Leaders of Tomorrow

David Suzuki turned 80 years old this week. Robert Bateman will be 86 in two months, and Thich Nhat Hanh will be 90 later this year. So many leaders, true leaders, are coming to the end of their lives. Replacing them will not be easy.

Silent River Kung Fu’s Pandamonium is teaching tomorrow’s leaders the value of empathy and respect. Leadership is about bringing us together. It is about respecting the world we share, and taking responsibility for its welfare.

“An educational system isn’t worth a great deal if it teaches young people how to make a living but doesn’t teach them how to make a life.” - David Suzuki (b. 1936)

Empathy and Leadership

Kung fu is all about empowerment. It is about taking responsibility for where you are and how you got there. Taking that level of control of your life allows you to choose your influences and to build the world you wish to be a part of. In fact, one of the most common statements I hear coming from the parents of prospective students is, “I want my child to be a leader, not a follower.”

Getting people engaged in fundraising is a challenge. People are more likely to write a cheque than they are to inspire others to contribute. It’s easier to throw money at an issue than it is to properly address that same issue. Yet when it comes to kung fu and personal empowerment, as a teacher I have no greater tool to teach empathy and leadership than SRKF’s Pandamonium fundraiser.

Engaging with SRKF’s Pandamonium means learning what it is like to go a week without a single complete meal. It means being aware that there are people, not so different than us, who require extraordinary assistance to complete the most basic of tasks that the rest of us take for granted. The Pandamonium helps teach us all about the concept of inter-being. Educating a girl in Malawi can solve many socio-economic problems that plague the world. Learning about the ecological collapse that can happen in the wake of harming the efficacy of a keystone species can shift paradigms surrounding unsustainable development. So much more can be learned through active engagement than just writing a cheque.

Silent River Kung Fu’s 24 hour Pandamonium is set to go on May 14. Please consider sponsoring a few minutes of the event so that we can learn more about the world we live in while helping those less fortunate than ourselves.

“No one cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.” - Theodore Roosevelt (1858 - 1919)

Northern Lights Wildlife Wolf Centre

I am pleased that the Silent River Benevolent Foundation has voted to include the Northern Lights Wildlife Wolf Centre as an initiative that is worthy of funding this year. Our annual Pandamnoium fundraiser has seen a drop in engagement from our students these past few years and so I see this new initiative as a real opportunity for us to help all our initiatives benefit from added engagement.

Wolves are a keystone species. They are integral for maintaining and preventing an ecosystem from collapsing or dramatically changing. This fact played out in Yellowstone Park when wolves were eradicated and then reintroduced. Currently there is a wolf cull going on in British Columbia, ostensibly to protect caribou. It is well proven that habitat quality is the most important component of caribou population recovery yet rather than protecting the caribou habitat from human activities like logging, the BC government is going after the wolves.

Nature always balances itself. Typically it is man who throws things askew, putting species at risk and even driving them to extinction. It is an exercise in futility if we think imposing our control is going to fix a problem that was caused by us imposing our control. Hopefully organizations like the Northern Lights Wildlife Wolf Centre can help educate the public and change the government narrative when it comes to prioritizing the economy over ecology. You would think a country whose economy depends on its natural resources would be more worried about the long term affects of unsustainable growth and development.

“If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. Ifs insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.” - E.O. Wilson (b. 1929)

Wolfgang Beltracchi

I watched a documentary about the art forger Wolfgang Beltracchi. He was very successful by producing forgeries that were actually original pieces of art.  Beltracchi was a master of imitating the style of other masters. Rather than copying existing artwork, he produced ‘newly found’ originals. In fact some of his forgeries were more revered than the art of the masters themselves. The only thing that classified his work as forgeries were the artists’ names that he put on the pieces. Beltracchi’s original work was worth millions with someone else’s name on the painting but once his fraud was exposed, the same art became virtually worthless.

At first I did not understand why something was worth less if Wolfgang Beltracchi painted it as Max Ernst than if it was Max Ernst himself who had produced it. Why should anyone care as long as they like it? I ended up resolving these thoughts myself. The value in art is in innovation, not imitation.

“Innovation is change that unlocks new value.” - Jamie Notter