Where were you 8 years ago today?

Right around this time eight years ago, I was at MicMac Mall with Gabriel and Izaak shopping for a new bag, as that was the year I returned to school at St. Joseph’s College of Early Childhood Education. I remember this day with great clarity, as it was a day that greatly impacted on my perceptions of the political realities of the day.  Every moment was recorded in my head like short film clips.

I was in the store Bentley… you know the one with luggage and wallets and backpacks and the fuzzy slippers (I never could figure out the consumer connection between travel and slippers).  In any case, Izaak was in the stroller, and Gabriel was almost three.  This was before Izaak was mobile, so it was easy to be out with the two of them by myself.

The radio was on.  Q104.  With an important news update… This was odd to me, as it was early in the morning on Q104… it is usually the chatter of dirty jokes, boobies and beer, not reportings from Washington.

“The Pentagon has Been Attacked!”

My attention dropped from the wallet I had in my hand and zeroed in on the radio, “What did that say?”

Another customer had wandered into the store… “Oh didn’t you hear? America is under attack.  A missile flew into the Pentagon and the Statue of Liberty has been hit by a plane… It’s all over the news.”

No I certainly did not hear… If I did hear, I would certainly not by standing in Bentley shopping for freaking wallets… “No, I have to get home.”

I remember my heart was racing.  I beelined it to the bus depot and anxiously waited for the bus.  This was a time when I was having frequent panic attacks, so everything was particularly heightened.  Now waiting for a bus was a time that evoked anxiety in me even at times I did not think that the world was potentially coming to an end (leftover anxiety from Y2K, but at the time, real nonetheless.

It took me about 15 minutes to get home.  I hopped on the bus that would get me closest, and pretty much ran from the stop to my duplex off Wyse Road.

The other half of our duplex was rented by close friends (considered family).  One of which was scheduled to babysit that afternoon.  Dave had gone to work at Convergys that morning… and I had classes.  At least I thought I had classes…

I burst into the house and put on CNN… to the sight of that video clip which probably wins the award for most replayed historical clip ever.  A plane, flying into the World Trade Tower…

I picked up the phone and called next door… “Turn on your TV or get the hell over here.”

It was all so surreal.  And then, when the towers came down, I welled up as my heart broke.  This is fucking crazy.  I felt like I knew that in that moment, things would never be the same again.  I was terrified that Bush was at the helm… and remember lamenting Al Gore’s bum deal all over again (the wounds had just healed).

Eight years later and we are certainly living in a different context.  The ghosts of 9/11 still haunt us in Afghanistan and Iraq… and in our daily lives as we find ourselves handing over little pieces of our privacy in the name of security and intelligence.

9/11 was a game changer for the trajectory of globalization, community and human progress.  It was perhaps the perfect excuse for CCTV, wire-tapping, holding people without charges or legal representation and using the Stanford (Zimbardo) Prison Experiment as a model for dealing with “terrorists”.

9/11 gave us new enemies to replace the commies, and a new source of anxiety and  irrational fear to justify a post-modern witch-hunt on those who would question the omnipresence and omnipotence of America… in all her red white and blue glory.

Yes 9/11 changed all that.  It traumatized North America, and we will probably never be the same again.

Why I am voting Green

I have a very dear friend named Greg. Greg has lived with schizophrenia for his whole adult life.  After many struggles, psychotic breaks,  pills, poverty, addictions and therapies, he has arrived at a very good place in his life.  He has found a nice balance between the meds, his art, his friends and living.  He has been on Income Assistance because of his schizophrenia for a while now.  But recently, he has expressed a desire to get off I.A. and try to find a job.  He’s in a stable housing situation, and starting to get involved in a few community and advocacy organizations around Mental Health.  Greg will need his meds to be able to maintain a job though, and if he goes off of I.A. he loses coverage for his meds… you see the problem.

I jokingly said to him the other night that his situation now was a good symbol for everything that was wrong with the Departments of Health and Community Services.  It is really not right.

So what does Greg have to do with why I’m voting Green?  Well Green is not simply about the environment.  It is actually about the approach.  You see, approaching things in a Green way means looking at them holistically (David doesn’t like it when I use that word, because it’s flaky, and we are really trying hard to reduce the stereotype that the Green Party seems to still face in Canada and especially in Nova Scotia).  Viewing something holistically means that you do your absolute best to look at it from all angles, and see exactly where it overlaps and intersects with other issues.

The reason why it’s Green, is because it is the physical environment first.

When David, Ryan (Watson) and I went to Dartmouth High last week, one of the kids there said, “so I’m going to die in 80 years and I don’t plan on having any kids, why should I care so much about the environment (he later admitted he was playing devil’s advocate).  But I said to him… if our physical environment keeps going the way that it’s going, it might not be 80 years, but 40… and David asked if he wanted to go take a dip in the Harbour.

The reason why it’s Green is because environment means more than just saving the trees and putting up windmills… it’s about our social environment to.  For too long our governments have been disconnected our selves from our environments, physical and social, for the sake of profit margins and powerful lobby groups.

Our physical environments and our social environments are intimately intertwined.  We need clean air, clean food, clean water and protection from the elements absolutely first.  Our survival depends on it.  Yet, it seems as though it is too much to demand these things living in our democratic and abundant society.  You may question the word abundant in these times of economic crisis, but we still have many resources at our disposal, despite the minuscule drops in our GDP.

Last night on CTV Atlantic, Ryan Watson was interviewed by Steve Murphy and he was asked, what do you mean by seeing opportunity in this global economic crisis?  Ryan responded that when a crisis emerges, it is the perfect time to take a step back and examine why we have arrived at a crisis situation.  It’s not about a few emergency room beds here and a few “green” jobs there… it’s about looking at the whole structure.  It’s about taking a step back and examining whether or not we are delivering services in the most effective and efficient ways, it’s about throwing away the perspectives that got us in this mess in the first place… it’s about moving into the 21st century with 21st century ideas using 21st century technology and organizing our government in 21st century ways…

The Green Party is the only party suggesting that it’s time to move away from the GDP as a measure of our progress and province well-being, and instead adopt the GPI, Geniune Progress Index.  The fundamental difference between the GDP and the GPI is social accounting.  Social accounting is a difficult task because really, what price tag can you put on a human life?  How to do calculate the human experience in economics?  The current trend is to simply discount it as a part of the equation.  The GDP calculates the value of the person as a consumer, and nothing more.  The GPI considers the value of a person as a person, participating and communicating with their community.

I am so sick of being referred to as a consumer.  I am a person damnit.  I have a family and a community.  My life is more meaningful than being part of the bottom line in some trans-national corporations year-end profit margins.  Greg is not a mental health consumer, he is a person who requires a little more support in his community because his brain works a little differently than most.

I love my province.  Nova Scotia is a gem.  We have a perfect-sized population, a wealth of natural resources, and a creative class with great ideas. I believe in the 6 priniciples that the Green Party embraces: Ecological wisdom, social justice, participatory democracy, nonviolence, sustainability, and respect for diversity.

I am voting Green because I want to see structural change which reflects their holisitic approach to the issues.  I am voting Green because I believe the citizens need an opportunity to participate in the dialogue.

What is Retarded?

This blog began with the title “When worlds collide” and was going to be simply a comment on the recently surfaced claim that Facebook, and other social networking sites could be causing autism… It is very rare that I see two of my “themes” so closely and overtly connected to one another.  But, as I got into the meat and potatoes of it, I noticed I was throwing the word “Retarded” around quite a bit… a word that causes a very negative reaction among the most politically correct of us… and implies a derogatory meaning.  I do use the word Retarded in a derogatory way… but never directed at individuals with cognitive processing problems… I use the word Retarded to describe the slowness of society, policy, in relation to the evolutionary processes our species have been undergoing for the past 100 years… It isn’t people who are Retarded… it’s society and the institution that is retarded…  With all those caveats put in place… this is what I have to say.

An Oxford educated expert has very boldly gone on record by making an intellectual connection between social networking and the wave of mental health issues plaguing society, and particularly autism.  “Perhaps given the brain is so impressionable, that screen life is mandating that more infantilized lifestyle. Now this is based on a little bit of neuroscience, observations, a bit of clinical evidence, there is no one single or conclusive killer fact,” said Professor Susan Greenfield in a House of Lords debate.

Perhaps indeed Professor Greenfield.

In essence she claims that all the fast, bright and shiny objects we play with online are making us a bit retarded…

Now on the heels of this story, a research study was released which indicated that the brains of kids with ADHD were perhaps developing slower than the “normal” brain… The period of childhood is, essentially, getting longer for the distracted mind.  More retarded people?!

Interesting indeed.

So we have two bits here, one suggesting neurological linkages between mental illness and a pervasive cultural phenomena, and one which may be suggesting a link between mental illness and the social phenomenon of “arrested adulthood”: the state of prolonged childhood.

While I like the notion that the Internet, and our use of it, is rewiring our brains… I don’t like the assumption that this is, in itself, is a “developmental problem” for the individual.  I think it is our society with the developmental problem.  Further, I like the notion of a neurological indicator for our defining of development… I don’t like the assumption that this is somehow detrimental for the individual living in the world today.

From my understanding, developmental norms are set by the large-scale patterns of behavioural and cognitive milestones observed within the majority.   When individuals take longer to hit those milestones they are labeled either “special” or “retarded” (depending on who you are talking to).

But what if… and entertain me a bit here… what if it was the characterization of developmental milestones that was a little bit retarded… That is, what if it wasn’t that these individuals weren’t slow in their development at all… what if the developmental milestones which have been guiding us along for the past century or so are no longer relevant for the individual existing the post-industrial world.

If, as a society, a species, and through our culture, our brains are rewiring as a means of adaptation to our environment… an environment that we, ourselves, manufacture on all levels on a day to day basis… And if the outcome of that rewiring are characteristics like those exhibited in ADHD and autism… then isn’t that just evolution?  Is there really anything we can do about it?

The notion of “slow” or “lagging” development is a tricky one for me to reconcile when considering an ADHD and an autistic mind.  It seems to me that these brains are fast… really fast… so while it might take longer to hit those developmental milestones… the in the moment processing is hyper.

Like most ideas which have guided our civilization over the last century, the notion that human development occurs along a linear trajectory is perhaps doing us more harm than good.  Further, the population of those disenfranchised from “normal” is perhaps getting so big, that we have to seriously reconsider everything that we think we know about human development, psychology and cognition.

For example:

Living in the moment without being able to set long-term goals and commitments is one of those developmental characteristics which is considered to be immature and infantile… when you can move beyond your childish ways and become a responsible adult you’ve hit one of the developmental marks of adulcy.  If you can never make that leap to adulcy, and find yourself swimming in the sea of immediacy… you are developmentally retarded.

Until about the 1960’s… looking beyond the moment, setting long-term goals, and making commitments to your family, your community and your country was perhaps an easier thing to do.  Plus, from a survivalist kind of approach, it would have been far more beneficial for individuals who had those characteristics bred in their bones (or brains) because the institutions in our society were focusing around those characteristics…

In the 1950’s it was “normal” for an individual to be schooled for 12 or 13 years (or if they went to university 16 to 20 years), and when they were finished, they entered the workforce to (most likely) settle into their career where they would pay into their pensions and follow through to a happy and healthy retirement.  Even if school was out of the picture, most people who had that bred-in Protestant work ethic could find a job where they could follow the same ‘normal’ trajectory.  Once people got settled into the workforce, they would find a pretty gal or a handsome lad to marry… then have kids and hope that they would follow the same trajectory and become more normal humans.

However those were more simplistic times, and the problems which individuals faced on a day-to-day basis were not nearly as complex as the mess we got going on now.  Their brains were perhaps developing “normally” over the long term, but with far less variation in the short term.   The problems that these simplistic, but normal, brains had to process on a day-to-day basis made it easy to find that trajectory of ‘normal’… because they were tied to routine and habituation.  It was like these brains were on auto-pilot.  Their brains were wired for their times… this doesn’t seem like such a crazy notion now, does it?

Today, as we find ourselves seeking reprieve from these volatile social, economic and culture storms, aren’t we better off if we do live in the moment?  Is setting long-term goals (especially around a career) really a viable option?  Isn’t it beneficial to our survival to be ready, at any given moment, to be able to adapt to any given thing?

Perhaps those whose brains are wired for living in the moment are better off than those whose brains are wired for long-term and stable environments.

This is all just theory of course… I’m talking out of my ass here… but really, is it such a crazy idea?

We have always labelled mental illness and developmental disorders like autism and ADHD as such because they prevent us from “normally” participating in a “normal” society… but perhaps in this tendency, we are dangerously connecting the inability to conform to stale old traditional modern paradigms with mental illness.

Imagine what a different world we would live in if we finally admitted and came to terms with the fact that Western society isn’t “normal”… it isn’t “natural” and it is in fact making us all crazy.

The next time someone uses the word Retarded to describe an individual with extreme in the moment processing capability, but who lacks the ability to conform to the myths of normal development and social etiquette… tell them that they are the retarded ones, for they are the ones who are developing for ages past… not for the future that we are hurtling towards…