Mentat Musings: October 2008

Recommended Reading

What a lovely thing a trip to the library is. I fear that many of us have forgotten the pleasure of sharing books with one another. On my last trip I discovered, in my wanderings around Central, a short novel by Wendell Berry called Andy Catlett: Early Travels. Here is an excerpt that I particularly liked:

"For many years now that way of living has been scorned and over the last forty or fifty years it has nearly disappeared. Even so, there was nothing wrong with it. It was an economy directly founded on the land, on the power of the sun, on thrift and skill, and on the people's competence to take care of themselves. They had become dependent, to some extent, on manufactured goods, but as long as they stayed on their farms and made use of the great knowledge that they possessed, they could have survived foreseeable calamities that their less resourceful descendants could not survive. Now that we have come to the end of the era of cheap petroleum, which fostered so great a forgetfulness, I see that we could have continued that thrifty old life fairly comfortably--could even have improved it. Now we will have to return to it, or to a life necessarily as careful, and we will do so only uncomfortably and with much distress.

"Increasingly over the last maybe forty years, the thought has come to me that the old world in which our people lived by the work of their hands, close to weather and earth, plants and animals, was the true world; and that the new world of cheap energy and ever cheaper money, honoured greed, and dreams of liberation from every restraint, is mostly theatre. This new world seems a jumble of scenery and props never quite believable, an economy of fantasies and moods, in which it is hard to remember either the timely world of nature or the eternal world of the prophets and poets. And I fear, I believe I know, that the doom of the older world I knew as a boy will finally afflict the new one that replaced it.

"The world I knew as a boy was flawed, surely, but it was substantial and authentic. The households of my grandparents seemed to breathe forth a sense of the real cost and worth of things. Whatever came, came by somebody's work."

Use it or lose it

I'm continually amazed at the ways humans give their power away. Whether it is purchasing a new item of technology to remove a "burden" from our lives, or obeying a man in uniform, or making a piece of paper to send someone to make decisions on our behalf, even in small ways, it represents a rejection of our ability to provide for ourselves. It's almost as if history never happened.

Take for example our cars. Obviously they make us reliant on fossil fuels to move around and permit us to live far away from the places that we are required to frequent (work, school, family).

One observation I've made twice in the past week is that a new "innovation" is again making us less powerful. I'm sure you've seen or have purchased a GPS travel adviser for your car. These things can be programmed with an origin and destination and tell you where to turn and when using maps of the world. On the surface these are positive devices as they help us to reach our destinations by avoiding us fumbling with maps and getting lost.

But you have to ask the questions: what did people do before such GPS systems? Were we always lost? Was it more dangerous on the roads?

Of course people had, and continue to have, the capacity to look after themselves. If they had to go somewhere they could easily plan a route and execute it. I like to make lists which I can quickly glance at to make sure that I'm on the right track. Often we're not traveling alone on unfamiliar routes so a passenger can read a map safely.

Why are we paying to lose our abilities to navigate?

Now you probably think that this is unimportant but much like children who are driven to school I wonder if this new technology will affect our ability to conceptualize space. It's a fact that children who walk or take the bus to school versus those who are driven to school can conceptualize an internal map of their neighbourhoods and solve problems more readily than their powerless peers.

Imagine, you are born, go to school in a vehicle driven by your parents. When you are old enough your parents buy you a car, outfitted with a GPS system. Then you go to university and get a job after graduation that requires you to work 75 km away from your home using a GPS system. Naturally you would have done some walking to your destinations throughout your life but overall you would not have much experience on the ground learning routes and patterns.

Humans are mobile animals. We move around to different places and learn things by observation. Driving zombie-like along a hypnotic highway listening to orders from a small machine is not a fitting pinnacle of human achievement. We can definitely do better and take our power back.

And let's not forget that the GPS system is a product of the US military. I wonder if a portion of the proceed of the purchases of these devices goes to the US military?

Labels: Consumption

Valhalla Towers

When I was younger, I left my name behind. Some cops beat it out of me. I was powerless and alone and they knew it. So they ripped it out of me like only cops can do.

Fucking pigs. They left me alone on a cell floor, gasping, flat on my face. I couldn’t even see their faces, just the gang, one after another taking their turn. That’s all they are, an official gang. Like the mafia.

Here’s a lesson the cops taught me that day: if you want to pound the fuck out of someone, use a phone book. The pain is the same but your lawyer won’t be able to make a case out of it; you’ll be lucky if your lawyer even believes you. Lawyers don’t get the phone book. They’re not even listed. Protection from guys like me I suppose.

Now my name’s Odin. The legendary all-father, though I doubt if I have any kids. I always took precautions. No attachments that’s the most important thing. No one to rely on and no one to rely on me. It’s the safest choice in an insane world. Only a fool gives the state something to hold over his head. Kids are like that, partners are like that, families are like that—weaknesses.

I’ve managed to remove anyone who might remember my old name from my life. My family was a disappointment though I know they think that I’m the real disappointment. Funny that, can we both be right?

But it’s sad in a way. My parents are probably dead by now. I never saw them at the end like estranged children do in movies. Never had our chance to say goodbye.

My brother is probably some successful retiree with a great pension and a white smile. This bastard who used to get me into trouble and beat the hell out of me is a probably a big shot now. He was always into stocks and shit like that, trying to pick the winners. I bet he’s spending his summers at the cottage in Muskoka and his winters down in Florida or the Cayman Islands. Or maybe he got fucked by the crash of 2008, maybe he blew his brains out when he realized they would take his yacht .

But Odin, an immortal name, is infinitely mortal. Though when I took the name, I thought I would live forever. Time passes. I’m an old man now. But when Odin was young, he rode the rails. Stole what he needed. Became a self-declared herald for anarchism. A living example of how one can live outside the fucked up system. No job, no pension, no home, no family, no email, no phone number, no bank account: all those things that make you a real person. I guess Odin was a fitting name.

I had some great loves. Women like me, travellers. All so beautiful. Freedom is beautiful. If you don’t know that yet, I feel sorry for you. But now they are all gone. Let go of the life I suppose, found homes, needed something more. I wish them only the best.

Last year, my life caught up with me. I smashed my left knee jumping off a moving train in Winnipeg. It was obliterated on a section of track. It was dark, I’d done it a million times, but just once is all it takes. They found me the next morning. It was too late to do anything.

Against my will, Winnipeg is now my home.

Social services paid me a visit in the hospital. They told me that I was now disabled. I was entitled to a monthly pension, housing and access to food banks. All those traps the state lays out for its deviants. All they needed was my social insurance number and a piece of photo identification to start the process.

I laughed in their warm, smiling faces. Do-gooder fucks!

In the end, they got their way but they never got those numbers out of me let alone my name. That’s my secret. Something they’ll never take. Cops or social workers, it’s all the same to me.

So here I am: standard apartment in an indistinct building, scooter with annoying horn (I spray painted an anarchist A on the back of my chair), bars on the wall to help me in the bathroom. They made me get a phone and I managed to get them to pay the bill. They want to check up on me: Prisoner 887 904 114 in room 1902. Prison guards are unnecessary in this jail. Disability ensures compliance.

But I’m saving up for a train trip, maybe back to Hamilton. Not like the old days but I miss the rails, I miss the speed. Miss the wind on my face on warm summer nights under the stars. Miss freedom, real freedom.

I never asked to live forever. I never asked for anything from anyone. I don’t need anything.

Least of all you reading my story. Now piss off and get back to your cell.

Labels: Fiction

Never Again

I sincerely hope that I'll never hear the words "Main Street" or "Kitchen Table" again. What with the global economy collapsing and the Canadian election plodding on, it's almost all you can hear. "It's going to spread from Wall Street to Main Street". "Canadians are tired of hearing about the boardroom table, they want to see what their government will do for them, at the kitchen table". Yuck! Makes me want to puke.

So I wonder what to think about the economic collapse that swings wildly up and down like a yo-yo. First it's doom and gloom. Then a market rebound. Then a market dive. Then back up. What a roller coaster. I wonder if this is the long anticipated recession that never ends. After all how can you have infinite growth on a finite planet? At some point you can't grow anymore. That's a fact.

Something though, keeps telling me that this is not the end. That the global economy has much more destruction to wreak before it fizzles out. We certainly don't want to leave a habitable world behind for future generations. Don't we?

Election Made Easy

So in my last post I offered a mentat lesson on strategic voting. It was pretty long-winded but also straightforward and a way for you to look at your riding and find a way to make your vote prevent the Conservatives from winning another election.

Then today a friend forwarded me a link to voteforenvironment.ca which makes strategic voting really simple. The site recognizes that the Conservatives have no real plan for climate change and for reducing our greenhouse gas emissions while the other parties have much more progressive policies. I've embedded their video below this post.

Essentially they are targeting certain ridings which the Conservatives only won marginally or have a chance to steal in the next election. Your riding might very well be on the list.

Hotly contested ridings (with links to their recommended voting):

The best hope is for a Liberal minority government supported by the NDP. The corporations will have less power (and the Liberals definitely love corporations) and they will have to give in to NDP demands like mandatory labeling of genetically modified food. The most important thing is that the NDP will hold them on their climate change promises. Climate change is the only thing that matters: fuck the economy! What good is an economy on a climate crazy planet?

Here is how the vote would break down if environmentally-conscious Canadians vote smart for the environment:

Conservative
Liberal
NDP
Green
Bloc
IND

97
109
46
1
53
2

As dirty as it feels to vote Liberal you should probably do it if it means keeping a Conservative out of power. Please spread the word to anyone you know (especially those Canadians in the hotly contested ridings).