The City of Joy

A couple weeks ago, I promised an imminent follow-up post to my initial thoughts on discovering joy.  Those of you who've been following my ramblings for a while know that when I predict a publication "tomorrow," reality dictates that it will actually be a couple of weeks in the making; with this in mind, hopefully you're not disappointed.  Fittingly enough, I just concluded a conversation with my housemate Janine on the topic of perfectionism, in which I described my tendency to procrastinate in blogging as characteristic of that tendency in my life. I'm sure I'll address this in a post in near future (read: sometime before Afghanistan becomes a fully-functioning democracy).

For those of you with poor long-term memories: in an entry in late March, I described my recent attempts to gain insight into the anatomy of joy using literature.  Frankly, it's turned out to be an absolute disaster - if anything, my perusal of C.S. Lewis' Surprised by Joy only served to increase my confusion on the topic.  If utter failure was ever the best thing that could happen to me, though, it was in this case; by neglecting to define joy in any objective manner, I feel that Lewis revealed to me the possibility that joy is a wholly subjective, or personal, thing.  I'm happy to say that Dominique LaPierre's City of Joy, while causing me to become even more intrigued about the idea of joy, didn't contribute any more to my cheeky original purpose.

City of Joy is a story set in the Indian city of Calcutta, based in the 1970's (I think; the date is never explicitly revealed).  It is primarily told from the perspectives of two people - a Polish priest called Stephan Kovalski, and urban immigrant Hasari Pal - whose lives, despite being separate at the beginning of the book, symbolically converge as the narrative unfolds.  One thing that they have in common throughout the whole book is that they live amongst the most destitute people in one of the most destitute cities in the world, with the most salient difference being that while Pal is forced by circumstance to live as a street-dweller, Kovalski is compelled by his Catholicism to voluntarily immerse himself in the lives of "the least of these".  About midway through the book, a young American doctor, Max Loeb, joins Kovalski in his occupation of the notorious slum of Anand Nagar, the name of which the book's title is some kind of translation.

If you were to glance at a set of Coles Notes for City of Joy (heaven forbid their existence), you would probably envision a place totally devoid of anything positive.  Slumlords, clogged sewers, lepers - the depiction of scathing droughts being immediately succeeded by invasive floods, along with being literal, serves as a metaphor for the cruel irony that characterizes the locale.  Indeed, at times the story was downright depressing; just as the reader is getting to know a character, for example, the latter will be stolen by the scourge of tuberculosis.  The suffering of children is perhaps the most unfathomable: those who happen to survive through the brief period of juvinility granted to them by the slum are, more often than not, thrust into an adolescence of begging and garbage picking.  Suffice it to say, an Amazon.ca "Sneak Peek" probably wouldn't increase sales in this case.

It is upon closer examination of the relationships of this book that the story becomes more compelling.  The spiritual bonds that endure in what could otherwise be described as a physical mess are the remarkable aspects of this account; indeed, I'd go so far as to say they offer a glimpse of an irrational, bizarre, supernatural thing that may best be described as joy.  What would compel Muslim and Hindu residents of the slum, one day fighting over deep-seeded disparities, to celebrate a Christian festival together the next?  Lepers, burdened by unimaginable physical incapacities and social stigmas, to drag themselves along with smiles on their faces?  A large family, living on a pittance of resources, to offer the best of their dinner to the young, healthy European priest in basketball shoes?  Some might deem it ignorance, others blame it on insanity - I'm convinced that it's something more, something given to humans by God.  

Without succumbing to the temptation of trying to define this thing - joy? - I'd like to suggest that it is most vividly eminent in people who are determined to live their lives fully, regardless of their situation.  As well as seeing this throughout City of Joy, I observed  it at times during my own travels in India: people, mired in the webs of class and caste, living lives characterized by cheerfulness and a contented demeanor.  I'm not saying this was the case with everyone, and I certainly don't believe the strangleholds of class and caste are morally right; however, there seems to be something that glows here, that isn't as readily seen in the West.  

In Becoming Human, which I also just finished reading, Jean Vanier talks of freedom as being "the acceptance of the world as it is together with the will to struggle to make the world a better place for us to live" (p. 121, see Mar 1/09 post for citation info).  At first, I considered this passage depressingly defeatist - how can I, as an outisider, accept the world of Anand Nagar as being how it is, much less the people that actually live there and experience it?  However, as I considered it more, I realized how essential the first clause is to victory in the "struggle" Vanier mentions in the second part of the sentence.  If the people of the City of Joy don't learn to live the fullest life and love with the little that they currently have, how are they going to work together to make their world an even better place?  The same logic applies, of course, to us in the West; if we don't nurture the small amount of spiritual awareness we possess in our society, how will it possibly erupt into a blazing flame?  Perhaps it is when we learn to appreciate the presence of God in our lives, no matter how small, that we truly experience joy.

Sincerely speaking, I really don't know.  Joy remains as mysterious a concept to me as it did before I naively picked up two books that just happened to have it in their titles.  The Bible is, no doubt, a good place to dig further; I've read it with this intention before, but I'll have to do some more focused study with joy in mind.  Thankfully, I feel as if I'm coming to the humble realization that joy is not to be found in crash-course format.  It looks as if I, like Father Kovalski and rickshaw-wallah Hasari, am just going to have to live it out.  

The "real world" - more of the same?

I just finished a short discussion with a couple of friends, which originated when one of them expressed concern over the effects a semester abroad program he's participating in would have on his learning experience.  I'm not sure what was exactly at the core of his anxiety, but he appeared to be skeptical of the balance between "academic" and "real-world" learning that the program would presumably try to strike.  A brief-but-succinct conversation ensued, in which those involved (the aforementioned friend, another friend, and I) contrasted academic and real-world (or experiential) learning in fairly different ways.

Not being foreign to this debate - indeed, I've tossed it around in my own mind many times, as well as with others -  I had a pretty good idea of what I thought was the most important factor to consider when discussing the nature of each learning method.  As those of you who've been following this blog for the past year (c'mon, there must be a few!) know, university, to me, has largely been a place where one gains status.  Hopefully, you've also recognized the immense respect I have for the academy's place in the world; however, in this conversation, it suffices to say that a good part of my motivation to "succeed" in my studies was that it would help me become a more respected (even exceptional) member of society.  For whatever reason, I've also been bred to believe that the academic type of learning is a prerequisite to being successful in the "real-world."  It won't come as a surprise, therefore, that I've been burdened with the misconception that success in university would necessarily precede eminence in anything that might follow in my life.

It's only quite recently that I've come to realize that I subscribe to this mentality, that success in the academy = high status and reputation.  I resent it, and believe that it's corrupted my view of what it means to live a life that's fulfilling to oneself and others.  With this in mind, for all of the positive impacts that university has had on me, it's also centrally contributed to the development of unhealthy motives within me.  I've come to view motivation as the factor that can "make or break" a student's tenure in the academy, in terms of how he uses the tenure to benefit the world around him.  For example, how is someone supposed to truly empathize with the poor and vulnerable if he maintains the pretentious conviction that his education makes him, in some way, more "refined" than them?

Considering the relative passion with which I expressed these ideas to my friends, I was surprised when they reacted the way they did: they blatantly disagreed.  Although I won't presume to know exactly what was going through their minds at the time, they seemed to be more concerned with the practical deficiencies of academic-style teaching than any possibility of the university advancing pompous mindsets.  The academy didn't seem to be teaching them to feel superior, as it did to me; rather, they harboured doubts that it was really teaching them anything at all.  Conversely, they seemed to believe that an experiential approach - talking to people instead of just reading about them - would help them better understand the issues that they initially enrolled in school to learn about.

My friends were, of course, making a very good point.  There are many realities which one can only become aware of through direct confrontation – in international development, the area of study for all three of us, this is especially true.  However, I don’t think that less academic learning and more experiential learning would have changed the attitude that I believe somewhat compromised my learning experience.  This is because I truly believe specter of ego resides just as threateningly in the “real-world” as it does in academia. 

From a linguistics standpoint, terms such as “real world” carry undertones that are just as strong as contained in words such as “academic”, “university”, or “Dr.”.  Of course, this doesn’t have to be the case: just as being a scholar wasn’t considered synonymous with being an elite in the Middle Age European universities, as it seems to be today, entering into the “real world” doesn’t necessarily mean entering adopting a "more realistic, pragmatic outlook" than one's comparably naïve academic friends.  However, I think we need to be conscious of the fact that places such as academia and the real world are just as much mindsets as geographical places, and if we’re not careful, they’ll come to define us.

I’m not sure about my two friends, but graduating from university and entering the so-called “real world” hasn’t liberated me from the temptation to be motivated by status.  Unless I continue to be conscious of my vulnerabilities, I’ll always be looking for new ways to advance, progress, and refine, no matter what occupation I find myself in.  

Defining joy

If you know me well, you're probably aware that I really like to put my finger on things.  Before you get weirded out, don't worry - it's a metaphor, a way of me saying that I'm the bizarre type of perfectionist that won't even bother pulling my hammer out of the tool belt if there's not chance of me hitting the nail square on the head.  Aside from making me maddeningly slow at building stuff (that's not a metaphor - ask the construction crew I worked with back in '07), this trait also makes it quite frustrating for me to think  about problems for which there's no clearly definable answer.  Although my recent foray into postmodern/poststructuralist literature has helped me come to terms with this side of me a little better, it's far from quelled my desire to turn craggy mountains into neatly analyzed molehills.  

As you can imagine, this doesn't exactly make my experiments with Christianity (some might call it a "faith walk") a jaunt in the park.  In contrast to the picture that that Billy Graham Crusade rerun painted for you on CTS the other day, the Christian narrative isn't simple - there are more than a few concepts that will throw anyone who tries to squeeze them into a tidy box for a loop.  Become like little children, sure - just make sure you bring daddy along to explain the big words.

Recently, I decided to try and tackle one of the more enormous ones: joy.  Being the good student of history that I am, I was sure that the consumption of a couple books by famous scholars would answer all of my questions, and pave the way for a wonderfully lucid blog exposition of the meaning of this elusive little three-letter word.  

Wrong.  Brushing off the blank stares of my pastor and church librarian that accompanied my initial inquiry, I promptly checked out C.S. Lewis' Surprised By Joy, thinking the Great Sage of Belfast would undoubtedly offer a comprehensive definition.  To my disappointment, the concluding paragraph of this otherwise enjoyable work made me feel as if had actually lost ground in my quest for clarity regarding joy:

But what, in conclusion, of Joy? for that, after all, is what the story has mainly been about.  To tell you the truth, the subject has lost nearly all interest for me since I became a Christian... I now know that the experience, considered as a state of my own mind, had never had the kind of importance I once gave it.

Clive Staples, you have got to be kidding me.  Did I seriously just sit through 190 pages of you describing the meals you ate at yuppy prep school to hear that the central theme of the book didn't actually, in the great scheme of things, end up meaning a whole lot to you?  Anticlimactic is an understatement - this was borderline distressing.  

As I think about it a bit more, though, I really shouldn't have been too surprised/disappointed. Perhaps joy is something infinitely subjective, the meaning of which is totally based on the specific stories of individuals or communities.  Maybe the fact that my trusty Nave's Topical Bible Reference System highlights instances of joy ranging from warriors experiencing it on the battlefield in the Old Testament, to angels expressing it upon the birth of Christ, suggests that the only way of truly understanding it is to consider it a narrative.  Something that doesn't hold a definition that spans people, cultures, and creeds.  If this is the case, should even a teacher of such stature as Lewis be expected to form it into a universal theory?

Immediately after finishing Lewis, I began sinking my teeth into a significantly thicker package of pulp: Dominique LaPierre's epic The City of Joy.  Whether my subconscious deemed it worthy due to the presence of "joy" in the title, or simply because it looked long enough to last me through the long journey home from Australia and then some, I don't know; all I'm sure about is that it made me reconsider my drive to define joy objectively, and instead approach the topic in a way more reminiscent of the ideas proposed in the previous paragraph.  Details on the City of Joy next time, hopefully tomorrow.

The crisis that can be community

A few days ago, it was reported that a Russian "Bear" bomber - one of those old prop-driven behemoths that they built at the onset of the Cold War - approached Canadian airspace.  In a display of typically-Canadian self assurance, Peter MacKay went on to make a bunch of lame-o macho statements about how our "world class air force" turned the plane around on a dime, and how they better not try that again, etc.  Russia responded with the casual indifference that one would expect in light of such accusations on the part of a Canadian defence minister: a brush-off of the claims of airspace infringement, accompanied by an assurance that all proper diplomatic channels were being utilized.  

Despite the surface vanity of it all, I'm not surprised that it made the news in Canada and abroad.  Aside from the obvious questions that immediately come to mind - firstly, how the heck did a 55-year old tin can reach Nunavut, and secondly, how did the CF manage to get two fighters up there to meet it - this episode stirred me up in a couple slightly more abstract ways. Whether one considers the increasing amount of Russian shows of military force around the world - Harper & Co. aren't fabricating that one - or the sensationalist Canadian media response, it becomes evident that both governments are utilizing one of the most powerful weapons in history: nationalism.  

Now, it's important to point out that this type of allegiance to one's nation is so deeply engrained in human nature, that it would be arrogant to write it off as a wholly negative force.  On the contrary, I'd say that it can be a positive source of self-identity.  However, it also has the potential to morph into more isolating, inflammable phenomena such as patriotism, populism, and even racism.  If being united with others by nationalism can be characterized as a type of community - as I believe it can - then letting it take certain forms represents a loss of any positive nature that that community once embodied.   

Let me expand on that a little.  I'm currently reading Becoming Human, a print account of Jean Vanier's contribution to CBC's "Massey Lecture" series in 1998.  Vanier is the founded of L'Arche, a worldwide network of communities that exist to foster societal inclusion of, and care for, people that live with intellectual disabilities.  It's not hard to imagine, then, that Vanier fully recognizes the benefits of sharing communal bonds with people of a common vision or mission; in Becoming Human, he describes how the residents of the L'Arche communities are united by the simple desire to express love towards lonely people, and realize that they have just as much to offer to humanity as anyone else.  By inviting people to live at L'Arche, the organization is allowing them to experience the type of belonging that is, according to Vanier, a basic human need, as essential as food, water, or oxygen.  

However, Vanier also acknowledges that communion can take on forms that are exclusive, volatile, and encourage feelings or superiority over others.  I've quickly come to realize that the author is keen to identify key dualisms in human nature, and he succinctly summarizes the positive and negative potential of community as such:

There is an innate need in our hearts to identify with a group, both for protection and for security, to discover and affirm our identity, and to use the group to prove our worthiness and goodness, indeed, even to prove that we are better than others.  It is my belief that it is not religion or culture at the root of human conflict but the way in which groups use religion or culture to dominate one another. (Becoming Human, p. 35)

Although Vanier doesn't explicitly address national identity in his analysis, I don't think it's too far-fetched to draw a parallel between the type of cultural belonging that he speaks of, and our conceptualization of nationalism.  Just as he implies that the basic desire to "identify ourselves with a group" can be corrupted into segregation, I believe that the sense of belonging and unity that we naturally derive from being Canadians, Italians or Laotians can devolve into evil, base impulses such as racism.  Whether one looks at the rise of Facism in Europe in the 1930's or the genocide in Rwanda in the 90's, the conflicts that took place can characterized as community gone way, way wrong.  

"Belonging is a beautiful but terrible reality."  Vanier makes this statement in the middle of an elongated analogy, in which he compares the development of the relationship between a child and his/her parents with the experience of individuals integrating into community in general.  In this passage, he seeks to point out that as well as having a potentially damaging impact on people outside of the group through devices such as degradation and exclusion, communities can also end up harming the individuality of those within them.  Although the relative weakness of a child can be an opportunity for parents to influence them in loving, nurturing ways, it can also create a situation where they're, in the words of Vanier, "crushed or manipulated".  In the same way, nationalism that morphs into patriotism and populism can begin to devalue the unique individual nature of the people within the nation.

Unfortunately, I see the world polarizing into an east-west dichotomy in recent years, and I believe it's largely due to this sort of corrupted nationalism, the type that idealizes the culture and history of communities, and closes them out to others.  As long as presidents, foreign ministers, and everyday Joes continue to search for differences between people around the world instead of emphasizing similarities, some of the biggest communal groups that exist in human society - nations - are going to be a perennial source of conflict and strife.  

All quotes in this post were taken from Chapter 2: Belonging of the book form of Jean Vanier's 1998 Massey Lecture, "Becoming Human" (Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 2008).  Contact me for specific quotation references.  

An unreasonable proposition

My aunt, who's trained as a nutritionist, recently told me that spinach is the healthiest all-around vegetable that I could consume.  Despite the fact that I find many preparations of spinach border on the offensive, I've chosen to take her advice to heart, and have tried to incorporate the chewy little leaf into my diet.  Metabolically speaking, this inclusion should improve my prospects for maintaining my overall health.

What if, however, I took her advice to mean that the broad range of benefits derived from eating it made spinach a panacea?  What if I perceived her statement that it had "all-around goodness" to mean that it was all I need to keep the ol' engine purring?  You probably think that I'd have to be some kind of kook to take it this way - fair enough.  It's amazing, though, how many people approach the realms of philosophy and theology this way.  One concept, one perception, as a type of cosmic cure-all.  Case in point in Wednesday's BBC Magazine.

Perhaps the author of the article, Manil Suri, had a word limit imposed on him by the publication, or was pressured into giving a very brief precis of a broader concept.  Still, I find it shocking that a supposedly well-respected academic could make such a bold (arrogant?) statement in so few words.  What exactly does he mean when he states we should not "get irritated or invoke God or tradition" when helping our children answer basic questions?  Is he implying that we are "misleading the malleable" by teaching them to explore questions of spirituality?  His parochial belief in the superiority of "basic humanist principles" - blatantly revealed by his equating of them with "common sense" - reeks of the type of dogmatism that he would seem to oppose.

Furthermore, doesn't Suri's identification of a logic-ideology dichotomy seem shamelessly ideological in itself?  The New Oxford American Dictionary defines ideology as "the ideas and manner of thinking characteristic of a group, social class, or individual."  In my opinion, his clear conviction of - indeed, obsession with - the preeminence of rationalist philosophy places him in a category of intellectual enslavement comparable only to the most extreme religious fundamentalists that he would presumably disparage.  Again, it's possible that he's not as tunnel-visioned as he comes across in this article; however, his word choice and audacious style makes it difficult for me to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Finally, I'm concerned with the sociological/psychological/emotional implications of bringing up our children based on such principles.  Of course, logical reasoning skills need to be at the centre of any educational strategy; they are, after all, one of the core faculties that allow us to function in everyday life.  However, if we teach them that all answers can be found using pure logic as we understand it, we're inevitably setting them up for a life of disappointment and breakdown.  Even worse, we're denying them the hope, joy, and wonder that should be definitive of any childhood, and indeed adulthood.

I thought that the photo at the top of the article was really telling.  Here you have a young man, probably in his pre-teens, sitting at a desk in a modern, metallic-looking study area of some sort.  He's wearing a t-shirt that seems to glorify "success" and "achievement" - note the soaring eagle, the great symbol of ascent and regality - and is probably doing a math problem, judging by his choice of a pencil as a writing instrument.  The backdrop is an outer-space view of Earth, and seems to bathe the entire room in an exciting blue glow.  Science is king in this scene, the vehicle that will propel this kid through the atmosphere of mediocrity to the unknown elite heights.  

As I consider it more, the  Suri's way of thinking doesn't just have philosophical and spiritual implications for the development of children, although these are profound.  This mindset also has the potential to prevent young people from becoming true neighbors to those around them. Where do virtues such as empathy, grace and humility fit into his paradigm?  They don't seem to, as I see it, and that's a very sad thing.  Ironically, this makes Suri's "logical" proposition one of the most unreasonable that I've heard in quite a while.

Virtual insanity?

Required listening/watching.

“Futures made of virtual insanity 
now always seem to be governed by this love we have For useless, twisting, our new technology 
Oh there is no sound for we all live underground”

Last week, my boss asked me to sit in on a “webinar” on the benefits of “social media” utilities such as blogs, Facebook, and Twitter.  For those of you who don’t know, a webinar is basically a glorified power point presentation streamed over the internet; in this case, it was accompanied by a one-way audio dialogue of a guy/girl guiding you through the slides.  It was arranged by a firm called “Firstgiving” who, as is suggested by its utilization of the savvy presentation medium, extolled the opportunities social media presented for the fundraising operations of not-for-profits.  Although I thought the presentation itself could have been a bit more convincing, the base idea behind it – that the networking opportunities offered by the Internet hold endless possibilities – seems to be consuming western society like wildfire.

Admittedly, my own buns have been thoroughly toasted.  Despite the fact that I initially viewed Facebook as nothing more than a virtual plebe-filled People mag, I’ve increasingly bought into its virtues as of late.  As someone who’s studied /worked in the international development field, I recognize that civil society engagement and community building are some of the most powerful ingredients of an effective campaign: mediums such as Facebook and blogs are able to extend a common banner over individuals from vastly different walks of life.   Whereas I may have been able to have a conversation such as this one over a pint with a few friends on a Saturday night in a world without blogs, this forum grants me an unprecedented opportunity to share my thoughts with people whom I’d never have a reason to wet my whistle with.  Such an evolution could easily be casted as a social revolution, which has enabled people to advocate and mobilize for good causes at a level never before seen.  Every revolution has its guillotine, however, and all to often heads are rolling before anybody notices. 

If one can get past the seemingly blatant hypocrisy of a synthesizer-saturated band like Jamiroquai preaching the vanity of our obsession with technology, it’s easy to see that the lyricist has a point that can be applied to the social networking craze.  From what I can see, the verse that I’ve quoted above – the chorus from the band’s song “Virtual Insanity” – conveys a view that technological advancements have consumed us to the point that our individual and collective futures are controlled by them – a reality that we remain largely oblivious to.  I recently watched a PBS Frontline documentary called “Growing Up Online” that attempted to profile the demographic that grew up literally “snared in the Net”: those born in the early 90’s and onward.  It assembles a fairly diverse panel of academics, parents and teenagers, all of whom reserve widely ranging views on the cumulative impacts the ubiquity of the Internet is having on young people.  One thing they all agreed on, though, was that your average American 13 year old has been absolutely submerged in an ocean of social networks: as Jamiroquai so funkily asserted, their deaf to any world outside of Myspace.   

I'm stumped as to whether I should consider myself fully part of this generation. Granted, I've been using computers for must of my life: since Grade 3, a portion of my schoolday has been designated for some software-based activity, whether it involve slogging through touch typing drills or fighting off cholera on the Oregon Trail.  It wasn't until I was about 11 or 12, though, that my family got "wired", and another one or two years before I'd ever dabbled in e-mail or instant messaging.  Whereas my mom was still making me send snail mail to my cousin on his birthday when I was 8, a tyke of the same age in 2009 has likely never tasted envelope glue.  

Granted, extent of exposure aside, I feel fully caught up in the fast-pace, “now now NOW!” culture that’s largely the offspring of the advent of cyberspace.  My laptop decided – rather inconveniently – to “take a break” on an ill-fated night in mid-December, and during it’s R&R-filled holiday at the technicians’ place over Christmas I was, at times, absolutely, hopelessly lost.  Although it’s really not that hard for one to get access to a PC in Guelph in 2008 – there’s plenty at the university library – the prospect of having to get up every morning and catch a bus in order to access the almighty Internet perturbed me mightily.  At times, it was an almost unbearable inconvenience.  Indeed, this sounds melodramatic – but many of you, I’m sure, would agree.  If I feel like getting up at 4 am to re-watch Barack Obama’s inauguration speech for the 6th time, I damn well should be able to do it!

No matter how much I rely on it, though, the Internet – and, more specifically, social networking – is mostly still purely practical for me; essentially, it’s a glorified means to an end.  Not so, for the group of kids examined in the aforementioned PBS documentary: all of them admitted a certain type of psycho-social dependence on social media, and that they would be totally lost without it.  Kind of like a draft horse without a load to haul, to utilize an Aggie-inspired metaphor.  Even more alarming were the observations of a couple of the more thoughtful, perceptive interviewees that they developed alternate identities on the web, easily distinguishable from their everyday personas.  One girl, for example, described herself as “happy-go-lucky” social butterfly by day, self-degrading anorexic by night (in a depressing admission, she identified the latter as closer to who she really was). 

The development of this type of duality and disconnection scares me far more than any role that social media may plan in allurement and abduction.  As one expert points out in Growing Up Online, the vast majority of Internet-related cases of physical and sexual harm are a result of an active engagement in risky behavior on the part of adolescents themselves, and God knows that teens were putting themselves at risk far before the advent of the web.  “The Predator”, despite his universally feared status, is as much a creation of urban myth as an object of reality.  From what I can see, there’s a much greater danger of losing our children to holes dug deep inside themselves, than to some grimy back alley behind the 2-for-1 pizza joint. 

Kids are going to make bad decisions.  In most cases, they turn out “just fine”; in much rarer ones, they end up losing their lives as a result, or at least a good deal of their prospects.  Does this risk justify building walls around our loved ones - locking them into the safe "havens" that parents such as Evan Skinner (in the doc) have so lovingly and intentionally constructed (truthfully, no sarcasm there)?  I think the benefits of social media, as outlined by folks such as my Firstmedia webinar leader, are far too promising to keep from the future leaders of society.  Rather than developing introverted communities that are primarily concerned with looking after our own, we need to learn to confront the world around us, with all of its blemishes - this includes the Internet.  What we do need to ensure, however, is that our most vulnerable don't get lost in the vastness of the world during the course of the interaction, as Jamiroquai warns.  When people, including kids, lose hold of the tether of family during the spacewalk of life, they'll inevitably become lost within themselves.  

If your head was just one big eye...

...would this church square look like this?  I have no freaking clue -all I know is that this is a 360 spherical panorama, which used a "stereographic projection" to create a globe.  Pretty wild; check out more of them here.

This image, which was originally posted to Flickr, was reviewed on 31-December-2007 by the administrator or trusted user RedCoat, who confirmed that it was available on Flickr under the above license on that date