All posts by James W. Breckenridge

Addiction

Youth, Drugs and Addiction

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I read the blog below and the question it posed and felt the need to answer it:

I am greatly concerned about how drug use is affecting our communities. It worries me that young children are taking drugs and becoming addicted. how do we get our youth out of the pattern of drug addiction after they are addicted at for example, age 15?

As a First Nation educator I am working on changing the worldview of our youth for them to look into education as a viable option. instead of taking drugs for it could and probably would be a long road to get out of that to get back on the Red road

It is my experience that addicts – no matter what their age take drugs as an unhealthy way to deal with what, to avoid a long and involved listing, I shall simply call issues. Examples would be mental illness, the effects of growing up in an alcoholic household or environment, feelings, abuse etc.

Over the past several years I have been dealing with my mental health and growing up with alcoholism and it has and is a long, uncomfortable, often painful journey requiring a lot of effort and willpower.
Having been homeless and currently working at an shelter I have observed that those who go to treatment and get sober without dealing with the underlying issues they have, soon fall back into using.

Feel pain, unhappy, etc? The quick easy solution is to take a pill in our society. The reason so many fall back into addiction is that we do not provide the counselling and support they need to deal with their issues in a healthy manner and build good mental health habits.

Not just those with addiction either. As I worked to restore my mental wellness I observed that most of us have some kind of issue(s) that we should learn to deal with in a healthy way.

We forget or ignore the importance of the Spirit in our lives – at out peril.

It worries me that youth today seem to think the only way to party or have a good time is to get drunk or stoned. I am not claiming that when younger I and friends did not get drunk, merely that it was not the whole idea of partying to get high.
We seem to have, pretty much society as a whole, forgotten how to have fun without mind altering substances.

I recently read an article with which I agree that stated the only real “solution” to drug and alcohol problems is very long term and lies in raising healthy kids. Mentally healthy kids who when feeling sad, mad or upset have the tools and skills to deal with these negative emotions instead of turning to drugs for escape (temporary escape).
I went through a course at Triangle Resources a few years ago and was left wishing that the life skills and self knowledge had come to me as a youth.

My experiences with addicts, the mentally ill, my own mental illness (If I could and did catch the unhealthy mental attitudes and thought patterns of an alcoholic parent, then it follows that parents and society can pass mental unhealthiness on) and issues have convinced me that at the middle school level we need to have life skills courses. Imparting knowledge on anger, self esteem, that happiness is an inside job etc.

Not an easy task, but it is a necessary task if we want to raise a truely healthy and balanced generation – and end the human nissues that lead people to drugs as a dead end solution to their pain.

Municipal

Double Standard

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You expect the police to speed and drive badly on patrol, after all it is the public they issue traffic tickets to in “protecting the public from bad drivers”, not their fellow officers.

Apparently this double standard applies to the photographic arts as well when it comes to police versus public allowable behaviours.

It is, in the eyes of the Abbotsford Police Department (APD), perfectly fitting for the APD to surreptitiously snap clandestine pictures of citizens for no justifiable reason.

Personally, I hadn’t realized the Charter of Rights and Freedoms together with the privacy laws were not the Law or at least the laws enforced in Abbotsford.

It is not, in the eyes of the APD, perfectly fitting for citizens to photograph ADP officers as they work their duty tour. Should you be as bold as to video the APD, you will quickly find APD officers in your face demanding your camera as one abbotsford resident found out recently.

Notwithstanding the fact your right to video on duty APD officers would, outside the boundaries of Abbotsford, be protected under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Moreover, videoing on duty APD officers would appear to be totally legal under the privacy laws.

So these days in Abbotsford, the police can ignore the public’s Charter rights, disregard privacy laws and deny the public the right to exercise their rights under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Makes one pine for the good old days, when speeding and bad driving were the only double standard the APD exercised, eh?

Consider, Homeless, Municipal

Emerging Abbotsford Police State?

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I was leaving the Dragon Fort eatery the other day when I paused to observe an Abbotsford Police Department (APD) officer in an unmarked car stealthily wielding a camera. Looking around to see what or who was being so slyly photographed I recognized the subject of his attention as a new arrival in town.

There was something deeply unsettling about the image of an APD officer in an unmarked car surreptitiously taking photos of someone merely standing on the sidewalk.

One can understand police thinking in this matter: new face, tattooed and standing around in “that area” of the city. But understanding is not authorization agreement to or approval of this behaviour. The thought of the APD secretly photographing us is chilling, bringing to mind the behaviours of the secret police of the old communist state apparatuses and other despotic regimes.

One is left pondering the implications of this behaviour; wrestling with the morality of spying on citizens and wondering about the legality of secretly photographing any citizen.

Charter of Rights and Freedoms, privacy laws and requirements that the police obtain warrants would appear, from the behaviour of the APD, not to protect citizens from clandestine police spying in Abbotsford.

How many other pictures have the APD taken? Just how many secret police files on citizens does the APD maintain and exactly what is the purpose or use of these secret police files?

These questions and other problematic APD conduct underscores how essential it is we put in place and exercise citizen oversight and control of the APD before we find ourselves living in an Orwellian police state, living the novel 1984 with Big Brother watching our every move, seeking to control us and our thoughts.

Hmmm

Immutable Laws of Weirdness?

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I found myself pondering the possible existence of a universal law of Weirdness or The Weird, along the lines of the law of gravity. If in the same way that a planet has mass and attracts passing asteroids to itself, does Weirdness have a pseudo-mass such that at a certain level of Weirdness it begins to attract any nearby Weirdness, thereby increasing the Weirdness in a given area or in a person’s life?

These days I will admit that my headspace has always contained a certain amount of Wyrd, that my world view could/can be considered from slightly to a great deal skewed.

For many years my mental illness together with the effect of being an adult child of alcoholism caused me to hide and suppress my idiosyncratic thought processes and off-beat way of seeing or thinking about the universe around me. With all the negative connotations, the stigma, associated with the words mental illness I certainly did not want mental illness linked in any manner to me. Growing up with an alcoholic parent is all about keeping secrets and you are as sick as your secrets.

You become fixated on appearing, being normal. You stuff any problems or issues until their mass reaches the point that it collapses in on itself becoming a black hole that devours your life. Perchance black hole, while colourful, is not quite accurate in that there is no escape from a black hole, while there is escape into recovery from mental illness and the ‘isms of being an adult child of alcoholism.

Escape is not easy requiring years of effort and a willingness to face your true self, to do the work needed to change the way you think about yourself and the universe around you.

As part of the recovery process I became comfortable in my own skin and instead of denying the writer, the words inside of me, my Chi, I set them free. In setting them free I set free a part of me I had locked up, setting ME free. With that freedom came not only acceptance of the fact my head can be a Weird place to dwell, but I came to treasure that Weirdness and the little spark of madness that is an essential part of ME.

This train of thought arose as I found myself holding a digital video camera, zoomed in on a piece of paper hand towel that was full of crap, zooming out and panning over to the SCN correspondent so he could comment on the philosophical, ethical and societal implications inherent in the existence of this crappy piece of paper towel.

No, no metaphor; I mean full of crap literally – as in someone had used it as toilet paper.

You are correct this scenario was just a little Weird. Hence my contemplating whether Weirdness has some bizarre sort of pseudo-mass that could attract more Weirdness into my vicinity and life. I began to wonder if in accepting, even treasuring, the Weird in my head and sharing my thoughts through writing had resulted in a pseudo-mass of sufficient magnitude that it had begun to pull this kind of Weirdness into my life.

The whole chain of fate(?) began innocently enough over a cup of coffee at a coffee house. Hmmmm, I suppose it would be more accurate to say that this chain of events began as a result of events I had observed and that had set my mind to wondering and my fingers to typing about the conduct of the Abbotsford Police Department (APD) in terms of Orwellian Big Brother-ism and a police state. I emailed this article off to Something Cool News, leading to an exchange of email that led to a phone conversation that resulted in the conversation over coffee.

The conversation began about some of the unacceptable behaviours the APD has been increasingly engaging in with respect to the homeless and this behaviour’s expansion even into negative treatment of youth members of a local church for daring to “encourage” the homeless by giving out sandwiches. As interesting conversations tend to do this conversation ranged outwards into broader discussion of homelessness and the uncaring treatment of the homeless and others in need in Abbotsford.

At some point in this wide-ranging discussion the correspondent spoke of his chance observation earlier in the day in Abbotsford of paper towelling that had been used as toilet paper by someone forced to use the great outdoors as a washroom. We passed on by this conversation point to talk of other improper APD behaviours and City Hall’s love of paying lip service to the epidemic of homelessness and poverty on the streets of Abbotsford while actually doing nothing to address these grave social problems.

We left the coffee house to shoot the video report on the observations of APD behaviour and the thoughts and concerns that the observed APD behaviour raised in my mind. When we had finished the video report the SCN correspondent returned to his observation of the soiled paper towelling and what it said about Abbotsford. Thus it was I found myself following him to the site of the paper towel sighting to help him make a video record and commentary.

I found myself on video putting context and comment into this pile of crappy paper towelling. Pointing out that in Abbotsford washrooms are for “Customer Use Only”; or that there are “No Public Washrooms” in stores; that the keys to the locked washrooms of gas stations are not handed to the homeless; that while at the Clearbrook Library branch the washrooms are not locked, at the downtown MSA Library branch beside Jubilee Park the washrooms are locked and accessible only with a key.

Thus it is that the homeless are forced to either hold it in indefinitely or urinate and defecate outdoors like animals. Perhaps, even less than animals considering that just the day before I had seen a business truck whose business was cleaning up after people’s dogs.

I touched briefly upon what this says about Abbotsford, particularly in light of the (false) pride so many take in all the churches in Abbotsford and how very “Christian” Abbotsford is. This led to reflecting on the question of just how Christian it is that a community with all the wealth and resources of Abbotsford does not find the homeless situation intolerable and take the necessary steps to end homelessness and address poverty in Abbotsford.

When we had finished taping the commentary on the paper towelling and the treatment of the homeless in Abbotsford, I could not resist taking advantage of having a conversational associate to bounce a somewhat heretical train of thought off of.

It occurred to me that despite their claims to be Christians many, if not most, of those who name themselves as Christians behave in a totally Un-Christian manner. They appear totally willing to sacrifice the homeless and the poor in order that they not be required to put forth effort or even worse – money – in simple Christian charity.

Given that blasphemy is defined as: profane or contemptuous speech, writing or action concerning God. Are not all those who label themselves Christian but behave in the most Un-Christian of ways, committing contemptuous actions concerning God? Are not their actions in showing disrespect and contempt for the golden rule, the parable of the Good Samaritan, the admonition to love your fellow man and so forth, profane?

Do they not then Blaspheme?

Does it not follow that rather than being the most Christian of communities, that through their actions these self-labelled “Christians” in fact cause Abbotsford to be the most Blasphemous of Communities?

So there we were in between the two parts of the video commentary on the implications contained within these soiled paper towels, debating whether, in their inactions and uncaring indifference to the homeless the smugly superior Christian community does blaspheme? After a moment for both of us to reflect on that question we concluded: How could it not be blasphemy?

I then found myself holding a digital video camera, zoomed in on a piece of paper hand towel that was full of crap, zooming out and panning over to the SCN correspondent so he could make a comment on the philosophical, ethical and societal implications inherent in the existence of this crappy piece of paper towel.

As we shook hands and parted company I found myself reflecting on just how much and often the Weird enters into my life. This is only to be expected if there is a universal law of Weirdness along the lines of the law of gravity. The Implication being that I can expect increasing amounts of the Weird in my life as the increasing pseudo-mass of the Weird around me attracts more and more Weirdness.

There is no point in worrying about an immutable law of the universe regarding which I can do nothing. Besides it should fill my life with creativity, interesting challenges, and passion and prove to be downright fun.

Consider, Provincial

Election Reform

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While I agree with the essence of Mr. Bucholtz’s assertion that election reform is needed; I must dispute his premise that Single Transferable Vote is the reform the electorate should be demanding in making their votes count.

Mr. Bucholtz’s statement: “I am a strong believer in improving democracy, as opposed to just taking an apathetic approach to it” includes two problematic assumptions.

That STV is an improvement to democracy is debatable since STV and alternative reform proposals add complexity to elections. I am also uncomfortable with the assumption that nonparticipation and nonvoting are the result of apathy. It may well be that people currently feel no cadidate represents their views and positions.

I heard and hear far to may people who are not voting for policies but are holding their noses voting for “the least objectionable” outcome.

We should be pursuing a course of electoral reform to put the power back into the hands of the people, keeping reform simple. Thus I advocate adding one simple choice to every ballot cast at every level of governance in Canada – NONE OF THE ABOVE.

Democracy is defined as: government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system.

Power is only vested in the people in an electoral system that offers them a choice to exercise their vote for agents of their choosing. One could well argue that currently we are not a democracy since we are offered a limited number of bad choices made by others from which to choose our agents.

With one simple bold reform we can return the power back to the people, reclaiming it from politicians, political parties and the “powers that be”. In any electoral area where “none of the above” receives the most votes none of the candidates or parties are permitted to run in the next round of election.

The election process is repeated until such time as a candidate is judged and found to be worthy of exercising the voters will and power.

I will not claim this will be a neat process. In fact I truly hope that the votes held under this reform are incredibly messy and require several rounds of voting.

Fundamentally voters will be able to insist on being offered good candidates. The second (and any other needed) round should, with the elimination of party politics and politicians, be extremely lively offering opportunities and choices for a most eclectic offering of candidates.

We should also get the re-introduction of debate on issues, problem solving, policies, leadership and other positive outcomes. The new system should ensure the opportunity for many, if not a majority, of independents, new faces, new ideas, the evolution of new alliances and parties.

Yes it will be a little chaotic at first but as the author Alan Dean Foster wrote: “Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting.”

BE BOLD, embrace change, Carpe Diem.