Category: Videos

The Happy List

If you haven’t gone through the archive of A Show with Ze Frank, I highly recommend it. The topics range all over the place, and the tone can vacillate from serious to silly from one episode to the next. There are a lot of times where I feel like he’s struck a chord, and says or shares something that deeply connects with me and my own experiences.

I could keep rambling about that (and maybe I will, sometime), but I actually wanted to share a particular video that I think poses a good question, about what makes us happy. Go ahead and take a minute to watch it, I’ll wait.

I love this concept, and is one I’ve thought about a lot in the past, the notion of the little moments or vignettes of experience that allow you a moment of happy contentment. It’s part of what I try to get at when I talk about the notion of “Festina Lente”. Being present in the moment, not rushed. Attentive. (It’s also one of the things I enjoy about Amélie — savoring the little moments, cultivating alternative pleasures.)

There are a lot of moments I appreciate, but here are a few:

  • Walking through dry leaves in the fall.
  • The smell of the woods and the fields after a good summer storm.
  • Biting into the first apple of the season.
  • Watching snow and ice melt into the brook on the first warm day of spring.
  • Watching traffic lights sway in the evening winds in the summer.
  • Watching a full moon rise over fresh snow.
  • Cooking and sharing a large meal with people I love. (There are reasons I try to celebrate both Canadian Thanksgiving and American Thanksgiving!)
  • Feeling the cool air on my face from the comfort of a warm bed.
  • Cupping a warm beverage in my hand after being out in the cold, feeling the heat seep into my fingers.

How about you? What are the moments that make you happy when you catch yourself being present for?

Clay Shirky's TED Talk about SOPA and PIPA

I completely agree. I also feel the online protests today are invaluable: it’s not enough to defeat these bills. We need to make it absolutely and abundantly clear that these sorts of laws are unacceptable.

I’d go farther than that, though: I sincerely hope that this pushback will cause dialogue to be opened up about revisiting the nature of intellectual property and copyright — and I mean REAL dialogue, not just specific industries with a vested interest in locking in more power and restrictions. We need to acknowledge that the idea of the Commons has grown. Scrap what we have and go in with no preconceived notions, go back to the original discussions of copyright (and patents and trademarks…) and ask the question of what exactly we need to protect and how much.

You Are Not Cattle, You Are Men

Hope… I’m sorry but I don’t want to be an Emperor – that’s not my business – I don’t want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible, Jew, gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another, human beings are like that.

We all want to live by each other’s happiness, not by each other’s misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone and the earth is rich and can provide for everyone.

The way of life can be free and beautiful.

But we have lost the way.

Greed has poisoned men’s souls – has barricaded the world with hate; has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed.

We have developed speed but we have shut ourselves in: machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical, our cleverness hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little: More than machinery we need humanity; More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.

The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men, cries out for universal brotherhood for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me I say “Do not despair”.

The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress: the hate of men will pass and dictators die and the power they took from the people, will return to the people and so long as men die [now] liberty will never perish…

Soldiers – don’t give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you and enslave you – who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel, who drill you, diet you, treat you as cattle, as cannon fodder.

Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men, machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts. You are not machines. You are not cattle. You are men. You have the love of humanity in your hearts. You don’t hate – only the unloved hate. Only the unloved and the unnatural. Soldiers – don’t fight for slavery, fight for liberty.

In the seventeenth chapter of Saint Luke it is written “the kingdom of God is within man” – not one man, nor a group of men – but in all men – in you, the people.

You the people have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness. You the people have the power to make life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then in the name of democracy let’s use that power – let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give you the future and old age and security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power, but they lie. They do not fulfill their promise, they never will. Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people. Now let us fight to fulfill that promise. Let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness.

Soldiers – in the name of democracy, let us all unite! Charlie Chaplin – “The Great Dictator”