Yesterday was laundry day, but I had decided not to write and instead concentrate on what should be central in my life at this time. I raised this issue with myself, because I was making my web work too much of a purpose. It had turned into an ambition of showing off in how much I could do. This is making the activity a purpose in it self, which is not how I had intended this to be initially.

I started on my web work in 2009 to have a project to help me through a state of feeling depressed. Through the courses that I took in 2010/11 - helpful as these were - old professional type ambitions about performance surfaced again and are still present. This motivation I wanted to curtail and I spent some time contemplating this yesterday.

This resulted in a two pronged re-orientation of my attitude and motivation. One was a rededication to the early purpose of publishing my work that I produced over the years, as well as my current writings and talks.

The second re-orientation point is something I could call a ‘life purpose’, in the sense that I now want to center on what I think my life is about. This has the aspect of integrating my present life experiences into a pattern of conscious understanding and the preparing for a next life time as I expect that within the process of re-incarnation.

This latter process is not well accepted in the Western view of existence, but there is more evidence in support of the continuity of conscious existence, than there is for its absence. As a matter of fact, there are very few instances of true discontinuities in nature, science or existence in general.

I therefore hold that it would be counter intuitive to say that nothing precedes or succeeds our present conscious human life in this biological body, hence the idea of continuity. I think that this continuity occurs by means of reincarnation and if you believe in that, then you should act on it. This in turn concerns my earlier mentioned second re-orientation in my life today. This is a rather philosophical introduction for the diary section, but is does relate to my activities of yesterday.

I also had a long conversation with Derrick, who spent the holiday break in a Thai Theravada Buddhist monastery near Kamloops, BC. We did talk about re-incarnation as well surprise, surprise. Derrick is also taking more courses towards his counselling goal, this becoming the third year into this initiative. Way to go Derrick.

Last Friday I managed an experimental sound file addition to my ajax gallery. It is a real ‘breadboard’ version as electronics designers call that, but is works. I now have to make it more presentable for the web site posting. I am also getting closer to a slide show for 2012-redux.

An other project that I revived was my mandala doodle from 1973’s Christmas holiday! The doodle’s year printed date is actual 1973! That was our first year in Calgary as a family and I had started on colouring this mandala using the felt tipped pens that my parents had brought me when the visited in July that year. After the holiday my life took a turn away from doodling and towards building my career with Sait and Educational courses, Course design and Learning Psychology, in the evenings at UofC.

And so the mandala remained, rolled up for all those years and the pens gone by now. So, here I am, thirty nine (39) years later, trying to find new matching pen colours to those old colours! Not easy, that is. But, I am now working on this mandala every weekend - two so far - as a physical and symbolic project of integration! How is that for an outcome of contemplation on my life re-orientation mentioned above! I am taking pictures of my progress and intend to insert them in these entries in the coming weeks.

Today is grocery shopping day and I am going for it now at 8:53am.
And returning at 10:09am, which includes a coffee break.

Next comes an observation relating to “The Inconvenient Indian” by Thomas King - who has a Amerindian (California state) mother and a Greek father - and who is a scholar of and author in the English language. The author reports that the earliest formulation of the book’s title was “The Pesky Redskins”, which he morphed into the present main title with the sub ‘A curious Account of Native people in North America‘. It was given to me for Christmas by John and Tammy, and I am now starting on chapter five (5) of ten (10).

I want to write about this now for a short observation relating to ‘identity’. This because, I am formulating some material and views relating to this topic. The human identity, for which we fight to defend it against all comers as this becomes clear when we look around us in local and global politics, as well as in history. At times this identity is associated with religion and geography, but often with other value and belief frameworks, such as science, business, ecology and even secularism.

King certainly deals with and illuminates the identity conflict that exists between the original inhabitants of the Americas and its new comers since ca 1500AD. The latter, subdued, displaced and at time destroyed the autochthonous Nations and Civilisations. This is a process that is still going on and this is what King writes about.

My own comments in relation to this process is as follows. The Redskin and the Paleface are in an identity conflict. The Indian struggles to define a new identity under much less favourable and some times dangerous circumstances (Zapatistas). The New Comers, who know full well that these continents are stolen from people with whom they - including me - are stressed by the continuous confrontation of being face to face with the original inhabitants. It is a bit like living with the owner of the house you broke into.

This is a problem of integration and assimilation for both parties. Such a process is always a two way street, but difficult for the dominant party, who feels that assimilation by them is an admission of guilt, as well as an implicit recognition of having less than full rights to the claims made over the past five hundred (500) years in support of their conquests.

That claim, in part, is that the whites are entitled to take the land, because the Indian does not use it to its full potential. Or, to put it in a sharper focus, how can we tolerate to have poor white people, while there are rich Indians? This brings us to the crux of the identity definition. It is that I, with my identity, am superior of those whose identity differs.

This value system is taught at schools and in professional groups at this very day and I also, experienced this while growing up. Its function is to support the individual in and bind it to the group, creating group cohesion and pre-branding potential traitors and is effective as far as it goes.

However when the other group cannot be dominated and or eliminated, a much more demanding process is called for. It is one of mutual acceptance, which requires changes and at time reductions of the former closely held group identity. The older and simpler - but now too simple - attitudes, identities and reference frame no longer work in the complex society that has to be able to accommodate multiple identities within the same geography and societal structure.

Formulating such a multi identity framework needs conscious effort to bring it about. It is a process that needs to be directed in an informed manner, involving social sciences, economics, politics (read power), value systems and human traditions.

In addition we need to define a psychological feeling-value attitude expressing willingness to come to a resolution of the conflicts. This latter aspects needs to include genuine honesty and steer free of all temptation of manipulation and subterfuge, which would destroy the trust needed to prevent a turn to violence.

At this very moment the Canadian Federal government and the First Nations are meeting in the context of finding solutions to old and festering conflicts, which so far have defied mutually satisfactory solutions.

The outcome will be marginal, because the public at large still is not convinced that it too needs to give up some things, sharing in an equitable fashion and make changes to what is perceived to be the Canadian identity.

Nationally and Globally the question we face is this. How to let go of these old identities and forge new ones, a process demanding but necessary; progress will be slow and painful. <10:54am
Closed and saved, unedited on 2013-01-10 at 8:21am.

2013-01-11; 9:23am Friday, proceeding with editing and completion where needed. This completed at 10:45am~