Canada’s Debate

I had another one of my frequent, unplanned and uncontrollable free-association daydreams this morning, while I was shaving. Ignoring the fact that this is not a good time to shave, my thoughts led me somewhere interesting. For some reason Blossom came to mind, which led me to porn, and then to a show I remember watching several months ago where a woman said she couldn’t wait to turn 18 to she could get into pornography itself.

If you came here looking for boobs I’m sorry; this is not a post about porn. Being a nice guy I’ve tossed a picture at the bottom of the post though.

Ok, so when I remembered that dialogue I thought, “Man, our subculture is weird.” Now, every generation of youth is different than the preceding one, but I honestly think that something different is happening here. Subculture, or the distinctive culture of a certain group has always existed a bit on the margins. Kids have always hung out where their parents ain’t, geeks have always avoided jocks by hanging out in the library or stage-crew room, artists have always lived in colonies, etc. What’s striking about all of these examples (at least to me) is that these spaces were always at least partially shared; sub-culture existed on the fringes of the mainstream, but there was always an overlap of physical space. Now the internet (and in theory WWW2) allow for unlimited space. It is possible for someone to seek out inclusion and expression in a space that never only that particular group will see. (Continue reading…)

Warren Kinsella picked up on this last week and I meant to post on it, but it kept on slipping my mind. Now before anyone thinks I’m just dropping Kinsella’s name to draw attention, let me explain why it is I hate Jan Wong…

Back in 1997 (I believe) Jan Wong decided to do a piece on teenage smoking. She was determined to get to the bottom of this newfound crisis, so she dug down deep and came up with one of the most thorough and even-handed plans in the history of investigative journalism. She visited my high school during class and interviewed a half-dozen grade 9 students who were outside smoking. From this exhaustive and balanced study she was cunningly able to extrapolate and generalize about the behaviour of the entire student body at the school.

That’s right; Jan Wong interviewed a handful of grade nine losers and used that as a preface to call pretty much every student at the school a juvenile delinquent who was more concerned with getting high and drinking during labour shortages than anything else.

Needless to say, at Northern her work was not well received; and yet for ten years she continued to publish her bombastic and unfounded drivel. I take endless pleasure in seeing her being exposed for the hack she is.

Here’s a simple question with two difficult answers. Is it possible to have a moral society when social obedience (social adherence to the laws of the land) is enforced by further laws?

The subject came up last week during an uncomfortable conversation with my family in a car last week. Does creating new laws to ensure that people follow old ones (creating new punishment regimes, adding regulations, overlapping laws, sentencing enhancements, etc.) really promote moral society, or does it undermine that society? I know what I think, but I’ll wait for someone to chime in before I embarrass myself.