Since my one post some time ago, I haven’t come back to the topic of depression, but I do have something to write on the subject tonight.

Up until 1990, I was an on-and-off smoker, though for the last couple of years preceeding 1990 I was a very heavy smoker, often over two packs a day. It was definitely a nicotine addiction, and it had a lot of power over me. The only reason I was able to quit was that I began seeing a woman who was both allergic to cigarette smoke, and had asthma; given the choice between cigarettes and her, I chose her, and a few days ago we celebrated our seventeenth wedding anniversary.

It was very hard to quit; apart from the physical discomfort, I had to rewire my brain to be able to enjoy activities like meals, drinks, a night at the pub etc. without my cigarettes. But I did it, and was able to beat the addiction.

As part of my depression treatment, I have to take anti-depressive medication on a daily basis, and the scary thing is that if I don’t take my little red pill in the morning, the side-effects (generally beginning around noon) are nasty — dizziness, mood swings, etc. In a sense I am right back where I started, with a chemical dependency.

I will have to find the courage to start getting weened off this nasty stuff; drug dependencies are not fun.

Technorati Tags: Depression, Drugs, Dependency

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My wife just returned from Germany, where she was on tour with a Jewish choir based in Toronto. She is sharing the stories of the trip, whether funny, sad, or, as in the case of the following story, amazing and heart-warming.

One of the concerts in which this choir performed was a joint performance with a host German choir. During one piece, one of the singers in the Jewish choirs began to cry, although she was able to continue singing.

Afterwards, one of the singers from the German choir approached her and asked if she was OK. The singer from the Jewish choir was overwhelmed by thoughts of the Holocaust, and explained that “her grandparents were murdered during the Holocaust.” The German singer replied “and my grandparents murdered them.” She also began to cry, and the two women embraced, sharing pain and reconciliation.

I wish I could have been there to see the moment. When my wife told me the story, I could literally feel the power of forgiveness and reconciliation emanating from her words. This was not a moment about forgetting the horror that had happened, but rather two people who agreed to jointly transcend the past; not to forget it, but to deny the past any power over them. 

As long as humanity is at least occasionally capable of such acts, then maybe there is some hope for our species after all.

Technorati Tags: Germany, Music, Holocaust

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Here’s a song I wrote a couple of months ago, called Red Uniform. It’s sort of a punk song, about the Star Trek experience, but from the point of view of the nameless security guard in a read uniform, who dies in every episode. The song was done in Logic Express; the only 3rd party loop I used was for the drums; everything else is keyboards and my rather iffy electric guitar. (I normally play fingerstyle folk, so this is way out of my comfort zone).

Definitely not to be taken all that seriously.

Technorati Tags: StarTrek, Punk, JohnMeadows, Music

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In September of 2008, Oxford Canada, producer of the very successful Canadian Oxford Dictionary, closed its Canadian Dictionary division. Among the people put out of work as a result were a couple of very talented people I know. Apparently, the reason for closing the division is that Oxford is seeing the writing on the wall for printed dictionaries, in the face of free online alternatives. Printed reference materials are being seen as less and less relevant in today’s digital-everything culture, and Oxford sees no future in this business.

If I compare this situation to the auto industry, the only difference I see is that of scale, and the number of people directly affected. Apart from that, the auto sector is just another industry trying to hang on in the face of a changing economic, technological and environmental realities. Except this industry, mired in a crisis of its own making, is still showing its sense of exceptionalism and entitlement as it goes to the taxpayer, asking for still more money. The dictionary makers didn’t ask for a blank cheque.

There are those who say the auto industry is too large to be “allowed to fail.” Or is it too large to be held accountable, and be forced to adapt and innovate to changing conditions? 99% of all the species that have ever lived on this planet are extinct, and similarly, there are many, many businesses and occupations that have either become extinct, or transformed themselves into something almost unrecognizable in order to survive. In either case, it happened without government handouts.

Like it or not, the age of the automobile is drawing to a close. It might not happen tomorrow, but I believe it is inevitable. Whether by a growing consciousness of what the car does to the environment,  or the practical reality of dwindling affordability, the car will become less and less mainstream. It began as the “rich man’s plaything” and I suspect it will end that way as well. An yet, we are being asked to finance a continued delusion that this industry can cantinue under an essentially unchanged business model.

In the Second World War, whole industries were able to retool and convert seemingly overnight into producing new and different items required for the war effort. Is it not time for the auto industry to do the same? Public transit, enhanced rail transport, green energy…. there is no shortage of potential industries where success could await. There will of course be pain and sacrifice required, but bailing out the auto industry now will only forstall (and in the long run compound and prolong) the pain and sacrifice.

If we could do it sixty or more years ago, why can’t we do it today? Instead of producing the weaponry of war, we could be producing the foundation of our future on this planet.

If we only have the courage.

Technorati Tags: Automobile, Industry, Bailout

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I was just reading a bloomberg.com article about Best Buy expecting lousy Christmas sales, and the following quote jumped out at me; it may be the most offensive thing I’ve read this week so far:

“This is going to be the holiday of socks and underwear for consumers, that dreaded Christmas where that’s all you get,” said Patricia Edwards, the founder of Storehouse Partners LLC and an analyst with nine years of experience covering retailers.

Leaving aside the obvious point that there is no shortage of the homeless, the unemployed and the working poor would love to have new socks and underwear for Christmas, the whole attitude of measuring the success of Christmas by dollar signs and conspicuous consumption has never been more baldly stated than it has been here.

Will the current economic downturn teach us anything? The holiday season would be a great place to re-examine attitudes.

Technorati Tags: Christmas

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This past Friday night as a favour for an acquaintance, I recorded a poetry reading in celebration of the release of a new book of poetry by a West Coast Canadian poet. As I recorded the event, I couldn’t help but notice the similarities between what I saw at the ready, and my experiences in the Social Media community.

And indeed, the sense of community was the first thing I noticed. It was a small gathering; perhaps  twenty people in attendance, but everything indication of a community was in evidence. Every community has a social shorthand: the people who are referred to using first names only, the chuckles and smiles at the in-jokes, etc.; All the common knowledge you are expected to know.

The poet, described by the event’s host as elderly and reclusive, was not able to be at the event, so four readers read from his works. I was struck by the fact that the first two readers had never met the poet, but based on years long correspondence with him, considered him a friend. It does seem that a shared passion, as much as technology, can make geography irrelevant.

What made the deepest impression on me was the fact that people were so happy to come together to celebrate what can be a rather solitary pursuit; numerous mentions were made about how this poet’s work, like all good poetry, really comes alive when it is read aloud. The spoken word drove the community.

I see a clear parallel with the podcasting/social media community of which I am privileged to be a member: my favourite aspects are the podcamps, the meet-ups, other events, and especially the friendships I have made as a result of getting into podcasting. When we get together, and transcend the technology, that is when social media is “read aloud.”

Tags: Poetry, Podcasting

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Recently, I have seen articles/blog posts about Social Media in the Enterprise (such as this one by Mitch Joel) which paint a picture of Internal IT departments as the home of baseless obstructionism when it comes to innovation. The IT department is seen as an obstacle to be overcome or circumvented, or even as the enemy of Progress.

As an IT worker for fourteen years, I have to say enough! Even though as a software developer and social media evangelist, I often butt heads with the support and operations groups in our IT organization, I still feel I have to come to the defense of internal IT departments. For any business large enough to have an internal IT department, if the IT infrastructure is offline, the business is offline. Without network infrastructure, ERP systems, CRM systems, email etc. the business cannot function.

And in the event of a catastrophic outage, who is on the hotseat? Certainly not the high-priced social media consultant, who has split the scene to attend the next conference or power breakfast. It’s the folks with the unglamourous but vital role of keeping the IT infrastructure running. It’s easy to dismiss IT as stodgy and uncooperative if you don’t have to assume responsibility for things going wrong. I’ve had to explain to high level executives why a critical system is offline, and it is not fun. How many of these “IT is the enemy” consultants have had to do that?  IT has to assume the accountability; regardless of how it happened. (And by the way Mitch, there have been exploits of Flash, so to dismiss Flash security concerns as absurd does your customers a disservice.)

IT assets are among the most important assets a company has in today’s business environment. They cannot be treated as a playground into which to dump trendy toys. A competent IT department will obviously do its best to protect them. Consultants who are truly looking out for the interest of their clients will accept this as a given, and will work with Internal IT groups to provide safe, secure, scalable, maintainable solutions.

Technorati Tags: SocialMedia, Web2.0, IT

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Although I’m only 46 (OK, I will be 47 on Nov. 16th), Remembrance Day is one of those times where I feel my age. When I started Grade One in 1968, there were plenty of First World War veterans alive; in fact the youngest of them were not much older than retirement age. At the Ottawa cenotaph ceremony, the Silver Cross Mother (the mother of a fallen soldier) was typically the mother of a Second World War soldier. World War II veterans were numerous, and still in the prime of life.

Now, forty years later, World War I combat experience has passed from living memory. The absolute youngest of our World War II combat veterans are in their 80’s, with most older. It won’t be that long before World War II passes from living memory as well. And while sadly the war in Afghanistan is responsible for a new number of dead Canadian soldiers, I fear what may happen as the years pass.

It is important for Canadians to know the history of these conflicts, for good or for ill, from a Canadian perspective. And by history I don’t mean reveling in the memory of victory, but rather thinking upon sacrifice, loss, suffering, and the horror of war. I do not believe that Canada is a warlike nation, but there are nations, industries and political groups who profit from war, see it as a natural, unavoidable reality of existence, and believe the glory and worth of nations is measured by their ability to inflict death on others.

This glorified view of war unfortunately permeates the main stream media, and I always thought that seeing veterans, and hearing their stories, served as a vital counterbalance. When there are no veterans left, when the last soldier is gone, when the history of war is morphed into romantic legend to serve the interests of a few, who will stand up and say “I was there — let me tell you what war is like”?

Technorati Tags: War, Canada, RemembranceDay

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In his most recent blog post, my good friend Keith Burtis asks us to say why “we should look at life as one, rather than life as fragments scattered across the universe.”

In both a positive and negative sense, the story of the last few decades has been one of erasing borders. With sad exceptions such as firewalled China, the Internet has rendered borders and geography obsolete. You won’t find Cyberspace on any map, but we are all citizens of this virtual society.

In the negative sense, the problems facing the world today are problems that respect no border: climate change, economic dislocation, etc. To think that one is immune by living in a rich part of the world is just sticking ones head in the sand. Like it or not, we are all unified in the consequences we could face as the result of inaction.

For unity to work, many things will need to change, over and above what happened in the U.S. on Nov. 4th. Societies and nations (primarily Western) will need to give up the sense of entitlement and exceptionalism, and the desire to dominate and exploit. There is no leader of the free world, unless we are all leaders of the free world. And that would be a true unity.

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If we look at all the economic models that societies have used, it seems they can all be reduced down to one simple premise: there is always one group in society that has too much money. Where the difference of course, is which group had or has too much money; Marxists would rail against the rich, and the bourgeois, neo-cons complain bitterly about social benefit dollars going to “lazy welfare bums” etc. The other similarity, at least in the last couple of centuries, is that each economic model that has been used has been shown to be defective, to a greater or lesser degree, when human nature gets in the way of abstract economic theory.

Capitalism has taken a beating recently; greed and recklessness have trumped the work ethic. Those who did work hard and save, and did everything they thought they were supposed to do are finding their savings battered, and he prospect of retirement bleak.

It wasn’t supposed to work out this way, was it?

I wonder, when we do hit bottom, and the rebuilding begins, will it take place on the questionable foundation of defective old-school assumptions, or is there room for new post-millenial ideas? More sustainable development? Conspicuous consumerism ditched in place of a greener value system? Neo-subsistance? I hope so; we can’t go back to business as usual.

Technorati Tags: Economics, Politics

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