Inspiring eye-openers

I have been thinking that it might be helpful for you to know what has shaped my views on politics.

Back in 2002, I was majoring in Anthropology at UBC. My focus was on Archaeology and Physcical Anthropology, but we had to fulfill a certain number of ethnographic credits. After much endorsement from classmates, I enrolled myself in a class called The Ethnogography of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, taught by Michael Ames, then curator of the Museum of Anthropology, and Jim Green, at the time a member of Larry Campbell's COPE party.

In class, we looked at the Downtown Eastside through a global lens, and read authors such as Antonio Gramsci, Pierre Bourdieu, Earl Shorris, and Paulo Friere. The first book I read for that class, however, was a homegrown one: John Ralston Saul's The Unconscious Civilization. And that was the book that did it for me.

Did what, exactly? It opened my eyes to a whole new way of understanding the world around me. More precisely, it gave me a language to understand the dissatisfaction I felt with the world and the way things often are. I still feel this dissatisfaction, but having read these authors, I know better what my own role is in contributing to the discontent I find with the world. Which is why, one day when I'm ready, I will jump into the world of politics and do what I can to eliminate some of this discontent. Then I really will be able to put an X in the box next to my name on a ballot.