Muslims are terrorists, ad nauseum – for what may turn out to be the stereotypical first episode of the rising Islamic comedy genre. It made me laugh a number of times, and has potential if they can think of original, funny plots involving characters that happen to be Muslim instead of constantly making jokes about Muslim stereotypes.

 The show is about as realistic as one would expect any sitcom to be. Situations are lighter than usual and it’s not fully realistic. The show doesn’t seem to take itself to seriously – as much as some would like it to. Its fairly positive outlook is refreshing from the gloom-and-doom non-Muslims are typically used to when regarding Islam. If I wanted a fully accurate depiction of the ups and downs of being a Muslim in “multicultural” Canada, I’d look for a drama on the subject. Little Mosque has the potential to be an excellent small-town Canadian comedy in the vein of Corner Gas or Made in Canada. Hopefully the cast will start to settle into their roles a bit more and develop a bit of chemistry. In particular, Amaar, the community’s new Imam (played by Zaib Shaikh) acts out his disbelief at the lack of big-city amenities such as cappuccino (so five years ago) in a way that made everyone in the room cringe just a little.

 By virtue of the fact that the show involves the hot-button topic of interfaith relations (though it handles it in a light manner), the concept has caught the attention of the media in both the United States and Europe. Most articles on the subject quote Kirstein Layfield, a CBC executive’s claim that broadcasting the series is a risk – though this could be a genius promotional move on her part. I’m sure there are some that are betting (or hoping) that the series will receive a Danish Cartoon-like backlash. Despite all the serious press, the show’s production company - with the name of Fundamentalist Films is anything but. They have created a show that’s fairly inoffensive to all but the most easily-insulted of all extremes.

Assuming this approach works out, there could be a market for new Canadian comedies on the CBC – a void that has been for the most part lacking since the departure of the gem that was Rick Mercer’s Made in Canada. Little Mosque style seems halfway between the cookie-cutter style of the American sitcom and the colonial influences and small-town feel of modern British television – appropriate for a Canadian show. While the media-created political implications of the show is sure to help Little Mosque’s ratings, “first and foremost it’s entertainment” says show creator Zarqa Nawaz. It’s sure to offend extreme people on all sides, but in the end it can just be a piece of good Canadian television – and why should we fight against that?

And we will all go down together.

I’m spending much of my holiday at home in the suburbs, taking care of my parent’s house while my family is out of town. Yesterday, I hopped into my car and drove over to the local everything-you-need-in-one-place mega supermarket to pick up a few things for dinner. I stepped out of my car, looking at the hundreds of cars around me and – even worse – at the even greater number of unfilled yellow boxes, which continued out of my sight. This kingdom of concrete was bordered by Dufferin Street on one side, where thousands of pairs of lights slowly pressed on in the hopes of making it home, honking as they went, everyone angry at the person in front of them and ignoring everyone else. I was surrounded by  the white-walled, cheaply-built, uniform outlet stores, chain restaurants and fast-food joints that seem to be nearly everywhere one can drive. It would have been a ten minute walk to get from the aforementioned grocery mega-mart to the computer store at the end of the strip.

It was at this point that I realized just how much of an – and there’s no better word for this – idiotic effect the invention of the automobile has had on our society. An incredible amount of space and money in our urban and suburban areas are devoted to the worship of our metal mobile gods. Driving costs individuals money and patience, and it’s the only time where one has to be so paranoid as to stay within his or her own tiny little space – for if you even brush anyone, it’s beyond a headache. The automobile carries so many hassles with it – parking tickets, speeding fines, accidents, traffic, and so on, that it’s a wonder that we continue to find it essential to our lives.

 Yet we do, and much of that is because we’ve built ourselves into it. Strip malls, suburban sprawl, the incredible distancing between every place deemed essential has caused us to believe that walking is simply too strenuous and too time-consuming. So we continue to expand our roads, build up our parking lots, and drive to the places we need to get to, ignoring the public transportation system that – at least in the GTA – won’t conveniently get us anywhere on time.

 Now, having grown up in the suburbs, I realize that I’m a hypocrite. I’ve had (read: “needed”) a car since the age of sixteen and since then have only worked jobs that I’m able to get to by my car. I try to ignore the car while living in the city, where I merrily walk everywhere I go, but I reluctantly tiptoe back to my car over the winter and summer breaks with my head down, hoping no one will notice. I long to be able to take a good job in the city and live a car-free lifestyle, but unfortunately that’s not viable right now.

 Yet our combustion-happy culture is starting to have consequences on the rest of the world. Climate change is a big issue in all the papers lately, and the current lack of snow is only bringing more people over to the way of thinking many scientists embraced years ago. There’s now a tiny sheet of snow on the ground, but that is sure to be gone soon. The recent collapse of an arctic ice shelf shows us that this crisis can and will go far beyond a mere increase in temperature. Scientists believe that this is the first of many arctic geological changes, and this is sure to affect us in both the short and long term – first getting in the way of ships, and then affecting the ocean itself.

Some argue that there’s nothing wrong with climate change, that it’s a natural process that has happened in the past and will continue to happen in the future. However, since 1985 it’s been a certified fact that we are definitely speeding up the process. Regardless, if climate change is causing us to head towards another ice age, naturally or not, it’s not exactly something to look forward to. Warm temperatures now may mean freezing later. The last times we delved into a drastically cooler climate, it had near-biblical consequences, causing darkness, wreaking havoc with our crops, and may have caused great plagues.

 So why not change our habits? Why continue to drive for twenty minutes in traffic to pick up some milk when we can structure our cities and suburban areas so that the local market is in walking distance. The only real argument in an unwillingness to spend the extra money and the fact that many people in high places have a lot to loose from us ending our dependency on cars, concrete, oil, and exhaust. But if the impossible were to happen, we’d suddenly have hundreds of kilometers of yellow lines and concrete that can become public space – a place for trees, concerts, and good times without the hassles of finding a spot closest to the entrance of the build so that you don’t have to walk an extra twenty feet. A bit more walking and a bit less driving might even lead to a decrease in this country’s average weight – solving another media-declared crisis facing us. Public motorized transportation could get us around town, with buses, plains, and trains for inter-city travel.

 Of course, this is all a fantasy. It’s going to take a massively terrible event for us to change so much. People enjoy convenience – I’ll fully admit that I do. This isn’t quite an initiative that one person can take, but mayhaps the next time you feel like getting some milk, you can take a nice walk,  burn off some calories and maybe say hello to someone else walking down the street instead of completely ignoring them and trying to make sure you make no contact with your fellow man whatsoever. There’s barely even any snow outside to get in your way.