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!
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.
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
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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
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.
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.
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,
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…
שֶׁ×”ֶ×—ֱ×™ָ× ×•ּ וְקִ×™ְּמָ× ×•ּ וְ×”ִ×’ִּ×™×¢ָ× ×•ּ לַ×–ְּמַן ×”ַ×–ֶּ×”
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.
MarÃa Corina Machado, who won the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize for “promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela,” is literally the anti-trump.
As everyone in the world knows by now—because trump announces it every chance he gets, which is almost every day—he wants desperately to win the Nobel Peace Prize. It’s a pathological obsession. He thinks he can sell the Peace Prize Committee on giving it to him, as if it were one of his cheap ties or overpriced watches, by repeating the exaggerated lie that he has resolved seven conflicts around the world since coming into office (sometimes it’s as many as eleven).
Well, now we know what we’ve always known: the people in Norway are not as gullible as his merch-wearing MAGA yokel supporters.
You’ve likely never heard of MarÃa Corina Machado. She is Venezuela’s main opposition leader, and unlike trump she is relatively inconspicuous in international headlines, because she has been forced into hiding by the murderous Maduro regime. The Nobel Committee cited her decades-long “tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.”
So while trump is ordering his military to blow up Venezuelan fishing boats and ratcheting up tensions by moving seven U.S. Navy warships and a nuclear-powered submarine off the coast of South America—giving Maduro an excuse to tighten his grip on power—Machado has been working to “mobilize both domestic and international support for a peaceful resolution to the ongoing electoral fraud crisis” and to “bring attention to the human rights abuses occurring under the current regime.”
Personally, I don’t much care about the Nobel Peace Prize. Ever since they gave it to Obama for no apparent reason—saying it was for “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples”—its meaning and prestige have been downgraded in my view. But of course, the fact that Obama got it makes it that much more desirable for trump. As the leader of a neo-Confederate, racist political movement, trump feels desperately that he must not be outshone in any way by his Black predecessor.
Still, I’m relieved the Nobel Committee didn’t fall for trump’s song-and-dance routine. Part of me feared they might give it to him anyway, as a way of reminding him that he’s not actually on Putin’s side and encouraging him to behave more like a Western leader.
But I don’t think the folks in Oslo have given up on using their platform to send a message. It’s as if awarding the Prize to Venezuela’s Machado was directed at trump. The message is: this is how you pursue peace—not with warships. And also: the Peace Prize is not about ceasefires, it’s about democracy. Because without democracy, there is no peace. No politician in U.S. history has done more to damage democratic principles and institutions, at home and abroad, than trump. Giving him the Prize would have been a travesty.
It’s why he will never deserve it. And all the talk lately by pundits and analysts that it may be merited for the Gaza 20-point plan misses the mark. There are plenty of reasons Netanyahu and Hamas have decided now is the time to cease hostilities—most of them having nothing to do with trump. The supposed “trump plan” is largely a rehash of the Biden plan that failed last January. Now, the timing worked out favorably: Hamas has essentially been defeated, and Netanyahu is thinking about his positioning as a “peacemaker” ahead of Israeli elections less than a year from now.
We’ll see how much of the plan actually gets implemented. My guess is that phase one will go through, the hostages will be released, Israel will release prisoners and retreat to the agreed-upon line. Aid will start flooding in. After that, it's anyone's guess. I can't imagine that Hamas will de-militarize.
Nonetheless, clearly trump’s recent push to bring the parties together was part of his campaign to win the Nobel Peace Prize. And if so, the prestige of the Prize worked in trump's narcissistic mind the way it had to.
The rebuilding of Gaza will take a very long time and the sustained efforts and resources of the US. I hope trump remembers that for the Nobel Prize, like a trophy at his golf club that he's won a dozen times, there’s always next year.
Projection. Human beings are experts at it. In all likelihood we are the only creatures that do it—though that would be hard to test (but I suspect not impossible). Projection bridges the existential gap between our inner thoughts and feelings, which we are sure of, and the outside world, which we can never be sure of.
Projection is both conscious and unconscious. We anthropomorphize and personify. We project motives, thoughts, and feelings onto other people, animals, events, and even inanimate objects. We merge our own points of view and beliefs with the outside world so completely that we often cannot distinguish between the real and the imagined.
I think this is part of the reason our screen activities merge so seamlessly with our lives—because it is so natural. We have simply substituted the screen of our minds with the screen we hold in our hands. In fact, projection is precisely what the technology is designed to do, but in reverse: to understand our beliefs and desires, and to project a curated world back to us that reflects them. And then the world we inhabit digitally becomes pure projection.
Psychologically speaking, projection has utility. It has both positive and negative aspects. On the positive side, it is necessary for sympathy and empathy. To empathize with others, we must imagine that they feel (and suffer) as we do. On the negative side, projection can be a source of self-delusion and denial—an evasion of truths we find uncomfortable to confront.
Projection is also a form of identification. It feeds our powerful need for belonging. It reassures us that we are not alone, that there are others like us—and who like us. On another level, it aligns us with a seemingly indifferent and unknowable world. We want the world to make sense, by which we mean a world congruent with our personal thoughts and feelings. Nothing is as threatening to our sense of safety as lack of control, and projection offers a kind of control, however imagined. At its base, it is a product of fear, will, and desire—a denial of the true agency and independence of others and of the world itself.
In his talks, the Hindu sage Nisargadatta Maharaj spoke of moving beyond illusion. Illusion, by definition, is false—and the false is the source of all suffering. Freedom from suffering, the only true freedom, requires clarity of mind. This begins with recognizing that there is an unchanging reality to which we may have access, but which is obscured by the projections of the mind. Mistaking this projected world of illusions for reality, we are not fully conscious or aware.
Nisargadatta gives the example of the world as a screen and the self as a projector of images upon it. The screen is real and unchanging, but blank—one might say disinterested. The images are projections of the mind. The energy that animates them—the light—is the energy source of all life.
We have, he says, the capacity to discern the difference between the screen, the projections, and the light itself. Through stillness and self-examination, we can attune ourselves to the workings of the mind. The more attuned we become, the more elevated our consciousness, and the closer we draw to the unchanging light source—what he calls Love, Reality, or Truth. He uses these words not religiously, but as expressions of awareness and connection to the only thing we can truly know: our own mind.
For those of us shaped by Western thought, the first step is to accept that the universe is indifferent and uncontrollable. It doesn’t care about us; events happen. Believing they happen 'for a reason', as the old self-comforting adage goes, is projection and therefore false. Any notion that the world was created by a well-intentioned deity for our benefit is the epitome of projection. It is no mystery that our conception of the Creator is expressed in human terms—merciful, wrathful, jealous, loving.
Yet the universe, though it may not “care,” has produced us out of its own energies and forces. We are inseparable from it. Perhaps this is what appeals to many about Eastern thought: it acknowledges our innate connection to the universe without the need to invent a Creator or intermediary. It offers a practice of mindfulness that deepens that connection.
And as the falseness of projection and illusion dissolves, what remains is a quieter kind of happiness—a generosity of being. Perhaps this is all that enlightenment means: the light that remains when we no longer insist that the world mirror us, but let it simply be.
Those days were pretty wild,
We went to all the shows.
Knew every verse by heart,
Had nowhere else to go,
Wore the future like a charm,
Danced to incantations.
We were mystics immune from harm,
Princes of provocation.
Our bodies had no limits,
Except to test the imagination.
We moved in sync like spirits,
The night was our education.
There was no giving up,
No matter how we got knocked down.
Always another chorus,
Always another round.
The hour may be late,
And I may not be in my prime.
But I'm here to tell you, girl,
I've still got some time.
The ingredients are still there babe,
Not as fresh as they used to be.
But I can still remember,
All of the recipe.
Don't call me nostalgic,
Don't say I'm old fashioned.
If you're willing to go there, babe,
I don't have to search for my passion.
The hour may be late,
And I may not be in my prime.
But I'm here to tell you, girl,
I've still got some time.
I've still got some time... for you.
CLICK HERE TO HEAR AUTHOR READ
We wear the weekday hats
and costumes,
in the stores, the factories,
the offices,
and weekend gatherings,
baseball
and football,
warrior games,
flags and anthems;
and at night
in the bars,
the face paint, tattoos, dances;
and on weekends
in churches and synagogue,
the skull cap and fringed shawl,
psalms and tribal chants,
and every refrain means
we belong, we belong, we belong.
Beneath the melodies,
between the words,
a silence,
a nakedness
covered by the caps
and uniforms,
stillness
like the moment
we were born,
helpless and beheld -
on the edge between
death and life,
being and longing to be -
when we witnessed
that before anything
there was only
love.
In the 1960s the Beatles told us that love was all we needed.
A decade later the British glam band Sweet compared love to oxygen: “You get too much, you get too high / Not enough and you’re gonna die.”
By the 1980s, Howard Jones was already asking the more skeptical question: "What is love anyway? Does anybody love anybody anyway?"
But perhaps it was composer Sammy Fain and lyricist Paul Francis Webster who said it best back in 1955, as sung by Andy Williams: "Love is a many splendoured thing. It’s the April rose that only grows in the early spring… the golden crown that makes a man a king."
Admittedly, looking for guidance on the meaning of love in pop music may seem strange, but together the songs testify to love’s eternally puzzling and multi-faceted nature. Romantic love is beautiful, intoxicating, and transformative. Spiritual love is defiant, transcendent, and awesome.
Poet Dylan Thomas assured us that love endures even beyond mortality:
"Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion."
Even the pop refrains point us in the same direction. Huey Lewis & the News declared in 1985 that love is a power beyond explanation: "Make-a one man weep, make another man sing… And with a little help from above, you feel the power of love." Even here, love is not just a fleeting emotion. It requires “help from above,” suggesting something eternal and transcendent.
And love has long been recognized as the cornerstone of Western morality. Leviticus 19:18 commands us: “Love thy fellow as thyself” - ve’ahavta l’re’echa kamocha. One of Judaism's greatest sages, Rabbi Akiva, called this a klal gadol, a great principle of the Torah.
This insight is shared in the East as well. In the non-dualist teachings of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, love is not selective but boundless — not an emotion directed toward one individual, but the very connective tissue of existence. When the ego dissolves, desire and fear give way to an inexhaustible energy of giving. “You are neither the husband nor the wife,” he taught. “You are the love between the two.” True love is not confined to bodies or personalities; it is the space of shared consciousness.
Seen this way, the journey of love is really the elevation of consciousness — the realization that beneath our separateness we share the same being, the same life. This is the universalism behind "love thy fellow as thyself": love as recognition, not preference. Or as Nisargadatta put it: “Love says: I am everything.”
From the Beatles to Dylan Thomas, from Huey Lewis to the Torah, the message converges: love is both mystery and power, both intimate and universal. But the essence of love is actually as simple as it is transcendent: act with kindness and compassion. The rest, as they say, is commentary.
I used to feel proud to be part of humanity.
It felt good, because human beings had done wonderful things. We created majestic works of art, wrote magnificent books, sang joyous songs. We built cathedrals and pagodas, carved temples out of stone, and raised cities from the ground. We eliminated smallpox, split the atom, and stood on the moon.
Of course, we have also done terrible things. Atrocities, wars, cruelty beyond measure. But you cannot deny the Sistine Chapel, Saint Peter’s Basilica, the Taj Mahal, Angkor Wat, Machu Picchu. You cannot deny the poetry of Emily Dickinson and Yeats, the novels of Dostoevsky, the music of Bach, Beethoven, Gershwin. The songs of Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen. Humanity has proven itself capable of staggering beauty.
Growing up, I felt part of that story. When I read the books, visited the sites, sang the songs, I felt I belonged to a lineage of creators. It seemed to me that I was part of a species with limitless creative potential, because of what we had already achieved. Surely there was so much more ahead of us. And maybe—just maybe—I could play some small part in it.
Lately, though, another thought troubles me: What happens when we stop creating? What happens when the machines do it for us—the image-making, the music-writing, the story-spinning, the thinking itself? What happens to humanity’s sense of itself when we outsource the very acts that once defined our spirit and soul?
In the film The Social Dilemma, technology critic Tristan Harris speaks of a paradigm shift. For the first time, he says, we have invented a technology that is not merely a 'tool'. From the wheel to the printing press, from the telephone to the personal computer, technologies have historically been designed to help us accomplish tasks more efficiently. They extended human agency. The printing press spread ideas. The telephone allowed voices to carry across distance. These were tools that worked for us.
But social media—and now machine learning systems—work on us. They use us as much as we use them. Algorithms learn our preferences and in turn shape our thoughts, desires, and behaviors to serve commercial or political ends. The more we rely on them, the more they influence us.
In some sense, this is not entirely new. Newspapers, television, and radio were always used to persuade and to sell. But the intimacy of today’s technologies is unprecedented. Our phones are not just media channels; they are companions, advisors, decision-makers. They mediate every aspect of life: work, shopping, travel, communication, entertainment.
And now, increasingly, they mediate creativity itself, which is troubling to me.
Art is not just another domain of human activity. It is where we meet our own soul. Through stories, music, paintings, films, poems, we connect to one another and to the depths of our humanity. Art is not decoration. It is recognition: the proof that someone else has felt what I feel, seen what I see, longed as I long.
What happens when machines make the films we watch, the music we listen to, the stories we read? What happens when the mirror of human experience is replaced by the reflection of aggregated data scraped from the internet and optimized for engagement, but untethered from lived life?
I fear that as we outsource creativity to machines, we risk losing our faith in ourselves. We risk ceasing to believe in the potential that human beings are capable of. If beauty no longer carries the weight of human struggle, love, or imagination behind it, then it will not connect us to one another in the same way. It may dazzle us, but it will not bond us.
And without that bond—without that sense of belonging to a lineage of creators—we become disconnected, apathetic, and lonely. Just as great art once elevated our sense of humanity, machine-made art may begin to flatten it. If we consume only the reflections of algorithms, we will become their reflection: soulless, mechanical, cut off from our own depth.
The danger, then, is not simply that machines will replace us. It is that we will forget who we are and care less about each other. The moment we stop creating for ourselves, we risk losing the very thing that once made it feel so good to be a member of the human race.
You might think I'm anxious,
Did everything that I could.
To make you think you're mine,
Never thinking that you would.
I dressed the part and I said the words,
But couldn't offer any proof.
I was shy and quiet, half-scared to death -
Hoping you'd approve.
Just tried to get my chance,
At something better than I've got.
Not trying to be the type of guy,
Who's someone that he's not.
I'm going all in with nothing to lose,
And I swear I really care.
Not saying it makes any sense,
But I've got this soul to bear.
Won't try too hard,
Won't use much force,
Hope this time it works,
When cart pulls horse.
There are times when one and one,
Don't add up to two.
I'm going to put it all out there,
Ignore all the old rules.
I've decided if I can't be cool,
I just won't bother trying.
The birds with the brightest feathers,
Don't use them for flying.
Won't try too hard,
Won't use much force,
Hope this time it works,
When cart pulls horse.
I'll get the order wrong,
Reverse the way time flows.
Do it cock-eyed and backwards,
Declare my love then watch it grow.
Because whatever we may have,
It begins and ends with hope.
It ends and begins with hope,
Horse pulls cart, cart pulls horse.
Won't try too hard,
Won't use much force,
Hope this time it works,
When cart pulls horse.
One more brief word on the recognition of a Palestinian State. In my last post I focused mostly on why it was counter-productive. This time, I want to add a word that’s more emotionally motivated, as a Canadian.
Despite the speeches at the UN General Assembly about how recognition would benefit the Palestinians and advance a two-state solution, the real drivers are domestic politics and performance. Britain and France want to placate their growing Arab populations. And what better place to do this than on the world’s biggest stage, the UNGA? It’s also a form of political “virtue signalling,” reflecting the growing influence of social media on international politics. From their perspective, it’s understandable.
But why Canada? We don’t have a particularly large or influential Arab community. The answer, I think, is Trump. Canada wants to send a signal, also on the biggest stage: that it’s distancing itself from the U.S. and aligning more closely with the EU, economically and politically.
In other words, these moves are less about what’s genuinely best for the Palestinians, and more about how countries are positioning themselves in the shifting international order. Once again, the Palestinians are being used.
What we’re witnessing is not a peace process or a step toward resolution, but countries staking claims in a new geopolitical game.
Bump stocks and automatic guns,
Volleyball and video games.
Cruise ships and particle physics,
Fashion brands and User names.
American Football and Taylor Swift,
Comment sections and mineral baths.
Crypto-currency and NFTs,
People who vote for sociopaths.
There's still so much,
I don't understand.
But trust me when I say,
I'm becoming a new man.
Jesus Christ and McDonald's meals,
Billionaires and content creation.
Tik-Tok influencers and school shootings,
Anabolic steroids for recreation.
Los Angeles, Late Night talk shows,
Pole vault and Biathalon.
Coltrane's album 'A Love Supreme',
Greek frappé and Ozzy Osbourne.
There's still so much,
I don't understand.
But trust me when I say,
I'm becoming a new man.
James Joyce and machines that learn,
By artificial intelligence.
Plastic surgery, music streaming,
The epidemic of loneliness.
What some people call patriotic,
The fuss made over diversity.
Feeling at home with so many homeless,
Cancer, famine, and poverty.
There's still so much,
I don't understand.
But trust me when I say,
I'm becoming a new man.
What it means that I was born,
The distance to the closest star.
Manic-Depression and gravity,
Love, hate and peace and war.
There's still so much,
I don't understand.
But trust me when I say,
I'm becoming a new man.
CLICK HERE TO HEAR AUTHOR READ
Today I saw
an injured songbird
lying on the pavement—
probably
a car.
I was walking to work,
through the parking lot,
about to slip in
through the exit
next to the garage door
of the building,
when I noticed the small body—
a Yellow Warbler,
curled like a fist,
wings folded tight
like fingers.
The morning sun shimmered
across its feathers,
flashed green and red
with each strained breath.
I stopped.
Wondered what to do:
Should I pick it up?
Hold it
in my cupped palms,
carry it inside,
try to save it—
How?
I bent low,
close enough
to see the beak,
sharp as a syringe,
trembling,
a tiny bead
eye.
The bird was afraid—
not of death,
not of pain,
but of me.
I wished it well,
went inside.
CLICK HERE TO HEAR AUTHOR READ
The pursuit of happiness
takes you away from happiness.
The pursuit of meaning
takes you away from meaning.
The pursuit of wisdom
takes you away from wisdom.
The pursuit of authenticity
takes you away from authenticity.
The pursuit of modesty
takes you away from modesty.
The pursuit of love
takes you away from love.
To approach, stay still.
To find,
refrain from seeking.
Everywhere is here.
Forever is now.
I was always wrong,
In most everything I thought.
So don't listen to the things,
I said when we fought.
Yeah I may have meant,
Everything in my head,
Still, pay no attention,
To whatever I said.
The future was for me,
Part of some fascination.
No way it could match,
All my expectations.
We’ll marry and have kids,
Or maybe we won't.
They'll decide to have kids,
Until they don't.
It's all okay, it's all okay,
I promise it’ll all turn out.
It’s all okay, it’s all okay,
We’ll figure out,
Whatever we’re about.
There are no big storylines,
So don’t look for a saviour.
Just ask a friend,
To do a little favour.
Maybe just maybe,
Someone will come through.
And some of your wishes,
Might even come true.
I’ll play you a song,
Nothing too fancy.
You might get inspired,
To do a little dancing.
You’ll tell me a story,
Cause we all have a few.
I’ll drink to your health,
And you’ll drink to mine too.
It’s all okay, it’s all okay,
I promise it’ll all turn out.
It’s all okay, it’s all okay,
We’ll figure out,
Whatever we’re about.
Charlie Kirk's assassination was foreseeable. Not his assassination in particular, but political violence in general, because it was already on the rise. It follows the assassination attempt on trump, his pardoning of the violent Jan 6 seditionists and the leaders of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, and an uptick in a number of other acts of political violence since he took office.
Political violence is symptomatic of the deterioration of rule of law and democracy. It happens when people lose trust in the institutions that support law and order. No American President in recent history has done more to undermine law and order than the convicted felon-President.
Political violence increases when:
a. It's outwardly and implicitly encouraged by leaders against political rivals. Violence is rhetorically normalized.
b. There is a breakdown in the rule of law. The law enforcement and criminal justice system are weaponized and politicized. The guilty get off scott free, or get unearned clemency, and the innocent go to jail.
No President is recent memory has done more to weaponize politics, demonize political rivals, and tacitly or actively encouraged political violence, as Donald J. Trump. This has the impact of encouraging violence among his supporters as well as among those who oppose him, a vicious cycle. Violence is contagious.
This is a perilous moment for America, but for trump who thrives in chaos, it's political gold. An opportunity to crank up the heated rhetoric, when any normal politican who actually cared about his country would be doing the opposite. Predictably, in a statement from the Oval Office he blamed the 'radical Leftists', implictly encouraging further violence. The politicization of this tragedy feeds trump's agenda of consolidating authoritarian power and militarizing the streets. A very weak president, which is what trump is, weaker than ever, is an even more dangerous president because the only way he can maintain power is to further divide the country and radicalize his supporters.
I would hope that Americans understand the political dynamic underway and resist it. I'm not terribly encouraged that they have the capacity or will.
Israel bombed Qatar.
Actually they bombed a residential building in the capital city Doha, purported to house the headquarters of the internationally-recognized terrorist organization Hamas, with whom they are at war, and who holds their non-combatant citizens as hostages.
The international community is almost unanimously wringing its hands or outright condemning the attack. The Prime Minister of Canada called the attack 'an intolerable expansion of violence'. Trump said he was 'very unhappy' with the attack, impotent as usual.
Netanyahu said that the decision was made to attack the day Hamas gunmen attacked a bus stop outside Jerusalem killing six people.
So let's think about this.
What we see happening in real time is the unravelling of the international order. The power vacuum left by the weakness of the United States is being filled, by new alliances - China, Russia, North Korea, and India in Asia, and in the Middle East, Israel asserting itself as the preeminent military power in that region. In Europe, the power vacuum issue is being fought out in Ukraine.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres condemned the attack, saying “I condemn this flagrant violation of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Qatar.” He is saying this because the Israeli action is also endemic of the abject failure of the UN to deal with terrorism.
At the heart of Israel's action is a question: Do we live in a world where terrorism is acceptable or not? Will we accept countries (member states of the UN) providing safe haven and funding for terrorism?
On the respected podcast The Rest Is Politics, Alastair Campbell said that if Israel was planning this attack all along it means they were negotiating for the release of their hostages in bad faith. An astonishingly naive comment. So, the government of Israel is in bad faith doing whatever it can to get its citizens released from captivity? Is there no distinction between the government of a nation-state acting on behalf of its citizens and a terrorist organization? Terrorists holding hostages is the very definition of bad faith.
After strongly condemning the attack, which of course they had to do, the Qatari PM said that it would not deter them from acting as mediators for further negotiation. I read this as a wink and a nod. They either knew or at least expected the attack was coming and tacitly consented.
I am in favour of attacking terrorists. Even if it means attacking them in sovereign countries who give them safe-haven. And especially if the terrorists hold your hostages. This was not an attack on Qatar, and the Qataris know it. It was not an attack on the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Qatar, as the UN SecGen said. It was Israel acting in defence of the international order against terrorists who want to undermine it.
Because Israel realizes that if they they aren't going to do it, no one will.
