The Only Reason Why I Actually Care About London

I’m a young guy. A little Londoner who doesn’t do much, but I try and I felt I should reflect on why I even care about this city. There is only one reason why I care about London, and it’s not what you might think.

Yeah there are cool things going on in London, but in the end, why I have a deep root here, is because of the people who have given me a chance.

It has been the people who looked at me, saw a kid trying to do something that would likely fail—I’m talking about the businessTalks conference I held—and rather than ignore me, they decided to give me a chance. They saw someone who had nothing to offer them and still gave me minutes and hours of their time. Whether it was meeting with me, giving me ideas, or honestly just acknowledging me. The times I feel like leaving London most, are when someone ignores me. Now I know that’s childish and such, but when I reach out to leaders in London and am ignored, it feels like London is ignoring me. Of course that’s dumb and isn’t true, but it’s hard to shake that initial feeling.

But when someone extends their hand. Even to just give me a response by email. You can’t imagine the impact that has on someone who never sticks their neck out in the first place—i.e. The ones who aren’t yet engaged in the city, yet have the potential to. The first instance of this was last January, I went to the first conference I had ever been to, the Student2Business conference. The keynote speaker was Paul Copcutt (@paulcopcutt). I quite liked his talk, so in the networking portion I awkwardly approached him and struck up a conversation. Got his card—also an awkward affair for me—and then later that night I emailed him saying thanks.

He responded.

I emailed again weeks later with a link to something I felt he’d dig. Nervous he’d think I’m being annoying and never respond again, I swallowed my vulnerability and hit send!!!

He responded again!

He actually ended up driving quite a distance to attend my conference. That impacted me even more!

I know this seems small. But you can’t imagine the feeling of someone you respect, responding to you. That’s it. It is these little moments that change peoples lives, nothing more. Maybe we forget because the constant interactions of work-life leave one numbed to the excitement of your first excursion out into a new world.

I love London because it is here that many of these little moments have happened in the past few months. In doing the businessTalks conference, there were a couple dozen people, busy people who took the time to help a very under-experienced and slightly crazy me. Whatever you think about the success of the businessTalks conference itself is irrelevant, I felt like I accomplished what I sought out to, and I could never have done it without the attention of these Londoners—and in some cases Hamiltonians and Dundasians.

I don’t give a crap about the fact that I totally cannot find a job right now. I don’t care about the lack of beautiful Vancouver-like-urban-planning (though that would be so sweet). I’ll make my own opportunity if I have to. I love London, because of the people who have given me a hand in this city, not because of the city itself. Think, why are well designed urban spaces so good? Because they attract people and we like people, we like being with people. It’s not the space, it’s the people; it just happens that nice spaces attract more people. A city is made up of people first, and spaces second. To forget that order is problematic.

So, it’s up to London’s people to make London awesome. By being the kind of people that attract more people. By being the kind of mentors and friends that make this city the city I love.

We always try to fix the problem of engagement with a large program or other real or virtual infrastructure. Either by creating new policies, programs or networks. These networks are IMMENSLEY useful yes, but they are populated only by one-on-one leadership. By you, London’s leaders, reaching out your hands to us awkward, mumbling youth, and showing us that you care. You can’t even imagine how small the acts that accomplish this are.

If every single one of the “already-engaged” of London were to merely give the time of day to a single student or young Londoner, the impact would be beyond reckoning. This can’t be done by a mentoring program, or an aggregating network, those are what comes after. What is needed first, is for people to care.

So, my benediction to you London, is this:

…may you give of your time and energy to those who simply need someone to care; that is how you will see new faces at community events and the new generation of leaders who will take this city to heights it has never seen before.

The Problem Concerning This Obsession with Branding

No I’m not just ranting about my dislike of buzz words—though I do loath buzz words, especially when I catch myself using them all the time—this is more on the concept of branding, its uselessness in certain instances and what to do about it.

In particular, I will deal with an idea that has been talked about a lot in my city: the need to brand the City of London, Ontario. I am always reading benedictions from marketing experts telling me to brand my company or be doomed to failure. Now I do think those are quite important with regards to companies, but I think there is an inherent problem if one tries to brand a city.

To an extent, branding a city is good because it gives focus and shows you your priorities. But there in lies the problem, it shows you ‘your’ priorities, the Brander’s priorities. Are my priorities omnipotent in a city of 492,200 people, what about the other 491,199 people, they are apart of London are they not? The solution would be to find out “what London is” to the remaining 491,199 Londoners, right?

Wrong, since of course someone from the peanut gallery would point out—and be correct—that “you can’t canvas 492,200 people about ‘what London is to them’ because there would be no agreement.”

Holy banana pancakes, really?! That’s the very point I’m trying to make. There is no agreement, so why insist on having one agreed upon brand. Why can’t a city be many different things to many different people.

The need to focus on one brand leads to what I am now coining as Ross’ Brand Uselessness Relationship. (Nobel ceremony to follow this blog post, my house, BYOB). The relationship is as follows: the uselessness and disconnected-from-reality-ness of a specific and singular brand is directly proportional to the number of people that brand tries to grasp in its’ scope.

The tension is between trying to create a realistic brand that is connected to the reality of the participants it claims to represent, and the impossibility of having only one brand represent all the unique opinions, interests and functions of every member of London. So a balance is needed. In hopes of ending this abstract deconstruction of a post with something practical, the best one can do is allow London to have many brands to many different people. Don’t look for a single brand you can communicate with mass media—which isn’t communication at all but instead impersonal broadcasting—instead look at the many different niche brands in London and communicate those to the people who would actually care.

By the way, what I’m saying is not new. It has been said again and again in new marketing and leadership literature over the past many decades. Think Stephen Covey in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, telling companies to have a mission statement for every person, then every department and finally the whole organization; as opposed to single mission statements using disconnected words and empty promises. Then think decades latter to Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson in Rework deconstructing mission statements and mass media advertising. It’s the wisdom that comes back again and again: bring it back to reality, out of abstraction and find a balance between the two.

However, this need for a balanced brand will then lead to my next problem which will likely be one of my next blog posts: the issue that broadcasting a brand does not mean what you’re branding actually is what is broadcasted. The problem that advertising your brand, is not advertising your brand. That Marketing Zen Koan will be dealt with in a future post.

The Realist

A realist will say “only stick to what is really there”; keep your head in the present, ignore the future and the past, for “yesterday is history, tomorrow a mystery and today is a gift.” But that begs the question…what is “really” there?

When I look at my water bottle, it isn’t just an object in the present; in me “seeing” it, I see my past experiences of using water bottles, that leads to my expectation of what I can possibly do with a water bottle.  If I tried to pick it up and it was glued to the table, I would be shocked, because this isn’t how I usually encounter water bottles.  I perceive the future, I perceive possibility every day when I pick up my water bottle; if I didn’t, such a bare object would be quite confusing when I encounter it, but water bottles are not confusing the last time I checked.

The realist thinks it is fairy-tale to “keep your head in the clouds” and think of dreams and possibility.  But that is how the realist drives her car every day.  By perceiving and expecting possibilities.  By perceiving possibility. The realist has things mixed up.  Where she thinks realism is closest to the present, and to what actually “is.” That couldn’t be farther from the truth.  In the present, we perceive possibility, the past and the future are woven into the present; how else do we get better at a skill.  At first a bike scared me, now I perceive a means of fluid movement, something I can actually grasp just looking at it.

Hope, expectation, dreaming, possibility-ing, is not what has to be purged for our leaders to see clearly; instead, what is in need of purge is the dogma that we experience our life in a series of unconnected notes rather than a specious melody, with past, present and future entangled together to create that familiar sound that we mistakenly call “the present.”

So, dream my dear realist friend, dream like you do every time you pick up a water bottle.



If you’re depressed about the meaninglessness of life,

then you don’t understand the meaninglessness of life.

 

If you’re happy about the meaningfulness of life,

then you don’t understand the meaningfulness of life.

 

If you’re depressed that your happiness,

constitutes an ignorance of the meaningfulness of life;

then you still don’t understand the meaningfulness of life,

nor do you understand your ignorance of the meaningfulness of life.

 

If you’re happy that you’re depression,

constitutes an ignorance of the meaninglessness of life;

then you still don’t understand the meaninglessness of life,

nor do you understand your ignorance of the meaninglessness of life.

Would You Like Some Deconstruction With Your Soup

Sorry for the spelling mistakes, I’ll fix that later.

I heard recently that apart from the other 1700 words that Shakespeare invented (nbd), he invented the word “unreal”. Imagine it, that before there was that concept, the idea of reality was never so strongly highlighted; imagine learning of it and realizing that, “oh” yeah, the unreal, is what’s not-real, thus highlighting the reality we’re in. Only in contrast do we fully understand things right. This of male and female. There isn’t exactly a maleness if there was no femaleness, the term would be pointless if there were only males on planet earth.  But then this makes one wonder, if all concepts are expressed in this binary of negations, then what has real meaning.  This is why the whole system requires a primary side for the others to form their meaning around.  Whereas without this signified, male is not-female and female is not-male; with the primary signified, female is not-male but male is male (there is no recourse to the opposite, one simply assumes the primacy of one side so as to structure the whole thing).  And bam, you have patriarchy.  You privledge one perspective to give meaning to the whole structure.  Obvious recent privlidged centres are male, white, Western, me….no scratch the last one.  But the key point to notice is that there must always be privledged centres for our meaning to have any grounding.  They can shift, and perhaps shift to less narcissistic privledged perspectives, but there is still this play of privledge.

Now I’ve noticed an interesting play of these binaries–in particular reality and unreality–in philosophy.

Phenomenolgy with its emphasis on the fact that in reality, there is no need to get over this Cartesian subject-object gab because you are always already dwelling within the world; they also emphasize that the Cartesian dualism of subject and object is unreal and in fact is an illusion that those contemporary analytic philosophers are blind to.

Conversley, the analytic philosophers emphasize the fact there is a real distinction–though not necessarily a classically Cartesian one–between the self and the objects out there in the world; and therefore, it is meaningful to ask whether objects are real and how they are real.  They also emphasize the fact that those phenomenologists are blatantly ignorant of the obvious question as to if and how objects exist; and further, their horizon of being talk is unreal, and since it merely ignores the hard problem of the dualism between self and object.   

Each privledges one side over the other, and has very adequate justifications for why they are right once the privledges perspective is choosen, but no justification for why to choose their privledged perspectives or reality and unreality.  If we think back to the beginning with our talk on Shakespeare, neither phenomenology, nor analytic philosophy exist as they do without the other.  The play of real and unreal is apparent here.

So, shall we take the waves of this ever shifting play of meaning so seriously, or do we enjoy the play as a play, and not get lost in the characters of the drama on stage too intensely.  To end my call to embrace the play of philosophy as a drama, as a poetry, which we must simultaneously take seriously and deconstruct, I leave you with Robert Frost’s, “To a Thinker”.

“The last step taken found your left/ Decidedly upon the left./ One more would throw you on the right./ Another still–you see your plight./ You call this thinking, but it’s walking./ Not even that. it’s only rocking,/ Or weaving like a stabled horse:/ From force to matter and back to force,/ From form to content and back to form,/ From norm to crazy and back to norm,/ From bound to free and back to bound,/ From sound to sense and back to sound./ So back and forth. It almost scares/ A man the way things come in pairs./ Just now you’re off democracy/ (With a polite regret to be),/ And leaning on dictatorship;/ But if you will accept the tip,/ In less than no time, tounge and pen,/ You’ll be a democrat again./ A reasoner and good as such,/ Don’t let it bother you too much/ If it makes you look helpless please/ And a temptation to the tease./ Suppose you’ve no direction in you,/ I don’t see but you must continue/ To use the gift you do possess,/ And sway with reason more or less./ I own I never really warmed/ To reformer or reformed./ And yet conversion has its place/ Not halfway down the scale of grace./ So if you find you must repent/ From side to side in argument,/ At least don’t use your mind to hard,/ But trust my instinct–I’m a bard.”

Why I Cannot Do Academic Philosophy

I’ve always had this problem of loving and hating philosophy.  I love philosophy’s ability to help me break down some of my walls and to occasionally bring out some of my bullshit, I love it’s ability to grow me and make me feel alive; but I’ve never been sure what it is that I dislike about it, which is a problem when I’m needing to decide whether to do grad work or not.

But I finally get it, it became really clear recently.

To explain it let me begin with this.  So, you know how the most annoying thing is when you’re going through something hard, complex, scary or new in your life and your parents give you their ‘awesome’ advice…cause you know….you were really fucking asking for advice lol.  It is suffocating, terribly suffocating, because often you want someone to just vent to, and to hear you, to affirm you as this suffering person, not to claim they ‘get’ you by telling you the awesomely objectifying and condensending, ”I know what you’re going through and this is what will solve it.”  Often venting IS fixing the problem, we need a vent not advice, and sometimes after venting then we’re open to adivce, but parents…well…in reality yes, they ARE older and wiser than you just because they’ve had more experiences than you, and yes, they probably HAVE had a similar experience and probably have good advice, but giving advice isn’t what helps us grow and face these events. Just because you see what someone is doing wrong, doesn’t mean what will help them is to tell them what they are doing wrong. 

But you know that feeling when someone is really really listening to you, letting you be, letting you vent, letting you expand and unwind all the coiled up thoughts, tensions and emotions about whatever is going on, it’s that awesome, non-judgemental, active listening (rather than just hearing what we’re doing wrong) that helps people change and grow, or at least be open enough to then hear the advice of their peers.

So, what’s this have to do with my future decsions about academic philosophy you might be impatiently asking?  Well, academic philosophy is very often, critiquing and ellucidating what other people are doing wrong. Sure you build on the ideas of those you learn from, but in the end, if you don’t show something to be wrong, or show something to be the correct way of seeing the subject, then, well, you’re not really doing academic philosophy.  So, my problem is that what I love about philosophy isn’t what I get in academic philosophy on its own, it doesn’t allow that growth for myself or others, because trying to help someone see something they’re doing wrong by writing a paper about what they are doing wrong would be a failed venture for the reasons mentioned above.  And you can’t exactly hold philosophy conferences where the speaker doesn’t speak but just stands there and listens! But don’t hear what I’m not saying here, I’m not hating on academic philosophy here, nor am I saying philosophy professors don’t have this other love of philosophy besides academia, I’m just bringing out what academica philosophy’s nature is; granted, I’m an undergrad, so I don’t know what I’m talking about.

Either way, this is why I cannot do academic philosophy, because what I love about philosophy is not what academic philosophy is.  Writing papers about compassion is not the same as practising compassion.  Writing papers about truth is not the same as seeking truth.  Writing papers about wisdom is not the same as having wisdom.  And this is why I cannot do academic philosophy.

But then again, I did just write to you all about the problem I have with academic philosophy; in the end didn’t I just write a article saying what is wrong with something. Well maybe I will do well in academic philosophy after all!

I Came Across A Really Cool Poem/Anecdote

As the title so eloquently put, I came across a really cool poem/anecdote the other day.

“A rouge wave, exceeding the height of its peers, by no device of its own, but rather the conditions of the ocean, leaves a mark far up on the shore and splashes sunbathers, trying to wake them up. But they think the wave itself is what was to be seen.  Time passes, now others argue that the mark is of importance because we can deduce what the wave was really like; others claim we have no access to how the wave really was and what caused it to be so special. Centuries pass, many people have killed for the wave, its mark and what can be deduced from them; everyone is still sleeping, there’s no one to jump in the water.”

–Anonymous

I dug it, thought you gals and guys might as well.