I am using Patti Digh’s title for this post. She posted today on Keith Jarrett’s Köln Concert, in which he had to perform on a piano that was far from ideal. But he accepted the constraint and played one of the most enduring and transformative jazz concerts of all time.
It reminded me of the time that Geoff Brown and I played with two Turkish musicians at the Applied Improv Network conference in Portland. The image above shows us in full flow.
I had just met Geoff, and we were beginning a friendship that has lasted nearly two decades despite having been together only three times – in Portland, working on a sustainability conference in Melbourne, and doing one on Indigenous Housing here in Vancouver.
The show in question was the gala improv show, held I believe at the Portland Schweitzer Concert Hall, which is a big venue. The four of us were invited to be the band for part of the show. Geoff had his guitar with him and the Turkish musicians had their instruments, but I had nothing. The show organizer said “my son has a really nice guitar. I’ll bring it for you.”
We showed up on the evening ready to go (this was an improv show remember, no rehearsals!) and the organizer handed me the guitar case. I opened it up and instead of “a really nice guitar” he handed me a battered beginner classical guitar that was missing the A string. “Oh shit,” he said.
His son had evidently swapped guitars at some point and dad just grabbed the case without checking and left.
“I’m so sorry,” he said.
I took one look at the guitar and, after three days of accepting every offer that came my way, I said “it’s good. I’ll play it.”
And that’s how I found myself playing onstage in a soft seat theatre in Portland in front of hundreds of people on a battered old five string guitar with an Australian blues man and two Turkish musicians. You can tell from the photo above that we had a ball.
I was recently reflecting on Vaclav Havel‘s essay “The Power of the Powerless.” Acts of living in truth are critical for recovering power from those that have stolen it and are using it for oppressive purposes. Havel’s work has long inspired me and underpins the basis of how I see good dialogic work and participatory leadership. Small democratic acts of participation,collaboration, co-creation, inclusion and relationship are critical. There is no scale at which these are not critical if one values a world in which we participate together in building a future that serves all.
I was quite startled to hear Mark Carney quote Havel yesterday in his speech in Davos. Carney told some truths for which he is rightly being lauded. But as a Prime Minister he has a lot of work to do to build a society here at home where the most vulnerable don’t get steamrolled for the expediency of his large scale power moves.
I believe a lot of things can and must happen simultaneously to act within a world which has had much uncertainty and unpredictability introduced to it so quickly.
I am not prepared to give up a hope for a world of participatory and relational power alliances, especially here in Canada and especially with First Nations (seek out Christi Belcourt’s writing on this on Facebook, if you dare) I understand the need for speed but I also caution us all not to set aside things like justice, sustainability, and inclusion of the otherwise marginalized at the table lest we build the new system based on emergency measures and forget to be a society that stays committed to human rights, justice and environmental care, even if we don’t always get that right. I don’t believe one negates the other.
Doubling down on AI, defense, and fossil fuel energy production takes us towards a future where the wealth will be generated for the few who currently have the power with resources that are non renewable. Communities and ecosystems will be devastated as the costs are externalized for more generations. What assurances are there that these moves will build better and more resilient societies? Who will be asked to sacrifice for this future? Will we both defend ourselves from larger powers so that we can build a long term and effective education and health care system? Where we support and build up our natural ecosystems.
I don’t have answers. But I ask, what other ways can we align middle power nations that is built on the strength of relationship and long term care for people and planet? If the global system of power and economics needs to be realigned, what is the range of choices we have? How might we expand that range?
Carney has achieved what the entrepreneurs coveted “first mover’s advantage.” As a Canadian, based on the policy decisions he has made domestically, I am unsure how he will use it. In his speech his lauds his domestic accomplishments:
Since my government took office, we have cut taxes on incomes, on capital gains and business investment. We have removed all federal barriers to interprovincial trade. We are fast-tracking a trillion dollars of investment in energy, AI, critical minerals, new trade corridors and beyond
And yet. Every provincial health care system in Canada is currently in a crisis. Affordability continues to price an entire generation out of their start in the world. Our post-secondary education systems are failing because we underfunded them, forced them to rely on high paying international students, and then stopped that immigration program. Wealth inequality is the biggest threat to our survival as a democracy. And yet we still cut taxes.
I can envisage a dystopian world where AI, oil and weapons are the currency that just gets spent in a hyperscaled and hegemonic battle for supremacy among the few. What can the rest of us expect from this?
Yesterday Carney said “You cannot “live within the lie” of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes the source of your subordination.” That is true. And yet does he not see to see how his latest moves to fast track projects like an oil pipeline to the west coast reflect exactly this approach via a vis First Nations?
Carney also said “if you are not at the table you are on the menu.” That is a chilling statement to me because, despite the outpouring of pride and excitement about how he named the current global order, what he is proposing puts most of us on the menu. Carney’s commitment to a doubling down of neoliberal principles as the basis of his invitation to fight does nothing to address the pressing challenges faced by most of the victims of the global experiment of the last 45 years. I hope he changes that stance but I don’t think he will.
It is no surprise to most of us in Canada that Carney has become a fairly traditional “progressive conservative.” Most of us voted for him because he was preferable to the current conservative party’s populism which was based on outrage baiting and very little cogent policy. Things have become so bad in the world that we missed Brian Mulroney.
As for Havel, his wisdom is perennial. Carney’s speech is good but I encourage you all to read Havel. Just because the Prime Minister quoted him does not mean that the rest of us don’t need his strategy and tactics. We – most of us – are on the menu, remember. And Carney is not the green grocer.
We have a big job ahead of us. If we are to defend ourselves against threats of the global superpowers we need to do a much better job of talking about what makes us different. If our sovereignty matters, we need to say a lot more about why. And if someone whatever Carney is proposing “wins,” then what are building with the peace that follows?
After a long career in politics culminating in five years as Canada’s ambassador to the UN, Bob Rae has some opinions on Canada’s place in the world and our ability to meet collective crises together. CanadaLand interviewed him today.
The Economist today is also speculating on what’s going on and how NATO and Europe might face the current crisis. They spend a few minutes trying to figure out what’s motivating the US interest in Greenland and I couldn’t help thinking that, in an effort to expand the size of the US on a map, someone is obsessed with the Mercator projection which makes far northern islands look bigger than entire continents.
I spend so much of my time on Zoom in meetings and then trying to facilitate warm and engaging online spaces that it is hard to remember that Zoom is an incredible technology that was in place at just the right time to get an entire world through a global pandemic. I’m appreciating today Peter Rukavina’s reflections on how Zoom changed his life, and find myself silently nodding along with him. This one app kept food on my table when the future of my work was at stake.
And speaking of networking, here is an incredible list of links from Sonja Mikovic at Tamarack from 2025 all related to networks, connection and organizing. It’s going to take me a whole year to get through these!
I’m no fan of horror as a genre but I found this essay on how space functions in Japanese horror movies to be very interesting. From time to time in my facilitation world, folks discuss Japanese concepts of ma and ba, reflecting the nature of the temporal and spatial dynamics between us. This conversation is currently happening on social media between a few of us in the Art of Hosting community. It makes sense to me that the container has a personality in Japanese cinema.
That conversation coincides with this interesting piece from Emily Thomas on the history of time as a line. She traces the origins and implications of the image or metaphor of linear time (doing so in a linear way) to help understand where the western idea of linear time comes from.
There has been a spate of thoughtful writing on the issue of Aboriginal title in British Columbia since the BC Supreme Court ruled on the Cowichan Tribes’ Aboriginal title interest in a number of fee simple properties along the Fraser River last summer.
That ruling prompted Richmond Mayor Malcolm Brodie to engage in an act of blatant fear-mongering over the future of private property rights and set off a whole chunk of misinformed British Columbians and others who now believe that private property rights are dead in BC.
It’s hard to know how many people actually believe that assertion to be true as the debate has been fuelled by the same opportunists that cruise channels like Facebook making shit up and getting everyone riled up for partisan political gain. The politics of the situation, as they often do, run faster and in a million more imaginary directions than the legalities of the situation.
The result is that a perfectly reasonable legal question – how to reconcile a set of Constitutionally defined and protected rights – has become a political football, because once things become political truth doesn’t matter. The populists are loving this because it feeds their “drive-by shouting” strategy of stoking outrage and moving on.
So I thought it might be time for us to catch a breath. I’ll share a few links that might help illuminate this conversation for those that truly care about the issue and aren’t running around dodging pieces of the sky. These aren’t beginner links. If you want to dive deep into the nature of Aboriginal title and the Canadian Constitution, you can easily search these terms to get a basic grounding.
What I’m most interested in is the commentary that is thoughtful about the current situation in BC. I share these because I have seen normally thoughtful people losing their minds over these issues without understanding what is actually on the table here or without appreciating how much the muck raking and mischief making has made this issue one in which the reality of what the Cowichan are asking for has been lost.
These links are in no particular order and many of them will take you to some of the sources of bad information and poorly informed opinion that are driving some people’s panic.
- Geoff Meggs discussing the sudden silence from the BC Business sector around this issue.
- Khelsilem’s take on what the Cowichan decision actually says and what it doesn’t. Here’s a good interview he did with the local CBC morning show.
- A good CBC article on the threads of speculation and the effect that Brodie’s irresponsible letter created.
- Also from CBC a useful backgrounder on Aboriginal title and this case specifically.
- My own thoughts on how this issue should steer our attention back to what reconciliation actually is.
- A long discussion from a Union of BC Municipalities panel that discusses different interpretations of the decision with respect to local government issues. I appreciated the diversity of opinion in this and the fact that it’s the only conversation I have seen on this where everyone is reasonably discussing the facts of the case.
- A Policy Options piece that discusses the ruling in the context of the established law on Aboriginal title.
- An excellent and I think easy to understand legal explanation of the case itself.
- Former BC Attorney General Geoff Plant on why recent court decisions and legislative initiatives are important and required pieces of the reconciliation process.
Regular readers will know that I know enough about this field to know what I’m looking at with respect to Aboriginal title. Since 1997 I have spent time working in the NC Treaty process and with organizations like the BC Assembly of First Nations discussing Aboriginal title and its implications. That said, I am not a lawyer, and if you want a proper analysis you should find someone that can give you one. feel free to share these links.
I’ll update this post as new information comes in.