I have never been an acquisitive person. I don't believe it's in my DNA. And many have challenged me on this but I don't think it's in ANY DNA including human beings'. A lion will let a gazelle walk right in front of it without killing it. Just not a hungry lion. Only one species hoards more than it needs and I don't believe that it is a natural behaviour to that species. But I did not come home to Canada because I wasn't hoarding enough riches in Korea, or because I thought I could get rich here. I am not going to Indonesia because I can save more money there or have a pool in my back yard. But living for my whole life just one unlucky streak away from being flat broke, I have learned that it sucks to be in that position. I don't think it's greed or selfishness or detrimental to the harmony of the world for me, or anybody to feel that it sucks living paycheck to paycheck. And that is why it sucks in Canada for me right now. I reckon it always will to be realistic. Unless Canada makes a huge comeback from the hole it has dug itself into both figuratively and literally, (watch the documentary The Hole Story about the mining industry in Canada. It's on Netflix), I don't think I'll ever be comfortable here. So what will it be in Indonesia that will make me more comfortable? Other than not living paycheck to paycheck. I know I sometimes do things before I can consciously figure out why but I do them because I just have a strong feeling that they are the right thing to do. I trust my feelings and sometimes when I do the right thing I admit to taking credit for doing it for some wise reason when really all it was was a feeling. This is one of those times. I am sure that in the future if this turns out to have been a great decision I can claim to have had a great, adult, responsible reason for making such a drastic move, but really it's just a feeling right now and I think I'm doing the right thing. These recent blog posts have largely been about figuring out why I'm doing this for myself.
One of the things that I have missed in my figuring so far is something that I have so very little of here and will no doubt have in abundance in Indonesia that makes a massive difference to me and that's human connection. I came home sure that I'd be seeing friends and family all the time and that I'd meet lots of friends at work, develop a large network of them and have an active social life. Wow! BIG disappointment! And although I still haven't even learned to say hello in Indonesian, I have not a single doubt in the world that I will have all kinds of things to do with people at work, students and complete strangers over there. It's always been like that for me in the ESL industry and that has always been one of the best things about it. I am not married and have no kids. But I still need human contact. Professional human contact doesn't count. That's practically all I get here in Canada. Even sometimes with friends and family :( . Three years is a long time to go almost without that sort of thing. For me anyway. And I'm not going to go out and get married and have a few kids just so that I will have human contact built into my life. That's that capitalist thinking again. You feel a need, you have to OWN something that fills that need. I like to borrow folks from time to time to fill my need for human contact. I am okay with sharing them.
What I called "selfishness" in that last post could probably more accurately be called "individualization." THAT is one of the things I have found so disturbingly robust in my country where it wasn't just a short time ago. It is one of the things that has heated the water in the frog pot. In previous posts I have talked about greedy people as having the money sickness that has best been named, "affluenza," and said they should all be put into mental institutions. Like most of my philosophical ravings, I was not the first to theorize this. In fact it is quite an ancient idea that one who selfishly hoards much more than he will ever need is mentally deficient. Brain damaged. Native tribes in North America thought so. "Wendigo" is a word Algonquian tribes in the U.S. and Canada gave to a particular evil spirit that had some connections to cannibalism. But its significance may have not been so much in the eating of the flesh of another person but just in the inability to ever satiate this appetite. No matter how many human beings the Wendigo killed and ate, the monster remained in a state of emaciated starvation. This trait of insatiable greed was instantly attributed to the white man when he was first seen on our continent. They had, and still have, the spirit of the Wendigo.
The Canadian Inuit were almost wiped out because of their belief in community and non-ownership of property. Not even a man's wife was his exclusively. I was reading a very interesting account of the voyages of Frobisher in a history of the Hudson Bay Company and it included references to sailors taking advantage of the Inuit's generosity to the point of thievery. Because the Inuit made no protest, Frobisher's men just took sleds, dogs, kayaks, furs, bone knives and harpoons, all sorts of supplies back to England with them and upon returning again they noticed that the village had suffered for it. Not just in population depletion and general poverty but the people of the same village who showed such great generosity and friendliness on Frobisher's first voyage were nowhere near as welcoming the second time around. I think I remember reading this and wondering why the Inuit didn't just harpoon a couple Englishmen like the fat, greedy whales they were. They probably didn't want to be rude or considered unaccommodating to the foreigners. This is where the people of Canada are now. We've been burned by greed, (disagree with me if you want but I think it has been primarily foreign greed), and now we are doing everything we can to be less trusting, less friendly, less polite, protecting Canadians by writing it into law and completely transforming our culture when we really should be running the greedy bastards out of town to preserve our culture. We can still be friendly and trusting. Just not stupid. And we have to be tougher on greed.
I refer you once again to that documentary mentioned above called "The Hole Story." Anyone remember two successful Canadian companies called Inco and Falconbridge? Mining. One of our Canadian mainstays throughout our history. You may not know this but they're gone now. Bought up by foreign interests. Inco was bought by a Brazilian company. They still mine in Canada and take ore from the ground that should belong to US by birth, and by virtue of the fact that somebody a long time ago wrote an act and decided we should all pay for being born here, but ironically, because of the laws that greedy Canadians who ran Inco and Falconbridge cooked up while they were in charge, Canada receives exactly NO royalties or revenue from them. If you dig rock for gravel you have to pay royalties. Money to the country. These guys dig silver, nickel, gold and remove it from our country, refine it somewhere else, then sell it back to us at inflated prices. They do nothing for Canada except employ a few people at rates far below what the miners' unions got for workers at Inco before it was bought out. I guess we were too polite to stop this from happening. But I know of a few Canadian mining companies in other places around the world, Indonesia being just one, that did, and are doing, the exact same thing. Maybe it's our own damn fault.
You KNOW this will happen with the oil in Canada. In fact it IS already happening. And while we're on that topic. I can't just give it two measly lines. Has anyone heard about the latest BP oil spill in Lake Michigan? No? Gee, I wonder why not. Did anyone hear about all the water in Canada that went from protected to unprotected without a vote? That's what happens when someone wants to build an pipeline on our land. We say, "Oh, here let me clear these obstructions out of your way to make it easier for you to remove our natural resources." 2.5 million protected lakes and rivers in Canada to 159? Talk about rolling out the red carpet! Note the part in the article that says, "It has everything to do with pipelines." Oh but this, they hasten to tell us, doesn't mean they are no longer protected. It just removes the hassle of the Navigable Waters Protection officers having to go through the tedium of reviewing every single project that crosses these waters. They'll still remain protected under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. Yeah, the one that "protects" the environment so well against the disasters mining and oil drilling haven't caused Canada. Ever. The same environmental protection that, with the thousands of tankers to be carrying oil sands bitumen all over Canadian waters, has actually allowed the number of oil spill clean up crews in Canada to DROP! It's because bitumen is not oil. So pipelines like the Keystone XL are exempt from paying into the U.S. federal Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund or the funds where the clean up crews' salaries come from. No bitumen is not oil. It's much worse and harder to control if it's spilled. Here's an article that backs me up. Hey look at that! Exactly a year ago! Anybody hear about the Pegasus pipeline spill in Arkansas? It's called the Mayflower spill. I could go on and on. There are all kinds of spills we don't know about. Look in the articles. Media is always suppressed by the oil companies.
But it's not just the Wendigo spirit that has thrived in Canada. It was strong here even when I was young. I'm not so sure it has worsened. The only change has been the bottlenecking of the assets into the hands of fewer and fewer greedy people. And the internationalization of that process has made it so the real perpetrators of the crippling greed that affects Canada are probably not even in this country. In this way it could be said to be DEcreasing. I think it is the individualization that has been more prevalent to me than the greed and corporate mentality although they are certainly both healthier for having the other. People still need other people here in Canada. We haven't lost our social genes or anything. But what I see happening is the spouse and kids becoming pretty much the whole social ball of wax. For a lot more people than before in Canada.
I was walking down the street today and found that I am guilty of this myself. I actually walked for a few hours today all over Calgary. It was a beautiful day and I had some things to do. You need to walk for hours around Calgary to walk by enough people to have a decent sample for the research I conducted, (totally subconsciously). I probably walked past a dozen people today. The first was a lady of about my age walking her dog. She grabbed the dog not by the leash but the collar, hugged it close as I walked by and neither of us said hello. Maybe I look like a person who would sue if a dog growled at me. I don't know. I walked by some school kids who were playing in the schoolyard. I was talking on the phone with my Mom though so none of us said hello. I doubt I would have since they were girls of about 13 or 14 years of age. Saying hello just might get me some dirty looks from supervising teachers or parents on the school grounds. There was one group of guys in work clothes in the industrial district I walked through. I'd say they were in their 20's and 30's. They blocked the whole sidewalk and didn't move until I said, "Excuse me," so again no hello from either side. There was a lady walking in front of me at a slower rate. I detected that she was talking to herself, or more accurately, arguing with herself. She was most likely homeless although I couldn't be sure. I crossed the road before I overtook her. Hey, it wasn't to avoid her. Not only... I had to cross the road anyway! Then finally at the very end of my walk a lady was walking toward me. She was probably in her 60's or 70's. She said hi and I said hello as we passed and I know it made ME feel good. But not even a block after that there was a guy on the same sidewalk walking towards me. Probably late 20's. I made a point of acknowledging him but neither of us said anything. Oh and I forgot there was an Asian dude riding his bike. Probably in his 40's. Just after the lady with her dog. I tried to nod at him but he made a point of not noticing me. Actually there was another Asian guy on his bike but he had just finished riding up the Chinatown bridge Centre Street hill so he was out of breath. When I got into Chinatown and downtown it was crowded so none of those people count. Although there was a lady running for the bus, I'd give her 50's but since she was Asian, probably in her 60's. SHE passed ME. Grabbed my sleeve and said, "Ay, ay," to let me know she was passing on the right, then ran to get her bus. I made a performance of not looking at her and acting as if this were a completely normal occurrence. Oh yeah, then at the C-train stop as I got off the C-train there was another dude. He looked East Indian. A teenager with some books. We both saw the bus and tried to hurry down the switchback then up the other switchback to catch it. It's just long enough of a run so that the bus can pull away and you have to wait another half hour for the next one. Countless times this has happened to me. The kid ran but his phone fell out of his pocket and his battery came out so he had to pick that up. Then he ran again and dropped some books. So he quit running. I, being a veteran of this stop, knew it wasn't worth wasting the energy and was just walking fast. I actually caught up to him and passed him, then proceeded to check how long the next bus would be, decided it was too long to wait and walked home. The whole time I could have engaged him in conversation about his bad luck. Asked if his phone was okay. Maybe offered the information about how long the next bus would be. I just left.
It's strange but even in countries where I don't speak the native language I probably would have talked with this kid. The countries I've been to anyways. With the exception of the States. I probably would have talked with the lady with the dog too. Maybe even the school kids. And here we have the problem in a nutshell. It's ME. I take on the personality of the culture I am in. Well to some extent. I am MUCH more outgoing when I'm not in Canada! Even in Korea where a lot of times people are only saying hello to make fun of me, I'd still say I was more friendly there than here. Mostly because I think my culture has evolved into a highly personal, private one and I don't want to invade anyone's privacy. I wish I had spent more time in the country here. It might have been different because I know people are just nicer in the country than the city.
Anyway, this probably has a lot to do with why I didn't manage to make a bunch of friends, get onto sports teams, meet a girl, and have any social life to speak of while I was here in Canada. I probably didn't put myself out there enough. Though it might have been different if I could have made enough money to AFFORD to put myself out there enough... THIS has a lot to do with the difference as well I think. In countries other than Canada I can afford a social life. And another contributing factor: I have a little bit more confidence in a place where I make a decent living, don't have to worry about finances, have a job that uses my skills and education, (and is considered much more prestigious than anything I've done in Canada), have a nice place to invite guests to for drinks or whatever, exercise more and eat better so LOOK better, probably dress better too. It does a world of good for my social life if I feel good about myself, not just in meeting the ladies but in meeting friends of all kinds. I can't have that confidence in Canada. Sadly.
Now I'm going to bare a little bit of my soul. I am pretty good at acting like I have courage and am not shy, but I am insecure underneath. As I used to say, "Every security guard is at least a little insecure." I see people sometimes hugging friends they meet or even kissing them and wish I could have the confidence to do that. I think that the only way to change the terrible things I've been talking about is basically being nicer to each other and showing more love. OWNING our interconnectedness with each other and the earth. Doing just what those two famous philosophers, William S. Preston Esq. and Theodore Logan said we should do: Be excellent to each other and party on dudes! Was it Bill and Ted who created that or was it Rufus? I forget.
Anyhoo, I think when I was 19 or 20 I had the ability to hug people. I hugged a lot of relatives too and kissed kids. Now for some reason, I think to myself, "Better just shake their hand or wave or something. They may not want ME to hug them or kiss them." It's a confidence thing. I don't feel like I am coming close to living up to my potential doing security work. I feel more like I am contributing to society as an ESL teacher and I feel that others view me that way also. It allows me to be less inhibited and more outgoing and this just naturally leads to more fun, better experiences and memories and a happier life. This is a better explanation about why I said I don't feel so great living in Canada even though I know I am very fortunate to have that option.
One last documentary reference: Tom Shadyac's 2010 film called I Am. Tom Shadyac is the guy who brought us Ace Ventura, Liar Liar, Patch Adams and Evan & Bruce Almighty. He used to write jokes for Bob Hope for crying out loud! I LIKE his comedy but in I Am he talks to a lot of people who are intellectuals and have never seen his movies. He asks people like Desmond Tutu, David Suzuki, Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn and others two questions: What's wrong with the world and what can we do about it? Much like this blog post it starts out with greed, capitalism and the affluenza virus. But I absolutely LOVE where the film ends up! It ends up with global interconnectedness and love. This is something I dig. For so long science has been almost ignoring these mystic parts of the universe, one of which my favourite scientist, Nocola Tesla, called the Ether. It is not mentioned by name in the documentary but it was talked about. Einstein, of course, had trouble with it because it would have destroyed his beloved theory of relativity that, like some other theories, has grown to be accepted as fact in the new, not-so-scientific science. So many other scientists have trouble with abstract ideas like the Ether, love, God, but they have no trouble believing in their CHOSEN theories, and haven't had since the time of Darwin, or shortly before, which marked the great separation of God and science. I hate this rivalry and think it has been greatly detrimental to science trying to eliminate any unexplainable phenomena like God from it only to replace them with other unexplainable phenomena. It just makes modern theoretical sciences like quantum physics almost hypocritical in that they are entirely based on things that are highly elusive, impossible to prove but we just KNOW they exist. As I have said before, when a physicist says he understands the universe because of quantum physics it's like a person saying he understands T.V. because he has a remote and can change channels. If we could get beyond this arrogant belief that we can explain and understand everything, which is the misplaced core of modern science, I believe, as did Tesla, that science could have its greatest generation.
Again I will bare a bit of my soul here but I think there is a great power out there that binds us all together with each other and the earth. I believe if we could tap into it we could do wondrous things! Like healing diseases, incredible advances in technology and maybe even stopping the greed. It just might be the ONLY way to do this. This power is something that is being hidden and/or ignored. It is not possible to quantify but we know it's there. I think God, love, the Ether, the Tao they are probably all pretty close to the same thing or interconnected parts of the same thing.
Tesla was pretty defiant about the futility of science without the Ether. This is a man who was able to provide the world with electricity wireless and free for all over a century ago! The guy was too smart for his own good. It's not wonder that he, like so many other things, was silenced and sort of swept under the rug. His life was an awfully mysterious story. Check it out and see if you don't see a cover-up.
To get even more abstract, look at the very beginning of Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching. Written in the 6th century B.C. It says, "Non-existence I call the beginning of Heaven and Earth. Existence I call the mother of individual beings. Therefore does the direction towards non-existence lead to the sight of the miraculous essence, the direction towards existence to the sight of spatial limitations." I think this is pretty much the same thing. The closer you get to what Lao Tzu calls the direction towards non-existence, the closer you get to miraculous essence. I bet this miraculous essence is something we'd all be shooting for if we could work together and quit trying to selfishly hoard. Conversely, individuality leads to spatial limitations such as selfishness, jealousy and greed. Disregard the self and the Self is increased. If you desire nothing, do you not have everything you want? Sound familiar? Non existence. The Ether. God. Love. Mirror neurons. Interconnectivity. Things we don't, and in all likelihood CAN'T, understand are the things that could save us. I don't know about you but "miraculous essence" sounds pretty good to me! Worth a crack anyway, no?
But back to the documentary: all the people who Shadyac chose as interview subjects seemed to agree that, although we can't prove it, it is flaming obvious that people are programmed to help each other almost as if we are a bit more connected and not so individual. Speaking of things swept under the rug, Darwin's OTHER book in which he tries to apply his Natural Selection to the "Descent of Man," he talks a lot more about our co-operative nature than survival of the fittest. Probably why nobody KNOWS about this book of his. If you actually read "Origin of Species" closely, God is not excluded in THAT either. It's just been presented over the years in that way. Think about it. Why were there so many capitalizations of "nature" and "natural selection" in the book, and why, if nature is an inanimate, unintelligent force, did he use the self-contradictory term, natural SELECTION? Nothing inanimate and unintelligent can make selections.
In the movie they mention how good it makes everybody but a sociopath feel when we see people helping each other. It gives us a lump in our throat, a tear in our eye and an urge to participate. I think the most memorable event of my three-year stint in Canada will be the tragic floods in Calgary last summer. I say, "tragic," but they were anything but. The whole city pulled together and people were treating each other with human kindness that we normally reserve for family reunions or Christmas time. It would have been a very interesting sociological study to follow a homeless person around with a camera during that time. I bet every homeless person in Calgary is hoping for an even bigger "disaster" this year! Why can't it be Christmas every day?
Okay, one final documentary reference: I was watching "The Chocolate Farmer" the other day, about a cacao farmer named Eladio Pop in Belize who honours his Mayan heritage and co-operates with the land, almost becomes part of it. He thinks the Mayan culture was more advanced and we are going backwards the way we do things these days. Many agree. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization." Now, I don't necessarily think we should revert to farming and abandon technology. I'd be lost without my computer and the internet. But I like the part in this film when Eladio says that we study in school just so we can work for someone else and become their slave. I am a free man. No chance of ever doing this in Canada, but maybe I will put a little money away every check when I start working in Indonesia, and eventually buy a little shack with high speed internet, and farm pineapple or sugar cane or whatever grows over there. Chocolate? hmmmm....
So there! I'm not just going to Indonesia for a better job or to escape the evil capitalistic empire Canada has become. I feel like I will be better able to live a life there that is closer to the life I am supposed to be living. It won't be easy living in the heat and hubbub of one of the most densely populated places on Earth. I will have LOTS of human contact! And I will be working hard to build up a battery of lessons and techniques that suit the curriculum at my new school. I'll be busy learning the language and culture and finding my way around Jakarta. I'll be busy! But I think I will be happier by far. I will probably be able to get that beautiful feeling of co-operating with my fellow man more. And just maybe I can live a life that can make a small change in one or two people for the better. I think that is why the Shadyac documentary is called I Am. Because this is the change needed to change our world. Slowly as our world's frog water has almost reached a boiling point, it can be cooled by individuals just living good lives and affecting others in that way. As Lao Tzu says, "The Man of Calling dwells in effectiveness without action. He practices teaching without talking." Just do my part by living a principled life and hope that others will do so too. THAT'S what I am going to get started on as soon as I get to Indonesia. I admit, it's too hard for me to do that in Canada. I just wish that weren't the case. But who knows, maybe I won't pass my physical and I'll have to stay in Canada. Then I'll need to write a new blog post to convince you and myself that Canada is the place I am meant for. Ha ha ha. We shall see what happens...
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