Soon we will know if we are alone. A beautiful “Occasional Paper” from Doug Muir published at Crooked Timber about where we are in relation to the search for life on other planets. I love this description of the current moment:
What that means is that now, right now, we’re in a very special time. It’s a time when we’re actively looking for life out there — The Search is underway — but the question is still open.
For all of human history until the 1990s we couldn’t do anything but speculate. And at some point in the future — I suspect around 2100, but it could be 2150 or 2200 or 1500, whatever — we’ll know, or anyway we’ll be pretty sure we know. Right now is the only time in history when we’re able to actually Look, but we haven’t yet Found. This brief period is epistemologically unique. We are living through the short-lived Age Of The Search. And when it’s over, one way or another, it will be over forever.
I’ve been reading through Jen Briselli’s work both as an inspiration and a fresh take on much that I already know about what we both seem to love about complexity. One of the pieces that I’d recommend to others is this one on Stases Theory, a classical rhetorical technique for working with difference. Jen explores how difference works in complexity and offers these thoughts before moving in to a method and then a grounding in many streams of thinking from communication theory to complexity.
…disagreements are less like rungs on a ladder to be climbed stasis by stasis, and more like landscapes of unresolved questions and conflicting perspectives, overlapping and interconnected.
Crucially, when people are operating at different stases it isn’t always marked by overt disagreement or interpersonal conflict. Often, we don’t even realize we’re making sense of an issue differently, working at different stases, until we’re prompted to consider it. So, the question really isn’t “Where are we in the sequence?” as much as “Where is the crux of meaning making for each of us right now?”
Sometimes we don’t need to agree on the facts first, as long as we can still coordinate action around shared policies. Other times, coherence and collaboration absolutely depend on established facts and shared definitions before implications can be explored or decisions can be made. Knowing the difference isn’t just a matter for rhetoricians and laywers, but also one of collective diagnosis for teams trying to make complex decisions and take action together. It helps groups locate the friction so they can orient toward and navigate through it. In some ways, a stasis is less a blockage than a beacon — a signal where attention and understanding are most needed, and will provide the most leverage.
Oh the sports. I’ve been so busy lately, and travelling and working odd hours, that I haven’t had time to watch too many games. Nevertheless, I’ve jumped on the Blue Jays bandwagon for this World Series and, like much of Canada, become entranced with these loveable underdogs who continue their quest to become the absolute archetype of what can be accomplished with friendship, commitment to one another, and support. If they win the World Series tonight, you will never shut me up about how the intangibles are as crucial to quality work as the tangibles are. You can’t shut me up about that anyway.
It seems like the opposite also proves the case with the other two teams I devote much of my winter’s attention too. Both Tottenham Hotspur and the Toronto Maple Leafs are mailing it in at the moment, suffering periods of perplexing performance. Spurs are at least inconsistent, with wins like last weekend’s 3-0 v Everton coming at the same time as they get bundled from the League Cup or drop points in an anemic game against Monaco in the Champions League. They are also suffering an injury crisis again. The fact that the Premier League is so weird this season means that we currently sit third on 17 points, but if we lose to Chelsea tomorrow and Brentford beat Palace, the 11th place team can overtake us in one afternoon.
As for the Leafs, “discombobulated” is the word of the moment. They must be happy that the Jays are doing so well, because the Toronto fan base is ruthless when their team is underperforming. Heads will not yet roll at the Scotiabank Arena, but they are being feverishly scratched.
Some politicians in BC are stirring up some pretty alarming notions about a false threat to private property stemming from a recent Court decision affirming the Cowichan Tribes’ Aboriginal title. As a person involved in the field for decades, it’s terrible to watch the lies and racism spread fear to people that are under no threat at all. Horribly irresponsible politicians who know better are smirking through their faux serious stances as they watch the chaos they are sowing spread across the land. If doing your job is predicated on messing stuff up so much that you benefit from the destruction leaving everyone else to clean it up, then I might say your social worth is near zero. Stand down. For more, read this thread on Bluesky which includes a link to Khelsilem’s excellent post on the situation.
Joy! A new song from Jane Siberry. And double joy for me as we are going to see her in Ottawa in a couple of weeks. This song, like much of her music, is an antidote to the above foolishness.
Not so joy. Tottenham’s performance in the Champions League last night against Monaco. If it hadn’t been for Vicario’s stunning performance in net, with a handful of point blank reaction stops, we would have lost 4-0 instead of limping out of there with a 0-0 draw. Spurs’ finishing was woeful, and despite the best efforts of Kudus and Odobert to take on defenders and create some space, shots were ballooned wide, crosses were hopeful reminders of a bygone era (I’m looking at you Pedro Porro) and Monaco’s press forced several turnovers. Although Spurs is still undefeated in the competition, 5 points from three games is only good enough for 15th, towards the bottom of the seeded playoff places. We have a few big chances to make up for lost wins, but in reality, Monaco, with a slew of injuries and poor form, should have been a better performance. Football doesn’t always cure the world’s ills.
Our TSS Rovers League 1 BC men’s team, boys academy and supporters celebrating together this summer, photo courtesy of Tom Ewasiuk at AFTN Canada.
When I’m back in Ontario, as I am now, I spend a lot of time with my family watching sports. We’re all Toronto Maple Leafs fans, so when the hockey is on, we don our Leafs jerseys and watch together. At the moment this part of the world is also consumed by the deep playoff run of the Toronto Blue Jays, who have, against the odds, advanced to the American League Championship Series of Major League Baseball. I don’t follow baseball, but it’s impossible not to be caught up in the energy of the moment.
Both the Leafs and the Jays had bad weekends. The Leafs lost two games to Detroit back to back, with dire performances in which their offence sputtered. A leafs legend, Mitch Marner was traded away in the off season and his replacement on the top line last night is an enthusiastic young talent called Easton Cowan. He has big shoes to fill and it’s fun watching young players begin their journey. Cowan was probably the pick of litter last night as nothing else seemed to get going. Both games against Detroit had the feeling of pre-season warm ups. The hunger and energy and resilience isn’t there yet.
Meanwhile, across the tracks at SkyDome, the Jays dropped game two of their playoff series to Seattle. They too seemed to be truly sapped of enthusiasm and energy. Despite an early flurry of runs, the Jays had some poor pitching and defensive errors that Seattle pounced upon and they were sluggish with the bats. They are under the cosh now as they head to Seattle for games 3 and 4, and the mood in this city is far from ebullient.
In soccer news, while the Canadian Men’s team struggled against Australia and gets ready for Colombia tonight, there are machinations afoot at the governance level of the sport. I can hardly stand to engage in the arcane minutiae of how soccer is run in Canada – and I have a far from complete picture – but at the moment there is a concerning trend happening. In Canada, the Canadian Soccer Association has a deal with a company called Canadian Soccer Business. The deal gives all of Canada’s marketing and broadcast rights to CSB for a flat rate. CSB can then sell these rights and make a profit which it largely channels into the Canadian Premier League, the division 1 professional league for men’s soccer in Canada. The owners of the CPL teams, are also the directors of CSB.
Back when the deal was signed, it was a practical solution for Canada Soccer. The Association was having a terrible time getting funding for the national teams and getting them covered, marketed and recognized. Since then however, CSB has moved towards an ownership stake in the game. Last year they bought the second division semi-pro leagues which are organized under League 1 Canada. In BC, our league was set up by BC Soccer initially to provide a pathway to professional opportunities for BC based players, a vision we champion at TSS Rovers, the only community-owned team in the League 1 structure. It still exists for that purpose, but it is now owned by a marketing company who profits from the selling sponsorship rights to our league and so far hasn’t returned much into our level to assure it’s sustainability.
And lost in the mix of all of this is the women’s professional game, which has finally hit the ground running with the launch of the Northern Super League. The NSL is the brainchild of Diana Matheson and other former national team players who had to do it on their own, because Canada Soccer has made no effort to create a professional women’s league despite hoisting the women’s World Cup in 2015. Meanwhile CSB has profited from selling the images and broadcast rights of the national women’s team who were defending Olympic Champions and have maintained a top 10 global ranking for years. CSB has not at all invested in the NSL, nor have they been invited to. Their involvement in Canadian Soccer has largely NOT enabled the professional environment for women, and has been highly problematic for the national team, which is why Matheson and her partners started their initiative own their own.
This is a direct example of the forty five year project of privatization and commercialization of community resources that was started in the Western world in the 1980s and has spread around the world. This month Canada Soccer Business released a vision for soccer in Canada and it is deeply at odds with the idea of grassroots based, publicly-owned clubs and leagues who are building the game in the broader public interest. Instead it fits the privatization agenda to a T, and promises results based on growth. It is a financialization vision for soccer in Canada that primarily and ultimately benefits the Canadian Premier League. It doesn’t address the women’s professional game at all, because CSB has no involvement in that game. It is by definition not a unifying vision.
It is also profoundly at odds with the vision that is championed by the federal government’s Future of Sport in Canada Commission who released their preliminary report back in the summer. Their vision is very different and seeks to develop elite athletes in the context of a safe, vibrant and participatory national sport strategy that puts the welfare of the athletes first and roots sport in the community and national interest.
My buddy Will Cromack shared his thoughts on these competing visions today and I deeply appreciate his perspective and connection to the issues and his thoughtful, slow deliberation on what is laying before us and the possible pathways to the future.
Developing sport in Canada is a long slow road, because developing athletes is a long slow road. Our culture is changing in many different ways, and sometimes in directions that run counter to each other. We fetishize the professional at the expense of community. We create structures and enclaves which create opaque places where people and communities can be hurt. We demand results, but wring our hands over funding and investment. We laud accessibility but demand elitism. We eschew public involvement but fear the market’s rapacious rush into the vacuum. And at the end of the day, we often take a narrow self-centred view towards sport, making sure our kid or our team or our agenda is the one that succeeds with no awareness of the broader ecosystem for our sports, or the bigger role of sport in general.
As Will writes, a bigger conversation is afoot, as it has been for many years. We need to feel our way through all of this, while also taking bold steps to set the container for sport development on the right footing. And the context is changing all around us.
I’m on my way to Ontario for ten days or so. Jumping on a redeye, because I had a job to do today. Tomorrow morning early I will land in Toronto and my brother and neice will pick me up and we will travel to the Beaver Valley where we will interr my father’s ashes and finally lay him to rest. And then we will celebrate Thanksgiving together and watch the Leafs game (and probably some Blue Jays games) and marvel at the beauty of the Beaver Valley in all of its autumn glory.
And then, later in the week I’ll head out to eastern Ontario and find my way to my friends Troy Maracle and Cedric Jamet and Jennifer Williams and we’ll set up our meeting spaces at the Queens University Biological Station on Lake Opinicon, where the skies are dark enough to see comets and the lake is like glass and your breath hangs on the still morning air as winter drops hints of frost all around.
Our Canadian National Men’s Team played a friendly today against Australia. I caught bits and pieces of it as I was getting myself to the airport. Seems it was a performance that feel short in many ways and despite having enough chances to win 5-1, Canada couldn’t solve the Australian block and we lost 0-1. I figure that many teams might play like this at the upcoming World Cup. With 48 teams in the mix, we will have to get used to playing teams that will try to keep their 0-0 draw intact. Australia had 1 shot on target, a goal. We had 8. Another friendly awaits on Tuesday against Colombia.
One highlight tonight was the 18th appearance of former TSS Rover Joel Waterman who played 8 games for our plucky little team in 2017, our first season in existence. Joel apparently had his best game yet in a Canada shirt, according to smarter people than me who were able to actually watch it. He won his duels, got a tackle in and helped keep a clean sheet for 71 minutes. Since he was trade to Chicago where he scored the goal that got them into the playoffs, it seems like he’s been much happier. Montreal was a dumpster fire.
Long days of retreat facilitation. They start early. 6:30 wake up, and a little focused think about how our day is going to go. Breakfast with the group and off to commemorate the National Day of Truth and Reconciliation at the incredible Haida Heritage Centre near Skidegate. We are working here with the Sahatu Renwable Resources Board, the wildlife co-management body that was formed under their Land Claim Agreement in 1993. The history of intergovernmental relations in the Northwest Territories is fraught, as it is everywhere when fossil fuels are driving the agenda. The Sahtu people persevered for a century standing in their integrity on their lands waiting for an agreement that would serve their communities. The Haida representatives at today’s ceremony, which was MC’d by Miles Richardson, were deeply appreciative that the Sahtu had chosen to come to Haida Gwaii for this retreat, and tomorrow we will spend some time with their leadership discussing wildlife co-management in different contexts.
After the ceremony we returned back to Haida House for a deep check in and some timeline mapping and story sharing. The main goal of this retreat is relationship building, so stories are a critical aspect of that. It was a long day, but I’m happy with how it went.
Afterwards I got a chance to unwind by catching up on the Bodø-Glimt v Tottenham Champions League match. it was a weird game. The first half showed a flat and uninspired Spurs team, who spent most of the half absorbing pressure, with only Lukas Bergvall pressing the back line out of possession. Nothing worked and a series of dramatic giveaways resulted in a penalty that was skied by Høgh and some other rued chances. The second half began with more of the same, except the home side led by a scintillating performance by Hauge, took the lead. After Bentancur had a goal disallowed, Hauge scored another and Spurs were in deep trouble. Things looked a little better after Simons and Kudus cam into the game, which at least stemmed some of the awful giveaways we were having. Micky Van der Ven managed to get one back on a header from a Porro set piece, and late in the match at 89′ an Archie Grey ball fizzed into the box bounced of the Bodø-Glimt keeper and onto his defender Gunderson and into the net. A 2-2 final score saw Spurs return to London with a point we really had no right to have. A long day at the office for them too.