The Ghost Dance

The ghost dance was a ritual the came to prominence in late 19th-century North America, as European colonists from the east began to push deeper into the continent. Native cultures throughout North America were already in a state of flux, as traditional ways of life were abandoned and the arrival of colonists was preceded by waves of disease and disruptive forces like alcohol and  firearms. Much of the old native culture had already crumbled, but Christianization was only just beginning. The native cultures of the Americas were trying to find a new equilibrium that would allow them to maintain their historical traditions while interacting with new technology and invading colonists. Oddly, this is not so far from where First Nations cultures are today, struggling to find an identity and stuck in a broken and unfulfilled status quo.

 Amidst this chaos, the ghost dance was created by a Paiute shaman named Jack Wilson after he claimed to have had a vision during a solar eclipse on January 1st, 1889. Wilson claimed that if the dance was performed at the proper intervals the evil in the world would be swept away, leaving a renewed Earth where food, love and faith were abundant and the First Nations would live in peace with the whites.

The ritual spread quickly through the tribes, and as often happens with religions and rituals based on peace, the message was quickly lost. Some tribes began to focus more on "sweeping away the world's evil" and began to see the ghost dance as a tool to help them do that. Warriors were taught that the ghost dance could be used to enchant garments and make them impervious to bullets. Of course, this was not the case, and eventually the resistance to the colonists was crushed. For a time, though, this simple dance galvanised resistance to the whites and actually made people believe they were invincible.

The ghost dance is only one example of this phenomenon: the self-fulfilling power of belief. Whether or not something is empirically true, mere belief in it can radically change the course of people's actions. The same phenomenon was occurring around the same time, during the Boxer Rebellion in China, where the rebels believed that magic power could be used to repel firearms. It is still evident today, where Islamic radicals are motivated to blow themselves up with the promise of forty virgins awaiting them afterward.

The phenomenon even showed up this last NFL season with Tim Tebow and the Denver Broncos. Many of Tebow's critics pointed out that the Broncos' turnaround was not due to his play, but instead to the improved play of the defence. What they fail to note, however, is that the reason the play of the defence improved was arguably their belief in Tebow. A couple of improbable wins and Tebow's blind faith with respect to both God and winning started to rub off on his teammates, and the belief itself, regardless of its truth, propelled the Broncos all the way from last place to the second round of the playoffs.

The self fulfilling power of belief is why I do new year's resolutions (and then don't write them down until March). I am sympathetic to the argument that new year's resolutions are almost always unachievable and are actually rather silly compared to an attitude that focuses on continuous, incremental improvement. However, I feel like making a point to craft the resolutions, writing them down, publishing them and measuring progress lends a certain gravitas or accountability to them and actually makes it more likely that I will achieve them, at least in part.

That said, here goes:

In 2011, I had five resolutions. I accomplished one outright by running a 5k in 19:51 in the rain on Mother's Day. I also ran my first 10k road race, and although the time (45 mins) wasn't great, I'm glad I did it. I also made progress on my bucket list by visiting three new countries in 2011: Belize, Honduras and Israel, but it was more modest progress than I would have liked. Two of my other resolutions resulted in very modest progress: eating healthier and simplifying my material possessions. My last 2011 resolution was to improve my arm strength, and although I made progress early in the year, I subsequently regressed and likely made no progress overall.

 Therefore, I will carry over the four latter goals into 2012:

1. Make progress on and update my bucket list. I can potentially make progress towards visiting 100 countries, visiting Canadian national parks, running a marathon and/or running every day for a month. My time is also running short to see Peyton Manning play live so it will be important to see where he ends up. Updating the list will be the topic of a future post.

2.  Eat healthier than the previous year. My sub-goals here will change slightly. I think I will try to keep linking intake of unhealthy snacks to number of workouts, as that was effective for parts of last year. I think I will initially try 150g of snacks per workout - roughly 2 workouts for every bag of chips. For unhealthy meals, as defined last year, I will change to limit unhealthy meals to only those times when I go with other people, as that was the biggest source of failure last year. The home-cooked meals idea is gone for this year.

3. Simplifying material possessions. Carried over as written last year. Obviously Dana will have to be on board with many aspects of this.

4. Improve arm strength. Carried over as written last year.

Additionally, I have a few new goals for this year:

5. Run a half-marathon. I have no time in mind here, as the distance will likely be a challenge in itself. I think that given how little I have run over the last 2-3 months, running the Calgary half on May 27th will be a stretch. Melissa's half in Banff on September 22nd is not a bad one for me to target because it is a tough course and not good for running a time, but would be scenic for a first race.

6. Run a 10k fast enough to score for the Nexen Corporate Challenge team. Last year this meant about 41 minutes. I would probably want to do a couple practice runs prior to the CC to establish a time but at the very least I want to improve my 10k time from last year and try and beat a few of Nexen's very strong ladies!

7. Save at least 50% of my after-tax net pay. For the first time in a couple years, I have no major capital expenditures planned for 2012. I paid for about two thirds of my car in 2010 and the rest in 2011, so I should be able to recognize substantial savings this year compared to those years. My budget forecast currently projects about a 51% savings rate, so if I keep to that I should be able to achieve this goal.

8. My last 2012 resolution is likely a multi-year one, but it stems from an article I read a few months ago that really struck a chord. I can recognize that although I am good at some of these things, there are others that concern me a little, particularly the first two on the list. I have already set in motion work on the second item by looking to transfer to a department that might be a little less onerous, but I may have to revisit that further over the long term.

The first item is where the real dilemma lies. I need to make strides towards a life that I am spending doing more of the things I like to do and am passionate about, and less of the other stuff to compensate. I want to read, write, debate, run, compete, make a difference, relax and spend time with friends, family and Dana. I have felt that since I graduated from university, I have been on a slow slide towards doing less of the things that I want to be doing and more of the other stuff. I need to evaluate why that is, prioritize differently and reverse that trend, starting in 2012.

Just as the ghost dance was meant to usher in a renewed Earth, each year is an opportunity to renew and improve oneself, and there are too few years in a life to waste any.   

A Middle Kingdom

For a long time, there has been a fundamental disagreement between many in the western world and the government (some would say people) of China involving "universal values".

Many people in the west maintain that Chinese citizens are "repressed" because the political system does not allow the exercise of certain freedoms that we in the west consider fundamental. The press is censured, protest is not allowed and people have no input into the composition of their government, among other things. We tend to assume that people in China would prefer to live in a western-style system where they have greater individual freedoms and more political rights, and if that is not the case, we assume that they have been "brainwashed" by government control of the media.

The other side of the story is what you tend to hear from the government of China when they are asked about these issues. They argue that a claim for universal values (that also happen to be the fundamental values of the west) is an imperialistic viewpoint meant to force those (subjective) values on everyone. They argue that there are fundamental differences in the value systems of most Chinese compared to most westerners, and that makes a western style of government inappropriate for China. Probably the simplest example of this is the claim that Chinese people place less value on individualism than do people in the west and therefore the trade-off between individual freedom and collective harmony has a different optimal result.

As with many things in life, the evidence suggests to me that the truth is somewhere between the two extremes. There are four observations in particular that I find interesting when thinking about this issue.

First, there does seem to be evidence that the Chinese system of government has an efficiency advantage over other systems, based on the successful development of the country. The appropriate comparatives to look at here are not the OECD countries, but countries that were at a similar level of development to China in 1978, when Deng Xiaoping began implementing his reforms. It is important to note that China's advantage does not appear to be a result of the old argument that dictatorships are more efficient than democracies because they are better able to make unpopular but necessary decisions. China does look to have a development advantage over large, resource-rich democracies like India and Brazil, but it also appears to have a significant advantage over other authoritarian systems in big countries like Egypt and Iran and over hybrid or changing systems in Russia, Indonesia and South Africa.

Instead, I see the evidence as suggesting that China has been successful because their system has been effective in creating somewhat of a meritocratic government. Most of the people running the government in China are well educated and intelligent technocrats who are committed to making evidence-based decisions. Compared to many democracies, this may be an advantage because the skill sets and decision-making systems that are favoured when standing for election are often not the same as those that make an effective public servant. China has also been able to avoid the patronage, corruption and instability that has plagued other authoritarian systems.

The second observation that I would make is that the idea of Chinese citizens as ignorant, repressed or brainwashed seems to be fairly inaccurate. When I was in China, the great majority of people that I met were quite content with their lives and believed their country was headed in the right direction. I don't subscribe to the argument that the only reason for this is ignorance, or as my brother might put it, "they don't understand what it is like to be free". Despite the censorship of the press and the Internet in China, most people there have a fairly solid understanding of what goes on in the outside world with the exception of certain notable issues such as Tibet.

Many of the people I met in China genuinely believe that their system in not inferior to ours, just different. In their view, the two systems each have advantages and disadvantages, and emphasize different things. External evidence also seems to support that this is a genuine opinion and not a result of "brainwashing", as studies indicate that even in Hong Kong, with a free press and better access to information, approval ratings for the government in Beijing are quite high.

Although the government of China seems to be effective and generally well-liked, there are contrasting observations and arguments to be made as well.

The first thing to note is that although China has done a good job avoiding corruption per se, there has, by most accounts, been a significant expansion of the bureaucracy over the decades. This is less damaging than it might be in a system of crony capitalism where the expanding bureaucracy is skill-deficient, but even in China, it is likely to have adverse effects sooner rather than later. I heard an anecdote recently that I thought was illustrative of this and I would be interested to know how much truth there is to it:

"After the establishment of the PRC, Mao pretty much made the key decisions himself, possibly consulting with a small group of advisers. Once Deng Xiaoping came to power, there was more consultation and a larger group of decision makers but Deng still commanded ultimate authority. When Jiang Zemin took power, and then Hu Jintao, the same trend continued. With each generation of leadership, decision-making is taking longer and is more politicized, the state is less responsive and therefore less effective"

The second, and larger issue, in my view, is the limits and threats to the expansion of non-zero sumness in China. From a moral point of view, the limits set on freedom of expression in China are likely to limit the establishment of a true moral consensus in China. Even in the economic arena, China's growth is likely to be slowed by restrictions on communication and breakdowns in trust that are hard to avoid in authoritarian systems.

This is quite possibly what is causing an "innovation deficit" in China, where a society and educational system focused on efficiency, conformity and hierarchy has trouble creating an environment conducive to free thought and the type of revolutionary thinking that has led to innovations like the Internet. This, to me, is the best explanation as to why China is very good at improving on existing ideas and lowering costs, but has yet to produce any large-scale innovations in technology.

All that considered, I asked myself if there could be a third way. A third way that could give China some of the benefits of democracy and openness while maintaining distinctly Chinese characteristics and the advantages of the current system.

Suppose that prior to each leadership cycle, the Communist Party selected 5-10 candidates for President and Premier based on formalized versions of the criteria that have seemingly been utilized in recent transitions. This would result in a slate of candidates that are educated, experienced and intelligent, but also candidates that would presumably maintain continuity with existing policy and focus on incremental change rather than revolutionary shifts. This system would maintain the traditional Chinese focus on the importance of education, seniority and continuity.

Following the selection of the candidates by the party, each candidate would be given a list of 5-10 "topics", of which roughly 1/3rd would be constant cycle-to-cycle, one-third would be developed by the Party, and one third developed by popular submission (likely using technology). The types of questions I would envision would be as follows:

- What is your strategy to continue China's economic development and "peaceful rise"?
· How would you manage the growing income inequality within China?
· Should China take a more active role in international issues such as the Arab-Israeli conflict?
· How can protection of the environment be balanced with economic development?

Perhaps later, once the system was firmly established, more controversial questions would be allowed:

· How should China manage its relations with Taiwan?
· How can China better accommodate ethnic minorities in Tibet and Xinjiang?

Each of the candidates for President and Premier would have to produce a short essay (perhaps the equivalent of 1,500 words) on each topic, and these essays would be published broadly. No other information about the candidates would be released to the public, not even their names. The public would then elect the new generation of leadership based on the policy prescriptions laid down in the essays. This would force people to make decisions based on policy only, and would echo the centuries-old Chinese examination system that was the world's first truly meritocratic appointments system and also the de facto requirement for each Chinese leader to add their philosophy to the official state doctrine (as with Deng Xiaopeng Theory or Hu Jintao's Scientific Development Concept). It would also effectively limit the franchise to those people interested enough to inform themselves about the issues.

With a mandate from the people, a Chinese leadership team elected in this manner would likely be able to relax control over information and the press, and would probably be accepted into the international community as a "democracy with Chinese characteristics". This could allow the development of a true moral consensus within China and would certainly contribute to an expansion of non-zero sumness.

Deng Xiaoping was once asked why he wanted to study in France, and he replied "To learn knowledge and truth from the West in order to save China". Later in his life, Deng applied that knowledge to lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty while at the same time creating a strong sense of national identity and paving the way for China's "peaceful rise" under his successors. In the same way, I think China can learn from the west's experience with democracy and create a uniquely Chinese system for the 21st century. Deng did in fact, save China. His successors must now set it free.

These Are The Voyages...(3 of 10)

Although income tax changes would be a good first step towards a global meritocracy, far bigger steps toward that goal are possible through the establishment of global equality of opportunity. I think that the clarity I see on this issue compared to the others makes it one of the most important goals to focus on in the 21st century.

Unlike my proposed income tax changes, which would affect 167,000 people (166,000 high income earners in Canada making over $250,000/yr and 1000 contribution-prize winners), global equality of opportunity has the potential to help 95% of the people on the planet. Even if my income tax provisions were applied globally, they would probably affect less than 5% of the world population. Therefore, this goal has to be considered much more critical.

As I outlined in the first post of this series, I see two major components necessary to achieving global equality of opportunity. The first one is obtaining equality of opportunity between countries. Significant progress has already been made on this goal, with many more countries being welcomed into the developed world in the last 50 years. Chinese and Indian incomes are rising fast, and their educational systems are sufficiently robust that most children in China, and a significant number in India, now have the foundation necessary to accomplish virtually any goal they may set for themselves.

In China and India, the work that remains to be done is the equalization of probabilities - that is, it is still much more likely that an American kid will grow up to be rich and powerful compared to his Chinese counterpart. This equalization will gradually materialize if China and India continue to integrate globally and pursue sensible economic policies, and the west should encourage that rather than fear it.

There are a number of other countries, however, where the probabilities of achieving a western standard of living are infinitesimal for most people. In China and India, to some extent, we can stand by and watch the global market begin to equalize opportunities and standards of living, but for other countries, more help will be required.

The countries that are the farthest from equality of opportunity are primarily located in Africa and Central/Western Asia. The biggest common denominator among them is the lack of an adequate education system, but other commonalities include high birth rates, corruption and AIDS prevalence. These are all issues we can do something about.

In terms of education, my belief is that a large percentage of our foreign aid should be going towards the development of secular education systems in these countries. Ideally this would be done in conjunction with a Canadian civil service program, as I discussed in my post Across the Sea. Intense political pressure should be applied to all these countries, particularly with respect to education of girls, as many studies have shown that education of girls is extremely effective at lowering birth rates and fostering development. Health care and microfinance would also be key initiatives, as the above linked post describes.

In tandem with this, we should aim to bring these countries into the global economy more effectively, especially with regard to trade. As I have previously pointed out, the competitive advantage that many of these countries have is in agriculture. The elimination of agricultural subsidies in developed countries could go a long way towards bringing some of the world's poorest countries forward.

Those few initiatives will not be enough, but they would be a good start. Further initiatives could come from looking at the experiences of successful developing countries in Asia and Eastern Europe and modelling development of their experiences. As ardent of a free-trader as I typically am, I recognize that the evidence does show that some protectionism in the early stages of development followed by a later entry into global markets has been very successful in places like South Korea, Taiwan and even China. There are other lessons that can be learned from the experiences of those countries as well.

A final obstacle to the type of global integration that would bring about true equality of opportunity is the fragmented worldwide immigration system. I believe that the ideal we should be aiming for on immigration is of a free flow of people between nation-states, with those states essentially competing for the best people worldwide. People would be able to go to the country whose moral and organizational systems most appealed to them, and this would encourage countries to provide high-performance government as they would be essentially forced to compete for human capital in a competitive market.

Such a system is not possible in today's world, because economic disparity is still too great. If free migration was allowed, the massive influx of immigrants would destabilize the developed countries and destroy the societies that those immigrants wanted to participate in in the first place. For this reason, I think that the first priority has to be equalizing levels of development globally, which can then be followed by the loosening of immigration rules. However, it would not be a bad idea for developed countries to continue relaxing restrictions on immigration, perhaps with the intermediate-term goal of having a relatively open labour market within the OECD. I still have a lot of thinking to do on short-medium term immigration policy before I can get much more specific than that.

Although achieving a more equal balance between countries is probably more critical, equality of opportunity within countries is also important, and I will address that in my next post.

Shikata Ga Nai

As we hit the 42nd anniversary of the moon landing, and the last flight of the Space Shuttle, there are plenty of articles out there talking about the end of human spaceflight. I don't think the space program will ultimately end, but if it did, that would be a travesty of unimaginable proportions.

I believe that the three great endeavours that humanity has undertaken in our history are exploration, science and philosophy, and it is our destiny as a species to continue with these things. To abandon them would be to adopt an isolationist, luddite and closed-minded attitude that will take us nowhere but to extinction. Humans are driven to explore, to find new places, new technologies and new understanding of the universe. Not only that, but we have a moral obligation, as the most advanced life that we know of, to preserve and protect all life, especially intelligent life, because that is the one thing that gives the universe meaning.

Shikata Ga Nai.

There is no other choice.

Kim Stanley Robinson (via Sax Russell) says it best. This passage is about Mars, but it applies just as well to every other part of the universe.

“The beauty of Mars exists in the human mind. Without the human presence it is just a concatenation of atoms, no different than any other random speck of matter in the universe. It's we who understand it, and we who give it meaning. All our centuries of looking up at the night sky and watching it wander through the stars. All those nights of watching it through the telescopes, looking at a tiny disk trying to see canals in the albedo changes. All those dumb sci-fi novels with their monsters and maidens and dying civilizations. And all the scientists who studied the data, or got us here. That's what makes Mars beautiful. Not the basalt and the oxides.

Now that we are here, it isn't enough to just hide under ten meters of soil and study the rock. That's science, yes, and needed science too. But science is more than that. Science is part of a larger human enterprise, and that enterprise includes going to the stars, adapting to other planets, adapting them to us. Science is creation.

The lack of life here, and the lack of any finding in fifty years of the SETI program, indicates that life is rare, and intelligent life even rarer. And yet the whole meaning of the universe, its beauty, is contained in the consciousness of intelligent life. We are the consciousness of the universe, and our job is to spread that around, to go look at things, to live everywhere we can. It's too dangerous to keep the consciousness of the universe on only one planet, it could be wiped out.

And so now we're on two, three if you count the moon. And we can change this one to make it safer to live on. Changing it won't destroy it. Reading its past might get harder, but the beauty of it won't go away. If there are lakes, or forests, or glaciers, how does that diminish Mars's beauty? I don't think it does. I think it only enhances it. It adds life, the most beautiful system of all. But nothing life can do will bring Tharsis down, or fill Marineris. Mars will always remain Mars, different from Earth, colder and wilder. But it can be Mars and ours at the same time. And it will be.

There is this about the human mind; if it can be done, it will be done. We can transform Mars and build it like you would build a cathedral, as a monument to humanity and the universe both. We can do it, so we will do it. So we might as well start.”

Arnulfo Quimare

I highly recommend the book "Born to Run" by Christopher McDougall. Among other things, it is a story about these two guys: Scott Jurek and Arnulfo Quimare. In between epic race stories, the book has a number of discussions on nutrition, running form, shoes and of course, the Raramuri people.

The book provided a little inspiration and a few tips that I hope will help me with my 5k goal for this year, and with longer-distance goals beyond that. I don't think I'll ever be doing 100k runs like Scott and Arnulfo, but I do want to knock the marathon off my bucket list sooner rather than later.

Here's a short February update on my 2011 goals:

1a. I succeeded at this goal 4/4 weeks in February. I may have made this goal somewhat too easy, and I will reassess during March and possibly update for April. I think I am leaning toward a suggestion from Dana to cap snacks/workout at a set weight (like 200g) as opposed to a "number of bags". That may serve to up the difficulty and increase the measurability of my progress.

1b. Epic fail. I technically failed this goal 3/4 weeks, but I ate at least some unhealthy food at probably half of the meals on our cruise, so to me it feels like I missed 4/4. This goal is proving to be tough because you don't always have complete control over meals. There were a couple occasions where I had already had an unhealthy meal for the week and then I was heading for food with other people and the group consensus led me astray. Of course, there were some other times when I just didn't do it. I'll try to improve this one in March.

2. I visited Belize and Honduras for the first time in February. I enjoyed both experiences, but I'm not sure if either is high on my list to go back to. Belize has potential though, I could see myself back there at some point, if not in the immediate future.

Amit let me know that the letter of the law may not allow me to get a speeding ticket for running too fast. Darn!

3. I've been running pretty consistiently throughout the month, and I think I will at least make an attempt at the Mother's Day run. Unfortunately, I've mostly been running on treadmills, but hopefully it will be warm enough to test the course soon. I think I'm almost back to the level of fitness I was at last year...I think I have a sub-21 minute 5k in me right now, but I'm not down to 20 yet.

4. Not much progress to report here.

5. I've been good about supersetting biceps/triceps regularly and I am starting to see an improvement already. My 3-set, 10-rep bicep curl is up to 55 lbs and my overhead tricep is up to 40 lbs. I want to begin varying my superset in March to continue to provide muscle confusion.

Get out there and run everyone! Embrace the pain and learn to beat it like it's a competitor, and run because you love it, not because it's a chore!

Feel it Turn

In 2010, I had two New Year's resolutions. They were:

1. Develop a concrete plan for Dana & I to be in the same place by the end of 2010

and

2. Make 2010 a cash-flow positive year, despite buying a car

I accomplished both of these goals, the latter by less than $100, but I was generally pretty happy with the way 2010 went. I therefore was planning to go about 2011 the same way, with a couple of resolutions that I would slowly progress, without much planning and without putting them down on paper. However, a read of Vincci's super-organized goal-setting process and a realization that my goals this year were more incremental than 2010's prompted me to put something down on paper, albeit a month late. I think that will give me more of an incentive to keep to my plan to accomplish these goals and allow me to set more than just the one or two I had in my head. Some of them, as Vincci also noted, will probably carry over to 2012 as multi-year goals. Anyway, here goes:

1. Eat healthier in 2011 than 2010

Obviously this is one of the most popular resolutions around, and one of the hardest ones to keep. I therefore feel that this resolution is better attacked by breaking it down into a number of sub-goals that can be individually tracked and accomplished.

1a. Limit eating of unhealthy snacks (primarily chips/Cheetos/pretzels/popcorn) to one bag per workout. If I average 3 workouts per week, I want to limit myself to three bags of junk food. Specifically exempt from this resolution are small quantities of one-time snacks, like stealing a gummy bear from a friend.

1b. Limit unhealthy meals to 1 time per week. This resolution, like most, has a subjective dividing line, which I will define as precisely as I can to avoid cheating. Therefore, I will define unhealthy meals as: burger chains, fried chicken, westernized Chinese food, pizza, chicken wings and anything else clearly lacking nutritional value. Not included will be meals that are primarily healthy with a small unhealthy element (a mostly healthy breakfast with bacon included) or "tier 2 semi-unhealthy food," such as red meat, high sodium foods, alcohol, or cheese.

1c. Once I have moved to a new place with Dana (June) I will commit to home-cooking at least 3 dinners per week, with at least one new healthy recipe tried per week.

2. Make progress on my bucket list.

Right now, I have seventeen things on my bucket list. Many of them are clearly not achievable in 2011, but my goal is to knock at least one thing off the list, while making progress on others. The one that I will definitely make progress on is "Visit 100 countries," as I have booked trips to visit at least 3, possibly 4, new countries this year.

Others that I could possibly accomplish this year include:

Getting a speeding ticket for running too fast

See Peyton Manning play

Attending a taping of the Colbert Report

Run every day for a month

I could also make progress toward running a marathon or attending the Summer Olympics. I also expect to grow the list, so it is possible I could accomplish something that isn't on the list currently.

3. Crack 20 mins for a 5k.

This was a borderline 2010 resolution, but I did not make it official and did not accomplish it in 2010, so I will make it official for 2011. My current best since graduating from university is just under 21 minutes. I will try to run the Mother's Day run this year, and if that doesn't happen, then I will target the fall for an attempt.

4. Continue simplifying my life and focus on high-quality, multi-use possessions.

This is a tricky one to explain, because I am not talking about rejecting materialism or aggressively reducing the number of possessions that I have. I am merely talking about continuous evaluation of the question "Do I really need this stuff". Additionally, I want to focus on having higher-quality possessions instead of more stuff. I have already started working on this in 2010, with projects like digitizing my DVD collection so that I can get rid of the DVD's, digitizing as many bills/account statements as possible and significantly improving the quality of my wardrobe. I want to specifically exempt books from this equation, as I have many books and believe that they are a collection worth keeping, and adding to.

Areas where I believe I can make progress in 2011 include consolidating toiletries, building an efficient, high quality kitchen in my new place, continuing to digitize information and continuing wardrobe turnover.

5. My fifth and last 2011 resolution is to improve my arm strength. For several years, arm strength has been a weakness of mine because of its lack of applicability to running. While I have developed serviceable upper body strength in my chest and shoulders, my arms still need work. I will progress on this by tacking on at least one arm exercise or superset at the end of runs, when time permits. I may consider trying P90x to improve overall general fitness & strength.

I will try to update progress monthly. I also want to get back to my "22nd Century Economy" post series fairly soon.

Cathedrals

My first attempt at a photo essay. Enjoy!

"Pantheum vetustate corruptum cum omni cultu restituerunt"

Our Long Childhood

"Perhaps there is a kind of silver lining to these global...problems, because they are forcing us, willy-nilly, no matter how reluctant we may be, into a new kind of thinking - in which some matters the well-being of the human species takes precedence over national and corporate interests. We are a resourceful species when push comes to shove. We know what to do. Out of the...crises of our time should come, unless we are much more foolish than I think we are, a binding up of the nations and the generations, and even the end of our long childhood."

-Carl Sagan

The moment I read this, in Carl's Billions & Billions, I knew I had a new addition to my list of favourite quotations. There are two reasons that I am interested in the issues that make up this blog, and Carl's quote captures both of them. I am concerned about the magnitude and urgency of the problems we face as a species, but I feel like my generation has the potential to turn those challenges into a new "finest hour" for humanity, and I share Carl's optimism that the 21st century may be the last century of our long childhood.

I have been thinking a lot lately about the challenges we will have to overcome in the next 100 years. I have begun a series of posts on the problems we will face converting our economy into one better suited for the next age, and I have talked about the necessity of making policy with long-term goals in mind. It is the latter that I am going to focus on in this post.

I have discussed specific environmental and economic goals that I believe we should base long-term policy around in other posts, and I have also discussed philosophical and moral goals in some fashion. In this post, I am going to back out a bit, and try to formulate a set of goals that I believe humanity can achieve in the 21st century. These goals will be as all-encompassing as possible, and they represent the things I think humanity must achieve if we are to truly grow up as a species.

1. Develop a workable Theory of Everything

This goal may be a bit misleading, as it is possible a true "Theory of Everything" does not exist or is scientifically unverifiable. However, I believe that our understanding of physics, including the relationship between relativity and quantum mechanics, is incomplete, and before we can truly claim to be a mature species, we must understand the "purest science" more fully.

2. Travel to, and permanently inhabit, another planet

I have discussed in the past the biological and moral imperative our species possesses with regard to the colonization of other worlds. The moon landing was the greatest single achievement in human history, but in the 40 years since, we have accomplished very little. Of course there have been significant successes, including Hubble, the Shuttle, the ISS and the Mars rovers, but they pale in comparison to the giant leaps we took as a species from October 4th, 1957 to August 27th, 1977, between the launch of Sputnik and the launch of Voyager 2.

We need to recapture the spirit of those times, and turn our minds, and our dollars, to the stars once again. Mars seems the most likely candidate, and the technology exists to go there, and live there, today. All it would take is money and political will. It is also possible that we could go to Venus first, as it is our closest neighbour, and the upper atmosphere of Venus presents the most earth-like conditions anywhere in the solar system. If we could design some sort of cloud city, the colonization of Venus is within reach as well.

3. Establish a global political framework capable of addressing global-scale issues

I have talked extensively about this issue as well. I am not advocating world government, as I believe that the majority of issues are better solved at a lower level of government than that, just as I believe that the federal government in Canada should only manage those issues that cannot be managed more effectively at the provincial or local level.

What I do believe we need is an effective international body capable of dealing with issues of global scale. National governments have proven to be awful at addressing these issues, just as you might expect. I also believe that continued economic integration, and the continued growth of non-zero sumness, will eventually become limited by the lack of political integration across the world.

They system I envision, as discussed in previous posts, is something roughly halfway between the UN and the EU, although in many ways very different from either. Its main responsibilities would be stewarding the global economy/international trade, protecting the global environment, running a global space program, and coordinating peacekeeping/arms proliferation/diplomatic activities in the way the UN Security Council attempts to do today.

4. Establish universal basic education for all children

This one is a no-brainer. No species can claim to be a mature one when millions of its children are not educated. Education is a fairly easy service to provide, and has countless spillover benefits, not the least of which is further leveling of the global economic playing field. Also extremely important is the effect that the education of women has on decreasing population growth rates, and the importance of comprehensive secular education in leading youth away from fundamentalism and extremism.

5. Understand the process by which life came to be on Earth

Every culture in the history of the world has wondered about this question. Who are we? Why are we here, and how did it happen? How unlikely was our existence and what does that tell us about life elsewhere in the universe?

Part of this question is cosmological - investigating how the universe came to be the way it is. Further understanding of that question is covered under goal #1. Another part is evolutionary, how we got from microbes to humans. That bit is fairly well understood today. The last part is perhaps the most mysterious - how a dead Earth came to life about 4.5 billion years ago. If we can answer that question, we will take one more giant leap towards adulthood, whether or not we choose not to use our knowledge to create new life.

6. Create a "learning computer"

This is another goal that might be slightly misstated, as there is not an agreement about what constitutes "artificial intelligence" and by some definitions, we already have "learning computers". What I believe we need to accomplish is to advance computer science and robotics to a level where the vast majority of human effort can be turned towards higher pursuits. If we can solve tough problems in computing, like accurate language translation, voice-to-text, automated call centres that actually work, and mostly robotic manufacturing, we will have accomplished something important.

Progress in this area will be key to any interplanetary colonization effort as well. Take Mars as an example. Initially, it will be very expensive to transport people to Mars and keep them alive there. That means that the large industrial projects that will be the first step to building a new home will have to be mostly automated. Among other things, the construction of subterranean living habitats, the mining of key minerals, and the construction and operation of factories generating massive amounts of chlorofluorocarbons or perfluorocarbons will have to be primarily done by robots. This will require better robots than we have today.

Other advances in computing could also be key. Computers have transformed our society, and the leap from today's computers to say, quantum computers could be equally revolutionary.

7. Ensure environmental sustainability

This goal is a tough one to define, because no one really knows what the word "sustainability" means. I have previously stated that I believe the primary long-term goal of environmental policy is to restore 50% of each of Earth's biomes to a pre-human state, but I think that that goal is very long-term and unnecessary to reach what I would call "adulthood". Instead, I think that the primary goals that we have to reach in the next century have to do with what I will call "peak rates". These goals include:

- Achieve a peak in land use before 2100 and preferably much sooner (this means that the total land used by humans will begin to decline towards the aforementioned 50%)

- Achieve a peak in non-renewable energy use by 2050. Diminishing supplies will probably force our hand here, but the top priorities here are to drastically reduce the use of coal (probably by substituting natural gas in the short-term) and get our heads around viable nuclear fusion.

- Achieve a peak in the rate of species extinctions ASAP. This is a critical problem and we are running out of time.

- Achieve a peak in global carbon emissions and the rate of global temperature increase by 2100 or sooner.

- Achieve a plateau in the population growth rate by 2100.

- There are probably others that I can't think of, but these are the key ones.

8. Eradicate extreme poverty

Another no-brainer. All the other great achievements in this post cannot be for only a portion of humanity. We are all in this together, and a key step to levelling the global playing field is to make sure that no one is so poor they cannot survive.

9. Gain the ability to become a Type 1 civilization on the Kardashev scale

This last one is fairly arbitrary, and mostly an enabler for the other goals, but I believe the ability to harness the power of an entire Earth, roughly 1.74x10^17 watts, will be neccessary to reach these other goals. If efficiency gains are such that I am proven wrong, so much the better, but without the ability, most likely using fusion, I can't see a way to reach all of our other goals.

Humanity today is akin to an unruly teenager. We know some things, and we can use that knowledge in some productive ways, but we don't yet know enough and we are not yet wise enough to understand ourselves and our responsibilities.

The day is not far away, but it will take more work before humanity can grow up.

Walk on the Moon (2 of 10)

I have struggled over the last few months to formulate ideas to continue this series of posts. The issues here are pretty formidable, and most of them will not have an easy solution. In particular, the problem of externalities is a difficult one, I have been unable to come up with any credible alternatives to government management in the near term. I have also had trouble with formulating credible ideas on solving the technological efficiency/cost efficiency problem and the labour-saving technology issue. I have some ideas on inherited wealth, corporate democracy and global equality of opportunity, but they definitely need further refinement before they are ready to be put down on paper.

The one issue on which I feel like have a formulated at least a beginning solution is the disconnect in our society between profit and contribution. I began by considering the problem as the sum of two smaller problems. First, there are people whose earnings exceed their contribution, however you might define that. Second, there are people whose earnings do not reflect the contributions they have made.

The first group is harder to deal with. I don't think that you can ever come to a fair enough definition of contribution to be able to levy any type of tax or fine to solve this problem. The best solution that I could come up with would be a short-term one, which would involve the addition of a new top-income tax bracket. In the longer term, I actually think that income tax should be completely eliminated, with the revenues replaced by a variety of "optional" taxes like graduated sales tax and pollution taxes.

In any event, the idea goes like this: add a new income tax bracket for those individuals making more than $250,000 per year, with a marginal tax rate of something like 35% (the current top federal rate is 29% for those making over $127,021). Then, allow people to exempt themselves from this bracket (back to 29%) if they can find 1,000 people that will agree with the statement "In my opinion, this person has made sufficient contributions to Canadian society to justify their income".

This system would have to be administered electronically for ease of use. It would ideally be administered by the CRA and combined with the other system I will describe later in this post. Basically, each individual with an income over $250,000 could make a voluntary election on their income tax return to be eligible for the program in the following year. You would also allow each person declaring eligibility to make a 50-word statement about why they think they deserve this rebate. The CRA would publish a searchable database containing only the names and statements of people who had declared. Any Canadian could then access this database through the CRA website, using their social insurance number and a password, and support the claim of as many people as they saw fit.

Hopefully, this would partially and temporarily mitigate the problem by providing a tax incentive for high-income earners to contribute.

The second sub-problem here, that of people who contribute but are not rewarded, could be solved using a somewhat similar system. Anyone could put their name forward for this program, provided they are a Canadian citizen and resident and made under $250,000 in the previous year. Upon applying, each person would fill out and publish a standardized profile, highlighting their contributions to Canadian society. Once you had submitted your profile, it would be vetted by the CRA to make sure that you met the income, residency and citizenship criteria, and then made available on the web. Each person would have 30 days to accumulate 100 votes, in order to keep the number of profiles manageable. Once someone accumulates 100 votes, their profile would be available for the balance of the year. Profiles would be extensively searchable for ease of use.

Each Canadian, upon logging into the CRA system, would be given five votes per year to allocate to five people of their choice. At the end of the year, the top 1000 vote-getters would be written a cheque for $100,000 each. The cost of this program, $100mm plus admin costs, would be high, but I think it would be worth it to help reconcile the differences between profit and contribution. If the program was successful, it could be expanded.

In conjunction, I think these two programs would be a great first step towards rewarding contribution, and one small step towards the 23rd century.

Another Land, Beneath Another Sky

Sadly, Lost is over.

After giving the dust a little time to settle, I would say that it is probably my second favourite serial drama of all time, second only to The West Wing, and barely edging out Star Trek: The Next Generation (although I would still rank the Star Trek franchise as a whole ahead of it). I thought carefully about whether it should be first, but although The West Wing faltered a little in its later years, the first four or five seasons were so well written, so intellectually stimulating, and so real-world relevant they edge out the epic mythology, mysticism and cultural connectivity that makes Lost so amazing.

Lost could have been the best. I'm not sure when that title slipped away, but I would venture that the series hit its high point either in the second half of season 2 with "The 23rd Psalm,"" The Hunting Party,""Lockdown" and "Live Together, Die Alone," or in late season 3 and early season 4, with "The Man Behind the Curtain,""Through the Looking Glass," and "The Constant". Some parts of the last two seasons were mishandled a bit, and that is probably what prevented the show from being my favourite of all time.

Certain episodes of the show, however, rate right up there with the best episodes of any television show I have ever seen. The gold standards for me have always been TNG's "The Best of Both Worlds" and the West Wing's "Two Cathedrals", with honourable mentions to The Simpsons "Homer the Great," and several episodes of The Colbert Report & the original Law & Order. Here are my 10 favourite episodes of Lost, the best of which will stand beside the episodes I have just listed as the benchmark for any future TV show I watch:

1. Exodus

2. Walkabout

3. The Hunting Party

4. Live Together, Die Alone

5. Pilot

6. The Constant

7. The Man Behind the Curtain

8. Orientation

9. Through the Looking Glass

10. The Shape of Things to Come

Honourable mentions to Lockdown and Raised by Another, two more great episodes that just missed the top 10. I also have to say that the episode commonly regarded to be the series' best, "The Constant," dropped a little for me because as wonderful as the Desmond/Penny phone call was, I was underwhelmed by the rest of the episode, and feel that the "time travelling consciousness" theme didn't fit well logically with the other time travel presented in the show.

After all this, all these great episodes, the hours of reading theories online, where did the end of the show leave us? The most common response I have heard is "confused," and there certainly were some loose ends left hanging. However, I think that leaving a little ambiguity allows viewers to complete the story in their own minds, which allows a broad spectrum of people to feel satisfied with the show.

That said, here is my interpretation of the show's overarching mythology. I have to give credit to Entertainment Weekly's Jeff Jensen for his thoughts about the effects of the Source on people's souls, which influenced my own thinking.

My first thought about the show is that there is a place for some kind of God in the mythology. Nowhere was this more clear to me than during the final scene. The room Jack & Christian were in could not have expressed more clearly that all the world's religions are just different narratives trying to explain the same thing, the "one true way". Once you accept that, and based on the other evidence presented in the finale, I think it is pretty easy to conclude that the show subscribes to the religions tenet that the difference between people and animals, the cause of consciousness, is that humans possess some kind of soul, given to them by God, which persists into another life after bodily demise.

If each person in the Lost world is a blend of body and soul, I agree with Jeff Jensen that the Source is what gives people those immortal souls. This makes those theories about the Island being the Garden of Eden seem very accurate to me. When Desmond shut off the Source, everyone's souls ceased to be immortal and (in my mind) slowly began to fade away, as the Island started to sink into the sea. I imagine that if Jack had not restarted the Source, everyone in the world would have slowly lost their humanity, and the MiB, if he had escaped, would have been free to institute a reign of terror for a short time before his own soul finally faded away, leaving the universe empty, without consciousness, without love, and without meaning.

However, the show suggests that the source has a variety of other powers besides its soul-giving property. It seems likely to be the cause of the Island's healing powers, and most likely the cause of the Island's constant movement and difficulty of accessing it. It also seems to allow certain people, notably Desmond, Miles, Hurley, MiB, Jack, Ben and Locke, to interact with people who are deceased. Given the finale's reveal about the stages of the afterlife, it is likely that all the people who appeared were still in the "purgatory" stage and that the Source allows people to somehow interact between planes. Desmond appears to be the only one who can actually be simultaneously aware of both worlds. Finally, the source is likely able to be harnessed by "special" people like Jacob and Walt to accomplish various paranormal phenomena.

If you accept all that, which I believe derives relatively easily from the show, you can start to extrapolate to more speculative thoughts on the Lost universe. My current thought on some of the dialogue in "Across the Sea" suggests to me that in addition to the properties listed above, the Source is the cause of human free will. The show suggests, both by the very existence of the Valenzetti equation and by the philosophy of "course correction," that the Lost universe is mostly deterministic, but with a small allowance for free will.

If you take that in conjunction with Mother's statement that everyone has "a little bit of the light inside them, but they always want more" in that context it makes perfect sense. Everyone has a little free will, ability to change small things about the world, but what they all desire is more ability to control their own destiny, and ultimately, the ability to change the Valenzetti equation and change the destiny of the human race. However, people like Eloise & Mother, who warn against trying to do this ("you could put it out") believe that because power is corrupting, that if humans actually succeeded in grabbing control of their own destiny, it would lead to evil instead of good. They believe (I think) that destiny is best left in God's hand rather than man's.

Given that mythological context, some of the mysteries of the island become more clear. I will try and go through some of the ones that irked me the most. The first of these has to do with the show's final scene. There has been much debate about the people who ended up in the church at the end of the show, and why they were there to the exclusion of others. As the show explained, the sideways were a kind of shared consciousness, constructed by the souls of the people that had died, because they could not move on until the group was complete.

There also seems to be an element of repentance for people like Ben, Michael and Ana Lucia, who have passed into the sideways but must stay there "a bit longer" to atone for the sins of their life. The Island's properties as the source of human souls makes it "closer" per se to the sideways and enables limited communication between worlds.

So, in a nutshell I see it like this: when you die, you pass into the shared consciousness. If you are a "good person," you simply stay there until you have formed a complete group of the people who were truly important to you in your life. Then you move on (I like to think that when they walked into the light they ended up back on the Island, but a version of the island that was "more real" like the new Narnia at the end of C.S. Lewis' The Last Battle).

On the other hand, if you have been a "bad person," you must accomplish two things before you can move on. Not only must you find your "core group", but you must also atone for your crimes, and if you cannot, or will not, you remain in limbo forever.

So, when we see the group in the church (Christian, Jack, Kate, Hurley, Libby, Sawyer, Juliet, Desmond, Penny, Sun, Jin, Charlie, Claire, Aaron, Sayid, Boone, Shannon, Locke, Rose & Bernard) it makes sense for the most part. There are, however, some loose ends. The first of these is Sayid. His whole backstory has been about his great love for Nadia, and although he may have loved Shannon as well, the fact that he could move on without Nadia seems wrong. The second problem is Aaron. Why is he a baby? Presumably, if he has died, he would appear as an adult.

I also originally had a problem with the absence of Walt, but have changed my mind on this one. Others had a problem with the presence of Penny, or the absence of Helen, but I did not. Locke's real love was for the Island, although he loved Helen as well, that love was lesser. Conversely, Penny's whole life was bound to Desmond, and they could not move on without each other.

I am going to pretend that Nadia was in the church, and that Aaron was, like Jack's son David, an illusion created by the shared consciousness of the people in the church in order to facilitate the "moving on". The real Aaron is not in the sideways, I like to think, because he is not dead. There was an enormous amount of talk in the early seasons of Lost that both Walt and Aaron (more so Walt) were "special," a plotline that was never really resolved. My theory here is that sometime well after the ending of the show, Walt and Aaron return to the Island to fulfill their destinies, and eventually end up replacing Ben and Hurley as the #1 and #2 protectors of the Island. This allows Hurley and Ben to move on with the others, and ties up nicely Walt and Aaron's connection to the Island.

There are a number of other small things that still bug me about the overarching story of Lost, things like the Egyptians, the Supply Drop (and the ultimate fate of Dharma/Alvar Hanso), Miles' weird abilities despite not being "special" in the way other characters were, and the weird consciousness-flashing that Desmond experienced.

Nonetheless, I will leave it there except to say that I always thought (back in the early seasons) that the very best ending to Lost would have all the characters standing on the beach, as a rescue boat finally pulls up to take them all home. They all look at their would-be rescuers, and then at each other, and the series ends with a montage (ideally set to Blue Rodeo's "Lost Together") of each survivor flashing back to some of their moments of joy on the Island, realizing that there was nothing for them back in the real world, and one by one, starting with Locke and ending with Jack, turn around, away from rescue, and slowly walk into the jungle, embracing their destinies.