A Life of Self-Rediscovery

The midrash tells of an angel who accompanies the soul in the womb. This angel teaches the unborn child the entire Torah and all the wisdom of the world, only to tap the baby’s lip just before birth, causing it to forget everything.

It’s usually read as a charming explanation for the philtrum—the indentation beneath the nose—but the story intends much more. It speaks to the profound sense of alienation most of us feel from our own innate self. According to the myth, we once possessed a perfect, intuitive knowledge of who we are. Birth is the moment we lose it. The rest of life becomes a long, halting effort to remember.

Birth, in this reading, is a kind of exile. And the trauma of childbirth—leaving the warm, floating cocoon of the mother’s body, being squeezed through the narrow canal, expelled into cold light, poked, prodded, assessed as your lungs strain for their first breaths—is not incidental to the myth. It is its first proof.

Even the recent return to home births, meant to soften the harsh sterility of the hospital environment, can only go so far. But birth is only the first trauma of life.

The next arrive almost immediately, when your nascent sense of self collides with your absolute dependence on the people who keep you alive. As you grow stronger and more cognitively aware, those two impulses—independence and dependence—begin to grind against each other. You develop innate tastes and traits, early intuitions of who you are and how the world touches you. And at the same time, family expectations, household values and rules, and the norms and conventions of your immediate world begin pressing inward.

This is traumatic—not as a singular emotional shock, but as a continuous shaping force that leaves marks. As surely as the body carries scars from repeated blows, the psyche carries scars from repeated collisions with the expectations of others.

The process intensifies once we enter school. It is worth remembering that the modern classroom—rows of desks, the teacher at the front, bells, grading—was designed during the Industrial Revolution. The goal then was explicit: to mass-produce standardized workers with maximum economic efficiency. The system was not designed to cultivate the individual needs of children but to ensure conformity, predictability, and output. Even though educators have spent generations smoothing the rough edges, the basic structure remains.

Under these pressures—family, school, peers—we develop personas, masks in the original sense, to help us function within the rules of the game. But the more skilled we become at wearing masks, the more the question presses: what becomes of the authentic self we began with? The one closest to our emotional essence? The one the midrash says we once knew perfectly?

For some, the discontinuity is manageable. For many, it becomes a lifelong struggle that we tend to label as emotional dysfunction. I think it is more accurately a spiritual struggle—a yearning for reconnection with one's innate nature, the self that was lost at birth.

Viewed through this lens, the angel’s touch is not simply the cause of forgetting but the beginning of alienation. And the re-learning of Torah throughout life becomes a metaphor for personal rediscovery. To learn is to remember who we were.

If we take this seriously, then education should not be a mechanism for further alienation. It should be its antidote—a process that encourages self-rediscovery rather than conformity. Learning would not be defined solely by the acquisition of skills, although those matter. It would be defined by the deepening of one’s connection to one’s own nature: one’s innate feelings, predispositions, curiosities, and gifts.

In that sense, the highest purpose of education is not to prepare us for the world, but to help us find our spiritual path to our authentic place in it - not the place assigned to us by others, but the place remembered from before we were born.

The Alternative Future - We're All Artists Now

“Would that all of Israel were prophets.”

That is Moses’ startling response to Joshua, when Joshua frets that Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp—“false prophets,” as the anxious deputy frames it. Joshua worries they pose a threat to Moses’ authority. But Moses waves him off. “Are you jealous for my sake?” he asks. Moses doesn’t give the episode a second thought—secure as he is in his own standing with God. "If only," he adds, "all of Israel had the spirit of holiness."

A lot of people today are prophesying catastrophe about AI. They worry it will overshadow so much human activity that we will be left bereft of purpose, wandering in a desert of too much leisure and too little meaning. What will humans do when machines perform most of the tasks we once defined ourselves by? Find novel forms of mischief? As Proverbs reminds us, “Idle hands are the devil’s workshop.” Or, as the rock band Styx sang with theological precision, we’ve got too much time on our hands.

AI will almost certainly take over a large swath of white-collar work—the intellectual and managerial functions we’ve long associated with human distinction: analysis, instruction, diagnosis, computation, counsel. In the near term, though, I’m confident there are jobs AI won’t touch: nursing, plumbing, farming, building, maintenance—all the work we were suddenly reminded was "essential" during the pandemic.

AI will entertain us, but not everywhere. Not in sports. The whole point of sport is watching humans strive. We reject artificially augmented athletes even when they remain human; the idea of machines competing for our amusement leaves us cold.  Robot games, are a real thing, but haven't captured the imagination for a reason. They don’t scratch the itch.

And then there is art. Art is the thing AI will never truly do—not with honesty, credibility, or respect. The reason is simple: art is an act of human expression, and expression requires experience, feeling, and a subjectivity you cannot simulate. AI imitates, generates, computes. It doesn’t express. Without a human behind a work, the essential ingredient is missing. AI output may be consumed, but not 'appreciated'. It will be treated like a Big Mac: maybe tasty, but no one lingers over it. It will gain market share, but not reverence.

So what will humans do with all the time AI gives back to us, once it diagnoses, calculates, and counsels on our behalf? We will still seek purpose, challenges, meaning—because that is what we do. And increasingly, we will pursue those things for their own sake, not because they are necessary for survival or success.

That is what art has always been: the making of something beautiful and meaningful for its own sake.

In fact, we have been drifting toward this future for 150 years. As machines have made more and more of the objects we use, and leisure time expanded, artmaking escaped the academy and became a popular pastime. Never in history have so many people written, painted, sculpted, composed, or photographed. The artist is no longer a rare, romantic figure touched by the muse; today they are everywhere. This is not cultural decline but cultural abundance. Only the professional gatekeepers - the critics, snobs, and agents who profit from it - lament the democratization of creation.

As Moses might have said, had he lived to watch Bob Ross on PBS: “Would that all of Israel were painters.”

Perhaps that is what AI will give back to us—a renewed sense of what is irreducibly human, and a reminder of its own limits. It may accelerate the return to art-making as the quintessential human activity. AI will be able to do almost everything better than we can—the more complex, the better—from calculation to diagnosis to useful design.

But not art—because art is the human spirit made visible. 

I Am For An Art by Claes Oldenberg

I am for an art that is political-erotical-mystical, that does something other than sit on its ass in a museum.

I am for an art that grows up not knowing it is art at all, an art given the chance of having a starting point of zero.

I am for an art that embroils itself with the everyday crap & still comes out on top.

I am for an art that imitates the human, that is comic, if necessary, or violent, or whatever is necessary.

I am for all art that takes its form from the lines of life itself, that twists and extends and accumulates and spits and drips, and is heavy and coarse and blunt and sweet and stupid as life itself.

I am for an artist who vanishes, turning up in a white cap painting signs or hallways.

I am for art that comes out of a chimney like black hair and scatters in the sky.

I am for art that spills out of an old mans purse when he is bounced off a passing fender.

I am for the art out of a doggys mouth, falling five stories from the roof.

I am for the art that a kid licks, after peeling away the wrapper.

_____________________________

The above poem by the artist Claes Oldenburg inspired the song Manifesto (1979) by Roxy Music. Enjoy.

Manifesto

(Ferry/Manzanera)

I am for a life around the corner

That takes you by surprise

That comes, leaves, all you need

And more besides

I am for a life and time by numbers

Blast in fast 'n' low

Add 'em up, account for luck

You never know

I am into friendship and plain sailing

Through frenzied ports o' call

Oh shake the hand to beat the band

With love is all

Or nothing to the man who wants tomorrow

There's one in every town

A crazy guy, he'd rather die

Than be tied down

I am for the man who drives the hammer

To rock you till the grave

His power drill

Shocks a million miles away

I am for the revolution's coming

I don't know where she's been

For those who dare because it's there

I know I've seen

Now and then I've suffered imperfection

Studied marble flaws

And faces drawn pale and worn

By many tears

I am that I am from out of nowhere

To fight without a cause

Roots strain against the grain

With brute force

Oh you'd better

Hold out when you're in doubt

Question what you see

And when you find an answer

Bring it home to me

The Time of Loss

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Goodbye old friend,

it's not just us:

It's the time of loss.

The tree I pruned last spring 

has shed all its leaves,

the lawn underneath dotted 

brown and wet.

The first snow fell

two weeks ago

on Remembrance Day

when we gently dropped 

red poppies

on the tomb

of the unknown soldier 

the snow is melting,

even as the mercury 

plummets;

The night comes sooner,

the day recedes faster.

The slippery politicians lie

and lie

about prices

coming down,

as the bread lines,

the tent cities,

and picket lines grow

like ground frost,

the situation is grave,

very grave,

democracy teeters -

and it's not just here,

they lie 

about peace

on distant shores, 

as bombs reverberate,

buildings crumble,

and helmeted crews 

scour the mounds,

count the dead

lying somewhere inside 

crypts of rubble.

The Blessing of Being Leaderless

There are many things that distinguish Judaism from other religious traditions, but the one that stands out to me these days is how profoundly leaderless we are.

Of course we have leaders in the ordinary sense—people elected or appointed to fill necessary roles. But I mean leadership in the grander, spiritual sense. Jews have no representative of the Divine on earth, no equivalent of a Pope. We have no model of divinely-sanctioned human behavior—no Jesus, no Muhammad, no Buddha. And that's been our blessing.

Our biblical leaders—Abraham, Moses, David—were remarkable, inspired figures, but they were also deeply flawed and recognized as such. Their stories are as much about failure as fulfillment. They made serious mistakes even while carrying out their divine assignments, sometimes precisely because of those assignments. Almost none of them wanted the job in the first place.

This has given Jews a healthy skepticism of leadership and a realistic view of human nature. It may also be one of the qualities that has irritated others about us for centuries. Paired with our spiritual self-regard as a “chosen people,” our refusal to bow down—even to ultimate authority—has not always endeared us to the nations.

It’s hard being a leaderless people.

Some modern Jewish movements have tried to soften the disadvantages of this leaderlessness by creating their own leaders. Hasidism is the clearest example. Founded by the Baal Shem Tov in the 18th century, Hasidism responded to the political upheavals, intellectual elitism, and assimilation pressures in Eastern Europe.

The irony is that the Baal Shem Tov himself seems to have had no interest in becoming a leader. His teachings emphasize the holiness of ordinary life and the spiritual capacity of every individual. He believed that divine understanding was accessible not only through sacred texts but through the simple act of living with a full, open heart. If anything, he preached the opposite of perfection: humility, commonness, the sacred everyday.

And yet stories proliferated—of miracles, healing, mysticism. Over time, the pedestal formed. In several Hasidic groups, the elevation of rabbis to quasi-messianic figures took on a life of its own. Lubavitch, for instance, met the challenges of modernity by embracing a vigorous, outward-facing messianism centered on Rabbi Menachem Mendel Shneerson.

Historically, we find messianism in Judaism ascendant in times of political crisis and spiritual upheaval. The original form of messianism in Judaism evolved into Christianity at the time of the Roman conquest of Judea and the destruction of the Second Temple. There were other moments of messianic fervor such as the so-called false messiah Sabbatai Tzvi who developed a personal following in response to the Khmelnytsky Massacres, which reportedly killed tens of thousands of Jews, and devastated the Jewish world. 

When messianism is on the rise, you know we're in deep trouble. 

The core message of Judaism, though, is that no one is coming to save us. Responsibility rests with each of us individually, and all of us collectively. If Judaism has a hero, it isn’t a king or a prophet; it’s the people themselves, the ragged, imperfect multitude that stood at Sinai and has been wrestling with what it all means ever since.

Whenever we place our faith in a single leader—even a charismatic or comforting one—it signals desperation and a retreat from personal responsibility. And whenever a leader tries to convince us that someone else is to blame for our problems, we should remember this: Living life is a profoundly lonely and mysterious individual experience, but we’re all in the same boat. So at the very least, we have each other.

Nostalgia

As we get older, more of life lies behind us than ahead, and what remains to look forward to isn’t always inspiring—unless one counts hemorrhoids, lower-back pain, and menopause as perks. The reality of aging is that loss begins to take center stage. We lean more on memory to make sense of our feelings and the world around us. The sadness of losing family and friends becomes tempered by warmth and comfort; grief softens into recollection. We become nostalgic.

The word "nostalgia" combines the Greek "nostos" (homecoming) and "algos" (pain). It captures the ache for what has passed and the yearning for the comfort, security, and innocence we associate with “home.” Nostalgia plays on fundamental human needs. We all access the past to soothe ourselves, especially when the present feels unstable. It is powerful, and it can be triggered—sometimes manipulated—with Pavlovian precision.

One of my favourite online public intellectuals, Vlad Vexler, recently made a fascinating observation about nostalgia and its political uses. Drawing from his childhood memories of the Soviet Union, he uses ice cream as a symbolic entry point into a broader phenomenon: nostalgia as a political balm. His argument hinges on the idea that political nostalgia sells a past that never was and promises a future that will never be.

Authoritarian regimes have always understood this. Nostalgia is deployed to make older citizens feel good about themselves at moments when conditions are, in reality, quite grim. It pacifies and depoliticizes. We see this plainly in the propaganda machines of Putin’s Russia, Kim’s North Korea, and Xi’s China. But it is also at work in Western democracies drifting toward illiberalism—Orban’s Hungary, Farage’s UK right, Le Pen’s France. In its most extreme form, as in Nazi Germany, nostalgia emerges out of acute social, economic, and political disarray and becomes the foundation of a new/old moral order.

The United States is hardly immune. You could argue that part of the genius of the American political system was its ability to harness nostalgia in constructive, relatively benign ways. The system’s traditional balance depends on a kind of dialectic: a backward-leaning conservatism in the Republican Party, which thrives on one form of nostalgia (a nativist, frontier experience), offset by a forward-looking progressivism in the Democratic Party, which offers a different variety (the refugee immigrant experience).

Viewed this way, today’s political imbalance reflects a failure of Democrats to offer a compelling narrative that counterweights the Republicans’ nostalgia. As Vlad notes, “If you suppress the benign forms of nostalgia, the malign forms will come to get you.” The myth of the American Dream once served as a benign national nostalgia. It is now being displaced by the malignant nostalgia of White Christian Nationalism.

Political nostalgia almost always intensifies during periods of technological upheaval. It is no coincidence that the myth-soaked fantasies of Nazism flourished alongside the revolutionary new medium of radio. Likewise, the rise of social media—and its tendency to isolate and atomize—has coincided with the ascent of MAGA. Nostalgia is, at bottom, a longing for connection in a hyper-individualized world. It is also a search for authenticity, which is why memories of the past become so idealized.

The antidote to this surge in political nostalgia is reality: the reality of what actually was - not the gilded, soothing version we prefer to remember - and the reality of the present, unfiltered and undistorted. Admittedly that is a tall order in a post-truth age, especially when nostalgia itself is now algorithmically amplified and fed to us as content.

The first step is simply recognizing that nostalgia is not always benign. Sometimes it signals that we may not be prepared for tough times, and we need to re-calibrate.

The News

In a few years, G-d willing, I’ll be telling my grandchildren about something called "the news."

“The news,” I’ll say in that rambling, affectionate way grandfathers do, “was once gathered and delivered by skilled professionals called 'journalists'—people trained to separate what mattered from what didn’t.” I’ll compare them to miners extracting gold from the dross, or farmers sifting wheat from the chaff, the way people used to back in the olden days. And I’ll explain what “dross” and “chaff” mean.

“But how could those—what did you call them? Journalists?—how could they know what was important to you?” my granddaughter will ask.

And by you, she’ll mean me personally. Because she will have grown up in a world where “important” is whatever pleases her in the moment, served up by a perfectly calibrated personal feed. The idea that other people once chose what everyone needed to know will strike her as bizarre—as archaic as people tapping out telegrams in Morse Code.

I’ll try to explain that some events were important to everyone, or at least to most of us. She’ll look unconvinced.

And I’ll be thinking about the time when we arranged our evenings around the 6 PM or 10 PM broadcast. A time when the morning paper on the doorstep was more than information, it was a unifying force, curating not only facts but shared priorities. It told us not just what happened, but what mattered. It helped shape our sense of place—our community, our country, and the wider world. It offered a kind of moral framework, because we were all drinking from the same fountain, imagining ourselves as part of the same story.

How do I explain such a thing to a child whose world is a constellation of self-contained narratives, each one tuned to the desires and impulses of a single person?

Maybe I’ll bring it down to something she knows.

I’ll ask her whether someone who only tells you what you want to hear is a real friend. Or whether a true friend is someone who tells you the truth—even when it’s uncomfortable, even when it’s something you’d rather not hear. If someone only ever tells you what pleases you, I’ll say, they don’t really care about you. They care about being liked.

And somewhere in the back of my mind, I’ll realize that this is exactly what our technology has been doing to us. Not empowering us, like other inventions. It's doing the opposite. Disempowering us. Infantilizing us. Turning us into children—which might explain why so much of public discourse sounds like the schoolyard.

I won’t say that part to my granddaughter. But I suspect she’ll understand anyway. After all, we’re all at her level now.

In Praise of Laggards

A long time ago, when I was in my late teens and working as a part-time ticket-taker at a repertory movie theatre, I had a co-worker who was unusually enthusiastic. By “enthusiastic,” I mean the sort of person who would line up outside McDonald’s before opening so he could be among the first to taste the McRib.

It was 1981 and I still remember the day he showed up to work carrying a warm McDonald’s paper bag filled with McRibs. The expression on his face as he took that first bite—pure bliss, as though he were communing with something sacred. And I remember thinking: who exactly lives for the privilege of being first to try the latest lab-tested addition to the McDonald’s menu? Who sees a processed meat patty shaped like a pork rib and thinks, finally, my moment?

Apparently the same kind of person who will stand outside Starbucks at 5 a.m. for a limited-edition green-and-red Hello Kitty holiday mug. That would be a colleague I work with today. She arrived at the office this week triumphant, Starbucks bag in hand, and within minutes half the team was gathered around her desk as she unboxed the thing like it was a Fabergé egg.

This one, at least, had a certain logic behind it. The mug had sold out immediately and was already doubling in price online. I looked it up myself. Meanwhile the McRib—discontinued in 1985, resurrected in 1989, cancelled in 2005, and now inexplicably back again in 2025—remains the fast-food equivalent of an unemployed couch-surfing buddy making the rounds.

I don’t understand any of this. I hate crowds. I hate standing in line even more. At bar mitzvahs I remain seated until everyone else has hit the buffet, on the theory that there’s plenty for all. Admittedly, I have eaten more than one piece of brisket that looked like it was carved from the heel of a hiking boot.

It seems there are “adopters” and there are “laggards.” My McRib and Hello Kitty colleagues are adopters. I am, without question, a laggard. Adopters love new things because they’re new. They need to be first. They live in a perpetual state of FOMO (fear of missing out) like someone plagued by migraines.

Laggards prefer the tried and true. We prefer the sweatshirt that has a familiar smell that never comes out in the laundry over the latest fashion, and the refrigerator we got twenty-five years ago that hums in the basement over the shiny model upstairs. Newness doesn't usually mean better, it means more complicated, more expensive to fix, and less reliable.  

Culturally, adopters get all the flattering adjectives: bold, visionary, entrepreneurial. Laggards are told, “You snooze, you lose.” Which is convenient for people trying to sell you something.

But lately I’ve started to wonder if maybe laggards like me are finally having our moment. This early bird does not want to catch the worm, because the worm seems to be infected with a brain-eating parasite. 

I'm talking about the parasite that infects through technology. With information pouring into their heads through their devices, like water from a broken hydrant, the brains of adopters are turning soft and mushy. Meanwhile, we laggards—by virtue of our god-given skepticism and natural reluctance to embrace anything 'latest' or 'improved'—may be in a better position to survive this period of history with our sanity and perspective intact.

Being a laggard, it turns out, is no longer just a personality trait. It's the future. I can live without the newest McRib. My coffee tastes just fine in the stained mug I've been using for the last 20 years. Actually it tastes better.

Seymour Blicker z"l (1940-2025)

One of the great blessings I have had in my life in the last 20 years or so has been getting to know the great Montreal novelist and playwright Seymour Blicker, who passed away at his home this past Friday. 

Seymour made a name for himself in the late 1960s and 70s with the publication of three novels, Blues Chased a Rabbit (1969), Shmucks (1972) and The Last Collection (1976). I wrote about Shmucks in an earlier blog post. In the 1980s and 90s, Seymour went on to write screenplays, television scripts and plays. He is perhaps best known for the play "Never Judge A Book By Its Cover" (1987) which I know was still being performed internationally a few years ago, and the film script of The Kid (1997). 

It was Shmucks that brought Seymour and I together. The novella was mentioned to me by my friend  and co-author Seymour Mayne. He said that he had recently re-read it for consideration to be put on a syllabus for a Jewish Canadian literature class he was teaching at University of Ottawa, and found that it had stood up surprisingly well. I immediately tried to find a copy, locating a used hardcover edition on Abe Books. I loved it. It was funny, poignant and clever. I wondered whatever happened to Blicker. A bit of online searching revealed that he had continued to write plays, taught in the creative writing department at Concordia University, and had moved up north in the Laurentians. I was intrigued by his apparent reclusiveness. And there was something else that caught my interest, his work in television, particularly an episode he had written for the police comedy Barney Miller. When I was growing up I was a fan of that show, and one episode in particular had stuck with me. It's possibly the most famous Barney Miller, when a man comes to the station claiming that he's a werewolf and asks to be incarcerated before midnight when he transforms and wreaks violent havoc. It's a masterfully written story. I remember the anticipation of waiting until the very end of the episode to find out if he actually becomes a werewolf. Unbeknownst to me Blicker had written that memorable episode.

Mayne put us in touch, and the two Seymours and me (they called me an honorary Seymour) met for coffee in Cote-Saint-Luc. By that time Blicker had moved back to the city. I felt giddy (and honored) to meet him. That was the first of many coffees with Seymour. We stayed in touch, regularly exchanging emails and meeting every so often at the local McDonalds. The last time was about a year ago I think. We had planned to get together for coffee last spring and at various points over the summer but something always got in the way. He'd had health difficulties for many years but somehow always mustered the energy to meet. It was apparent now that his health was declining more quickly. By the end of the summer he was messaging that he wasn't feeling well enough for a visit but would let me know when he was up for one. I had a feeling I wasn't going to be seeing him again. 

It's a terrible shame that Seymour has not received the acknowledgement that he deserves. In around 2019 when Seymour was approaching his 80th birthday I contacted some people I knew at the Concordia creative writing department to see if they would be interested in organizing a public literary event to celebrate his birthday. I also brought the idea to the Jewish Public Library where I know there is an archive of clippings on his career. I received polite but unenthusiastic responses. Busy in my own life, I didn't press harder, which I now regret.

Seymour had undoubtedly been a talented and ambitious writer in his prime. In the mid-70s he packed up his family and moved to Los Angeles in the hope of establishing himself as a writer for film and television. It didn't last very long. I asked him what happened. He said, LA was no place to raise a family. I got the impression it was culture shock for him.

By the time I got to know him he had mellowed, maybe even become disillusioned. Like so many writers who felt they deserved more recognition, he now seemed to have become ambivalent about it. In truth, I think Seymour had acknowledged that the culture had moved on. You might say that he was a casualty of the times: Novelists, playwrights and even filmmakers were no longer held in the same esteem as they had been. 

Every time we met I asked if he'd been writing, working on a new play or short story. He'd say he had ideas, but was finding it harder and harder to focus enough bring his ideas to fruition. At one point he travelled to Vienna to see the opening of one of his plays, which he found gratifying. And he was excited when his novels were re-issued by his publisher as e-books. At one point, I suggested to my publisher Vehicule Press, who specializes in publishing classic forgotten Montreal novels, to consider buying the rights to publish a new edition of Shmucks. The literary industry being what it is, it's doubtful that this satirical novel, which has comic elements that are decidedly 'unwoke', will have a new print edition too soon unfortunately. Even the novels of Mordecai Richler have been taught less and less in the years since his death. 

I look forward to the day that Blicker is back on the syllabus alongside other great Montreal literati Richler and Cohen, where he deserves to be. Sad that he won't be here to enjoy the accolades.  

Bonus: My brief online review of The Last Collection, a novel which didn't get close to enough attention when it was released.

Absolutely hysterical and thoroughly enjoyable. Canada is not known for its satirical novels, but in Shmucks and The Last Collection Seymour Blicker proves himself to be equal to the masters of the genre, especially the Jewish sub genre, which has it's own style and flavour. This novel is especially reminiscent of Woody Allen's wackiest. Memorable characters include a particularly neurotic psychiatrist whose office features tropical decor and a remote controlled recliner chair that spins and rises to the ceiling, and a Jewish thug with a soft spot. Blicker does what all the best authors do, he turns the tables on the characters and at the same time on the reader. The cons get conned, and we can't ever really be sure who is the genuine article. And therein lies the deeper resonance of this novel, as in all superior satire, the layers of truth and deceit are revealed. The last collection referred to in the title is not only collection on a debt, or the mental illness of hoarding and greed which afflicts the protagonist and which gets him into debt in the first place. But it also cleverly refers to the collection of moral sins that one party wants to atone for and the collection of guilt that the other party wants to liberate themselves from.

Love Everywhere

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There is love everywhere,

It's like the air we breathe.

Don't look very far,

It's like the flowers and the trees.

It comes to you in silence,

It comes without fanfare.

It comes to you when life, 

Is more than you can bear.

It comes to you from friends,

It comes to you in song.

It comes to you in memory, 

Of someone who is gone.

It comes to you in whispers, 

It comes in soothing tones.

It comes when you're together,

It comes when you're alone.  

Love is everywhere,

Love is everywhere,

Believe me when I say,

Love is everywhere.

It's not rare as a diamond,

It's not precious as gold.

You don't have to go digging,

In some deep dark hole.

Just open your eyes,

Take a deep breath.

Feel it in your bones,

Feel it in your chest.

Love is everywhere,

Love is everywhere,

Believe me when I say,

Love is everywhere.

Believe me when I say,

It won't hurt a bit.

The secret to finding love: 

It comes if you allow it.

Love is everywhere,

Love is everywhere,

Believe me when I say,

Love is everywhere.

Save West Mabou Provincial Park: Strike Three?

Update: It's been officially rejected by Premier Houston. Cabot's proposal to build a golf course in the protected provincial park.   

A big sigh of relief. Public outcry works! David can beat Goliath. 

My only question is whether this strike three means they're out for good!

An Anniversary and An Uneasy Future

This month marks the twentieth anniversary of the publication of my first novel, The Rent Collector, released in November 2005. I wish I could say I’m excited. I’m not. Not because my publisher hasn’t offered to bring out a twentieth-anniversary edition — the book went out of print a decade ago — but because publishing itself now feels almost like an anachronism. The novel lives on as an e-book, half the price of the original paperback, destined to be sold digitally in perpetuity.

What I feel instead of excitement is a kind of unease. Looking back, I realize the novel seems to have intuited something that was coming, though I couldn’t have known it then. The story follows a property manager in a worn industrial building in Montreal’s garment district — an ultra-Orthodox Jew temperamentally unsuited to his trade. Rent collection, in the book, becomes a metaphor for indebtedness — not only financial but existential.

At the time, I was reading Emmanuel Levinas, whose philosophy of “infinite responsibility” described indebtedness as the very foundation of the ethical self: an obligation not chosen but inherited. We are born, he said, already indebted — to our parents for giving us life, but also for everything else we have,  our language, our culture, our heritage, our traditions, our community, our world. To exist is to owe.

In The Rent Collector, that sense of debt takes both physical and spiritual form. Physically, it’s represented by the building the protagonist manages — a literal inheritance from his father, to whom he owes not just his life but his livelihood. Spiritually, it’s his debt to the soul and to God. The rent collector seeks to repay that spiritual debt by finding meaning in the mundane rhythms of work — in encounters with the tenants, the decaying infrastructure, and the declining industry. “Life is rented,” he muses to himself, which echoes one of my grandfather Sam’s favorite refrains: “The banks own everything.”

I won’t claim the novel foresaw the future. But sometimes writers absorb the undercurrents of the zeitgeist before they break the surface. What I see now is that the world my rent collector inhabited has metastasized into a broader condition — what one commentator I follow, The Functional Melancholic, calls “modern techno-feudalism.”

Today, more people than ever live on borrowed time and borrowed money. They own nothing of enduring value and will likely never be able to. They live by subscription — to housing, to entertainment, even to the means of making a living. The bottom fifty percent rent from the top one. My generation, for the most part, still lives off the remnants of inherited stability; the next faces digital indentured servitude — a kind of techno-sharecropping in the gig economy.

The symbol of this dystopian future came to me this week when Trump floated the idea of a 50-year mortgage — a plan announced not long after he toasted martinis with billionaires at a Great Gatsby-themed party at Mar-a-Lago, while SNAP benefits, which feed an astonishing 42 million Americans, teetered on the edge of cuts.

Twenty years after The Rent Collector, more and more people can barely afford rent, let alone dream of ownership. My protagonist’s struggle to collect back rent from tenants on the cusp of bankruptcy now seems almost quaint beside the moral and economic bankruptcy of our age.

So no — I don’t feel much like celebrating.

Keboard Slips

I wonder if keyboard s slips an\re similar to Fru7edians slips if thgey arerveal somethinbg soubconsc cioius of just carelessness in the is world we whwere we are all all multi-=taskikng doing too muchn overwhlemed by tjhe with responsiobiolitierts and tasked outsourchiomng critical information no thinking running everybgting through spell check becaUSE EVEYRHITBNG IS HAPPENING SO FAST AND THE MIOND AND THE HANDS WERE NOT MADE FOR THIS KIND OF SPEED AND THEN FIUNGERS SLKIP ALL OVER THE KEYBOEARD, HITTING BIUTTONS WE VE NEVER YINBTENDED  to got to hiot and we don;t even bother to rereard or reconsoder or deliberate and would rathje rhavre the machines do ith fpor us because we still want perfection or at leats the appearance of perfectiopn and efficiency but lets face it what s done is done theres no going back this klife is one draft and frankly im okay with the mistakes because it m,akes me feel like there is a trace of humanity left  

The Supreme Court

Their arguments over the written word,

Mean one thing today, another tomorrow,

They hold court, high up on their bench, 

Black-robed Inquisitors, 

Hacking away at language with mallet and chisel,

To shape something, intended or not - 

Or like cloaked wizards casting Latinate spells,

Caped stage magicians, now you see it, now you don't,  

Thieving pickpockets who've studied the technique,

Practiced the sleight of hand, 

To lift your wallet and ID without you even feeling it.   

Being Played

I'm a very bad chess player. I stopped playing it when my older brother took it up when we were kids. He picked on me, as older brothers will, and took a certain sadistic pleasure in making me feel stupid. He taught me how to play chess - by which I mean he'd show me how each piece moved. Meanwhile he immersed himself in the game, read the books, learned some tricks, and then would want me to play with me, using me as his guinea pig. He'd mate me in three or four moves. It didn't take long before I decided chess just wasn't for me. There is only so much humiliation a person can take at the hands of his older brother. 

Since then, I've played occasionally, still badly. Chess is undeniably a fascinating and intellectually challenging game. And the advent of computers has made it safer to play ego-wise. You might get humiliated, but at least a computer doesn't take any glee in making you feel bad. 

It was way back in 1997 the chess master, perhaps the greatest player ever, Garry Kasparov, first lost to a computer. That was way before AI as we know it, and when computer processing power was the equivalent to horse-and-buggy compared to today's super-charged technology.

It's often said that great chess players think many moves ahead, and that's true. But another way to think about it, is that not only are they thinking about their next moves, they are also thinking about their opponent's responses to their next moves. You might say that not only are they moving their pieces around the board, but they are also moving their opponent's pieces. Every move the chessmaster makes is designed to make the opponent move in a predictable way. The better the player, the more they can manipulate their opponent, like a puppeteer pulling strings, forcing the opponent into making them do what they want them to do. At very high levels, chess is not just a game of strategy, it's a game of will power. 

It's perhaps the best analogy of what we can expect from advanced AI, and like playing chess against a grandmaster, most people don't stand a chance. AI has an infinite capacity to learn your game. It will know your game so well, that it will be able to play your game without you even realizing that you're not playing your game, you're being played.    

If you want to get the sense of what that feels like, play a game of chess against a computer. When you are a weak player like me, the point at which you lose control of the game becomes pretty obvious. In my case it's not long after the first few opening moves. Slowly the noose starts to tighten as the game spreads out. Until finally there is only submission. Of course the good players, can stave off that point longer. 

My sense is that in the game we are playing with AI we are still in the opening phase. The board hasn't quite taken shape, we still have agency and options. But not for long.    

Misfits

CLICK HERE TO HEAR THE SONG

We were misfits,

And we made rock n roll.

We knew we couldn't fake it,

We played it from our soul.

Some kids got good grades,

Others won the game. 

The rich kids had nice clothes,

The nerds had all the brains.

We were the kids in the corner.

Didn’t have many friends. 

We watched them from sidelines,

Waiting for the day to end.

We were shy and sensitive,

Outside the social circles.

Ignored and never noticed,

Or teased by pretty girls.

We hung out at the store,

We fingered through the racks.

We memorized the lyrics,

Knew all the album tracks.

We were misfits,

And we made rock n roll.

We knew we couldn't fake it,

We played it from our soul.

We learned to play the songs,

Of all our favourite bands.

It's how we found acceptance,

It’s how we took our stand.

We were angry, we were ugly,

We sang it strong and loud.

We did it for ourselves,

The singing made us proud.

We were misfits,

And we made rock n roll.

We knew we couldn't fake it,

We played it from our soul.

We played it hard and loud,

We played it night and day.

Sometimes we drew a crowd,

Most times they didn’t pay.

These days I couldn't say,

How it went so wrong.

One day the songs had heart,

Suddenly it’s gone.

We were misfits,

And we made rock n roll.

We knew we couldn't fake it,

We played it from our soul.

Misfits...

We played it from our soul...

Winnable Wars

People fight wars. Always have and always will.

They will fight them when they think they can win—and even when they know they can’t. That is precisely why, if wars must be fought, they must be winnable. Decisively so.

When wars are won decisively, peace—or at least stability—tends to follow. When wars drag on or end inconclusively, instability festers and new wars soon follow. If there has to be war, the best war is a short one.

One of the defining failures of the modern international system is that it has made decisive victory almost impossible. Global institutions meant to limit suffering often end up prolonging it. They place a finger on the scale for weaker or illegitimate actors, turning short wars into long ones and amplifying the human toll.

Nowhere is this clearer than in Gaza.

A non-state actor—Hamas—launched a war against a vastly superior military power, Israel. It had no legal authority to do so and no chance of winning. Its leadership knew this. Their real goal was to trigger a wider regional war. When that failed, they pivoted to Plan B: a propaganda war waged through global media and sympathetic international institutions. That plan succeeded.

By manipulating public opinion and exploiting humanitarian outrage, Hamas transformed what should have been a swift military defeat into a prolonged, grinding conflict. Instead of isolating Hamas for committing atrocities and taking hostages, much of the international community attacked Israel for defending itself. The result: tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths and no decisive conclusion.

Israel, acted as any state would that has an obligation to defend its citizens and territory. But its efforts were hamstrung by international hesitation and moral confusion. The United Nations, the International Court of Justice, and countless global commentators blurred the line between the aggressor and the defender. In doing so, they gave legitimacy to a terrorist organization and eroded the very principles they claim to uphold.

The international community should have acted unanimously to condemn Hamas and support Israel in dismantling it quickly and completely. A decisive end to the conflict would have saved countless lives, not cost them. The longer the fighting dragged on, the more civilians suffered, and continue to suffer.

History shows that clear victories produce clearer peace. The stability of postwar Germany and Japan came not from negotiation but from decisive defeat and reconstruction. By contrast, the world’s most unstable regions—Syria, Yemen, Gaza—are defined by wars that never quite end.

The purpose of quick, decisive victory is not revenge. It is order, and ultimately spares lives and reduces destruction. 

Decisive victory also serves as a deterrent, making the next war less likely, not more. Indecision and moral equivalence invite more bloodshed. Terrorists learn that they can survive by hiding behind civilians and global sympathy. 

Peace built on ambiguity never lasts. The world’s democracies need to recover the moral clarity that built the postwar order: terror cannot be excused. When a terrorist group launches a war, the international community’s duty is not to balance sympathy between the opposing sides—it is to ensure the aggressor loses quickly and decisively.

Because wars that are won end. Wars that are managed never do.

Municipal Politics - Dull No Longer

Suddenly municipal politics is no longer dull.

All across Quebec yesterday, November 2nd, is election day in municipal politics; 1,100 cities in total. This year many incumbents weren't running for reelection. They sensed what we all sensed. It was time for a change. 

Voter turnout in Quebec municipal elections is typically around 40% to 45%, which is significantly lower than in provincial or federal elections. 

In the most recent 2021 municipal elections, the average voter turnout was 38.7%. The estimate so far from yesterday was that voter turnout was on the high end of the average, around 44%. In our humble hamlet of Westmount it was 45%. That's very high for us. In the last election it was 25%, principally because the mayor and half of the 8 council seats ran unopposed. 

In 2021 only 11 candidates ran for council seats. This year 25 candidates ran, a record. In my district, which was for some reason the most hotly contested in the municipality, there were 5 candidates. The streets were plastered with signs, on every lamppost, and many many front lawns. My home was visited no less than 3 times by candidates or their representatives, and even this past Saturday, we were still receiving flyers in our mailbox. Last evening, after we'd already voted, we were visited by a couple asking us if we'd voted, and when we told them that we had, they handed us a sticker that said "Democracy Enjoyer". I've lived in this town since 1996 - all of this is unprecedented.      

So what accounts for the sudden engagement in municipal politics? 

As usual, I've got my theories.

Theory #1: Timing. The November 2021 municipal election took place while the pandemic was still happening, and it was only six weeks after the September federal election. No doubt this had a suppressing effect on municipal political activity, for both the potential candidates and the voters.

Theory #2: Political Cycle. It's been 8 years in power for many current municipal administrations, and many incumbents had decided not to run for reelection. In the regular ebb and flow of politics, this was definitely a 'change' cycle. 

Theory #3: General Interest. You could see the rising tide of interest in municipal issues from coverage in the local newspaper. I've been receiving the Westmount Independent for years and until about 2 years ago it usually went from my mailbox straight into the recycling bin. But then, one day, I decided to peruse the headlines, and suddenly found myself enjoying it, mostly because they were funny in a quaint, Lake Wobegone, sort of way. Examples; "Man Trips on Sidewalk Crack, Taken to Hospital," "Dog Electrocuted While Peeing on Lampost" (not making it up). I was also understandably interested in the police reports about break-ins and car thefts in my neighbourhood, which seemed to be on the rise since the pandemic. 

But it wasn't just me getting interested. The Letters To The Editor section had had two or three letters, mostly about whether dogs should be allowed to walk unleashed in the 'bird sanctuary' at the top of our hill - apparently its scares away the birds - and people being upset about bi-weekly garbage pick-up. In the last year or so the section exploded, publishing up to ten letters about all kinds of issues, related to two big matters: the administration's plan for the redevelopment of the derelict and neglected south-east corner of the borough, and fiscal mismanagement of infrastructure projects. The debate was ongoing and lively. I was even motivated to write in after October 7th, taking issue with how the local paper was covering the Gaza protests - which relates to Theory #4 -   

Theory #4: Anger. Perhaps the greatest motivating factors of political engagement are anger and fear, and you could feel both on the rise. It stemmed from how the current administration was handling the Pro-Palestine protests. The Israeli Embassy in Montreal is located in our borough. Ever since October 7th, on a monthly basis there have been protests on the street outside the building, which also happens to be a mixed-use commercial/ office/ residential complex, surrounded by other upscale residential buildings. The protests were usually loud, disruptive, and to many area residents, threatening and deeply offensive. Lots of residents were angry (and fearful) at how the city was handling, or rather mishandling the situation.

Finally, Theory #5: Local Democracy. I have this sense that in a world that seems to be spinning out of control, particularly on the international level, threatening democratic institutions, there is a desire to turn inward. Social media makes even the most farflung issues feel local. But in reality we have very little capacity to effect changes at that level. So, in response it seems like a lot of people are getting engaged in local politics, where they can make a difference and safeguard democracy.     

In Westmount, the fiscal mismanagement and the Gaza issue seem to be front and center. The newly elected mayor is a chartered accountant, with no previous experience in municipal politics. He's also Jewish, and so are 4 of the 7 newly-elected councilors. That may be coincidental. Only one of the councilors, as far as I read, made explicit mention of the Gaza protests in his platform. Although it should be mentioned that during the campaign one of the mayoral candidates came under severe criticism when it came to light that her law firm had defended in court the McGill campus Gaza protesters' right of free speech. She and her (Jewish) husband, run one of the most prominent constitutional law firms in the country. I frankly thought she got a bum-wrap, but it was clear many Jewish residents had it out for her on that basis.   

And the local election this year was not without controversy. In a year with so much engagement and enthusiasm it was curious that there was one council seat in District 3 that went uncontested, and the current councilor won by acclamation, for the 3rd straight term. One constituent in District 3 was upset by the situation and did a bit of sleuthing. He discovered that in fact there were two candidates who reside in District 3 running in the election, but they were running in other districts. This intrepid constituent did a little further digging and discovered that the 'official agent' - the person who handles the finances of a campaign on behalf of the candidate - for the two candidates, one was the current District 3 councilor's wife, and the other was his daughter.  

Money

My father believed the purpose of life was to make money. Well, I’m not sure he would have put it that way. But he did say that money gave you the means to do what you actually enjoyed doing. This meant to me that making money was a necessary evil to get what you really wanted in life. 

The other thing my father always said is that you should always want 'more and better'. What he meant was more and better of what money could buy. 

So what if what you enjoy doesn’t require a lot of money? What if ‘more and better’ isn’t about what money can buy?

My problem, with my father at least, was that I could never muster the ambition to make a lot of money. I think he saw it as a glitch in my character. And I believe it bothered him because somehow he saw my lack of financial ambition as a reflection of something he feared in himself.

My father was born in 1928 and grew up during the Depression, the youngest of 9 kids, 8 of whom survived. His father, Abraham, made a modest living as a peddler. He went door to door selling things on credit. Kept accounts in a ledger and would collect twenty-five or fifty cents per week from his customers. Half the time, when he went to collect, all he got were excuses. He was a communist at heart. So when he came home after an afternoon of collections empty-handed, and my grandmother Leah was upset, he told her, 'they need it more than we do'.      

By the time My father hit high-school it was World War 2. All he'd ever known up until that point - the age he was getting ready to enter the workforce - was austerity. I can imagine how hungry and driven he must have been. 

He jumped in with both feet, and his efforts were rewarded handsomely. The post-war period were boom years. The economy had nowhere to go but up. As my 86 year old mother-in-law Margie is fond of saying, 'In those days any shmo could make a buck.'

I'm not sure that's exactly right. But if you had a little family support, which my father had, and a bit of drive, the opportunity was certainly there. 

I can't help but contrast my dad's upbringing with my own. I was raised a child of privilege. I enjoyed all the dividends of my parents and grandparents hard work. We lived in a large house in an affluent neighbourhood. I went to a private school, and we took family vacations to Florida twice a year. We had a chalet in Vermont, and went skiing every weekend. 

When I graduated high-school in 1981 the world was in the most severe recession since the war years. And a few years later, when I was ready to enter the workforce, it was like my father's experience in reverse. The economy was struggling to emerge out of recession, the unemployment rate was hovering around 8% in Canada, and it was much worse, above 10% in Montreal because of the uncertain political situation in Quebec. 

It's commonly said that wages have not kept pace with inflation since the 1980s, coincidentally the period of my entire working life. While the economy grew at an average annual rate of 5% in the 1950s, by the 1990s that was down to an anemic 2.4%. And the middle class, which had exploded in the post-war boom years, was now in the process of shrinking for the first time. 

Nonetheless, I was lucky. I was able to buy a house in the mid 90s and support my family well enough because I had financial backing, beginning with an inheritance left to me by my late grandpa Sam. 

But here's the thing about money - it represents so much more than just financial security, which of course is significant enough. Money is also (and perhaps more importantly) emotional currency. Money is a metaphor, chiefly for anxieties and fears. It's also about memory and dreams, self-image and self-loathing, meaning and purpose. 

For me, money also represented unhappiness. All the people I knew who had a lot of it, and seemed to care about making it as the focus of their lives, namely dad and grandpa Sam, seemed very unhappy. I don't think I ever thought money was the cause of their unhappiness, but having a lot of it certainly never did anything to cure their unhappiness either. Money was never a panacea for whatever troubled them. 

And I think that's why I never cared for it very much. It's true that I already thought I had enough. But what I saw was plenty of people who had a lot more, but never had enough. 

What was the point of killing yourself to get more money if, after a certain point, it didn't liberate you but rather, seemed to become a burden. A spinning wheel you were trapped on that went nowhere fast. There had to be a better way to spend your time than to devote it to making more money.

Sometimes I regret not accumulating enough wealth to be able to help my children in the same way that I was helped by my father and grandfather. On the other hand, we have invested our generational wealth enough to be able to help each of them a little. Anyway, it may not matter all that much since my kids seem to be making different decisions with their lives. Decisions that don't put the accumulation of wealth and acquisition at the center. And that might be our greatest gift to our children - pursuing a different set of values.  

Grandpa Sam had a favourite saying - "The journey is greater than the destination." We put it on his gravestone. It's a reminder that spending money is not the measure of 'more and better' in life. How you spend your time is.

Save West Mabou Provincial Park - Again

I'd never heard of West Mabou until 3 years ago. Why would I? It's a small town, population approximately 1,298 (including the larger hamlet of Mabou proper) on the west coast of Cape Breton Nova Scotia. I first heard of it when my eldest daughter Sivan, who had travelled with her then-boyfriend Matthew, to the larger municipality of Inverness CB, a 15-minute drive north of Mabou, to visit his mother's family. She called me a day before they were leaving to come home to inform me that they had decided to buy a two-acre plot of land in West Mabou. I said, what's a Mabou?  

Google maps helped with some orientation. I had a few other questions, beginning with who are you buying the land from, for how much, and did you do a title search? She answered, It's from a fellow named Carmen who works in construction. He is selling off parcels of his family's farmland. And no, we met him, he liked us, he asked for a downpayment of $5,000 (whenever we could send it to him) and we shook hands. That's the way things are done in West Mabou. 

Mabou is actually known for a few things, most notably as the home of the famous (in Canada) singing Rankin Family. It's also where the American photographer Robert Frank had a home, and where the Canadian cartoonist-graphic novelist Kate Beaton lives. I had one of my only brushes with greatness at the regular Sunday Mabou farmer's market last summer, held at the local hockey arena. I sat down at a picnic table next to the composer Phillip Glass, who for decades has had a house nearby, and even named a theatre company he co-founded in the early 1970s Mabou Mines. We nodded hello to each other, as two locals typically do.

Well, Sivan and Matthew got married (on their land) and have since bought another adjacent piece of land to double their investment in West Mabou. They have built a small dwelling, and seem to be taking a stab at making West Mabou their permanent home. Sivan works at the local municipal library and Matthew is a construction project manager in the area. Most of our family has spent the last two summer vacations there, so this place in rural Cape Breton, which I'd never heard of just a few years ago, has become an integral part of our life. 

West Mabou is known for something else: West Mabou Provincial Park, which features a very popular sandy beach, beautiful wind swept dunes, and hiking trails with a view of the ocean.

The town of Inverness is known for something other than a provincial park. It's known for golf. A few years back a company called Cabot Resorts Corporation built two world class links golf courses along the ocean in Inverness. It was a boon for the community, which has been suffering economically for decades, ever since the demise of the Cape Breton coal mining industry. The golf courses were built, with the town's blessing, on the old slag heaps and garbage dump. The benefits to the town cannot be overstated. In addition to the obvious injection of investment, it cleaned up an environmental mess, and turned Inverness into a summer resort attraction. Golfers come from all over North America to play at Cabot. Walking along the pristine beach, helicopters are seen regularly delivering golfers from Halifax airport to play a round.    

And here's where a story about success takes an ugly turn. Now Cabot is coming for the magnificent grassy dunes of West Mabou Provincial Park for their next golf course development. 

For the third time. They failed the first two times because there was a groundswell of local opposition. The townsfolk didn't want it, and still don't. They'd rather keep their beautiful pristine provincial park the way it is, and are wary of the precedent that it will set if any protected provincial park lands can be targeted for economic development in this way. As my daughter, an unofficial spokesperson for the Save West Mabou Provincial Park effort said, "If they can do it here, no protected land in the province is safe. It renders the Provincial Parks Act meaningless." 

She rightly argues that there is plenty of opportunity to redevelop lands in the region, but Cabot is trying to avoid the hassles and cost of dealing with private owners. So much easier to simply get one party, the government, to de-list the park with legislation, so it can be leased to Cabot for 100 years.        

It's not completely true to say that everyone in Mabou is against the golf course redevelopment. Some local businesses see the economic benefits it brought to nearby Inverness. So in some respects it's splitting the community. 

But the folks at Cabot know they are in for a fight. There has been virtually no public consultation and they've been lobbying the government with subterfuge, explicitly to avoid scutiny. And Cabot has engaged some powerful lobbyists in the past, including a former provincial premier. The first time they made their plans known it only came to light after drawings of the proposed Mabou golf course were published on Cabot's corporate website. This time it went public after the issue was raised by an MLA in the Nova Scotia legislature.  

Last year my daughter, who got heavily involved two years ago, thought the fight was finally over after they won the last round. She's learning how relentless and unscrupulous corporations can be. It's back in the headlines and it's gone national. Goliath against David. The residents worry that this time the Progressive Conservative Houston government is more open to Cabot's influence. I hope not.

Shredder culture

TikTok is for shredders.

A sentence that would have been pure gibberish just a few years ago.

To dissect: TikTok, as you may know, is the world’s fastest-growing social media platform. It currently has around 1.6 billion users worldwide and is projected to reach 1.9 billion by 2029. The platform is especially popular among younger audiences—roughly 25% of users are under 20, and another 35% are between 25 and 34. By country, TikTok’s largest user base is in Indonesia, followed by the United States and Brazil.

That youth appeal is significant. Cultural trends—in music, fashion, food, and beyond—have always been driven by the young. So TikTok’s cultural influence far exceeds its raw usage numbers. 

Increasingly, it’s not just shaping taste but shaping thought. In the U.S., 43% of adults under 30 now regularly get their news from TikTok, up from just 9% in 2020, according to the Pew Research Center. 

The trend shows no sign of slowing. In 2024, TikTok was the most downloaded app in the world, with 825 million downloads, and more than 4.3 billion cumulative installs. The average U.S. user spends nearly an hour a day on the app.

So what makes TikTok so influential? At its core, it’s a smartphone app for creating, sharing, and watching short-form videos. According to the NIH, TikTok’s algorithm—known as “For You”—is one of the most advanced ever built. It maximizes the user’s internal states of enjoyment, concentration, and time distortion (the so-called "flow experience"), leading to addictive behavior. In effect, people who consume culture and information primarily through TikTok develop the focus and attention span of gamblers. They’re lulled into a trance: catatonic, reactive, and endlessly scrolling.

I have nothing against trance states. Some of the best art is hypnotic.

The difference with TikTok is that the trance comes from the algorithm, not the content. Because it’s a conveyor belt of endlessly replenishing short videos, it’s the platform itself that mesmerizes, not the creativity on it. TikTok diminishes the meaning and impact of individual pieces of content. It’s not like listening to The Doors’ twelve-minute song 'The End', or a meditative Indian raga—it’s more like the cultural equivalent of speed-dating, on speed. You psychologically buy into it not because of what you’re seeing, but because of what you might see next. 

Getting to know any creative work with depth and craft—like getting to know a person—takes time and attention. TikTok is engineered for quick impressions.

Which brings us back to that opening sentence: TikTok is for shredders.

In rock music, “shredding” refers to playing a flurry of notes very fast on guitar—technically dazzling, but often emotionally empty. Many guitarists can shred; few great ones do. The truly greats—Hendrix, Clapton, Page, Gilmour—understood that technique is no substitute for musicality.

TikTok, and short-form social media in general, is made for shredders. It rewards speed, spectacle, and surface over substance.

It’s true that the importance of music as an art form (even as a commercial product) has been in decline for years. The craft of songwriting reached its apogee in the mid 1970s. Since then, chordal progressions have become less complex in favour of grooves, and lyrics are added as an afterthought. (Admittedly I'm not a fan of hip-hop, but I don't think I'm out of line in saying groove and rhyme take precedence over substance.) The days of poet-troubadours like Bob Dylan, and The Who's epic rock operas are long gone. 

Platforms like TikTok, that considerably shorten attention spans, advance these trends immeasurably. 

TikTok is so pervasive it may not just reflect culture—it may redefine it. When speed becomes the measure of value, and attention the only currency, stimulation takes precedence over meaningful connection. 

As I posted recently, one danger is that we’ll stop making art altogether (except as a personal hobby) because AI will take over. But there is the added possibility that we’ll forget what art is actually for. 

It is said that great artists need great (read: receptive, attentive) audiences. 

TikTok is for shredders, but real culture has always belonged to those who linger, who listen, who take time to allow art to penetrate the soul. 

It's Time

CLICK HERE TO HEAR THE SONG

It's time to protest,

It's time for unrest,

It's time for redress,

It's time to make a mess.

It's time that they stop,

For the folks at the top, 

To share what they got,

With the rest of us lot.

It's time,

I say it's time,

You know it's time,

I say it's time.

It's time to get real,

To declare how we feel,

To change a bad deal,

It's time for us to heal.

It's time to realize,

That all they do is lie,

To get us to take sides,

While they steal the prize.

It's time,

I say it's time,

you know it's time,

I say it's time.

It's time for the street,

To call out the elite, 

And show how they cheat,

So we can't compete.

It's time that they fall,

Cause they take it all,

It's time to stand tall,

So let's heed the call.

It's time,

I say it's time,

you know it's time,

I say it's time.

It's time that they know, 

That this movement will grow,

We will rise from below,

To make sure that they go.

The time has come,

We unite as one,

Justice will be done,

A new era has begun. 

A new era has begun...

Gamification

The gamification of politics makes me mad. 

I first heard the term gamification a few years ago from my daughter, who was writing her master’s thesis in occupational linguistics — the theory and mechanics of teaching language. She was collaborating with a professor of computer programming to develop ways of teaching language by turning it into a game. Students earned points for mastering skills and advanced through levels by solving language puzzles. Learning, she explained, was enhanced by play.

Ever since, it feels as if everything in our lives has been gamified — especially through our smartphones. Gamification activates the same dopamine circuits as addictive behaviors like gambling. (There’s a reason casinos prefer the word gaming.)

Of course, none of this is entirely new. “Game theory” — the study of strategic decision-making — has long been applied to mathematics, politics, economics, and psychology. Even Monopoly was designed to illustrate how the capitalist system that dominates our waking days is essentially a game of acquisition.

Lately I’ve been thinking of my grade 10 art teacher, who took our class of creative misfits to see a show at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts by the great Canadian filmmaker and installation artist Michael Snow. Afterward, we had to write a review. During our discussion, the teacher kept probing me for a reaction. Each time I offered an impression, he’d push me further until finally he said, “It’s a game. What Snow wants us to see is that life itself is like a game — full of rules and systems we only discover through interaction. Once you understand the rules, new layers of perception open up.”

At the time, I barely understood what he meant.

These days, though, it feels as if life’s been reduced to just a game — stripped of Snow’s depth and turned into something mechanical and shallow. The algorithms don’t invite discovery; they compel reaction. We’re no longer playing the game — it’s playing us.

It plays us through our phones. Amazon makes shopping feel like a slot machine. Interest in sports is largely driven by betting odds. News outlets cover elections like horse races.

But Parliament or Congress isn’t the NFL. Political rivals aren’t avatars in a video game. Politics is supposed to be about negotiation, compromise, and crafting laws that serve the public good — not racking up points against opponents.

Yet the media frames every issue as a scoreboard: who’s up, who’s down, who ‘won’ and who ‘lost’. That framing cheapens the issues, demeans the politicians, and insults the voters. 

Watch the broadcast interviews with supporters at a political rally, the flag wavers and sign carriers. When asked to articulate the reasons for their support it’s rarely impressive, let alone coherent or comprehensible. The impression one gets is akin to asking a football fan why they wear their colours. There is no reason. It’s emotional and performative. That’s fine for football. Not politics.

And yes, people on the right, the MAGA team are particularly egregious. But ‘No Kings’ didn’t fill me with any great confidence that they had much more sophistication in their political discourse either.

Gamification has ‘flattened’ and dumbed-down the public discourse all around.  

Politics shouldn’t be about winners and losers. It should be about the issues, values, governance, accountability, and competence.

When we gamify everything — even our democracy — we reduce it to spectacle and scorekeeping. And in that version of the game, we all lose.

Robot-Made Art

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about robots making our art. By 'art' I mean everything from writing novels to playing music, painting, and filmmaking. I’ve been wondering how good robot-made art will become, how dominant it will be in the marketplace, and whether all human-made art will eventually be relegated to a pastime or hobby. The most important question, though, is what will happen to our sense of humanity and community if the art we consume is, overwhelmingly, machine-made.

Of course, much of art-making has already become a pastime. Painting, once a viable profession supported by academies and apprenticeships, has been economically unsustainable for most practitioners for at least the past seventy-five years. Image-making technologies played a large role in that decline—but technology alone isn’t to blame. Advances in recording, for example, created an economic boom in music for musicians, songwriters, and concert promoters. In writing, print technology made authorship a profession.

Still, technology does seem to be the story. Once applied to art-making, it eventually replaces the professional artist. Mass-market economics demand it.

Advances in AI have now reached the point where machines can produce virtually any kind of mass-market art as professionally and more efficiently than humans. The economics clearly favor machine-made art, just as factory-made furniture and clothing displaced handmade production. The concern today isn’t so much about quality, but about how to tell the difference between human and machine creation—because the machine-made is getting that good.

Here's an example. This song is described as “Discovered on a forgotten mono tape marked ‘Handle Me – May 1952.’ This juke-joint scorcher captures the unstoppable blues powerhouse Bertha Mae Lightning—a woman who could outplay, outsing, and outdrink half the Delta.” Only at the very bottom of the description does it add: “Disclaimer: A lost-session tribute—written, arranged, and composed by a human, brought to life with AI in true blues spirit. The backstory’s fictional, the music’s real.”

The music is real, only in the sense that it was generated by AI from scraped samples. It’s undeniably good—very good—and most listeners, judging by the comments, have no idea it’s artificial. The packaging is designed to fool.

What’s happening in music will soon happen in books, films—everywhere. And since streaming platforms control access, they’ll inevitably promote machine-made work over the human. There's more money in it for them.

So does it matter if Bertha Mae Lightning is real or not? How about Elijah "Hollowfoot" Turner?

I think it does. No matter how good it sounds—or looks.

Art-making has been faked before, especially in painting, and we’ve always drawn a firm line between the counterfeit and the original. That line must exist in all the arts. Admittedly, it’s trickier in music, where performance and reproduction blur. But even in the visual arts, where a canvas or sculpture is one-of-a-kind, there have long been marketed facsimiles—prints, for example.

Still, knowing that a real person produced something matters. It’s part of what makes art art.

The artist’s presence is so integral to the experience of art that we’ve always struggled to separate the artist from their work. Often, the work itself is sublime and deeply human, yet the artist turns out to be a scoundrel. Art history is littered with such examples—from the Baroque painter Caravaggio to filmmaker Woody Allen. Should the fact that Ezra Pound and Roald Dahl were avowed antisemites change how we value their poetry and stories? The point is, it matters; it makes some of us deeply uncomfortable that the author of the beloved children's book "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" unrepentently hated Jews.

Whether it 'should' matter is a debate worth having—and part of what makes art so compelling. Art reflects the paradoxes and mysteries of the human journey, both the tasteful and the unsavoury. The nature of art is artifice to be sure, but it's artifice in the service of truth. 

The knowledge that there is no real experience behind Bertha Mae Lightning’s lines—I shine too bright, I cut too deep/ They talk that love, but they don't keep, means the essential component is missing. It changes the way it lands for me. I hope others feel the same way, once they know the truth.

What if

What 

What if

What if no

What if no one 

What if no one paid 

What if no one paid attention

What if no one paid attention 

What if no one paid

What if no one

What if no 

What if

What.

Ahead of his Time

One of the major regrets in my life is that I didn’t get to know my grandfather Sam better. I’ve written about him once before. That blog post was mostly about him as an artist. But Sam was best known as a businessman. At one time, his company, Sample Manufacturing Corporation, was the largest producer of ladies’ dresses in Canada. In addition to innovating by applying an assembly-line model to clothing manufacturing, he was a pioneer of private labeling—selling slightly altered fashion designs to mass-market retailers under their own labels.

Sam passed away in 1989 when he was seventy-six and I was twenty-five. I had just finished graduate school and started my first full-time job working at a library when he got sick. He succumbed quickly to his illness after only a few weeks in the hospital.

As children, we didn’t actually see our grandparents too often. They lived in Florida during the winter and came back to Montreal in the summer. We’d fly down to visit them for two weeks during Christmas and Easter vacations. During the summer months, when they were back in town, my brothers and I were away at sleepaway camp. The only time of year we were really in the same place was at the beginning of the school year, before they returned to Florida for the winter.

My grandparents divorced in 1975, and by the time Sam’s business was winding down in the mid-1980s, he was spending even more time in Florida. By the time I graduated high school in ’81, and my parents’ marriage had come apart, we weren’t visiting Florida as a family anymore. We didn’t see much of Sam in the last decade of his life. My two older brothers saw him more often because, for a period of time, he let them use some of his empty factory space for the kitchen cabinet business they were trying to get off the ground. I, on the other hand, had no interest in business.

What I do remember about Sam has stuck with me—and, oddly enough, become more resonant with age. So many of the things I remember him talking about fifty years ago seem even more relevant today.

Sam was an autodidact. Despite never graduating from high school, he loved books and read widely. He read about politics, economics, philosophy, psychology, and art. When I was at university studying political science I can remember having discussions with him about some of the theories we were learning. I can remember him incisively shooting them down as ivory tower nonsense. 

I remember Sam being deeply interested in the writings of Freud and Marx though. His interest in Freud, I believe, was partly personal—he had underwent psychoanalysis for many years—but also connected to his work as an artist and his belief in the dominant role of the subconscious in life.

He was also interested by psychology as it relates to spectacle. One of his favorite phrases was “Bullshit baffles brains.” What he meant was that people could be manipulated, diverted, or gaslit. He was fascinated by American culture, and especially by the popularity of megachurches and televangelists in the South. On a portable cassette recorder, Sam used to tape the Sunday morning broadcasts of the charismatic preachers—the “Holy Rollers,” as he called them. He loved it when they made their pitch for donations, the psychology of salesmanship.

He was highly skeptical of politics and politicians, and despite his own success as a businessman, he didn’t believe in the future of capitalism. I remember him saying that “capital and labour are in conflict.” I presume much of his economic skepticism came from his difficult experience negotiating contracts with garment workers’ unions. He also said, “The banks own everything,” expressing his doubt in the very concept of private property that underpins the capitalist system.

I remember one time he drew a circle to illustrate why capitalism cannot work in the long run. He said, “Let’s say you have a circle of ten people, and you give each one $100 to sell a product or service to their neighbour in sequence. According to capitalism, each person must make a profit on their transaction. Logically, after a number of cycles, one person will end up with all the money.” (The exact number of cycles depends on the profit margins, but the principle stands.)

Today it seems like Sam was right about everything. Nothing about current events, thirty-six years after his death, would surprise him. Capitalism has failed in the way he foresaw—all the money has ended up in the hands of a few. Politics has proven that “bullshit baffles brains”; people are easily diverted and gaslit.

Sam was ahead of his time.

The truth is, I’m not sure what Sam actually thought, because I never had the depth or maturity to ask him. That’s the source of my regret. I’m just sewing together fabric swaths of memory to create a complete garment he might have worn.

Smoke and Mirrors

This week has been one of mixed emotions for me.

Elation that the final living hostages have been liberated — tempered by disgust at the triumphalism surrounding trump. Watching him bask in the praise and glory he’s been receiving in Israel made me feel sick to my stomach. It was like watching a drug addict take his fix. In trump’s case, the addiction is narcissism, and the drug is adulation — heaped on him not only by Israeli leaders and the public, but also by analysts and media commentators, which has been confounding to watch.

Yes, trump deserves some credit for helping secure the release of the last twenty living hostages. But not the standing ovation we’re seeing. A little perspective is in order: the Biden administration managed to get 110 hostages released. The so-called “trump plan” is, in fact, a rehash of the ceasefire framework negotiated earlier by Biden’s Secretary of State, Antony Blinken.

Of course, timing is everything. In every film, it’s the ending people remember. And humility rarely earns applause in politics. If there’s one thing trump truly excels at, it’s hyperbole — turning minor accomplishments into monumental ones and claiming credit for what others have done. I'm just tired of watching people fall for it.

Still, let’s clarify what actually happened. No “peace deal” was signed — and the media should stop calling it that. What was agreed to was a ceasefire, and it’s already starting to unravel. Instead of demilitarizing, Hamas is doing the opposite. They’ve claimed victory and taken to the streets of Gaza as a self-styled “police force,” re-establishing control through public displays of power and executions.

The document signed in Egypt wasn’t signed by either Israel or Hamas. It was called a “joint declaration,” slightly more consequential than a communiqué, and was signed by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, trump, Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. In other words, it was mostly PR.

If there was any doubt about the decline of western democracy, that was put to rest in Egypt, watching trump humiliate all the other leaders - their sycophancy together with the media's complicity.   

My question to Americans is this: At what point do you begin to see that the trump presidency for what it actually is, little more than smoke and mirrors — a performance designed to conceal the most corrupt presidency in U.S. history?

According to Forbes, trump’s personal net worth has jumped by nearly $3.4 billion in the first ten months of his second term — about $2 billion of that from cryptocurrency ventures, the untraceable currency of choice for crooks and corrupt politicians (read: bribes).

The rest of the trump family has profited handsomely as well. Jared and Ivanka have become billionaires in their own right. Jared has raised $4.6 billion from investors in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, and has already invested more than $2 billion in twenty-two companies. Eric and Don Jr. have joined in too, enriching themselves by roughly $750 million and $500 million respectively, much of it from crypto and real estate licensing deals across the Middle East and Asia. The family’s total enrichment from the presidency is estimated at more than $7 billion — and we’re only ten months in.

How do Americans not see that under trump, the office of the presidency, like every cheap product he’s ever slapped his name on, is for sale? Accepting the “gift” of a $400 million jet from Qatar wasn’t enough of a “for sale” sign? And what did Qatar get in return? Among other things, reportedly, a base for the Qatari Air Force — on American soil.

Meanwhile, trump has shut down the government while collecting billions in tariff revenue — effectively raising taxes on ordinary Americans — even as he cuts taxes for the wealthy and slashes benefits for the neediest. Does this get the public’s attention? Not so much.

What does raise Americans’ hackles? Apparently, the release of files on a wealthy, well-connected, dead pedophile. Maybe. Unless trump can keep the smoke-and-mirror show running long enough to distract them indefinitely.

And honestly, I wouldn’t bet against him. He knows you can never underestimate the American appetite for distraction — or the media’s willingness to go along with it. In the post-truth attention economy, spectacle is all that matters. 

Just Put The Phone Down

CLICK HERE TO HEAR THE SONG

Just put the phone down,

Don't follow the flock.

Just put the phone down,

And maybe we'll talk.

Don't look it up,

Don’t need to know why.

Don’t want the answer,

Meet me eye to eye.

Let's have a moment,

Share some head space.

Leave questions unanswered,

Inhabit one place. 

The screen doesn't give, 

A genuine impression.

Except of a person's,

Unhealthy obsession.

It's honesty I need, 

Now more than ever.

Not some stranger's comments, 

That makes him sound clever.

Don't care about the memes,

That try to make you laugh.

Don't need to be outraged,

By a dumb photograph.

Just put the phone down,

Don't follow the flock.

Just put the phone down,

And maybe we'll talk.

Don't look it up,

Don’t need to know why.

Don’t want the answer,

Meet me eye to eye.

Don't need further details,

On the Middle-East.

I have more concern for, 

The problems on my street.

The rivers of chaos,

Vulgarity and greed.

Vapidity, conspiracy,

On the misinforming feed.

The uncontrolled addiction,

The digital affliction.

The venal exhibition,

Of every politician. 

Hypnotized, mesmerized,

Anesthetized, lobotomized.

Paralyzed, desensitized, 

Our future is jeopardized.

Just put the phone down…

Hostage Release - Shehecheyanu

שֶׁהֶחֱיָנוּ וְקִיְּמָנוּ וְהִגִּיעָנוּ לַזְּמַן הַזֶּה

Shehecheyanu v'kiy'manu v'higiyanu laz'man hazeh

Blessed is the One who has kept us alive, sustained us, and brought us to this moment.

It’s the Hebrew blessing we say at moments of significance — family gatherings, holidays, birthdays, anniversaries. It signifies celebration and gratitude. But, as with all Jewish celebrations, it carries a certain heaviness — a shadow of memory and regret for those who are only with us in spirit. It’s a reminder of how much we owe to those who made our present moment possible.

I can hardly think of a more appropriate time to recite the blessing than today. There are inevitably mixed feelings. We celebrate the return of the living — their freedom from the dungeons of captivity. We mourn the more than two years they spent suffering helplessly, enduring mental and physical torment at the hands of the most depraved, sadistic individuals. We rejoice in their reunions with family. We grieve for those who could not return safely to theirs. We celebrate the end of a nightmare. We regret the 465 Israeli soldiers — most of them in their late teens and early twenties — who gave their lives in the war, and the tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians killed and wounded, along with the hundreds of thousands who continue to endure deprivation and inhuman living conditions.

I am grateful to the politicians who finally reached a deal. I blame the politicians for taking so long — for the unimaginable toll their delay has taken.

Shehecheyanu, yes — but this should have, and could have, happened much sooner.

Almost two years ago, on October 29, 2023, the Montreal Jewish community gathered downtown to call for the release of the hostages. My wife and I attended, and we brought home a bright yellow sign that said, “Release the Hostages.” That day, I stuck the sign in the window of our front door and vowed not to take it down until every hostage was released. I never imagined it would remain there for almost two years.

I thought I was taking a small risk. Ours is a quiet, affluent neighborhood. Many Jewish families live on our street, though it’s a mix. What worried me most was the bus stop directly in front of our house. I feared someone not from our neighbourhood might see the sign, take exception, and throw a rock at the window. I figured the worst that could happen was the cost and hassle of replacing some broken glass. Taking a public stand, however meagre, was worth the risk. My worries grew as the war dragged on, the Palestinian death toll rose, and antisemitism in the diaspora intensified. Still, I kept my vow to myself. 

In those two years, we experienced only two clear responses to our sign — and perhaps two more, if you count the ambiguous ones.

The first was direct but civil: someone stuck a pink Post-it note to our door, on the sign itself. In neat cursive it read, “And stop killing the children of Gaza.” Hard to disagree. It was a restrained gesture, considering the hatred and vitriol that were exploding online.

The second involved my wife’s small business. She sells vintage housewares online and by appointment from our basement. Once, a customer who had arranged to pick up an item failed to show. Later, she messaged my wife to say that she had changed her mind. We’re fairly certain that she came to the house, saw the sign, turned away, and decided not to go through with the purchase.

I might also add that more times than not, the sign elicited positive and considerate reponses from some of my wife's customers. One time, my wife went to the door for a customer and saw through the window that she was removing her keffiyeh, presumably so my wife wouldn't be offended.    

The remaining two incidents are more speculative. One week, our recycling wasn’t collected. Normally it’s picked up from the curb, right near where the sign is visible from the street. I’d put the blue bag out early; all the other houses’ bags were taken, except ours. It was picked up the following week, so our house wasn’t blacklisted — but I still wonder if the driver decided that day to make a quiet protest gesture of his own.

The last incident was stranger — and unsettling. One summer weekend, while mowing the lawn, I found a large kitchen knife planted upright in the grass near our walkway. I had no idea why it was there. Perhaps someone waiting at the bus stop had found it on the street and stuck it in the ground absentmindedly. But this happened during a time of vandalism and violent acts against Jewish institutions and on university campuses, and for a brief moment a chill ran through me — as if it were meant as a threatening message. Within a few minutes, I dismissed the thought as paranoia, pulled the knife out of the grass — it was perfectly good, maybe even expensive — and brought it into the house. We still have it. There was never any follow-up, and I’ve come to think it was pure coincidence.

Today, the last 20 living hostages have come home - I must settle for the living for now. I am taking the sign down. I’m relieved it’s gone.

Shehecheyanu, indeed.