A Bad Day in the Park

The park was oddly quiet. Deserted in fact, which was strange given how nice a day it was. Normally there would be people.

We had been there for hours, but we were now on our way out. My wife and I were just getting to the top of the valley. Our dog, as usual, was a few feet ahead scouting out the path. It was a beautiful day -- quiet and relaxing -- but that was all about to change.

As we came around some bushes, to our left there was a group of eight or ten people looking somewhat out of place. We continued along the trail as a young girl broke off from the group and approached us.

“Do you know where you are?” she said in an authoritative, but slightly condescending voice.

I started to answer, but then I noticed that she was wearing a rather elaborate outfit. Although it was warm, she had on a vest over a number of different layers. She had a backpack, and I think water bottles strapped to her side. With her hat, she looked like a cross between a guide in the outback and one from the Rockies; like someone ready to lead a month long trek through the barren wilderness. It was a little out of place for this park. Pinned to her vest was an overly large badge with some official looking writing on it.

We’ve been hiking in the park for years. It’s a serenely peaceful place and like many of the nicer parks and valleys in Toronto it’s not packed with people. You do find hikers and dog-walkers there, but not a lot of them. Most come because they appreciate nature and want to get out of the city to enjoy it. They’re generally happy, friendly and very relaxed.

Ignoring my silence she continued. “You not allowed to have your dog off leash, it’s a Toronto by-law”, she scolded.

The “dog issue” has been going on for some time now. There is a small, yet vocal segment of Toronto that hates dogs. Sure, there have been incidents with a few careless owners, but most people in Toronto love their dogs and are over-protective of them.

Life in the city for an animal is not always the best, so those of us that treasure the health of our pets want them to do what they were born to do. Run, explore, sniff and generally enjoy themselves. Leashing them is a cruel compromise sometimes necessary on city streets or when there are lots of people about, but not in a wide open (and oddly empty) park.

The guide however, clearly didn’t see that perspective. Even through she was dressed as an outdoorsman, she was uncomfortable around our dog. I found that very unusual since the old girl is usually a magnet for animal lovers. She is a strong, happy animal that is very affectionate and most content when getting pet by strangers.

Still it was a beautiful day and I wasn’t in the mood to argue. I called our dog. She returned to us and sat patiently as we leashed her. We had already been out for several hours, so her city angst had melted away into a peaceful calm with nature. She was tired, and it was time to go home.

The guide continued “You’re not allowed to walk there”. She pointed back to the trail we had been following. “You have to stay on the trail!” She pointed to the old service road that her group had been walking along.

I’d always considered that service road to be a blight on the landscape. It was built when the area was still a strip-mined quarry and those industrial scars have yet to heal over. It gently wraps around the old toxic mining pits, which someone flooded and are now homes for the occasional bird family. I had to bite my lip as this guide somehow insinuated that any such remnant of a violent industrial past was somehow a trail. It was wide enough to allow two ATVs side-by-side and covered in old wood-chips. It was the least desirable part of the park, but it is convenient for getting from one side to the other.

A trial is a line of dirt or compressed leafs that is followed by people and/or animals. From the width of the trail, you can see its popularity. Over time, old trails fade and new ones emerge. The best trails are the faintly marked animals trails because they lead to the most interesting places. Well-trod areas are paths and something covered with wood-chips is a road. Neither of these are trails, and I doubt the sincerity of anyone dressed as a guide if they can’t distinguish that not too subtle difference. We had been following a trail.

She continued on with a rather condescending speech about how tromping around in nature will somehow break it. Apparently her organization has figured out nature and in order to allow it to be ‘natural’ people shouldn’t interact with it in anyway. We should stay on the road and only take pictures from a distance. In this rather narrow philosophy, people and dogs are no longer natural.

She had concerns that our dog might eat the animals, break sticks or otherwise interfere with her organization’s attempts to control the landscape. I came to realize that her backers might have been the people responsible for the recent alterations we had seen. Someone put up signs, poster boards and an oddly misplaced emergency life buoy far from water. Some of the trees had been prematurely cut-down. They apparently have a vision for the landscape, although the landscape has its own vision, which they don’t seem to like.

Then she gave me a pamphlet that had a map on one side and a set of rules on the other. The map showed that a group called the “Rouge Park Alliance” has laid claim to the half of the park that overlaps Toronto’s borders. Dogs have to be leashed, and people are no longer allowed to go beyond the “marked trails”. The pamphlet also points to a website on it with more information: www.rougepark.com

At this point we parted ways. My wife, dog and I headed back to the car, while the guide rejoined what I now understand to be a tour that she was leading. I controlled myself in her presence, but an examination of the group’s website revealed that other similarly accosted people -- the ones who are generally relaxed and friendly -- erupted in anger and frustration. That’s not surprising.

I supposed I could have tried to argue, but her arrogant tone quickly convinced me that any rational argument would fall on deaf ears. Critical thinking is never behind a choice to drive out the people using a park so that they can be replaced by tours. Logic isn’t used in a decision to wall off a common area. An understanding of nature isn’t driving the desire to turn a wild landscape into a manicured garden. This authoritarian agenda may be cloaked behind the cover of the green movement, but it has little to do with improving our world.

I suppose I could try to bring this to someone’s attention. I did try the Toronto Star, but with the major media under assault, they’ve drifted away from investigating the truth and over to more sensationalist coverage. It would be unwise for them to run articles that questioned any green endeavor, no matter how poorly it was conceived. It might not help to sell papers.

The city itself is unlikely to listen or care. Bureaucrats here play a vicious tug of war with each other for control of the wealth. It’s abstracted from whether or not things need to be done, or whether they are right. It’s just a game they play without regard to the consequences. Some days money flows in one senseless direction, only to be abruptly switched the next day. They play, while our city falls apart at the seams.

In the end, I doubt there is anything to do that could change this trajectory. They’ve taken over.  We’ll have to find somewhere else, farther from Toronto’s borders. Our park is becoming a walled garden available only for superficial bus tours. However in its isolation there can only be trouble. Abandon spaces tend to get filled in big cities. But the type of foresight to understand that is not something you find commonly in Toronto these days. Although I think Joni Mitchell would understand when she sang in “They Paved Paradise” the lyrics:

“They took all the trees, and put em in a tree museum
And they charged the people a dollar and a half to see them
Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you got till it's gone
They paved paradise, and put up a parking lot”

IACA

Hi, my name is Paul and I have a problem...

I care. I really do. I know it’s inappropriate in this modern age to care, but I can’t stop myself.

I go to work, but I am unable to drink the cool-aide. Unlike other employees, I can not reach that nirvana of a zombie-like state that lets me say things like “it’s not my job”, or “it’s somebody else’s problem” or even “it’s always been that way”.

If I see something wrong, I want to fix it. If I’m wasting my time with useless work, I feel bad.

I watch our society, steeped in unnecessary complexity, decay and shallow deceptions, but I am unable to turn away. I can not say “it doesn’t matter”, or “we shouldn’t help people who can not help themselves”, or generally just funnel money, power or opportunity to my friends, while others are left out in the cold.

I try to be more self-centered. I really do. But my delusions keep getting dispersed by empathy; by thinking; by caring.

Now I realize that I’m in a minority. Most people can find happiness by blindly following the herd; by refusing to question even the most obvious stupidity. They can just put their heads down and go with the flow. And they are happy. Happy redirecting their focus on little gadgets. Happy lounging around on the weekends. Happy doing meaningless work. Happy in the knowledge that is not their job, not their responsibly and they are doing what they are told even if it makes no sense, makes the world a crappy place, or contributes to an inevitable disaster. They are happy because they don’t care.

But I’ve decided to do something about my affliction. I’ve forming the IACA, which stands for “I Actually Care Anonymous”. It is an organization for those few of us afflicted with caring. Each week we can gather, and through group effort, we can learn to shut out the world. To blindly follow, and not question. To act without thinking. To turn off our compulsive need to fix things. We can chant things like “”That’s perfect”, “Yes, I want a Performance Review”, or “Wow, isn’t it great that I can re-do the same work many times over and still get paid”.

We can reiterate the lack of need for common sense; for things to be functional; for work to be have some real value. We can learn to be “pro-active” without thinking, or to apply wafer-thin “team-spirit” in place of results. We can learn to shut out that nasty reality, and narrow our focus down to something trivial.

Through a dedicated effort we can learn the ultimate power of sheep, and to blindly follow where no sheep have gone before. And that should make us happy again. Secure in the knowledge that whatever bad things befall us, they are not our problem, even if they were preventable. We can learn to take marketing literally. We can learn to believe even the lamest of executive ploys to distract us from that fact that things are dysfunctional and that we aren’t being respected. We can learn to be happy.

So, stop caring today. Join us in finding true and mindless happiness. Learn to baaaa like you don’t care. You’re only prolonging your pain if you don’t.

The Keys to Success

Forget all of those dainty platitudes that you’ve read on the web, if you’re really interested in success there is only one proven way to achieve it.

Stop worrying about everyone else. Stop worrying about the rules, or laws or whatever they’re called. You’ve got to go out there and take what’s yours.

True unapologetic selfishness and absolutely no empathy for others. That’s the only way!

And it starts with the little things. If you’re in a car approaching a stop sign late at night, why bother stopping? There’s no one there to catch you.

If people are getting off the bus, out of the subway or out of a doorway, why not just push your way past. They’re not even worth a grunt. And you could shave a valuable minute or two off your precious time.

If the others in the organization aren’t paying close attention, why not bend the rules a little. Or even better, break them out-right. It’s not like you’re going to get caught. And it’s not like they can charge you, even if you are discovered.

And don’t forget, while you are busy humiliating the staff of a restaurant, to short them on the bill. Tips?! Ha! Those are for the weak. And you want to be successful, don’t you? At any cost.

It’s not like you need friends or family talking to you. Use them for whatever they’re worth and split them out again. You’ll feel better, and you can always buy some new loyalty later if you’re in the mood. After all friendship is cheap when you have money. Lots of money.

You can’t let these “little” people get in your way, they are meaningless to you. Mindless simpletons at your disposal, so crushing them is not only satisfying it also keeps you entertained while you’re counting your riches, over and over, and over again.

Cause we all know: money is the solution to every problem, and only action-oriented, proactive, take-no-prisoners, motivated, determined souls that fear no repercussions and live life to the fullest are the ones willing to do what it takes to grab life by the horns and shake that money lose from whatever losers are currently clinging onto it. After all, you need it more than they do, even if it was for food or shelter or something pathetic like that.

And what you can’t buy with money, you can just take. Your time is more valuable then theirs, you’re more important than them, and they always fail to appreciate how you’ve left them a crumb or two to subside on. After all, you could have taken everything, couldn’t you.

So that’s it. To get successful, all you have to do is crush everyone you meet, treat people like dirt, alienate those close to you, break all the rules and stab your way to the top. And once you get there, you’ll have it all to yourself, so there won’t be any namby pamby sharing, or niceties to worry about. The whole heap will be yours; yours alone.