Personal Political Contradictions: Utopianism

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If I had to choose one word to describe my political belief it would be utopianism. Let me explain. Utopianism as acquired a bad name over the years, mainly because it is denigrated for promoting the “impossible”. It is often use in contrast with realism (ideas based on so called empirical reality, often represented by “objective” facts). Indeed in international relations theories realists gained prominence by comparing their ideas to the failure of what they called utopians. Some realists still identify liberal theorists as utopians. Realism is predominant in the political discourse of all the major political parties. Today it is “utopian” to desire a better world if it is not realizable in the immediate future and within our “means”. I however reject this negative connotation of utopianism. In fact I would go as far as saying that utopia is as realistic as any other political proposition; what is offered to us, citizens, today by the political elite is simply unsustainable, unjust, and frankly unrealistic considering the state of our world. I prefer to envisage a world where humans and nature are not desecrated on a daily basis with the tacit acquiescence of the majority (at least on a national basis). I prefer to use this “utopia” as my starting point and work to achieve it from there. After all most people consider utopia as impossible solely because they refuse to consider the idea in the first place as it is too far remove from our contemporary “reality” (as much as our reality must be far removed from ancient civilizations).

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Some self-reflections

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I rarely use social media to talk about myself. I talk about my ideas and my work, but not about me as an individual and certainly not about my feelings. But a lot has happened to me since I left the Federal Court and went back momentarily to the school bench. The events of the past months have forced me to reflect on some aspects of my life and of myself; some of which are worth sharing.

Background

Before exposing my reflections I think it is useful to summarize the events that led me to them. In August 2011 I started working for the Federal Court. Shortly after, I moved in with my partner. I entered this new phase of my life (working full time and living with one’s partner) already exhausted from 5 years (for three different degrees) of law school and part time work to pay for my education. I’m not trying to attract anyone’s pity; after all I come from a progressive upper middle class white family. But such experiences are subjective and I felt exhausted. The smart thing to do would have been to take some time off to write and read until I could apply to a PhD program (I didn’t have time to apply during my tenure at the court) since there was no need for me to go back to school or work at a job I hated. But no, I had to enroll into another master program and manage a plethora of activities at the same time instead. The program ended up much less interesting than expected (partly because I am intellectually insecure and thus cannot admit that I could be intelligent without the schooling to prove it) and, instead of being enjoyable, fueled my stress and exhaustion further. It negatively affected my whole life. I reached the breaking point a few weeks ago and dropped everything. And now I feel great! But why did I go through all of this in the first place?

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Bye Bye Miss Environmental Law

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This past year brought a lot of change and sometime stagnation in environmental law. For someone who tries to wear the mantle of environmental law scholar I should have been stimulated or at least productive in my writing and my comments. And I must say I have been in a way through my more “official academic” writing. However my public silence except for the occasional twitter comment has a reason beside my overcharged schedule. I haven’t participated to the public debate mainly because I have nothing good to add and my mental health requires it. I try to stay optimistic as much as possible about our future, but one cannot ignore the facts: the dire situation we are in and our stagnation. There is little I can do or say that will change the will of the public, the government or the international community. Therefore, out of self-preservation, I stay silent in order not to plunge into pessimism and depressive thoughts. But I am a stubborn academic and I am opinionated; in the end expressing my anger and dissatisfaction is probably more constructive, if only for myself.

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Video Reflections 2: Slavoj Zizek investigates the ethical implications of charity

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Yes I am back, at least partially. I am still very busy but I will try to post one video reflection and one longer post each months until I find more time (probably in December). In any event, today’s video, still from RSA animate (I really love those video, I think the little cartoons really help comprehension, at least for me), is on capitalism, charity and the coming end of that system. It’s from Slavoj Zizek, my favourite Marxist and an overall excellent philosopher (even if you don’t agree with him).

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The Day I Felt Shame

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It was one of those days where time flies by like a bumblebee; nonchalantly. The temperature was finally starting to look like spring. As usual my workload was nearly unmanageable, but my coworkers were taking care of the surplus work I had. Feeling less stress than the average day, I felt compel to accept a lunch (averaging 2 hours in length) offer from my mother. We ate, of course, and I even drank a beer, oh frivolous me. We talked politic on that beautiful Thursday as we always do. The topic of the day was the never-ending student strike and the inability of the complaisant and ineffective Québec government to deal effectively with the problem it created in the first place. We were blissfully unaware of the content of the so called special law that the National Assembly was going to pass. Life was relatively good. The next day … not so much.

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Video Reflections 1: 21st Century Enlightenment

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This post marks the beginning of a series of post that I’m trying out: Video Reflections. One out of two posts (at least for the time being) will be a short post on my relatively immediate personal reflections on a short video that encourages us to think. I highly encourage you to share your thoughts on the video through a comment. This will allow me to post more regularly as these posts require less time to write than my regular posts, and I simply thought that it was a fun idea that would change the pace of my blog. The idea germinated in my head when I started watching the RSAnimate videos on YouTube. They are basically a series of video on short 10 minutes presentation on a topic inciting reflections on what the RSA has called the 21st century enlightenment. My series of posts will thus start with the RSAnimate videos. The first video selected is a video introducing the concept on 21st century enlightenment:

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