Tag Archives: culture

Lost items

A few days ago I found a nickel on the ground near the park my wife and I walk. I picked it up and put it in my pocket. I then had to change pockets because it was clinking against my phone, making an annoying sound. I realized then that I don’t tend to walk with change in my pocket very often. At home, I put it in my drawer that I keep my keys in, where I also put loose change. I noticed that I didn’t have any change in there and haven’t for a while. I don’t walk around with coins, I don’t pay for things with cash, and I don’t find lost change nearly as much as I used to in the past.

What I do see that I never used to is lost and dropped masks. They litter the floor like abandoned cigarette butts, easily noticed and equally as unappealing. I don’t want to see them, but I also have no desire to touch them in order to throw them away. Because they are much larger than cigarette butts, they are even more noticeable, and they seem to be everywhere.

Yesterday the grounds crew were cutting the grass and weed whacking around the school and one of them brought in a drone that fell out of a tree. He brought it in and said maybe a student had lost it. But the reality is that it probably belonged to someone in the community and I’ll have no way of knowing who it belongs to or how to get it back to them?

20 years ago lost coins and cigarette butts were items lost and dropped by people. Now it’s drones and masks. What will it be in another 20 years?

The Van Gogh Exhibit

Here are some images and a short video from the Van Gogh Exhibit at the Vancouver Convention Centre:


This was truly a visual experience to be had. It begins with written information shared in socially distanced panels, then opens to the room in the images I shared above (there are 6 to scroll through on the Instagram post). If you get the opportunity to go, you will enjoy it.

Colonial noose

“New Zealand male lawmakers are no longer required to wear a necktie in parliament after the rule was dropped following a Maori MP’s protest, calling a tie a ‘colonial noose’.” (Reuters)

I’ve always hated neck ties. What kind of society are we in where we teach young boys that, to be formal, you must tie a noose around your neck and make sure it is nice and snug?

What a ridiculous fashion accessory.

I wore a tie almost every day for 2 years in China. As a principal there, it was an expectation. I wear one once every one to two months here, only when I am entering a meeting where I feel it is important to be formal, such as when I’m representing my district, or my schools in a formal way.

If I can avoid wearing a noose, I will. I know others that wear them all the time. I don’t judge them in any way, it’s fine if they want to, choose to, like to wear them. But I get no pleasure in wearing them myself. I don’t feel dressed up in them, I feel constricted. I feel like an animal in a choker collar.

The only time a tie should be worn is at a costume party when dressed up as someone from a time long past. Or maybe at a ball or Galla, like wearing a cummerbund with a tuxedo. Beyond that, I’d love to see the ‘colonial noise’ disappear from regular formal wear.

Sometimes the path forward means…

Recently I was chatting with one of my teachers and we were talking about some issues and challenges we are dealing with. She said something simple but it was timely and I needed to hear it. She essentially said, ‘Yeah, I know some of these issues are creeping up, but we are in the middle of a pandemic, and sometimes we just need to remember that, and give everyone a little slack.’

Sometimes the path forward is more about taking care of the present, and supporting rather than pushing. Caring rather than cajoling. Listening rather than leading. Sometimes we need to give others, and ourselves, some slack.

Now is one of those sometimes.

Who are the Kardashians?

It was September 2011 and I had recently returned from China after living there for 2 years. I had just started working at the adult learning centre and I had a meeting at our Continuing Education head office about a 15 minute drive away. A few minutes into the drive the radio announcer started taking about the Kardashian family. I listened out of interest about who these people might be, and out of shock that there could be a tv show about these people’s ridiculous lives.

I arrived at the centre and after walking into the office with 4 secretaries I had only met a few times, I asked, “Can one of you help me out with something? Who are the Kardashians, and why do I want to keep up with them?” This got a laugh, but not a response. I had to add, “No, really… I’ve been in China for a couple years, I have no idea who they are?”

Their answer didn’t help me. I was completely unaware of this pop culture reference and Bruce Jenner was the only name I had any connection to. Admittedly, I never ended up watching the show, and still don’t really know who they are beyond the name Kim, and that Bruce is now Caitlyn.

I think of this now because I’ve noticed that today there seems to be more and more pop culture references that I don’t get. I don’t watch TV, my Twitter network is mostly educators, and the Facebook and TikTok algorithms know that I’m a 50+ year old dad. I am shielded by an information wall that hides many new pop culture reference. I see memes that reference people I don’t know. I hear names I have to Google. I hear words that don’t mean anything to me.

How good are the algorithms? When I go on TikTok I don’t see a single teenager dancing, but (very) occasionally I see a mom doing the moves their kids do. The only place they get me wrong is that I have to tell them (using the ‘I’m not interested’ feature) to keep creators telling bad dad jokes away.

So it’s not easy keeping up with the modern day Kardashians. The newest cultural references seem to change weekly, and despite not living in a foreign country, I feel like I am missing out on what’s going on in the different and fast changing world. This is especially true with hit songs that seem to get popular on TikTok. They are what we used to call ‘one hit wonders’. Artists who catch a wave of likes thanks to a single use of their song in a TikTok that explodes in popularity, and then the song hits the pop charts. This isn’t always an unknown artist, one 1-minute video brought Fleetwood Mac back to the top of pop charts.

By the time I’ve heard and recognized that it’s a thing, the cultural reference or song is usually almost at the end of its life. So it seems that I’m at an age where I will always be behind and catching up. This realization isn’t going to change what I do going forward, it’s just interesting that a decade ago I had to be literally on the other side of the world to be left in the pop culture dark… And now it seems like a weekly thing, simply because my social media consumption is based on algorithms that are completely different than a younger generation.

Resilience Revisited

Right now it seems like I chose the right #OneWord for 2020: Resilience. But as you read my last post of 2019, written before we learned about the impending pandemic, remember something… We are social beings and we are not incredibly resilient on our own. We need a community, we need friendship and love, we need each other.

Relationships, be they with family, friends, co-workers, student/teacher, and even pets, build our resilience, and our ability to not just cope, but to thrive.

Let’s support one another and show our resilience together!

Here is the post:

December 31, 2019

If I were to pick 2 words for 2020, I might pick “Growth Mindset”, but if I’m only choosing a single word, it would be:

Resilience

The world needs this word right now. Here are some specific places I see a need to pay attention to this #OneWord in 2020.

In Schools:

Student anxiety seems to be on the rise, and anxiety lowers resilience and the willingness to try new things. Words seem to ‘injure’ students in ways that victimize them rather than make them stronger. This is not to say that students should tolerate bullying or inappropriate language or slander, rather they should speak up, defend themselves, and report poor behaviour. Instead it seems that they feel wounded and do not act. This is a sensitive topic, but one where I’ve seen a greater awareness of adults who want to support students and at the same time I see students allowing words to hurt them deeply, giving too much power to the transgressor.

In Politics:

I said this in Ideas on a Spectrum, “In a civil society, dialogue is the one problem-solving strategy that should be sacred. To do this, free speech is essential. But right now there is a culture of ‘attack the opposition’ that is very scary.“ – We need to be resilient when hearing opposing views, and understand that, “…we must be tolerant and accepting of opposing views, unaccepting of hateful and hurtful acts, and smart enough to understand the difference.” When we can’t have conversations with people that have different political views, we don’t grow as a culture or as a society.

In Online Spaces:

People will make mistakes online. They will say things that are unintentionally hurtful, or blindly offensive. This is different than someone being intentionally biased and rude. If the slander is intentional, it should be reported. If it is unintentional, even to the point of ignorance, we need to be more resilient about what our responses are. When every transgression is treated with an attack, the most severe/bigoted/rude/biased transgressions are not given the heightened alarm that they deserve. With lesser errors and mistakes, we need to let people have a venue to recognize their errors and invite conversation rather than damnation.

Growing up, I heard the playground retort to taunts, “Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words will never harm me.” We are past the era of letting nasty people say whatever nasty things they want, and just turning the other cheek to pretend we are not hurt. This is a good thing. We want to live in a world where that behaviour is not acceptable. But it does not serve us well to treat the attacker like they can not repent or be sorry. It does not serve us to let the words said hurt us too deeply. By being resilient we can speak up, clarify our perspective, and engage in conversations that help us feel empowered rather than victimized.

Resilience allows us to be strong, flexible, and engaged in a society that is the kind of society we want to live and thrive in.

Our big ‘neighbor’

I remember driving through Indiana and meeting a couple older teenagers at a motel pool where we stopped for the night. It was the early ’90’s and these kids knew very little about Canada. They asked if I knew of Larry Bird and the NBA? They asked if we used the same currency? And they asked what the big mall was like? After a couple questions, I realized they meant West Edmonton Mall, and living in Toronto at the time I said, “You tell me, you live closer to it.”

That wasn’t a fair response, but I was growing weary of questions like this. As a Canadian on my travels through the States, I’ve been asked about hunting moose, dog sleds, igloos, and one of my favourites, if Canada was an American State?

I don’t pretend to know a lot about America, especially their history, but Canadians have an unfair advantage over Americans when it comes to knowing about each other’s countries. We see their news, they don’t see ours. We watch their television and movies. We follow their social media and business icons. We eat a lot of food produced in the US, and eat at restaurant chains that are American owned.

Canadians know we are significantly different than Americans. I’m not sure (beyond cliches) that the same can be said in reverse. It matters more to us when we rely so much on the US. And, if you look at a population map, the vast majority of Canadians live relatively close to our border, and that is not true for Americans.

Americans can live their lives not knowing anything about Canada. We don’t have the reverse option. Our election will be a ‘blip’ of news ‘down south’, theirs have and will continue to flood our media sources. Tariffs disputes affect individual companies in the US while they affect entire communities and Provinces in Canada. We will watch their blockbuster movies, and while some of them are filmed in Canada, they will be American films that Canadians might know were filmed here, but most Americans won’t.

We have a very large and powerful neighbour to our south, and we can’t ignore the influence they have on us. It will be interesting to see how this plays out in the next 5-10 years. The closed border, the discrepancy between our two countries in Covid-19 cases, their leadership, and the impression the US has on the world stage, has all changed the way the US is viewed in Canada.

The little brother or sister eventually stops looking at his bigger brother or sister with admiration and awe. I think we are seeing a similar relationship transition between Canada and the US. I just hope these two siblings remember that we are all part of a North American family and keep trying to play nicely together.

Limited shared reality

Have you ever thought of your bandwidth of sensory observation?

We can’t hear a dog whistle, but the sound is still there when someone blows one. We can’t see ultraviolet light. Our fingers can detect the location of a touch that are backs can not. Some people love cilantro while others think it tastes like soap. Dogs and other animals can smell things we can’t. Some of us see colours that others can not.

We are all, in our own way, like radio receivers, who can hear certain stations and not others. As we get older, our bandwidth decreases in what we are able to hear. But in keeping with the metaphor, that doesn’t mean the radio stations aren’t still playing.

We have limiting and limited senses with which to observe our world. We are only capable of witnessing and observing a narrow set of frequencies, because our receivers are limited… and imperfect.

Even within the scope of what we can mutually observe our shared reality isn’t fully shared. We see, hear, feel, taste, and smell things differently. Our cultures and upbringing influence this as well… some cultures can’t see/distinguish certain colours, some can’t pronounce certain sounds, some have vastly different tastes.

Our shared reality isn’t always as shared as we think. This invites conflict and miss understanding. It also invites the joy of seeing things from another perspective, and learning to appreciate our, and other’s, understanding of our world.

Let’s help each other expand our views of our shared reality. Let’s celebrate the difference and find joy in creating mutually appreciated, shared events.

Every voice matters

“Every voice raised against racism chips away at its power. We can’t afford to stay silent.”
― Reni Eddo-Lodge, Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race
I read Reni Eddo-Lodge’s book a couple months ago, and I was struck by something that was also brought up in Bell Hooks, Teaching to Transgress: The fight for women’s suffrage was the fight for white women’s rights. The fight for black freedom was primarily a fight for the rights of black men. Of course it’s far more complex than that, but for hundreds of years it has been in the interest of those that have power and privilege to divide underprivileged groups that could come together, uniting their causes. Divide the voices, they are easier to beat that way.
Will Smith quote - Racism is not getting worse it is getting filmed
I saw this Will Smith quote recently, “Racism isn’t getting worse, it’s getting filmed.”
It’s getting harder and harder for injustices to be kept apart. These things are not suddenly happening, they are finally being shared such that the patterns of injustice are obvious rather than subversively separated.
Yesterday I wrote about ‘The chasm between tolerance and acceptance‘. I struggled to write this. I wanted it to be honest, and I think it was. But when I looked back at it today, I noticed moments of futility mixed in with a call to action. That wasn’t my intent. I had other ideas I intended on writing about yesterday and today but I had to get those words out of me. I needed to share my small voice. I couldn’t stay silent. Three words inspired me, haunt me, and sadden me. “I can’t breathe.”
I did not mention George Floyd, or Ahmaud Arbery, yesterday. And so I wanted to share their names today. They should have a voice. They don’t anymore. This is a tragedy. We are 20 years into a century when human beings should not be defined by differences in our race that are merely skin deep.
I want to say more, but I also want to pause and listen. I want to hear the many voices… voices of those that can teach me, not anger me. Voices that can change me, not harden me. Voices that can be heard, that only a few days ago would not be listened to.
Malcolm x Quote

The chasm between tolerance and acceptance

I am struggling to express my thoughts about how we have to move from a world of tolerance, to one of acceptance.

When I listen to this reflection by Trevor Noah:

I understand the challenge of living on different sides of a social contract that does not measure the treatment of people equally, while still expecting the social contract to continue.

When I read these words by Barack Obama:

“It’s natural to wish for life “to just get back to normal” as a pandemic and economic crisis upend everything around us. But we have to remember that for millions of Americans, being treated differently on account of race is tragically, painfully, maddeningly “normal” – whether it’s while dealing with the health care system, or interacting with the criminal justice system, or jogging down the street, or just watching birds in a park.
This shouldn’t be “normal” in 2020 America. It can’t be “normal.” If we want our children to grow up in a nation that lives up to its highest ideals, we can and must be better.”

I think about my bias regarding what “normal” looks like. I also think of how easy it is to put everyone’s experiences into dichotomous polarities, and miss the nuances of a spectrum of perspectives, and a spectrum of human experiences.

I learned a long time ago how I can be biased to my own privilege, but that didn’t make my privilege disappear. Actually, it heightened my understanding of just how privileged I am. We tend not to see our privilege, and we tend to misunderstand how privilege breeds tolerance rather than acceptance. Privilege blinds us to how someone else’s experience could be so much different than our own.

In January, I shared a Martin Luther King quote from his “Letter From a Birmingham Jail“. I said,

The last two sentences chill me,

“Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”

I think about how few extremists there are in the world, despite how much media coverage they get. Beyond the news, most people are not exposed to extremists. We are all exposed to moderates. So, in the day to day living of most people, hate is not something we see, however shallow understanding is.

In many places there is tolerance masquerading as acceptance. This to me is what slows down progress. It’s not the wing-nuts on the extremes spewing dogmatism… Although their stance plays a role in allowing others to justify their tolerance as acceptance, since that tolerance can be justified as moderate. But it’s the complacent, shallow, (lukewarm) moderates that hinder genuine acceptance… because this population is huge. This population is blind or ignorant to their own prejudice; this population performs daily interactions that infringe on the true acceptance of ‘others’, without knowing it.

As long as the conversation is about tolerance, it will not ever get to acceptance. The chasm between the two isn’t just large, it is impossible to traverse.

First we must accept that the human condition for some is unimaginably different than ours.

Next we must accept that privilege is also a human condition. It is not earned, it is bestowed whether we want it or not.

Then things get nuanced. Privilege is not something to be blamed for having, but it is something that warrants us to recognize, accept, and be humbled by. It carries authority, power, and status, which need to be consciously and intentionally recognized. From here we can accept that others are less privileged than us. I do not worry about where my next meal will come from. I do not worry that I might not be able to afford a hospital visit. I do not worry about someone misunderstanding or judging me because of my accent. I do not think about the colour of my skin when I must face someone with authority over me in a stressful situation.

If I have less privilege, I am sometimes/often forced to be concerned about tolerance. I hope for acceptance, but I come across those that are privileged that expect me to see the world through their eyes, their ‘struggles’, and their willingness to tolerate our differences, while calling it acceptance. What I see is that others have ‘supremacy’. That word carries a powerful charge with it. That word can change the conversation. But that word is no different than what I’ve already said. Just a paragraph ago I said of privilege, “It carries authority, power, and status, which need to be consciously and intentionally recognized.” The very definition of supremacy is ‘the state or condition of being superior to all others in authority, power, or status’.

Again the chasm runs deep and wide.

“Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.” ~Martin Luther King

Who are the people of good will? What can they do to go beyond shallow acceptance?

The challenge is that uprisings and protest, while sadly necessary, confuse or even anger many with privilege. The privileged don’t understand the social contract was broken before the unrest (as shared in the Trevor Noah video above). They don’t see that it is only happening because society is not living up to its highest ideals and that ‘we can and must do better’ (as shared by Barack Obama above). They/we do not see that our acceptance is just lukewarm, tolerance masquerading as acceptance. Instead privilege permits us to cringe at terms like ‘white supremacy culture’ and point the finger outwards to more extreme views and say, “That term belongs over there, not with me!” Instead there are conversations of being ‘colorblind’, of ‘not seeing race’, and of denying privilege because ‘I have struggles too’.

Shallow understanding. Shallow acceptance. Shallowness is the enemy of progress. Shallowness prevents us from identifying systemic wrongdoing, identifying underlying injustices, and being positively responsive to cultural differences. Shallowness creates a difference in perception as it relates to authority, power, and status in the eyes of those with and without privilege, such that each are blind to the other.

“I don’t know what your problem is?”

“I don’t know how you can’t see that you are part of the problem?”

Tolerance helps us get along until the contracts are visibly broken (again, again, and again). Acceptance is not about accepting others, it’s about accepting our own privilege. Accepting that we must see justice from the eyes of those that live in an unjust world. We must accept that if we do not venture into the deep, and speak out on injustice, then we shall remain in the shallows of an intolerant world pretending to be tolerant.

Acceptance isn’t someone else’s work, it is ours… all of ours, but especially the work of anyone who was born with, or gifted with, any form of privilege.