Archive for August, 2006
Michael Baigent on why the conclusions he, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln came to in ‘The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail’ hadn’t been uncovered before”
The answers to [this question], we realised, lay in our own age and the modes or habits of thought which characterize it. Since the so-called ‘Enlightenment’ of the eighteenth century, the orientation of Western culture and consciousness had been towards analysis, rather than synthesis. As a result, our age is one of ever-increasing specialisation. In accordance with this tendancey, modern scholarship lays inordinate emphasis on specialisation - which, as the modern university attests, implies and entails the segregation of knowledge into distinct ‘disciplines’. In consequence, the diverse spheres covered by our inquiry have traditionally been segmented into quite separate compartments. In each compartment the relevant material has been duly explored and evaluated by specialists, or ‘experts’ in the field. But few, if any, of these ‘experts’ have endeavoured to etablish a connection between their particular field and otheres that may overlap it. Indeed such ‘experts’ tend generally to regard fields other than their own with considerable suspicious - spurious at worst, at best irrelevant. And eclectic or ‘interdisciplinary’ research is often actively disocuraged as being, among other things, too speculative
I very seriously hope we are ready to start speculating again. All of this analysis is killing us.
August 30th, 2006
“For years now people have been criticizing the Bush administration for intelligence failures, specifically: the president’s failure to be intelligent.”
–Stephen Colbert
August 29th, 2006
1.) It’s 10:30pm and my boyfriend calls from Montreal to wish me a good night. He tells me he’s out with a friend, and a friend of a friend and that their conversations about politics and defining yourself have been incredable; that they’ve been sitting on a patio drinking beer and smoking cigarettes and talking and being inspired, and I’m happy and can’t wait to spend time with he and his friends in Montreal.
2.) As I hang up the phone I find myself wondering again, as I have many times this week, what I’m doing right now. Sure, of course, I’m studying things I am incredably interested in. And I have a job that’s putting me through school which is pretty awesome. But these courses I’m taking 9 times out of 10 they are not connecting me with people with whom I have inspiring life-changing conversations with. In fact, the combination between my introversion and the anti-social nature of my post-secondary school of choice has left me with a staggeringly low number of friends at university–but isn’t connections between people what this whole life thing is all about?
3.) Meanwhile I study psychology and philosophy and religion because combined those are the things that fascinate me the most; but what ignites me is talking about environmental issues, population growth, and the lack of literacy and education around the world–so am I even studying the right thing?
4.) This summer I have fallen madly in love. And it’s been incredible. And it’s had me rebuilding all sorts of plans. And it has me thinking ahead toward a practical life plan involving the proper allocation of money with which to raise children and how I can incorporate staying at home for a few years into a plausible career…And that’s not the track I’ve spent most of my life thinking about.
5.) My own hypocrisy irritates me. My inability to reconcile my lifestyle with what I believe in frustrates me. I try to be patient with myself (because change is difficult), but I worry that eventually I’ll just give up, and instead of building schools in 3rd world countries, and being involved in grassroot organic food co-ops I’ll end up in suburbia driving a gas-guzzling vehicle, buying genetically-modified food at my local grocery store and raising my kids to be as materially focused as I am.
Which breaks my heart. Not even because I think that kind of lifestyle is “wrong”, but because it’s not what I want for myself, or for my kids.
But how do you fund a grassroots lifestyle?
How do you make that about face from the world you’ve been brought up in and say “Listen: this is how I’m going to live my life”?
6.) How do you get to a place where you know that every choice you’re making is not just one you can be proud of and accept, but one that falls exactly in line with the person you want to be and the changes you want to help make in the world?
It’s time to start a new year (because I am a student and my year begins in September), and these will be thoughts I will struggle with as the year goes on.
August 28th, 2006
Today I was driving from Toronto to Guelph on the 401, and I drove by an armoured truck, painted army green. The driver’s window was rolled down and a man’s elbow pointed out. He was wearing camouflage with a Canadian flag.
And as I kept driving I past three pickup trucks painted army green and three big trucks with the round tented like backs, each with two men dressed in green and brown and sporting our flag…
And I kept feeling like I wanted to cry. It was the closest I had ever been to men in the army, save for the men who hold machine guns and stand outside banks when money is transfered in Ireland that I saw from inside a bus once. And I suddenly found myself thinking about the fear people in countries that are occupied must feel every day when they walk down the street or drive down the road. I suddenly found myself wondering what it would actually be like to have to drive through army checkpoints.
I put thought into the idea that going into Afganistan was, under the assumption that the Taliban was reponsible for 9-11, warrented. And that given that our army is a peace-keeping force in Afganistan and not techinically involved in Iraq…that maybe as Canadians we can be proud of what our soldiers are doing…
And despite that I couldn’t quell the negative feelings associated with the trucks I was driving by. Their existance made me sad. Their apparent necessity broke my heart.
We train men to kill. Even in a country like Canada young men are trained to kill other people. What kind of a species are we?
A little excerpt from Ani Difranco’s poem ’self-evident’
and we hold these truths to be self evident:
#1 george w. bush is not president
#2 america is not a true democracy
#3 the media is not fooling me
cuz i am a poem heeding hyper-distillation
i’ve got no room for a lie so verbose
i’m looking out over my whole human family
and i’m raising my glass in a toast
here’s to our last drink of fossil fuels
let us vow to get off of this sauce
shoo away the swarms of commuter planes
and find that train ticket we lost
cuz once upon a time the line followed the river
and peeked into all the backyards
and the laundry was waving
the graffiti was teasing us
from brick walls and bridges
we were rolling over ridges
through valleys
under stars
i dream of touring like duke ellington
in my own railroad car
i dream of waiting on the tall blonde wooden benches
in a grand station aglow with grace
and then standing out on the platform
and feeling the air on my face
give back the night its distant whistle
give the darkness back its soul
give the big oil companies the finger finally
and relearn how to rock-n-roll
yes, the lessons are all around us and a change is waiting there
so it’s time to pick through the rubble, clean the streets
and clear the air
get our government to pull its big dick out of the sand
of someone else’s desert
put it back in its pants
and quit the hypocritical chants of
freedom forever
August 27th, 2006
First read this. Then tell me: am I missing something? I mean, generally speaking I fall on the side against the Catholic Church, but in this case I don’t think I even understand the problem–and until further clarity is shed on the situation I am definately siding with the Church.
How could crossing yourself be provocative?
August 26th, 2006
“Always be kinder than necessary, because everyone is fighting their own battles”
–unknown
August 25th, 2006
“What happened?”
“Something called ‘love’”
“Did you fall and get it all over you?”
“I did. …
*considers carefully*
But it’s not as messy as it has been in the past. …
*reconsiders joyfully*
I mean, it’s messy in the sense that it’s all over the place. …”
August 24th, 2006
My nerves are shot. I’m so quick to lose it.
“Shouldn’t you be down taking notes.”
“No it’s fine.”
“Don’t you need to record if the baby eats anything or bumps his head?”
“Well that yes…”
“I mean couldn’t we have this conversation later?”
No. Totally not. I’m angry. I’m frustrated. I resent being challenged in front of a client while I’m trying to run a lab visit. A visit which you were refusing to help with in the first place, which you were late for, which you interfered with before it even commenced. This is a conversation I have to have now. Because whether I’m right or not isn’t even the point. The point is that you can’t argue with me while the visit is going.
The dichotomy I am often faced with in this job is on one hand having more responsibilities and authority than I think I deserve and on the other hand struggling with the fact that my coworkers fail to acknowledge my authority when I need them to.
August 22nd, 2006
I’m from the country. And I mean that. Here in Toronto I am often teased among friends for being from “Guelph”, a place which must have more cows than people…but what I can never quite convey is that I am not even from Guelph. People in Guelph teased me for being from the country. I’m from a little tiny neighbourhood of cottages which hugs a lake that noone knows about, and I grew up climbing trees and paddling canoes and building elaborate forts in the forest.
This I share as a background for just how fantastically at home I feel in my new home. I have just moved into the outskirts of Forest Hill just north of Casa Loma (and when I say “just north” I mean I can see it out my south-facing window). Today I was walking home from the bus, through the beautiful neighbourhood adjacent mine filled with houses I can’t believe anyone could own sitting on lots with real-live trees like you never see them in the suburbs–and I suddenly realized that I’d never noticed how much I missed those moments when the rustling of leaves is the only thing you can hear and it’s louder than your thoughts.
I think this neighbourhood will do me just great until I can get out of the city :).
August 20th, 2006
Why do I always have to be so fucking stubborn? Why can’t I ever let a rational needs-based analysis focused on my longterm goals win out over my arrogance and opinions?
Why am I at a serious risk of failing a course that is based on incredably straight forward and simple material?
Fucking hell.
August 14th, 2006
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