Zen and the Motorcycle

So, I started reading Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance today.

It is an interesting so far and of impact to me because of the whole father-son relationship.  I have been spending a lot of time in the last few weeks being the primary caregiver to my son and we are certainly developing a certain rhythm to our days.

Anyhow, want I found interesting was Pirsig's use of the term Chautauqua, which looking on the interwebs was an adult education movement founded in the United States and popular during the turn of the century (the previous one).  The ones Pirsig refers to seem to be of a travelling variety, going from town to town, dispensing their knowledge.  And this is the sort that Pirsig emulates with his attempts to reconstruct his old personality of Phaedrus and in his teachings on different subjects.

I will continue to work through the book and see where it takes me but this Chautauqua idea is interesting and can be put down as the new thing I learned today.

World Cafe

In a couple programs I've participated a World Cafe style discussion was implemented.  The Cafe is described on Wikipedia as "a structured conversational process in which groups of people discuss a topic at several tables, with individuals switching tables periodically."

The general principle is to be able to discuss a variety of topics without having all involved talking about one topic at a time which can be cumbersome as not everyone in a very large group would be able to fully participate.  By breaking down into smaller groups and breaking down the main topic into smaller portions, everyone gets an opportunity to have a voice all the topics and gain a cross sectional view of the topics being discussed.

The World Cafe was originated by Juanita Brown and David Isaacs, a practitioner's manual exists to help explain the process further.

In the cafe's I've participated, the process was a bit rushed as time was a factor but I can see the value of being able to work in small groups but also being able to move from topic to topic.  But these were just demonstrations on how to apply the cafe concept rather than full implementation of the cafe to generate dialogue on a larger issue.

I'd be interested in hearing from anyone that has had more experience with this form of discussion in order to understand its full capability.

The Great Disruption

So, was flipping through The Great Disruption by Francis Fukuyama and came across a passage that implicates in some ways explains that horrors such as the Holocaust are not so difficult to dissect:

Ordinary morality is compatible with - indeed, is the precondition for - shocking immorality at higher levels of social organization.  A disorganized, individualistic rabble cannot pull off a systematic genocide like the Soviet killing of the kulaks during collectivization in the 1930s.  The Southern soldiers of the Confederacy who died to preserve slavery, or the Germans who carried out the Holocaust, often displayed virtues of integrity, courage and loyalty toward their own communities.  The Germans, in particular, are known as sticklers for order, unwilling to cross the street against a red light even as they marched prisoners off to concentration camps.  But the kind of ordinary morality that makes an individual not want to disobey a traffic law contributes, at a higher level of community, to the most monstrous crimes.  Our desire to be liked and esteemed and to conform leads individuals to carry out the most brutal orders when caught in an evil political system.  Morality at the level of humanity as a whole dictates that we violate deeply felt norms of loyalty and reciprocity to our particular group.  The great moral conflicts of our time have arisen not over the absence of ordinary morality, but rather over the tendency of human communities to define themselves narrowly on the basis of race, religion, ethnicity, or some other arbitrary characteristic, and to fight it out with other, differently defined communities.

I'm no expert on morality but it was interesting that there are different levels of it depending on the scale one is considering.

More from the Ingenuity Gap

In commenting on the haze that is experienced all over the world, Thomas Homer Dixon observes:

Why am I so concerned about haze?  To me, it signifies something more general than just pollution or atmospheric processes.  As haze cuts us off from vivid skies and landscapes, it attenuates our ties to the wider, external reality in which we are embedded.  It is just one of the many ways we are constructing - inside that wider reality - an artificial and self referential world.

Increasingly, only the collective human ego - what I call "the Big I" - bounds and defines this constructed world.  We subordinate, alter and reinvent almost everything around us according to our own interests, from the mounts of Vancouver Island to the Isle of Dogs and the very sky overhead.  Seduced by our extraordinary technological prowess, many of us come to believe that external reality - the reality outside our constructed world - is unimportant and needs little attention because, if we ever have to, we can manage any problem that might arise there.  And, in any case, as the pace of our lives accelerates, we have less time to reflect on these broader circumstances.  All these trends can push us into narcissism, as they weaken our sense of awe at the universe beyond our human ego; and what is perhaps more important, they also weaken our receptivity to critical signals from the external reality that might awaken us to our deep ignorance of the potential consequences of our actions, and warn us against hubris.  Without this awareness we have a less accurate understanding of how much and what types of ingenuity we will need to meet the future's challenges.

I think part of why this is important to me revolves around a point of contention I have with someone in know about community gardens.  He is perturbed at the fact that developers that lease land to community gardens do not have to pay property taxes for that land.  He argues that community gardens won't feed the city anyways and the property taxes would buy more food.  From my perspective, he fails to see that eating the food is often a side benefit of a community garden.  Community gardens allow individuals to connect with what Dixon terms the external reality.  The benefits of community gardens are well documented and it goes beyond the food.  But I'll leave it at that because food issues are dealt quite well by others.

What the library had to offer this week.

Never seem to be able to leave the library without a book, so this week's selection includes:

Salman Khan - The One World School House, Education Reimagined

Founder of the Khan Academy that features online learning in order to allow anyone to access educational material and to free teachers from their traditional roles as lecturers.
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Mark Dery - I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts

This is a collection of what the author calls drive-by essays.  It caught my eye because the foreword was written by Bruce Sterling.
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David Wann - Simple Prosperity, Finding Real Wealth in a Sustainable Lifestyle

Always looking out for books on sustainability just to get a feel for where the field is going.  Wann is also the author of The New Normal: An Agenda for Responsible Living, which is a book I'll have to check for.



That's it for this week.

Wal Mart Reinvigorated

Wal Mart is undergoing a transformation to being more green, but can a tiger change its spots?  Well, if it doesn't want to suffer the fate of the tiger, Wal Mart will need to change.

Edward Humes covers some of this transformation in his book Force of Nature, The Unlikely Story of Wal Mart's Green Revolution.

From the introduction:

Wal Mart is proposing to go public with product information that has always been kept secret or that hasn't existed at all.  Few really know where the stuff inside their toothpaste tubes or frying pans or hard drives comes from or how they are made - at least until some sort of contamination or sweatshop scandal erupts, long after the harm to the public and the bottom line is done.  So many things on the shelf and in the home are black holes, from what happens to the plastic tops on your shampoo bottles (nothing - most are nonrecyclable) to the key ingredients in leading brands of perfume, mentioned only as trade-secret "fragrance" on labels (but containing hormone disrupters, allergens, asthma triggers, and chemicals linked to headaches, infertility and cancer.) Because finding this out requires extensive investigation, few people notice the lack of truly useful information about products filling their homes.  And this blindness is not just on the consumer end of the business. Not even the companies that make these things like to trace the origins of the parts and chemicals and raw materials they use - they fear the information and just how bad it would reveal so many products and companies to be. And when they do have it, they hide it.

Not this isn't for some benevolent purpose - Wal Mart understands that to stay competitive and relevant, an evolution of business practice must occur and that by embracing sustainability, Wal Mart can be at the front of the pack.

And if you don't like Wal Mart, don't shop there.

Another 100 words, Julian Agyeman

Flipping through the 100 Words book, the blurb by Julian Agyeman caught my attention:

Sustainable development means using our unlimited mental resources, not our limited natural resources. If this is true, as I believe it to be, then we need to develop constructive ways to unleash these phenomenal mental resources, and quickly. Currently, we waste human potential as wantonly and comprehensively as we lay waste to our environmental potential, and this is no surprise, as both actions are directly related.  We need to mobilize our efforts toward developing the potential of all humans in order to live productively in a convivial manner within environmental limits. Failure to do so will end our ability to approach anything near the just and sustainable futures we are capable of.

 This caught my eye as I'm still working my way through the Ingenuity Gap and this notion of unleashing mental resources for me links to the idea of being able to harness humanity's ingenuity to meet the tremendous environmental and social challenges we face.

Julian Agyeman seems to be a fascinating individual and this will probably send me off on another tangent some day - his blog can be found here.

Write something, anything

So, in the 100 Words book, the first snippet is by Kathleen Adams - the founder of the Center for Journal Therapy.

I have kept a journal, on and off for nearly twenty years now.  Actually sitting down and writing down my thoughts and observations can be therapeutic and it is interesting to see that someone has made a living of it.  Now, keeping a journal isn't for everyone but I would recommend it as it only takes five to ten minutes for an entry.  Even if you don't think you don't have anything write, there are tricks to unblock the mind that I have found that work for me.  Interestingly, these are part of the list of things that Adams suggests on her website:

She has a list of fourteen writing techniques which, if you decide to start, make things definitely easier:

1. Sentence Stem. A sentence-completion process. Fill in the blank with a word or phrase. May be very universal (Right now I feel———-) or highly customized to an individual’s immediate question, problem or interest.

2. Five-Minute Sprint. A timed writing process designed to bring focus and intensity in short bursts. Excellent for those who are resistant or aversive to journal writing, or who are uncertain about how to start, or who state they do not have time to write journals.

3. Inventory. An assessment of life balance in major areas of living (health, family, home, work, spiritual/religious, emotional well-being, etc.) Gives a quick picture of which life areas might need attention.

4. Structured Write. A series of Sentence Stems grouped and sequenced to reveal consistently deepening layers of information and awareness.

5. Clustering. Visual free-association from a central word or phrase. Lines and circles connect key thoughts and associations to the central core. Work quickly to maximize results. A brief writing to synthesize findings may follow.

6. Lists of 100. A list of 100 items, many of which will probably be repetitions, on a predetermined theme or topic. Repetition is an important part of the process. Topics can be about any current issue (for example: 100 Things I’m Sad About; 100 Things I Need or Want to Do; 100 Places I Would Like to See). At the end of the list, group the responses into themes and synthesize the information.

7. Alphapoem. Write the alphabet, A-Z, or any collection of letters, vertically down the side of a page. Then write a poem in which each successive line begins with the next letter. Excellent for groups as it promotes a high level of participation and sharing. Adolescents and reluctant writers respond well.

8. Captured Moments. Vignettes capturing the sensations of a particularly meaningful or emotional experience. Written from the senses with strong descriptors. Captured Moments of beauty, joy, blessing, calm can add balance, hope and perspective to a challenging time.

9. Unsent Letters. A metaphoric communication to another that is written with the specific intention that it will not be shared.

10. Character Sketch. A written portrait of another person or of an aspect of the self. Can also be written about emotions by personifying an emotion and giving it a characterization – an appearance, a style of dress, a personality and temperament.

11. Dialogue. A metaphoric conversation written in two voices. Anyone or anything is an appropriate dialogue partner. There is no constriction by time, space, physical reality or literal voice.

12. Perspectives. An alteration in point of view that provides a different perspective on an event or situation.

13. Springboard. A free-write with a prompt. Starting a free-write with the smallest structure of a question, thought or topic can focus and frame the writing session.

14. Free Writing. Unboundaried, unstructured, unpaced narrative writing. Useful for creative flow or spontaneous writing sessions. Can be structured by adding a time limit or page limit.

I know in a world where we feel that we don't have time to deal with Facebook, Twitter, Blogging and other online activities it seems that keeping a journal is superfluous.  However, I have a belief in the physical, the personal, and the privacy of a journal.  In my history courses, there is constant reference to reading the private papers of Presidents and journals of other historical figures that fascinates me.  I wonder if people don't continue to keep journals or personal records if historians of the future will find it more difficult to unravel the happenings of the past.  Social media is useful but often not candid and cannot contain national secrets.

So, grab a book and start writing.  You'll find that you might actually like it.

What the world needs now isn't another iThing

It seems that every time that I go the library to return some books, I end up leaving with more than I came.

Anyhow, picked up a few, including a compilation of short essays called 100 Words, edited by William Murtha, founder of the Global Visionaries Project.

The book had a short quote on "What the World Needs Now" by Elizabeth Watson:

ONE THING the world needs now is people who can tolerate ambiguity, people who are challenged, not threatened by the state of the world. I want to suggest a few things such maturity might require.

First, do not seek security in things, nor yet in status. The care of possessions, and position, is time- consuming and energy-consuming, and they can be taken from you by a thief in the night, by a fire in the night, by a change in political fortunes, by any numbers of disasters. Whatever security you have lies in yourself.

Henceforth I ask not good fortune. I myself am good fortune.

If you understand yourself, both your strengths and limitations, If you like the person you are, if you acquire coping skills through experience, if you are not too encumbered, and if you know- inwardly- that disaster cannot ultimately overcome you, then you have gone a long way to maturity. You will be part of the solution, not part of the problem.

Second, don't rest In intellectual security, for your philosophy and the knowledge on which it rests are likely to become obsolete. Wisdom is not amassing facts....

Third, the only real security in the end is the love we have given and the love we have received. All else can be taken from us. So pour out your love and friendship and do not hoard it ... And don't delay or hesitate In standing up to be counted with the oppressed.

Finally, cultivate the light touch. Develop a sense of humor. Learn to light up a room with joy when you enter. Accept the challenge of our chaotic and dangerous word with a sense of adventure, of gratitude that our time is now.

Hopefully the book has further spots of inspiration that can push me closer to taking real action.  I'm trying and always have it in the back of mind but need pushes every so often to get it to the front of my mind.

Decluttering my space and my head

Well, I wrote the final exam for my history course on international relations in the twentieth century last night.  It feels good to get that over with as it was a online correspondence course that had started in January.  But now I have more credits in the bank on my longish term goal of acquiring my arts degree.  Some of the facts will fade but many will stick in my head.  It allowed me to keep my writing skills honed with a couple essays notched on my belt.

However, the tidying up of the papers read and materials used begins today.  Need to return some library books and recycle some of the articles that I printed.

But this brings me to how I am working on decluttering my home.  It is a slow process and sometimes daunting when you walk into a room and wonder where to start.  For me, I just start and work on what I have termed the principle of five.  Get rid of five things or work for five minutes.  By compartmentalizing the job into fives, I find that one makes progress without feeling overwhelmed.  And it works, boxes are being unpacked and things are looking better.

TTFN

Ryding A Wave

Was listening to the radio while driving to Playland this afternoon and What I Wouldn't Do by Serena Ryder came on.  Had a debate with my son as to who who the performer was, he said it was Selena Gomez but I found the voice too deep for Gomez and figured she doesn't sing as well as Ryder.

Anyhow, have been watching/listening to some youtube content of Ryder and like what I hear, especially the one with her performing at the Luminato Festival in Toronto.

 Back to studying now...

Buccaneer Scholar

My wife had borrowed a book called Secrets of a Buccaneer Scholar by James Marcus Bach so I started flipping through it and was intrigued by his statement that:

School is temporary.  Education is not.  If you want to prosper in life: find something that fascinates you and jump all over it.  Don't wait for someone to teach you; your enthusiasm will attract teachers to you.  Don't worry about diplomas or degrees; just get so good that no one can ignore you.

I have some hesitation to fully accept this but in general I agree that everyone should work on learning through their whole life and that if you don't know something then find the resources necessary to learn about it.


As a homeschooler I was more interested in his later statement:

I don't seek the destruction of schools.  I am out to dismantle something else: the popular belief that school is the only route to a great education, and that the best students are those who passively accept the education their schools offer.

There are so many different learning styles and teaching styles that it is crazy to think that a single approach that is used by so many schools is going to work.  Hammering away at multiplication tables and rote memorization might help you memorize something but is it learning?  I think Bach's approach has value but I think he falls into the same trap that he criticizes in that just because it worked for him doesn't mean it will work for everyone.  He does admit this but he comes across as beating his chest a little to strongly for my liking.

Down by the river

Took a walk with my son along the Brunette river this afternoon on my way to mom's.  It was interesting to hear the flow of the water as it rained earlier in the morning and the storm drains were active.  This was special because it has not really rained much in Vancouver in the last six weeks.

We then crossed the road to get to the Caribou dam at the east end of Burnaby lake. It is one those hidden and little known spots in the city that controls the level of water in the lake. Always neat to see the difference in the water levels on the two aides of the dam - probably approaching two meters. 

Just pass the dam we saw a heron that was just enjoying the sun along with mallard and her four ducklings. 

It was a nice walk and calming to watch the animals in their natural setting. I feel quite fortunate to live in a part of the world where one can witness a variety of animals within the city including eagles and coyotes. And on some days we even have deer and bears wandering the streets. 

And the great thing is my son enjoys these excursions and is always willing to head out for a walk. 

Your plans for the future?

I once took a continuing studies course on existentialism in which one of the instructor's objectives was for each student to write down their five year plan.  He had a whole scheme of things - career, family, education - that were to be covered.

I constructed one at the time but it has long past expired and am in the process of starting anew which works well with the recent changes in my life including resigning what was a secure but unrewarding position.  I am also working on decluttering our house as we are slowly unpacking things after our extended renovations and multiple moves over the last year.

Anyhow, I will work on my short term and long term life plan in order to give some sense of order to my life.  This might not be for everyone but I believe that it would work for most and would encourage you to write one.

A quick search brought up this template by Joanna Optimax

What I am reading today (August 5, 2013)

Just finished reading The Beauty of Humanity Movement by Camilla Gibb, a book based in Vietnam.  The jacket indicated it was a story of lost love but that took a while to unravel itself.  I picked up by chance as I was working on my history essay on the Vietnam war so some of the people and places mentioned actually made sense to me which is not the usual thing.

Of the things I've picked up at the library recently are:

Thomas Homer-Dixon, The Ingenuity Gap
Peter Walsh, Lighten Up
Edward Humes, Force of Nature, The Unlikely Story of Wal Mart's Green Revolution

Comments to come as I work through these books.

Building momentum just takes a tiny push

Began studying for my history course on international relations in the twentieth century and have discovered the power of collaboration.  The instructor has provided a long list of over two hundred terms that will be referred to in the exam and it seemed rather daunting to attack that all by myself.  So, I threw out an email to the rest of the class to see if anyone was willing to break down the list and we just do a small portion each.  Figured it was worth a shot, even if I just one or two responses.  Well it worked out and we have seven of us tackling the list.  I'm beginning to learn that with a little push, people are willing to help.  I wouldn't call myself a leader, I just like to get things done and if I can make the task easier for everyone that's great.

Change will happen, those best prepared for change will prosper.

Why I stopped playing Magic and how I learned to love the bomb.

My son has recently taken up playing magic the gathering because some of his friends go to a "card club" on the weekend.

So, I dug out my twenty year old cards which apparently most are out of print or banned from regular play and tried to construct a deck for him but realized that it wouldn't work.  The game has devolved into a mini-max style of game where decks are loaded up with the lowest cost, highest power cards.  There is no imagination in deck creation because it is all about the win and not actually gathering together to have a good time.

This is why I got out many moons ago because I couldn't convince others to just put together a loosely organized multi-color deck with some rare cards in it and play multi-player games to see how things develop.  Alas, I was ahead of my time with the creation of the Commander rules around the turn of the century.  I guess my only hope is to just stay out of things or convince my son's friends to build commander decks and have multi-player games.

But back to the whole not having fun thing, I am not surprised about the recent Hockey Canada report indicating many children are not participating in hockey at the grassroots because kids aren't having fun.  The sport has morphed into a hyperexpensive machine designed to milk parents of their hard earned money on the narrow chance that their kid will make it big, or at least get a college scholarship.  Fun isn't really part of the equation, or enough of the equation for kids under ten.

I would recommend a book by Ken Campbell, Selling the Dream as it does a much better job reviewing the minor hockey machine than I can here.

My son now plays lacrosse and certainly enjoys it.  I like it because the children are tiered quite clearly and play at a level commensurate with their experience.  As they develop, they can move up and often are called up to play with the next level team for a game or two.  The game is still competitive with respect to playing game against other teams but a much better sense of equality within the team itself.  And even if your child plays hockey, I think lacrosse as an off season sport provides valuable hand-eye coordination and fitness training but without the monotony of playing hockey twelve months a year.

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See this article from the Globe and Mail for more on the hockey issue

What's the Buzz?

I subscribe to the David Suzuki Foundation's "science matters" newsletter and here is an excerpt from today's article on bees. Found it noteworthy as we often forget that much of what we eat needs these important insects but that they have been slowly disappearing and it threatens food production at a time when we need to be finding better ways to ensure we can meet this basic need.


Bees are endlessly intriguing, and incredibly useful to us — and not just for honey and wax. If bees disappeared, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to grow much of what we eat. Bees pollinate crops ranging from apples to zucchini. Blueberries and almonds are almost entirely dependent on them. Some experts say they're responsible for one of every three bites of food we eat. The economic value of pollination services from honeybees alone is estimated at $14 billion in the U.S. and hundreds of millions in Canada.

For the full article, go to the Blogs section of the Foundation's website.

Knowledge for All - Open Course Ware

Was brought up in discussion recently that UBC has begun to offer free courseware to the public, representing materials that are being taught in an institution of higher learning.  I remember a few years back looking at the MIT OpenCourseWare project which I toured again today.  It has definitely expanded and increased available subjects.

So, like usual, I went to see what my local library systems have on the topic and came a cross a book by Taylor Walsh. Unlocking the Gates: How and Why Leading Universities Are Opening Up Access to Their Courses (Princeton University Press, 2011).

I brought to my attention earlier attempts at sharing courseware that failed, primarily due to being a fee service for materials that did not offer university credit.  It also mentioned other successful efforts including Carnegie Mellon's Open Learning Initiative, Open Yale Courses, webcast.berkley and India's National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning.

Why would a university give away their course material for free?  Why wouldn't it I would respond.  I say so because students already share information with each other overtly and covertly in the form of exam questions.  And undoubtedly some student is making public the lecture notes from courses.  Also, in the opinion of Charles Vest, the president of MIT when OpenCourseWare was released, he deemed that it was a direct extension of MIT's basic educational mission.

So, go check out one of these offerings and learn something new.