I’ve never heard of anything like this happening in Canada before. One of my tweets on Twitter yesterday read: “Is it just me, or is the world getting a little bit less hospitable every single day?” It’s hard to be positive at times, especially when you see a group of anarchists, who basically don’t care about anything except, well, anarchy, hijacking a protest against a group of politicians who are out of touch with reality and don’t, quite frankly, give a rat’s ass about the people they’re supposed to be representing.

It’s the same all over. It doesn’t matter whether you’re talking about governments, huge corporations, media outlets, or religious institutions. The individual just doesn’t seem to matter any more. It’s all about the institution maintaining itself and, if possible, growing even bigger and more powerful.

Somewhere in its growth cycle, the large institution experiences a shift in priorities. Policies, procedures, and power become more important than people. The entity is too large to be flexible anymore, and the people running it don’t care about anything except their end-of-quarter bonuses.

And keeping their jobs.

I’m a dyed-in-the-wool cynic. I take everything I read, hear, and see with a grain of salt. The media may be telling us what’s going on, but they’re doing it on their terms, telling us exactly what they want us to know. They have to show us just the right images, couch things in just the right terms, so that we’ll keep watching or listening or reading, and they’ll keep getting their advertisers’ dollars.

I don’t watch or read the news much. Not only is it depressing; it’s misleading. It gives us a skewed view of the world, and inundates us with infuriating stories and disheartening images. I prefer to use the internet for my current events. At least there I have a hope of getting real opinions from real people.

And even then, my grain of salt is close at hand.

Because most people really don’t know what the hell they’re talking about.

Okay, are you about ready to click away from this post? Have you had just about enough of my cynicism and negativity for one day? Well, hang on just a bit longer, ’cause this rant is about to go in a different direction.

You see, timing is everything. And just a few days ago, before all this G-8/G-20 brouhaha erupted, I made a conscious decision to try something different with my blog. I decided to try incorporating interviews into my blogging mix. Interviews with real people. Interesting people who are doing interesting things and have interesting things to say.

I think I got things off to a good start. If you didn’t read my interview with Julie Wilson (aka The Book Madam), please go check it out. It’s interesting, it’s fun, and it’s a real change of pace and breath of fresh air in what has been, for the most part, a fairly self-indulgent blog.

You see, people are interesting. Governments and corporations don’t seem to realize this. People have things to say, stories to tell, lives to live. We’re not numbers, we’re not database entries, and we’re not blobs of product on an assembly line. Each of us is unique, and each of us has our own, equally unique, contribution to make to the world.

I don’t always remember this. I don’t experience enlightenment every day. Hell, not even most days. It’s hard to ponder an individual’s unique contribution to the universe when said individual is shouting obsenities at the person who just caught them trying to shoplift, or when they’re grumbling at you because they want to pay the American price for a book instead of the Canadian price. On such occasions, it’s hard enough just to keep a civil tongue in your head.

Because people can be damned stupid and inconsiderate a lot of the time.

But we don’t have to get to know everybody we meet. Can you imagine how overwhelming that would be? The world is a pretty overwhelming place on the best of days. Truth is, we don’t even have much in common with most people we meet. And that’s okay. Everyone has their own way to rock and roll. And I have no problem with anyone doing their thing, as long as it doesn’t interfere with me doing mine.

And my thing, as of this moment, is articulating my view of things and trying to make sense of an increasingly nonsensical world.

When I worked for Academic Computing Services at Dalhousie University many years ago, one of the things I did was format and edit the campus IT newsletter, which was called Information Technology Update. While I enjoyed the layout and production process, I also contributed to the publication with the occasional article and, eventually, a regular column, which I entitled “The Human Factor”, in which I made a point of relating all our marvellous technological advances to the reason it all exists to begin with: Us.

Even back then, I was cognizant of the submersion of the individual into an ever-growing miasma of data. I felt it important to poke my head up from the swirls of toxic mist and say, “Hey! Listen! We’re still human beings out here!” The exclamation holds true today more than ever.

I’m glad that BookCamp Halifax happened when it did, because it stimulated my mind and got me talking to a bunch of really interesting people. And that sparked me to revisit the interview thing for my blog. And it’s something I’ll be doing again.

And again.

Because people are interesting.

Don’t forget to leave the light on.

(And, just to add yet another new twist to my ever-expanding blog, here’s my very first video blog entry, embedded from the Faltarego YouTube channel.)

It’s been a month since my last entry on this blog. On February 28th (which was also a Sunday, because that’s just the way February rolls), I wrote a blurt about the Olympics and how my attitude towards them changed dramatically over the course of their seventeen-day run.

Seems like a long time ago, now.

Since then, I’ve started a couple of new posts—one on the remastered CD of the Beatles’ Help! album and one on the closing ceremonies of the Winter Olympics—but both of them seemed a bit flat upon rereading. I just wasn’t feeling it.

So, what have I been doing, then?

Well, sometimes it feels like I’ve been sitting around with my thumbs in a strange place, and sometimes it feels like I’ve been exploring the mysteries of life, the universe, and everything (but no, I haven’t been reading Douglas Adams).

Being in the place where I am right now is kind of a paradoxical thing. On the one hand, there are financial pressures and the constant need to increase my income so that ends can meet and the day-to-day can carry on normally. On the other hand, there’s a tremendous opportunity to really figure some things out if I just don’t give in to the tempation to rush things along.

I wish my mind were this crystal clear.

I’m in the process of reconstructing myself after a serious piece of demolition. 2009 was The Year of the Fuse, and the last third of it was The Detonation.

Shit went down.

It wasn’t all bad. I started this blog, I wrote a NaNoWriMo novel, and there were day trips and mini-holidays and movies and friends and family and all the rest of the normal good stuff that happens in the run of a year.

But in the end, something had to give. And, unfortunately, that something was me.

Or maybe fortunately, because now I’m in a place where I can step back, survey the wreckage, and start putting Humpty back together again.

I’ve begun to examine what’s really important to me and to consider what it is that I really want to do with my life. I turn fifty this summer, so I guess this might be a good time to really get a handle on things.

I know that writing will always play large part in my life. It’s always been there, I’ve always gone back to it, and I’ve always striven to express myself creatively and to make myself understood.

You have no idea how important it is for me to be understood.

Okay, so I know I have the skills. I’m the grammar guy, the punctuation pundit, the spelling shark. I know how to string a sentence together, and I know how to say things in an interesting way.

Fine. Great. Fantastic. But what the hell am I going to do with that?

Well, I’m going to get my novel published, for one thing. That much I do know. Because, even in third-draft stage, I think it reads pretty well and has some great stuff in it.

But beyond that… What am I going to do in the long run with my writing skills? How am I going to use them?

This is where the reconstruction of my beleaguered self comes into play. I have the chance to be my real self and chuck off all the shackles of expectations and conventions that have been placed upon me over the years. I have the chance to come out of the basement and step into the light of day.

I don’t want to screw this up, people.

So… mixed in with the writing and the musing and the day-to-day living, there’s been the occasional consideration of a little thing called “meaning”.

Basically, I’m starting to wonder why I’m here, what I’m supposed to be doing, and what the point of it all is.

This has nothing to do with religion. I’m going to brace myself here, screw my courage to the sticking place, and finally own up, right on this blog, to the fact that I don’t believe in God, and that I think that organized religion is one of the most dangerous and destructive forces on the face of the planet. It has no place in my life, and if that offends you, then there’s really not a whole lot I can do about.

I’m not going to go on and on about it. I’m not one of those atheists who feels they have to argue about everything and stick it in your face. I’m not like that. I just don’t believe in God.

It doesn’t make me a bad person.

I am, however, a thoughtful and contemplative person, an inquisitive and curious person. I want to know where things come from, why things are the way they are, and what else is out there. I look at the world as a wondrous place, filled with marvels beyond imagining. Nature is amazing, the universe is amazing, and the human mind is amazing.

So why am I here?

Questions like this have brought me back to my Philosophy for Dummies book. I bought it a couple of years ago and read a bit of it, but the time has come for me to delve deeper and see what all those great minds of the last few centuries have been going on about all this time. I want to challenge myself and explore what it is to be human, what it is to have self-awareness, and what it means to be able to think about such things at all.

It’s a starting place, anyway.

I feel that this blog is about to transform, just as I am. I’m starting to figure out my place in the world and what I can do in it. I suppose, like most of us, I want to leave my mark here on this planet, but I think it might be better if I thought in terms of how I can improve things while I’m here.

And at the heart of it, when you get right down to brass tacks, there’s this little concept that has always been important to me, and which is now emerging as a defining force in my life.

It’s a little thing called “respect”, and there’s not enough of it in the world right now.

And I’ll be writing a lot more about that in the days and weeks to come.

Stay tuned.

And don’t forget to leave the light on.

(Okay, just to bring a little levity back to the proceedings, here’s some Deep Thought for you. This still makes me laugh.)

I do have a topic for today, but before I get to it, I feel an odd compulsion to share with you the rather bumpy and circuitous route by which it arrived in my brain. Synapses work in mysterious ways, and this is a fairly good example.

Bear with me here. The link density in this first bit will be rather high.

One of my Twitter friends, who goes by the handle @AliasGrace (and whom I met in person for the first time at PodCamp Halifax two weekends ago), has a blog entitled East Coast by Choice, for which I wrote a guest post three weeks ago. She’s had a number of guest posts over the time she’s been blogging, the most recent of which, entitled “The Death of Barrington Street?” and written by Paul MacKinnon (Twitter handle @downtownpaul), was a really interesting read.

Paul’s post mentioned a number of well-known buildings on Barrington Street, but the one that caught my attention was the Green Lantern building. Now, being the geek that I am (you knew that, right?), you’d think I’d have known Halifax had a Green Lantern building. For some reason, though, I didn’t remember the name at all. But, of course, I was tickled by it. So I went to my dear friend Google to see if I could find some pictures.

And find them I did. The Coast (our local artsy/cultural/gritty/emo/freebie newspaper) has an article about the building, complete with historical pics from the time when the building actually housed the Green Lantern restaurant. The building’s official name is the Keith building, and it currently houses Pogue Fado, a traditional Irish pub. Nice to know the green is still there, anyway.

Still with me? Good. ‘Cause I’ll be getting to the point any second now.

When I looked at those pictures of the Green Lantern restaurant, taken in 1941, I very nearly audibly sighed. The shiny newness of the tables, counters, seats, and fixtures made me want to step into the images and experience what it would have been like to sit there, order a meal or a coffee, and watch the people go by. It all just looked so… nice.

How weird is it to suddenly feel nostalgic for a restaurant that opened a couple of decades before I was even born? Well, it did operate into the sixties, but I don’t remember ever going there. Even if I had, I would have been extremely young, and the shiny newness seen in those pictures would have long since faded.

The whole experience of finding these photos and reacting so strongly to them reminded me of how much we romanticize the past. I know I often think fondly of times gone by and wonder what it would be like to visit times before my birth. Sometimes I want to pick a spot, stand there, and move progressively back through the years so that I can see the changes unfolding backwards.

Intellectually, I know that the past was not better. Previous years of my life all had good points and bad points, ups and downs, high and lows, just like the present time does. And some day down the road, I know I will look back upon 2010 with the same gauzy filter through which I now gaze upon my childhood.

So why do we do it? Why do we remember selectively? Why do we idealize past events and put them up on pedestals built of nostalgic longing? Why do we filter things so much? Is the present really that bad?

Well, I have my theories about that.

From what I’ve observed, people tend to get more nostaligic as they get older. This applies not only to people I’ve met, but also to myself. The older I get, the more stuff I have in my head, and the more stuff I have in my head, the less attention I have for the world around me, and the less attention I have for the world around me, the faster time seems to zip on by.

Remember when you were a kid? (Yes, let’s get nostalgic for a moment here.) Remember how long the Christmas break was? Remember how long the summers were? Remember how each school day dragged on and on? Time was different then. There seemed to be more of it. Even the pleasant days lasted longer.

That’s because there was less stuff in your head back then. Less worry. Less planning. Less responsibility. Less distraction from the moment. You were free to soak it all up, see it for what it was, without all the voices in your head tearing your attention away from it.

We talk about the carefree days of childhood. And for a lot of folks, that’s pretty much what they were. Obviously, not everyone has the same experience. Childhood was a nightmare for some people, and they look back with a different filter entirely. But for many, thinking about childhood brings back fond memories. We might not have been free of cares, but we certainly had less of them.

As we grow older, however, and accumulate knowledge, skills, and responsibilities, our attention is more frequently hauled away from the here and now. And so the present becomes something less than it could be. We miss the moment because of our inner time travel. We fret about the past and worry about the future. We go over and over things we might have done differently and try to plan things we can’t possibly control.

And suddenly, the present is not so great. But it’s not the present’s fault. We’re clouding it with hurts from the past and uncertainties from the future. The poor present moment doesn’t stand a chance.

And therein, friends, lies a profound irony. As much as we look back on certain past events with pink gauze over the lens and sigh about how much better things were back then, we are simultaneously corrupting the present moment with ghosts and shadows of past events that just weren’t that shit-hot at all.

Today, I purchased a book entitled The Secret Pulse of Time. It’s a science book, and it looks like it’s going to be an interesting read. I’m looking forward to it, because, well, I’m a little obsessed about this whole time thing.

As I’m sure many of you are as well.

Don’t forget to leave the light on.

(And, in keeping with the nostalgia theme, not to mention the time theme, here’s a live performance of “Time” by Pink Floyd.)

Movie Monday? No problem. Lots of stuff to write about there. Tuneful Tuesday? Back in the groove. Getting the pattern established. Wordy Wednesday? Rant city, man. Getting intense about the words. Freebie Friday? Always seems to be some free software or other out there to have a look at. Super Saturday? Golden. The field is wide open.

But Thoughtful Thursday has been patchy, spotty, uneven, and downright uppity.

I started off with a talk about The Power of Now on August 6th. It was an okay post, but I realized after writing it that I didn't want to do reviews of self-help books every week. Also, despite my interest in the Law of Attraction, in general terms, I find I'm not all that cool with the new-agey lingo that's thrown around in a lot of the books and videos about it. It's all very rosy-cheeked and fluffy and filled with jelly beans. I like my philosophy and spirituality a little grittier, thank you very much, a little more down-to-earth, a little edgier. That's just the way I run, home-skillets.

So nix on the "We Are the World" self-help book reviews. What's next?

Ah, yes… The next week, August 13th. "The Blog and the Anti-Blog". My first rebellious post. My first attempt to say, "Why the fuck am I doing this?" My first kick against the self-imposed regimen. I was feeling absolutely rotten that day, so I just spewed. Mildly humourous at best. Utterly pointless at worst. Moving on.

Week Three, August 20th. Guest post week. Thoughtful Thursday was pre-empted by a post from Asheyna, called "Open Source… Fan Fiction for Geeks?" I loved it, not only because it was an interesting post, but also because I still wasn't feeling all that great (oh, memories of the heat wave) and was happy to have someone else write the content that day.

Week Four, August 27th. "Deep Thoughts (or not)". This post marked a sort of turning point. Very reflective, asked some good questions, talked about honesty and finding out my own intentions. Also had an argument with myself about the whole "no personal stuff on this blog" issue, which I now realize is a bunch of pretentious hogwash. Personal stuff is going to come out here on these pages. I'm just not going to dwell on it. So, progress of sorts.

Week Five, September 3rd. "Thoughtful Thursday? What a Hope". This was a very silly post. I think it makes for an amusing read, but it's not really all that thoughtful. Caffeine, procastination, computer desks, and the downfall of civilization. Sounds like the makings of a bad science-fiction novel. Great. Now I've got that idea in my head. However, NaNoWriMo is coming up…

Which brings us to last week's experiment, "A Little Riff on Non-Existence", which marks my first foray into the world of philosophy. I quite enjoyed writing that post, as it really got my mind working overtime and made me think carefully about what I was writing, so that I could be as clear as possible. It's kind of a heavy topic, especially thrown at my readers all of a sudden like that, after the silliness and the nonsense, and the Cinnabons. But still, I was pleased with that one.

So what is to become of Thoughtful Thursday now?

I'm not sure. I like the self-exploration stuff. And I really like the philosophy stuff, too. I'm certainly no philosopher, but I do have a copy of Philosophy for Dummies, so I think I'll dust that off and read some more of it. I might feel the urge to wax philosophical again sometime soon, so it would be nice to have some information stored in the old noggin.

So far the Thursday posts have been little snapshots of my headspace that day, which is cool, because that's what "thoughtful" is really all about. Reflective. Introspective. It's not what I had envisioned when I originally came up with my "blog schedule", but I think it's evolved appropriately.

Good to look back, so that I can look forward.

Thanks for indulging me.

Gesundheit.

I don't think I headed in the direction of dangerous. I didn't think about obtaining firearms or explosives or anything like that. I think my odd notions tended towards the curious and the interesting.

There was one in particular, though, that was kind of mind-blowing if I thought about it too much. And it went something like this:

"There didn't have to be a me."

Now, that's a fairly simple statement, and a true one at that. My parents could have combined a different sperm with a different egg and come out with an entirely different offspring. Could have been a different gender, or had different eye or hair color, or grown to a different height. Any number of characteristics could have been different.

Or they might never have had children at all. Or they might have had only one instead of the two. The possibilities are endless.

But the basic premise of my statement above is that I, as an individual consciousness, did not have to come into existence. There's nothing says it had to happen. The world would have continued turning and running and moving and shaking without my participation in it.

That's where it gets freaky.

Is it even possible for me to imagine a world without me in it? It's difficult at the very least. Because the only way I know about the world is through my own senses, which are connected to my own brain, which houses my consciousness and processes all the sensory information it gets.

So how can I envision a world without me if my only frame of reference is the very consciousness that does the envisioning? My worldview is uniquely mine, and if I didn't exist, that worldview wouldn't exist. The world might still exist if I weren't in it, but I certainly wouldn't know about it. There wouldn't even be an "I" to have that knowledge.

My mind is starting to contort just thinking about this, as it did when I was a kid. But the fact remains: My particular consciousness did not have to land in this world.

Think of it this way: At this moment, as you read this, there is a finite number of humans in the world. Okay, a few more were just born as you read that last sentence, and more are being born as you read this one. But each moment, there is a finite number of people on Earth.

Right. So think of all the possible permutations and combinations of human characteristics. The number is inconceivable (no pun intended). So that means that, while there is a finite number of live humans on the planet, there is also an infinite or near-infinite number of individuals who do not exist.

What if you were one of them?

It's hard to grasp. Ask yourself the question: "What if I didn't exist?" And I don't mean "What if I died tomorrow?" I mean "What if I had never existed?"

It's not sad or depressing. It's just interesting. And it's very difficult to comprehend, because of that whole "frame of reference" thing. The mind perceives the world, and with no mind, there is no perception.

It's difficult to even write about this with any kind of clarity, because there is no language to describe non-existence. Non-existence is not something we are familiar with. We are only familiar with perception, cognition, locomotion, and biological functions. We know about absence, but absense is not the same as non-existence; it's the opposite of presence. In order to miss something, it had to be there in the first place.

I could go round and round and round with this and never really land on an exact description of what I'm trying to convey. What I can tell you, however, is that when I thought about it as a kid, if I went round and round one too many times, I'd start to get a bit panicky, because this whole non-existence thing is actually pretty frightening. Especially to a kid. It's fear of the unknown taken to its extreme.

But it's an interesting exercise in speculation. And I think speculation is pretty much all it can be. None of us knows why our particular combination of characteristics came into existence, and why our particular consciousness came to be the perceiving, sensing, thinking thing that it is. We just know we are here, and that we see the world in our own unique way.

At least we're pretty sure we're here.

But that's a whole other ball of wax.

Finally, Thoughtful Thursday gets the treatment it deserves.

Gesundheit. (said the German philosopher)

(Thankfully, when I typed "non-existence" into YouTube's search box, the second entry to come up was from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Good job! This ought to lighten things up a bit.)