Leaving the House of the Dead

A reflection on a lifetime of being “different”

Introduction

The world is not particularly kind to those born different. In obvious situations where the difference is visibly apparent, like physical or mental disability or deformity, the attitude varies from pity to abhorrence, seldom acceptance. Sometimes the difference is malevolent, like in the case of violent criminals, bullies and dictators. Society has clear rules and guidelines for most of those, yet they persist. I understand the human need to “belong” but all too often that means excluding all those who don’t fit the prescribed mold, even if the perceived difference represents no threat and may even be beneficial if understood and valued. Instead, we fear, ridicule, torment and exclude those who don’t easily fit in.

I’m also currently working on two connected projects that spin off from my “What’s a Strategic Paradigm” – Definding Canada and Paradigm Wars.

Definding Canada

As soon as I have completed Strategic Paradigm I’m embarking on a quest to DEFIND (that’s Find and Define) Canada. I believe that Canada is a nation without a clear identity – a nation stuck in an unconscious colonial mindset. When I ask people to define what it means to be Canadian the answer tends to begin with,”well, we’re not like Americans” and seldom goes farther.

Journalist Andrew Cohen wrote in 2007: “The Canadian Identity, as it has come to be known, is as elusive as the Sasquatch and Ogopogo. It has animated—and frustrated—
generations of statesmen, historians, writers, artists, philosophers, and the National Film Board… Canada resists easy definition.”

To resolve this I plan to use my research on Strategic Paradigm to craft an inclusive national identity based on our relationship with our geography.

Paradigm Wars

An original three-part science fiction series that could well support a movie. It pits the Dark Age of the Declining Industrial Age against an emerging Age of Sustainable Bio-Technology. A proposed Business Model for films includes the concurrent design and release of an electronic game by the same name, Paradigm Wars.

Working Hypothesis and Interpretation

The story of this feature film series begins in the early twenty-first century and progresses into the future from there. It tells of the growing conflict between the traditional but failing industrial social and economic model and an emerging alternative paradigm.

The emerging new social and political order has moved away from a monetary model based on power derived from ownership and currency to one based on collective stewardship of resources and a new, sustainable bio-technology, as well as knowledge and information as power. The industrial complex, in the early stages of a new Dark Age or techno-barbarism at the open of the story, is land based and driven to find new sources of petroleum and access to dwindling resources for their failing technology. It is, as a result, very hungry for the emerging bio-technology of the new paradigm.

The new paradigm is water based, having developed the bio-technology to create substantial floating islands with the capability to move with selected variable depth currents to wherever they choose to be in the worlds’ oceans. This society and its’ collection of floating islands is called Arcadia. The name is derived from the traditional idealized rural setting of Greek and Roman bucolic poetry and later in the literature of the Renaissance of a real or imaginary place offering peace and simplicity.