Study after study demonstrate the importance of community to your personal health (TED talk). When you live amongst family and friends, you live longer and better. However, our modern society has slowly lured us away from community – suburbs box us in and make us drive, promising jobs pull us to new cities, and the glamour of the runway makes the grass look greener in New York, Paris or elsewhere. With our international lives, moving from one place to another, we sacrifice health in the name of money. To comfort ourselves in new places, we turn to familiar faces. In some ways, we have replaced common human faces with common corporate ones. When I lived in Beijing, I was happy to eat at MacDonald’s or Starbuck’s, just for the sake of comfort and familiarity – they were like family members.
But do not confuse the friendly neighbourhood corporation for your friend, in fact, you probably don’t really want to get to know them. The Harvard Business review points out that we prefer the ATM to the teller, the online shop to the physical one, and self-service stations to full service ones. We like the image and experience of the Starbuck’s, but not the people working there. We just don’t want to be touched, we want our bubble to stay inflated.
Slavok Zizek, the crazy european intellectual made a fascinating point during a recent interview on Al Jazeera English. He said, and I am paraphrasing, that what we want today is “decaffeinated people”. By that, he means that our society is full of decaffeinated products – decaf coffee, non-alcoholic beer, fat-free cake and so on. We remove the poison from the things we love to make them more edible. Similarly, we are interested in our fellow humans in only so much as we are interested in top most layer of their personality, free of any darkness, unpleasantness or ambiguity.
It is easier than ever to move through life without interaction with your fellow citizens. With a bit of money, you can easily detach yourself from your local community. In our increasingly international economy, people fly and move from one city to another, with scarcely a second thought. I remember, when I worked in Pisa, Italy for a summer one of my coworkers, a 40-year-old man made a 2 hour commute every day to work. I asked him, “Why don’t you move closer to work?”. His response was that in Italy, you simply did not move. He grew up in his village and that is where he lived, he knew the people, his family, the stones and the buildings – his natal village and him were one. Despite having travelled the world, I too have trouble seeing myself living somewhere other than Montreal.
Of course the problems above are mainly tied to the wealthy and the very poor – those who flee their natal villages for the slums of Beijing or Mumbai and the rich who bounce from Hong Kong to Paris. Wealth allows you to distance yourself from people and problems. You can become isolated as you have the ability to pay people to do things for you, things that are fundamental to being human – cooking, farming, taking care of children. Of course, it is not rocket science to see this type of life becomes very void, very fast. To die alone is no fun and you rarely hear of people taking their retirement to spend more time with their possessions. People are meant to live with people, for better or worse. We are messy animals who bark and fight and quiver, but we are social ones and the sooner we realize this, the happier we will be.
Join a club, volunteer, or heck, even join an online community.
Open-Data is dear to my heart, since July 2010 I have been working at Montreal Ouvert to bring an open-data policy to the city. Open-data basically means that the government (in this case Montreal) publishes its information in an open, accessible and legal format that allows for re-use.
To show our fellow citizens the potential power of open-data, I convinced the amazing Jeff Wallace to build Resto-Net.ca. The site that takes the health inspections, currently available on the city website, and presents them in an easier to use format – along with some great analytics prepared by James McKinney. So, what is missing? A lot. The city should be doing the following:
Publish the information in a machine readable format
Create an API to get real-time updates of health inspections
Publish warnings, inspections and other information – not just fines (which is what they currently do).
On November 11th, 2010, CTV News is airing a special report on health inspections in the city of Montreal and yours truly will be featured. Tune in at noon or 6PM.
To give you an idea of the fines our there, take a look at this chart:
After many years of patriotically wearing a red poppy, I have stopped. Why do we wear a poppy? The Canadian Legion considers it the utmost sign of remembrance for the sacrifice of our ancestors – 37 million casualties in world war I and over 60 million killed in world war II. Did the young men, women and civilians die for our freedom or for the politicians who gallantly led them into the muds of Europe from their armchairs in state capitals?
The dead did sacrifice, often with the best of intentions, but if we are to remember something, we should remember the good instead of the bad, the living instead of the dead. Peace, not war.
I firmly believe in the power non-violence and non-cooperation, it changes history – from Gandhi to Jaurès to Schindler to King to Mandela. Do not confuse non-violence with pacification; non-cooperation is the active battle against injustice through peaceful means. The Danes saved far more jews through non-violence than many countries did through violent action. We must honour the dead by reminding ourselves the folly of war; wearing a red poppy does not accomplish this, it simply propagates our reverence for military solutions to problems. This year, I will be wearing a white poppy, in vehement support of peace.
The Canadian Legion must recognize the power of the white poppy, because it has tried to ban it, claiming it infringes on their trademark. The power of peacekeeping is evident in Canadian history, we are a country born out of negotiation and one who embraces non-violence. Without descending into a history lecture, remember that Lester Pearson had the courage to send peacekeepers, instead of arms, to the Suez Canal – and it worked.
The white poppy is not a new idea, it dates back to 1933, when the Co-operative Woman’s Guild brought about the idea of commemorating peace instead of war. In his famous poem, “Flanders Fields”, John McCrae challenges us to take up the torch from the fallen and continue the battle with the enemy – but is the enemy the man across the mud or war itself?
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
Is the quarrel to be taken up with the unknown German soldier or with the people who send the patriotic citizens to their deaths? In WWI, over a quarter million people died or were wounded on the fields of Verdun in a matter of a few days, during WWII six million taking Stalingrad, and millions more continue to perish in conflicts today. We must stop the cycle of violence. There is great injustice in the world that must be fought, and it must be fought will all our bodies and souls – but not with guns.
Only resolution brought through non-violence can be lasting, war leads to war, just as WWI led to WWII. It was only through peaceful measures of post-WWII such as the Marshall plan, mass migration, the UN and the EU that peace in Europe was finally established. War begets war, peace begets peace.
Violence across the world has been steadily declining and while the tasks ahead remain daunting, a white poppy will help us remember that we must honour and remember peace, not death. Mahatma Gandhi prophetically said, “Non-violence is a plant of slow growth. It grows imperceptibly but surely”. We must fertilize the soil upon which it grows and that is why I will be wearing a white poppy this year, I hope you join me.
Prostitution comes in various forms and it is very hard to say where it begins and where it ends. People marry for money, the rich guy gets the girl, attractive female waitresses in scant clothes; people constantly use sex, or sexual innuendo, as a way of generating income. However, the actual practice of sexual intercourse in exchange for money seems a fair definition for “prostitution”.
Last week, a superior court of Ontario struck down a series of federal laws that were designed to criminalize prostitution (Globe and Mail Article, Big Think Article). In doing so, they have opened up the doors to brothels and the legal status of sex workers. In his decision, judge Himel makes clear that the decision is based on concern for the safety of the sex workers, not the morality of the practice. The two sides brought together 12 years of studies and data and the judge unequivocally decided that the safety of women in the sex trade was better protected if the trade was done in brothels, not on the street.
My thoughts on this issue have changed somewhat. I used to be in favour of judge Himel’s view, I felt that the current criminal system pushed sex trade underground and compromised the safety of the prostitutes. By making it legal, the trade could be monitored by the government and the health and safety of the people involved would be better cared for.
However, while my views on the safety of sex workers remains the same, the immorality of the practice is a serious consideration. By permitting prostitution, we indirectly (or directly) encourage the objectification of woman and their subjugation to the desires of men. While decriminalization may be done for the safety of the workers, a society that decriminalizes prostitution implicitly says it is an acceptable profession. I think the majority of Canadians would agree it is not a moral profession, so herein lies the rub. (Scary stats here).
A perfect society would certainly be free of prostitution, if we are not working towards that, what are we working for? The question becomes, how do you eliminate or reduce prostitution? Clearly, criminalizing prostitution does not work – there is prostitution everywhere in the world and its illegality endangers the very women you are trying to help. Criminalizing the client does help; in Sweden, the Sex Purchase Law has dramatically reduced the prostitutes and clients that trawl the streets.
As with most problems, prostitution needs to be tackled from the side. The root of the problem is that when the deals are done under the table, out of view of society, bad things happen. So, why not make the entire system transparent? If the people involved in the trade, both client and supplier feel their trade is a legitimate one, they should have nothing to fear. In Sweden, when men are caught with prostitutes, their names are published on a shame list. Prostitution has dramatically dropped in the country.
People who frequent ladies of the night should not be ashamed of it. I would say that those who support legalization of prostitution should be equally in favour of listing all the names of the patrons. I have no qualms with endorsing a baker I frequent or a plumber that helps me, so people in favour of open and legal prostitution should have no issue declaring who they frequent.
We can then use the reduced enforcement costs (courts, police, etc.) to fund education programs and job placement for women. As with anything in society, it is very hard to isolate factors – why do people frequent prostitutes? Surprisingly, many do it for companionship – which indicates another failure in society and in their own relationships. So, perhaps we might offer counselling to some of the people who frequent prostitutes for companionship rather than purely sexual reasons.
Why not let judge Himel’s decision stand, but institute a law that states, “The names of all prostitutes and all clients will be published on a website managed by the government.” Who could possibly be opposed to this? It might just solve our problem and help move society towards greater equality between men and women.
This idea came to me while visiting the Shoah museum in Paris for an exhibit of filmmakers who captured the horrors of the concentration camps. The exhibit demonstrated the power of film in conveying injustice and motivating people to rectify the situation. Prior to my visit, the story from the film Ferris Bueller’s Day Off was played out on Twitter. Each character would tweet his lines at the appropriate times (the movie takes place over the course of one day) and other characters would reply.
Some people claim that social media (Twitter, Facebook) allow for more democracy and communication, but do they? Twitter failed to change anything in Burma, Iran, or Xinjiang. Where has social media made an impact on real societal quests for freedom?
What if the historical events of a genocide – Holocaust, Rwanda, Cambodia, etc. were played out on Twitter and Facebook – would anyone notice or care? Would anyone do anything concrete? What if we played out a current crisis, would it increase awareness of the problem?
For example, for world war II, some exchanges might look like:
Each relevant historical figure (Hitler, Churchill, Shindler) would have a twitter account and say things that were true. For example:
Hitler – “All propaganda has to be popular and has to accommodate itself to the comprehension of the least intelligent of those whom it seeks to reach.”
Chamberlain “My good friends, this is the second time in our history that there has come back from Germany to Downing Street peace with honour. I believe it is peace for our time.“
Hitler – @Chamberlain “Any alliance whose purpose is not the intention to wage war is senseless and useless.”
Churchill – RT @Chamberlain “Any alliance whose purpose is not the intention to wage war is senseless and useless.”
Shindler – @Hitler “Power is when you have every justification to kill someone, and then you don’t”
Churchill – @Hitler @Musollini @JPEmperor “We shall go on to the end, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight on the beaches, … we shall never surrender”
Roosevelt – “A date which will live ininfamy“
Hitler – “The holocaust is the solution to the Jews final question“
Truman – @JPEmperor “The atom bomb was no “great decision.” It was merely another powerful weapon in the arsenal of righteousness.”
etc.
This could go on for a while. There was a very interesting debate about the good and bad power of social media such as Twitter. The two debaters were Clay Shirky and Morozon. Clay claims that twitter helps free people, while Morozon claims these tools allow oppressive governments to easily monitor dissidents. See the debate at the Edge.org here.
What about doing this for a current conflict by parsing headlines? We could do the Congo or Sudan.
Last year I spent eight months in France, primarily in Paris. In 2003, I lived in Marseille and Dunkerque and I have been to France over 26 times. I hold a french passport, a french name, and a french heritage. Perhaps, given all that, I can say a few words on the country of my fathers.
If you would like to skip the rest of the article, my points basically boil down to the following sentence. The country is currently run by old men, for old men – (or by young men who pretend to be old). The smart, young, ambitious frenchmen and women are fleeing the country – to Canada (4,026 in 2006), the US, and elsewhere. Why? In many ways, France is well placed for a young ambitious person; you have access to open european markets, a dynamic immigrant workforce and some of the best infrastructure in the world. Yet, the brain drain is remarkable.
In many ways, the country and its young people have the sense that all has been said. On a number of fronts, the country feels finished. Part of the problem is the centralization of the nation in Paris. Nearly all the top schools and international businesses are based in Paris, the government is highly centralized and if you are not in the capital, you are a nobody. This leads to a major problem: the top tier of French entrepreneurs, businessmen, lawyers and engineers all end up together, in Paris. Living, studying and working in the same place leads to groupthink. Innovation is fundamentally an ability to think differently. Canada has a fairly spread out intellectual basin between Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. The United States has various poles of expertise in Boston, New York, Houston, San Francisco and Chicago. In France all of the most ambitious end up in Paris and they all end up alike.
Installing a Bixi platform in Montréal
Paris feels like a museum, the entire city has been developed to the maximum height of six stories, and companies located in Paris dare not leave for fear of losing the top talent or being perceived as inferior to their parisian coutnerparts. If Paris is disregarded, the remainder of the country seems equally developed – all the way down to the residential home and the bike racks. As an example, both Montreal and many French cities offer communal bike systems to their citizens. In Montreal, the bikes sit on mobile platforms that are solar panelled. The platforms can be picked up and moved to different locations with a simple forklift and flatbed truck. In France, the bike racks are cemented into the ground and hard wired to the grid – making it impossible to adjust the distribution according to usage. The French plan for permanence, but the world is moving in the opposite direction – more mobile and distributed. The centralized french model is dead.
A cemented, permanent, velib station
Another example are residential homes in France, they are usually surrounded by a high fence. In North America, most properties flow from one to the other, with no physical barriers in between. In France, everyone seems determined to mark their land and proudly proclaim, “This is mine! Don’t touch”.
To live by what is and was reduces your ability to see what can be, what might be. The French culture is obsessed with its glorious past, the focus must be shifted to the future. Throughout the country, you find monuments to past accomplishments – the renaissance, Napoleon, the Republic, but there are so few monuments to the future. By emphasizing past achievements, the country has developed an air of superiority that prevents the desperately needed change and adaptation to a new global reality. There is no denying the monumental achievements France made, they moved the world forward; but no one can live off the past for long. France’s cultural and economic inheritance is being spent fast.
Their passion with the past leads to reactions that smack more of fear than anything else. At the time of writing, the Assemblé Nationale just passed a law banning burqas in public. The government, all members save one, did this under the pretext of protecting the secular state, increasing social cohesion and ensuring woman are not oppressed by men. The law will affect 2 000 french women and some tourists. Despite the benevolent paternal intentions, it is fundamentally contrary to liberal enlightenment principals and will only further fragment French society. In Turkey, when Ataturk wished to secularize the country, he first passed an outright ban on hijabs – it failed. Instead, he decided to attack the problem indirectly, he obliged all the prostitutes in the country to wear a hijab. All of a sudden, woman removed their headscarfs.
France prides itself on equality and justice, yet it remains a deeply unequal country – only 14.8% of the Assemblée nationale is made up by women (compared with 30% in Quebec, 53% in Rwanda, and 46% in Sweden). The burqa ban is designed to protect women from oppression, yet their own Assemblée nationale, theoretically the bastion of gender equality, fails to represent the population of the country.
France’s love affair with their enlightenment past leads to other bizarre reactions. For the second time, Quick, the French fast food chain, is proposing to convert 20 of its outlets to Halal serving venues. This is to attract business from the very large muslim community. Again, the political establishment, both left and right are crying foul. They claim that it will segregate the society and play to religious extremism. How?
France is paralyzed. With the success of the far-right Front National party in the last regional elections (over 20%), one must start to worry. Studies have shown that minorities are tolerated by most countries, until they reach about 15% of the population. At that point, populist politicians, especially in tough times, start to point the finger at the “different” people, claiming they are stealing jobs and changing the spirit of the nation. France, like many countries, has not come to grips with diversity – they tolerate the immigrants. But, when you tolerate something – you are not accepting it for what it is. Do you tolerate your children? Fundamentally, you cannot both love and tolerate something, and if you do not love your fellow countrymen regardless of faith or skin colour, how can they fully be your countrymen?
Fundamental social reform is desperately needed in France, the french economy is based primarily on three things: the state, large corporations (which are supported by the state), and agriculture. There has been a failure to innovate – not due to a lack of resources, but rather due to a mindset that has infected the country. The current mentality is to secure a government job or get out of there. As an example, France employs half a million more bureaucrats than Germany, despite having a population 20% smaller. When I tell my French family that I am starting a business (two actually), they look at me dumbfounded – like I just told them I converted to Islam.
Just last week, the French took to the streets to protest an increase in the retirement age – from 60 to 62, still amongst the lowest in the world. If people are not prepared to work two more years for a very generous pension, one must wonder how bad their jobs are. The problem is not the amount of time they need to work, but rather the attitude they seem to have towards their work (WSJ Article).
It is sad. France of the 1980s and early 90s was a dynamic and moving place, they built state of the art technology – La Défense, High Speed Trains and led important social movements. In the late 90s, something changed. France went on the defensive; perhaps it was the fall of the soviet empire and the rise in power of the american liberalized economic model. Perhaps it was a change in leadership in France or the rising age of the population. Whatever it was, at some point around 1995 the country changed, or rather, it stopped changing. And that was the beginning of the end.
The fear of change, the paralysis in the face of challenge and a degeneration of political discourse on minorities is becoming tired. France must move beyond beyond 17th century enlightenment, they must embrace the global world and assert their role as democratic and technological leaders. Today, the country holds great potential – a young and energetic immigrant population, a strong infrastructure and world class schools. To unleash that potential, bold steps must be taken. The old guard must be shoved aside, the republic must be rebuilt and the country must undergo a quiet revolution. De Gaulle, came to our nation some years ago and proclaimed, “Vive le Québec libre!”, it is time someone returns the favour and shouts from the Eiffel tower, “Vive la France libre!”
I just watched the most recent TED talk by Sugata Mitra, a very innovative educator. His talk outlines the different ways he has used technology to successfully educated children around the world. The inspirational talk is well worth 17 minutes of your day; however, one sentence during the talk really stood out for me, “These kids wanted to be football players, but after watching eight TED talks they wanted to be Leonardo daVinci”.
The media children consume today is so full of idolatry for music stars (not really artists), television starts and sports players that it is difficult for children to dream of anything but that. It is absolutely essential that they become more exposed to intellectuals, scientists, engineers, doctors and other people who they can aspire to be like. Just as smoking has disappeared from advertisement, we need to deeply think about what children see everyday. Sweeden has.
There is a lack of appreciation for old technologies that we use everyday. Two examples are mail and checks. Both systems are incredibly easy to use and arguably far easier than their electronic counter parts (just ask someone over 50).
Imagine this crazy idea: you drop an item in a red box, with a handwritten address and a small fee and it will be reliably delivered nearly anywhere in the world. Yes, email is great, but delivering physical objects around the world in a timely, affordable and reliable fashion is even more impressive. On top of that, it has been argued that the penny post was a major contributor to the industrial revolution.
Checks are a nutty idea too. Take some liquid dye (pen), apply it in a pattern (words) on a piece of paper, and boom, you just transferred money. This is far easier than transferring via Paypal, and there are fewer fees attached.
Too quickly we write off the amazing accomplishments of the past to make way for the shiny new toy that the neighbour just got.
I was not planning on writing about Israel, but who knew they would be so ridiculous this week. First came the report that they are deporting 400 children born in Israel of Palestinian parents. The justification? Zionism. Seriously, the cabinet publicly claimed that they were deporting these children to ensure the preservation of the Jewish nature of the state of Israel. This is despite a public appeal by the wife of the Prime Minister. In pretty much every other developed country in the world, if you are born there, you are given citizenship. Guess not in Israel.
The second impressive story, that is more noteworthy for its potential impact, is the soldier who posted a group photo of herself and some Palestinian friends (who happen to be handcuffed and blindfolded in front of a cement barrier). Lovely photo.
With the hyper-active behaviour surrounding Copenhagen this year, climate-gate, and the failed climate change bills in the US and Australia; it might be time to take some perspective on our situation as a species and global warming as a problem. We are destroying the planet, but not in the way you might think. Global warming is a serious issue that threatens countries and people, but it is a superficial, easy to solve and a fundamentally materialistic problem.
Global warming is caused by the overconsumption of fossil fuels, used for the transportation and production of goods and services. Therefore, the solution is quite simple – reduce our use of fossil fuels. Global warming is a secondary level problem. When you steal an item off a store shelf, you are directly committing an immoral act and harming another person. When you burn a barrel of oil, you are indirectly harming people, but the indirectness reduces the level of immorality you might feel. Global warming is a secondary issue, it is therefore not as significant on the moral scale of crimes.
Global warming and other environmental issues are external to ourselves, while they might affect us and be our fault, they are manifestations of our failure as a society, not the actual problem.
In fact, there are much more pressing issues to solve. In 2010, there are over 26 million slaves in the world, nine hundred thousand women are raped every year, over six million people are behind bars, and over 200 million children are abused while working every year. To these people, pollution, global warming and other middle class issues could not be more remote. Slavery, inequality, and poverty are fundamental problems of society – pollution is a consequence. A doctor always strives to treat the source of a sickness, not simply mask the symptoms. We need to attack the root of the problem.
To tackle global warming, we must fist address the underlying issues that plague our society. Not only is it morally urgent to address human suffering, it is also beneficial to the overall improvement of the environment. Let me be perfectly clear, you cannot put a price on human suffering and life and you can therefore not equate carbon reductions with a child slave. Priorities matter. Therefore, it follows that we should first address the issues with the greatest moral weight and and largest potential dividend.
Some will say that we need to tackle all these items – global warming, women’s rights, slavery, etc. But resources are finite and even more limited is the ability to keep the public engaged on an issue. As an example, contrast the fundraising results during large natural catastrophes such as the Haiti earthquake or Asian Tsunami with the average fundraising efforts. It therefore follows that we should focus on the items that have the largest moral potential first. I cannot conscientiously ask for money for carbon credits when our fellow humans are in such misery. The problems of inequality and injustice go to the root of civilization and the way we treat each other. They are therefore much more difficult to resolve than secondary level issues such as climate change.
Not only are the victims of our crimes within reach of our help, the perpetrators are also within our sphere of influence. We choose not to act because it is fundamentally a reflection on ourselves. The diamonds on your wife’s hand may be tainted, the clothes on your children may have been made by another child, and your cellphone contains coltan dug by slaves in eastern D.R. Congo whose mothers were likely repeatedly raped. By recognizing the failure of mankind, we inevitably confront our own failure to change.
To truly effect change we must change ourselves, we must ask ourselves, “What am I doing on a daily basis that may be making the world worse, not better”. Find one thing, and change that. Day in and day out, if done on a global scale, we could begin to change things in a fundamental way. It is far too easy to point the finger and say, not my fault!
Pollution is easy to externalize. The poor countries claim the west created the mess, the developed countries point at the coal factories in China, and individuals blame corporations. While we recognize we are all part of the problem, none of us think we are at the root of the problem. By focusing our media attention on global warming, we are actually making ourselves feel better, which is exactly what global warming advocates are doing. Green people, myself included, too often go to bed saying, “Yes, climate change is a big problem, but it is not my problem, I drive a Prius”. Global warming just isn’t that important when placed against other issues. All of these issues are intertwined, but we must focus on those with the largest moral payback and which lie at the root of our ills?
In my opinion, not a penny should be spent on climate change programs while children die of hunger, women are raped and slaves toil away around the world. The money proposed for climate change initiatives could have far more moral impact if it were employed to reduce poverty, improve medicine, increase the equality of women, and strengthen democratic institutions. The problems I propose to address first are so massive it may mean we never solve climate change. But do we deserve to solve environmental problems if we cannot address our most fundamental societal failures?
