It never ceases to amaze me how we imprison ourselves. One of the most insidious forms of colonization is the deference to external authority for self-esteem, confidence and knowledge. We are not aware of our own inner resources when we have been colonized. Our volition is stolen from us and we wander around aimlessly until someone comes to save us. Piers Young posted this poem: “The young lieutenant of a small Hungarian detachment in the Alps sent a reconnaissance unit out onto the icy wasteland. It began to snow immediately, snowed for two days and the unit did not return. …
From an essay by Jose Saramago called Reinventing democracy: True democracy should begin with what is immediately to hand – the country of our birth, the society we work in, the street we live on. Without that, all the underlying reasoning, the theoretical foundation and practical operation of the system will be vitiated. It is no use purifying the water in the taps if the reservoir is contaminated. Good essay…have a read of the rest. Thanks to wood s lot for the find.
There is a long discussion going on at Peter Rukavina’s Reinvented about Canada’s Olympic team. It started as a post about the CBC and streaming media, but morphed into a series of comments about why Canadians celebrate “mediocraty.” I weighed in with these comments: All of our athletes at this year’s games were chosen because they were ranked top 12 in their sport. I think anything better than 12 then is an improvement and when you see a guy like Rick Say swim the race of his life against the field of the century and finish sixth, you HAVE to …
Clarksburg, Ontario Cruising the highways and byways of southern Georgian Bay in my old homeland of Ontario. Eating lots of corn, swimming in the lake and cursing our luck at an overcast sky for the meteor shower tonight. Spent some time with my old friend Stephen Couchman with whom I killed many nights in Peterbourough, Ontario in our student days doing performance art and making music. Nice to connect with one’s original collaborators. I’ll be back soon…in the meantime, have a look at what I’m reading on this trip.
Not quite done with The Gift yet, although definitely slowing down. Chapter five of the book deals with the community that is created by gifts and goes into some interesting detail about the scientific community and the implications of gift exchange on the free market. We’ll save the free market piece for the next post. Right now I want to focus on something Hyde says that has applicability in the blogging world. Hyde takes the view that “gift exchange at the level of the group offers equilibrium and coherence, a kind of anarchist stability…[T]he conversion of gifts to commodities will …