I Can't Do It Any More - We Can't Do This Any More

People say I'm the life of the party

Because I tell a joke or two

Although I might be laughing loud and hearty

Deep inside I'm blue

I'd like to think that I add value to the world I live in with the rest of you.  I'd like to think that the things I've done in my career and in life have had a positive impact - provincial policies changed, projects realized, countless individuals mentored and supported in their growth trajectories.  

The events I've organized on my own have been copied by others, which means they were good ideas, right?  The events I've supported have surely taken on added life through my contributions. My blog posts are fairly well read, considering I don't do much to promote them; I'd like to believe the comments I make on social media spark conversation, expand networks, hopefully inspire others to change their view or take action to strengthen society.

The sad truth, however, is that I often feel like I'm completely worthless.  Like there's a yawning gap between the objectives I try to accomplish - and put a great deal of energy into - and me, as an individual.  I keep pushing harder but have actually started to lose ground.  Increasingly, I feel like I'm bleeding out, like the work I do is my life blood, oozing out of a thousand gaping self-inflicted wounds.  

I feel tired, spent, lost.

This probably sounds like a "woe is me" rant; I can only tell you that isn't my intent, that isn't how I feel.

Recently, I've been wondering if I'm just completely delusional.  I mean, people invest in things that have value, right?  People that do good work are in demand; they are recognized, invited, brought on for contract work or project development or whatever.  If people are constantly asking more from me, it's because what I've done simply isn't enough - it doesn't have value.

Therefore, I don't have value.

It's a gut-wrenching thing to admit, but it must be true.

I think of all the people I've worked with - the encouraging words, the polite smiles, the push to do more, to frame differently, to hustle harder, and all I can think is I've let each and every one of them down.  

How many conversations have I hindered rather than help with my constant stream of ideas?  What great initiatives have been sidelined by my suggestions?  How many people have I frustrated by imposing myself where I had no business being?

There's nothing worse than intending to add value but, in fact, taking it away.  Demanding what isn't my right to demand, imposing where I have no business doing so.

I know how exhausted, how spent I feel day in and day out.  I can only imagine how much life I suck out of others simply by being around.  It's not fair to any of us.

I can't do it any more.  I can't keep being a thorn in the heel of meaningful development, a cross to be borne by the amazing people who have given me so much of their time and patience.

You deserve better than that, than me.

I'm sorry.

There is but one tag on this post – April 1.  As in, the first of April, commonly known as “April Fool’s Day.”  Naturally, there’s a reason for that.

I’m not going anywhere.  I will continue to tweet, event-organize, lobby, connect, mentor, strategize and do all the other things I do to contribute to society and do my part to keep a roof over my family’s head and food on the table. 

Those who truly know me will tell you that giving up simply isn’t part of my genetic make-up and that no matter what hits I take, I always get back up.  My attitude, in a nutshell, is this – adversity is the world’s greatest teacher.  Every stumble, disconnect or deal unclosed is a lesson on how to better frame the next time.

I’d be lying if I suggested there was no truth to the theme of the piece.  Like a growing percentage of people in this world of ours, I often do feel like I’m being asked to do more for less, with increased emphasis being placed on me to sell the value of whatever it is I’m doing to the people with the money or space or capacity or whatever. 

We see this in the workplace, with unpaid interns being told they should consider themselves lucky for the opportunity to skill-build, or contract workers being told they’re lucky to have work, period, so quit complaining about benefits.

Are there too few women in politics?  It’s quite simply their fault for not trying hard enough, is it?  Same goes with senior positions in Any Give Sector – if the women self-promoted as much as the men folk, if they put career before family like men did, they’d have more success, wouldn’t they?

What about youth and civic engagement?  Kids these days, they want everything handed to them – they expect university education to lead to well-paying jobs, they expect to be listened to without having to do the really hard job of sales and marketing to make what they have to say be relevant to the people they’re saying it to.

Same, of course, for voting.  If youth don’t vote, they can’t complain if policy doesn’t reflect them.  The burden must always, always be on the individual; the only way to ensure a strong economy is to push everyone to have that killer instinct, to be hunters and sellers studying the market landscape and predicting employment trends – and develop their own budget to afford this R&D/market research.

That’s the system we have; that’s laissez-faire capitalism.

In reality, this system is a crazy hybrid of tribal hierarchies and typical predatorial behaviour. 

People get to the top of the social ladder through hard work, right?  And with that comes the riches.  If anyone wants those riches, or access, or whatever, they have to hustle in the same way.  That’s the predatorial part – eat what you kill, always be closing, etc. 

Except we’ve also got the hierarchical system in which the Alphas get the greater portion of everything, but that comes with responsibilities to the societal whole.  If the percentage of homeless people, malnourished children, poverty, etc. existed in a smaller tribal society, the head man would quickly find himself without a head.

None of this is to suggest there’s an elitist conspiracy theory to mix social systems in a way that actively oppresses growing percentages of the population from achieving success or being engaged in society; those who say that’s true have way more confidence in the ability of people to cohesively organize than they deserve.  It’s more a matter of “if I did well in this system, than anyone can, and why would I want a different system if this one clearly works for me?”

People’s intent matters, but it’s simplistic to expect a direct correlation between intent and consequence. 

Besides – not everyone is a hunter.  Not everyone is a hustler.  Nor, despite what laissez-faire capitalists think, should they be.

Can you imagine any ecosystem where every creature is a predator?  There’s none that exists in nature; if anything, the evidence shows that any given ecosystem can only support a small number of predators. 

It’s the exact same thing with economies.  If everyone is selling a product and the general rules of predation apply, the vast majority of people aren’t going to close, aren’t going to get paid, aren’t going to survive. 

Except in our social ecosystem, the “weak” hustlers don’t die, they underperform, burn out, suffer from depression.

Which is exactly why the tone of the original post was written from the perspective of depression. 

People are giving up looking for work because they have no expectation of winning.  They’re giving up voting because they don’t feel it makes a difference.  You can call them weak, needy, losers, whatever you want, but the fact is their ranks are swelling.

As are reported incidences of depression. 

Depressed people don’t work well, contribute less, are less effective at parenting, more distracted while driving, more likely to use healthcare services, taxing the existing health system.  In aggregate, it ain’t a pretty picture.

If you’re at the top of the social strata, or if you’re a natural hustler, you will probably come back to the “so what?” mentality – what’s this got to do with me?  If you can’t sell the threat of an emerging situation in clear soundbites without a lot of complexity, it can’t really be that much of a threat, can it?

History tells a different story.  It tells this story over and over again in compelling ways.  If you care enough to look, you’ll have little trouble finding examples.

We can’t do this any more.

Every man for himself is not going to work.  We need to figure out how we’re going to survive here.

Why?

What happens to predators when there’s no more sheep to eat?  Exactly.

Everyone has value.  It's really baffling that the people most reliant on others - the sellers, the CEOs - have some much trouble recognizing that fact.  

If everyone has value, then we're all worth investing in, aren't we?

Kinsella, Depression and Why Mental Health Matters

I’m no expert in depression, but I had always assumed that people suffering from it mostly harmed themselves, not others. If the early reports about Andreas Lubitz are true, however, that assumption is plainly wrong. Lubitz’s apparent act of suicide was also an act of homicide, on a massive scale.

Can anyone refer the rest of us to writings on this issue? It’s important, I think, because it may help answer the “why” that lingers over then tragedy of Flight 9525. It’s also important because I suspect we are going to now see measures to exclude people with depression from certain roles in society – like airline pilots.

There's a fair bit of academic understanding around depression, mental health and cognitive function in general - the problem is so much of it feels counter-intuitive.

As poster Ablana suggests, there isn't always a big plan behind suicidal acts, nor is it always tied to depression: http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/suicide-often-not-preceded-by-warnings-201209245331 If you think about this, it makes sense - figuring out the right way to do it requires research and planning.  You can't think too much about it without considering consequences, including what happens if your plan fails.

There's nowhere near enough information to conclude what exactly happened with the Germanwings pilot - there may never be - but it does help to get into the headspace of depression a bit to see how it may have led one man to murder many.  

Picture yourself in a vibrant world full of smiling, happy people; everyone's enjoying life, having a good time.  Then imagine a glass partition lies between you and them.  Beyond that invisible wall, the smiling people start smirking or outright laughing at you.  Or maybe they simple ignore you're there.  Your little glass cubicle starts to fill up with water, obscuring your view of the people beyond.  The water gets darker, heavier, and before long the world right beyond your barrier is entirely lost from sight.  If the pilot felt like this, if his depression was severe enough, he might not have really had any emotional connection with the consequences of his acts on others.

Depression can also repress all the neurochemicals that make us happy, engaging, or competitive - food loses its taste, jokes lose their humour, sex provides no pleasure.  Self-injury becomes a way to feel SOMETHING other than the dull ache of loneliness that envelops the individual like a shroud.  Severely depressed people can also feel like an illness, a source of pain for those they love the most.  You wouldn't tend to think of suicide as an act of altruism, but for people who feel less than worthless, that's the frame it can take.  

Kinsella raises a timely and thought-provoking question about depression and employment.  Of course, people with mental illnesses like depression or schizophrenia or conditions like ADHD and autism are already excluded from much of society.  An introvert may be the best choice for a job that involves operational skills, but if they aren't one of John Tory's aggressive golfers, will they get noticed?  What about an autistic kid like Jacob Barnett - if his parents hadn't taken a significant gamble, he could have been packing groceries at Wal-Mart instead of becoming the next Einstein.  That's a key point; we have understanding, medicine, tools and training to mitigate the negative impacts of mental health concerns to the same degree we can manage diabetes or HIV.  What we lack is a culture that wants to do this. Mental health is the left-handedness of our time.

Here's where I'll get controversial.

Depression is a seen as a social negative, ie something to be contained or removed.  If depression gets tied to acts of murder, there will unquestionably be a crack-down on people with diagnoses of depression, driving admissions even lower.  It won't matter, though, because the internet allows potential employers to scour every public facet of a potential employee's life; if you've posted some depressing thoughts on Twitter or Facebook, what impact will that have on your ability to land work?  If people crying out for help on the most anonymous platform we have are punished for doing so, what will that do to worsen depression in general?

If you're an employer, you might say "not my problem - I'm looking for the best so I can be the best for my clients/most competitive in my sector."  Survival of the fittest, etc., with the spoils going to those best able to take them through persuasion, persistence or force.

So now picture yourself as an Alpha hustler, aiming for fame and fortune, unwilling to let anything or anyone get in your way.  It's a bit like the rest of the world lies behind a glass barrier, with those blocking your Critical Path presenting themselves as obstacles, those who can support you serving as stepping stones and everyone else - they just fade away, like Jack slipping between the water in Titanic.

Depression isolates the individual, but so does narcissism and sociopathy, also considered diagnosable mental health conditions.    Narcissists and sociopaths are really good at taking from others and have little regard for the impact of their actions on others.  Yet these are the sorts of people who rise to the top, elbow their way into the corner office or the Prime Minister's office.

While their actions can certainly be self-destructive, they tend to be pretty good at fending off the consequences of those actions through charm or threats.  Sociopaths are pretty good at holding grudges and have no problem using fear and force to achieve their goals.

We've seen enough high power people break the law and social conventions for personal gain; we don't like it, maybe, but we generally accept that that's how the game works.

But what about when sociopaths make choices that impact the lives of others?  What if sociopathic politicians do things like cut science research, demonize minority groups or wage wars for tactical political advantage?

Is there a difference between a man with depression crashing a plane and killing all the passengers and a sociopath ordering the direct (a bombing, say) or indirect (cutting of needed services) death of others?

You can draw a lot of inferences here, but please understand  my intent is not to pick on individuals, but the cultural context.  Mental health is on the radar in a way it wasn't even a couple of years ago; the correlation between work and conditions of work, mental health and productivity are also being seriously discussed (think police, PTSD and the avoidable deaths of mentally ill civilians).

We're talking about mental health, and some of us are actually starting to get how critical an issue it is to everything from driving behaviour to parenting ability to innovation, but by and large we still don't get mental health.

It's a bit like germ theory - we accept that people get sick, but assume getting sick or not getting sick has something to do with personal "toughness" or black magic and nothing to do with hygiene and environment.  It's interesting that anti-vaccine people use very similar arguments to anti-med for mental illness folk do, with the importance of environment being down graded in both cases.

Kinsella is right to ask questions and raise concerns about depression and performance (especially around positions that are responsible for the lives of others), but that's just one part of the elephant.

The ability and even desire to kill another human being as though they were not human - that's mental health.  The desire to put self-interest above all else, even the well-being of others - that's mental health. The creative impulse, the oxytocin benefits of giving to charity or the urge to push past human limits with cocaine and hookers on Wall Street - that's all mental health.

There are no clear-cut answers to how we should handle all of this, but that's because there isn't any set-in-stone image of what we're supposed to be.  As the collateral damage of our resistance to tackle mental health head-on mounts, though, there's a wall we're pushing up against as to how long we can ignore the complex truth.

Like a tidal wave, there's only so long a wall can take constant barraging before it breaks down.  

Which is why I remain rationally optimistic about where we go from here.

I have been told that the average length of time between someone deciding to commit suicide and acting on the thought is 10 minutes. I don’t know how you protect against that. We don’t, as a society, deal well with mental illness in any of its myriad forms. That is something we can address. All it takes is a willingness to confront those demons.

Designing the Perfect Get-Away Space

Elton is quiet.  "I spend a lot of time thinking," he says.  "I don't talk a lot, but my mind is working overtime."  The tunnel that Elton built, a 10-minute walk from home in the ravine below Driftwood Court, was his portal into a world of quiet.

The story of Elton McDonald, the Toronto Tunnel builder, fascinates me.  

Here's a guy that dedicated a massive amount of time learning skills, iterating, experimenting and constantly working to create something unique.  These are all the talents employers theoretically want in employees; it's also the sort of experience a millenials wants in employment - the ability to learn new skills, grow as individuals/professionals and be an active part of building something.

I've been near the centre of a growing number of related conversations over the past couple years on youth employment, youth engagement, civic engagement, open government/data, open data, digital tools and back to youth employment.  The common theme from all these conversations is building something new, building something collaboratively, building something that people feel they have a stake in, but that can benefit others as well.

The CODE Hackathon is a great example of this - so is Ontario's Budget Talks or TGIF Tuesday, a policy hack I did with Toronto Youth Cabinet.  I believe (and I'm not alone in this) that the trend line is this: all these separate acts of engagement, creation, community-building and digital connectivity/tools is laying the groundwork for our next big social revolution, like the Industrial Revolution or the Green Revolution before it.  Change is clearly in the air, as is disruption - the question is #howmightwe move more quickly and productively, plus less painfully, from where we are to where we're going?

At the same time, of course, there are many who are uncomfortable with change and want it to stop. We have politicians who are determined to resurrect the manufacturing economy, employers who insist that traditional top-down hierarchical leadership is the way things should be, parents who reject their kids learning new things and all kinds of people rejecting social changes from empowered women to diversified socio-cultural norms.

It goes without saying that society is simply busier, too - we're crowded by people, words, images, even when we're in our own homes.  There's real value in having spaces that we have at least co-designed as refuges, places to think, to iterate, to unplug, or process, or discuss.

Every year there's enough snow, I build a quinzee - essentially, an igloo made from piling and digging.  The building of this relaxes me, gives me an outlet for my energy, something to do with my snow, an opportunity to play with my kids outdoors, but it also gives me a quiet space I can hole up in and feel 100% comfortable in, because I made it with that purpose in mind.  

I've similarly built a "me zone" for my wife; it's got a comfy couch, a fireplace, a big-screen TV, a bar and a couple other amenities.  It's out of Lego, so not a physical space she can really retreat into (I don't have enough blocks for that!) but I know the concept will make her happy, feel a swell of gratitude for the effort and that feeling alone will help ease some of her daily stress, even if just for a bit.  Plus, I got to create, and better than that I got to create something that will make someone happy.

Elton McDonald has decided to turn his 15 minutes into an opportunity to empower others - essentially, to create opportunity for his peers.  Rexdale Lab, The Workshop and countless other community-generated initiatives are trying to do the same thing.  Citizens Academy focuses on capacity-building for civic engagement, Techsdale for digital/tech skills to help youth develop the skills they need to succeed in the modern economy, but they're all variations on the same theme - motivated individuals creating spaces that empower people to learn, grow, experiment and develop the tools they need to build themselves.

Kinda like schools.

It's not a coincidence that the TDSB is in conversations about the future of education (what do we want schools to provide for youth, what kinds of abilities do we want youth to have when they emerge?), that John Tory is all about empowering the disenfranchised/harnessing creativity, learning from models like the South by South West festival in Austin, Texas.  It's simply fortuitous that we also have increasing calls for youth-oriented spaces while our student populations are dwindling to the point that schools need to find new purposes.  

So, here's a challenge for you - #howmightwe tie these threads all together, starting small and working big?  Could we have spaceathons that teach youth about the design thinking process, then facilitate discussions on what the perfect youth incubation/thinking space could look like?  How would you mix shared and quiet space?  How would it work time-wise?  What would be security measures, accessibility measures, how would it be accessed, who would it be targeted to?

Then, those spaces could become hubs for the next tier of discussion - how do we design public spaces and services to be more conducive to social business - and what does that business look like?  From there, we can expand to the sorts of conversations happening at global Open Data events or the Americas Forum - what should governance look like?  What should the economy look like?

Co-designed space, tools to build with and mentorship/opportunities to learn how to build with them, breathing room for contemplation and creativity, things to aim for, then ways to connect; that's all it takes.

Perhaps designing the perfect get-away space is where it starts.

Stephen Harper Should Read Alan Moore

If this is truly the game plan for Election 2015, then the governing party may be in worse shape than public polls indicate.  The prospect of loss, they say, brings a fear all its own.

I'm not so sure Stephen Harper's CPC is leaning more heavily on the fear button because they are fearful themselves.  I think it's more a matter of looking at the political landscape through an opportunistic lens and seeing what's there that should by all rights work to their advantage.

Then, it's a matter of holding hammers and seeing nails.

That being said, I don't think Harper's organizers realize how vulnerable they've made themselves.  

Harper clearly doesn't.

By the rules of the game they're playing, the prize is government and the players are those who could become government, namely the Opposition parties.  This being the case, there are only certain levers that can be pulled to shape electoral fortunes.

As a sidebar, there's The Harper Agenda, which is to remake Canada into a country that reflects his world view, that is a comfortable, safe place for him to be.

Team Harper is playing the fear game on two main fronts:

- make the people fear external and internal threats, including the Opposition, so that ONLY HE can keep them safe

- kindle fear among your opponents, the public service, Not For Profits, etc, so that crossing the Harper Government results in 21st Century forms of exile.

I can't watch this play out with remembering this quote from a comic book movie:

I want everyone to remember why they need us.

Imagine a meme'd parody of this being sent through every social media feed, being picked up by every newspaper desperate for a controversial story and stoking every political conversation around water coolers and dinner tables.

If people are being encouraged to fear, what could possible be more frightening than a government that has abandoned the principles of democracy?

Stephen Harper is no Adam Sutler, for a variety of reasons.  Yet he insists on making the comparison easy.

So here's the dynamic - Team Harper is framing the political narrative as on of a narrowly-defined view of Canadians and Canadian Values under attack by a growing rogues gallery of villains. 

Terrorists who would bomb our towns and scientists who would question the policy choices of the Harper government are being attacked with similar rhetoric by the same party spokesfolk.  Home-grown Jihadis and anyone who criticizes Harper's economic policy are equally dangerous to the future of Canada - at least you'd think that's what Team Harper wants you to feel, given the way both are vilified.

Then, there are an increasing body of non-political actors, including public servants, who are suggesting Canadian Politics - the institution that gives Harper any claim to legitimacy when defining what constitutes Canadian Values - is broken.

If it's all about winning government and being government gives the legitimacy to shape Canadian values, then does an attack on the institution itself count as a threat to Harper's power to define our views for us?

Were this not a democracy, the growing assault on the government's claim to represent the people could be viewed as insurgency - surely, a threat to the well-being of Canada.

Of course, if Canada wasn't a democracy, one may find speaking truth to power and exercising one's right to disagree, to protest and to question could result in the individual being branded a threat to the state.

Not the safest narrative to weave if forming government is your objective, perhaps, but then that's not everyone's goal, is it?

Be David

Serbinis' final piece of advice for the audience was to frame what their startup was doing as a battle between David and Goliath.

David - the little guy who did not accept that a challenge that daunted others was to big to tackle.

He beat Goliath.  He used a stone to do it.  And he changed the world.

Fear is not the answer

Quite simply, the Conservatives have decided that she is a useful weapon in their re-election campaign. By scapegoating her while introducing their much-criticized new anti-terrorism bill, they hope to convince frightened voters that the Conservatives are their best hope against dangers of all kinds. But in doing so, they are instead actually jeopardizing the country's security. Stephen Harper and his minions are actually subverting the work of our security forces by alienating much of the Muslim community.

When it becomes about winning, not accomplishing - or uniting - everyone loses.  

Altruism is selfishness that plans ahead.

When you refuse to recognize this - when you see yourself as "history's actors" - you aren't exercising power, you're neglecting the birthright of all humanity.

Muzzling Canadian Scientists, Public Servants and Everyone Else: