Terminating an adoption

It is all over may social networks and I am reading a lot about this case of the Tedaldis. Do you know the story? 18 months after adopting a child her husband and her decided to return it, as they weren't bonding to the child the way they had bonded with their biological daughters.

It is a pretty sad story. As is every story of a child being rejected, abandoned and left "for someone else" to take care of. The child in question had been abondoned as an infant by the side of a road and was taken into state care. Then adopted to the Tedaldis family.

It seems impossible that a family would go through the process of adopting and child only to turn it away again, but it happens...and happens frequently. But need we react with name calling and disgust? I don't know. It is a very sad story. It is sad because it reminds us how little love we give sometimes. It is sad because it reminds us of how we have abandoned those we should love. It is sad because it is so true to the experience of each of us.

Life is often a series of abandonments. But it is also full of people willing to take us in. To give us love, attention and affection when we least expect it.

It may be years, decades even before this child finds love. Although with the media coverage of the story probably he will be one of the lucky ones and soon find the people who can and will love and care for him. Who knows, perhaps even his biological parents seeing the hardness of their first abondonment repeated will be inspired to face up and give their son the love he needs. But in the end, in some way we all get the love we need.

It's down to your base pairs...

Non-sense. There is this wonderful nonsense that surrounds and envelops us, that is put to us plainly everyday, so plainly that it is very tempting to accept. The nonsense goes something like this: something about your behaviour in life is CAUSED by the pairing of acids inside each of your cells. This unfortunate pairing pattern is why you behave in this abhorrent way. But don't worry because if we give you enough talk, lectures and education, we will override that unfortunate pairing...

Let us consider. point one...your behaviour is caused by some chemical bonding. Makes enough sense. Those pairs eventually spell out the production of certain hormones and enzymes in certain proportions...it is possible that this would somehow influence behaviour. Even though behaviour is usual a response to a momentary stimulus predicated by experience...somehow the levels of various chemical things must be involved, seeing as they are a necessary factor in any kind of movement, memory recall etc etc. So fair enough, in going through a kind of syllological reduction we could get A=B=C=D=E=F=G=H=I=J=K somehow and says behaviour=stimulus+experience, experience=time+stimulus+memory, memory= perception + chemicals...=genes... I'm sure we would get there somehow, if we really went through the reasoning and did the math. So let's allow it, behaviour=genes+other environmental factors.

But after making this big stink about the overpowering effect of genes, they go on to say that a kind of brainwashing talk will unravel the negative effects.

Let's look at a concrete example. Today in the news is a US study, or British...i forget now, about how genes, in families where the father is absent for whatever reason, play a key role in predicting early sexual activity. But that what we must do is target these fatherless children and educate them about sex and about why it is bad.

These days I am beginning to think sex education is a load of nonsense. Why not just give them other things to do. I really think there are two things that lead to our current hysteria about children engaging in sexual activities. 1. We recently created this category of being called "child" and thrust on it a Victorian sexual sensibility without recognizing that this was a new way of treating young adults. 2. Children have less interesting things to do. We can't ride horses in cities. We can't keep chickens, see swans, climb trees (without getting into trouble), build campfires...do dangerous things that are interesting, stimulating and exciting. Instead we do the only thing we can think of that stimulates that fun hormones that make us feel happy and exhilarated.

If we really want to keep this impractical view of "the child" then we need to nurture and create a world where "child" life can exists, where kids can be like Huck Finn and Mr Sawyer, where kids have ample space to explore, adventure, question and test with real risks, rewards and consequences. We don't need to educate them to "not have sex till you are ready"--we are ready for those exhilarating hormone rewards from a very young age, 1 and 2 year olds are already actively seeking them. What would be better is to be more fun ourselves and make opportunities for our kids to do other things.

but do you know what that means. That the solutions we are proposing exactly reject our causal theory. If genes are the cause, should genes not also be the solution? And if environmental stimulus (like education) are the solution....then is not environmental stimulus also the cause of the problem?

Young love

I was recently reading about a survey in the UK of people age 13-17 and their views about their intimate relationships. The survey found that many young people experience abuse and violence in these early relationships. One of the researchers claiming that it is surprising and appalling that abuse would start so young. But, I'm not sure that it is at all surprising. Aren't children far more abusive that adults? I mean I thought physical communication like hitting and biting to be vital in childhood to express frustration, displeasure, distaste and also preference in the time before we had the words to do so. I know I am a pretty unusual kid, but I see it all over the place, even here in Japan. When kids don't know how else to say "no" or "yes" they usually say so physically. They pull you towards a certain activity, they throw books on the floor, they grab you hand or turn away from what they don't want to do. So should we be surprised that younger people in intimate relationships are abusive with their partners? They aren't adults. They don't appreciate they aren't adults. Often we don't appreciate they aren't adults too. But those of a certain age understand with certain clarity that they aren't adults, and thus it would be difficult to expect them to act as adults would in such a new and uncharted territory as an intimate relationship (even if they have had several). I wonder if it is useful to use words like abuse in describing these sorts of interactions. This very broad category can leave young people feeling helpless and paralysed as what they learn in schools is that to overcome abuse in your life is a lot of work, complete overhaul of your life and the strength to strike out against those who are "oppressing you". I think rather we need to think about how to be involved with your youth. How to be active with them, play with them, engage them in the community so that they have a rich and full life with many diverse aspects to it, so they can engage more things than finding intimate partners. For fear of sounding really catholic, we should also help our kids to value the preciousness of intimacy, and prepare them to wait to find that real person who they want to maintain long term intimacy with. While I know it is unpractical for everyone, there is a great value in the independence and self worth that comes with saying no.

Is it true?

I recently have faced several proposals that to become truely creative people we must hold up freedom of speech as the pinicle goal of democratic society.

But, creativity demands restriction. Creativity flourishes under oppression. Creativity is the intelligent response to a problem. In a world without problems how can creativity possibly exist. What is creativity anyway? Ken Robinson defines it as the ability to have original ideas that have value. This is a very useful definition as we can look at how we create value in an idea and how we produce original ideas.

As I have suggested original ideas are predicated by problems. If there was no need to solve problems, if there was no need to find new ways to express ourselves within the limits of our time our context our location and our human and other relations, there would be little creative activity beyond the asthetic production of things. But the production of various forms of art as only one very narrow part of the whole of creativity. I argue quite the opposite that creativity flourish best under circumstances of restriction, of oppression, suppression of free speech and the threat of these things.

Let's look at some of the great creative moments. During the Rennaissance there was barely a paltry freedom of speech. And yet that time produced great minds like DiVinci and Michalangelo. It was following the return of the King when freedom of speech was greatly curtailed in England that Milton wrote Paradice Lost, a work that through and through demonstrates a creative outlet for Milton's perhaps controversial political views. Even Christ, if we look at him as just a man who in history had some good advice about how to live, brought forth his ideas against a strongly oppressive regime. We could look to Mohammed too and see that his time no more encourage free thought or action, and yet he produced (transmitted?) a greatly creative work that looked at the problems of his contemporary world and sought to offer new and original solutions that have proved to be very valuable. Further let's look at the Manhattan project, a spectacular demostration of human creativity driven by the fear of forced changes in freedom of thought. If we didn't find away to end aggressions we would be engulfed by war and the possibility of colonization/annexation by various members of the "evil empires".

As I look into my own experience and think about some of my most creative moments it is when I have been somehow restricted, by time, by resource, by motivation, by expectation that I have produced some of my most creative work. Not just of art and writing, but I think in methods of learning material, in means of facing the challenges of school.

Freedom of speech must be valued and allowed, but not because it causes creativity. I think quite the opposite that restrictions and problems in the world cause creativity, a bi-product of which is the valuing of free speech.

Having babies

I was recently in a discussion with two student about the birth rate in Japan. About how the birth rate is plummeting. As the discussion progressed I recognized I had been maintaining some pretty fatal ideas about why children have or don't have children. I recognized this largely because of the male student in the discussion. Somehow hearing the arguments I have heard a million times from a rich successful doctor with at least 1 child (I don't know much more about him) showed me how totally fallacious these beliefs are.

Chiefly we say there are two reasons for falling birthrates: more women are working and children are expensive. And I think every time we good philosophers hear them we think...hmm. But being lazy we take what appears logical at face value and don't investigate further. But we must. So here I go:

The male student largely maintained that women didn't want children as they wanted to work. It seems like a logical conclusion to draw. Supposedly more women of my generation, and at least the two generations before mine, are working in more diverse fields of employment.

But somehow I don't think that more women are working. I think women have always worked just as much as they do now. The only difference is we are recognizing their manner of social participation as working. Not just they are moving into "traditionally male dominated" profession (I even contest that many professions are traditionally male dominated), but that work like nursing, prostitution, educating young children (being a governess, elementary teacher etc), writing are being recognized as professions for both men and women. With our change in perspective of what constitutes work, we have mistakenly concluded that participation in this new perspective is also new. This is like when you first come to understand quantum physics. Just because you have only come to understand it now, doesn't mean it hasn't been governing the universe for ...well forever.

Further, women of my grandmother's generation worked like mad; both my grandmothers maintained full time employment during their working years. And they had 3 and 5 children. Also many of my friends have told me about their grandmothers working, and again they have 2 and 3 aunts or uncles a side... so then we say, ah but women are working at jobs with schedules that are less conducive to child rearing...but I remember hearing stories of my grandmother working graveyard shifts at her hospital...so I don't think that is true either.

But if it isn't the case that more women are working more then why are fewer women wanting children. Well then the argument goes that children are expensive, people don't feel they can afford to have children. Really? Cars are expensive...but most people feel they can afford a car. Houses are really expensive...but most people feel they can afford a house...take out a loan right?So, how expensive is a child? I have no idea, but in university my cost of living without tuition books etc was about $600 a month, for rent, food entertainment etc...so $7200 a year. Now of course a baby doesn't pay as much rent as I did, or eat as much food and alcohol. Now of course there are start up costs on having children you have to invest in infrastructure like beds and strollers, ante-natal training and stuff...so lets say $10,000 a year for the first year, and then $6000 a year subsequently for the first 10 years. Its true...that is a lot of money... But on my single income minimum wage income I save that in a year after travel and celebrating life as I do.

So let's compare: how much is a university education...most people without thinking would take out a $10,000 a year loan for a university education that may or may not help them gain more lucrative employment. how much is a car...most people would take out a loan to buy a new $18,000 car. Most people would tie themselves into a 25 year mortgage for a $250,000 house.
So are children so expensive?

But we have to look at what you get for the money you invest. A child enriches every aspect of ones life, bring validation to many, meaning and motivation to succeed and thrive. Many people find it difficult to be successful for themselves, but when told this will help your family friends etc they have little difficulty overcoming great obstacles.

So, not only do I disagree that children being expensive is a valid argument but I don't even agree that children are expensive.

So why are fewer babies being born in Japan. I contest that even that is true. Yes the current trend is of lower birth rates. But I think that is just because women are having children at a later age. Women are marring later. My future sister in law is well in her thirties. I have many friends too in the same situation. But I think even women who start a decade later we will find will still have 2 and 3 children.

Another very serious reason we need to consider is that men don't want children. It is often placed on a woman's want or not want, but who much is it really? If we were to interview childless couples about why they are childless would the reason really be 1 she's working and 2 kids are expensive... Somehow I think we have been fed these fallacies that we need to reexamine and deconstruct. They don't account for the reality of lowered birthrates and we owe it to our society to figure out why.

Parent's rights

There is an interesting debate in the Alberta legislature these days about what rights parents have to pull their children from classes on topics they don't want teachers educating their children on. The debate is sparked by the high-tension sexual health segments of school curriculum as well as lessons about religion.

Hmm. In the CBC news article on the topic it suggests that perhaps teachers are not presenting the material in ways that some parents would like their children educated on these topics. Presumably, these parents will provide some sort of homeschooling to compensate for the child's absence from class.

I agree that parents have the right to control, influence and effect what their children learn about the world and how their children learn it. Of course they can't control everything their child learns, but we have a human right to inculcate our children with a worldview that we believe is good. And to introduce them to ways of experiencing and living in the world that will enable them to become mature contributors to Canadian society. Provincial curricula are just one way to educate children. And you can see across every province a myriad of teaching methods, curricula, and pedagogy at work making children into what Canada is. A beautifully interwoven patchwork of differences.

It is what makes our country so great, that we have so many ways of doing everything, and yet more or less we manage to remain a cohesive society. It is what makes me so proud to call myself Canadian. We are diversity at its best. So what of parents pulling their children from classes on topics they don't agree with...I don't agree with this tactic. It doesn't bolster critical thinking in children nor does it support the fundamental Canadian value of diversity.

To me diversity means recognizing there are ways you don't want to live your life, but that for some people they are good ways to live.

A better tactic for parents is to be more involved in their children's classroom learning. Asking about what children learned at school, supplementing school lessons with parental views and values. Adding more information and being a part of the education of children. Trying to make a one size fits all education system in a country like Canada is ridiculous. And trying to give kids outs on education is not the right answer either.

As parents we are responsible to be part of our children's education. We are responsible to make our children's education unique and custom fit tour each child. Sure kids will learn things you don't want them to learn, but with good parenting you will help fix right beliefs in your children. And further prepare them to face the diverse ways of living that exist in Canada. Diversity and tolerance aren't about accepting every ones way of life, but affirming that your way of life is right for you. And accepting all Canadians have the same self-affirming right.

I want to use the example of evolution, as evolution is usually the topic people always say, "you have to learn it, there are uncountable volumes of scientific [ie irrefutable facts] that support evolution, if parents don't want their kids learning evolution then they should home school or not expect to get a science credit from any respectable Canadian school." It seems to be this inarguable truth in education that only simple rock creatures wouldn't agree with. Evolution explains life.

Personally, I have long disbelieved in evolution. I always viewed it as a story, like an Aesop fable...a very good and useful story that hopefully will endure 2000 years as the fables have endured...but in the end it is merely a way of explaining, not an irrefutable truth. It is the moral of the story that is the enduring point. The moral of the story of evolution is "life changes" and evolution teaches that, so it is a useful story to teach. Where as the biblical creation story somewhat falls short of teaching us that life changes and thus is not so useful in that regard, but it does teach belief in the fantastic; which i consider an essential life skill...so it has its place too.

Anyway, even this belief in evolution which we hold up as the bastion of modern though is these days up for debate. Darwinian evolution is fast falling out of favour with many in the scientific community and the whole story itself is changing. But children educated to look at it as "one way" of explaining life are well prepared to handle this debate, this change and the shifting explanations that are now spewing forth from the scientific community. But will children learn this by pulling out of evolution lessons? Even if it isn't the best explanation or the full story, it is a piece of the puzzle. And that's all we should hope for in education...pieces of puzzles.

And parents have the right, and should have the right, to help their children lay with those pieces.

Unconditional Positive Regard

What a wonderful idea! I stumbled on it last night before my mind grew quiet and I drifted out the window into the night air. I was reading Gabor Maté's book "In the realm of hungry ghosts" about his experiences working with the drug addicted and under housed in Vancouver. He said, in quoting someone else, that in this line of work (and I think in all lines of work and life as i will discuss) we need a kind of unconditional positive regard.

He was discussing working with drug addicted people and the kind of expectations we tend to have of them. He suggests that it is not fair or productive to have your own expectations of them, but rather you must learn to learn what their expectations are for themselves and see how you can't help them feel empowered by their expectations and seek and pursue them. Even if you have what you think are better ideas, having an unconditional positive regard means that you don't think in terms of better or worse, but in terms of this is what is and this is a beautiful and powerful human let's be beautiful and powerful humans together.

Drug addicted people are an obvious cohort with whom we must have an unconditional positive regard; as they have usually learned their whole lives that they are useless, worthless, failures with nothing to offer the world or themselves, it is our responsibility to be part of the team that helps them learn their life lessons are untrue and that what has happened in the past doesn't have to determine (fully) what happens next. That we have the power in us to make more in our life than numbing escaping or self-destruction (a lesson not only for drug addicts but for all addicts and all people who seek nothing new but an endless nostalgia and repetition of the good old times). It is this belief that I know everything, have experienced the most high, most positive thing in life and all that is left is to experience death.

In reading Mate's book, I am gaining a sense of what addiction attempts to fill, and how sad it is that we think addictions will fill that desire, need, curiosity, innate human spirit. But in thinking that I am right and those who do things differently are wrong, I refuse to engage an unconditional positive regard. And in the end this regard is what is the best way to help build people up, lift people up, enrage and engage minds and hearts in the positive world, in the creative world, in the uplifted and excited world.

So what is the unconditional positive regard. It seems very clear to me just in those three words. It is a way of regarding, viewing, thinking about, and interacting with other people. It is positive, it focuses on what is done, what is made, what does exist and what i believe i can do. not what i believe you can do. Even if i believe you can do more I disregard that belief and am thankful grateful and cheerful about what you do do. And it is unconditional. I will always be positive about what you do in your life, because it is what you do in your life and it is human. It is beautiful. I don't reward your good behaviour and chastise your bad, but I say always well now what and how can i help.

This might be a nice manifesto, a nice slogan, motto or the like...unconditional positive regard.

Practice never betrays you

So I am still mulling through this new information about the money system. I think it is very interesting. We are pretty mad and pretty upset, but I think it is unfair, and we shouldn't be. And I think this because of the fundamental nature of science and of evolution.

What does science have to do with greed or money or the crashing changing growing money system...maybe not very much. But I suspect that actually they have a great deal to do with each other. The pursuit of science, the pursuit of knowledge, like the pursuit of experience requires theories, requires experimentation, requires testing trying out and assessing predictions.

I want to believe that we are experimenting in capitalism, we are pursuing a science of monetary creation and accretion. That much like the Challenger or whatever space shuttle it was that blew up all those years ago, some experiments go very wrong, and at the cost of human lives...

I value life above all things (how can you not?), but I don't think that we should be afraid of loosing it. I see that this financial crisis is leading to suicides, murders, to cycles or depression and despair...because the experiment went wrong. We didn't use a good methodology and as a result missed important indicators that it was not a viable model. But I don't think that means we should follow the example set by the international space programs. It is a bad idea to stop pursuing the dream.

We are capable of doing a lot of things, and I know finding an effective wealth creation-distribution model is one of them (keeping in mind that this system isn't some kind of goal or destination but an ongoing experience). We shouldn't let the fear of extinction kill the process of evolution. Any process of evolution. We must work with that reality and with that goal...that extinction is a necessary part of life, in the same way that death is.

The world as I know it isn't fundamentally changing, because the world as I know it is one of fundamental change. There has never been a day in this life I haven't faced the challenge of change, and i wouldn't have it any other way. If you think the world doesn't change much or very quickly you are deluding yourself. Look at the evolution of the pre-frontal cortex. What is it about this memory storing part of our brains that it demanded the complete architectural overhaul of the human skull in the blink of evolutionary time?

It is very new that we have had the skills granted us by the PFC, we shouldn't be surprised that we aren't very good at using them, yet. So we should keep practicing. We should keep asking, testing, making and trying theories, we should keep on predicting and examining our predictions, because we will start getting it right more and more times...and then we will meet our antecessor...

Perspective

I had a couple pretty amazing experiences with perspective this weekend, that have got me thinking about the topic quite heavily. It started with a new sketch book. I finally finished the book of block, that is the book that has essentially held the entirety of my writers block over the past three years. Creatively, it is a pretty depressing book to look through, tons of pages of incomplete poems, stories, thoughts, ideas, sudokus, maps of places, plans, goals, drawings, grocery lists...you know the kind of things on puts in a sketch book when experiencing creative block.

Of course, the last two months worth of stuff shows a huge shift in my work, but that's only about 7 pages out of 200...but now I started a new one. And it was funny, looking at the first page and thinking about what to put there, I was afraid I was going to start panicking and I thought I will go back into the mode of self editing and creative abortion that formed the better part of the block. But before i had even started thinking these things I realized that i wasn't worried at all about what to put. I thought it doesn't really matter if it turns out really good, or really crap, or most likely somewhere in between those extremes. I just want to make something. I want to work on it and then some time later finish working on it.

I thought that was funny, because in that moment i came to realize that I wasn't afraid of blank pages anymore. And it was pretty cool. It was like when I came to realize I wasn't afraid of the dark anymore, or I wasn't afraid of people hearing me pee. And I never thought it was something i was afraid of, and if it was i never thought i would stop being afraid of them. And that got me thinking about I can...

I can't is the most dream defeating phrase in every language I have ever tried to learn. And that is because it reifies a temporal obstacle and makes us believe it may be an eternal blockage. We need to revolutionize this phrase and change it from I can't to Now I can't... I sort of always thought I can't means I never can...but that is my great error, and it is an error many of us make and I hope if you are still making it you heed what I have learned. That I can't only means in this moment I can't..but maybe with more heart and practice, with more support and strength I can one day.

I climbed a really steep mountain this weekend. With a child and two women. The child, like any child would, just wanted to go and go and go. She has not yet developed any sense for conserving energy. About 200m from the top, however, she reached her limit. Her legs were heavy from the climbing (it was in many parts a 60-75degree incline...totally wicked). She wanted to quit and stop. But I know how wicked it is at the tops of mountains so I told her to climb on my back.

I didn't know if I could carry her up 200m. In fact I was pretty certain I was as tired as she was. But I wanted her to make it. And I was up for the challenge. So I put my bag on her back and crouched for her. And it seemed that was enough. She sort of looked at me as if to say, "I am tired. I don't think I can keep going, but you would find the strength to carry me the rest of the way...well then I will find that strength too" And like a mountain goat she lit off up the last slope. We raced the last 50m and both fell down on the top of the mountain for feel how good it was to have made it.

Before that she didn't try to talk to me, nor I to her. But after I guess our relative positions changed and we did our best to talk.

Then their was the view of the world. At the top of the mountain there was only blue sky over head, as we has climbed up through the cloud that sits on the valley below, or so it felt. New mountains came into view in the distance and the sea too. I couldn't have imagined...but i can now. And I look forward to more things unimagined. And know they exist out there, just have to find them.