All this is good, except that the standard we use to measure human growth is still weighted heavily towards a monetary yardstick, a simple but crude measure: GDP. Translated down to the individual level, when introducing yourself at a cocktail party, it’s easier to say, “I am a lawyer,” or “I am a corporate executive,” for that implies a guaranteed income potential and its accompanying elevated social status. I had some of those monikers in the past and it was smooth sailing in social circles. Now, when I say, “Umm, let me see, I write books and blogs, I play in a band, I do infrequent consulting gigs, I edit for a publisher, I dream a lot, I take lots of walks and I am learning much about myself,” people look at me as if I am a weirdo. “He has no MONEY!”

The United Nations made some strides in developing the measure of human development, going beyond the GDP yardstick. The Human Development Index (HDI) measures education, health, mortality, inequality and poverty, in addition to GDP. But as this is an aggregate country-level measure it only serves at that summary level – a good alert for a government on whether a “spring uprising” is brewing in that country, perhaps. Others have tried by measuring happiness quotients (HQ); there are tests and exercises on how to increase this measure, some people even self-medicate by repeating “this is the best day of the rest of my life,” several times a day to ramp up their ratings.

I think we need to go beyond HDIs and HQs. We need to measure self-awareness and make that a key driver of human success. Who am I as a person and why did I come to this earth? What is my role and am I on the path to achieving that measure before I pass on? The extent to which we are closer to achieving our life goal should be the measure of happiness, social status and all the other measures we use to grade human beings. We might find some surprising results: the multi-millionaire who is hopped on drugs may be lower on this scale than the poor fisherman who catches his daily supply of food and has a little surplus to share with his neighbours. Likewise, newly emergent nations, guzzling up the world’s energy supply and its jobs and on a path of consumerism never experienced in their histories may pause and say, “Hey, wrong track, must switch, chop, chop.” Arms factories may close, wars will stop or never start.

I’d like our ever shrinking census questionnaire to add the following questions: “Do you know what you were born to accomplish?” and “How far along that path are you at present?” and “Are you a net producer or a net consumer” and “If you have assets to leave behind, who should benefit from these after you die?” and the guilty question: “Who should pay for your debts?”

Tree-hugger philosophy? Utopian? Ballsy? But then nations are built by utopian and ballsy leaders, and I prefer a tree-hugger to a vote-hugger. And as our established western nations are under threat of falling behind, we need a lot of balls in our camp and some out of the box thinking.

It is almost a given these days that a new writer has to self-publish his book and give away the e-book version for free. Some say that you have to give away three free for every one sold at $0.99. That is less than 25 cents per copy. How long will that take before you amass the minimum required to receive your first royalty check from the online retailers who are notoriously lax at paying? Perhaps many fall by the way before accumulating that minimum, to the benefit of the online retailer. And why do we have to do this? Where is the value exchange? Where is the token of respect for all the hours socked away into learning the craft and then producing the book? Where is the sense of self-respect that this labourer is worthy of his hire?

Sure, I give a certain amount of content away for free – like this blog article, for example. But my value exchange here is received in the engagement by the many that read and provide feedback to me on the issues I raise – that is my compensation. But to give away a whole book, something taken years to create, to some faceless person, seems a bit excessive to me. Yes, I have given away books for free too, but again, only when the reader engages with me one-on-one and agrees to discuss the book’s pros and cons. Most of these “freebies” have paid off, for the readers have gone on to post online reviews of my book, good, bad or indifferent.

I am told that free downloads can amount to thousands of curious, “anything for free” collectors, but not many of these freeloaders actually get down to reading the book. So, all that one has achieved is to have moved the book of your own hard drive to the hard drives of many others where it sits in storage. I believe that the online retailers also count free downloads as “books sold” (I recently received a $0 invoice for a free download that I tested) so this permeates the myth that the free book is now a best seller. Of course, try telling this to a new writer and it’s like water falling on a duck’s back.

I developed a principle some time ago: I will not give away my e-books for free unless in a limited promotion (and I haven’t engaged in one yet for I am still studying the implications). My e-books (and trade books) will have market competitive prices to the faceless multitudes. And “market competitive” does not mean “free” for then there is no market for one’s work. And if my restraint ends up in fewer copies sold, well, so be it. At least that will give me an indication of my true value as a writer. J.D. Salinger was the master of this restraint principle – the more he tried to hide his work, the more the world wanted of him.

I do not know if this stubborn “last stand” of mine is going to drive me into a hole in this new publishing world. I am sure those who practice the “give three free, expect one to be bought for $0.99” approach will dismiss me (and Salinger) as a Luddite. But if the new publishing world means working for free, it sounds worse than working in the times of slavery, and I thought that we had evolved past that dark stage of our lives. And as for the guy who sends me that ubiquitous tweet, “Thanks for the follow, please download my debut novel Blah, Blah & Blah for free,” he, or she, will be coming off my “following” list pretty damn quick.

Okay, here’s what I do: I skip through the daily newspaper, reading only the headlines (conditioned by Twitter, of course), pausing only at a few to read further if they interest me. I do not notice the adverts, especially the full page glossy ones that act like warning lights for me to skip to the next page. TV commercial breaks are for taking a personal break, and there are many breaks to be taken these days: checking on the cooking, laundry, e-mail, Facebook and Twitter, and that break that is increasing in frequency—the washroom. When I am online, I zero into my search results or e-mail and ignore all peripheral ads that vie for attention. These ads have become white noise to me, even the recent one that pops up dangerously close to the middle of my screen with pictures of young women who supposedly want to date me – hey, I’m married, update your profile on me through your hidden cookie! I’m dreading the day when every second line of text in my e-mail will be a subliminal ad tempting me to buy, buy, buy. At that point I will have to return to handwritten postal mail.

Why have I become like this? After years of spurious consumption and with a declining income that comes with age (due to the associated false perception of being less productive as we age), I only live for the work I have left to do. I downgraded from Cadillac to Cobalt. Guys – don’t you get it? I just need to buy what I need, not what I want anymore. No amount of advertizing can stimulate a want in me – that muscle is dead, kaput! And they haven’t yet invented a chemical to get it functioning again, although they have invented lots of other pills to get boomers’ non-functioning organs to stand and deliver. Advertizing has also failed to deliver; its sizzle is always bigger than its steak. And we have come to believe that, so why waste time on a lie?

I tried engaging the next generation on this subject—the ones who were brought up on ads and seem to need them as badly as they need TV, cell phones and the Internet. I was told that they liked ads for their entertainment value (yes, today’s ads can be quite funny, and if they are not, there is supposedly something wrong with them) and for the images of lifestyle that they create. But that does not alone create a “buy.” The buy decision is now shaped by not just advertizing, but by user experiences shared via social media, and by the skimpy money supply available to the younger generation living from one paycheque to the next. And as we globalize, that supply is becoming skimpier.

I think corporations need to recognize advertizing’s present overreach. They need to ramp back and become more integrated into the myriad of influences that lead to a purchase. The mere fact that multiple internet businesses have advertizing as their main revenue stream does not empower advertizing to intrude so overtly into our lives. Corporations could also do their bit to increase the buying power of consumers by opening their stockpiles of cash and investing again, getting people back into real work and off temporary, minimum wage jobs. Start creating wealthier suckers who are willing to succumb to their alluring messages in the future. As for me, I am a lost cause. Advertizers, take me off your mailing lists. Don’t call me, I’ll call you.

We have always had opinions but many of us have not been able to express them in past eras. This was for many reasons: some of our predecessors could not articulate opinions due to a lack of education and a lack of access to channels or communication tools; some of us were censured for our opinions with punishments as harsh as jail or death; some of us preferred to keep our opinions to ourselves as it was culturally more acceptable.

Then social media dawned and made it all possible, and in some instances, mandatory; we had to have a public persona. Everyone had to know everything about us. “Just Google him!” became a standard. It was professional suicide if a person who actively pursued a profession that dealt with the public—like a writer, for instance—was told that he could not be found on the Internet. And this led to people wanting to know what you stood for: “Take a stand, man. Show us your beliefs, principles, ideas, life stories and family pictures. We want to know that you are a living, breathing thing out there.” And on the employment field, “If you want a job with us, we wanna know all about you before you even step in for an interview. Oh, and if we don’t like what you’ve posted in cyberspace, don’t be surprised if we suddenly cancel that interview on you. Forget resumes and references, just your online persona will give us clues on whether you will be a fit with us.” It was as if job ads had a subliminal qualifier: “Strong silent types need not apply.” Thus, after all this information was uploaded, there was only one step left: gravitate towards being a full-fledged Online Opinionator. Why not?

And so we have opinions on everything: what we eat, where we vacation, what we read, what we buy, who we date. And we love to offer opinions. People do not make a purchase based solely on advertizing any more—no, we need everyone’s thoughts on it as well. Oh, you poor ad companies, you that fuelled and funded those start-up social media sites, did you think that matters would come to this pass?

One thing that all this opining helps with is in choosing your friends more easily. If everyone is wearing their hearts on their sleeves these days, or, more aptly, flashing their opinions on their Facebook pages, it’s easy to know where you stand relative to the other. Perhaps the entry point to person-to-person friendships in future will be a virtual one at first. Perhaps Facebook will invent new signs to follow their ubiquitous “like” and “comment,” buttons, like “Let’s Meet for Coffee” followed by “You passed, now you can phone me” or “You failed, bozo.”

Not sure where this will end. Maybe we will drown in our opinions and start regurgitating them (there are only a finite number of opinions one can have, surely. I am fast running out of my supply). Friends will tune out, and it will become harder for corporations to find employees who fit squarely into their boxes. I see more buttons for Facebook: “no opinions, please” and “opinionated out.” “Gimme the facts, man” will be back in style. Perhaps those job ads will change their qualifying line to, “Only strong silent types without a Facebook page need apply.”

And so the world will go around and another age will surely dawn upon us.

I am not sure who is right. Certainly, Internet 2.0 has provided for an instantaneous dialogue between writers and readers and we are not satisfied any longer with just the bare presentation of facts, arguments, propaganda and lies. And the very static “letters to the editor,” – that is, the traditionalists’ old fashioned attempt to stimulate audience participation – pales under the online world’s “like” and “comment” buttons that accompany most e-journal pieces these days. “Going viral” happens faster on the Internet than in traditional media. The fact that most traditionalists have embraced the Internet to issue e-versions of their paper editions means that they don’t want to be left behind. To make matters worse for the old guard, the recent telephone bugging scandals of the traditionalists have not endeared them to readers. Traditional content providers are out to sell advertizing – we all know that – so mass appeal is where their interests lie and the citizen journalists are left to cover the niches. Therefore, one could argue, how comprehensive is traditional journalism if it is shaped by a powerful sponsor with vested interests?

Not getting paid for citizen journalism, while this indicates purity of intention, could also include poorly written pieces and content emanating from those with undisguised axes to grind. But we have also heard of “right wing” or “left wing” newspapers in the traditional space. On the other hand, traditionalists are lifers and insist that their journalists are immersed in their subject, and provide accuracy, structure, responsibility and voice, while citizen journalists are scattered in their presentation and may quickly get bored and move onto other pursuits once they have had their fill of saving the world or exposing its underbelly.

I too have dabbled in citizen journalism and like the fact that I do not have to pay obeisance to an uncaring editor who may edit, alter, or reject my submission because it is not to his liking or displeases his sponsors. It has allowed me to view the world and comment on its idiosyncrasies while maintaining a paid career elsewhere. I do not entertain ads on my website or blog for the privilege of being free of interference. I have thus managed to escape the moniker of “jaded journalist” or “corporate lackey.”

I am not sure which side is better for both have pros and cons. I am grateful that Internet 2.0 has allowed many of us who care, to share our views with the world without relying on the narrow portal of traditional journalism to showcase us. It has also given the reader a wider spectrum of opinion to consider and a bigger headache in sorting out the wheat from the chaff.

Doesn’t the Hippocratic Oath bind those in the medical profession to selfless dedication to the preservation of life? Or has that been replaced by a Hypocrisy Oath? And how the heck can an individual be free down south if he is afflicted with a disease that he can’t afford to pay to get cured of?

I wanted to phone into that TV panel and tell them to please let those CEO’s go south because they were obviously in the wrong jobs. There are lots of skilled CEO material floating around our province with clear consciences, honest motives and fresh perspectives, waiting to take those jobs and willingly settle for the handsome salary of half a million dollars. In fact, I wanted to ask the panel why it was not debating the merits of capping those salaries at $250K – how much money does a person need? And while they were at it, those migratory CEO’s could take the ambitious doctors within our medical profession along with them too– those who had received a subsidized education in this country and were now looking to “maximize their earnings” in southern climes – I did not have confidence that they were healers anymore, gold diggers perhaps. And as for that poor sod on the electoral platform, I hope he doesn’t blow a gasket and find out that his private insurance company does not cover such types of collateral damage, and that he has to cover the exorbitant bills himself. I wondered what platform he might then choose to stand on.

I thought the radio would have more enlightened faire and switched on that device instead, and listened to this academic talking about “creative destruction”; how this phenomenon was the only thing going to sustain our growth and prosperity into the future. The professor went onto profess that generations of miners, factory workers and farmers were not good for growth and that things had to change rapidly in order to create the next platform of innovation. The professor was “tenured,” we were reminded, and thus insulated from this wonderful panacea called “creative destruction.” I wondered how our country would have emerged into the 21st century as a G8 nation if hadn’t been for resources, manufacturing and agriculture. And if we outsourced all this economic activity to China, what the heck were we going to do here? Watch hockey? I switched off the radio and put on the CD player with some classical music – no more voices, I couldn’t bear to hear any more of this talk in which the protected 1% clinically discussed the fate of the other 99%.

And I looked out at the snow, thick now, a rare storm, making the ground a pristine white, blanketing us with purity. I wanted the snow to last, enveloping us in its virginal innocence even for a few days, before it gave way to shovelling and melting and revealed the ugly world again as it truly was.

So I came west with a lot of optimism, and after a honeymoon period, I saw the tide begin to turn. Now I live in the West and over here there is crumbling infrastructure, governments mired in debt, high unemployment, healthcare and pensions under siege, industry shrinking and going east, no guarantee of incomes or of employment. The only affluent middle class here will soon be retired public service employees on indexed pensions, who got out early and have only declining healthcare services to contend with. I still feel shafted. And one can never go back.

The lesson from this radical shift is that there is no free lunch. I wrote down my learnings:
1) Walls erected artificially will come down.
2) Inflated benefits will convert into piles of debts – phone any western government!
3) The rich will exploit the poor, always. One can only be rich if someone else is poor. It’s a relative thing. It happened in the Middle Ages, it happened in Dickensian times, it is happening now. It will happen whenever vigilance and resistance is dropped.
4) Standards only apply if there is energy and discipline to uphold them.
5) We will work until we die. “Man will earn his living by the sweat of his brow,” still holds true today, instead of “Man shall retire to a beach at 65 and stare into the sunset with a margarita, while money collects in his bank account.” Maybe this latter mantra works for a privileged few who will die of boredom, but not for the majority of us. Professor Emeritus on full pay has gone out of fashion; temporary worker on minimum wage is in.
6) Our children will be worse off than us because we did not teach them survival. A well fed stomach does not make one lean and mean. A survivor is lean and mean. And as the world lurches over the 7billion mark heading towards 10billion in the next 50 years, only the lean and mean will survive
7) There are no guarantees in life: guaranteed, employment, guaranteed government largess, guaranteed lifestyle – all myths that we created for ourselves in a post war boom when happiness was at a low base.

Having fortified myself with these seven pillars of wisdom, I realized that it really does not matter where you live these days. Each place brings its own set of challenges; each challenge enriches the soul. The pursuit of happiness is a myth. Ours will be the pursuit of experience. Now, I finally get it. But I did I have to travel all the way from east to west to find out?

I wondered why this has come to pass. Is it because of the inefficiency in the regulated process, the bureaucracy, the backlog, the biased decision making – all factors that have sent people underground? Have we as buyers and sellers lost faith in the establishment? When governments and banks around the world start failing suddenly, as we have seen in alarming frequency since 2008, it’s no small wonder that people start looking after themselves first, on their own terms. And when governments keep saying that they want to be “less government,” then they are unconsciously signalling that they wish for less tax revenues.

Much of the regulated system is determined on the honour principle: the onus is on us as taxpayers and consumers to declare our incomes, our assets and how we obtained them, in order to be assessed fairly, and as faith in a regulated society wanes, and cheating the system becomes endemic and acceptable, and when governments renege on election promises, there is a strong compulsion to avoid declaring that hand. The black market becomes a sign of self-reliance without an interest in a public handout (or is that now called a bailout?)

Consider the flip side: would an economy – regulated and unregulated sectors combined – be as robust if everything was regulated? Would regulation kill creativity? Take the internet – the last bastion of unregulated enterprise it seems, or is it, with a battle raging today to muzzle and censor it? Would e-commerce have grown so rapidly had the internet been regulated from its inception? Would a regulated internet become just an information power grid and cease to be an incubator of new business models?

It seems to me that these two opposing market systems exist in a symbiotic relationship, each giving rise to the other’s existence, each taking pot shots at the other, each demanding the other to be creative. More regulation creates a black market and when these black markets get out of hand, that brings in more regulation. And the sum of the two is greater than the two halves.

Viewed from a historical context these two rivals have existed since trade began. Regulation was identified with those who were deemed to have legitimacy of government, however corrupt or immoral that government, from the time of ancient despotic kings to modern megalomaniacal dictators; both operate under the principles of “Might is Right.”

Makes one wonder whether the unregulated market is always wrong and the regulated one always right, or is it the other way around? Perhaps an economy split 50:50 between the two, scary though it sounds, may be best to keep these two sectors jostling each other and raising the wealth of nations as a result.

Therefore, do we need a black market? It seems so, if at least to keep the two halves of the economy honest. Ironic, isn’t it?

Make your world – by Linda LaRoche

This week I had a former student ask me if he could use the title of my book. I pointed out how as a native-English speaker, he could come up with his own title. I neglected to point out that I’ve had a copyright on it with the Library of Congress since 2008. As an exercise in my creative writing class on characterization, I read students a sample paragraph and asked them to write on the facial features of a character they know well. Some choose to use the same words in the same context I had read aloud. The problem is, we tend to be blind to our own mistakes — and without a teacher or an editor, we keep making the same ones over again!
According to the Global Language Monitor, published May 18, 2011, there are over one million words in the English language. And while I understand that many works of art are derivative, such as a blog, where we link to one another, commenting on something that has been said or done by someone else, adding our bit of wisdom, but borrowing from one another, I ask– where is original thought?
Art is a noble quest. I know a few writers who won’t read while they in are in a writing mode just so they can be assured that their words are uniquely their own. I’m a believer that as part of the race of man we share some of the same creative ideas on the spiritual plane. But how we choose to interpret what is in us makes us distinct and adds style. Good writing involves a love of language. Using your own words comes down to original thought. A thought is tied to a string of personal memories, biased and uniquely yours: original in every sense. And isn’t creativity whereby a person creates something new from what is inside them?
It takes work to reconsider what you are trying to say. It involves the need to improve the content of your material, looking for a whole new aspect of the issue, and in the end, to express it in a fresh way. The Creator has a Master Plan
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkVLS6muw1k

What is this zone? It’s a storehouse of memories and impressions created from any and all of the following occurrences: a moment of stress or loss, a change of scene, a thought provoking piece of art, a book, a movie or play, a song, a promotion, a demotion, a firing, an illness, a transgression, a relationship, a cataclysmic social event, a birth or a death. Sometimes, a hidden voice gives us something brand new, something we have never experienced, a bonus for our enjoyment; we like to call that imagination.

How does one enter the zone? Although this storehouse comprises our personal collection of life experiences, we are not automatically granted access. There has to be a preparedness before the door opens, a willingness to go inward without holding back, with the Blackberry switched off, and with an acceptance that not all the artefacts within are necessarily pleasurable to handle.

What do we do with the contents of our inspiration zone? Not all can be shared, for not all will benefit mankind, therefore why share them? Besides, events need to be embellished, polished, sequenced and arranged so that they tell a coherent tale and yield a valuable lesson. This is the price for entering, for what is gathered needs to be deciphered and communicated. And this is not easy, for the moment this composition is out in the public domain it is subject to the slings, arrows and plaudits of an uncaring audience. This is sometimes like a road to Gethsemane with no reward in sight. The only reward is the inward journey that enriches the soul.

It is less painful to take the easy way out, to never open this door, and live the unexamined life. Some who take that route are known to have sudden heart attacks, suffer neuroses, jump off tall buildings, go on a rampage, or simply drink themselves into an early grave. Those who brave into the inspiration zone do not suffer any less, for they too are known to engage in self –destructive activities, but their demons are exposed to the world, and through the act of unburdening and sharing, healing may be expected, though not always granted. This latter category is usually labelled “writer.”

As 2012 dawns, the year in which great change is predicted from way back at the time of the Mayans, where do you want to play? Are you prepared to enter through the door into your inspiration zone or do you want to leave it for another generation to discover?