That’s Trudeau folks. Our Prime Minister is as corrupt (SNC Lavalin – evidence is clear) as Donald Trump (election interference – evidence is clear). Your first world ideals are under attack by ambivalent weak leadership, right now. Your only hope in a democracy is your vote. You stand for the ideals of individual autonomy or socialism. You stand for pay based on merit or income redistribution. You stand for reduced taxes or increased taxes. You stand for strong law enforcement or weak law enforcement. You stand for fiscal prudence or deficits and debt. You stand for limited government or an overbearing one. You condone corrupt activity with your vote or you do not. If you believe in you, vote conservative. If you’re compelled to turn to the state for your needs, vote otherwise.
Perturbations Arising From Technology
It’s happening. Behavioral patterns are being negatively impacted by technology and perturbations are arising. The full deployment of Artificial Intelligence is rapidly approaching and there is relatively little push back in the context of understanding consequences. Few have read any study regarding the impact technology will have on relationships as we delve mercilessly into the AI age. Decorum, etiquette, empathetic response, expressions of subtlety and anxiety are all variables of communication which possess linear paths to a non-digital centre of human sentient which no computer should be expected to calculate. Yet, objectives will be programmed mechanically in a stale environment free from considerations of nuance. The machine will be granted credit instead of crafty hands gifted in experience. Time made available to under employed workers non-resilient to economic change will choose causes detrimental to the health of humankind. The moral compass will be eroded with citizens’ sense of power through work and contribution eroded.
As we speak, legislators have proven to be indifferent to mass murder. The suicide rate in the U.S. has increased 24 percent from 1999 to 2014. Metro cultural zeal has waned in place of commercial real estate interests. Inner cities are being routed in favor of profitable single family dwellings in suburbia where few know their neighbors. Police departments regularly turn a blind eye to civic infractions. The western hemisphere now also identifies matters of corruption specifically. Intransigence between special interests and the common good is alarming. Personal insults by politicians are apparently deemed positive for the campaign trail. Tailgating is now epidemic with zero appetite for enforcement. Drivers spurn distracted driving laws with tinted windows all around. Bullied kids still have no advocate to affect justice. Hockey parents lose their mind over a bad call. Politicians grant subsidies to millionaire athletes and billionaire owners in lieu of a populous apparently charmed by idolatry instead of their own creative pursuit.
I remember Canada differently than the aforementioned prior to the new millennium. I contend that the evolution and deployment of technology in our lives without the capacity of the person to restrict its usefulness is one variable among others which have contributed to civic decline. Oh yes….I did not use “Grammarly” to write this piece. In fact, I’ve come to learn through my relationships that kids are now no longer taught how to hand write in school.
Comments on The Industry of “Personal Growth”
Before I start….let me premise with the statement, I believe in “personal growth”
Here is where I differ from folks who circulate in the industry of “personal growth”. We do most of our learning as humans between the age of 0 and 15 years of age and for developing success habits our parents indeed played a large role in our growth….like it or not. Somewhere along the line in our formative years we were learning about consequences to our behavior. We were learning about rewards emanating from work and behaviors which would lead to successful relationships. We were learning right from wrong, etiquette (maybe), how to overcome, and skills necessary to complete tasks. We were learning adaptations and workarounds. We were up to challenges or we weren’t. If we were not, then we ran the risk of isolation. We learned when not to say what we were thinking. We learned to speak with strength in the right context. We learned how to assess environments with our intuitive senses and feedback mechanisms. All this was going on prior to the age of fifteen. A tremendous amount of stimuli came our way.
So, this personal growth industry wants you to believe that you need to be remade or remove much of what you had already learned or discard baggage or eliminate dysfunctional relationships. Some other person is going to do a quick assessment on your weaknesses having not lived through your years of development assumedly by injecting a bag of tricks from the self help domain in order to make you new and improved.
I suggest that if you believe you need to find a better version of “you” that you assess your situation and work it backward for yourself for starters. Then entertain bringing in somebody else to assist with your own assessment. You do have the capacity to be honest with yourself but you must do so in the context of some reading or watching / listening to course materials in the area in order to stimulate regions within you that yearn to be fortified. Engagement with a practitioner will be much more fruitful having researched yourself first and identified sources of trouble.
It’s difficult to witness the disingenuousness of unqualified people prescribing without the authority to do so. It’s even worse to watch the low esteemed subject themselves to others when they’d be better served in solace with abundant materials available. The kinds of people one wants to see more of in the personal development space are those who have achieved what they’re espousing.
Is Canada Corrupt?
Is Canada corrupt? You go to work every day and pay your taxes. Your taxes are intended to provide services which benefit the public good. Naturally, human resources are required to administer such services. Your government also assesses your country’s standing in the world and maintains relationship with other nations in the context of preserving freedom and quality of life for citizens.
Then we have a system of commerce which operates under the guise of “capitalism”. In a capitalist system, small businesses and large businesses operate with particular reasonable regulations relevant to their industries and such regulations are imposed also in the context of the “public good”. An inherent trait associated with “free enterprise” is the right of business to “fail” due to whatever underlying factors are confronted. It is not the business of governments to pick and choose winners and losers through political bias, personal relationships, or preferential treatment due to the geographic jurisdiction of stakeholders. If such a landscape was permitted to exist, free enterprise would lose its appeal as a viable commercial system to engage with freewill unencumbered by systemic bias.
Today, as learned through an ethics report – your country has failed you because in spite of you playing by the rules, you’ve come to learned that your federal government has a interfered in the legal process of a defendant charged with improprieties in the name of “picking winning and losers” in the capitalist system. One must ask, as a nation, are we any different from third world countries which make ever day habits of conducting affairs on such terms?
Music Training Beginning in Adulthood
Apparently the plasticity of the brain is lesser in adulthood. Hence; you are going to be more challenged to identify pitch. In fact, musical scholars are claiming that an adult may not be able to develop perfect pitch but with training and could obtain proficiency in “relative pitch”. So, don’t despair, this relative pitch is what we need the most when picking out the next chord in a progression. A key has limitations with respect to which chords are available and consequently the adult brain now gets to work with finite possibilities in relative terms.
My youtube channel has one song which I posted that I knew didn’t sound right but given the nature of my channel oriented around progress and learning, I didn’t think much of it during the upload. Today, I revisited the song and searched around on “ultimate guitar” (website) to review some reader feedback associated with the chord structure of the selected piece and discovered two flaws. Somebody with a better ear than mine not only knew it didn’t sound right as scored but he was able to offer the two corrections. I now look forward to the “redo”. The process gives me comfort in that I may be going from the phase of “not knowing what I don’t know” to “knowing what I don’t know” in the context of chord recognition. At this stage of my development, I am still only reaching for a chord because of a memorized sequence and not because of ear sense. This contrasts to a professional musician who made an exclamation on his youtube channel that he showed up at a weekend festival and was introduced to 18 new songs of which he went right to work on learning and in short order played rhythm for the band in support. The take away is that I must listen more carefully to the sounds instead of anxiously searching my memory.