RSA Animate - The Divided Brain

Some may have already seen this video on Youtube or Facebook, but I liked it so much I thought I would post it again on here--also to atone for my lack of posting last week. And if you haven't already seen it, here it is for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy!

Grameen, Micro-Credit, and a Sobering Encounter

A couple of weeks ago I finished reading Banker to the Poor by Muhammad Yunus. It had been sitting on my shelf for about three years, bookmark wedged in a few pages shy of 100. The damn thing wasn't getting read. I figured I'd sell it to Russells for store credit or something, but I decided, out of a mix of guilt and curiosity, to actually finish reading it first.

Doubtless most people reading this will be familiar with Yunus and his Nobel Peace Prize winning Grameen Bank, if not for its work and theories, then at least for the controversy it received in the media last year over allegations of tax-evasion and charging extremely high interest rates*. But for those of you who aren't familiar, Dr. Yunus started the Grameen Bank in the late 70's in Bangladesh. The idea was born after he lent a total of $27 US, at no interest, to a number of impoverished families in a village, to help them purchase the materials needed to make and sell their wares, and lift themselves out of poverty without turning to greedy moneylenders for help. At the heart of the Grameen Bank (Grameen meaning "rural" or "village" in Bangla) is the belief that poor people are incredibly creative and resourceful, not lazy and worthless, and the Bank's job is to offer them the chance in the form of "micro-loans" to help unleash the creative potential of these people as contributors to the economy and valuable members of society. The Bank lends the money to borrowers, the majority of them women, so they can use that seed money to start their own businesses, like selling hand-made baskets or fabrics, and the borrowers pay back the interest-free loan on the terms of their setting. It may take a while, but as Yunus illustrates, almost every single borrower pays back what they owe.



I am not entirely against capitalism, but my belief is that it must be curbed by government policy. So it's quite a challenge when Yunus says we should reduce the role of the government and let the private sector take the lead. But he is no typical neo-liberal. He argues that bureaucracy has completely undermined the idea of a state-funded social safety net, and because money isn't getting to the poor, it's not doing its job. But he recognizes that at the other end lies the cut-throat business entrepreneur consumed by greed, whose image of the world is equally horrible. The poor get screwed on both accounts. So what Yunus advocates is small government, and that instead of international aid and charities combatting poverty, the standard should be taken up by a kind of "social entrepreneur", a new breed of entrepreneur whose goal of making profit is second to her goal of helping the world through socially and environmentally conscious action, Grameen being one example.

This strange brew of socially-minded, compassionate capitalism may be hard to imagine, but as I read of Yunus and the Bank's struggles from inception to the present day I was struck by the overwhelming number of success stories, ones where the value of human life was enshrined. Of course, micro-loans aren't a cure-all to poverty. The borrowers didn't suddenly become part of the middle class, and there were endless setbacks, including disease, famine, natural disasters, and even cultural resistance (rumours went around in the conservative, rural areas of Bangladesh that the Bank actually turned women away from Islam). But many have started up their businesses nonetheless, broken the debilitating cycle of poverty, and since then have become an economic force to be reckoned with, in Bangladesh, and in various other countries around the world where Grameen or similar micro-credit programs have started up. Overall, micro-loans have had a positive influence in the world. Of course the founder will portray his program in the best light, but the proof speaks for itself. Plainly written so that a layperson like myself can read, enjoy, and maybe even be inspired by it, I don't regret finishing it, and may instead decide to lend it to someone else instead of sell it off.


A couple of days ago I was headed downtown, waiting at the corner of Yates and Quadra for the light to change, when I was approached by a man. He seemed friendly enough, but he shoved a paper into my hands and went on to explain that he was living on the street and selling this paper by donation. I told him I didn't have any money to offer him, and when he asked if I could go to a bank to get out some cash, I told him again that I didn't have any money to offer him. Clearly disappointed, he told me to keep the paper, and walked away. The whole experience lasted maybe two minutes, but it left a bad taste in my mouth. It certainly poked a hole in my bubble of a self-satisfied life. I did have a few nickels in my wallet. I think I said no as a knee-jerk reaction; it's not just to people living on the street, but canvassers of worthy causes like Amnesty, Red Cross, and SPCA as well. I don't react well to peddlers of any kind. But even though I didn't like how pushy he was, I could understand what he was trying to do. In fact, it seemed not unlike what many borrowers in Bangladesh villages are trying to do. Instead of just asking for spare change, he was trying to engage me in a business transaction, working to generate seed money to help himself along while keeping his dignity intact, perhaps even empower him. It's not exactly a parallel situation, but similar in essence. And in light of the hope I felt after reading about the Grameen Bank, you'd think I would've been more enthusiastic about what this guy was trying to do. But for one reason or another, out of fear, caution, impatience, or whatever, I refused.

I offer this anecdote as self-reflection, and as a tonic to whatever sense of ego-inflation we may feel when we align ourselves with a noble cause. This sort of scenario happens thousands of times a day, but for some reason it certainly gave me enough pause to need to stop and reflect on it. Regardless of a person's attitude toward homeless people asking for money, hopefully others can learn from my behaviour and find a better way of dealing with these brief, but impactful meetings with people living on the fringe making an honest effort to better their lives. I hope that perhaps if I am approached by another person selling this paper or any like it (it's called the Lionheart Tribune, by the way. Anybody else been approached by someone with this publication?), if I can't offer anything by way of money, I can at least offer a word, or an ear to listen. We needn't go to the other side of the world to find poverty. It isn't quarantined off in developing countries, but here in Canada as well, and the best part of Yunus' idea is that it is applicable to any country, regardless of its GDP. I'm not about to go off and become a social entrepreneur now, but it seems to me even the little efforts count for something. Here's hoping, anyway.

*These allegations were proved to be nothing more than that. The source was a Norwegian documentary called Caught in Micro-Debt. Micro-credit is not without its critics of course, and I'm sure there are cases where they are right, but I don't have reason to believe that it is fundamentally unsound as an approach to fighting poverty. It's certainly worth a try, isn't it?

It's James Ussher Day! HAPPY BIRTHDAY, THE UNIVERSE!

That's right, folks. Today's the day it all began. One sleepy day in late October, while strolling through the endless stretch of Nothingness and Chaos, God decided to make the Universe. And if it weren't for the dogged efforts of a 17th century Irish Archbishop named James Ussher, we never would have known it was today, 6015 years ago. If it wasn't for him paying close attention to the Bible and calculating back to the days of Adam and Eve, we would still be living the erroneous belief that it was 13.7 Billion years ago, not in 4004 BC. Whew! That was a close one! Thanks for putting that to rest, Jim. Good sleuthing!

Never mind that God started Time on a date as arbitrary as the 23rd of October (why not January 1st? Or Christmas? Or International Talk Like a Pirate Day?). And never mind that he started the clock counting down. Or that the earliest homo sapiens, the dinosaurs, most rocks, and Mickey Rooney all predate Ussher's reckoning of Genesis. Ussher was a smart guy! He was an Archbishop. You don't get promoted to Archbishop if you're the village idiot; he must've been doing something right. And hey, why not 4004 BC? Stranger things have happened. Besides, those creationists seem so darn sure about it. They must be right!

So for that, we thank you Mr. Ussher. And to you, the Universe, I say Bonne Fête à Toi! (And please don't stop existing just yet, k? I enjoy pizza too much!)

Returning to Faery: Creation Through Narration

I dare you to try to build an imaginary world for a character to walk through, fight for, destroy, love, die, etc. and not become instantly overwhelmed by the immensity of the task. Go on, try it.

Tolkien said that he created the mythology of Middle-earth because he wanted to imagine people who spoke the languages he had invented. For him, the languages came first, and then the stories. I'm working in the reverse, which has a host of problems, not the least of which being that I’m taking a path many have trodden before, and few have actually succeeded. I want to write a story in a fantastical world and in order to do that I must imagine the languages, the customs, and cultures they speak there. It must be rich in detail, or else it won’t bear the stamp of my own unique perspective. I won’t enjoy it because I’ll be telling someone else’s story. The thing is, I've realized that for me the Story comes first and foremost. Don't get me wrong, I've got a taste for languages myself. I’ve come to relish the rhythm and cadence of language, and the beauty and strangeness of words. But I am not a linguist by trade, and I've come to realize that if I'm ever going to get this bloody book finished, I have to accept that I’m not going to become a linguist any time soon. For all intents and purposes, I am a storyteller. And a storyteller’s trade is the Story.

So, after Story, everything else is secondary. The world does not exist outside of the story. But that seems like a problem to me, in fantasy. Story reigns like a tyrant here, but it is not the only important thing. I want to create a four-dimensional place, a sense that people in it keep moving through time and space, keep going about their business elsewhere during the main events of the story, long after the last page has been turned, and the book has been placed back on the shelf. So how does one go about doing that? Correction: how does one go about doing that without losing his mind? I know it must be done, but after countless false starts over the years it seemed like I would never find a way in.

Last summer, in a moment of recklessness I decided “to hell with it I’ll write the damn thing anyway” and proceeded with a ‘Write first, ask questions later’ mentality. What I found was this: if I just wrote a passage of the story I knew I wanted to happen, without editing or judging what came out, I could actually find some really cool stuff. It was liberation: I could carry out this story without knowing all the details of the world. In fact--and this was the best surprise of all--I would find just the details I needed through the telling of the story. Example: my protagonist is put in a prison. She falls asleep there in that dank hole and when she wakes up, she sees a vine has grown up the wall from where she lay her head, one that was not there when she got tossed in. This is a detail that I didn’t plan for, but it came up while I was writing the scene out. It may not lead anywhere, but then again, it just might.

Of course, there are some things that are harder to get around. In the next scene, my protagonist is escaping a city through an underground tunnel; she is escorted by a guard. What is the guard’s name? What are the men and women who live in this city named? I’ve always been hung up on names. It’s hard enough when finding the right name for a character set in our world. "Should I call this woman Lisa? Or is she a Deb? Or a Françoise?" The snag is tenfold in a world you made up. Eventually the responsibility of creating these people proves too much, and if you let it, it becomes death to creative flow. But every now and then, I’ll brainstorm some words and some names, and if they’re suitable for this culture, I’ll use them. Which leads me to the best part, which I only recently gave myself license to do: if I realize later on a name doesn’t work? No biggie! I can always go back and change it! What a thought! It sounds pretty obvious, but for a long time I had felt I couldn’t find the character until I had the name, and once it was down on paper the process was almost irreversible, because the name is a powerful thing and can take root quickly. But it doesn’t have to. So the guard’s name? Let’s call him “Kalfira.” Why? What does that name mean? “Don’t ask me! I don’t f#$%ing know! Because I like the way it sounds! Leave me alone! I’ll figure it out later!” is my response. In the meantime, I stop myself from getting hung up, and just keep writing. The result? I’ve actually started writing certain scenes I’ve had in my head for years. It’s finally happening!

That’s the other thing: I don’t have to write out this story in chronological order. The very start of it is still a bit fuzzy, but I can see very clearly where my characters are three or five steps ahead. So why wait for the first step? Figure out just where you are, take note of your surroundings, look for clues, and then you’ll have an easier time of retracing your steps back. C.S. Lewis described the genesis of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe as a series of different images he had in his head, which for one reason or another kept floating toward each other, so he wrote them out and went backwards and forwards connecting them. The original seed didn’t start with the children fleeing London to escape the Blitz. It started with the image of a satyr standing beneath a lamp in a wintry wood. He didn’t intend for it to be a Christian allegory, but that’s the direction the story took him, and he followed it. But before that it was a story, plain and simple. And before that, it was images. And it was through the telling of the story that the images came together to become Narnia.

I find this approach seems to work for me as well. World building is a pleasure in and of itself, but I don’t have as much success with it if I just do it systematically, listing out names of places and people, mapping it out and conjuring up static information like I’m preparing a Encyclopedia entry for it. To an extent these can be useful things to help organize your thoughts, but I find they don’t generate the ideas themselves. They don’t galvanize the imagination, they don’t lead to action. And being an actor, I like me some action. A new world is an awfully big place. I’d much rather go there as a travel writer, documenting what I find. That way, the world comes in flashes, in sounds, images, in songs, poems, war stories, love stories. Stories. Approach it with child-like wonder and the active voice of narration, rather than the authority of a God-like architect listing trivia, and the world will more willingly unfold itself.

Another major obstacle has been my lack of experience. I’ve questioned whether I should be writing this story at this time in my life, simply because I haven’t lived enough. It’s stewed for so long (half of my brief life, so far), and it’s come to mean so much to me, that I feel like it has to be my magnum opus, or it doesn’t see the light of day. For a while I put it off, deciding I should wait until I’m older, wiser, have more life experience and am in theory a better writer, so it will be a better story when I’m at the top of my game. I realise now just how silly this way of thinking is. This isn’t prudence, or good writing habits. It's vanity! I’m coddling the piece to death. The ego gets in the way and the story gets punished for it. This must stop! The story burns in me now! Not 10, 20, 30 years from now. I should be writing from that place that yearns to make itself heard in the present moment. If I try to write from somewhere else, it will not be genuine, and it will shrivel up. Of course I’ve got other story ideas, and I work on them as well (if this was all I had to work on I would go mad!). But if this fairy tale habitually crops up unbidden, I should take that as a sign. Opus shmopus. It may not be the best story I’ve ever written, it may even be a very bad one. It may simply be something I have to get down before I can move on to a new adventure. Then again, it may be wonderful. But for now that’s not my place to decide, is it?

For now, my job is to keep writing.

Montaigne, Renaissance Blogger

'I write to keep from going mad from the contradictions I find among mankind - and to work some of those contradictions out for myself.' -Michel de Montaigne

It's a little ironic, being a blogger, and one of the few people I know who actually enjoys writing essays, and has spent the past 4 years whipping up several of them (though not at many as maybe an English or History Major), that I should not have once come across the work of Michel de Montaigne. Montaigne was a French nobleman of the 16th century, and was best known as the father of what we now call the personal essay. His most memorable work is a collection of prose writings called Essais (French for "trial" or "attempt"), covering diverse topics ranging from sleep, to books, to the limits of human knowledge and our own mortality. Granted, I was not officially a student of literature or philosophy, so there was really no pressing need that could have led me to him, besides errant curiosity or procrastination. But my studies of Renaissance theatre brought me tantalizingly close to him; it's very likely that Shakespeare himself read Montaigne. You'd think the name would have come up at least a couple of times, and sooner. Nope. Rather, I am finally exposed to his writing long after school has ended. But I should be grateful that I've come across him at all.

I got a little three-dollar Dover Thrift edition of a selection of Montaigne's Essays from Russel Books a while back, and read it this past month. I found it invigorating. He (and his translator English poet Charles Cotton) have a knack for making you want to study and meditate on your own life, to flesh out your thoughts and to attain perspective through the act of writing. He made it his goal to paint an honest portrait of human life, using himself as a reference point. His style is skeptical, anecdotal, often going into tangets and never making any claim of possessing some absolute truth. In fact, one of his Essays is titled "That It Is Folly to Measure Truth and Error by Our Own Capacity", discussing just that; we can never get the entire picture.

Reading these essays I found the syntax to be long and meandering. The sentences were in appearance so tangled, so clogged with dependent clauses and sub-clauses--of course not uncommon to writers of his age--it could hardly be decoded by a 21st century reader like myself without breaking into a bit of a sweat, and maybe a slight headache. But I kinda liked it for that. It was a robust workout. I remember what our Prof. Jen Wise said in Theories of Acting, that when you diligently read something beyond your skill level, your mind strengthens and widens to accomodate the new territory. You become a better reader. I think that's something I've found rewarding from generally all archaic writings, including Shakespeare: for a cretin like myself, half the fun is in figuring out just what the hell they're saying. And once you've breached that wall, you can freely roam the country they've laid out for you. You can understand and relate to Montaigne's observations. You can relate to almost everything he's saying, and you feel a kinship with him, and those that have gone before him (he borrows heavily from older, classical writers like Seneca, Plutarch, Horace, Cicero, Aristotle, etc.) This is in no small part because of his very personal style of writing. You then become aware of a long unbroken chain of human experience from the days of ancient Rome, to the French Renaissance, to today. It is a reminder of all the richness that Western philosophy has to offer, something I've neglected of late. Time and distance are no barriers; Montaigne's words are still valuable to me, a young Canadian man in the 21st century. There is still wisdom to be found with him, because like myself, he was a very human being.

So I feel that in a way the blogging world owes a great debt to this French nobleman. My part of it certainly does. I and many others try to understand our lives through writing. And any one who attempts this owes Montaigne for making room for such an attempt. He was an innovator, bringing his own personal experience into his work, because the great subject of his work was himself. So that's why I'm dedicating this post to Michel de Montaigne, the Renaissance Blogger.

Update

Got back from a fantastic Kings of Leon concert in Caprica City--I mean, Vancouver. I was considerably less familiar with KOL going into it than most people there, but I recognized quite a few of their songs, and really liked almost every single one. This has launched me into an infatuation with their music, naturally. I partly wish I'd done more research before going to the concert, so I'd be able to appreciate it even more, but on the other hand it's not a bad way of getting into a band, no?

I don't have much else to report, right now. Life is busy enough, though. I'm bouncing between work, yoga and karate classes, and among all that I've got a couple of projects on the side to keep me involved with theatre and performance, and am working on a short, 1500 word piece for a CBC short story contest. Lots of variety. I wish I could've done more blog posts for this month. I feel bad having only done these two. Sorry about that, September. I'll do more for next month. I promise.

Inception: The Dark Knight Rises at Bag End, or What You Will

What do The Hobbit, Shakespeare, and Batman all have in common? Everything, apparently.

A few days ago I had a dream. At the time it was terrifying, but also exhilarating. Here's how it went:



I am with a bunch of other people; I don't know who. Somehow we end up running from something, and we're running along a huge, but unstable wall we made out of snow bricks. It collapses as I run on top. As it turns out, we're being chased by a giant monster made of snow, which I later learn is actually a Balrog covered in snow. We take refuge in a dark cavernous place, and I think it's beneath Bag End, in Hobbiton. I go as far down this cave as I possibly can, down to the very bottom where there's water, and platforms floating around on it. I, and I'm assuming all the other people who got in, look up and watch with anticipation the cave's entrance way above us, hoping we aren't spotted. I then hide inside a crevice in the wall, and whoever I was before, I am now viewing the action from the perspective of a small cave-dwelling creature.

And then, instead of everything happening above me, it's happening down below. I'm up in the higher walls, looking down from this crevice. There is a metal railing on the edge of it, and there are other metal railings, platforms, stairs and walkways built into the walls of the cave: it is none other than the Bat Cave. Of course. What else would be underneath Bag End? And suddenly I see below me, Batman flying away in his Batwing, through a huge opening in the cave, going out to do battle with the Snow-Balrog. He's gone for a few moments, but then I see a red light, and then an enormous ball of flame bursts through into the cave.



Something opens from behind me. I am a human again, and someone comes into my hiding place, as a cold light of an overcast day spills in, as if from the main level of a city street. The crevice is sealed off from the rest of the Bat Cave, and in from this door come a bunch of thugs. I am surrounded by Bane's cronies. And then someone begins to explain that Bane is an ex-UFC fighter, and Italian, and he's out to prove that William Shakespeare is his direct ancestor, which for some reason means that he has to kill Batman before he can prove it's true. Someone also mentions that Commissioner Gordon is in cahoots with Batman, so they decide to go after him too. This pisses me off and frightens me, because now Gordon's life is in danger as well.



I don't know whether Batman won or lost against the Snow-Balrog, but I know he can't be dead, because it's Batman! However, things look grim. The forces of evil have the upper hand, now that they've discovered the Bat Cave.

So what does this all mean? Well, I'm no psychoanalyst, but I'm pretty sure my subconscious is saying that Christoper Nolan and Peter Jackson need to scrap the movies they're working on, join forces, and make a movie based off of this story. If they don't come willing, then I may have to sneak inside their dreams and plant the seed. They'll both think it was their own idea, of course, but I'm okay with that. I'll do what it takes.

I think it'll work.