Summer 2012

I am writing this post earlier than intended as we are still 2 months away from the 1 year anniversary of this blog. But it seems that perhaps, as we once again transition from the academic year into the months of summer, this is an excellent time to take stock of where have come from and where we are presently. My year has been a transition from unemployed, to student, to self employed. And as I look back on last summer, I can't help but think that blogging and writing and creating last summer and throughout this year was an important step and good preparation for this summer's challenge of making money in video production. (As an aside if you are interested in my photographic or video services, please let me know... a website is pending.)

One of the themes of Regent this year has been the repeated phrase: "everything is gift." This provided some of the impetus for my last post on imagining gift economics. Regent's convocation student address approached similar themes reflecting on Peter's experience at Jesus' transfiguration. Educational experiences such as Regent or CBC were compared to being on that mountain... They are not places we work for and build, they are places we are brought to and moments we are given and it is good to be there... But it is neither possible set up camp there as Peter desired, or through hard work recreate or return to that time for that is not what brought you there to begin with. The truth is that how we get places is complex, filled with people, randomness, and factors beyond our control... theologically one might insert the word providence here... 

My only point here is one that I have found encouraging all year: what looks and feels like failure may be the foundation for unbelievable success. Sometimes the road to where you are going is different than anticipated, feels unrelated and is frustrating. Sometimes we find success through failure or through stagnation or through unemployment. Sometimes it's obvious how things are connected and we may feel vindicated or difficulty may feel redeemed; other times it does not appear obvious as to why particular events or experiences were part of a journey. And yet I believe the alchemy of these experiences is important in preparing and shaping us hopefully for the better, even when we are unaware or unable to articulate it. 

So I anticipate summer 2012 to be a gift, just as 2011 was, despite its unconventional nature. I certainly have hopes and ideas of what I want it to look like, but mostly I want to try and be open for the surprises, for the nice weather, for opportunities to work and opportunities to rest, opportunities to read and opportunities to write, to take picture and make pictures, to laugh and cry... I expect nothing less than the fullness of life in all its glory and sorrow for this is what we have been promised - and in the midst of it, I will attempt to trust that the joy, the boredom, the work, the stress, the rest, and the love are all shaping my soul into the gift that my life is intended to be for you. I will try and be a present in the present (Sorry. It was so perfectly cheesy that I couldn't deny it.).

Share This Link

"Share" and "Like" this link and you will be put into a draw and possibly win something... Really???

I see this all the time. And what I think when I see it is that someone has been bought and then sold all of their friends for the possibility of winning some bauble...

Oh, I am sure that some people genuinely like whatever it is they have forced onto my newsfeed, and some people genuinely liked it but only came out of the closet with the possibility of a treat. Some people only care about the prize, and some people like me, will refuse to like whatever it is as soon as you start treating me and my relationships as commodities that can be bought and sold for advertising, regardless of whether we like it or not.

This of course puts me in conundrum, because I am working on starting a business in videography... And as such I am forced to wrestle into practicality the ethics of advertising and marketing and sales in general. The problem is basically that I loathe these fields from the very centre of my being and would literally be more comfortable being a criminal defence lawyer than working in advertising. So perhaps I will begin studying for the LSAT...

I know that to level a critique against advertising is easy and demands something more... I also know that many small local companies are doing good work and working hard within the system we have inherited. I just happen to hate the system and I know this means I need to not merely be critical but propose an alternative style or approach. I think what I want is a more genuine approach that doesn't appeal to people's self interest and rest its presuppositions of utilitarian moral theory. Part of the reason advertising particularly relational advertising works is because people trust their friends - they want to trust their friends... and it is actually relationally damaging to take the perspective I have because in my cynicism I run the risk of interpreting peoples actions very negatively, which may or may not be fair. This ironically betrays that my position also hold utilitarian moral theory as a presupposition and therefore finds it difficult to believe that people "liking" links or pages for prizes has anything other than self interest in mind and therefore find it offensive.

This then is what I am trying to escape: utilitarian moral theory. I want to move toward gift language, gift economics... I think that Radiohead moves in the right direction with the "gift" of their album "In Rainbows" inaugurating "pay what you want." I think this moves humanity in a good direction which expects and values trust and relationship over greed and self interest. Radiohead and others have proven this model is not insane or entirely untenable.

I have a friend who asked me what I thought about trying to apply this model to a manufacturing situation. I said I thought it would be difficult... North Americans don't like flexible pricing or haggling over products. Furthermore, we have been trained to think in utilitarian terms and so to do things differently one must simultaneously risk losses and present "pay what you want" in terms that push people out their utilitarian thinking patterns...  For independently wealthy and famous creators of digital media with online channels of distribution these are of course not really risks or challenges at all. For anyone operating in material production and on a smaller scale the risks, of course, increase exponentially. I am sorry that I discouraged my friend rather than trying to imagine with him how to not just pitch his product but a different way of thinking about and doing business.

We write on this blog as a gift. We have created art and video as gift. How do we re-imagine our lives and jobs and businesses genuinely as gift? How do we recenter our live around trust rather than fear?

Gift Economics. Give.

Turning 27...

Late last year, I was at a Sarah Slean concert and she assured the audience that 27 is a great year, but that you pay for it in year 28 and 29. When one is 27, adulthood has definitively set in and there is no escaping it, although perhaps it is the last year in which denial is quite socially acceptable. I find it difficult, as I believe we all do, to not compare myself to those around me in a variety of spheres and contexts. Some of my more famous fellow 1985 babies include: Lily Allen, Fefe Dobson, Zac Hanson, Kiera Knightly, Lady Sovereign, Frankie Muniz, Ashley Tisdale, T-Pain, and Madeline Zima. Other superstars like Miss Stefani Germanotta (Lady Gaga) are a year younger. While we could have a lively discussion regarding the degree of adulthood these celebrities have achieved, certainly their success and cultural influence is spectacular. Friends of mine own houses and are having babies... My parents had finished school, bought a house, and found the job my Dad continues to work at, given birth to me and were pregnant with my sister. These are examples of those who while less globally influential are discernably settled, rooted. I, however, seem to be stuck in the midst of the same existential crisis I have been in for the past at least 10 years, except 10 years ago I was more optimistic regarding the future. At 27, I am feeling both the desire and terror of settling... I am feeling distinctly exhausted with the uncertainty and transience of many peoples early and mid twenties.

Please let me be the first to be cynical regarding my own cynical out look. From any other perspective but my own, my own pathos is near inexplicable. I am married, I have travelled the world, I am currently enrolled in grad school and I have concession style popcorn machine, I live in Vancouver; life, by any reasonable external standard, is fantastic. Despite the often uncertain and unexpected series of events that have been the last decade of my life, they have been far from dull, uneventful or unproductive. However, from a young age I have had my eyes set on a world stage, and rather than making progress I find myself living everyday with angsty teenage uncertainty regarding what I want to be when I grow up. And here we are and I still don't really know or am too afraid to say or am afraid that the ongoing ambiguity determines me a failure regardless, doomed to be blown by the wind.

My eternally embarrassing confession of competing in figure skating up to the age of 16 never ceases to cause me discomfort. It is in this context of competition, my eyes always directed to national and international success, that I spent some of my most formative years. The height of my success was not a gold medal but qualifying for nationals (perhaps you can hear my disappointment). Anyway, I retired at 16 in order to more fully devote myself to school and art. My ambition for a world stage did not disappear, it merely shifted toward film and television. I have now spent 6+ years formally pursuing spirituality and theological education. But my vision/desire for global impact remains undeterred. On a side note, 4 years ago I recognized in myself a great longing to escape. This is mostly expressed in not wanting to live in North America. Despite and because of this I seem to have confined myself to the very context I both love and loathe, Vancouver.

Ambition is considered both a vice and virtue in modern society. I have mixed feelings about my own ambitions. Oh I could call them "hopes and dreams" and that would be far more acceptable but realistically it is the same. My desire to engage an audience is, perhaps, innate to my identity. There is not a time in my life that I can remember when some aspect of my time was not directed to this end in some fashion. And yet my young desire to perform and entertain has shifted to a desire to express and communicate. This blog succeeds in quenching some of that need. However, blogs and internet communication are often unsatisfying outlets, as they can feel like performing Shakespeare in the dark. Can anyone hear you? or see you? Does anyone care what about what you are doing or trying to do? These fears are somewhat alleviated here by group authorship...

My question, which perpetuates my own frustration and dissatisfaction is not: Do you care? or Can you see me? but, What am I doing? According to Dorothy Sayers I might be classified as an artist all energy and no idea... Although in reality I am exhausted and rarely energetic. I move amongst my own shadows of doubt looking for something... Perhaps we will have a child and I will find focus, perhaps I will be given an opportunity which will crystallize things, perhaps I will meet someone who will make things clear... But after 10 years of pursuing God for these things, learning to think, and discerning in community,  it is my conviction that we must learn to live in the shadowy reality of our own subjectivity. I must continue to step into the darkness by faith, because all is darkness. It is my hope to walk while holding hands with those I love. It is the deep torture of my soul to be weighed down with the call to speak and simultaneously deep uncertainty about what to say, or perhaps my uncertainty is a mask for inability to commit to a subject or perspective...

So I am most curious regarding your thoughts of ambition as a subject and its role in the Christian life...
How common is my sense of dissatisfaction? I perceive, perhaps wrongly, that many other people are much more content within life's mundane routines and much more capable of finding joy in the doldrums of the grind...
Is existential discomfort good or bad? Some might say that comfort and lack of personal tension should be considered a bad sign. 
Is the my decision thus far to confine myself to a context (e.g. Vancouver) that I do not particularly like, in order to attempt to work out my loathing of North America, reasonable or does it make more sense to run off somewhere and hopefully shatter my naive and romantic illusions regarding other parts of the world? This seems a common experience of many people.
Is my restlessness genetic, merely skipping a generation, and now simply expressed in the anxiety of my postmodern generation?
I apologize for what, perhaps, is far too personal a post for the public nature of this setting. 

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?

Safety

Thanks to Mark Klausen for coming over for breakfast and inspiring this post.

Life is filled with risk, uncertainty and randomness. In North America we have insurance to try and create a sense of safety amidst the chaos. However, those of you who have dealt with insurance companies will know that they may or may not actually be the source of comfort and support they claim to be since they are likely to make every effort to avoid paying (hooray capitalism). I think that we often can become obsessed with safety and that this leads us probably into isolation, and either anxious paranoia or delusion. Ultimately, no matter how much insurance you have, things can still go wrong in ways that will screw over your entire life. What did people do before there was insurance? Well two things: sacrifice to the gods, and depend on family/community. Before the false community that insurance companies created through the corporate idolatry of money - before that, people relied on real communities and actual relationships to support, protect and help them.

Safety can become a debilitating obsession. However, we also often use safety measures in order to take risks. It is interesting that often safety measures fail to make life safer because there is a tendency for us to absorb the risk. So if we are in a car with a five point harness, wearing a helmet, with a roll cage we are more likely to drive 'more dangerously.' This was statistically demonstrated during study of the addition of ABS brakes to a fleet of trucks. While in theory, if everyone were to drive the same, the new brakes ought to prevent some accidents and thus decrease the accidents overall. However, it takes very little time for drivers to adjust there driving to the new technology and thus the benefit is absorbed into efficiency rather than safety.

What we discussed over breakfast was the usually required social support to take the risks required to pursue dreams or even dream them to begin with. Without a safe community to dream in and be encouraged by it is all too easy to get stuck in the dead end job - because dead end jobs, more than anything else, provide safety.

We escape dead ends with the help of friends.

Also since insurance companies are like churches, in that they don't really sell anything tangible and often prey on people's fear, they should, like churches, be not for profit organizations.

Out on a limb...

Last week I went apple picking with my mum. There was an apple tree behind the community centre and my mum recruited me to go up and pick the apple which were perfectly ripe and very delicious. I have always liked climbing trees and throughout my life I have made my mum nervous on many occasions as I placed myself in precarious situations. However, last week she was egging me on... "There is lot just out and up a bit farther," she said. And so I found myself probably the farthest out on a limb I think I have ever been. I was careful, I was cautious but I also pushed myself to the very limit because that was the place I needed to be to get the good apples.

The line between madness and genius is thin. The line between success and failure is thin. The line between life and death is thin. The thing I find interesting is that we are notoriously bad and knowing where the line is... We are notoriously bad at evaluation in general. The drummer before Ringo Starr, quit the Beatles because he thought they were no good. Way too many people go on American Idol and think they are great. We try and evaluate results but which results are relevant? Einstein had early speech difficulties, Van Gogh had no success while alive. Our understanding of the present and the stories that history will tell are often different...

At the entrance to the temple at Delphi it said in Greek, "Know thyself." "Who am I?" is one of the ancient philosophical conundrums... The task to know one's self is exceedingly difficult as there is certainly no agreed upon method. Furthermore it is not a question to be answered by a single individual given we are relational beings, our identity is wrapped up in much beyond our own individual psyche. We like to talk about self esteem, and bad self esteem as someone who doesn't know them self. However, "bad" is a judgement we make from the outside based on our perceptions. We are likely to disagree just a strongly with an unrepentant serial killer who has really "good" self esteem.

The line between confidence and arrogance is thin. My father in law says that it is the difference between seeking impress rather than express. And yet I am sure we can all resonate with the experience of knowing someone who liked to express themselves just a little bit too much... I know people who seem to be very comfortable with who they are and they are very "real" but what this looks like is often abrasive or uncomfortable. They are either oblivious or disinterested how there self expression impacts those around them. People deal with it. I put up with it. I find myself often a combination of frustrated and jealous of these people. Frustrated because they can be like a grenade; jealous because they can get away saying and doing things that I cannot, with an earnestness that I would have to fake.

Expectations may well be the death of you...

I find myself farther and father out on the limb of life. My ability to evaluate whether the branch can hold me or not is negligible. Although past experience tells me that I'm ok. But of course past experience tells me I'm ok because one is ok until one is not, one is alive until one is dead, the branch is holding you until it snaps. Will it snap? or will you get a delicious apple?

How much risk is acceptable? How do you determine risk? How do you psychologically manage to get in your car every day knowing the statistics of traffic fatalities: 32, 708 people died in the US last year in a traffic accident.