Cultural encounters of a hopeful Albertan kind

It's been a while since my last opportunity to sit down and start a new essay. Between my day job hanging above the Alberta landscape and my humble efforts at organizing as a candidate in the ongoing provincial election, it's been quite the ride over the last month or so. However, as the faction I am currently allied with has recently put forth it's substantial cultural policy, I thought it time to scribble down a few personal ideas that have been brewing for some time.
As most anyone in a G20 country can probably relate to, Albertans have been increasingly swept up in the new world (dis)ordering that neo-liberal globalization has served up as the dish of the last few decades. What this has effectively meant for the average person is that 'The Economy' has become the primary focal point, in mental and physical terms, for the prioritization of people's lives. As citizen has increasingly morphed into the self-involved consumer, one of the major opportunity costs as been the conceptual and real loss of the creative impulses of the human as an agent and arbiter of authentic, homegrown culture.

Though the Alberta Party has done a considerable job with its Creative Industry framework already, I feel that there are a few augmentations that could be made to round out the approach we take towards ensuring that the humans that breed, work, and play in this jurisdiction do so with the utmost of cultural richness, appreciation of beauty and the capacity to partake in the magic of artistic creation.

The first cultural priority I would add to the discussion around cultural vibrancy and political efforts at maximizing cultural dynamic quality in the province pertains to a fiscal measure that would channel revenue from an existing cultural trend with many negative social and psychological implications, advertising, towards building cultural mediums whose mandates aim at benefiting the public good, over the long term.

Before I go any further though, its probably essential to point out the fact that advertising in today's consumer capitalist system goes a long way towards manufacturing desire and making wants/needs out of things that were either previously widely available, free or non-existent. Indeed, the advertising industry can be directly linked to certain pathological tendencies in modern domesticated primate cultures and some jurisdictions around the world have effectively banned large-scale commercial advertising (much to the disappointment of multi-national corporations but general praise of resident people). Especially regarding the well-documented effects of advertising on children, the need becomes quite apparent that we would probably be healthier individuals and a saner culture with less advertising in our faces, or at the very least, by taking a small share of the profits of such endeavours and with it, balancing out the cultural equation.

So what do I propose? Nothing too crazy, just a small 2-5% excise on all public advertising installations in the province. This would most likely affect those companies responsible for and displaying on massive banners, screens, billboards and other such things that are now (overly?) commonplace on our highways, streets, and buildings. In focusing on these large scale installations, we differentiate between small businesses getting out a message for the local services/products they offer and wealthy firms that can afford to assault the captured public with messages containing constructed techniques of overt and hidden psycho-cultural manipulation.

The best sources to transfer this financial capital to would, in my opinion, be organizations with proven track records of promoting mediums that enhance the public's ability to make informed decisions on shared and emergent realities and those institutions that build a cultural heritage
for all Albertans. At the top of my list: new and existing public radio stations, local and independent publishers and newspapers, and local media, arts, and cultural foundations. By shifting some incentive away from private high-wealth advertising operations and to public, local journalists and demographics of the culturally creative, we'd go a long way in building cultural capital across this province.

The second of the cultural policy augmentations I would like to offer up is really a mandate that the provincial government could encourage municipalities incorporate into all further urban, suburban, and community designs: human scaled nodal development. It's been tried around the world and is even being promoted by the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation. It simultaneously increases connections between humans, nature, and places of interest and in so doing, it could help to further transform our municipalities from car-dependent, citizen-competitive environs to walkable, relaxable, and gatherable places.

Perhaps, in light of our goals to increase democratic participation, citizen empowerment, and local sustainability, we could again take a note from the permaculturalists. To host a handful of Village Building Convergences across the province and paint, plant, and placemake our way to a more responsive civic design would be a heck of a lot of fun and it could really go a long ways to make a culture of creativity and positivism an emergent reality.

It goes without saying that our settlement patterns reflect our values. And so, if we wish to really revitalize the culture capacities of the people in this province, we need to make changes that nurture physical and emotional connections in and to the places that we, the people, live. Some might argue that it is not the role of government to meddle in the cultural affairs of our communities, that my second cultural policy recommendation verges on 'social engineering'. To this, I would reply that we live in a time and circumstance where we are challenged by changing world conditions to make the ideal of democratic government act as a filter and focal apparatus for good design a 'social evolving' reality. That like in all other realms of public endeavour, we can make the power of government work through and for, us - always listening and ever adapting.

To wrap up this essay on cultural encounters of a hopeful Albertan kind, I would like to propose my third cultural policy focus. It has to do with a more radical approach than is often given thought or action to in our contemporary political culture for it somewhat undermines one of the hidden fears that snoozes in the oily bosom of industrial civilization; that, leisure time is dangerous and leads to the great sin of being unproductive.

Before coming straight out and making the recommendation, let us put aside, for reasons of brevity, traditional critiques of industrial work and anthropological questions regarding the effects of trading labour for interest-oriented currency. Instead, we can simply draw to mind (and from our own experiences) the fact that we in Alberta are working longer, harder, and with more stress than any other time in our collective history. Our households work more with less leisure time overall and as this study suggests, we have relatively low levels of feeling like we belong to our communities and they to us. These qualities alone, are enough to bring us to seriously consider what I am about to propose:

Let's take the first Monday of every month off from our day jobs.

Okay, whoa - I know, it seems like a bit of an ask, but then again, who are we to ask when we can legislate? Citizens of course; conscious creatures with the capacity to co-evolve a culturally rich civilization, to make things better for ourselves, our neighbours and our offspring not just now, but for the long term. And in my mind, there are not as many good reasons for as against denying ourselves a monthly Alberta Culture Day wherein we allow ourselves freedom from industrial work to pursue interests in the gift, volunteer, craft, or cottage 'economies'.

Whether you are a musician who pushes paper as a legal assistant so as to afford the excitement of a downtown lifestyle or a poet who Journeyman pipe-fits to keep food on the table for his family - Albertans in all spheres of our society can use more time off to pursue their passions and weave a stronger community and cultural fabric. Interestingly enough, I think this will appeal to almost every citizen, regardless of their orientation along conventional political lines, and do more than any other single effort in revolutionizing our cultural capacities as active, informed citizens.

We can carry forward a bigger dream for this province. As my fellow candidates are demonstrating every day in their own campaigns, we can do politics differently. Part of this has to do with building upon the wonderful institutions and networks of creative impulse that both rise in the side-shadows and in the stage-lights of this province's musical, artistic, and intellectual scenes. Another part of doing politics differently, and indeed, carrying forward a bigger dream for this province, means being unafraid to act in elevating culture - the co-integrated patterns which we cultivate as social animals - to the core of the attitudes, values, and goals of our civilization.

Thanks for reading and be sure to get out your vote in the next few weeks!

जय सच्चिदानन्द

-KSE