A Christmas Carol and thoughts on Capitalism

A week ago I saw “Capitalism: A Love Story,” Michael Moore's new documentary film. I thought that this might lead me to put more thoughts into the place of capitalism in the world. Now, on its own Moore's movie wasn't very inspiring, but together with Disney's new version of “A Christmas Carol” I was given a spark of thought on the issue.

“A Christmas Carol” in all of its forms is one the most popular stories that is also a scathing critique of capitalism, or at least its form in the 1800s. It shows a man so obsessed with the accumulation of wealth that he has come to despise all people, including himself. His nighttime visitation by the Christmas ghosts leads to an epiphany and he becomes a humanitarian; but this is fiction. Scrooge is merely a cartoon of capitalists and his change of heart is unrealistic.

Also, this capitalism of the 1800s is much more dire than that of today (at least in Western nations), as living conditions have vastly improved for most people and the political and social setting has changed a fair bit since then.

In this new version of “A Christmas Carol” Scrooge states in one scene that everything he's done has been out of fear of becoming poor himself (I don't know if this was in the original Dickens version or not). However, while Scrooge may care about his own financial status, it is to the detriment of that of other people. He doesn't care about the livelihood of others, even people he knows. Ultimately he doesn't see other people in the same light as himself. They are not really human to him. This view is cured by the end of the story and Scrooge becomes happier as he sees other people as being important.

This is really the key here I think, the notion that some people are less important than others, notably oneself. Many people (often including myself) would condemn capitalism or money or greed as being the root of many of society's current problems, and while these things may contribute to the situation (or at least how our situation has manifested) I now think the main factor is in this disparity of self and others – that there ARE different sorts of people and they should (or at least can) be treated differently.

I constantly see this view manifest in myself, and wonder if it is a part of our innate human nature. Usually i am uncomfortable around other people, but the other day as I was walking home, I thought of the people I passed as actually being fellow human beings, and suddenly I felt much more comfortable.

If capitalists, managers, employees, customers and everyone else involved in the capitalist society really thought of the other members as being equally important and fellow to oneself then maybe our situation would seem so dire. But then the question is how to bring about what would be a great social change. And I don't know if there even is an answer to that, but we can hope and we can still celebrate our fellow humanity. Merry Christmas!

Stephen's Impressions of the Old Testament

I'm now going to share some of the stuff I got out of the old testament. Genesis is everything that happens before Moses, while the following four books are the story of Moses. Moses' early life and the basic story of the exodus of the Hebrews from Egypt is given in Exodus, along with Moses delivering God's covenant to the Hebrews (this is basically an assortment of laws). More laws, especially those dealing with sacrifice are given in Leviticus. Numbers has even more laws. When they are about to get to the holy land in Deuteronomy, Moses then repeats everything he already said (his is very tedious).

Joshua is about the Hebrews' invasion of their promised land and how they divided the spoils. If you didn't know, the area was inhabited, so many people had to be conquered and/or massacred for the Hebrews to live there.

The Hebrews' history is then recorded in Judges, and the books of Samuel and Kings, The books of Chronicles repeat what was in Samuel and Kings (bor-ring!). The Israelites form a kingdom to help stability and successfully have three kings: Saul then David then Solomon. Its funny that you never hear much said about Saul. Also, David didn't become king after slaying Goliath - that story really wasn't that important. David was chosen to become king before then, and didn't actually become king until much later (Saul was in the way).

After Solomon, Israel split in to two kingdoms: Israel and Judah, who proceeded to have many wars with each other and the million other nations in the region. Eventually the Assyrians took the Israel people as slaves back to Assyria and later the Babylonians did the same thing to Judah.

After Cyrus of Persia took over the region, some Judeans were allowed to come back and rebuild (this is told in Ezra and Nehemiah). As far as I can tell the Israel people were dispersed for good though.

The book of Psalms is little more then a bunch of whiny prayers asking God to help the people of Israel out when they are attacked every other week. This part is really discouraging to faith in Christianity/etc as even the ancient people seem to not see God helping them out when they ask, and seemingly not seeing any sign of him really.

The Book of Job is a really long-winded story of a man who is screwed by the devil over a bet with God. Proverbs is a collection of adages with an emphasis on equating wisdom with doing what God tells you to do.

Isaiah is the longest book in the Bible, apart from the collection of Psalms. It's also very repetitive and doesn't say much, just that while Israel has been the subject of God's scorn, he forgives them and they will be well off in the future and their enemies and those that don't do what God says will suffer greatly. Nothing really enlightening. While I haven't read them yet, my guess is that the rest of the prophets' books will read similarly.

Sorry if I bored you guys with that; I'll talk about something less dense next time. See ya!

Reading the Bible

A couple years back I started reading the Bible. If I remember correctly, I alternated back and forth between the old and new testaments. This was probably a good idea, since much of the old testament is dull and repetitive. I had actually started reading it once before, but got stuck part-way though Joseph's story.

The story of Joseph is actually the last third of the book of Genesis and is quite lengthy, compared to say the story of Eden at the beginning which is very short. People seem to have the most to say about the small bits of the Bible it seems. I'm making a companion video to this blog on that topic actually.

The interesting thing about the Bible is that it often isn't what I expected from what I've seen from church services and from people talking about Christianity and Judaism. Almost every Bible verse you hear people quote or discuss seems to be taken out of context; and large chunks of the Bible tend to not be discussed at all.

Now, I've been reading the Bible to get a better feel for just what Christianity is, or what the their holy book says it is anyways. If you just stick to the gospels or Paul's letters, it tends to be what people say it is (not that Paul and the gospels agree with each other of course). However we must be careful as it's easy to take verses and even entire chapters out of context.

I finished reading the new testament and all of the old testament excepting the prophets some time ago and just recently picked up reading the Bible again. I read Isaiah this week and will probably finish the book in a few weeks if I keep to it.

Next on my "spiritual" reading list is the Qu'ran. The version I have has lots of commentary. This will be helpful, since I don't have the background in Islam that I do in Christianity.

I would also like to read the Book of Mormon or whatever the LDS call their holy books. Unfortunately you can't buy it in stores and the only way to get a copy is to have a Mormon to come to your house and talk at you. Frankly, I'd rather they didn't know where I live.

Well, I'm posting some of my impressions of the old testament as a follow up to this blog (read it or not). See you later!

Exercise to Improve the Mind

Hi Internet people!

Sorry it's been a while since my last post. I've been somewhat depressed lately. However, I've just started what will hopefully improve my spirits: my new exercise and diet plan!

In fact, I just got back from climbing up the Mountain (Parc Mont-Royal) for the first time in quite a while. I used to climb up the stairs there every day for about two years! Unfortunately I got out of the habit. Since then I've gotten fat and out of shape, and my motivation to return to this practise has declined. But now I've started again. It feels good to go on a long walk through the woods, especially with a steep staircase in the middle.

I also returned to doing some working out last night. I have a pair of 15-lb dumbells I use to do some upper body exercises and I do a whack of abs and lower body exercises as well. Many of the exercises I do come from a book put out by the New York City Ballet Company. They know what they're doing. I've found this routine to work quite well.

The best part about doing these exercise is that they make me feel better about myself, both physically and mentally. Te routine energized me last night. The main hinderence to my motivation is that the routine takes about and hour to do. But hopefully I can get over that.

I've been overeating a lot, mostly by eating at fast food places and buying candy. To start I've just decided to cut out the junk food from my diet and keep track of what I eat.

Eating better should also help me feel better about myself. From past experience, after about the first week of dieting I should already feel a lot better, since I'm not lugging around so much crap in my stomach anymore.

Hopefully, I'll be able to report good things about these plans in a future blog.
'Til nest time!

My Journey Into Music

It may seem surprising, but I only got into pop music just over four years ago. (I'm 27) Before then I just listened to classical music that I got as gifts and soundtracks from movies I went to, most Disney.

It was Christmas 2004 and I was staying at my parents place. At the time I was living across the harbour from them, while I was doing my Masters'. One advantage of being at their place is that they get full analog cable (plus some digital stuff), while at the time I only got basic cable. This meant that I could watch music channels I normally didn't get, namely MuchMusic and MuchMoreMusic. My Dad also has a tendency to have MuchMusic on.

So I did a bunch of watching MuchMusic over the holidays and even saw their "Fromage" special celebrating the cheesiest music videos of the year. I saw some artists I seemed to like and decided to use some money I got from Christmas to buys a few albums.

I ended up buying five albums by five seperate artists: "Encore" by Eminem, "Chuck" by Sum 41, "Every Page You Turn" by Boy, "Still Not Getting Any..." by Simple Plan, and "The Chronicles of Life and Death" by Good Charlotte. I'm really into any of these groups at the moment, although Eminem's "Just Lose It" came up on iTunes's shuffle as I was writing this.

I found the website allmusic.com and used it to research music similar to those that I seemed to like. I also took suggestions from friends as they seemed happy to help me get into pop music. In this manner I sought out music by artists and groups such as Green Day, Billy Talent, Fall Out Boy, Gwen Stefani, Hot Hot Heat, Spoon, Maximo Park, The Hives, Franz Ferdinand, Bright Eyes, and many others. At this point I mainly stuck to Punk Pop and Indie Rock types of music, but also got more mainstream stuff like Josh Groban and Michael Buble.

After moving to Montreal (Fall 2005), I finally had the chance to see many of these acts live, and I did so (going to most concerts on my own, as most of my music tastes were not shared by my friends).

Since I found out about many bands through allmusic and other resources I didn't know what was super-popular and with whom. It was interesting to see that Fall-Out Boy, who had a stupid name and whose album I bought on a whim, had become quite popular. One of the first shows I went to was the All-American Rejects. I was quite surprised to find out that much of their fan base was rowdy teenage girls - I only found this upon going to their concert.

I found out about many cool artists from going to shows featuring other artists I liked. These included Ben Lee (who is awesome), Angelique Kidjo (who is also awesome), Anti-Flag, The (International) Noise Conspiracy, and Tokyo Police Club. When I first saw TPC they were the first of four bands, only had a 15 minute set, and seemed really unprofessional. Still, they were good, and I've seen them twice since and I love them.

My favourite live band is definitely Of Montreal, though they are closely followed by Scissors Sisters. The (International) Noise Conspiracy is also great live. Imogen Heap is a lovely person and has awesome shows - she chooses the best opening acts to tour with her.

Some bands aren't great live, such as The Bravery (the first band I saw live in fact). I also found out that in person the Kaiser Chiefs are a bunch of douche-bags.

In Montreal, I've also been able to go to see the Symphony (and other orchestras) frequently, and now appreciate classical music (including opera) more than ever.

While I focussed on pop music my first two years in Montreal, I spent my next year mainly enjoying live classical music. I'm taking a break from live shows this year for the most part, going only to the opera. Also, while I've collected a large CD collection, I'm now just enjoying what I have and getting only a few new works.

I no longer actively seek new music to listen to, but I can enjoy almost anything. Though recent pop music doesn't seem to appeal to me much.

See you later!

The Watchmen & Humanity

Hi All!

I saw the new Watchmen movie yesterday. It was excellent; probably the best movie based on a comic book. I highly recommend it. You can watch a review I did of it here.

The best part of the movie was that it provided a plethora of topics to think about. The character of Dr. Manhattan provided several of these topics by himself. In particular, I couldn't help but identify a little with the doctor in his lack of connection to humanity.

I often feel like a robot observing the world but not interacting with it. I walk from one place to another in the city without caring or even noticing the people I pass along the way. I care about my immediate family and friends. But people I don't know (or don't know well) don't inspire empathy or compassion from me. I think part of my problem is that I don't interact with others often enough, something I'm trying to repair. Perhaps this was part of Dr. Manhattan's problem as well.

While I certainly don't consider people akin to unliving matter, often the deaths of people mean little to me. While I feel a token sympathy when I hear of deaths on the news, they really don't mean anything to me. I felt nothing when I heard of the 9/11 plane crashes. If a large proportion of humanity was killed in a major disaster, I don't think I'd really care. I often think that it would be neat to see the end of the world in my lifetime.

Similar to the doctor, there are many aspects of humanity that I don't understand and strongly dislike. The idea of getting in touch with humanity is a scary one. The Comedian was knowledgeable about the truth of humanity and he was a murderer and rapist.

Rather than self-exile, I'm going to continue to interact with people in small amounts and hopefully I'll make more friends and learn more about how and why people act.

Hey, my French classes will also help is this. Language is a good connection to the mindset and nature of people.

See you next time!

Waking Up and Playing DS Games

Hi All

I'm finally regaining my composure after muddling in depression for the past month or so. I just posted a new youtube video. And now I'm finally updating this blog. Hopefully someone will read this!

I'm going to be more personal on this blog than I am on youtube. Of course, that's not hard since I never talk about myself in my videos.

So I've been having weird sleep patterns lately. But I'm finally getting over that, or at least adapting my life to it -> I just woke from a refreshing sleep and it's 1am! I'm also getting back to my studies. When I do this I realize that I enjoy learning about mathematical modeling and simply learning new things in general.

It's also nice to add more abstract and technical knowledge to what my brain is pondering. It's good brain exercise and I haven't been getting enough of that lately.

On a different note, I thought I'd talk about the fun I've been having with the Nintendo DS I bought at Christmas. I originally bought two games with it: The Legend of Zelda Phantom Hourglass and Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles Ring of Fates. I have a history of leaving video games unfinished. This has certainly happened with these games.

I've since bought a bunch of short fluff DS games and finished all of them. One was Dragon Ball Origins, which was actually quite good. Three are Sims games, which eat up time but have little substance - they're still fun though.

I of course have along shopping list of new and soon to be released games - including Dragon Quest IX, Pokemon Platinum, Suikoden Tierkeis, as well as the new Crystal Chronicles game: Echoes of Time. It's an incentive to finish Ring of Fates before that one comes out.

Maybe I'll even get back to finishing Dragon Quest VIII and Final Fantasy XII on the PS2. . . eventually. (lol)

Until next time!

(which will hopefully be sooner)