Glenn Gould: The Russian Journey

Glenn Gould was the first North American concerto pianist to visit Russia in the cold war era. He had an impact through his artistry, musicality, and historical perspective that gave many Russians musicians a glimpse of what the musical world is like in the west. I enjoyed this documentary very much.

Book: Campus Confidential by Ken S. Coates and Bill Morrison

(Picture from Amazon.ca)

Score: 4/5

This book, written by professor Coates, the University of Waterloo’s Dean of Arts, and professor Morrison, caught my interest as it demystifies and reveals many things about the Canadian university system.  I recommend this book to prospective university students, parents, employers, and even policy makers.

Below are some of my favourites:

• All Canadian universities are public institutions.  As such, available funding is smaller and they are obliged to adhere to political priorities, such as focusing on accessibility of education to all Canadians.  One consequence of this focus is low cost education and lower admission standards.
• Traditional core disciplines from the 19th century, including literature, history, social, natural, and physical sciences are slowly giving way to other more lucrative, applied, or newer fields such as commerce, accounting, law, to name a few.  There is a tug of war between professors who advocates for the traditional disciplines (who dominate the decision committees) and professors, students, and employers who want a more interdisciplinary and flexible education.
• Universities are incentivized to see students as customers and cater to their needs.  This sometimes run counter to the need of the workplace and national competitiveness.
• Aboriginal students tend to put the need of their communities first and pursue areas of study that will directly benefit their communities.
• The authors argue that the Internet with its abundance of piracy, is lowering the moral barrier to stealing intellectual properties, thus undermining intellectual integrity in universities.
• Quebec universities are working closely with provincial government to transform the provincial economy with some success already.  An example is Montreal’s emergence as a Canadian leader in pharmaceuticals and aerospace.
• Of the 10 provinces in Canada, Ontario ranks last in the amount of provincial funding to universities.  Of the 50 states and 10 provinces in North America, Ontario ranks 59th.  In Stats Canada’s ‘07 – ‘08 report, public funding for Alberta per student was $22,469.  Ontario?  $9,718.
• The resources dedicated to research in technology and scientific innovation far exceeds resources for innovation research from the field of social sciences and humanities.  This leaves many important questions such as “how are innovation societies created and maintained?  Which forms of education best support industrial and economic innovation?  What impact do community structure, multiculturalism, and local heritage have on innovation” unanswered.
• Harvard’s endowment fund per student is 100 times greater than that of U of Toronto’s.  This impacts the quality of research and professor to student ratio.
• Canada’s quality of high school education is quite high.  According to OECD rankings, Canada ranks 3rd in science (US ranks 29th), 7th in math (per ‘06 ranking.  US ranks 35th), 4th in reading.  Canada isn’t doing as well in funding research, and especially in commercializing research efforts from private sectors.  Patents and commercialized products are examples of what Canada doesn’t have enough of.  With great education and somewhat lackluster basic research, and lacking commercialization, this hurts Canada’s national competitiveness.

Book: The Swerve by Stephen Greenblatt

(Image from Amazon.ca)
Score: 4/5
While I was researching for my democracy essay, I learned that during the Renaissance period there was a shift in art form and societies to focus more on humans and their experiences rather than the stories of gods.  I kept wondering – how did this shift happen, and how did this contribute to cultural values of our time, the modern world?  This was my motivation for reading The Swerve.
This book is about how Poggio Bracciolini, a book hunter in the 15th century, discovered an ancient Greek poem On the Nature of Things written by Lucretius.  This poem and the discovery of other ancient Roman and Greek texts laid the foundation for the mainstream thoughts of the Renaissance.
Europe in the Medieval times was very repressive.  The Church had much power and often influenced matter of the state.  It persecuted many who contradicted its teachings.  Curiosity was frowned upon, as Adam and Eve committed their sin out of curiosity.  The pursuit of pain is viewed as the way to a better afterlife, just as Jesus had suffered for eventual glory.  Discussion of textual material is strictly forbidden and book commenting is a privilege reserved for high authorities.
Lucretius’s poem, however, proposed that the world is made up of innumerable, small, and indestructible particles called atoms.  These atoms, without the guidance of a divine being, move unpredictably, constantly, and humans are made up just as everything else in the world is.  Humans are not unique, and gods, even if they existed, cared only for their own pleasure and not for humans’.  The poem extols the pursuit of pleasure, human sensations, and vindicates curiosity, as humans no longer should fear their exploration would inevitably bring on a god’s wrath.
Lucretius’s idea seem rather mild to us now, but as the book shows, it was very radical and dangerous at the time of its discovery by Poggio.  Though the book’s focus was more prior and during the time of discovery of this poem (thus not well suited for my question), I nevertheless enjoyed understanding the historic background.  The writing style can be a little daunting, but is beautifully written.
Below is one of my favourite parts of the book.  Thomas Jefferson, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, owned at least 5 editions of Lucretius’s poem:

Jefferson took this ancient inheritance in a direction that Lucretius could not have anticipated but of which Thomas More, back in the early sixteenth century, had dreamed.  Jefferson had not, as the poet of On the Nature of Things urged, withdrawn from the fierce conflicts of public life.  Instead, he had given a momentous political document, at the founding of a new republic, a distinctly Lucretian turn.  The turn was toward a government whose end was not only to secure the lives and the liberties of its citizens but also to serve “the pursuit of Happiness.”  The atoms of Lucretius had left their traces on the Declaration of Independence.

Video: Jack Dorsey interviewed by Kara Swisher

Documentary: Steve Jobs - One Last Thing, by PBS

Watch Steve Jobs: One Last Thing on PBS. See more from STEVE JOBS - ONE LAST THING.

Acknowledgement

My last blog post is my entry to a contest to bring more awareness of democracy to youths.  The topic was “what does your democracy mean to you”.  It was an arduous journey but also a rewarding one.  The resultant essay can be found here.

I couldn’t have written this piece alone, and want to take this chance to thank all those who have provided their help.  Thanks, Taneem and Seungchan, for reading over my drafts and providing feedback, and my dad for helping me find my voice in the article.  I also want to thank professor Nelson Wiseman for providing guidance on book selection (Canadian Democracy and The Penguin History of Canada, among them) to help with my research on the topic.  Your help is much appreciated.

My gratitude goes also to the authors of books I’ve read.  They have given me new perspectives and inspiration.

The following resources helped me to understand Canadian and Chinese politics and is what my article is based on:

• Documentary: The Palace Museums – Five Millennia of Chinese Treasures, episodes 1 to 4
• Book: 解讀中國經濟 (Understanding China’s Economy) by Justin Yi-Fu Lin
• The Penguin History of Canada by Robert Bothwell
• Canadian Democracy, by Stephen Brooks
• John A.: The Man who Made Us, by Richard Gwyn
• Wikipedia.org

Though the following material did not directly contribute to my essay, they provided inspiration and perspective on the research:

• Models of Democracy, by David Held
• The Age of Turbulence, by Alan Greenspan
• The Unfinished Canadian, by Andrew Cohen
• Documentary: Breaking Point – Quebec/Canada: the 1995 Referendum, CBC Television
• Documentary: Freedom Had a Price: Canada’s First Internment Operation from 1914 to 1920, by NFB
• China Witness: Voices from a Silent Generation, by Xinran
• German Voices: Memories of Life During Hitler’s Third Reich, by Frederic C. Tubach and Sally Patterson Tubach
• What we Knew: Terror, Mass Murder, and Everyday Life in Nazi Germany, by Eric A. Johnson and Karl – Heinz Reuband

Last but not least, I want to thank my family and friends who encouraged and supported me through this whole journey.  I couldn’t have done it without you.

Democracy – My Opportunity, My Voice

In 221 BC, a unified China was born after 500 years of fighting between warring states. This new dynasty would be called Chin and its emperor, the first in China, had conquered 6 neighbouring feudal states in 10 short years.

Having unified the country by war, he gained absolute power and unleashed a slew of ambitious initiatives, unifying China’s measurement units, currency, culture, and language. Unification was codified in laws that severely punished anyone who didn’t obey. Old literature was burned and philosophers were executed to suppress dissents. Hundreds of thousands of citizens were forced to leave their homes and travel for months by foot in freezing weather to construct the Great Wall. Many young and able men died on the journey. Citizens were tired by years of war, the assiduous uprooting of their local cultures, and the separation between loved ones. But it didn’t matter, for the emperor had the only vote in the country that counted. So people revolted, ending a dynasty 15 years after its inception, plunging a newly unified China into chaos for 5 years. This was life under dictatorship – where people could only listen. When they want to be heard, chaos and revolt would often follow.

About 3 centuries earlier in another part of the world, the city state of Athens showed a different model of government. One of its prominent features was an assembly (Ecclesia) that occurred around 40 times a year, where every ordinary citizen could gather to listen to proposed laws, and vote to pass, reject, or return them for amendment. The assembly is also a place to elect officials. It was in Athens that the word “democracy” came into being. In Greek, it means “rule of the people”.

Democracy is a political system in which the people choose how and who will govern them. All citizens are given the freedom to voice their own view, with each voice having equal weight. Through voting, democracy allows the change of government and policies to occur without violence, and every citizen has an opportunity to be heard. In democracy, people have a voice and the government cannot silence them simply for its pleasure.

To me, democracy is the opportunity to have an impact on the country through my voice. It gives me a sense of satisfaction to know that if I form a point view through learning, and vote to help bring it to reality, then I am no longer an indifferent observer but an activist making a change. I become part owner of this country. It means I participate in a community of people with whom I share much in common to craft a future we deem beautiful, and that others’ lives could be better because of my contribution. I could help a friend’s parents pay less for home care, or help to fund the education for a child from a low income family, or help to attract foreign investment in green technology that creates more jobs for my neighbours. Democracy gives me the opportunity to change my world through my voice.

Democracy also gives me the opportunity to build a legacy. My family immigrated to Canada in 1997 and I have received for free what previous generations of Canadians have built through democracy – a safe and prosperous society, a high quality education system, universal health care, and more importantly, the laws and policies that value respect for minorities, compassion for the less fortunate in society, and appreciation for diverse points of view. These are qualities I admire, aspire to, and feel compelled to protect and pass on to the generations of Canadians after me so they may learn the values that the country has stood for. Democracy is the opportunity to shape the legacy I will be proud to call my own and pass it onto others as it had been passed to me.

There is a sequel to the Chin dynasty story. Even though the dynasty survived for only 15 years, the Chin emperor managed to leave an infrastructure for national unification and a centralized government system with emperor having absolute power. For more than 2000 years since Chin, China would remain largely a unified country with dictatorial rule.* Many succeeding emperors found no incentive to educate the public, and in some dynasties intellectuals were actively persecuted. I often wondered how different China’s history would have been had its people been allowed to demand for more education. Could China have led the industrial revolution? We might never find out for sure.

Chin dynasty left a legacy in building its nation, but it stemmed from the emperor’s choices. The impact of this legacy was felt by many generations after Chin, yet Chin’s own people had no opportunity to choose that legacy. I could only imagine what that must have felt like, to live in someone else’s aspirations.

Canada faces many challenges today, ranging from youth unemployment to global warming. Democracy means these problems are opportunities for ordinary Canadians like me to be nation builders. With democracy we can shape a legacy for generations of Canadians to enjoy, a legacy we can proudly call our own.

* Apr 4, 2012.  Correction: Dr. Yu mentioned that China actually spent more of its years as a divided nation than unified, if starting the count from the the dynasties before Chin.