Life, the Universe and Everything

So for awhile now I've been writing out 'My Platform' (still a ways to go on that). Part of the reason for writing this was to get ideas out there but it was also, in part, because I get invited to join alot of people's political causes, so I thought I should lay out exactly what I think (so as maybe to narrow the range of such invitations a bit.)

I also get invited to join alot of religious causes and let me say, in summary, that I don't like any of them. I am not an atheist but I do not think that organized religion has anything to do with spirituality (none of them.) What made me decide to finally open up on this is the wonderful ad campaign that has been running around the world. For those people who have been whining about being 'attacked' - shut up, seriously. The world has been subjected to religious propaganda for thousands of years, and, especially given your abysmal track record, there is nothing wrong with the non-religious expressing their point of view as well. It is not an 'attack' - a few hundred years ago you could have tried for heresy. Fortunately though we are past that.



Anyway, just to make it perfectly clear. This is what I think on the the whole issue of Life, the Universe and Everything.

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Religion is certainly the source of much good in the world. Countless charitable organizations are funded and operated by religious orders. As the first decade of the 21st century has illustrated for us, yet again, religion is also the source of much of the world's evil. I have frequently said that faith is a wonderful thing but religion is dangerous and I believe this goes to the root of the problem.

Faith is what fills people with inspiration and hope without proof or the necessity for reward. Faith is a belief that comes from the heart. Religion is something else. Religion is the unquestioning faith in the wisdom of other humans. Religion is the belief that another humans fairth, or knowledge of the divine is greater than your own.

Religion is, in short, at odds with reality. While all modern religions claim to be based on the testimony of eye witness' any good trial lawyer will tell you that eye witness testimony is notoriously unreliable. Eyewitness testimony handed down, over hundreds of thousands of years is scarcely more reliable than high school rumors. Virtually all religious texts claim to be the absolute word of god, but none of them have anything to backup such a claim other than the texts themselves and the aforementioned eyewitness testimony.

The reality is that no one currently living knows anything for certain about the divine. Others may have spend years or even decades reading religious texts, the meditations of monks and theologians and religious theory but all of this was written by people who were writing out of theory, or faith and none of it has any more authority than what you or I might write.

This does not mean that you should not believe. Many people in this world need religion, in one form or another. Some people need to believe in a higher purpose or power because it is the only thing that gives meaning an purpose to otherwise unhappy lives, others belong to churches because of the need for a sense of belonging. Humans are, after all, social animals and the open door policy at most churches - the ability to walk in the door and become a part of a community is important to them. What must be avoided is the following of religious leaders without question especially when those leaders attempt to use faith to turn one group of people against another, to spread hate, and mistrust and fear.

I personally do believe in a higher power. I do not feel any need whatsoever to belong to any organized religion and I believe that there is much wisdom to be gained in books but I do not believe that god ever has or ever written or ever will write a book. What I believe is, in parts, supported by various theologies but is also largely based in science.

“There is no end. There is no beginning. There is only the passion of life.”

- Federico Fellini

"You can't create or destroy energy"

- First Law of Termodynamics

"The Force is what gives a Jedi his power. It's an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together."
-Obi-Wan Kenobi

The entire universe is made up of matter and energy and matter is, at the deepest level, only extremely dense energy. It is also true that in one way or another that all of that energy is connected. If you look at the stars at night they are very pretty, but what you are seeing is energy that left that star and is now arriving at earth. Sure it's only a little bit, but in the same way that energy from our own sun arrives on a daily basis, fueling plant growth and sun tans the energy from other stars forms spider web like connections with thousands of other stars. So the universe, at a very basic level, can be seen as a giant web of energy floating in space.

What's more all of the energy that makes up the universe (including that energy masquerading as matter) is constant. It changes form but there is never more or less of it in total. It has all been here since the big bang and will be here when the universe 'ends' though even that isn't really an end, just another beginning.

Without getting into too much detail that pool or web of energy is what I call god. However that is only a physical description. While this description clearly makes god neither male nor female, of no skin colour, race, or ethnicity it doesn't answer most of the common questions about "Life, the Universe and Everything." So onward ...

"All things are implicated with one another, and the bond is holy; and there is hardly anything unconnected with any other things. For things have been coordinated, and they combine to make up the same universe. For there is one universe made up of all things, and one god who pervades all things, and one substance, and one law, and one reason."
Marcus Aurelius - The Meditations (7.9)

James Lovelock's Gaia Hypothesis urged us to think of the Earth and it's systems as an organic being that lives and breathes. What if it is? I don't mean like a frog or a bird but what if, on some level, the Earth and the universe is organic and what if it, on some level is conscious. By this I don't mean that it says "I am" or that it speaks or thinks about writing a book, but what if it is on some level aware.

If the that web of energy I described is organic and aware and we are all a part of that web (the energy that composes your body and causes it to function is also a part of that web) then it has profound implications for our concepts of mortality.

"The deeper 'layers' of the psyche lose their individual uniqueness as they retreat further and further into darkness. . . . they become increasingly collective until they are universalized and extinguished in the body's materiality. . . . Hence 'at bottom' the psyche is simply 'world.'"

- C.G. Jung ("The Special Phenomenology of the Child Archetype" [pt. 2] [_Psyche_&_Symbol_])

What I believe, and it is the biggest leap of faith you will find here, is that when a person dies they rejoin this consciousness. They are aware of all lives lived, everywhere in the universe, as if they themselves lived those lives. So you would be reunited, in the most intimate way, with everyone you've ever known, and everyone you haven't as well. You would know the story of everyone and everything that ever was and would have experienced it first hand. You would also, I believe, to cease to be you. Your memories of your own life would be indistinguishable from all of those other lives. You will know the truth of every story and every situation, you will know the innermost thoughts of everyone - even those still living.

"In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move."

Douglas Adams

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
-Willliam Shakespeare

So, if there is no heaven or hell, if we are all part of an unending organic universe then what is the point of being good? What is the point in any morality what-so-ever?

As I see it each life lived is the equivalent of an idea. It is 'God having a daydream' and the entire universe will know the entire story backward and forward. So what do you want your story to be? Will you be a hero or a villain? Will it be a story of bravery and overcoming adversity or a story of giving up and sitting on the couch? Everyone reading this has read enough books, watched enough movies and television programs to know how people react to a character. If you were watching a movie about you how would it go? How would you feel about your character and your story?

In the 1960s (and beyond) the baby boomers kept talking about 'finding yourself.' It is a ridiculous, silly, non-sensical concept. The idea is to discover deep down, at your core who you 'really are.' If you take this path you will never answer the question. You will just be a person reacting to external stimuli in whatever way seems best at the moment.

The trick is not to 'find yourself' it is to decide who you want to be, how you want your story to go and then work to be that person and tell that story. It won't always go smoothly but all you can do is wake up every day and try to take a few small steps forward. Some days things will go very well, some days they won't, some days you'll fail to be who you meant to be and some days you'll take a step back. The key is to get up every morning and try again to be the best person you can be, work toward your goals and don't let setbacks cause you to quit.

“Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

“We must become the change we want to see.”
-Mahatma Gandhi

“We have to do the best we can. This is our sacred human responsibility.”
-Albert Einstein

My Platform: Intro

As I said the other day I'm going to make a few suggestions for, what I believe, would make good government policy going forward. A few of these will be recaps of things I've already suggested but most of them will be new. Since I'll no doubt be covering other things on the blog over this time, I'll be putting these under the broad heading of 'My Platform' and once it's all done I'll send it on to the members of Un-Party to get some input there.

Broadly I'll be covering arts and culture, poverty, industry and government subsidies, crime, labour/workplace reform, electoral/political reform, education, Canadian sovereignty, and aboriginal/first nations affairs and digital technology/internet.

Before I get into this though I want to lay out a bit of where I'm coming from.

I think that the general mistrust of any and all government is left over from feudal Europe. The government is us now and our taxes, rather than go to pay the expenses of feudal lords, go to pay for these that we collectively have decided need to be done - kind of like everyone chipping in to buy a gift for someone. To the extent that this isn't true it is mostly our fault for not being active enough in our politics. I will though address government corruption and expanding democracy in the electoral/political reform part of all of this.

I think that religion plays too large a role in our politics and society. I do not care about your religion or its teachings. I'm very happy for you if it means something to you but it doesn't mean anything to me. Don't get me wrong, I do believe in a higher power but I believe that virtually all organized religion and virtually all of it's leaders are interested in earthly wealth and earthly power and not in anything spiritual. The deceptions and atrocities committed by religious organizations and in their name disqualify them in my mind from having any say in anything that we choose to do or not do. I believe that faith is a personal matter and should stay that way other than as a point of friendly philosophical discussion.

I believe that Carl Marx and Adam Smith were both had their points but that both socialism and capitalism, in pure forms, are fatally flawed. 'Give according to your ability, take according to your need' is, of course, ideal. The problem is, and everyone who's ever had a job knows this, there are too many people who will do the opposite - take according to their ability and give according to their need. In other words they will take all they can while doing the minimum necessary in order for them to keep taking. On the other hand Smith's idea, that everyone acting in their own best interest all the time is ultimately best for everyone is also wrong. There are too many people who are completely selfish to the extent that they don't pay any attention to consequences for themselves or anyone else. It is this kind of thinking that has let to the current state of global poverty, the environmental crisis, the great depression and the current 'economic crisis'. The best we can do is try to find a balance between the two, one that recognizes the strengths of both systems while minimizing the flaws of each.

One final note: Many will notice that the environment isn't directly listed in the above list of topics I plan on covering. That is because the environment is such a large, pervasive and vital issue that it's impossible to talk about it without talking about nearly everything else. So I will discuss it along side many of the issues listed above, it's there, just not as a heading.

WFT is Wrong With People?

I'm sure you all have heard plenty about the murder of Tim McLean on a Greyhound bus. I haven't talked about it previously and won't really talk about it now except to say - Seriously! What the fuck is wrong with people? It appears that two different groups, both with political agendas, saw the murder as an opportunity to publicize themselves.

The first shouldn't be a surprise I suppose: the Westboro Baptist Church (based in Kansas) had planned to picket at McLean's funeral "to tell Canadians his slaying on July 30 was God's response to Canadian policies enabling abortion, homosexuality and divorce and remarriage." Fortunately most of these people were turned away at the border, a few might still show up though. I can't say this group has lost any credibility, they never had any - they have been picketing the funerals of AIDS patients for decades now.

The second group is People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals

An animal rights group has posted an ad on its website comparing the recent stabbing and decapitation of a young Winnipeg man to how humans kill animals for food.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals said the advertisement is meant to make people understand how animals suffer when they are killed in slaughterhouses. The group posted the imageless advertisement on its blog site Wednesda

Look, I'm a vegetarian and everything but to use a grizzly murder to promote your politics is completely beneath contempt. Whatever credibility PETA had is completely and totally gone.

There are only two things I can say about it beyond what I've said
1) The church group has nothing whatever to do with God (maybe the other guy though.)
2) PETA is no better than the church group.

Is This What We're Fighting For? Pervez Kambaksh

I, like most Canadians I think, have mixed feelings about Afghanistan. On the one hand there is a horribly impoverished country, ravaged by (literally) decades of war. A country that is clearly in need of help of some kind.

At the same time I can't help wondering if the country that Canadian soldiers are building is one worth protecting. I mean, if we can't turn prisoners over to the local government for fear of their being tortured and a 23 year old Journalism student can be sentenced to death in a secret trial for "distributed a paper that humiliated Islam." How much better than the Taliban can this government possibly be? The paper that humiliated Islam, by the way, was apparently on the role of women in Islamic socieites.

Surely, if Canada wants to get into the business of propping up heavy handed, oppressive religious fundamentalists we can find plenty of countries more pleasant and less embattled than Afghanistan to support.

I am well aware that you can't change the society, culture, beliefs or customs of a people quickly, and definitely not at the point of a gun but I believe issues such as this should enter into the debate on Afghanistan going forward. At the very least Stephen Harper should offer to grant the young journalism student asylum in Canada.

In the meantime please consider
Singing this petition and adding your name to over 12,000 worldwide urging the UK Foreign office to intervene.

You can also "Have Your Say" on the Independent's blog.

If you have a facebook account there is also a group you can join to stay informed on the issue.

CBC Doc Zone: The Pagan Christ

Oops, one more. If you're bored and looking for something to do here's the CBC Doc Zone presentation the Pagan Christ



Part II

Part III

Part IV

Part V

I Liked the Book Better: The CBC's 'Pagan Christ'

Before I say anything I should quantify it by saying that I almost never like a movie based on a book if I liked the book. I should also add that I loved "the Pagan Christ" by Tom Harpur.

With that said I can now say that the CBC Doc Zone presentation of "the Pagan Christ" should have been a series, not an episode. Given the format and time constraints the doc is barely more than a trailer for Harpurs book.

The book on which the documentary was based goes into painstaking detail on Harpur's research into early Christianity and covers not only his questions about Jesus, but about several other points which might damage 'the bible as history.' It also goes to great lengths in explaining how, as an Anglican Priest, Harpur feels Christianity can be strengthened by abandoning the literal, historical translation of the Bible.

On the flip side there are many deeply thoughtful, scholarly works that seek to refute Harpur. The Doc Zone presentation barely had time to skim the surface of some, but hardly all, of Harpurs evidence and theories and had even less time for those who disagreed with them. It was almost as if the opposition was put there just to take the curse off of it; As if they were saying "If Harpur's theories upset you here is a 'well known biblical scholar' to tell you it's not true." I am a fan of documentaries and think this is exactly the type of programming that television, especially the CBC, should be doing but please give the topic the depth and time that it needs to be meaningful.

The Pagan Christ on CBC

A documentary based on Tom Harpur's excellent book "the Pagan Christ" is set to air on the CBC. Harpur is former Professor of New Testament at the University of Toronto's Toronto School of Theology and Toronto Star Religion Editor and his book is, for me, where modern Christianity meets the work of Joseph Campbell.

So, what if it could be proven that Jesus never existed? What if there was evidence that every word of the New Testament – the cornerstone of Christianity – is based on myth and metaphor?



Based on Tom Harpur’s national bestseller, The Pagan Christ examines these very questions. During his research, Harpur discovered that the New Testament is wholly based on Egyptian mythology, that Jesus Christ never lived, and that – indeed – the text was always meant to be read allegorically. It was the founders of the Church who duped the world into taking a literal approach to the scriptures. And, according to Harpur, this was their fatal error – and the very reason Christianity is struggling today.

The book has, no doubt, raised the ire of many Christian extremists, and I'm sure the documentary will as well. That should surprise no one though as it is that very extremism that the book is meant to confront. It is, at it's core, about how to preserve the better teachings and values of Christianity (the love thy neighbour, turn the other cheek, do not judge kind) without the need for a literal interpretation an actual Christ or the ridiculous theories that come out of "Bible as literal history".
It attempts to introduce a Christianity that can survive in modern times and withstand the scrutiny of known history and modern science. I highly reccomend reading the book - but for a taste and (I'm sure) some intriguing video - you can catch the documentary Thursday December 6, 2007 at 9pm on CBC-TV and again on Newsworld Saturday December 8, 2007 at 10pm ET.

spirits, sufis, soulpepper

When the last dervish quietly walked offstage at Roy Thomson Hall Friday night, a cool silence decended for a moment before the applause began.

The sema was over, the whirling had stopped, time to go back outside to mundane reality.

Beautiful as the Sufi religious ceremony was, my companion turned to me and wondered aloud if it wouldn't have been more spiritual of us to go see soul singer Jully Black, who had been singing at the Mod Club that same night.

I mean, does the Profound always have to be accompanied by such poe-faced joyless solemnity? Is the spiritual always so serious?

I turned this question around in my mind seeing Blithe Spirit lastnight.

The final play of Soulpepper's 2007 season, it positively brims with laughter and joy. Believe me, your face will start to hurt from smiling -and that's a good kind of hurt, particularly these days.

Noel Coward has always been thought of as a souffle-light sort of playwright -the guy with the velvet robe and cigarette holder, martini in hand, writing witty plays about smartly-dressed people who natter away about nothing in particular.

And yet, I thought, it takes a deft hand to take an essentially unpleasant situation (intrusions of the past on present situations) and make it... funny.

CBC Radio's Mary Hynes explored the idea of God having a sense of humour in an interview with Rumi interpreter Coleman Barks earlier this year. Barks had said that laughter was how God expressed his humour, that through the joyful, shared expression of laughing, God expresses delight with his creation.

In light of this, it's fascinating to see a company like Soulpepper -who, in nearing a decade old, have been more noted for producing tragedies than comedies -choose to end their ninth season with Noel Coward, and flavour much of their tenth with comedy too.

Says something about the power of laughter, I'd wager.

Morris Panych's brilliant production has definitely kept the laughs of Blithe Spirit intact, but has wisely chosen not to soften the nasty edges either.

Coward's play centers around the mayhem created in the lives of Charles and Ruth Condomine, when the ghost of Charles' first wife, Elvira, is inadvertently summoned by Madame Arcati during a seance designed to provide writing material for Charles' latest novel.

Issues of jealousy, possessiveness, trust, deceit, identity and responsibility are all cleverly woven into the text, and Panych has no problems in bringing out these themes through deft timing, pitch-perfect performances, and a brilliantly gorgeous design scheme.

While the world of the Condomines is staid in shades of black, white, and grey, Elvira enters from the spirit world as some kind of blazing she-demon, complete with fiery red bob & glammy orange-red outfit to match. It's clear that, while ethereal, she aims to set Charles' thin veneer of marital bliss alight with her wicked observations & hot temper.

Fiona Reid, who I remember being so lovable onstage in Hay Fever years ago, here delivers a perfect performance that seamlessly blends elements of pathos and comedy; her Ruth is both cloyingly conventional and yet endearingly sympathetic.

As her rival, Brenda Robins delivers a deliciously bitchy performance that has elements of imperious haughtiness & saucy sensuality; she might be behind some awful actions (both in life and death), but you can't help but like her. Mannered and yet modern at the same time, her Elvira is the sort of woman you want to swap cocktail recipes and dish on men with.

As Charles, Joseph Ziegler moves from obedient to dithering to cruel to sympathetic, all the while alternating between outrage and embarassment over his apparent willing emasculation at the hands of what he sees as two Gorgons (both redheads, no less) out to turn him to stone. And he makes it funny all the while. Wow.

Nancy Palk's Madame Arcati is all bulgy-eyed drama & flailing limbs; in a role that could easily be mugged and mannered, Palk is all sincere dedication and passion. When she flips out a leg at awakening, or skips across the stage to turn on the record player, it fits with the character, and is believable, in every sense.

So, too, the perfect marriage of physical and mental is perfectly realized in Melody A. Johnson's hilarious performance as Edith, the maid with the spider walk who is weaving more than polite manners.

Amidst the laughs, however, it wasn't hard to see the sharp nasty edges of marital woe which Panych has wisely allowed to sit in a sort of uncomfortable, if insightful, juxtaposition with the more comedic elements. He trusts his actors, and the text, to let the moments speak for themselves. And speak they do.

This production of Blithe Spirit underlines the notion that whatever you don't deal with in your past will always come back to haunt you, manifest itself in different ways, and keep reappearing, until you deal with it. Talk about your karmic whirling.

The problem -and the comedy, Coward suggests -is that people being people, keep perpetuating their own cow poop by running away from the responsibility, drowning themselves with drink, movies, art, affairs, the occult, politics... take your pick.

It's ridiculous, it's hilarious, and it's true.

Like dervishes whirling in their circles, the power of comedy suggests the comedy of the cyclical, divine in its own right -and whether it's Dante and his rings of hell, Wilde's witty repartee, or Coward's making the past the present and the present the past, there is a divine force at work that brings people together under the umbrella of human experience.

As Rumi wrote, "the core of the seen and unseen universe smiles, but... smiles come best from those who weep."

Blithe Spirit runs at The Young Centre until December 15.
For more information, go to www.soulpepper.ca

Stephen's List?

Here's a strange tale via Michael Geist: Apparently a large number of people received Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year) cards from the Prime Ministers Office. Now, if you're like me your initial reaction may be "well, isn't that nice." It turns out the answer is - 'no, that's not nice at all'.

The Prime Minister's Office is now being investigated by the Privacy Commissioner's office according to the Edmonton Sun. See, the problem is that the recipients of the cards were not friends of Harper's, or even supporters of the conservative party. They were just Jewish people. So, the question that these people want answered is - Where did the the PMO get a list of Jewish people and why was such a list collected in the first place.