To dream, perchance to...? Part Three

I'll admit up front I'm going to get a little esoteric on your intellectual rumps here. (But for those who prefer to take the facile, get-to-the-point route: 'We need to play more of a part in how our city changes into its next iteration. We need to 'creatively re-imagine' Hamilton. We need to dream.' There; feel better? Now go get me a coffee.)

I'm going to riff on awareness for a bit. Ability. Engagement, involvement...participation. But as I'm heading down that esoteric route, I present to you the spiritual stages of the above:

Unconscious inability: People who live Life struggling against emotional and spiritual challenges they're not consciously aware of, and certainly aren't capable of mastering. These are everyday folk who are 'unaware'. (Ignorance rarely means 'bliss'...though it is possible through denial and distraction to be existentially content.) Visibly seen everywhere, all the time.


Conscious inability: People who live Life struggling against emotional and spiritual challenges they're consciously aware of but aren't yet capable of mastering. These are everyday folk who have some degree of 'awareness', a basic understanding of 'what's what', who explore various pathways, read self-help books, take classes, whose engagement in all this ranges from 'casual' to 'earnest', with an equally broad range of success. Visibly seen in yoginis and adherents and acolytes and followers, pursuers of personal truth.


Conscious ability: People who live Life consciously gaining mastery of emotional and spiritual challenges. These are most often exemplary folk, people who 'have something special about them', who seem a little differently dialed-in, on another frequency entirely. Visibly seen in yogis and other 'leaders', traditionally identified as the shaman, the wise-woman, the elders of the community, the great philosophers.


Unconscious ability: People who live Life executing mastery of emotional and spiritual challenges in an unconscious way. They are the 'adepts', the most 'exalted' of our yogis, our leaders, people who in effect transcend Life's travails and banalities, capable of pushing through to another reality entirely. 

So. 

Having already presented my 'Dummies' Dreaming For a Better City' notion, let's for a little bit consider transposing the above into the arena of civic engagement, community-building, a citizen's investment, a resident's involvement, however you choose to frame things.

Truthfully, I'd say about 99.5% of Hamiltonians fit into the first category (as it pertains to what I'm referring to, actively 'dreaming' about the city). And I'm willing to include in that number, 'players' (aka 'developers') just because that's the kind of guy I am.

We've never really been encouraged to 'dream'. Not about 'what Hamilton might be'.

Yes, we've had some charrettes take place regarding our LRT future, and yes, we've had student projects focusing on 'free-thinking' exercises, imaginatively constructing their own visions. And yes, even as recently as last autumn, we had a session furthering public input about the John-Rebecca park.

But out of 500,00+ people, that doesn't amount to much. Even if you double it for this one-off, triple it to be kind...

And frankly, from what I've seen on Raise the Hammer, on The Hamiltonian and on The Spec, most contributors/commenters/trolls 'don't go there'. They don't engage in creatively re-imagining their city. In fact, I kinda sorta nailed it in a post of my own:

"I'm amazed at how much energy gets channelled into limitation-based thinking."

Please understand: I'm not suggesting that just because we all 'play', we're going to get what we want. That's at the other end of the spectrum from where we generally are now, where very little creative effort and energy is invested by the average Hamiltonian in 'how things might be'.

Instead, we bitch and whine about yet another travesty, another situation that invariably hinged on an 'in camera' session at City Hall, where 'divine sovereignty' is claimed by this Board or that agency to do as it sees fit with taxpayers' money-

Oops. I'd only intended on looking at 'private' development situations, but I got sucked into my own frustration about what's currently unfolding in several sectors of the city. My bad.

I'm reminded of an adage that was bestowed upon me by- Well, I can't remember who. Regardless, it's perfectly apropos of this conversation, and a fitting way to bring this monologue to a close, keeping in mind that it's time for us to play, it's time for us to creatively re-imagine our city, it's time to dream, and push the best of those dreams towards reality:

'You don't ask, you don't get.'

M Adrian Brassington