New Page: Vision
I know of only *one* respectably Kung Fu school in Toronto. All the rest I’ve looked at teach a watered down form of exotic exercise (including the school I go to) that attempts to boil the tradition down to a hollywood inspired form of LARPing. There actually used to be a Kung Fu temple in Toronto believe it or not, it wasn’t open to the public, students were forbidden to compete in competitions by the CCWA and it closed as the master retired. They taught White Crane, Wing Chun and Five Animal Southern Shaolin. I’ve also looked all the places that claim to teach zen meditation and chi kung, ‘couldnt find any respectable institutions (from the zen buddhist temple to the Toronto Zen Center to the JCC) none practice zazen properly. There used to be a world famous chi kung master in Toronto who was a world authority on chi kung and an advanced, combative form of tai chi but he left to live in California (he said it was too cold here but also that no one wanted to study his art. He had only one real student, a brilliant 15 year old who dropped out of high school and began writing books). It wouldn’t surprise me if this also applies to the high culture other ethnic groups could bring to this city.
The kung fu experience suggests the following:
- Emerging cultures are not integrated well into the city. (If a kung fu master set up a school here and didn’t have the money for all the pomp, how would westerners know? Further, if they had to spend 5 years repeating 10 sets of forms and sitting still on a pillow PLUS no UFC -gasp – and no money – gasp – , why would our air head children care?)
- Capitalism and culture don’t mix simply because culture is completely useless in business terms (How many books do you think Aristotle will sell?)
- Socialism and culture dont mix simply because culture is elitist. What do we do NOW?
- Universities are ill adapted to what I am arguing must happen. Universities were taken over by the merchant class (which needs to be marginalized) since the industrial revolution (Rotman anyone?) And even if universities were still concerned with culture, they are western entirely (you have a bacholars in zen?).
- Or also this: How do you think your average zen order will respond when you tell them that there is no necessary connection between the beta waves meditation induces and their nihilistic religion?
- Canadian politics in general is antagonistic to culture (Harpers budget). The Ministry of Culture anyone (insiders joke)?
- Multi culturalism in its current form is a dangerous illusion that does not promote cultural dialogue and is replaced by that disgusting thing called business (people today think imperial china was good because it made sushi).
If you are concerned about culture and if you recognize that inaction results in action by other parties with different (and in our case inferior) ideas, I invite you to participate in the Toronto Urgeist Movement or also this project:
http://www.buildwabashnow.org/
The goal is to create a space in high park where people can exchange ideas and things of value and generally make people understand that there is more out there than most way too specialized careers. Culture needs leisure. Capitalism needs work. Socialism needs, well, mediocrity. Is there a third way? The left looks up, the right looks down – let us rather look at the stars and far away into the horizon. Remember, culture takes centuries to emerge and can disappear in an instant, as it is today…
Speculations and visions for the future:
If we can get about 5 people here to work on this thing we can do a lot and perhaps get the community center running in a couple of years – for the community (not for outselves). If it works well, we can start a lobby for similar projects in other middle class neighborhoods. The problem with Wabash is that their building it out of an old factory. That0 isn’t necessary. Canadians have this neurotic obsession with renovating but there is no reason why government couldn’t tell the aesscetic priests inhabinting all of torontos churches to get the fuck out and convet those churches. Once these centers spread across the city (which will be a hard battle), they ought to be supplemented by another highly regulated corporate state type market that sells anything a person would need to live – and that only. Nothing should be allowed to be put on the market if it doesn’t last the lifetime of a person, all things should be produced locally (bioregionalism) food shouldn’t be sold if it isn’t healthy and things which are superfluous entirely (think fun) should be generally forbidden (environmentalism but also the possible diversion of human resources away from production and capital towards culture – Im not saying this to be an asshole but because it is a luxury we cannot afford *over millennia*). Toronto would have realized itself as a city when technology has been built so well that it hardly needs maintenance and certainly no upgrading. This coupled with other value inspired authoritarian policies would give us citizens lots of leisure which we would spend with culture and become more complete human beings who are so superior in their understanding of and engagement with life that they would laugh at today’s elite flashing yachts, BMWs, rolex watches and colonizing the third world. And a final word to those cynics of you, this is not utopian, there would still be so much tragedy and suffering in the world as there always will be.
You might say this is dreamy, but we have to dream. And I also want to tell the public this. Toronto as a society suffers from entropy. That is why people like us are organizing the underground – and you’d be surprised how many of us there are and how pissed off we are at how things are unfolding.
