Enslaved

As I have stated in previous entries to this blog I am not an economist in fact I have a very limited understanding of economic models or principles. I am, however, a participant in one of the world’s most influential economic system, North American Capitalism. The veracity of capitalism is astounding, elegant, almost as if it had evolved like the hunting skills of a great white shark. It seems to act independent of its participants like some form of sci-fi artificial intelligence that has overwhelmed its creators to enslave the human race. The most terrifying characteristic of this monster is that it only seems to be satisfied if it’s growing.

Capitalism doesn’t like holding constant and is certainly not happy when it’s forced to shrink, only when it is growing is capitalism content. With a finite amount of resources available on the planet a model of continual growth seem to me to be fundamentally doomed and yet capitalism fights on. It fights to survive, creating new and ingenious ways to keep its impossible appetite at bay. Again I am not an economist and I am not going to pretend I understand the mechanisms by which capitalism continues to sustain its own growth but as a participant I find myself amused and terrified by its tactics.



Water is a great example. Water a basic requirement of life. When I was a kid you didn’t buy water, it came from the tap and you drank it. We may have paid to maintain the municipal systems that provided the convenience of delivery to the tap but we certainly didn’t pay for the water itself. How did capitalism convince billions of us to start paying for water?

I picture a board room with window walls, downtown in some big city. A guy in a pin striped suit standing next to a piece of white bristle board balanced on an easel. In front of him stretches a long table full of pale faced balding men also suited up. The oldest and most distinguished resides at the end of the table. You can tell he is in charge because of the old man reading glasses he wears too far down his nose and the way he sits back from the table’s edge leaning slightly in his chair, his legs crossed and his hand in a thinking position on his chin. The young presenter flips the piece of white cardboard over revealing a picture no one has ever imagined. It’s a plastic bottle with a picture of mountains and a cascading water fall, “EVIAN” in bold arching letters across the top. No one says a word, the silence grows, the presenter reaches for his collar as a man in the second row asks the obvious, “What is it”? “Bottled water” the presenter answers in a wavering voice. Again the room fills with silence. The man in the second row who obviously has an affinity for obvious questions asks “can we really sell people something they currently get for free”?

Heads start to turn towards the older man at the end of the table. Slapping both hands down he stands up and shouts……….. “I love it”!!! The room erupts with applause. Once the back slapping subsides the old man speaks again. “Although…….I’m not too sure about the name”…….the table of suits all start nodding and looking at each other making sure everyone else is nodding. The presenter clears his throat…….. “EVIAN……sir…… its naïve spelt backwards”. A sinister smile creeps onto the old mans face……..”Perfect”!.

My body-wash claims to be selling me time. “Time for more manly things” is the claim on the bottle. The body-wash can be used on both my body and my hair which is why it will save me time. I’m not exactly sure what kind of manly things I am expecting to accomplish in the 2.3 seconds it takes me to grab a bottle of shampoo, flip the lid and squirt a glob into my hand. Yet over and over the capitalistic monster continues to prove its ability at create problems no one knew they had and then selling the solutions.

While 30,000 (1 every 3 seconds) children die a day of starvation, North Americans are marketed low calorie foods to keep our obesity from effecting our health. While 2 billion (30%) of the world’s population lives without basic requirements of life (adequate shelter, food and water) we buy special shelving units to house our shoes.
As the number of things I need to live in this North American economy increases I find myself feeling less and less satisfied, less and less lucky. Instead I’m feeling more and more embarrassed, more and more overwhelmed and more and more enslaved.

Paying Your Dues

One of the stages of any cycling career involves “paying your dues”. No matter how strong or fit you are there is no getting around the fact that when you are new to cycling there is a lot to learn. The basic structure of the sport is designed on the basis of paying your dues. Everyone starts in the bottom category and only by performing and proving your worth do you earn the right to move up into more competitive and prestigious ranks.

When describing the payment of one’s dues words like: dedication, desire, drive, hard work and even luck are used. It may sound cliché but the fact is that achievement in sport at any level does take hours and hours of hard work, full of early mornings and loads of sacrifice. This is undoubtedly the reason we can all relate to achievement in sport. I have never launched myself off a 120m ski jump but I can relate to the achievements of Eddy the Eagle because I can understand the inherent “paying of dues” that went into his success.

To achieve anything in life requires the payment of dues. When I think of my success it’s all about hard work.

There were so many opportunities and excuses to give up. Everyone has a list of barriers they overcame to succeed. The size of the barrier is less relevant that the event of overcoming. I know I have had every opportunity in life and I feel lucking for that, but that doesn’t mean that my obstacles weren’t just as formidable as the next persons. In failure any excuse is good enough.

It’s all about long hours painting houses to put myself through an undergrad degree. It’s about working in graduate school as a stock boy with a B.Sc. to save up for our first house. It’s about my wife a certified teacher working two and often three jobs to put me through school.

My wife never once complained about waking up early teaching all day, going directly from school to her retail job and then writing provincial exam questions for $20 a question before falling into bed, hopefully before midnight, only to wake up and do it all over again the next day. She did this for 300 plus days a year for two almost three years.

That’s paying your dues!

She taught me the real trick to happiness is wanting what you have not wanting what you don’t have. There is no room for envy in my life, only bike envy.
It’s about taking risks and making the best of your circumstances. In the end it’s about being proud of how you did it.

Success is a state of being not an end result which is why success doesn’t exist without hard work.

Success on the bike, success in life, the Olympic podium or a Perogy XC sport class second place finish, a mansion on the lake or a house in the burbs.

The manifestations of your successes are irrelevant only the sacrifice in achieving is important. I think Paris Hilton demonstrates this point clearly.

When you see the gold medal and hear that anthem played that tight feeling in your chest and the tears you are fighting back are not an expression of national pride but rather your recognition of the dues that were paid. That’s why we don’t care that Donovan Bailey was born in Jamaica, it only makes his sacrifice that much more important.