Disaster Capitalism

I’ve been reading Naomi Klein’s ‘The Shock Doctrine’ and I have to say that my inaccurate take on recent world history has been skewed by the popular press and my predisposition to blindly trust the western governments to protect human rights. The book has been a real eye opener on a lot of things for me, the least not being the current state of affairs with the economy and why we find ourselves at the precipice on which we now stand.

Over the past quarter century the west’s support for the freedom fighters in Latin America, South Africa, Poland, and the Eastern Bloc has been solely based upon our greed. Open market capitalism has been forced upon these countries at the cost of democracy and personal freedom. While our rich got richer, their poor got poorer.

I am not sure our current economic woes are even solvable with the way we have structured the workings of our economy. How can a stock market stabilize when corporations are only interested in taking care of their shareholders in the short term as opposed to taking care of their company in the long term? Our whole system not only supports but encourages speculative investors over long term investors. Did we not learn from South Africa’s stock market crisis after apartheid that speculative investing destabilizes an economy?

So once again I find myself encouraged by initiatives like the Ultimate Black Belt Test. With current global crisis’ caused by over-consumption and greed, how much more pertinent can we make the martial arts when we include activism, environmental awareness, sustainable living, and empathy training as our core values. I’m definitely proud to be a member of UBBT Team 6.

“If the firms that employ an increasing majority of the population are driven solely to satisfy the owner's greed at the expense of working conditions, of the stability of the community, and of the health of the environment, chances are that the quality of our lives will be worse than it is now.”
-Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (b. 1934)

Simplicity

This week marked the end of an era for me. I found a good home for my 1974 orange Volvo. This car was my most prized possession but I could no longer bear to watch it slowly disintegrate while sitting unused. My sister has always had a passion for that car too so I am hoping she will take care of it and get another ten years out of it.

For me this situation offered an important reinforcement that things are just things. My possessions do not define me, and while they may offer me some comforts, they ultimately do not bring me happiness.

My acceptance of this fact has also allowed me to continue to simplify my life by letting go of other possessions. I sent the first two Apple computers I have ever owned, including my beloved lime flavoured iMac, to the HERO Housing Resource Centre in Alabama. It feels good knowing that there is a use and a need for them and it definitely alleviates a guilt that I never even knew I was feeling over how they were underutilized by me.

While the spiritual side of my development has grown this week through simplifying my life, my physical growth has been struggling as of late. While taking it easy over the past two months in an attempt to eliminate the persistent swelling I still have in my knee from this Spring’s latest surgery, I developed a pain in both of my upper calves. It feels like I have been working them and have the muscle ache that comes with a job well done. However I have not been working out with my legs at all and yet this ache has only worsened over the past eight weeks. The common consensus is that I am suffering from planters fasciitis and my tendons are inflamed all the way up the backs of my legs. Since I have been relatively inactive before and during this development I was at a loss to explain why this would manifest at this point in my training. I was leaning toward my motorcycle riding as the only possible cause when I started to suffer from back spasms and paid a visit to my chiropractor. He took one look at the pronation of my ankles and declared this as an explanation for my inflamed tendons, my past five knee surgeries, and my current back spasms.

So while I have been living the good life where socks and shoes are a rarity, my arches have been slowly collapsing resulting in me developing pronated ankles. This pronation has put constant strain on my knees and lower legs for many years and now I am at the point where a change in lifestyle is in order. From now on shoes should be worn at all times and definitely for all work outs.

Since planters fasciitis has an average recovery time of fifty weeks, it’s a good thing I haven’t done something crazy like enrolling in the UBBT for the next fifty or so weeks. Actually I only see positives coming out of this. I have found the perfect time to complete some of my empathy training and spend a day in a wheel chair. I can also focus on some of the more cerebral parts of my requirements guilt free too. At the end of the fifty weeks I should just about be at my peak for my final performance. Everything is going according to plan, excellent.

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”
- Leonardo Da Vinci (1452 - 1519)

A New Era

I never placed much hope that change was ever going to happen when the world’s most powerful and influential country still refers to itself as the greatest country on the planet despite having its democracy ranked at 17th in the world and its population’s happiness ranked at 150th in the world. But now the American elections are finally over and the world is different this week. The USA has elected a truly great leader in Barack Obama. We live in a time where big ideas and promises are not enough. With the amount of reform that is going to be required to change the world’s perception of American foreign policies and the American financial sector, only a great leader will be able to return the USA back to an era where they are once again a trusted protector of human rights and a world leader that influences by example as opposed to the imposition of their will.

Barack Obama is a great leader. A leader is what is needed now because for change to happen we all must buy into it and do our part. We can’t expect to sit back and have someone else responsible for it to happen. Barack Obama has strong leadership qualities that make him the man for the job and he has the potential of inspiring the entire world to take a stand on critical issues like poverty and the environment.

I am very excited about the possibilities that are in front of us all. I live in a country headed by a very smart man in Stephen Harper but he does not have the leadership qualities to rally the Canadian people behind anything of consequence. I am definitely looking toward Barack Obama for leadership and inspiration for lasting change.

“A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.”
- Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)

I've Always Wondered

Something I have wondered about ever since I was a kid is the whole logic that goes behind the drunk driving laws. While it is accepted fact that someone who has consumed alcohol experiences an impairment in their judgement and their reflexes, our laws have determined that anyone with a blood alcohol ratio of less than 80 mg of alcohol in 100 ml of blood is not legally impaired. So if I am over the limit and am impaired, is it really reasonable for society to expect me to show solid judgement and not get behind the wheel? If on one hand we are saying someone is impaired enough that they can’t drive, shouldn’t we also be saying they are impaired enough that they can’t make a solid, accurate judgement as to what their blood alcohol level is?

Anyway, just something I have been thinking about for a couple of decades. I’m not sure why we are so outraged by drunk drivers while at the same time we justify other stupidity as being due to the influence of alcohol. With this type of logic we are never going to see the end of suffering of those affected by the impaired judgement of a drunk driver.

"If four or five guys tell you that you're drunk, even though you know you haven't had a thing to drink, the least you can do is to lie down a little while."
- Joseph Schenck (1878 -1961)