Incite Magazine - February 2011

Incite Magazine Volume 13, Issue 4 · McMaster University, Hamilton ▪ february 2011

happiness: Incite drives away the winter blues It’s all in your head: The neuroscience of happiness plus unconventional happiness: A how-to guide

Editorial happiness is a warm press Andrew Prine, Editor-in-Chief

I

n a 1964 United States Supreme Court decision, Justice Potter Stewart famously wrote that “I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material to be embraced within that shorthand description [‘hard-core pornography’]; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligently doing so. But I know it when I see it.” I think this quotation describes happiness pretty well too. I’m not thrilled that my subconscious associates happiness with the legal system and hardcore pornography, but that’s beside the point. This kind of positive emotion can come from so many different sources and mean so many different things to so many different people that it’s incredibly difficult to compartmentalize, define and pin down, but it’s still so easy to recognize.

I’m now most of the way through my fourth year, and I’ve finally come to that point in my university career where most of my friends are giving up their sleep patterns and social lives to work slavishly away on their undergraduate theses. While I can’t pretend that all of my friends enjoy the enriching process of academic inquiry, every now and again I’ll hear people I know absolutely ecstatic about their new piece of research or bacterial culture’s growth, and I can’t help but get excited on his or her 2 ▪ Incite Magazine ▪ February 2011

photography by just.luc (flickr)

behalf. Even when I don’t have the foggiest idea of what they are gabbing on about or why anyone could possibly care about it, I still understand their excitement, and that is why I wanted the team at Incite to approach happiness, if not from an interdisciplinary perspective, at least from a multidisciplinary one.

Angela Irwin’s examination of the neuroscience of happiness and Jenny Nicolle and Brianna Smrke’s piece on Seasonal Affective Disorder approach good vibes, and their absence, from a scientific background, while Lily Hasting’s Happiness and Mental Illness and Patrick Byrne’s account of his international bike trip consider happiness on a more personal level. Shawn Fazel and Alisha Sunderji’s cheerful look at the dismal science and Meg Peters’s and Sarah Silverberg’s Smiles: A Cultural History draw on the social sciences that fall somewhere in between.

I still remember the first time that I ever felt old. I used to teach guitar at a studio, and when I asked one of my new students what her favourite band was, she said My Chemical Romance. I’d never heard of them. Later that week, I learned that their hit single was

number one on the charts. I’d still never heard of them. I was seventeen and already out of touch with society, and it scared me.

If I was this far behind already, how obsolete would I be by the time I turned 40?

Well, I’ve seen a few more seasons now, and unfortunately, it’s happened again. Incite Magazine is proud to enter the wonderful world of Web 2.0, with a Facebook fan page, a Twitter feed, and a spiffy new website. On that note, this smart little drawing underneath these words is apparently what’s called a “QR Code.” I won’t pretend to know what that stands for or how it works, but savvier people than I have assured me that if it’s scanned by smarter phones than mine it will take you to our website. Of course, if you’re by a computer, you can always check out the excitement the old fashioned way at www.incitemagazine.ca.

incitemagazine.ca Features

Departments

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Minutes from last month Selected news from near and far Postcards from England Ava Dideban, Catherine Mary Zagar The Adventures of Patrick Byrne Patrick Byrne Power/Play Yang Lei Diversions: Crossword Jordan Milko

graphic by Joanna chan

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Neuroscience of Happiness Feel Good Inc(ite) Angela Irwin The Economics of Happiness Happy faces, mean incomes Shawn Fazel, Alisha Sunderji SAD State of Affairs Seasonal Affective Disorder Jenny Nicolle, Brianna Smrke Arts Spread Joshua Carey, Joanna Chan, Dorothy Leung, Alex Ngalebaze, Andrew O’Connor, Afrisa Yeung Epicurus Strikes Back Hedonism head-on Will van Engen Pieces of God Postmodern, etc.

Michael Capitano In Defense of Valentine’s Day Despite the Cupidity Jenny Whistance-Smith Happiness and Mental Illness Jokes here would be inappropriate Lily Hastings Smiles: A Cultural History Fangs for comin’ out Meg Peters, Sarah Silverberg Reel Happiness Today’s entertainment Jeremy Henderson Unconventional Happiness It’s this easy Erin Chesney Tim Burton on Display Oh my goth!

Anna Kulikov

Incite Magazine is published six times per academic year by Impact Youth Publications, founded in 1997.

Entire contents copyright 2010-2011 Impact Youth Publications. Opinons expressed in Incite Magazine are those of the author(s), and do not necessarily reflect the views of Incite Magazine’s staff or Impact Youth Publications.

Letters of up to 300 words may be sent to incite@ mcmaster.ca; they may be edited for length and clarity and will not be printed unless a name, address, and daytime phone are provided.

Editor-in-Chief Andrew Prine Managing Editors Yang Lei, Layout Joanna Chan, Graphics Will van Engen, Photography Editors Chris Hilbrecht Anna Kulikov Hilary Noad Adira Winegust Communications & Marketing Ishani Nath Kathy Woo Assistant Editors Angela Irwin Hannah Webb Contributors Patrick Byrne, Michael Capitano, Joshua Carey, Erin Chesney, Amanda Coulthard, Ava Dideban, Shawn Fazel, Dave Franciosa, Lu Gao, Lily Hastings, Jeremy Henderson, Dorothy Leung, Jordan Milko, Alex Ngalebaze, Jenny Nicolle, Andrew O’Connor, Irena Papst, Meg Peters, Mandy Shek, Sarah Silverberg, Brianna Smrke, Alisha Sunderji, Anne van Koeverden, Jane van Koeverden, Jenny WhistanceSmith, Jordanna Winegust, Afrisa Yeung, Catherine Mary Zagar Covers Ianitza Vassileva Printing Digital Art & Graphics, Inc. Contact incite@mcmaster.ca

Volume 13, Issue 4 ▪ Incite Magazine ▪ 3

Happy-nings just lyin’ there

INSIDE THE BUBBLE...

IN NORTH AMERICA...

Urine-luck!

While the watering bans and droughts of summer may still be months away, if you’re looking for dry wits and potty jokes, then McMaster Musical Theatre’s 2011 production of Urinetown: The Musical might just wet your whistle. It tells the story of two young lovers in a dystopian future where chronic water shortages mean that people have to pay to use public toilets. The production, directed by Riane Leonard, will run from 25 February to 4 March at the Westside Concert Theatre on King Street West. compiled by Andrew Prine

“You hit my car! I’m telling!”

LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY—Talk about an early run-in with the law. A Metro Louisville police officer, Cody Chapelle, recently issued a seven-year-old boy a ticket on the charge of third-degree criminal mischief because the kid hit the officer’s truck with a ball. What a baby! Officer Chapelle was suspended for fifteen days for the unnecessary issuance of a ticket, and, according to Police Chief Robert White, for a lack of common sense. The officer is reportedly appealing his suspension. Hopefully, officer Chapelle’s lawyers are prepared to handle a temper-tantrum if the appeal is not granted.

Pot on Film MEXICO—Drug smugglers in Mexico appear to have tired of traditional marijuana moving methods, abandoning their planes and tunnels in favour of a throwback to the medieval age.

Soldiers at the Mexico-Arizona border recently seized not one, but two catapults that were being used to fling marijuana into the States. Video surveillance showed that the catapults were high enough to launch marijuana in a double-rainbow trajectory (oh my god) all the way over the border fence.

Soldiers seized the catapults along with 2 kilos of pot but the “smugglers” had already left, though not before blazing the trail for future smuggling entrepreneurs. Border soldiers will have to beef up security if they are going to weed out those responsible.

Safari-fetched Menu TUSCON, ARIZONA—An uproar from animal lovers has stopped a Tuscon, Arizona restaurant from serving African lion tacos. Boca Tacos and Tequila is an eatery that takes pride in the biodiversity of its menu, already serving python, alligator, elk, kangaroo, rattlesnake, turtle, oysters and frogs’ legs tacos. The restaurant planned on adding African lion tacos to its menu in mid-February but public outcry—including death threats—has forced owner Bryan Mazon to take the exotic meat out of the restaurant’s tortillas. While it is illegal to buy and sell the meat of vulnerable wild lions, big cats raised in the United States can be eaten. Animal rights groups object that these lions are mainly unwanted circus animals and that being served in a chipotle sauce with sour cream, lettuce, diced tomatoes, shredded cheddar and green onions is a cruel, if mouthwatering, end for these magnificent beasts.

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Rashest to Ashes, Dust to Bust SLIVER SPRINGS SHORE, FLORIDA—In December, following a break-and-enter, an urn was taken from an elderly lady’s home along with some electronics and precious jewelry. When police arrested a group of teenagers in connection with the theft, they soon learned of the tragedy that befell the urn containing the cremated remains of her deceased husband and her two Great Danes. The thieves, mistaking the grey powder for cocaine, apparently attempted to snort the substance. When it became clear that there were no narcotics in the ornate jar, the ashen-faced thieves unceremoniously dumped the container in a lake for fear that their fingerprints would be discovered on it. The suspects have been charged with burglary while police divers seek to recover the urn from the lake.

Bagged by Garbage NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK—An attempted suicide by a 26-year-old man was thwarted recently by an unlikely saviour: a pile of garbage bags. Vangelis Kapatos, recently released from a psychiatric ward and anxious about the possibility of being evicted from his rent-controlled apartment, jumped from his ninth-floor window. Fortunately, garbage from the previous weeks were left on the streets because a blizzard in the city prevented waste collection, and successfully broke his fall, saving his life in the process. If Mr. Kapatos does get evicted from his apartment, at least we know that he’s able to make a living dumpster diving. compiled by Lu Gao, Chris Hilbrecht, Angela Irwin & Jordana Winegust

feel good inc(ite)

Angela Irwin explains the neuroscience of pleasure

H

ow far would you go to feel pleasure?

We seek pleasure in any form, be it from fun, friends or food, and our appetite for this emotion is a driving force in daily life. The desire for pleasure underpins human happiness, and the inability to experience it has been linked to depression.

As demonstrated by addictions, pleasure can also lead to unhappiness. The importance of this pervasive emotion has led to research into how pleasure works in the brain, and it’s brought to light some surprising results regarding how much we may do to experience it.

In the late 1950s, psychologists James Olds and Peter Milner conducted a study that later led to the identification of a “pleasure centre” in the rat brain. In their original study, they implanted electrodes into the rats’ tiny brains and had them press a lever that would deliver an electrical shock into whatever brain area the electrode was touching. Olds and Milner recorded the rats’ behaviour in response to this shock; by noting how often the rats would go back to press the lever, the researchers gauged how much the rodents enjoyed the electrical stimulation. They then killed the rats, cut open their brains, dug around for the electrode and recorded its location.

illustrations by angela irwin

It turned out that rats with electrodes in certain parts of their brains thoroughly enjoyed a little brain zapping, some sending electrical shocks deep into their cortices even thousands of times per hour. The rats with electrodes in their “pleasure centres” were so turned on by the electrical stimulation that they would push the lever to the point of exhaustion, only to recover and push it some more. They found this mind titillation more rewarding than food and sex, and they could never get enough of it. This research predicts that if the rats were left to their own devices, they would choose stimulation over food, water and sufficient rest, eventually dying of pleasure.

When I told my mother about this study, she laughed and responded, “They must have been male rats”. She was referring to the view that men are more self-indulgent and women are more likely to be deterred from such a pleasurable activity by feelings of suspicion or guilt, as a result of disparate judgment in our culture of male and female behaviour. While rats don’t have culture influencing their decisions and so likely don’t feel guilt the way humans do, my mother did shed light on popular opinion of human male and female differences in the pursuit of pleasure. But what I found more entertaining is that all the rats used in

these studies were, in fact, male.

Even though Olds and Milner identified certain areas of the brain that could potentially lead to pleasurable deaths, understanding the neurobiology behind this emotion in humans has proven to be more complicated than identifying and stimulating a single “pleasure centre”. There are many interconnected areas of the brain involved in making us feel warm and fuzzy, an entire system which is known as the “reward circuit.” This system is made up of brain areas that were among the earliest to develop in our ancestors, indicating just how important our drive for pleasure has been throughout our evolutionary history. For those with interests in neuroanatomy, these areas are commonly believed to be the septum, nucleus accumbens, prefrontal cortex and amygdala.

Of all the parts involved in the reward circuit, the nucleus accumbens is the area often called the “pleasure centre” because it regulates the release of dopamine, a neurotransmitter responsible for sending pleasure signals to other sensory areas. Studies have shown that this area is activated in straight men when they are around attractive women. In addition, subjective reports from patients during neurosurgeries demonstrate Continued on Page 7 Volume 13, Issue 4 ▪ Incite Magazine ▪ 5

happy faces, mean incomes

Shawn Fazel & Alisha Sunderji examine the economics of happiness

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n this issue of Incite, the “dismal science” of economics stains your happiness with an analysis of the economics of happiness.

Imagine your government’s goal was to make you happy; where would your tax dollars go?

Health care? Education? Mass orgies? Public humiliation of prisoners? No drinking age?

No speed limit? 15 cent chicken wings? Human rights in Somalia?

Instead of pondering on our perfect happy world, readers should note that the quest for happiness starts within. Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert separates happiness into two different categories: natural happiness and synthetic happiness. Natural happiness constitutes what we feel when we get what we want, while synthetic happiness is the exact opposite, what we make when we don’t get what we want. An example of this idea is expressed in Aesop’s fable “The Fox and the Grapes.” In the story, a fox spots some grapes hanging from a tree and wants to eat them. Upon realizing that he is unable to reach the fruit, he surmises that they must be sour, hence the expression, “sour grapes”. The fox in Aesop’s story didn’t get what he desired, but convinced himself that he was better off nonetheless.

Gilbert argues that happiness is intrinsic to humans and comes with an acceptance of our circumstances. Similarly, Adam Smith, the father of free-market capitalism, argued that we over-rate the difference between one situation and the other.

Our longings and worries are somewhat overblown, Smith figured, because we have the power to manufacture the happiness that we seek.

Happiness is often portrayed as something that has to be attained, as natural happiness is often valued more than synthetic happiness. After all, what kind of economic system would promote that not getting what we want could be just as good as getting what we want?

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Perhaps the mentality that the more we have, the better off we are, is perpetuated by how we measure progress. Simply stated, Gross Domestic Product is the total market value of goods and services produced by a nation’s economy over a given period of time. Accordingly, GDP is a decent measure of the material prosperity of a country.

artwork by mandy shek

The logic that greater wealth corresponds to greater well being is easy enough to understand. Hungry, broke people, for instance are made happier when they have enough to eat. Over the years, the world has developed a “GDP fetish,” a phrase coined by economist Joseph Stiglitz; maximizing GDP has guided institutions and policies, shaping society as a whole. Yet it is not always the case that betterment follows from increased consumption of goods. In fact, psychological studies have shown that beyond a threshold GDP of

roughly $15,000 per capita, happiness is not really increased by greater wealth. What’s more, the failure to account for environmental degradation and income inequality constitute two important shortcomings of the GDP as an indicator of well-being. If governments have become focused on increasing wealth and not well-being, how do we switch gears?

How would we, collectively as a nation, define happiness?

Nestled in the Himalayas, Bhutan has become the only country in the world to put happiness at the forefront of government policy. In 1972 King Jigme Singye Wangchuck, spurred by problems affecting developing countries that focused only on economic growth, decided to make his country’s top priority Gross National Happiness (GNH).

Bhutan has pioneered the use of genuine indicators of welfare to dictate policies and guide its institutions. Having absolute power, the King was easily able to direct the country’s development policy toward the four pillars of GNH: environmental protection, good governance, cultural resilience and equitable economic development.

The capital city, Thimpu, is devoid of advertising. In fact, the city council recently banned billboards advertising Coke and Pepsi. Advertising is apparently a major source of unhappiness, since it suggests that you would be better off if you bought something. Bhutan was also the last country in the world to introduce television, only doing so in 1999, and has recently banned channels featuring international wrestling and MTV. Plastic bags and tobacco have also been banned on the grounds that they generate unhappiness.

Many countries have been inspired by Bhutan’s GNH project and have begun researching their own potential alternative measures of well being. The UK has recently announced that they are working towards a

measurement of GNH, with preliminary results showing that overall Brits are less happy today than they were in the 1970s. An important question to ask in discussions of GNH, though, is whose interpretations of happiness are being used to guide policy. Bhutan’s monarchy had no political opposition in implementing new policy based on GNH, but how can we, in a democracy, design policy based on a subjective reading of a mental state? We must be wary of happiness measures being used as a political instrument.

Although happiness is subjective, there are a number of ideas policy-makers would be wise to keep in mind when trying to improve national happiness, including promoting equality and protecting the environment.

In their recently published book The Spirit Level, Richard G. Wilkinson and Kate Pickett study the relationship between income distribution and wealth distribution to physical health, mental health, drug abuse, crime,

imprisonment, obesity, social mobility, trust and community life. The results are powerful.

The book suggests a strong correlation between healthier, happier societies and more equal societies among the world’s richest countries. They point out competition causes high levels of stress, which lead to long-term societal problems.

It is easy to see that more equal societies seem more pleasant to live in; this is why neighbourhoods become segregated by income, for example. Disregarding land value, gated suburban communities are attractive for a reason. The book even studies the trend between the states of the US, finding the most equal states to have the lowest rate of crime, drug and health issues.

As well, although Adam Smith would argue that by pursuing our rational self-serving interest, we actually benefit society; we must consider how distant our economy is from the theoretical one described in Smith’s

“happiness inc(ite)” continued from Page 5

that stimulating the nucleus accumbens leads to feelings of happiness, well-being, and sometimes orgasms!

When parts of the reward circuit are damaged, people become less motivated and unable to feel pleasure; in people with depression, the nucleus accumbens does not function properly. Even though the reward circuit may be more complicated than a single pleasure centre, it was Olds and Milner’s pioneering studies that led to further—although sometimes ethically questionable—research in humans and our current understanding of pleasure in the brain.

Also in the 1950s, Robert Heath conducted research similar to Olds and Milner’s studies, with a couple of differences; for one, he didn’t kill his subjects, but that’s because his subjects were humans. Heath implanted a few electrodes into the brain of a male who was termed “severely ill” due to his drug addiction, severe depression and homosexuality (oh, the fifties), as part of a “therapeutic program.” One of the studies in this therapy program involved giving the man the ability to self-stimulate his pleasure centre (in this study it was the septal region of the brain), with the goal of “altering his sexual orientation.” The man would pleasure his brain with electrical stimulation in response to hetero-

sexual pornography and daily interactions with female ward personnel, and eventually engaged in heterosexual intercourse with a prostitute while researchers watched EEG recordings of his brain (oh, the days before research ethics). Observing his orgasm on the EEG allowed the researchers to examine which brain areas are activated in moments of intense pleasure, and allowed the subject to have a pretty good time as well (as verified by post-coitus interviews).

More recently, researchers have looked into how stimulating the reward circuit could provide benefits that are possibly less morally questionable than the attempt to change someone’s sexual orientation. Some have proposed the invention of a “sex chip” to be inserted in the brain’s pleasure areas in order to help people who have lost the ability to become sexually aroused. In addition, deep brain stimulation of the nucleus accumbens has also been shown to alleviate symptoms of depression.

work. A big problem with traditional economics is that environmental considerations are not always calculated in the costs of doing business. Internalizing these negative externalities is crucial, as environmental degradation and eco-anxiety certainly do not feed happiness.

Altogether, considering the place of happiness in economics and the role of economics in happiness presents an important challenge to traditional ideas of development that call on governments to work toward increasing the wealth of their nations. “More is more” may still be a decent slogan for economic policy makers, but happiness economics forces them to ask “more of what?”

If they answer “equality, decent government, culture, community life, environmental protection and 15 cent chicken wings” instead of “endlessly growing wealth,” they may just be on to something.

But in addition to all of the happiness this brain area can bring us, it is also involved in certain drug addictions. Some recreational drugs work by stimulating this same area, and the system has a way of making us want more pleasure once we find a way to get it. Addictions to drugs such as nicotine and cocaine have therefore led some psychologists to wonder whether the reward circuit is more about intense “wanting” than a drive for pleasure. Wanting in excess is what these researchers claim leads to addictions, and the search for pleasure becomes a need to avoid the unpleasantness of being without the drug.

More research is definitely needed before sex shops can start selling pleasure probes, but the studies done by Olds and Milner have sparked much research and debate regarding electrically enhanced pleasure.

Would the ability to feel good at the push of a button truly make us happy? Is pleasure only an end, or does the manner it comes about matter too? Recent research raises questions about how we can or should achieve happiness through pleasure. My only comment on Olds and Milner’s original experiment is that maybe they should have let the rats stimulate themselves to death. I can think of worse ways to die than being killed with pleasure.

Volume 13, Issue 4 ▪ Incite Magazine ▪ 7

Pa ck a g e d e s i g n e r Magazine editor Fo r m l a y o u t d e s i g n e r Contracts officer Media relations director

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Layout and photography by Catherine Mary Zagar & Ava Dideban Volume 13, Issue 4 ▪ Incite Magazine ▪ 9

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SAD state of affairs

Jenny Nicolle & Brianna Smrke look at seasons and happiness

S

easonal Affective Disorder (SAD) is part of a rich tradition of inappropriately named diseases (Maple Syrup Urine Disease and Dandy-Walker Syndrome, anyone?), perhaps proof that even researchers need more opportunities to crack a smile. For those suffering from SAD—which causes feelings of sadness and depression—it might seems a tad excessive that the acronym of their condition describes their dominant disposition.

SAD is a mood disorder wherein individuals experience depressive symptoms only during a specific season, most commonly winter.

As summarized in a 1998 article by Partonen and Lonnqvist, these symptoms usually include excessive sleep, social withdrawal, feelings of sadness, decreased activity, and cravings for carbohydrates. In severe cases of SAD, individuals may become suicidal. SAD was officially recognized as a disorder in 1984 by Dr. Norman Rosenthal and his research team at the Washington D.C. National Institute for Mental Health. Some common treatments used for winter SAD are antidepressant medications, light therapy, melatonin supplements, and cognitive behavioural therapy.

More unconventional SAD treatments have also been used. In 2005, the Austrian town of Rattenberg announced a plan to set up giant rotating mirrors nearby in order to reflect sunlight into the town. This plan was formulated to combat the town’s high preva-

Artwork by AFRISA YeUNG

lence of SAD, thought to be a consequence of the three months of complete darkness that mountainous Rattenberg experiences each winter. Similarly, the Italian town of Viganella has set up a giant mirror on the side of a mountain to reflect sunlight into the town square. Prior to this development, Viganella experienced darkness for 84 days each year and its inhabitants showed high rates of SAD. In both of these scenarios, the mirrors are controlled by computers which adjust themselves depending on the sun’s position in order to maximize light.

The effect of decreased light exposure is just one of the hypotheses concerning the cause of SAD. Recent studies have suggested that SAD may be a vestigial form of hibernation. J.E. Eagles’s 2004 paper suggests that SAD may have provided an evolutionary advantage to female sufferers because it may have kept them inactive during a winter pregnancy. Others classify SAD as a subset of major depression rather than its own unique mood disorder.

Still, the most common explanation for SAD identifies decreased light during the winter as the primary cause. Much like when we experience jet-lag, the lower levels of light during winter can change our circadian rhythms thus increasing our desire to sleep. Less exposure to sunlight also means our bodies do not produce as much vitamin D, which causes a decrease in

the brain’s serotonin levels, the neurotransmitter known as the “happiness hormone”.

Studies supporting the light hypothesis have shown a higher prevalence of SAD in countries in northern latitudes. One exception to this is Iceland, which shows significantly lower rates of SAD than the US, despite being further north. In their 1993 article, Magnusson and Stefansson suggest that natural selection could have taken place within Iceland’s isolated population in the last thousand years, increasing Icelanders’ tolerance for winter darkness.

During the warmer months, individuals can be afflicted with reverse SAD, also known as summer SAD. For those who experience reverse SAD, high temperatures during summer months can cause different symptoms from winter SAD such as insomnia, weight loss and anxiety. Some people with the condition find relief by vacationing in countries with colder climates or sleeping with bottles of ice.

The symptoms associated with SAD may seem to describe the way many of us spend the winter months—curled up with a steady supply of carbohydrates, sleeping the day away.

Still, those with SAD experience these symptoms to the point that they cannot carry out their daily activities as they would normally.

Then again, anyone who had to spend three months in complete darkness on an annual basis would likely feel pretty SAD! Volume 13, Issue 4 ▪ Incite Magazine ▪ 11

the adventures of patrick byrne Patrick Byrne bikes from B.C. to Mexico

I

n this two-part series, Incite contributor Patrick Byrne writes about his 3,200 + km bicycle ride from Vancouver to Mexico.

Some numbers: 1 – trip to the emergency room 2 – Patrick’s flat tire count 15 – nights spent at strangers’ homes 23 – Total flat tires suffered by group Gifts from strangers on the street: 4 – pears 2 – beers 1 – chocolate bar 3 – tire tubes 1 – bike maintenance book About the author: Plucky Mac student in his mid 20s whose physical fitness prior to this trip peaked in Grade 10 during a particularly intense round of badminton. Abundant in chutzpah, lacking in skills and even a semblance of life-direction. Adventure seeker.

A Simple Adventure “So, how far is it from Vancouver to San Francisco?”

“Oh I have no idea.”

12 ▪ Incite Magazine ▪ February 2011

photography by patrick byrne

“But…you’re going to bike there?”

“Yeah, it’s cool, it’ll be an adventure.”

And thus began nearly every conversation I had about my “plan” to bicycle down the West Coast in September of 2010. As of 1 August, I had no bike, no route, and no gear. But exactly one month later, I found myself rolling my precariously laden bike (total weight of bike + gear = 81 lbs) down the residential streets of the Point Grey neighbourhood in Vancouver, unsure, for the first of many times during the trip, where I would sleep that night. Starting off with two friends and one relative stranger that day in September, I had no idea that by the middle of December I would find myself with beefy thighs and a mean shorts tan, posing for pictures with my father at the Mexican border after having traversed over 3,200 km, more than 1,000 km further than the original itinerary.

What happened along the winding roads, smooth bike lanes, glass-strewn freeways, and rocky dirt paths of British Columbia, Washington, Oregon and California, you ask? The answer, like so many of my responses to people I met along the way, is simple: adventure. So pack your panniers, shimmy into your padded bike

shorts, don your helmet, and let me tell you a few tales from along the way.

After a hectic week of arranging to have our ‘real’ lives put on hold for four months, three trips to Mountain Equipment Co-op for gear, some frantic bike assembly and maintenance, and a series of last minute panic-inducing affairs (losing a contact lens, getting health insurance), we finally set out into the unknown.

While we had with us a guidebook and a wealth of equipment, we lacked, amongst other things, the following: a) basic bike maintenance knowledge, b) anything other than rudimentary biking experience, and c) fitness. So the idea was simple: to see how far we could bike each day, and go from there.

We rolled (teetered) out onto the street, many hours later than planned, riding our weighted down bikes for the first time, trying to get used to clip-in pedals and spandex shorts, questionably functional brakes and painful seats. After several wrong turns (“We’re already getting lost and we haven’t left Vancouver yet!”), some surprisingly strenuous sections of coastal road after Stanley Park, and a joyful reunion with Miranda—who somehow managed to lose the group for

upwards of half an hour—we were ready to board the ferry and make the crossing to the small town of Gibsons. Exhausted after our frantic first ride, we lay strewn about the surprisingly plush seats of the ferry, eating tuna directly out of cans and warding off disgusted looks from welldressed commuters with impish grins, and the feeling of being able to get away with most things because we were carrying everything we owned on our bikes, a feeling that would certainly fuel many subsequent escapades.

That night, riding off of the ferry into very unfamiliar territory, we began to feel the first hints of fear that our general unpreparedness was already catching up to us. It was pitch black, we only had two functioning lights between the four of us, and we were miles from the nearest campground. We took a sideroad that we hoped would have access to some open but secluded space where we could pitch our tent for the night, but all we found were walls of thick bushes and steep driveways lining the road that hugged the edge of the coast. Eventually, Lauren and Emma decided that we needed to take a more direct approach and simply ask someone if we could sleep on their lawn. They did just that and within minutes they triumphantly returned, showing us our very own piece of land on George and Jennifer’s front lawn upon which we could pitch our tent for the night. I was sceptical that someone would be so kind to four grubby-looking, sweaty bikers and in the back of my mind expected some sort of horror story ending in axe murder, but we were exhausted and quickly fell asleep after what would turn out to be one of our shortest biking days on the trip.

We awoke the next morning to the shifting and crashing of the ocean lapping at the beach, and George, our septuagenarian host, rousing us from slumber with the alluring announcement in his thick Scottish accent, that breakfast was ready and that we had better get up. “The word

of the day is marmalade!” he proclaimed.

A good sign if ever there was one. As we ate a full breakfast of scones, ham, English muffins, fruit and yogurt, tea and coffee, and yes, lots of marmalade, we enjoyed not only a spectacular view of the ocean from the sitting room, but also hilarious stories about George and Jennifer’s richly-lived lives. I quickly realized that my fear had been ridiculous, and my defensiveness around strangers, unfounded.

Through their unconditionally trusting kindness, George and Jennifer not only gave us a place to sleep and food to eat, but also the confidence to trust others, accept help, and to be generous in our own small ways. George’s parting words to us rang true as an oft-repeated motto for our trip (more often than not to justify impressive chocolate binges): “If you’re not good to yourself, then who the hell will be!”

The days rolled on and we found ourselves meeting other touring cyclists, fielding queries from interested locals, and attending to Miranda’s many flat tires. We settled into a rhythm: wake up with the sun, ride the curve of the coast, and tumble into our tent for 10 hours of sleep so we could do it all over again the next day. As our tans deepened, our quads rippled, and our butts ached, we inched our way through Washington, about 80 km a day. We felt strong, adventurous and unstoppable. And then it started to rain.

And rain. And rain some more. After a damp day of thick, wet fog on the road, with the surface slick and the visibility poor, we were eager to stop for the night in the town of Westport. Throughout our time in Washington, we had been particu-

larly struck by how, um, ‘rural’ the state was. It might have been that most ‘downtowns’ we cycled through were populated primarily with buffalo jerky and fireworks vendors, or that 80 per cent of vehicles that passed us were trucks with mangy, barking dogs in the back, but Washington was really beginning to register certain stereotypes. I was particularly concerned with the large hand-drawn poster outside of a store proclaiming: “We love God, the Consitution [sic], and the Tea Party.”

But as we pulled into Westport, things were looking good. Spotting a library as we rode through town was the first good sign; it had been much too long since we had seen any evidence of literacy. We pulled off the road and alighted upon the “Totem RV and Trailer Park” where we paid $20 and were shown to our campsite, a barren patch of gravel in the corner of what appeared to be a parking lot. We set up our tent close to the chain link fence, having been warned by the owner that he could not be held responsible if an RV ran us over in the middle of the night, unaccustomed as the trailer park was to people in tents with no car to set up as a buffer between the tents and certain death.

After struggling to get our tent pegs into the hard ground, we stepped back and surveyed the scene.

Through the thick fog (and the impressive stench of fresh fish) we could see a row of squalid-looking trailers, complete with stacked tires and an overgrowth of grassy sideburns, all hemmed in on the left side by the smouldering remains of a strippedbare RV: the remnants of an impressive bonfire.

My defences were up. I was out of my comfort zone and once again felt the doom of impending axe (or maybe shotgun) murder. But this time, I was slightly braver, and decided to talk with the people sitting around the fire, if for no other reason than to get a working description of my soon-to-be-killers. But the people I had stereotyped so brutally refused to play along with my assumptions. We had Volume 13, Issue 4 ▪ Incite Magazine ▪ 13

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a pleasant chat about life in the trailer park, about how it was cheaper than renting in town and that you couldn’t be closer to the docks where a few of the men had jobs. If you could put up with the hot water being turned off at 9 p.m., and the less-than-scenic view in exchange for being able to live with your family, close to work, then everything else was just peachy. My new friends clinked their beers, joked about our tiny tent, and turned back to their roaring fire. Turns out that happiness could thrive where I would least expect it to.

The rain continued unabated as we rode south towards Oregon. We once again found ourselves rolling into little Raymond, Washington, soaked to the skin and with no plan for the night. Through some stroke of luck, Emma had written 14 ▪ Incite Magazine ▪ February 2011

down the numbers of some CouchSurfing hosts the last time we had internet access and one of them was located just outside of Raymond. We made the call and were soon on our way to Chandra’s house. Upon our arrival, we were welcomed into our new digs by Chandra and her 15 year old son, Elijah, and promptly given warm bowls of soup, the use of their washer and dryer, and oh-so-glorious, hot showers. Chandra, we learned, was a bit of an outsider in Raymond. Her meditation and yoga courses were slow to receive positive attention as her neighbours were rather traditional Christians with a distaste for anything ‘alternative.’ Chandra, her husband, and Elijah had also just returned from a seven-month journey around the world. The adventurous upbringing shined through in Elijah, one of

the most confident and kind teenagers I’ve ever met. After an evening of travel stories, a movie, and guitars, we tucked into bed—our spirits overflowing with trust in strangers.

We finished off our time in Washington with more rain, a coincidental meeting with a man walking to Mexico who happened to be best buddies with a professor of ours, and a hang-on-fordear-life bridge crossing into Oregon.

But the border didn’t stop the rain and we decided to once again call upon trusty internet strangers to provide lodging for the night. Neil, a semi-retired track coach and guidance counsellor from Seaside was our host. With a ruddy face, a tireless smile, and a knowing wink, Neil let us into his home, immediately offering us full use of anything, “I’m barely home, so use my kitchen, garage, laundry, whatever you need, it’s just sitting there otherwise!” he said. After a quick chat about his own travels, Neil was out the door again, turning to say “Oh and if you leave, don’t worry about locking the door, 99 per cent of people are good, and the others, well you can’t do anything about it anyway so you might as well trust people and be happy.”

A wink, a smile, and he was gone. After five minutes with him, we already knew that Neil was something special.

After a brief respite from the rain at Neil’s, we found ourselves mentally and physically recharged. We were still fighting a chilly wind and began noticing a subtle change in the colour of the leaves. The seasons were changing and with nothing more than a sweater and a rain jacket each, we knew it was time to pick up the pace and keep moving south.

Wet days dribbled into sunny weeks as each turn of the wheels propelled us further south and we soon found ourselves posing in front of the California welcome sign. The moment was complete when a man in a beat up truck saw us awkwardly trying to take self-photos, U-turned on the highway so that he could take a picture of us all together underneath the sign.

One of the great joys of bicycle touring was how each day turned into a massive game of leapfrog. In the morning, we would pass another group of cyclists (most often retired couples), stop and chat with them a bit before heading on, possibly see them again at lunch, and then have a joyous reunion at night, when we both turned up to the same campsite.

The reunions were even sweeter when it had been days or weeks since you had last seen one another. In this age of instant communication, it was particularly amazing to me how information would travel up and down the coast simply through people talking to one another. When we came upon another group of cyclists, the traditional greetings were exchanged and we entered into a seemingly scripted dialogue: “Where are you guys from? Where are you going? Do you know ___ and ___? Cool! How are they doing? Where are you staying tonight? Know anything about the weather? How busy is that road coming up?” All the essential information was passed easily through the shared bond of being a hobo on a bike. One time in particular, I found myself receiving a hand written note that had been passed on twice already with exact directions for a particularly tricky detour around a section of road under construction.

We entered the majestic Redwood forests of Northern California and spent

gruelling mornings climbing 3,000 foot hills, and glorious afternoons coasting down along the beautifully paved Avenue of the Giants, winding our way through the thousand year old trees, never needing to pedal.

As we neared San Francisco, I began to have doubts about the second portion of the trip. Originally, after we biked to SF, the plan was to ship our bicycles home and continue to travel through Central America by bus, plane and foot.

But my appetite for cycling had only just been whetted and I found myself realizing that what I really wanted to do was just keep bicycling. I loved the feeling of having a massive, seemingly limitless expanse ahead of me which I could explore by my very own power; in short, the initial pain had transformed into a need for movement, for rhythm, for uninterrupted journeying. In two months of cycling, I had become comfortable with the vulnerability and uncertainty inherent in never knowing exactly where you will sleep, eat,

or even where you will find yourself the next day. I had started to learn the most important lesson of the journey: people could be trusted. With this new confidence in myself and the world, I made the Mexican border my new destination and informed my trusty travel companions of the change in plans. Striking out on my own was something beyond consideration when I first started the journey, and now it was quickly becoming a reality. I celebrated my decision by purchasing my very own lightweight tent and shipping home nine pounds of unnecessary gear.

I was now self-sufficient from an equipment point of view, but fear of loneliness lingered in the back of my mind. The big change was coming fast and I resolved to continue the solo journey with the same spirit of openness, vulnerability, and generosity that had made the first part of the trip so life-changing.

The Adventures of Patrick Byrne will continue in the next issue…

Volume 13, Issue 4 ▪ Incite Magazine ▪ 15

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Volume 13, Issue 4 ▪ Incite Magazine ▪ 17

epicurus strikes back Will van Engen takes hedonism head-on

H

edonism has a bad rap. The mention of it brings to mind images of Tony Montana with his face in a pile of cocaine or Wilt Chamberlain surrounded by a few of the 20,000 women he claimed to have slept with. We think of rock musicians like Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin, all heavy drug users who satisfied their base urges and all of whom died at age 27. What hedonism boils down to in popular culture is excess: a relentless pursuit of sensual or psychedelic pleasure which, if it doesn’t lead to an early demise, inevitably brings about dangerously promiscuous or unhealthy behaviour.

But, this isn’t the way that hedonism was envisioned by its philosophical forefathers. Epicurus, who provides the most complete system of hedonist philosophy in the Western tradition, did not encourage a smorgasbord of orgies and binge drinking. Rather, he argued that the pursuit of pleasure must be tempered with reason and advocated avoiding bodily pleasures if they led to pain in the long term. At times he’s positively ascetic in his avoidance of sensual pleasures.

For Epicurus, philosophy was about helping people find happiness. He criti-

18 ▪ Incite Magazine ▪ February 2011

cized speculative philosophy whose aim was not to improve the human condition: “Just as there is no profit in medicine if it does not expel the diseases of the body, so there is no profit in philosophy either, if it does not expel the suffering of the mind.”

As Aristotle before him had argued, Epicurus held that happiness was the natural and ultimate goal of human life. For Epicurus, all of human action should be directed towards this goal.

So then, how do we become happy?

Epicurus looked to nature and saw that animals and humans alike seek out pleasure and avoid pain. They fulfill their primary needs of food, shelter, and copulation in order to avoid the painful sensations of being hungry, cold or, well, horny. Epicurus breaks from the contemporary (mis)conception of hedonism in that he advocates a reasoned weighing of the various pleasures and pains against one another. Far from being an objective set of criteria, the Epicurean system relies on individuals in any situation using their own sensory experiences and reactions to pains and pleasures to evaluate each one and set them against the other. When Bart Simpson encounters Lisa’s cupcake and reaches out for it, only to find it is electrified, he puts into effect

an Epicurean calculation. He weighs the pain experienced by that shock against the pleasure he would receive from the cupcake. Unfortunately for Bart, he fails to acknowledge the cumulative effect of the shocks, which individually may be worth suffering in the interest of the cupcake, but together cause him to keel over.

In light of Epicurus’ commonsense system, the consequences of overindulgent behaviour on the part of rockers, athletes and university students make sense. Had Jim Morrison better evaluated the overall pain of his alcohol and drug use, he may not have indulged in them at the outset. (However, had he done that we may not have had the great drug-induced music that he created.) Had Magic Johnson forgone the pleasures of bedding multitudes of women, he would not have contracted HIV. How Wilt Chamberlain managed to evade serious venereal diseases remains a mystery.

There is a sense in which this Epicurean equation is overly simplistic. To suggest that life’s ills could be solved by a simple calculation of pain and pleasure is ignoring other factors. For instance, most drug addicts probably didn’t understand Continued on Page 20

PIECES OF GOD

Michael Capitano explores how the West can overcome its despair

T

he time has come to pick up the pieces of God. We lay them before us on our desks, analyzing and scrutinizing them with a jeweller’s loupe. We ponder if they are of any value, if they are even real. Some may be curious if they can be put back together again. It seems like a daunting task, to reconstruct an old god. Or maybe that’s not it at all. Maybe we’re trying to experience God in a new way—our own way. Maybe there are fragments of God for each of us. We just have to put ourselves out there and take hold of them.

What I just described is how we function in our current era, which has been dubbed by some as the age of Performatism. People are looking to reclaim the power to perform—to regain the ability to genuinely be who they are—through their own narrative and through ones they can identify with. What does this all mean, especially when we try to place it in an historical context? Purely thematically, with examples throughout, I will describe the cultural changes in Western thought from the beginning of the Modern era to now. I would just like to add as a disclaimer that my description is very general and misses many of the nuances that have shaped our cultural history. But I hope after reading this you will be able to fill in all the cultural, intellectual, and economic developments of the Modern West into the framework I provided. The purpose of this article is not to provide a perfect description of why we think the way we do today, but as a guide to demonstrate that why we think the way we do today is not arbitrary, but the natural, happy and positive outcome of our cultural existence.

Stage 1: Pre-Enlightenment The dawn of the Modern Era. The West is moving away from medieval thought, a combination of ancient Greek and Roman logic and science and Judeo-Christian theology, which can be captured in the works of Saint Thomas Aquinas. But Christianity and authority still play a large role in

societal beliefs and values. Take a look at Descartes, the father of modern philosophy. He wanted to set up Reason as the foundation of thought, but argued that the only way we can trust our experiences, is not through reason, but through the establishment of God as good and all-powerful.

Despite his claim that he gave up all his prior preconceptions, God still remained the guarantor of our existence.

artwork by dave franciosa

Stage 2: The Enlightenment Science is beginning to exert itself as a serious mode of inquiry, but the West has not shed religion from its thinking.

Although scepticism about God is increasing and reliance on religion waning, most thinkers still try to make their ideas and theories compatible with Christianity. For example, Francis Bacon, one of the pioneers of the scientific revolution, endeavoured to show how religion and science work together in humanity’s ultimate search for enlightenment. But by the end of this period, God is a declining authority figure and religion a waning legitimator of ideas.

Humanity is beginning to flex its philosophical independence; it has grown up. Reason is the sole power that governs thought. To paraphrase Immanuel Kant, we have overcome our self-incurred immaturity. It is in our best interest to use our reason and overcome those forces that prevent us from doing so.

Stage 3: Post-Enlightenment Humanity has asserted its dominion over the world and thought.

Reason, on the whole, has taken the place of God as humanity’s centre of meaning; God is no longer the answer to the complex questions of the world. This stage begins a split into two branches of thought. One branch begins with Nietzsche, who calls into question the value of the Enlightenment, arguing the movement has run its course and the West needs a new, life-affirming value theory to replace the mediocrity of secular Christianity and the rational philosophy born of it.

He claims that the West is in a state of unacknowledged nihilism—that it has grown tired of itself –and strives for a way out. The other continues the Enlightenment tradition, arguing for rational, humanistic thought. Humanity should continue on the rational and scientific path to further its standing in the world. This strain continues on to present time, embodied in, for example, the current secular humanism and atheism push in the media.

Stage 4: The “Posts” The branch beginning with Nietzsche eventually transforms into postmodernism, in which the popular ways of thinking and understanding the West and its history are called into question. Careful analysis attempts to uncover how institutions, cultural movements, and other possible sources of influence established themselves, as can be found in Foucault. The argument is that such power structures are totalitarian (e.g. colonialism) and should be deconstructed (broken down as to be exposed for what they really are) in order to prevent their Volume 13, Issue 4 ▪ Incite Magazine ▪ 19

ability to silence others. The main purpose of postmodernism is to give voice to those that would otherwise go unheard. However, it also prevents people from asserting their own ideologies over others, attempting to encourage people, as Lyotard notes, to move between the fragments of the meta-narrative as if we were simply playing a game in order to find meaning in life.

Our meta-narrative is the story that encompasses the history of the West. A fragment of it is a piece of that story, separated from its origin. All throughout this stage, the meta-narrative of the West has been broken down. As such, it provides the opportunity to sample multiple components of culture at the same time. By putting them together, the hope is to generate something creative. Postmodernism is not what is after Modernism, but the eternal recurrence of it.

Stage 5: Performatism Tiring of the postmodernist game, performatism instead focuses on choosing an ideological fragment from the multitude we inherited from our entire history of the West that is meaningful to the chooser.

Using our identified narrative as a means to develop spiritually, we no longer feel overwhelmed to constantly be creating something new and forced to constantly change. Performatism allows for the sincere expression of a person’s values and an assertion of those values in the domain where they are accepted. The focus is on transcendence and the exploration of situations that, no matter how absurd, cannot be taken ironically. They are always placed within a frame. The movie American Beauty captures the essence of performatism.

But what does any of this have to do with despair? And how does it relate to examining the fragmented pieces of God? Taking the above description metaphorically, imagine that God is a magnificent gem. It had been worshipped for a long time, but slowly began to collect dust when humanity realized it had the power to forge its own jewellery. Thus, the gem of Reason was formed. But even that was

judged in contempt. It had simply usurped God’s position of authority over humanity.

The West had been challenged to fashion its own charms, but that proved to be too difficult for the common person, which ultimately culminated in the Second World War, where there was no choice but to face reality. And so, all throughout the 20th century, thinkers began instead to fully expose both the folly of God and Reason.

Those two gems were dusted off, only to be cracked and splintered. Finally, they were fragmented completely.

It was proclaimed with joy that we would never have to suffer the tyranny

“The space that was once occupied by God was now a dark void and there was nothing to be grounded in.

Oddly, Postmodernism decided that we did not need grounding...”

of the past. Instead, the pieces of these gems were to be used for us in the name of creativity. Where they had once caused war, peace and progress could be attained.

All one had to do was gather some fragments, mash them together, and hope for something beautiful. When that combination ran out of power, the process was to be repeated with different ones. Though, once the novelty had worn off, it became clear that jumping around from fragment to fragment provided only transient fulfillment. A way to get back to the centre, instead of always being forced to the outside was needed. People began to think about their lives, trying to locate what was meaningful to them. In doing so, they sought the fragment that was right for them— whether it be a fragment of God, Reason, or some other recombination of the past—and decided to hold on to it, shine it, and allow

themselves to be imbued with its power.

Could it really be that these developments of Western cultural thought have been moving us closer towards despair, ultimately to overcome it? Each culture has its own specific symptoms of despair, as do people. But these can be abstracted to a general process. It has been my observation that the cultural development of a people over historical time mirrors the personal developments of individuals within a specific era. Every cultural period has thinkers and artists that provide solutions to overcome the problems of the time and each cultural period forms as a reaction to the problems of the previous one.

Kierkegaard elegantly penetrated into the cause and overcoming of despair, which can be roughly summarized into the following progression. Despair exists in two types: in weakness, not wanting to be oneself, and in defiance, wanting to be oneself. To despair is to lose the eternal. To experience the despair of weakness, people ignore that they are truly in despair. They invest themselves in material things and vie desperately to be someone else, without ever truly knowing the self. They act as if despair is behind them, pointing to the future as if even the slightest change will free them from their torment until it catches them unawares.

The despair of defiance is different.

It is in desperation; in wanting to be oneself. But such a despair is not wanting to be one’s true self, but rather some ideal, thus severing itself from the power that established the true self to begin with. Such people want to rule over themselves, create themselves. The defiant self prefers to endure prolonged and agonizing suffering so long as it retains the right to be itself in direct rebellion of existence and the eternal. But such a self has not yet truly experienced despair. Thus, there can be no overcoming it. Only when, in despair, the self acknowledges that it is in despair and wants to be its true self, can faith be restored. Faith in this context is defined as the opposite of despair. It is the reclaiming of the eternal; it is the only way to achieve

epicurus strikes back Continued “epicurus strikes back” continued from Page 18

the risks when they began toying with certain substances. Alternately, they may have starting using drugs to cope with serious life problems that initially fogged their reasoning. If one has to evaluate a 20 ▪ Incite Magazine ▪ February 2011

situation based on one’s prior experiences, how does one approach new scenarios?

While there are flaws in Epicurean hedonism, it is certainly far more balanced and reasonable than it is given credit for.

Its aim is not to constantly seek sensual

pleasure at the expense of one’s health, but to create happiness in the individual through indulging his or her natural desires while keeping in mind the dangers of overindulgence.

salvation. Faith is being able to relate one- est concern is about leading a legitimate For example, with the green movement in self to one’s true self. And in wanting to be life full of meaning and passion. We’re full swing, economics is slowly going back one’s true self, the self genuinely grounds still using the terminology of the era be- to its ecological roots. its existence in the power that established fore us, but we’re making progress. When We have come full circle from the preit. For Kierkegaard, this power is God and we are down, all we are concerned with Enlightenment days; the major difference the true self is a model of Jesus Christ. But is how to triumph over despair. But that’s is that we can choose our own narrative in the West, this power is our cultural his- what we are doing, searching for those instead of being fed one. Maybe from this tory and our true selves are left up to each places where we can exercise our creative point on we’ll be called the Light Ages inof us to discover. power and conviction. What path leads stead of the Dark Ages. We’re at that point Hopefully, after my thematic and to enlightenment? How often do we hear of the cycle again! But will this period last, metaphorical descriptions of the history that they all do? It only depends on which or will this entire process repeat once again of Western thought, it is evident that the path is right for you. We overcame the through the little narratives we’ve spirited following has occurred: in the time before transience of postmodernism by instead forth from the overarching meta-narrative and during the Enlightenment, humanity finding a fragment we can find meaning in of the West? Will we eventually succumb experienced the despair of weakness, look- and transcend through, to find the shard to individual nihilism? Or in the end, when ing forward to the future of science and that is right for us and make it shine! This we shatter all those precious fragments we Reason while beginning to ignore what regrounding is not only in how people at one point came to love and cherish, will has provided them with meaning for over approach their lives, but how society ap- we be waiting, in the gleam of sparkling a millennium, God. During and coming out proaches its existential problems as well. dust, for new stars to form?

12956 tech ad (5x6.5):Layout 1 12/23/10 6:09 PM Page 1 of the Enlightenment, that despair changed into one of defiance. First, it was defiance towards God and then it became defiance towards both God and Reason. (We’re now at the start of the 20th century).

Through genealogy and deconstruction, thinkers began to understand that these solutions to the changing landscape of thought were not real solutions. Ideas in phenomenology and existentialism began to address these concerns by trying to look at life in terms of how we experience and interact in the world and how we can come to understand our existence in order to derive meaning Increase your skills and competitiveness from it. But the self was no longer a in today’s job market with a Humber graduate self —being had been severed from what constitutes the self as if we were studies program in Applied Technology. ghosts floating above our bodies as Project Management they fulfilled multiple roles, without having any control over what we had Supply Chain Management been thrown into. We realized we were really in despair. The space that Wireless Telecommunications was once occupied by God was now a dark void and there was nothing to be grounded in. Oddly, Postmodernism decided that we did not need grounding, likely because of the new developments of technology and the growing prominence of capitalism. We circled around in the despair of weakness, the despair of defiance, in the despair of despair until the consciousness that we didn’t have to stay in despair appeared. There was a way out. We needed only to grab hold and truly rehumber.ca/appliedtechnology/graduatestudies discover what we had only toyed with moments earlier.

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Volume 13, Issue 4 ▪ Incite Magazine ▪ 21

In defense of Valentine’s Day Jenny Whistance-Smith

I

t’s February and everywhere you go, pink teddy bears, red hearts, and little fat cupids hound your every step. This should come as no surprise though, because as soon as Santa laughed his last “ho” on Christmas Eve, a different set of elves decked retailers’ halls with pink and red. Let’s face it, because of these, and many more, reasons, Valentine’s Day has as bad a rap as Vanilla Ice. It has gotten to the point that the most love going on during this day is from the singles and the over-stimulated couples who love to hate it. I do not disagree with these people; Valentine’s Day is an extraordinarily commercial holiday and has been for a very very long time, but it’s not without its charm.

To give an extremely brief (and not so accurate history), Valentine’s Day began when some guy named St. Valentine—who really believed in love—started illegally marrying young couples, and in the process, may have cured a young girl’s blindness. At some point he gets beheaded. This somehow led to sweethearts exchanging gifts, and in the 1700s, card makers seeing an opportunity to bring in the big bucks between Christmas and Easter, started creating cards to commemorate Valentine’s Day. The rest, as they say, is history.

On top of its dubious connection to the heart strings, Valentine’s Day is also infamous for its exclusivity, and well, infamy. Even those 22 ▪ Incite Magazine ▪ February 2011

artwork by WILL VAN ENGEN

who are happily single can’t help but feel a little bit bitter (or a little bit nauseous) when they have to watch all the mushy couples making googly-eyes while whispering sweet nothings and feeding each other whipped cream filled pastries off of heart-shaped forks.

And Valentine’s Day hasn’t been helped by events like the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, in which seven Chicago mobsters were gunned down in one of the bloodiest events in mob history. To give this heart day a further beating, it has also been known to raise suicide rates, send sales of gold jewelry skyrocketing, and lead to millions of metric tons of special holiday waste.

If that weren’t enough, James Bond died on February 14th, 1989†, my dog Boomer died on Valentine’s Day a couple of years ago, and candy hearts taste like crap.

Although I may have just reinforced the animosity that you feel towards Valentine’s Day, I’m still going to beg you, implore you, to think of the day in a different way. Put on a pair of those rose-coloured glasses that Dollarama’s full of right now and view this holiday in a different light. As cheesy as it sounds, Valentine’s Day is about, and should be about, celebrating love. Not love as in “I love my schmoopy snookie-wookums so much that I bought him/her a dozen red roses, a heart-shaped box of chocolates, and a cuddly teddy bear so he/she knows

how I really feel,” but love as in the warm feeling that you get in your chest area when you think of your friends and family.

When I was growing, up my family used to celebrate Valentine’s Day by having a family dinner that my mother called “a love feast,” at least until we asked her to change the name. It just sounded creepy. Anyway, on this day, we would have breakfast together and eat heart shaped pancakes or oatmeal with a pink icing heart drawn on top. Everyone would go off to work and school, and then rendezvous for a family dinner in which the heart shaped theme would continue in things like heart-shaped ravioli drenched in alfredo sauce with red food colouring in it, and a heart-shaped cake for dessert. This sounds tacky, and it may have been, but it was nice. We didn’t need Valentine’s Day to prove anything, to remind us of our feelings, or to reinforce anything; we just took it as an opportunity to spend some quality time together. One of my best friends also told me that one of his favorite Valentine’s days was when a huge group of his friends all went out for dinner together. Couples or not, they all just got together and had a really good time. And this, my friends, is what Valentine’s Day should be about—celebrating family, celebrating friends, and celebrating love. †James Bond, the American ornithologist

Happiness & Mental Illness Lily Hastings

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f I were to choose a day when all of my problems started, it would be when I was nine. I was watching TV when I thought, “If I had a gun, would I shoot it?” Would I accidentally hurt my family? Would I hurt them on purpose? Deep down I knew this would never happen, but the what-ifs tortured me.

I felt sick and I couldn’t eat. I just wanted to be a normal kid, so I started counting everything I saw by threes. This relieved some of the constant noise in my head. Unfortunately, the thoughts became worse and I soon developed rituals. I would say, “don’t you dare,” after hanging up the phone and would only pray with my fingers pointed down at church. I was terrified that I would cause the death of someone I loved if I pointed my fingers at them or didn’t scare away death after hanging up the phone. I became so upset that I thought I should kill myself to prevent me from hurting someone I loved.

I was at my grandma’s when everything broke apart. I had slept all afternoon to avoid the thoughts and I couldn’t eat. When my mom came to take me to soccer, I burst into tears. I told her everything and she took me to the emergency room. My parents hid all the knives in the house and started taking me to a psychiatrist. After a year of constant appointments, I finally started to relax. I re-

Artwork by Amanda coulthard

alized that just because a thought occurred to me didn’t mean I had to follow through with it. I was finally interested in normal kid things. I stopped treatment at the end of grade five and life was fine again, at least until I turned thirteen.

For me, puberty was hell. I developed much earlier than all of my friends, and it made me feel disgusting. I couldn’t stop comparing myself to the girls in my grade. They were all so petite and dainty; they wore nice clothes and danced and I was a tomboy who played soccer in the mud. I let them step all over me but I was too polite to say anything about it. I hated myself for letting them treat me this way, so when it was time to go to high school I decided leave them all behind and become someone else.

At my new school, I knew nobody. The girls there wore their kilts short and kept their weight low. I showed up with my kilt down to my knees and thundered down the hallway feeling awful about myself. I decided to do something about it, so I dropped 15 pounds in a month. I kept dieting, and by the end of grade nine I had only 100 pounds stretched over a 5’8’’, skeletal frame. I was admitted to the hospital. After gaining a little weight, I was released. I saw a therapist, a physician and a nutritionist every week. Some weeks I

had five doctor’s appointments. Every meal was a battle; I hated myself and hated my mother for forcing food on me. I felt like I was an awful anorexic for even agreeing to eat, but I knew that I had to. As soon as I gained enough weight to be considered “healthy,” I became very sneaky. I found inconspicuous ways to cut out calories; I would drink water before weigh-ins to fool the doctor, and my weight slowly began to fall again.

When people with low body weights do not consume enough food to meet their energy needs, their bodies begin to shut down. Their heart rates and blood pressures drop and their bodies enter a type of sleep in which only necessary functions occur. I still had a low heart rate, so my doctor forced me to eat more and booked an appointment with a cardiologist. As a result of my years of malnutrition, I was diagnosed with irreparable heart damage.

I finally realized just what I was doing to myself. I was put on medication to help with my anxiety. I began consciously attending my therapy sessions instead of sitting in silence, and finally began to eat healthily. There have been spurts of self-hate, bingeing and purging, and self-mutilation, but after all these years, I am finally happy the way I am.

Volume 13, Issue 4 ▪ Incite Magazine ▪ 23

Smiles: a cultural history Meg Peters & Sarah Silverberg bare their teeth

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hat makes the Mona Lisa smile so attractive? Is it the delicate sfumato brush-stroke technique, or is it the contagious nature of the smile itself? In modern western society, smiles represent contentment, enjoyment, and appreciation. But what exactly is in a smile? Is there a difference between a genuine smile and the photographed smiles picking up dust in your attic?

Smiling begins at infancy; some babies begin smiling within four weeks of being born. Babies’ smiles may be meant to attract their mothers’ attention and encourage motherly care. Even babies born blind innately know to smile. So why is the curling of a lip and the crinkle of an eye such an inborn characteristic?

As Sheldon discovers in The Big Bang Theory, smiling is more than just teeth. Grimaces, grins, smirks, jeers, simpers, and leers are all very similar, but definitely do not convey the same emotions. There are angry smiles, nervous smiles, embarrassed smiles, amused smiles, and the huge smiles that accompany laughter. When it comes to denoting happiness, however, this last type known as the Duchenne smile, is in fact the only genuine smile. Those false smiles you see in photographs that lack the crinkling around the eyes are not as contagious, and are known as the Pan-American smile.

24 ▪ Incite Magazine ▪ February 2011

Artwork by AFRISA YeUNG

When looking to seduce the man/woman of your dreams, remember that your smile can impact not just the way they see you, but how you feel as well. As your mood improves, they may begin to see you differently, or even start acting differently. It has been documented that smiling can actually improve mood. Participants in a study involving posed faces were more attracted to others when they were asked to smile. In another study, workers who were asked to smile all day were reportedly happier than those who had been solemn while working. One of the most popular Harvard classes is their Psychology 1504, “Positive Psychology,” the study of “happiness, self-esteem, empathy, friendship, goal setting, love, achievement, creativity, mindfulness, spirituality, and humor.” Perhaps this class was so popular because the smileinduced learning environment contribute to its students’ appreciation of the course.

The evolution of the smile did not begin as happily as one would assume. They may have evolved not from happiness, but from the grimaces of certain apes made when they feel threatened or surprised. This “smile” may be a sign of friendliness, a plea not to be attacked. Another theory is that humans, with smaller canine teeth, began showing them off to indicate that they were not a serious threat. Other theories describe the smile as an attraction method as showing a com-

plete set of teeth is a sign of health to attract mates. Next time you go out with a dentist, don’t forget to smile!

But smiling doesn’t mean the same thing in every culture. While in North America smiling is understood to be a sign of friendliness, smiling at strangers is considered downright weird in other parts of the world.

In Russia, smiling at strangers may be considered suspicious. Different Asian cultures classify smiles as signs of confusion, anger or embarrassment. Others smile to cover emotional pain or when conveying sad news in order to lessen the pain being imparted. In some Latin cultures, smiling may even be interpreted as “please” or “excuse me.”

Remember that old box of photographs in your attic? It may be worth pulling out in order to discern your future marriage success.

A study at the University of DePauw indicates that there may be a correlation between the intensity of photographed childhood smiles and marriage success rates. Those with full smiles to their eyes were more likely to end up with successful marriages, while those with less-genuine grins were unluckier in that regard. The University of California Berkeley found that the marital satisfaction of women correlated with the brightness of their college yearbook photographs. Seniors, beware; you may want to improve your smile before you sit down in front of the camera!

reel happiness

Jeremy Henderson investigates entertainment in the 21st-century

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t’s been a rough couple of years. Economically, it’s been the worst couple of years since World War Two. People are losing jobs left and right and consequently happiness seems to be in short supply. During the Great Depression, there was quite a notable change in the movies being produced by Hollywood. The cinema provided a means of escape from the otherwise bleak reality of life in the 1930s.

It is a well established trend that the predecessor to our modern entertainment industry thrived under less than ideal economic conditions. The Dirty Thirties gave way to the Golden Age of Hollywood; despite record unemployment and widespread misery, people were still willing to pay a few cents to go see a show. After all, the cinema offered a means of escape for anyone who was out of a job. For a meager 15 cents, people could spend an hour and a half forgetting about their unemployment and their children’s tattered clothes, immersing themselves in a fantasy world of upbeat music, storybook romance, slapstick comedy, and goodlooking people having the times of their lives. For just a dime and a nickel, they

Artwork by joanna chan

could reflect fondly upon the glory days of the 1920s, living vicariously through the likes of Bette Davis and Clark Gable.

The tail-end of the depression gave us many films still renowned as classics, including Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1938), The Wizard of Oz (1939), and Gone With the Wind (1939).

However, for the present-day unemployed and depressed individual, the entertainment industry has changed dramatically over the past 80 years.

The people of the modern era demand something different of their media. The glamour and glory that classical cinema had to offer is all well and good, but it’s been done. Since the market crashed in late 2008, there haven’t been an unusual number of feel-good films being made.

Perhaps this is because feel-good movies aren’t what makes us happy anymore. In the Golden Age of Hollywood, audiences were looking for witty dialogue, relatable plots, and talented, convincing actors. Today, we look for something different. A film made in the 21st century needs to have multi-million dollar special effects budgets and a roster of A-list celebrities to even have the potential to be commercially successful. We don’t

want to go see a film about people in our times in somewhat plausible situations.

We want epic wizardry, we want to see Paris fold into itself, and we want animation that is so realistic that we can’t distinguish between it and reality. Hollywood still has its place in society: to create what the rest of us would if we had the money and the expertise that they do.

But surely we require the comforts of a wholesome story, something to make us smile in these desperate economic times. If Hollywood isn’t delivering this, where do we turn? More and more often, the answer to this question is found on the internet. The digital age has introduced a medium of self-publication to a huge proportion of the world’s population. Anyone with a point-andshoot camera can make a movie and put it on YouTube. Anyone who can write (and even those who can’t) can publish their thoughts on a blog, Facebook, or Twitter. As a result, there is a limitless flow of stories out there about people’s lives that billions of people can access instantly. And as if that weren’t good enough, it’s searchable. Whatever it is Continued on Page 27 Volume 13, Issue 4 ▪ Incite Magazine ▪ 25

Power/Play Un-Finished Business Yang Lei, Columnist

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midst the self-congratulatory back-patting at last month’s McGill Model United Nations Assembly, I could not help but reflect on the United Nations in the news this past year. Sensationalist reporters gleefully accounted diplomatic failures such as the abuses of power in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the poorly managed cholera epidemic in Haiti. These negative media events, in tandem with the perpetual spectres of the struggle for relevance and Security Council reform that hound the United Nations, have left many people despairing. They bemoan the moral decline of what they perceive as a bulwark of morality in the realm of international relations.

Staring around the room of the model General Assembly, I seriously doubt the next generation’s capacity to rehabilitate the UN’s reputation.

As a child, I believed that the UN was a progressive, secular, scientific, and pan-human big-friendly-giant that emerged out of the greatest calamity that humanity had witnessed.

It was the benevolent world government beyond the wise government of

26 ▪ Incite Magazine ▪ February 2011

Artwork by Anne van Koeverden

the People’s Republic of China, where I lived. As I got older (and moved abroad from the PRC), the UN took on the role of a champion—advocating morality and transcendent values in the realpolitik world of international relations. All nation states spoke about morality to mask an addiction to power; morality simply does not factor into decisions in international relations. In this sea of amoral dealings, the UN appeared to transcend nation states and nationalism and follow ethical principles. It was the public corporation of world governments, running inconvenient programs, and operating at a loss, all for the public good. Most of us largely conceive of the UN in this public corporation role, and thus despair when reports of its inefficiencies, its blunders and its abuses come before us.

It is easy to fall prey to despair and dismiss the entire endeavour because of select rotten organs. Yet for all its sins, the UN runs many programs that very much justify its role as the world’s public corporation.

UNICEF, UNEP, FAO, and other facets of the UN provide wide-ranging ser-

vices and information to a host of organizations and people. These stories are never emphasized in the media and so we are generally only exposed to a slew of negative narratives. During the Spring and Autumn Period in ancient China, there was an incoming prime minister who had a highly successful and respected predecessor.

The new minister appeared to have no ambition whatsoever, not proposing reforms when his predecessor had made his name doing so. When asked why, the new minister replied that because the reforms made by his predecessor were so wise, it would be silly and counterproductive to do anything but ensure the everyday management of the previous reforms.

In that spirit, the day-to-day proceedings of bureaucratic tasks by the various UN agencies should not be forgotten in spite of the bad rep it might get in other areas.

It is also important to realize that the UN is made up of self-interested nation states and staffed by human beings. We, with our idiosyncrasies, fallibility, and vices, cannot always be efficient and decisive. In acknowledg-

ing this, our world need not shatter when an organization, however noble its intentions, cannot meet our unrealistic expectations. We have placed the UN on a pedestal from where it can only fall. This pedestal effect happens more often in our lives than we may think; at some point we all realize that our fathers and mothers are not perfect human beings, but just another man and woman. The inevitable shock that comes is followed by the start of a more constructive and personal relationship. You become able to talk with your academic hero instead of freezing up near them and meekly smiling as they walk by. You can joke and laugh with your otherwise stern professor. And you can appreciate and contribute to the various organs of the UN. Your perfect conception of them may be shattered, but it is precisely these flaws that make them relatable and approachable. The racist remark of your academic hero, the drunken stumblings of your pro-

fessor, and the various gaffes of the UN are not excusable in the slightest, but they should not catalyze a denial of their value in its entirety.

“It is also important to realize that the UN is made up of self-interested nation states and staffed by human beings. In acknowledging this, our world need not shatter when an organization, however noble its intentions, cannot meet our unrealistic expectations.”

ing us an ideal to admire and strive towards. Like any utopia, it gives us a lantern up ahead to chase. But just like utopias, we should realize that our heroes are not real, but rather psychological illusions, and that this does not diminish their value. In fact it is quite okay, and even useful, to utilize these tricks, as long as we keep in mind their constructed nature. If we lose sight of that, we risk proceeding down a path of fanaticism and unrealistic expectations that blur our conception of reality—a dangerous trick indeed. Back in the room for my model General Assembly session, I look around with despair. But a smile curls on my face as I remember that those same delegates who put on airs and debate pointlessly in circles are also very human, sometimes competent, and, with their enthusiasm and interest, put the UN back in fun.

Role models and heroes serve an important role in our psyche by giv-

reel happiness continued reel happiness” continued from Page 25

that makes you happy, it can be found on the internet. Videos of cats being ridiculous? YouTube has 850,000 and counting. Classic video games? Some sites offer over 10 different versions of Tetris. Robots doing standup comedy?

It’s out there. Can’t find what you’re looking for? Make it.

Much like the public grievance that produced the great films that arose out of the Great Depression, the 2008 economic crisis has inspired several online projects that were created simply to cheer people up. A famous example in internet circles is Neil Pasricha’s blog, 1000awesomethings.com, which he created after losing his job and going through a divorce. 1000 Awesome Things was his response to his personal troubles and the heavy news that defined 2008 and 2009. He started his website to remind himself and his readers of the simple joys in life people tend to overlook. Popping bubble wrap, horrible fake accents made by friends, not hitting any red lights on the way home: a new awesome thing is posted every morning that nearly every reader can relate to, which itself is just awesome.

And this blog is just one example of us-

er-generated happiness. From LOLcats to TED Talks, people with entertaining ideas without blockbuster budgets have been able to create brands, and arguably alternative cultures, which anyone with an Ethernet cable can enjoy.

That being said, the internet is not simply a bastion of unadulterated optimism; it may even be the farthest thing from it. Looking at the comments on any news story containing the words “abortion”, “Islam”, or even “President Obama”, you can easily lose faith in humanity, with hateful caps-locked arguments being waged from all sides. It’s just as easy to find a racist rant as it is to find Dinosaur Comics. The internet constantly reminds us that the democratization of media publication gives some of the seedier people in the world a means with which to publicize and promote their questionable, and possibly incite undesirable offline reactions. Its widespread accessibility has given anyone the opportunity to be a newsmaker, and not necessarily for the better. The high costs associated with making a feature-length film do have the unintended effect of limiting the extent to which people could promote extreme views,

but it is difficult to weigh this against the ability of the average, reasonable person to publish his or her musings for little to no cost.

The plethora of online media available nearly instantaneously has somewhat diluted the relationship between the mood of the public and the films that studios produce. In the past, the cinema was the only widely-accessible medium available for consumption, and had to respond more carefully to the circumstances of the masses. Today the internet has customized entertainment; you can get what you want when you want it, with very few exceptions. The implications that this has for society at large are very difficult to grasp, and I suspect it will not be understood for a few years to come. It remains to be seen what strides in technology will do to the cinema in the future: will the movie industry be able to innovate quickly enough to keep the public interested, or will it simply fail to compete against increasingly personalized online entertainment? No matter what happens, we can be certain that whatever the movie theatre of the near-future looks like, you won’t be getting in for fifteen cents.

Volume 13, Issue 4 ▪ Incite Magazine ▪ 27

It’s this easy

Erin Chesney on unconventional ways to be happy

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re you feeling down in the dumps?

Have you already failed at your New Year’s resolution? Midterms taking over your life? Well fear no more!

There is a remedy to cure your winter blues. What is this mysterious method for giving your frown a facelift? None other than that little old thing called happiness. But how can you, students of McMaster, obtain such a feeling? Again, I have the answer you seek. I took the time to Wikipedia the term ‘happiness,’ and, as always, technology and democracy followed through by producing a precise definition. It states “Happiness is a state of mind or feeling characterized by love, satisfaction, pleasure, or joy.” So, is that it? If you engage in activities that provide said emotions you can be truly happy? Unfortunately, I don’t buy it. I have witnessed far too many individuals in possession of these fine feelings revert to an inconsolable state to take this kind of precision at face value.

Therefore, I present to you an alternative approach, a path that does not involve the traditional happiness-seeking behaviours that your family, friends and even professors have instilled in you.

Brace yourselves, for I have for you the

28 ▪ Incite Magazine ▪ February 2011

illustration by Joanna chan

key to happiness.

First let’s start out with the common misconception that love makes you truly happy. I beg to differ. Love is full of heartbreak, temptation, frustration, and what’s worse, it can really empty out your wallet too. Also, unless you’re one of the lucky few who gets married after their first relationship, you will most likely have to repeat this brutal process over and over again. I suggest avoiding the ordeal altogether by gaining the pleasures of a relationship without having to endure the drawbacks. But how, you may ask, is this possible? Alternative methods that have proven to be successful include dreaming up an imaginary partner, blowup dolls and building a robot girlfriend/ boyfriend. All of these methods allow you to reap the rewards of a satisfying relationship while avoiding pain However, if they’re the judging sort, you might not find it exactly beneficial to show off this “happiness” to your friends and family.

Okay so now that love is covered, let’s move on to satisfaction. Some people claim that there is nothing more satisfying then a hard day’s work. I can think of something: not doing work. If society wants me to study my butt off

in university for four plus years, deflate my ego through a rejection-filled series of job interviews and then sit in a 4’ x 4’ office day in and day out where the most intellectually stimulating part of my existence will be counting the number of tiles on the ceiling, they clearly don’t know much about my 21st-century sense of entitlement. I say skip the process and win at life. How can you win, you may ask? From personal experience, I can attest that beating a level of Halo or getting a high score in RUA beats any feeling that can be obtained from a 9 to 5 job. Not to mention, if you still have a craving for the accomplishment of living in corporate America, why not play a life simulating game? You can still savour that feeling of high business success while playing a nice game of The SIMS (plus anyone who annoys you is gone in just a click). Can’t get that kind of satisfaction in reality, now can you?

Another common misconception is that true happiness can be found only in the countryside. Poets throughout the ages have commented that the pastoral life exemplifies happy living as it consists of clean air, beautiful scenery and endContinued on Page 30

Tim Burton On Display Anna Kulikov

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t the end of December, I found myself persuaded to traverse the floors of the Bell Lightbox Gallery in downtown Toronto, wind past the 21foot tall, multi-sad-eyed Balloon Boy, and go down the rabbit hole into the colorfully gray, phantasmagoric world of Tim Burton’s art. From the November 26th opening weekend of back-to-back Burton movies until April 17th, the gallery is hosting a showcase of Burton’s personal and commercial art, from his early pencil sketches and poems to more recent paintings and blindingly bright neongothic constructions.

The inner-gallery itself is designed in the Burton style, with black and white checkered floors and snaky hallways that guide guests along a chronological path, displaying his film-making side by side with the evolution and maturation of his distinct art. The walls speak for themselves. Burton’s drawings are at once childlike and violent. His characters are a gradient of gray shadings outlined in black, their inner thoughts bursting with irrepressible curiosity, creativity, and a rare uniqueness that transcends their mundane and structured realities.

I can see brush strokes of his biographical self in his depictions of Alice (from Wonderland), Edward Scissorhands, and

Artwork by tim burton

the Pumpkin King. While each of the characters are vulnerable to the externalities that misunderstand them, they all possess an unmistakable strength and ability to dream themselves beyond what restricts them.

Therein lies one of the most pervasive themes in Burton’s work: the mutilation or loss of individual dreams through coercion or submission to society. One of the first defining elements of Burton’s self and his eventual work was the suffocating nature of his surroundings: 1950s suburbia heaven. Perfectly manicured lawns hugged wide driveways with immaculately polished cars. Bright, unnatural colors of the streets reflected on the falsely happy people—all manicured, all polished, all perfect. All of them were far away from sordid and immoral cities, but also far away were creativity, individuality, and opportunity. We can all imagine, trained as we are to identify and oppose conformity, how trapped Burton must have felt, living with an inner creature growing restless behind suburban bars.

The artwork that he produced reflects frustration and torment, but also a desire for growth and freedom.

Ironically enough, Burton found himself caged in by a similar tyrant in the early 1980s—Disney. Working on the Fox and

the Hound, Burton concurrently sketched out his own ideas in a journal-like manner. One of these drawings is of differently shaped, colored, and sized creatures lining up to pass through a gigantic machine with Mickey Mouse ears, that is spitting them out on a conveyor belt as identical brown squares. It elegantly embodies his wit and his, by then fullydeveloped, contempt for the social norm.

I laughed and laughed when I saw this at the gallery, but then it got me thinking, who is to say that our ‘enlightened’ 21st century is any better? Who is to say, in fact, that instead of churning out identical, colorless, boxed-in automatons, our liberal education churns out thousands of the same wonderfully shaped and colored creature? A creature who learns to resent conformity, to praise diversity, and to pursue individuality, the same individuality that almost everyone else is also striving for. Who is to say?

But negativity aside, Burton certainly paved his own path alongside like-minded oddballs like Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter, who have together created movies in a truly unique way. So I encourage all, with the pure intentions of a newly enlightened fan, to exploit the student discount at the TIFF Exhibit, especially on a Saturday or Sunday when Continued on Page 30

Volume 13, Issue 4 ▪ Incite Magazine ▪ 29

tim burton on display Continued “Tim burton on display” continued from Page 29

they run workshops about green screens and breathing animation into Burtonian creatures. Maybe you too, will find a tad of inspiration to carry you through midterm season and beyond.

University of Ottawa

Faculty of Arts

Master of

Information Studies Anna’s Tips for a Burtonapproved Valentines •Don’t boil your brain in a pot of romantic comedies, try one of these instead (listed in order of increasing oddity and unorthodoxy): Big Fish, A Nightmare Before Christmas, Corpse Bride.

•Serve your romantic dinner with chilled, aged beetlejuice and a Danny Elfman score (stay away, however, from the opening sequence to the Simpsons).

•Instead of a love letter or an arguably impartial Hallmark card, present your valentine with a sketch of the most violent manifestation of your love (for instance, tearing their heart out of their stick-figured body).

• Extensive career opportunities in information services, communications, new technologies and many other areas • Bilingual program open to graduates holding a four-year bachelor’s degree or equivalent in any discipline • Two areas of specialization: Information Policy / Management of Information Services • Three formats: course-based / courses and CO-OP work term / courses plus thesis

Information studies: building networks, shaping the future.

Information: www.sis.uOttawa.ca

»

It’s This Easy Continued “It’s this easy” continued from Page 28

less time to contemplate. Although the thinkers of the past might have appreciated this type of serenity, the modernday average Joe would be bored to death.

The 21st century houses the generation that constantly needs entertainment, has a short attention span and would generally classify contemplation as lame, dude.

I know all this, and for you my friends, I am here to inform you that happiness lies in the city. As opposed to days of si30 ▪ Incite Magazine ▪ February 2011

lence and bliss, you will only be happy if you are constantly hearing the ringing of your cell phone, having the desire to stalk your cousin’s ex girlfriend’s vacation pictures on Facebook and of course, the invigorating smell of industrial smog in the morning. Yes, nothing will make you calmer and more relaxed than life in the city.

Author’s Note: Although humorous, I hope you are aware that I do not actually subscribe

to these methods of obtaining happiness. The truth is, unfortunately, there will never be an accurate step-by-step instruction to finding that state of pure bliss. Life is complicated and not many actions can be categorized as guaranteeing happiness. Whether you play Halo or earn one through good deeds, your path is not going to be without hardshisp, but then again, if we didn’t experience the bad, how could we truly come to appreciate the good?

Crossword

diversions: Crossword Jordan Milko, cruciverbalist 1

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Across 1. Major crude oil type 6. Poppy drug 11. Tap gently 14. In the future 15. Italian moped 16. Hello, to Ronaldo 17. The fifth basic taste 18. Upright 19. The most dangerous game 20. To impede, legally 21. To cure or smoke 22. Tattoo 23. Quebec cheese 25. American playwright 27. American track and field hero (2 wrds) 33. Acquire knowledge 36. A warm gun 37. Initiative linking university, industry and government

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38. Weapons 39. Canadian Junior hockey player Jordan ____ 41. Part of the psychic apparatus 42. Love drug 47. Pegasus’s Corinthian watering hole 48. Evergreen with ‘magical’ name 49. One of the Borgias 52. Expire 54. Bacteria food 55. Male offspring 58. Repulsive 63. Bear constellation 64. Papal announcement 66. Symbol of peace 67. Embryonic plant 68. Finnish phone company 69. Tennis tournament 70. To be (or not to be), en français 71. A lock of hair 72. Legal test

1. Feeling sad 2. St. Louis team 3. French ‘state’ 4. Famous clownfish 5. Libyan capital 6. To control by impressing 7. Jacques’s dad 8. Statement of understanding (2 wrds) 9. Bar codes 10. Barbie maker 11. Whips, chains and leather 12. Greenspan (of the Federal Reserve) 13. Riverside 24. Male doll 26. Beliefs conflicting with dogma 27. Type of tea 28. Type of wolf 29. Spinning speed 30. Records 31. Iceland’s internet domain 32. Paramilitary organization 34. Épreuve olympique 35. Sibling’s daughter 39. Famous Hardy 40. Two-legged 42. Nitrogen-oxygen mix 43. Here and now 44. Second element 45. Licensed healthcare worker 46. Authoritative dictionary 47. March 49. Reason for effect 50. Heron 51. The laser’s acoustic analogue 53. Tiny amounts 56. Smell 57. Goddess of Victory 59. Religious monument 60. Mistake interjection 61. Part of eye 62. In the mail 65. Opposite of trans.

For solutions, go to: www.incitemagazine.ca Volume 13, Issue 4 ▪ Incite Magazine ▪ 31

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