Change Doesn't Just Happen Over-night...

Change doesn't just happen overnight, it happens both over-night and during the day. Change happens whenever people live it, not when we observe it.

The following is a piece I wrote for one of my classes this semester that attempts to capture this sentiment. It includes both a spoken word piece and a short explanation of the piece. Hope you enjoy!

Anyone who has been to an Occupy general assembly knows the true rate of change – slower than turtle slow. Yet, when one removes themselves from the frustration of this time consuming process, they are struck by the essence of the moment. In front of the individual is a group of people who are more than willing to suffer through the monotonous motions of consensus while actively participating in a demonstration of inspirational social change. Here, it is the moment that is of utmost importance, for it is in this moment that change occurs. A conversation is started that had been previously hushed, someone is made aware of an important issue, and individuals and groups are transformed into something new. Even if the process appears to be slow and arduous, change is happening and should not just be criticized (although it is important to be critical). Instead, it should be celebrated and affirmed.

I wrote this particular piece after a conversation with my roommate about the Idle No More movement. Specifically, we were discussing the perceived fractured and ambiguous nature of Idle No More. People are often quick to criticize the movement while denying it any credibility because members within the movement often disagree with each other. Furthermore, people complain that the movement’s goals are unclear and that their cause would be strengthened with a list of specific demands. Similar arguments have been made about other recent movements such as the Occupy movement. However, I believe that these movements represent a new kind of social movement. These movements are comprised of decentralized individuals who are committed to the idea of social change. Although these individuals may disagree with one another at times, they are all dedicated to seeing the end of oppression, domination, and suppression. These people refuse to wait for change to happen and instead live their lives with the idea that change is happening through them.

Poetry and spoken word are powerful tools for social movements and activism. Sarah Browning writes, “Poetry and other art forms can combat despair, inspire those working in the trenches of social change movements, humanize those we are taught to fear, and build bridges across our differences, telling our human stories” (see below for citation). In his lecture on poetry and activism given on January 22, 2013 to a SJS 200 class, Bud Hall talked about the seemingly magical moment when poetry is read aloud, allowing a transference of ideas from one to another in a way that often mystifies and astounds us. Poetry and spoken word go beyond communicating simple concepts, having the ability to communicate emotion and feeling. For example, Bud Hall read aloud a poem that addressed the criticism of Occupy’s lack of concrete demands. The poem itself listed many varying demands that were both personal to the author and universal to the movement. Instead of presenting a clear list of demands however, the poem was able to communicate the complexity of the movement while reasserting its credibility. I hope that my piece might serve a similar role for social movements such as Occupy and Idle No More. I hope to demonstrate these movements’ complexity and often-contradictory nature while reestablishing faith and hope in the change they bring.

Batman : Truth and Lies

I recently watched the new Batman movie and the final instalment in Christopher Nolan's trilogy. To be fair I was reasonably entertained through the 164 minutes... However, the more I have thought about the movie and the trilogy the more disappointed I am. First of all, I was not expecting the fairy tale ending that the final instalment delivers. Each storyline wraps up neatly and everyone is happy even the villain... While this feel good ending felt good as I watched it, I left the the theatre with a bad aftertaste in my mouth -very much like Inception where you want to believe something is real but you just don't quite buy it....

Lets just check in with everyone:

Batman - saves the day but dies.
Bruce Wayne - saved the day, got the girl, immortalized Batman and both dies and doesn't die...
Commissioner Gordon - also saved the day.
Selina Kyle - saves Batman, wipes her record, vacations with Bruce.
Alfred - Has a glass of sherry and sees Bruce has found a "life"

Miranda Tate- Dies. But dies believing she succeeded in destroying Gotham.
Bane - Dies. Ok not quite everyone is happy.

Let me recap the basic plot of the trilogy:

Batman Begins:
"Its what you do that defines you."
"as a symbol I can be incorruptible. I can be everlasting"

• Bruce Wayne's parents are killed. 
• Bruce wants vengeance.
• Rachel is disgusted.
• Bruce leaves Gotham.
• Bruce in trained by the League of Shadows.
• The League of Shadows wants to destroy Gotham. 
• Bruce burns the League temple and tries/thinks he has killed Ra's al Ghul. 
• Bruce returns to Gotham.
• Bruce becomes Batman with the help of Lucius Fox.
• Batman saves Rachel.
• Batman thwarts a plot to infect Gotham's water supply.

• Ra's al Ghul shows up with a plan to vaporize Gotham's water.
• The League of Shadows burns down Wayne Manor.
• Batman saves Rachel. 
• Batman defeats Ra's el Ghul.
• Batman saves the city.
• Batman is a hero.
• Bruce loses Rachel. 

The Dark Knight:
"You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain"
"Madness... is like gravity"
"Nobody panics when things go according to plan. Even when the plan is horrifying."
"Sometimes the truth isn't good enough."

• Gotham gets tough on organized crime. 
• Joker offers to kill Batman. 
• Joker begins a terror campaign to discover Batman's identity.
• Harvey Dent claims to be Batman.
• Harvey and Rachel are kidnapped. 
• Batman accidentally rescues Harvey and Rachel dies. 
• Harvey becomes Two Face. 
• Gotham Citizens refuse to kill each other to save themselves.
• Batman defeats Joker.
• Batman defeats Two Face.
• Batman is blamed for Harvey's death.
• Rachel was engaged to Harvey. 

The Dark Knight Rises:
"Maybe its time we stopped avoiding the truth and let it have its day."
"Hope is really the key to torture"
"The fear will find you"

• Bruce/Batman are in hiding/isolation.
• Bane has taken over the League of Shadow and is doing construction under the city.
• Bruce bankrupted and loses control of Wayne enterprises.
• Bruce gives Wayne Enterprises to Miranda Tate.
• Bruce has sex with Miranda. 
• Selina Kyle leads Batman to Bane/gives Batman to Bane.
• Bane defeats Batman breaking his back.
• Batman/Bruce imprisoned.
• Bane takes over Gotham.
• Batman/Bruce escapes. 
• Batman is stabbed by Miranda Tate, Ra's el Ghul's daughter. 
• Selina saves Batman and kills Bane.
• Miranda Tate is killed in car crash. 
• Batman saves Gotham by flying the reactor out into the bay but dies.
• Bruce is 'buried'.
• Alfred sees Bruce and Selina in Italy. 

One of the things that was quite enjoyable in the first two movies was Christopher Nolan's commitment to realism/plausibility. This seemed to drop off significantly in the last movie, especially in the whole prison sequence. It also, I think, shows up in the plot. While in the first two movies when Bruce "wins" there is always a cost, a personal and painful cost, that calls Batman into question. However, in the final movie the cost of victory is "exile," the death of "Batman," the fake death of Bruce, (which also doesn't make sense/wasn't necessary, since it was Batman and not Bruce that died) BUT the whole movie has been spent setting up this move to be viewed positively. To end the tale of vigilante justice so cleanly is both disappointing and inconsistent to the trilogy. The real death of Bruce/Batman would have been far preferable and consistent. Perhaps Nolan was pressured by the studio???

In the first two films I was alway able to suspend my disbelief regarding Gotham. Perhaps someone could clarify this for me but I always imagined Gotham as kind of an "every city" and that while perhaps implicitly was located in the USA that it was never explicitly located in the USA. Anyway, that may be my mistake being not super familiar with the comics. Either way, I found saturation of America and New York to be overwhelming. Perhaps because I have been to New York since the second film came out I was more aware as I was watching this one... But I think that Nolan was significantly more brazen/patriotic in his use of iconic daytime New York shots. I found this to be distracting both visually and contextually. 

One of the interesting themes that is explored in the trilogy is order vs chaos. The Joker in the second film describes himself as an agent of chaos. The police and politicians like Harvey Dent of course represent order. Batman/Bruce Wayne is and interesting and complicated combination, scarred by violence, trained by the League of Shadows, Batman beats chaos at its own game/defends order with the power of chaos, all the while with evangelical self righteousness regarding his refusal to use guns. One of the questions in the midst of these struggles is the nature of humanity. Especially in the second film the Joker is continually placing Gotham's citizens on trial. Will they make the moral decision or will they destroy each other to save themselves? Is life sacred? What is most fascinating and terrifying in the second film is, as pointed out by Slajov Zizek, that the conclusion suggests that lies are required to maintain order and for the good of society. 

This was something I had on my mind as I watched Dark Knight Rises and was initially encouraged to see the lie, while perhaps to a certain degree effective was eating away at Gordon, had destroyed Bruce, and failed to created any lasting peace or order. Alfred's words, "Maybe its time we stopped avoiding the truth and let it have its day," were particularly poignant. Officer Blake's rebuke of commissioner Gordon was initially also a strong statement. However, any reconsidering or successful undermining of the idea of the necessary lie was demolished by the ending of the movie. The "non-working" autopilot which required the noble sacrifice and would mean that Bruce would have given everything to Gotham, turned out to be a fiction, which Bruce keeps a secret and in the most spectacular crisis imaginable, immanent nuclear explosion... he still keeps it a secret and then unfolds an impressively complex fake my own death plot, which has Alfred in tears. So regardless of how believable this sequence is (its not), it maintains the premise put forward by the second film that society needs a lie it can believe in for its own good. In the second film this was Harvey Dent in the final film it becomes Batman, as we see statue unveiled. 

I also found myself more aware of Bruce's entanglement with the American military industrial complex. Wayne enterprises is built on military development and contracts. So while Bruce can get all upset about organized crime, Bane's reply to his breaking into the stock exchange and being told their was no money for him to take, "Then what are all you people doing here," was a great piece of critique. There was very clearly a rich vs. poor dynamic that was played out in the last film. Selina Kyle's character is interesting in that she repeatedly switches sides and indicates that her criminal activity is morally superior to the games played by super rich and corporations. All this put together makes it difficult for me see Bruce as a moral human being rather than an angry, super rich, defender of the status quo and thus his own fortune and privilege. The capitalist narrative of trickle down economic appears to be explicitly perpetuated in the film as Fox explains the boys home no longer receives support since Wayne Enterprises supports it out of profit and is no long turning one. The donation of Wayne Manor to be used as a boys home for orphans, further affirms the story's encouragement of the viewer to trust in our benevolent super rich overlords, who while getting rich by the blood of our children at war will ensure that orphans have homes so that we can raise up another generation to fight wars and thus make more money...

Others have commented on similar themes and echoes of the Occupy Movement, which, if accurate, is clearly vilified in this film as either actually anarcho-terrorists bent on total destruction or at least secretly motivated and organized by atomic levels of intended destruction. The message is clear: do not oppose the current system or in so doing you will aide terrorists and annihilate yourselves and everyone else. While I suppose I am not surprised to find these perspectives in the film, they remain, however, ultimately disappointing.

Batman presents us with our own world and we should be horrified. A world in which corruption is rampant, and the system has failed. However, we are told that "the system/city" is above all else to be defended, despite its massive flaws. The status quo must be maintained by whatever violence is necessary and whatever lies are necessary because there are only two options "the system/city" or "'total destruction" and we "must" choose life and submit to authority and wealth, which will maintain order... Obviously, I disagree with this and find its presentation disturbing.

Anyway, those are some of my thoughts. How about everyone else? Did you like it? Am I being overly sensitive? Are there other nuances I am missing? 

Changing your hair...

Why do people change their hair? How do I decide to trim or shave my beard? Is it random? or is it expressive? or is it practical?


I have had numerous haircuts, styles, beard lengths, types of beards etc. If anything the rate of significant change has increased. It has been rare for me to have particular look and maintain that image for longer than 6 months and certainly not longer than a year. My wife, similarly, has started to fluctuate hair colour with mood and season. While certainly for myself my lack of hair maintenance, is related to my distaste for maintenance of all kinds. Therefore, I usually have a beard due to disinterest in shaving rather than my love of beard. However, keeping that in mind it is also true that I rarely change "because it was time," although this will often be how I will express it if people ask why... "because it was time" is the equivalent of saying, "you are human you know that sometimes things need to happen and I may or may not be sure of why and even if I am, I am not willing to share specific reasons." I have noted in myself and others a tendency to cut, colour or in some fashion change their hair as a way to exert control over there own life. Often we are battered about by circumstance and situations, either in reality or perception, beyond our control... addressing our hair can serve a number of functions in these circumstances 1) It is a way to exert control and feel power 2) It is a way to externalize or incarnate inner feelings and life in a variety of ways...either parallel or contradictory.

I once shaved off my beard and shared a devotional Bible reading about hiding. While, I would argue primarily I am too disinterested to shave, there are other elements of both hiding and also the assertion of age and with it power that are also wrapped up in my beard. Sometimes one or both of these aspects becomes psycologically problematic and I have to shave off my beard. In another example, I cut off my spectacular shampoo commercial worthy long hair last semester (as can be seen on the About Us page). (The picture is from the summer, let me assure you that it only got better and I was literally a lion among men). Anyway, I cut it off, by myself, the day after Occupy Wall Street got raided and kicked out of Zucotti park; it was a form of lament.

I also use hair cut and beard adjustment as a way of marking time. I will often shave either at the beginning or end of semester, paper, project or some other sort of season.

I had dreadlocks for a year, which effectively expressed my desire to surf and generally be a hippie. That was a good year: I got out surfing a lot and also bought a 1971 VW bus. I do not believe I have been surfing since I cut off my dreadlocks... Which I did after one day of out door manual labour, pulling up sod... Clearly I sold out to the man.

So, how does your hair express who you are? what you want? what has happened or is happening? Do you make these changes with intention or reflexively?

I believe that this is very much a modern phenomena... I have nothing in particular to support that... Do you agree or disagree? What are the underlying social causes for this phenomena?

Is our hair most often an outward expression of inner reality or is it equally common that our hair creates and participates in our inner reality?

Selling Your Birthright

I have been watching #OccupyWallStreet be evicted and their camp destroyed. I feel the hope that this camp represented for me drain from my body. I remember the fear and discomfort I felt as we tried navigate New York under lock down on New Years last year. The Occupy movement has inhabited insistently the limits of freedom in our society and as they are evicted and their camp and property destroyed and so with it the illusion of freedom we thought we had, we thought we believed in, we thought was at the core of our identity. It turns out inconvenient freedom has been sold perhaps for as little as a bowl of soup. The NYPD has sold out freedom for a paycheque. I have been increasingly frustrated over the past few week to the point of miserable apathy at the quickness that Vancouver also has quickly and easily sold our birthright of freedom, we have been intimidated by tragedy and fear into sacrificing freedom. We do not seem to understand precedents are laid or broken based on this. We do not understand that silencing the voice of Occupy is effectively cutting out our own vocal chords in any and all future occasions. It is devastating to me the degree to which we have bought into the power systems and structures of our countries and are happily prepared to sell the freedoms of others for our own comfort. I am sad that I am so apathetic of our power systems and political structures I have failed to energize either myself or others to fight our slow slide toward totalitarianism. We have sold ourselves for soup. I am embarrassed. I am terrified. There is something very Machiavellian about the way that our Governments have dealt with Occupy. Our law has become complex enough and our freedoms expendable enough and loopholes large and plentiful enough that it is relatively simple to enforce and not enforce law as convenient by those in power in order to gain whatever result is desired. Its also helpful when you have a police force to violently enforce whatever you order without any immediate accountability.

Recently I have heard a lot of disturbing thing about a crime bill that Harper is trying to push through. Can anyone tell me more about it?

#OccupyVancouver - On the ground

Ok so I have attended two general assemblies, went on the march on Saturday and just hung out a bit. On the first day there was 3-5000 people who showed up. Which was both amazing and I think overwhelming. We had great weather and a great march and the village was established. People are learning on the ground why democracy is slow and not everyone is excited. But there was another significant turnout on Sunday as the group continues to work to nail down a consensus process. Part of this process involved breakout groups which allow crowd discussion and ideas to happen and move to the mic. This was the best part of the day. People worked hard at actually communicating - speaking and listening - it was respectful, empowering and effective. There was also an interesting win for free speech when a participant was able to disagree with the movement's non violent position from the microphone reasonably articulately.

I had the opportunity to talk about #OccupyVancouver last night to a friend and failed miserably to communicate the fascinating and inspiring and moral nature of this movement. While in some respects so far it has been a protester convention, everyone with their own pet project and priorities, protesting is not the primary focus of what the group is trying to do. #OccupyVancouver is literally recreating society in microcosm, from scratch. While they are united in discontent, the movement is incredibly proactive. I say movement because occupy camps now exist in 900+ cities globally. By looking at the created microcosm societies in New York and Vancouver (the only two I have significant information on) it is easy to see what they/we want.

Consensus participatory direct democracy is the format in which the community thinks through and decides things. What does this say? I believe it is a critique of partisan politics and Canadian elected dictatorships, which is effectively what a majority government is. Furthermore, it is the demand for greater direct access, control or voice in our communities and countries. I think there is a sense that the ballot once every few years has become an ineffective way of voicing political opinions or communal desires. I think that the successful overturning of the HST is a clear indication that citizens want clear accurate information and a voice and will not have things foisted on them any longer. Regardless of your opinion on the HST, the results demonstrate the power of direct democracy, people's willingness to participate and their distrust of government. Furthermore, the consensus model emphasizes the desire for unity and the good of everyone AND a belief that this is possible. It fairly questions the idea a 51% majority in the house of commons should have the right to make decisions for everyone. Interestingly, the other places where consensus models of governance and decision making exist are the Orthodox Church, a number of First Nations tribes and the Quakers (Please add more that you know of in the comments). There is the political question at stake: Do we just want stuff to happen or do we want the right stuff to happen? And also how do we know or find out what the right stuff is? I think the financial, and environmental crisis highlight the increased perception that taking the time to really make good decisions that really represent everyone and the good of the planet are what is needed, rather than efficient political structures that exempt personal voice or responsibility, encourage passivity and apathy and are influenced by corporate voices more than community voices. Furthermore, the democratic ideals are founded on the belief that together we can make better decisions - if you think that the majority of people are stupid and shouldn't have a voice then go live in China because that's how they run things over there.

To the end of creating a community that is safe and inclusive and takes care of everyone, #OccupyVancouver provides free food - everyone is fed, everyone is kept warm, everyone has a voice, everyone participates. They claim they are the 99% and they offer a vision of what society could look like if the 99% re-evaluated their goals of wealth and luxury, continually chasing that 1%. #OccupyVancouver, minus some prayers and songs, looks more like the Acts 2 church than any church I know of...

The #Occupy movement has successfully imagined the possibility of imagining a better society with economic and social justice. They are actively working to not just offer ideas and suggestions, which there are lots of, but to also actually create it on the ground. This is exciting and inspiring I encourage you to find out more and get involved.

#OccupyWallStreet - "the right to peaceful assembly"

As I am intending on going to the art gallery tomorrow to visit/participate in #OccupyVancouver I thought I should check into some of the legal issues at stake in protesting. As Canadians we have the right to peacefully assemble. Note that we do not have the right to assemble as such, only peacefully assemble. In fact even the right to peaceful assembly may limited with "good reasons." The way all this is written up in both the charter and related legal documentation results in the reality that the police have HUGE amounts of discretion in both their interpretation of the laws regarding protests as well as the physical situational realities.

Laws regulating protests in Canada give the police a lot of discretion in deciding, first, what assemblies are peaceful, and second, when peaceful protests are not allowed. Police discretion contradicts the values of accessibility and precision that gave rise to the s. 1 requirement that limits on Charter rights be prescribed by law. The idea is that citizens should have a “reasonable opportunity to know what is prohibited” (Peter W. Hogg,Constitutional Law of Canada, Student Ed. 2007 at p. 798)—that’s accessibility of law, and that officials must not engage in discriminatory and arbitrary breaches of rights—that’s precision of law.

But in R. v. Hufsky and R. v. Ladouceur, the Supreme Court held that as long as police discretion comes from law, it meets the s. 1 standard of “prescribed by law,” even if the discretion is unfettered. - lawiscool.com

Does anyone else find this disconcerting? Throughout the related legal documents the ambiguous terms like peace, reasonable, justified, tumultuous, are used repeatedly. The result of Canada's failure to more specifically define words like peace and tumultuous is that the police have all the power in protest situations because it is at their personal and corporate discretion whether your actions and language are peaceful... The bottom line is that they can effectively disperse a protest or assembly whenever they want because they are granted enough discretion under the law to be able to act first and explain later. The result is that they may be influenced significantly by personal or government or even corporate influence rather than the public or social good or opinion. When in doubt the police enforce "peace" not freedom but peace without freedom is no peace at all, it is soulless mandatory order. Real peace, the peace that we want and need, must be more than a lack of physical violence.

The final analysis by lawiscool.com:

Canada is not a police state—far from it. Our ideal is the rule of law and protection of civil liberties. But just like with ideals, we shouldn’t take our eyes off frightening possibilities. In a police state, armed agents of the state are free to limit freedoms and rights as they please. Their discretion is completely unfettered, almost like the discretion our laws grant to the police in dealing with street protests.

Our police forces are professional, highly trained, and generally honest. But it is not their job to determine the content of the Charter freedom of peaceful assembly. Provincial legislatures and the federal parliament must step in and give clear guidance to the police when they can break up street protests. The police can make mistakes and may have its own institutional interests that are not necessarily the same as the public interest. The people have a right to clear notice of what is lawful, and we all have a fundamental freedom of peaceful assembly. Our legislators must set out with much greater precision what the police powers are in regulating street protests.

All of this is particularly interesting due to recent Vancouver riots and the Toronto G20 fiasco... Tomorrow will be interesting. I'll be out there in the morning, Silas and Danielle are hopefully driving in after work, let us know if you will be there. Get your church involved.

#OccupyWallStreet - An Issue of Choice

Complex, malleable, uncertain, passionate, misunderstood, confused. These are all words that come to mind as I ponder the "occupy" movement. I have many thoughts about what is going on in New York and around the US (and now Canada). With regards to those thoughts, what stands out to me is how much my thoughts have changed and morphed day-by-day as this protest continues to unfold. My emotional responses have ranged from cynicism to self-righteousness to support. I have yet to settle into one opinion. I think I am just as amorphous as the movement itself, I am unable to pick a side. Picking a side, well one can hardly do that with a movement like this because it does not have the same sides of the debate we have grown accustom to in our civic dialogue.

There are no sides. As I read a number of articles tonight and pondered what is occurring in the world around me I began to dwell on the concept of choice. As a result of my pondering, I am proposing that the heart of the issue is the desire to choose. I believe we were created for choice, it is innate within us to want to choose. Whether we are good at choice or not is beside the point, we all choose. This desire to choose, for a long time, has been satiated by the binary mode of thought we have grown accustom to in the west. We choose to be liberal or conservative, white collar or blue collar, religious or non-religious, we are products of the either/or. But we are entering, and have been entering for a long time, an era where the choices are less well defined, a movement into the both/and. We are in a time of challenge. A time where our post-modern outlook on life challenges the binary choices. When this occurs we often discover the choices we have been making are not really choices at all, or at best have been limited choices. We are forced to consider that the limited choice offered by both/and is just that, limited. One chooses democrats or republicans only to find they are more similar than they are different. One chooses Mac or PC, but they are both computers. One chooses to buy x or y only to find there is no choice in the system. Both/and is beginning to feel like a non-choice when we consider things such as economics, or a financial reserve that is beyond choice, or a capitalism that has become empire as it exhibits the trait of totality. We feel like we have lost choice.

It is my opinion that at the heart of the occupy movement people are desiring true choice. As a result, we are confronted by an amorphous protest that appears to be incoherent and unable to articulate what it wants. I suggest this is precisely because it is attempting to redefine the parameters of choice in the macro structures and ideology that govern our time.

I am not sure what the end result will look like, but I do know I am in favour of being along for the ride that takes our society to its redefinition.

#OccupyWallStreet - Zizek

So far to my knowledge, Cornel West, Slajov Zizek and Shane Claiborne among others have all given speeches at Occupy Wall Street. They are like three of my favourite people!

Here is the transcript of part of Zizek's speech:


…2008 financial crash more hard earned private property was destroyed than if all of us here were to be destroying it night and day for weeks. They tell you we are dreamers. The true dreamers are those who think things can go on indefinitely the way they are. We are not dreamers. We are awakening from a dream which is tuning into a nightmare. We are not destroying anything. We are only witnessing how the system is destroying itself. We all know the classic scenes from cartoons. The cart reaches a precipice. But it goes on walking. Ignoring the fact that there is nothing beneath. Only when it looks down and notices it, it falls down. This is what we are doing here. We are telling the guys there on Wall Street – Hey, look down! (cheering).
In April 2011, the Chinese government prohibited on TV and films and in novels all stories that contain alternate reality or time travel. This is a good sign for China. It means that people still dream about alternatives, so you have to prohibit this dream. Here we don’t think of prohibition. Because the ruling system has even suppressed our capacity to dream. Look at the movies that we see all the time. It’s easy to imagine the end of the world. An asteroid destroying all life and so on. But you cannot imagine the end of capitalism. So what are we doing here? Let me tell you a wonderful old joke from communist times.
A guy was sent from East Germany to work in Siberia. He knew his mail would be read by censors. So he told his friends: Let’s establish a code. If the letter you get from me is written in blue ink ,it is true what I said. If it is written in red ink, it is false. After a month his friends get a first letter. Everything is in blue. It says, this letter: everything is wonderful here. Stores are full of good food. Movie theaters show good films from the West. Apartments are large and luxurious. The only thing you cannot buy is red ink.
This is how we live. We have all the freedoms we want. But what we are missing is red ink. The language to articulate our non-freedom. The way we are taught to speak about freedom war and terrorism and so on falsifies freedom. And this is what you are doing here: You are giving all of us red ink.
There is a danger. Don’t fall in love with yourselves. We have a nice time here. But remember: carnivals come cheap. What matters is the day after. When we will have to return to normal life. Will there be any changes then. I don’t want you to remember these days, you know, like - oh, we were young, it was beautiful. Remember that our basic message is: We are allowed to think about alternatives. The rule is broken. We do not live in the best possible world. But there is a long road ahead. There are truly difficult questions that confront us. We know what we do not want. But what do we want? What social organization can replace capitalism? What type of new leaders do we want?
Remember: the problem is not corruption or greed. The problem is the system that pushes you to give up. Beware not only of the enemies. But also of false friends who are already working to dilute this process. In the same way you get coffee without caffeine, beer without alcohol, ice cream without fat. They will try to make this into a harmless moral protest. They think (??? unintelligible). But the reason we are here is that we have enough of the world where to recycle coke cans…

Part Two

….Starbucks cappuccino. Where 1% goes to the world’s starving children. It is enough to make us feel good. After outsourcing work and torture. After the marriage agencies are now outsourcing even our love life, daily.
Mic check
We can see that for a long time we allowed our political engagement also to be outsourced. We want it back. We are not communists. If communism means the system which collapsed in 1990, remember that today those communists are the most efficient ruthless capitalists. In China today we have capitalism which is even more dynamic than your American capitalism but doesn’t need democracy. Which means when you criticize capitalism, don’t allow yourselves to be blackmailed that you are against democracy. The marriage between democracy and capitalism is over.
The change is possible. So, what do we consider today possible? Just follow the media. On the one hand in technology and sexuality everything seems to be possible. You can travel to the moon. You can become immortal by biogenetics. You can have sex with animals or whatever. But look at the fields of society and economy. There almost everything is considered impossible. You want to raise taxes a little bit for the rich, they tell you it’s impossible, we lose competitivitiy. You want more money for healthcare: they tell you impossible, this means a totalitarian state. There is something wrong in the world where you are promised to be immortal but cannot spend a little bit more for health care. Maybe that ??? set our priorities straight here. We don’t want higher standards of living. We want better standards of living. The only sense in which we are communists is that we care for the commons. The commons of nature. The commons of what is privatized by intellectual property. The commons of biogenetics. For this and only for this we should fight.
Communism failed absolutely. But the problems of the commons are here. They are telling you we are not Americans here. But the conservative fundamentalists who claim they are really American have to be reminded of something. What is Christianity? It’s the Holy Spirit. What’s the Holy Spirit? It’s an egalitarian community of believers who are linked by love for each other. And who only have their own freedom and responsibility to do it. In this sense the Holy Spirit is here now. And down there on Wall Street there are pagans who are worshipping blasphemous idols. So all we need is patience. The only thing I’m afraid of is that we will someday just go home and then we will meet once a year, drinking beer, and nostalgically remembering what a nice time we had here. Promise ourselves that this will not be the case.
We know that people often desire something but do not really want it. Don’t be afraid to really want what you desire. Thank you very much!

Reposted from: http://www.occupywallst.org/article/today-liberty-plaza-had-visit-slavoj-zizek/

#OccupyWallStreet - Freedom and Oppression

Will freedom always give way to oppression? I ask this question because idealism in relation to freedom always must allow the possibility of oppression... Free speech, for example to be truly free must uphold individual rights to speak loudly against free speech itself even as well as anything else. So in relation to freedoms in general: the preserving of freedoms seems to naturally lean toward self negation since preserving freedom either requires the oppression of those who would seek to destroy it or its sublation into the oppressive desires and designs of free people. We love and hate freedom because our world exists between the dialectic of freedom/chaos and law/order. As we attempt to order and inscribe freedom into law we attempt to hold the thesis and anti thesis in tension but fail at true synthesis...

Is the natural conclusion of development always self negation? The capitalist becomes philanthropist (eg Bill Gates)

Žižek sees in this process evidence of Hegel's "negation of the negation", the third moment of the dialectic. The first negation is the mutation of the content within and in the name of the old form. The second negation is the obsolescence of the form itself. In this way, something becomes the opposite of itself, paradoxically, by seeming to strengthen itself. - Wikipedia

So are we doomed to a cycle of democracy negated by totalitarianism, which births democratic revolution? Is it possible to critique democracy without negating it? Is the combination of capitalism and globalization produce necessarily negative results due to human nature? How does globalization affect personal responsibility? Did you know that Britain does not have a constitution? At what point is a system bad enough that we are willing to endure worse in hopes of better? Can creation occur without destruction/chaos?

#OccupyVancouver ?

Hopefully you are aware that there has now been close to a month long protest in wall street...

http://occupywallst.org/

What is more is that this ambiguous and amorphous protest of a variety of things is spreading across the continent...

The first general assembly for Occupy Vancouver is tomorrow:
W2 Media Cafe - 111 W. Hastings St. Saturday, October 8 - 1:00pm

http://occupyvancouver.com

They intend on staging their occupation beginning on Oct 15th in front of the art gallery...(not in protest of art but based on space and proximity to Howe)

Garret Menges posted the following quote from adBusters in a satus update:

The rat-bastard Capitalist scum who are telling you to "reach out and touch someone" with a telephone or "be there!"--these lovecrafty suckers are trying to turn you into a scrunched-up, blood-drained, pathetic, crippled little cog in the death-machine of the human soul. Fight them--by meeting with friends, not to consume or produce, but to enjoy friendship--and you will have triumphed over the most pernicious conspiracy in EuroAmerican society today--the conspiracy to turn you into a living corpse galvanized by prosthesis and the terror of scarcity--to turn you into a spook haunting your own brain.

I posted this Oscar Wilde quote a while ago:

It is immoral to use private property to alleviate the horrible evils that result from the institution of private property.

There is clearly a growing discontent and critique of of our post modern consumer capitalism and the inevitability of its failure...

There has certainly been significant anti-empire language used on this blog... 

I feel like, maybe, we are standing on the precipice of something big...

So is Occupying Vancouver fighting the empire?

Can we please define empire before its too late?

Are we going to participate?

How is global economic failure going to effect society?

I think that our generation has been raised on stories of glories of the protests of sixties over Vietnam and civil rights...

I think that we have been raised watching Star Wars and know instinctively to fight those who would dominate the world with fear and violence...

The generation that fought in WWI remembered glamourized war. The generation that fought in WWII idealized war.  Vietnam destroyed moral superiority. The cold war killed idealism. The war on terror is ending fear? Every generation forgets, every generation believes, every generation remakes the world, is this that moment? The moment of revolution... A revolution of what and to what?

According to Occupy Vancouver:

It is time to come together and educate each other. We will stand in solidarity with these other movements and we will create a platform for people to speak and provide an audience that will listen.
Let them gawk, let them ask questions, let them wake up. 

We realize that our social, economic, and political structures are broken. This is more than just a protest "against" something. It is about coming together as people, acknowledging things are broken, and working together to fix them.

If you are thinking that that very ambiguous you are correct.

"This protest cannot be boiled down to a simple soundbite because this protest is ambitiously seeking a complex, fundamental, philosophical change in the social, political, and economic infrastructure of our country... The strength of Occupy... lies in the ambiguity of its mission. There is no laundry list of specific, unreasonable, and untenable demands. There is only the demand for change. Change of, by, and for the people, enacted by our elected officials. If the powers-that-be respond with absolutely nothing, then it is clear that they will never, ever be interested in effecting substantial change of our financial system, no matter how strong public support may be."
- Edward Murray, Huffington Post

Silas articulated via something he heard that the ambiguity is positive in that it does not allow itself to be co opted to single agendas or groups - the ambiguity forces conversation and dialogue as a starting place. 

Clearly the ambiguity has allowed for a unity in discontent. 

However, there is an emptiness to the demand for change that offers no plan, no solution and continues to look for the "powers" to satiate their thirst for change...

Zizek has suggested that the lack of actual coherent voice in the protests across the world, from greece to london to New York to Vancouver, other than complaint is the breeding ground for support for totalitarianism. That the blind support for change is liable to support a dictator who offers salvation... that between the financial crisis and the social unrest we are writing a story that is starting to sound like 1930's Germany...

Here is an article by Zizek on the London riots:

Shop Lifters of the World Unite

Clearly the Occupy movement is different but is it different enough?

Based on the immanence of this we are going to spend this week exclusively writing, thinking and researching this and will probably show up on the 15th to have some conversations...

Thoughts? Questions? Concerns? Rhetoric? Propaganda? Hope? Alternatives?