You, whoever you are reading this, if you’re in Montreal you still have a chance to see it.

Little Bang Theory’s current project consists of a sensually magnetic two-person dance (choreographed by Hanako Hoshimi-Caines with Louise-Michel Jackson); infused with a starry instrumental spectacle and Lhasa de Sela’s vocal soul; projected into March Hutchinson’s animated vestige of an antique childhood’s wonder as it unthreads in James Irwin’s myth, which sucks its audience outside of time.

And with that breathless mouthful, I mean to say that all of these elements wove together so wonderfully that I left the theatre with some friends, still absorbed with the creativity of the performance. I notice they’re performing again on Sunday, 14th of June at Sala Rossa. Go.

Peek of Exchange

While trees cite sky and sky golds,
surrender, solar abandon, to beatitude!
Behold below, the escaped blue arboretum!

Departing Dimensions

Toward vertex, a vapour marble
rides its chimera of fibrous wind
and heroic solitude.

Clearing of the Lucid Balloon

Whether nighttime rises
or falls, between its borders
echo a flotilla of twilight. ]]> http://phydeau.org/2009/06/01/montgolfieres/feed/ 0 http://phydeau.org/2009/05/31/the-pear-bell/ http://phydeau.org/2009/05/31/the-pear-bell/#comments Mon, 01 Jun 2009 01:07:53 +0000 Joshua Chalifour http://www.phydeau.org/?p=277 The creek's water stopped flowing arcing to reach outside its bed and up against the pear tree, Ringing the pears where bells lacked place. The tree vibrated and convulsed, its fruit chiming like the touch of ice to ice and clanging as brass to brass, and the noise gushed to the ground, flooding the lands around, twinkling a sweet chaos of pear bell rivulets of sound. The sonorous arm of water, succeeding its ravishing racket of the pears, retreated to the creek bed shores. During the ringing, two animals attended the tree, mute, two hours. But after the buoyant raccoon scaled the Pear tree and knocked a pear to the ground, the heron knew in the black feathers of its crown that stickycrisp secrets of ancestors would blossom. The pear relieved its pliant yellow skin on the dirt, which watched, amorally, Everything above it. Dropping its skin revealed its twelve-natured lunar pubis: The first still dizzy from the plunge to Earth, styled itself a young mynah with no eyes. The second ate licorice and water but drank slower than a mature ocean. The third claimed a mischief of paper cuts, greater than three is always a mischief. The fourth looked big as the lead cames in a window of Arctic islander glass. The fifth wriggled its toes into the dirt, unconcerned with the hour. The sixth became a ripe plum— Elsewhere distant bells, deflating like the end times, let go of their peels. The seventh rowed frantically as though pulling pushing oars gathering wind, and in the current, herons. The eighth, in a frenzy that raised furious foams of celebration, strummed its Slavic harp. The ninth spoke in words known only to lovers that expose their hearts through the railings of broken ribs. The tenth believed it could silken a foundation to outlast the deep lulling August heat. The eleventh collapsed upon itself, exhausted in single-minded worship. The twelfth obsessively tapped the splitting, dropping skins of the yellow pear bell and cried to their glistening sweetness. The creek water (turned tepid glass of endless ash) reflected raccoon and heron. The raccoon circled its eyes from the spent pear to the heron, which maneuvred its beak and elegantly speared the yellow pear skin. Dousing all twelve, the raccoon handled each into its mouth. Sunlight weaved through the pear tree's glowing green leaves. The fruit sated each creature as silence landed its imminence. ]]> http://phydeau.org/2009/05/31/the-pear-bell/feed/ 0 http://phydeau.org/2009/05/03/impromptu-circus/ http://phydeau.org/2009/05/03/impromptu-circus/#comments Sun, 03 May 2009 11:45:22 +0000 Joshua Chalifour http://www.phydeau.org/?p=270 A triangle of trees were lassoed with tough ropes. Each trunk, encircled with a padded harness, held itself stoically to the ground. Two men bounced, wobbled, and periodically traversed the rope between trees with grace. One floppy, determined child tried. Outside the triangle of tightropes, a woman practiced spinning a large hoop in a series of tricks. Sometimes she jumped through it, which caused her to drop it. A man juggled, imperfectly challenging the play of gravity.

These people appear, unexpected but welcome in our park on a glowing 16° C day. The girl continued to prop one leg on the tightrope but she never managed to get both simultaneously above it. A passerby audience paused between accidents. We watched one of the men bounce his rope into a swinging surf which he managed to ride in place, his legs moving and body keeping to a central spot. That impressed. With practice, someday these will be performers and the passersby will sit in a tent applauding.

I brewed some tea from boldo leaves, green tea, and kombucha. While waiting for it to cool to a drinkable temperature, I passed my left hand through the steam. I like the downy accumulation of dampness, the almost-burn of heat. I relaxed my eyes, letting the focus blur with the steam passing around my fingers.

My finger tips didn’t just feel warm though, some other familiar sensation confused me. Trying to identify the sensation, it reminded me of the flavour I anticipated from drinking the tea. That’s how I realized my finger tips were tasting.

But that’s not possible I thought. I hypothesized different explanations. I hadn’t drunk any of the tea. Nevertheless taste and smell, I always hear, are closely related. I must have smelled the steam. I held my nose with my other hand, thinking this would end the sensation. But I couldn’t deny that the next minute, with my fingers hovering over the cup, I still tasted the tea.

What should I think of this sensation? The tea tasted pleasant both on my fingers and on my tongue. It’s subtle though, this new sense. Perhaps I’ve had this ability for some time without noticing. Perhaps it always blended so well with my sense of smell and tongue taste that I couldn’t distinguish. Or does everyone experience this? If it’s a normal aspect of touch that I’ve lacked for years–how haven’t I noticed?

As I sat back into the sofa to consider this, I put my hand on the cushion. It occured to me that the cloth on the sofa feels bland to the taste. I wished I had a creamy chocolate bar to hold. Will I recognize the salt of my wife when we walk holding hands? I’ll need gloves for the gas pump. Soap is worrying me. And if I suck my thumb, will I taste taste?

People look at you a certain way, like a dog gazing up submissively, when they need directions. And pedestrians tend to be good choices: a man on foot knows his way through the thoroughfairs, back streets and alleys, and wherever else feet tend to go. Except, I don’t. I remember it in my unconscious gut and I can go anywhere by gut, but I don’t know how to explain this.

Once I tried. I confidently detailed instructions for an old lady… in a series of directions that had nothing to do with where she needed to go. I realized my mistake five minutes after leaving her. Worried, I turned back to find her but I was too late, she’d already gone too far for me to find. Now I usually apologize first and leave people to ask a more reliable source.

The man asked me in his inquisitive Russian accent “La Grand Central Station?” I wondered for a moment where that could be. The name sounded familiar but I couldn’t imagine a Grand Central Station. This time when I offered my “désolé” I really meant it. But as I walked off, I considered that I’d been to a Grand Central Station in New York. Had this Russian family come to the wrong place? Maybe I should go back and tell them that they need to go to New York? Then I remembered La gare Centrale. Good thing I have a policy about giving directions.

With ventilated hat,
in brick composure
the ragged outline of domestic industry
stands upright, dormant

while altocumulus float beyond,
sunrise igniting their pink.

I’m not just calling attention to A Very Good Day for Turtles because the people that made it are close to me (and I happened to have had a pet turtle as a child). I love the book and know its creators put a lot of care into it, which is obvious the moment you read it.

A Very Good Day for Turtles

Monument between Parc La Fontaine and Sherbrooke

Why preserve and move the edge of a utilitarian-designed building to the park? If the rest of the building had been demolished, why save this? What a hoax this artist made.

Every day I passed the thing, monument of ugliness. Every day, for months, I felt the same about it.

The other evening though, I had an aesthetic transformation. Over the course of approaching it, passing it from the sidewalk, and reflecting on it, I suddenly loved the thing.

Between the park and the rest of the city–this monument. The side facing the city is straight, segmented like an uninspired, generic modern building. A corner of its simple, mundane concrete at a right angle.

The side facing the park is jagged and uneven. It looks like it was torn from a larger structure. Or intentionally left unfinished. It has a slice of blue paint running through it as well.

Could the straight, uniform side represent the city it faces, while the jagged side represents the “nature” it faces? The monument appears as though it’s part of a larger wall, surrounding the park and framing the divide between human-made structures, and those of the non-human, chaotic natural world. But let’s not forget that a park, no matter how much vegetation it has, is planned by humans and can hardly be raw nature. Of course, even the jagged part of the monument is human-produced so this fits the metaphor of the site. That’s how I decided I’d fallen in love with this piece of art.

In fact for several days, I admired the thing whenever I passed it. Finally, I noticed a plaque nearby. Why hadn’t I ever noticed it before? It explained the monument, a gift and commemoration, and nothing to do with my new aesthetic reading.

Was I impressed that this monument could eke its way inside me and strike that shift in my perception? Was it a function of time and familiarity? I puzzle with this. Or have I projected the aesthetic transformation on to it? Can I love it in spite of the plaque or does the plaque require me to go back to the beginning?

Yet on days like today, I joke that I’m almost there.

No doubt I’ll make it, once almost there won’t be.

Happy birthday, me.

]]> http://phydeau.org/2008/09/23/thirty-four-twenty-threes/feed/ 0 http://phydeau.org/2008/09/13/what-is-a-thinking-organism/ http://phydeau.org/2008/09/13/what-is-a-thinking-organism/#comments Sat, 13 Sep 2008 23:21:36 +0000 Joshua Chalifour http://phydeau.org/?p=710 Thinking organisms are, as the name implies, organisms that one creates purely as thinking. The term does not refer to organisms that think, rather “thinking” is used as a gerund. Thinking organisms remain “within” one’s mind where they grow and evolve as an organism might, were it physical. I came up with the notion for these in 1995, writing my first (perhaps naïve) experiment in the medium, Idea Toy: A Game for Evolving.

The purpose of a thinking organism is to engage the thinker, in ongoing thinking. A successful thinking organism continues to evolve as though on its own even while the thinker is not consciously engaged in thinking on it. When the thinker returns his or her focus to it, it seems to have changed or evolved so that now the thinker has a different insight on it or greater awareness of something in reality because of it.

A thinking organism should be apprehended in a basic form by the thinker, and then grow and evolve as the thinker spends time with it. Like a koan, thinking organisms are not intended to be solved. Thinking organisms are simply “presencing”.

A Lab for Thinking Organism Development

While the thinking organism is created by thinking and thus, essentially invisible, it is possible to document the method of its creation. Documentation enables others to engage and produce such a thinking organism on their own. I believe many of these could start as suggestions, or partially written procedures, which I’ll house in this space for further development. Additionally, it ought to be useful to document any insights produced as natural byproducts of thinking organisms. These should take the shape of new or recalled awareness and insights.

After creating more thinking organisms and documenting their processes, I believe certain patterns and similarities might emerge. If that is the case, it seems like it may be possible to develop a taxonomy of thinking organisms, so that we can better describe, understand, and apply them. I’d like to encourage anyone interested in thinking organisms to contact me with any contributions toward the above goals.

Thought Experiments

The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy defines a thought experiment as:

a technique for testing a hypothesis by imagining a situation and what would be said about it (or more rarely, happen in it). This technique is often used by philosophers to argue for (or against) a hypothesis about the meaning or applicability of a concept. For example, Locke imagined a switch of minds between a prince and a cobbler as a way to argue that personal identity is based on continuity of memory, not continuity of the body…

By hypothesizing different possible scenarios and thinking about them, their results, permutations, relations, etc. one can, hopefully gain a better understanding of the way things are.

Useful Resources

WikiPedia:Thought_experiment
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy online | Searle’s Chinese Room example
The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Koans

Koans have a long history (WikiPedia:Koan). They do not exist as something that should be solved, rather they help open the mind to that which is outside logic and commonplace thinking. They are important tools for developing insight toward the nature of reality. For some examples, James Collado has a collected quite a few in English and Spanish in his Zen Koan Database.

It would be a good idea to explore koan-like things from different cultures.

A Bit on Logic

The many forms of logic make it seem somewhat difficult to encapsulate in an overview but it is broadly defined in terms of studying principles or criteria of correct reasoning.

This wiki may not be the best place to examine every form of logic but it may be useful to include discussion of logic methods here. Logic’s rich human history to the present activity in researching and developing new forms of logic, implementing it new ways, etc. cannot be omitted from developing a resource on thinking.

The focussed thinking in logic methods yields a clarity of understanding, which can be adapted toward many different types of situations. Often logical patterns emerge in one situation, which are the same as those thought about in another.

Logic Resources

WikiPedia:Logic
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy — Propositional Logic
Critical Thinking Web
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — L Contents

Logic Gives the Gift of Paradoxes

Paradoxes

Musings

The Merriam Webster dictionary defines musing as “to become absorbed in thought; especially : to turn something over in the mind meditatively and often inconclusively”.

2. The air around my flesh, feels to me, indistinguishable from the way water around a fish’s scales, feels to the fish. I must constantly be wary of hooks.

3. God’s abattoir: Earth. Humans talk about an all-seeing, all-knowing, wise God. Of course, nobody understands why little Dana, the age-three tragedy of Brome, had to die of a particularly virulent flu. They’ll say that in God’s wisdom there was a reason. Marcus, age 102 on the other hand, lived a life of acme quality. He fell asleep Tuesday evening and never awoke. And the stutteringly handsome Vincent, back in the day, contracted syphilis—so efficient those sorts. God gets hungry. Or if not God, a few of God’s customers need nourishing. God claims it’s the most humane method of slaughter, which they believe. Humans get to go about living, relatively unaware of what’s in store. No one escapes Earth. But come time for a tender young dish, God readies the flu machinery. Customers demanding something aged to fashionable ripeness encourage God to dispatch more disease, swiftly and efficiently handling the stock.

4. Birdcall serves the ominous function of death siren. We get lazy, we humans. The birds singing, we enjoy or marvel. But there is one, always one designated per person. We let our guard down over the millennia. Birds know it. Birds stick around, calling, trilling, chirping, singing, etc. making us used to their sound. We lost our ability to hear only what we choose. We hear everything now, only selecting some things for consciousness. But we hear it all nonetheless! So there’s that one unique bird, paired with its person, just waiting for its moment. That bird may land or fly nearby. Maybe it’ll wait in a tree or build a nest by one’s home. The moment one hears its song, is the last. Hearing that sound affects one’s singular solo decrescendo into death. Do the birds cheer one another? Are birds satisfied or joyous in their duty? One must practise choosing not to hear one’s paired bird.

5. Waking and dreaming as states of life: the parenthesis between death and inverted potential. While the wakeful may arouse the dreaming, I’m anxious to encounter the counterpart of the wakeful in the inverted potential that accompanies my death.

She sat on her towel, partially reclining against her elbows. The paperback du jour (holding the misfortunes of an Indian orphan) rested patiently by her side. She’d read a quarter of it before inserting her bookmark, a fading taxi receipt. The sun beamed beautifully but not too hot. She chose not to go into the water. Even though she’d taken a dip before reading, she needed to stare a bit longer. Ocean air floated through her nostrils, surrounding her thoughts with particles of all that floated on the waves.

Sitting before the waves, she temporarily escaped her once beloved city, where people battered one another, vying for the most damaging words and protective positions. She focused again on the distance, exhaling a curlicue of breath. She left the breath to gather with other particles, which floated or submerged themselves in the divine varnish of blue eternity. And the city was gone. Her shoulders relaxed, sinking her maple neck deeper between their hammocked edges. The waves continued.

Last month she thought she loved her fiancé. This month his self-indulgent note confessing fear of the future was the last remnant she’d seen of him. After three years of adjusting to pink anarchy, weightlessness, and synchronized hearts, everything crashed and unravelled the instant he left. One day she was party to vibrant people and scenes, which now pressed around her in charred relief. The future she thought would come, vanished, so that she lived blindly into it. Still, sunshine reassured her, warming her cheeks before nostalgic tears could condense. She sat up, hugging her folded knees, and continued to watch the ocean.

——

Walking West along the beach, a man wearing a blue and white striped swim suit, stood in the foam. His feet chilled in the water thankful to be privileged and out of the unbearable heat. He watched the water curve around subtle sand waves. It flowed at a steady pace but glided back to its origin unevenly because of the terrain. Between watery sand and sun-dried sand, the waves improvised their line of rhythm. He looked upward, past the caramel sand, to the spread of people on the beach. Daydreaming, he wished he’d meet–

The vision of a woman resting on her elbows; she looked steadily toward the distance.

Walking some more, he considered her. Her story came effortlessely. She was by herself but shouldn’t be. She was only recently by herself, and melancholy. Was that her story? Actually, what the hell was he doing here? Why’d she have to recently be a loner? Why shouldn’t she be? Her, with that book at her side, he reflected, and not the smallest trace of interest in her eyes for anything taking place on the beach. Still, her blond hair fluttered feral in the salty breeze.

Reaching around to scratch his sweaty back, he hoped against sunburn. Some people happily holiday with nobody and nothing but a book. In her place, he’d be looking for adventure. The book would only be what, a ruse? No, not a ruse, she was honest. She followed her goals, which sometimes also led to adventure. She depended on no one, but everyone wanted to depend on her. The more they needed her the less they interested her. Her perfect man would be out of reach.

He picked up a tear-shaped pod of rubbery seaweed. As he shook the pod near his ear, he heard water rattle inside. He turned it in his hand several times, mindlessly, then took a step in reverse, wound his arm down, back, picking up speed, and arcing it at a sideways angle over his head, he released the pod toward the ocean. It righted itself aerodynamically and sailed over a wave, plopping below the surface. Though it had an air bubble inside, he lost sight and didn’t know whether or not it floated. He didn’t care.

He’d glance toward the woman to see if she noticed him. No, wouldn’t be any sign. He wandered further, keeping the water just above his ankles. Maybe she’d have dinner with him. After all, in spite of everyone else, they were on the beach, alone. She’d probably want company. Chances are she would’ve noticed him when he wasn’t looking. Besides, she probably didn’t have another book to read.

——

Why I left Lyle while he was asleep? Who knows.

Forget that, I’m on holiday. Before it gets unbearably hot, I must take in the beach. That cool breeze-oh, definitely my kind of beach. Nobody’s awake I suppose. Dreadful ringing still-that insane band last night-such fun. Ghost instruments. Crashing waves drown them out. Life should start and stop in waves. Emotions are so violent, and I des-per-ately need this holiday.

What a lonesome morning! Imagine though, a tall young man could walk by, his feet displacing insignificant splashes of water from that slim layer slipping over the shore. He’d be wearing a tight, blue and white striped swimsuit. His T shoulders tipping their perfect balance to the right as he skips stones he bends over and over to take from under toe.

He’d be alone. I’d want to meet him. Except no, he wouldn’t be interested in me. He’d see a woman instead. She’d be mind-your-own-business, lying on her towel and staring at the sea, all picturesque and unconcerned. This woman, oh, she’d be attractive of course. A starlet propped against her elbows, looking a tad deflated but relaxed. No! She’d be sitting forward, hugging her knees and staring at the water.

My man in the blue and white striped swimsuit would be interested but he’d try to attract her through disinterest. The coy ploy. It couldn’t be a ploy though: only the authentically shy really pull that one off. She’d stare into the distance. He’d perform for her attention. So Pavlovian. He’d probably believe she was lonely. And wouldn’t they each have absolutely regrettable vacations, full of dissipating time, unless they met. He’d tell her so, but not right away. Why she needs him for that? Who knows.

No, first he’d loiter (not long) (not long enough) at a neutral but noticeable distance, and consider the best way to get her attention, to start talking. He could ask if she’d seen any good skipping stones. Her answer wouldn’t matter. Puffing his chest, he’d leave, just walk right off to find some and then return later to gab banalities of whether or not he’d found any. Everyone knows the question simply doesn’t matter, it’s the contact. He’d ask, in earnest tones, why she was on holiday alone. She’d change the subject of course, but talking for a bit, his persistence would find her hurt answer.

There, I’m back to dwelling on love. Stop. I had to leave. Lyle couldn’t’ve dreamed we’d ever last.

1. Slavery without adhesive
2. Collecting litres of mud
3. Pirate ideas
4. Prognosticating the colours of life
   or the wailing songs thereof
5. Forgetting all the unwanted premonitions
6. Ice impermeable to slippery children
7. Commissioned murders
8. Round quarters
9. Neutral drugs that don’t even nudge
10. Alien statesmen that recite chaos as poetry

Tick tick tap…

She said "you come from the earth and you end in the earth."

I said "no, I came from the ocean and I'll end in the sky."

Recently, I sent a couple Canadian party leaders a letter encouraging them to make intellectual property regulation a well-recognized issue (that is, ensuring there is less of it as opposed to the DMCA-style direction it appears to be heading). I included a copy of Lawrence Lessig’s book, Free Culture, because I think he does such a good job examining many of the aspects of present-day “intellectual property” debates. The following is the text of my letters, slightly modified to read less like a letter. I wanted to post this for the sake of adding to whatever public conversation on the subject I can.

I believe the damaging concepts of “intellectual property” are pressing issues for Canada and no party seems to care enough to make it a priority. I’d like to argue that it should be a priority and if presented well, it could rally people around this neglected cause. Although “intellectual property” initially seems like a difficult concept to discuss, presenting it in concrete terms, with examples, and pragmatic solutions will make it of palpable import to

1. Canadian sovereignty
2. Canada/Quebec culture
3. Workers’ rights and well-being
4. Individual freedom
5. Canada’s edge in technology, science, and business
6. A Canadian vision of modern society
7. Respect for our own heritage

In the following, I’ll try to briefly state my view on those seven points. I think this issue could project a dedicated party into a unique position, galvanizing the attention of many voters.

1. Canadian Sovereignty

Barely bobbing in the shallow layers of several domestic media outlets recently, word is that Harper’s conservatives may attempt to increase restrictions on “intellectual property” access and usage. Usually, when I dig through the news I find that these are in response to various foreign pressures. Have people already forgotten the way Bev Oda was reportedly ready to sell-out Canadian cultural rights to regulations of industry representatives (and not necessarily Canadian ones)? Why hasn’t this conservative wound been continuously prodded by the other parties?

Recently, you may have heard of the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP)-a Canadian project to provide access to copies of musical scores, which are in the public domain. Universal Edition, a publishing company in the European Union sent a cease-and-desist letter to the IMSLP because some of what it provided was not considered public domain outside of Canada. IMSLP, as a small operation, had little choice but to cave to the corporation.

In an increasing number of countries, modern copyright terms are overly lengthy. Intellectual property laws are nearing draconian proportions in US and some EU jurisdictions, which emboldens foreign companies to act in ways that affect Canadian individuals or organizations, thus impinging on Canadian sovereignty.

2. Culture-Canada’s Inferiority Complex and One of Quebec’s Great Imperatives

Canadians freqently make self-abasing jokes about our own culture. At least Quebec is constantly up in arms to ensure its culture thrives. Couldn’t “intellectual property” freedom be a lightening rod for support to improve local culture? Most federal parties certainly need support in Quebec. Why enact stricter IP laws that restrict the apprehension, distribution, even creation of our culture?

Artists, for example the Canadian Music Creators Coalition, tend not to favour extra restrictions. Artists inherently understand the importance of being free to play off of one another’s work and related work within our culture. Make the conditions right for our culture to grow and be disseminated, which more restrictive copyright, patent, and other “intellectual property” laws prohibit. We must have the freedom to apprehend and contribute to our culture, unrestricted.

3. Workers’ Rights and Well-Being

Company after company in information technology and knowledge work industries, science and research industries, etc. require employees to sign agreements about what amounts to the contents of their own minds. Read the agreements carefully-most don’t say it outright– but they can be understood in no other way. Those agreements often result in the implication that anything a worker comes up with, while under a company’s employ (sometimes whether on the job or not) automatically becomes the company’s property. This is a gross abuse of our workforce’s rights and well-being.

The realm of the IT world has a reputation of allowing people to make a decent living. Because much of the industry’s work product is formed in intangible electrons, perhaps nobody thinks IT/knowledge workers need help. The kind of damage occurring here is less immediately obvious than is the physical damage that can take place in other types of workplaces. It is subtle but it is severe. And it’s a template for other industries. It’s time for these “white collar” industries to lose their nice guy lustre and be exposed for the way they take advantage of Canadian citizens.

4. Individual Freedom

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees freedom of thought and expression. I doubt many people ever believed freedom of thought could truly be at risk, but it is. In addition, our generally accepted cultural freedoms are under attack. The notion that something exists called “intellectual property” implies it. It paves the way for people to accept that what takes place in a non-physical realm can be owned the same as physical property. A shovel can be stolen and there is one less in stock at the hardware store but a digital music file, like an idea, cannot-it can only be duplicated.

Following a road toward more restrictive “intellectual property rights” will eventually require us to stipulate who owns the rights of copyability for portions of every individual’s shared reality within our greater community. That may sound like alarmist and conspiracy-theorist talk. I know that it can take a lengthy amount of explanation to show how statements like the above make sense, to show that something like a sci-fi scenario of companies owning parts of peoples’ brains (much closer than it might sound) could take place, or perhaps to even introduce the word “reality” in popular political discourse. But there are ways to get these points across. Easy ones.

An invested political leader could incite passion via examples. Did you read the recent news article, where a father in the US wanted to take a photo of his children but was prevented because a company owned copyright to the image of the building that happened to be a part of where they were standing? How long before that attitude comes to Canada? Will we be allowed to take pictures of our children watching a hockey match if the team owner doesn’t give permission for reproducing an image of the players? It’s our experience after all, our reality just as much as anyone else’s.

What about a newspaper? Will it be allowed to publish a report and photograph of a strike taking place in front of a major auto manufacturer’s facility (and its trademarked logo) if the manufacturer doesn’t give the newspaper permission to publish the photo or print its trademarked name? How about the employee who signs on with his new job in a management consultancy. In his free time he thinks up a theory about how to improve work processes and writes a book about it. The company sues him because they believe they own the rights to those processes since they employed him.

How long before Canadians accept these things as commonplace and lose the core freedoms in our reality that are part of the foundation for all our freedoms?

5. Canada’s Edge in Technology, Science, and Business

The faster we develop new technology, the more we’re enthralled by it. This has positive and negative aspects, which are not within the realm of the point I’d like to make here. But new technology, science, and business can be better fostered without regulations that would be brought about by an “intellectual property” industry attitude favouring more restrictive “intellectual property” laws.

Fields of research in science, technology, and software development are faced with a patent plague. Patents are no longer used as incentives but rather as weapons of fear, inducing people not to follow through on ideas discoveries or not to follow certain lines of research and development that could be of huge benefit to society. Canada’s “intellectual property” laws must enable people to perform research unfettered by the fear of aggressive patent portfolios; to harness new technology; and to develop new, better, businesses, rather than prop up dead-end businesses that are unwilling to grow. This requires giving creative individuals the freedom to explore their innovative pursuits: the entrepreneurs, the artists, the scientists, and the programmers.

Think about when refrigerators became commonplace. Ice-delivery businesses either adapted to support the new technology, found a different business, or were overcome. Today, the many media distribution companies are like ice-delivery businesses. Recording distributors like major music labels take advantage of their power and money to influence politicians and adapt laws that preserve their dead-end business models. Instead, they should be adapting their models, replacing the old distribution of physical CDs, for example, with the new model of operating digital networks. The distribution medium changed but the companies haven’t. Tragically, instead such companies pervert the law and propagandize society in an effort to colonize our shared creative culture for their ends. Industry has transformed the positive engagement of sharing into a fearsome one called pirating.

6. A Canadian Vision of Modern Society

I think of a politician’s bind: the difficulty of both representing and leading simultaneously. Few political representatives are able to communicate a compelling vision of a path we ought to take. A vision representing Canadian interests by promoting our thriving, open-minded culture, is one that will help prepare Canada to address the difficult problems we face. What good is improving the lot of all members of society (Medicare, minimum wages, good public education, etc.) if our lives are miserable? Without fostering a culture that encourages creative liberty, I doubt we’d have the collective mindset to be capable of mustering great ideas like these.

The soul of all that we build as a society, is expressed in our culture. We must not allow a corporate oligarchy, foreign pressures, or the limited thinking of a few to limit that soul. The political party leaders out to present a vision of modern Canada filled with the best of our culture, philosophy, and learning, and alive with the elements introduced by people that have joined us from around the world. This society can thrive only when people are free of artificial restraints against apprehending our living culture, contributing to it, and sharing it.

7. Respect for Our Own Heritage

We must maintain our own access to what we have produced. What we produce, we must be able to preserve for the future of our society. Extending copyrights and other forms of “intellectual property” restrictions to lengths beyond a short and reasonable time frame damages our ability to respect our own heritage.

The physical media on which we’ve recorded certain types of our cultural artefacts or even scientific research, degrade over time. We need to ensure that these things are maintained and perpetuated. In the US for example, old films are disintegrating-companies that own the rights do not have the financial incentive to preserve them and nobody else has the rights to reproduce or disseminate these films. Thus, not only are people in the USA and the world deprived of the possibility to experience part of their shared reality in the present, but future generations will also be deprived of their heritage.

We are losing the context that so many of our inventions, like writing, have provided history. If Canada allows companies to lock away our culture, allows companies to take away Canadian citizens’ rights to our own shared reality by introducing increased “intellectual property” restrictions, then we show a gross disrespect to ourselves.

Finally,

Rather than allow conservatives to say that they are “modernizing intellectual property rights” or “protecting” the rights of artists, why not reveal such statements for what they are: harmful to artists’ creativity, harmful to the Canadian public, and a grossly offensive manoeuvre perpetuated by those that don’t care about Canadians’ freedoms.

I know there are many important things to take care of in and outside of parliament, for example, our environment, work conditions for a country of people at various income levels, Canada’s role on an international scale, etc. Still, we need a party that will also address the problem of “intellectual property” restrictions.

Corporate entities want to control the distribution and apprehension of all forms of our cultural artefacts. Music, movies, books, images, inventions, discoveries, architectural forms in public spaces, all of these things and more are being quickly sucked into a restricted zone of apprehension. In order to experience or reproduce these things, one increasingly must go through insurmountable efforts for gaining permission.

Our cultural artefacts, once made public, are by the nature of being public an integral part of our living culture. No artist, business person, philosopher, architect, scientist, etc. works in a vacuum. These workers gain inspiration and insight experiencing our shared culture, shared reality, which is infused with the very products of their creative labours.

Many political representatives would prefer to maintain the status quo, lie in the womb of industry, or to stick their heads under the ground, pretending the impossible safety of passed years still exists. We need political leaders with the foresight to present a concrete vision for improving Canada and leading to a better future.

The greying man raised his hands, hovered them somewhere between shoulder and head. Palms open and facing each other, they shook slightly in the space around his words. I think he asked for understanding, believing it’d be enough. Maybe he demanded a responsibility in full or he plead for the importance of one little family event. No saying.

The taller fellow, it turns out, wasn’t quite yet a man. Perched on stilt legs, his thick parka quietly bulged resistance around his torso. Birds puff their feathers to portray an image of dominance or the selfish impression thereof.

Finally, the tall one raised his hands in a gesture (probably unintentional) that mimicked the greying man. He didn’t look the greying man in the eye—just extended one leg in the opposite direction and followed it with the other. He stepped from the hip, in measures like a metronomic pigeon. His shoulders raised high and bent to incline the upper portion of the parka. He continued a few beats to the next corner. The greying fellow, resigned, strode away, his face empty and cheeks adroop.