Here’s what we do next, Canada.
We’re living through one hell of a moment in time. The news — whichever channel you choose to get it from — is an endless stream of what feels like absolute madness.
Unemployment is up by a lot, mental illness is pervasive and the deadliest mass shooting in Canada happened in April.
Right now, virtually everyone is hurting in real and significant ways. Often in more ways than one.
As much as it sucks, the fact that everyone is hurting makes this moment in time a perfect opportunity for real change. I believe Canada is uniquely positioned to take the lead and make real change happen.
Wide-spread infectious disease and abuse of power are nothing new.
A few thousand years ago it was leprosy and gladiators. In 2020, we have covid-19 and unpaid NCAA athletes (among other issues.)
Certainly, human life and society has objectively improved — on average, from a number of view points — since ancient times. But that doesn’t mean we don’t still have room for more. Because of course we do.
Global indicators of health and longevity are stalling if not worsening.
Time is running out to stop and (ideally) reverse the deterioration of our environment.
The wealth gap is widening to the point of impacting life expectancy.
Trust of core institutions (NGOs, media government and corporations) is declining.
We have more than enough reason to do things differently. Acknowledging there is room for improvement is the easy part.
Humans are designed to learn, grow and evolve. Humans who manage to dodge issues liked learned helplessness will desire self-improvement by default. It’s what we do.
Figuring out the exact direction and process through which we want to improve — that’s the hard part.
True improvement requires us to aspire to a truly different vision and behave in truly different ways. And the recent knee-jerk reflex by nationalists to retreat back to the “good ol’ days” is the antithesis of that.
The fact that nationalist attitudes look backwards is an automatic argument against them. We’ve been there. We’ve done that. The things that got us here, never get us there. It’s futile-that much is clear.
The rub is that a truly different future is, quite literally, impossible to know.
Remember the movie Encino Man? The one where Brendan Fraser plays a literal caveman — frozen for millennia— who is unearthed and thawed out in 1992?
I sure do.
And I remember my little kid brain trying to comprehend how it would feel to be that caveman waking up many millennia into the future.
I didn’t think a human brain could handle that sudden, unfathomable gap in knowledge.
The status quo of society in 1992 was so far beyond anything that fictional caveman could have ever understood.
Even if we’re only looking a decade ahead, the same truth applies: Knowing the future is not an option. We have to accept that, muster up some courage and move forward anyway.
Our next best option is to mindfully imagine the future. To imagine a pleasant-yet-plausible picture and systematically pursue that vibrant-yet-viable vision is our game-winning play.
It’s our only play, quite frankly.
So I propose we commit to it.
I propose we relax our egos and our delusional, time-intensive, risk-adverse efforts to know.
And instead, intentionally, intelligently yet playfully imagine what the ideal future could look like.
We have to stretch our minds beyond our current realities and norms.
We have to make space for new realities to enter our consciousness.
We have to fairly and objectively consider what may, in the moment, feel like silly and stupid ideas.
Often, new ideas only feel silly and stupid when considered against existing social structures.
Think back to how you reacted when you first heard about this new thing called ‘Airbnb’ where you pay to sleep at strangers' houses in foreign countries. I heard about it while I was backpacking Europe, staying in cheap hostels with many strangers to a room and I still raised an eyebrow.
Much of the stuff we take for granted today — like lightbulbs and airplanes-were initially ridiculed.
Hell, if someone had told me in 1997 that I (and many others) would have the hots for Ryan Gosling come 2004, my pre-teen-self would have told that person to talk to the hand.
Very little that exists now avoided doubt and criticism at some point in history. With that knowledge, we should be able to confidently imagine the silly, stupid, impossible future we want for ourselves.
I believe Canada is perfectly-positioned to lead this effort.
A proud Canadian, I have been personally intrigued by articles published in recent years about how Canada often operates in contrast with many other advanced nations. How Canada could even be the moral leader of the free world. (Aw, shucks!)
Let’s be real though. Are we perfect? No. Absolutely not. Not by a long shot.
We still have a lot of work to do when it comes to inequality, injustice, and environmental preservation.
However. Is it possible that despite our flaws, Canada could STILL be in the best position to lead the world into a new post-pandemic, post-share-holders-first, post-nationalism era? I think so.
Flaws-and-all, I believe Canada could lead the world towards a happier, healthier more enlightened era of existence.
Canadians have been casually (and not-so-casually) adopting progressive policy and social norms for a long time now:
Celebration and integration of many different tribes and traditions (for the most part.)
Polite, neighbourly and humanitarian demeanour.
Preference for local, responsible patronage.
Arguably, being flawed ourselves is an essential part of the equation. If we were already “perfect” we wouldn’t be able to offer other imperfect nations the perspective and insight for how to improve. Kind of like peer-to-peer counselling: having a shared lived experience has transformative power.
We Canuckleheads can leverage our multicultural imagination to dream up the initially silly-and-stupid but gradually slick-and-sophisticated society of the future.
We can work backwards from that dream to determine what social and economic priorities, philosophies and practices will get us there.
And because we’re so nice, we’d share those practices with our global friends and neighbours so they too may pursue their dreams.
We know humans are capable of progressive change.
We know even the most successful strategies have shelf-lives.
We also know at an individual level that sustained behaviour change (eat better, exercise, get sober, quit smoking) is difficult and often requires significant motivation.
And if there’s one thing virtually every human besides Jeff Bezos have in common today, it is a deep desire for change — we have the motivation.
The time to explore, share and act on big-but-silly-and-stupid ideas is now.
