Values

Where did our values go? Were they taken from us or did we willingly dispose of them? And why did we lose our values in the first place?

Generation by generation, we continually lose more and more of our values as a global society. We take more things for granted now than in the past because the access to excess is inflating faster than we can handle. Things that should be important to us - concern for our environment, for life, and for our future - are being shrugged off as flippantly as swatting a mosquito. We disassociate ourselves from group mentality long enough to overemphasize the importance of our individuality, then flop back when it suits us. The significance of this is staggering; it means we're indulgent to convenience. This indulgence results in ultimately determining the extent of our greed and what we are willing to compromise for the sake of personal comfort.

Take, for example, drive-through service. In the last ten years, the number of drive-through services has increased substantially. It used to be a few fast food restaurants that would offer this service, now it nearly establishes your existence in the marketplace. Everywhere I look, the line up at the drive-through window is longer than the line up inside the store. It goes without saying that drive-through service offers very little to civilization - indeed, it provides absolutely no benefit other than convenience - so why are so many people supporting it? Along similar parallels, the concept of the dollar store provides us with equal convenience but also no benefit. The majority of these products are produced by companies which are more than willing to exploit developing countries to make a profit. The economic principle of supply and demand dictates that by buying these products we are encouraging the companies to continue with their unethical business practices. This lack of ethics trickles down to the individual consumer who, aware of it or not, is part of the slave labour process. Both of these are examples of individuality conflicting with the well-being of the group, which helps explain why we gave away our values: mankind is inherently greedy.

So, finally, where did our values go? We put these values into every dollar we spend. When we shop at a multi-national company, we are putting value into the idea of globalization. When we shop at a company that uses sweatshop labour, we are putting value into the idea of human exploitation. When we shop using drive-through service, we are putting value into the idea of lethargy. Every time you choose to spend money, there are consequences. These consequences range from affecting the global community to affecting our own personal judgement, and they accumulate without restraint. Eventually you will reach a point when you question your choices as a consumer. You will be forced to choose between your greed and your guilt, and when you reach this point, ask yourself one simple question: what do you value?

Love

I've been receiving a lot of backlash for my views on the word 'love.' Let me address this as openly and concisely as I possibly can.

Love is the most dynamic and fulfilling emotion that human beings are able to experience. It is able to transcend multiple emotions, bringing us joy as well as misery. We rely on it for our society to function properly but ironically its misuse has become detrimental. I personally value love very highly. I regard it with the esteem it deserves, and I refuse to use it as flippantly now as I did in the past.

It seems that every form of media capitalizes on this emotion to evoke response from its audience. Subsequently, just like violence, we've become so completely desensitized that it has lost a significant amount of its meaning. We are so regularly inundated with the phrase "I love you" that we can hardly escape its prevalence. The entertainment industry glamourizes it so well that we all want to experience love. We want to be like the current celebrity couple who are so madly in love for a few months. We want to be like any number of characters on any number of shows who find the love of their monthly love life everywhere they look. We want to fall in love left and right, essentially trivializing its foundation with the frequency we've been taught.

Love is not something you merely say, it is something that you have to build. It is something with significance that you have to work at, something that must be earned not with a few words but with many actions. Instead, we have people declaring their unequivocable love to one person on one day, then to another person on another day. When you've said this same contrived thing to so many people during your life, at what point can you realize that you are truthfully and honestly in love? And, more importantly, how can you believe somebody that has said this so many times?

Saying that you love somebody should not be a conditioned response, it should be a heartfelt and sincere declaration of a deeply valued emotion. There are so many ways to express your adoration for somebody verbally which can be more accurate. As individuals, we must reach an apex of sincerity with ourselves, if only to be more capable to function properly as a society. By continually neutralizing this positive emotion, we are doing ourselves and the people we love a disservice.

I can't ambiguously denounce everybody who has ever said "I love you" as absurd. I can, however, question their intentions. I refuse to believe that people fall in love with accurate realization within a few months. I personally believe that those who claim they do and are still together twenty years later were merely guessing correctly. When I fall in love, I don't want to guess. I want to know with absolute certainty. I want to be able to believe in myself as much as I want to be able to believe in her.

Biased Anti-American Propaganda

I was watching a Talking To Americans segment on Youtube recently while I was hard at work. Below the video was an exchange between some Americans and Canadians, sometimes even coming close to actual debate. It incited me to share my own thoughts on the United States and Americanism.

The U.S. education system is drastically failing its citizens. On a study of grade 12 students, the U.S. ranked 19th out of 21 countries in math and science general knowledge. (www.heritage.org/Research/Education/WM134.cfm) According to a NAEP assessment in 2000, 32 percent of fourth grade students were proficient in reading. These statistics get much worse when you look at math, science, and history, so it's not too farfetched to assume an equally unflattering subject would be world relations. From my two recent experiences in the U.S., I have found that Americans know little about the world within their borders and even less about the outside world. Americans are so naively confident in their greatness that they have very little willingness to expose themselves to other cultures. I feel empathy towards them because they are presented with such opportunity and yet so much distraction. Americans don't want to know about the world because they are the world, and what bits of culture they do want to experience can be conveniently imported as novelties.

One thing we have to keep in mind is that the United States and Canada share the world's longest border. We are both victims of circumstance that enable us to be mutual trading partners. It is very important to note that the products and resources we trade are dynamically different; the US imports from Canada resources they need while Canada imports resources they want. Canada pumps fresh water south, and we get Survivor in return. Canada ships out softwood lumber, and they give us Christina Aguilera. Canada sends oil, and the U.S. gives us National Enquirer. Do you see the relation here? I certainly do not. We revel in the mediocrity that the United States sells us. Their national achievements are severely declining, but the fact that they have so much fun in the process makes it desirable. National concerns are given diligent attention until the commerical break is over, and then it's back to American Idol. Their culture is so overbearing, loud, and obnoxious that we can't help but be inundated with the products of their trivial culture. Canada is like their little brother, idolizing them when we are equals and wanting their unnecessary possessions.

Despite how close we are geographically, the differences are striking. Canada thrives on tolerance. The United States thrives on intimidation. If we continue to idolize the United States for the most unimportant accomplishments, we will be assimilated too far into their culture to be distinguishable. How powerful can a country truly be if it can't recognize the anchor of its downfall and cut itself loose? Canadians have to realize that our country is a graceful swan with an ugly duckling complex. We have such an incredible nation with so much diverse culture that drives us to be strong. We are one of the few nations with the capability to keep most of our international trade minimal and become self-relient. The United States is able to survive because of its ferocity; because they spend more money on their army than they do on teaching their kids. They are so preoccupied with power that they don't even see how powerless they actually are. So why do we insist on envying them? They rank 139 out of 172 countries in voter turnout. That's far removed from actual applied democracy.

Former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau described Canada-U.S. relations as "sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, one is affected by every twitch and grunt."

A Moment On Vegetarianism

I was accused this past weekend of being a vegetarian. The nerve! I immediately rebuked this statement, citing as example the eggs I had just ordered to eat for the very meal we were at. Please keep in mind that I wasn't denying the accusation out of a fear of being seen as a weak person, it was out of complete admiration and respect for true vegetarians.

I find it loathsome that there are people who insist they are vegetarian but still include things in their diet such as chicken and fish. The entire gamut of what humans can eat must either be grown or born, and these two categories are quite distinct. A true vegetarian ignores the second category completely and does not have the lissome willpower to be selective among its contents. I have no fundamental problem with what a person chooses to eat and I would never cast judgment upon them for that. The problem I have is when that person labels himself as something he most assuredly is not, and I have an even bigger problem when that person vehemently defends their incorrectly self-appointed status. As for my status, I consider myself a perfect omnivore. I will eat absolutely anything that I kill myself.

Imagine a scenario where, for the sake of argument, everybody had to raise, nurture, and kill animals themselves in order to eat. (I will preemptively avoid an impractical counter-point by saying that this fictional scenario begins tomorrow.) Do you truly believe that the average person who has been raised in a culture that encourages personal comfort would be able to kill without it being a necessity for survival? Sincerely doubtful. I admit that given a life or death situation, even I would be able to commit murder; but this is genuinely not the case. Thankfully, there are other options at my disposal that don't burden my conscience. The collective intelligence of our society has not yet been able to give significant value to the actual ethics of our lives, and this is apparent in nearly every aspect of our culture. We still demand bigger and faster every things, we pollute with the ferocity of a coal-powered lion, and we compromise true art with excess.

The biggest reason that I have chosen to significantly decrease the amount of meat that I consume is a concern for the environment. In North America, more than 60% of the wheat, corn, and grain we grow is used to feed farmed animals; of that food, most of it goes to keep the animal alive rather than actually making it grow. Further, it takes seven times as much land and resources to raise a farmed animal than it does to make the equivalent amount of food in fruits and vegetables. Allow me to present another sadly implausible scenario: if everybody on our planet immediately became vegetarian overnight, we would have enough food to feed us all.

You may want to tell me that you have the right to eat meat. While I agree that you certainly do have the right to eat meat, you also have the ability not to.

Biodiesel and Global Warming

For the last year or so I've been thinking that I would be driving with a calmer conscience if I had a smaller, more efficient vehicle that used a biodiesel-fueled engine. However, I have recently come across some information that, while being perfectly obvious, never quite occurred to me. Biodiesel is derived from biological sources such as vegetable oils and grains that could be otherwise used as food. And seeing as how the majority of people on this planet are already either starving or malnourished, maybe using the fuels that our bodies need isn't the most viable solution to the energy crisis.

If there is any pyrrhic victory that can arise from the global warming situation, it may be in food supply. Some scientists believe that the over-abundance of carbon dioxide in the air as well as the rising global temperature may actually help vegetation. A warmer northern climate would extend the growing season, which would allow more abundant crops to be harvested. Further, plants can be genetically altered to have the same drought-resistance that a cactus has. This would mean that if we experienced desert conditions in Alberta, our crops would not suffer. (Although the economics that tie themselves to this possibility create the impossibility itself.)

It is important to note, however, that with global warming, the inherent danger is not a more comfortable temperature; rather, it is the unpredictability of escalating dangerous weather patterns. Harvesting a massive crop of wheat will still be quite difficult during a tornado or hail storm, no matter how big an umbrella you have.

Sometimes I think that the same people who doubt the existence of global warming are of the same lineage as those who doubted the existence of gravity. And we all know where those same people are today... floating in the clouds somewhere.

Darwin's Consept Revisited

Consider evolution as a more abstract whole. The survival imperative of living organisms is to adapt or perish, but this imperative could be less species-oriented than science believes. All organisms on this planet could be living in a completely symbiotic relationship where the survival of one species depends on and is affected by another (possibly seemingly unrelated) species. This implies that a species doesn't necessarily evolve on its own; all species evolve simultaneously in order to benefit the planet as a mutual whole.

Now, consider evolution as simply a process rather than a forward-moving process. If evolution is possible, then an eventual retrograde of a species must be as well. Traditional discussion of evolution involves an organism developing new characteristics or mannerisms in order to live longer for the mere fact that it has to. When an organism is born, its default setting is to survive by reproducing in order continue the existence of its species. However, if all species evolve to increase the stability of all species, then a reverse-evolution of one species is possible if it benefits the global ecosystem... even if that leads to its extinction.

The human race has been fighting nature in a multitude of ways this past century. A variety of diseases, cancers, and natural phenomena have been antagonizing us and science is still struggling to keep up and understand. Maybe we aren't supposed to. This could be the next logical step in evolution; the end of the human race. Once again, think of the planet as a global whole. In the 20th century, man has created more setbacks to nature than anything else and a disgusting majority of our technological advancements are only for our own personal progress. Our extinction would definitely benefit the planet. We do not engage our planet in a symbiotic relationship; we are parasitic in nature, and our most significant evolution as a species has been our overwhelming apathy and greed.