The other night I
attended a hockey game—NHL, go, Sens, go—you know the routine. It was held at
the new Canadian Tire Centre, which was the old Scotiabank Place a few months
ago, which at one point had been called the Corel Centre, which originally
boasted the name Palladium when constructed in 1996.
I hate all those names,
except perhaps Palladium. I reflect on that name with some fondness, even
though it’s an insurance company, because it’s also an element in the periodic table with a fanciful
history.
Palladium is a chemical element, a rare and lustrous silvery-white metal discovered in
1803 by William Hyde Wollaston. He named it after the asteroid Pallas, which
was itself named after the epithet of the Greek goddess Athena, acquired by her
when she slew Pallas.
I enjoy hockey. I consider it an honourable tradition in our country, although it's suffering rapid decay into cheap shots with the resulting serious
injuries, and a lackadaisical attitude towards enforcing the rules.
But that’s not what
bothered me the most that night. It was the name change, all reflecting an age
that’s riddled with advertising—junk food—and this is what the establishment is
feeding our brains. And don’t kid yourself, big business, small business, “industry”
is the establishment, not government.
Everywhere we go, a
constant bombardment. Everywhere we open an Internet page, we’re force-fed
another commercial. Even when we pay a premium price, like at the theatre,
where once you could assume it would be commercial-free, an endless parade dances across the screen of cell phone comparisons, Coca Cola endorsements (oh,
you’ve been around a long time, haven’t you?), car ‘zoom zoom’ enticements,
until the movie finally begins. Is there any wonder people pull out their
tablets whenever a commercial appears on television, or we attempt to
circumvent the feed by taping and fast-forwarding through the empty garble.
But the feed never ends.
Have you read the book Feed by M.T. Anderson? If you have, did
you feel a deepening chill the more pages you turned? Did you see the society
in this book as futuristic, or did you see it as commentary on the ‘here and
now’?
The feed in this story is
directly uploaded to the characters’ brains through a surgically implanted chip.
Our chips are in our hands, on our screens, not in our heads, yet. And in the book
everything is disposable, just as all our household items are
designed to fail or become outdated within a few years. We’re programmed to eagerly
embrace the 'next best thing,' and cavalierly discard our two-year-old
laptop, our three-year-old toaster, our
five-year-old car—and of course our debt accumulates as we happily or miserably
pay the price for these shiny new treasures.
If you start eating a bag
of chips, it’s hard to stop, isn’t it? But eventually you’ll feel bloated,
nauseated, and it leaves a coating in your arteries that’s almost impossible to
remove. Physicians often need chisels and blow torches. Junk food is delicious, but it’s also addictive and sometimes a killer.
How do you stop the feed?
Switch it off? It’s not that simple, because we’re governed by modern
technology, we crave entertainment to release us from daily toil, and all our
entertainment is tangled with the feed. But perhaps we can change our values,
little by little, and that will spill over into our lives until industry will
have to pay attention.
When I flip through
albums I discover photographs that are just as beautiful created with my old
film-dependent camera, or even a point-and-click, as those made with a DSLR.
When
I walk in the woods I feel sustaining vigor and inspiration, rather than that
initial spike after a shopping spree, like a sugar rush that eventually comes
crashing down.
When I find special people, I want to keep them in my life, no
matter how the years make their skin sag, their hair lose its luster, their minds
wander, because I know their hearts will endure.
We still own a functional
toaster oven that’s 20 years old. It’s a relic I treasure, even though it
requires some supervision. I will keep it until it shorts out and dies. And
even then, I might keep it longer to remind me how much I need vegetables and
fruit and long-lasting protein. To remind me that junk food will always be
empty calories.
