How is it that I, as a Canadian, can allow a situation to continue where fellow Canadians are not allowed to own their own home--by law? Unless my fellow Canadians are not Canadians? Because they are First Nations and live on Reserves? Does that make them on par with under-aged minors? Or are they not human, because even minors are provided some form of ownership by way of beneficial ownership, residual ownership, and so on. Minors eventually grow up and legal ownership is transferred to them. 

If I was to point to one thing that continues to enslave our Indigenous peoples, it would be their inability to own their own land or their own home on Reserves. Without ownership, capitalism has no way of taking hold; prosperity will always be a dream. There can't be a mortgage without ownership. No lease. No licence. No security can be given, so no funding can ever be put in place. No infrastructure will ever be invested.

Instead, we are told that the federal government will take care of the Indians pursuant to the Indian Act. Calling our First Nations Indians is like saying the world remains flat. At the very least, Canada should rename the legislation. We are not in India. By 'taking care of Indians', the government means granting money--an allowance--that is insufficient to do much more than foster dependence. All of the programmes that Canadians feel are unfair--those that provide favourable grants to Indians--are destined to fail. Why? Because the underlying premise of grants, money, and entrepreneurship requires an understanding of ownership.

I love Canada. It is an amazing country with unlimited potential in the coming decades. What I don't understand is why it is so difficult for us to come to a peaceful resolution with the ancestors of those who helped us found this great land? We even named our country after an extinct tribe's word for land. (The name was originally the Saint-Lawrence Iroquoian word Kanata, meaning 'settlement', 'village', or 'land'. The Saint-Lawrence Iroquaians are now extinct.)
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I am not, by nature, a civil rights type of person (whatever that means). I get on with my life and I try to leave others be. However, this type of behaviour by me and other Canadians is the cause of this continued injustice. I have decided that, going forward, I will be part of the solution.

​Watch this space.

In complex systems, knowledge has a way of messing up predictions. The more we know about the likely future, the more we adjust our behaviour. The more we adjust, the more the future adjusts. It is not like the weather--it will either be sunny, rainy, or variations of wind, humidity, and moisture (in frozen or liquid form) regardless of whether we put on our Sunday best or slug it out at home in sweatpants.

The more we are told (as authors) to write blogs, the more we (as authors) write blogs. The result: an explosion of material online by earnest writers trying to demonstrate their bona fides to the world. For the diligent reader, these are golden times. For the lazy (like me), I end up reading less. The search is not worth the discovery.

We have all been given the same map towards social media nirvana. And we are all treading the same (or similar) paths towards that end. Podcasts, email lists, blogs, vlogs, giveaways, competitions, PR, paid and unpaid guerrilla marketing, and so on. We want to present the best images of ourselves and be helpful to others--hoping that, by helping others, we help ourselves.

It feels like camp leaders have taken over the world!

My personality walks away from these types of interactions. I am not interested in gaming the system. I have created an online presence and I will put my thoughts/products 'out there'. However, I don't wish to cross the particular Rubicon that permanently changes me from who I am in order to sell a few books. That being said, this is what I feel like now. Ask me again in six months!

I love Amazon and the Kindle and all ebooks. I also love ACX (Amazon's audible platform for creating audio books). However, I realised how flawed this system is when I wanted to share a book that I 'owned' with my brother.

If I buy an ebook from a non-Amazon supplier (Indie, etc), I get my pdf, epub, and emobi (Kindle) files. I can then share these files with my friends and family. If I buy from Amazon, I need additional technical knowledge before I can 'crack' the file and send it to friends and family. OK, this is annoying but not insurmountable.

I buy a LOT of audio books from Audible (another Amazon company). I love them. I walk for 3-4 hours a day and there is nothing better than doing so with a new book narrated into my ear. As I don't have many friends (yes, boo hoo me), I have never wanted to share my books that I have 'purchased'. Now, my brother has signed up and has become addicted to the siren-call of quality audio books. It is great value and allows you to listen to fantastic titles from business to classics to romance and thrillers. No argument there. BUT, I can't share my books with him, nor him with me. 

This made me think about what is happening to our society in general. Microsoft made the brilliant business decision to licence its software to IBM. IBM didn't care; it was only interested in making computers. Who cared about software? Over the decades, this licensing arrangement has become the norm. No one owns anything. Everything is a licence. You can't share or sell or enjoy any of the usual attributes of ownership.

In my research into the First Nations of Canada, I was struck at their members not being fully cognisant of the concept of ownership. I would suggest that many non-legally trained people also lack the full understanding of ownership. Over the centuries, we have sliced (salami-like) our ideas of ownership into various categories: legal, beneficial, reversionary, and so on. People would receive life-tenancies, or fixed tenancies. The government would regulate and enforce these forms of ownership and people became confident enough in the structures to start funding those with ownership. The banks/lenders would take security against one's legal, beneficial, or reversionary title. They would take security against leases or freeholds. They would take security against projected cashflows. All of this requires ownership.

In London, and throughout England, the richest families have been allowed to retain freeholds while leasing out the property that sits on top of it. Think of the Portman Estate, and much of the best parts of central London. All of this allows people who sit along that ownership spectrum to licence, lease, borrow against, sell and do what they want with the asset in question (subject only to the contracts to which they have  restricted themselves).

​However, if all we own are licences such as the ones we receive from Microsoft, Apple, Amazon and other proprietary business models, we are doomed to head in one direction--serfdom. Many people rent their homes (in Germany, it is almost 70%, in the UK, almost 30%). Almost all software is licensed. We are expected to act as a consumer or use the software to create more value. Most of us simply consume. It is like a piece of fruit. We never own something like this. It is perishable. Like fruit, we can eat it and become strong or we eat it and do nothing. Most of us eat and subsist.

Licencing of software has been a wonderful innovation to allow for companies such as Microsoft, Apply, and Amazon to become insanely big and powerful. But, it is also eroding our ability to be the masters of our own destiny. Instead, we are becoming pawns on a chessboard, constantly monitored and sold additional consumable 'add-ons'. Merely being on the chessboard doesn't make us players. Someone else is always in charge.

Until we recognise this vulnerability, we will continue blindly down this alley until it may be too late. The next generation is growing up without a concrete sense of ownership. They are growing up in systems created by others where nothing is owned by those within the system. 

Just a thought.

I am enjoying a break from writing. My brother has flown in from Canada and I am enjoying the finest cuisine. I knew he was a good cook, but this is ridiculous! We are going to all the tourist sites--places I haven't seen in over twenty-five years. It is a great break from my routine.

So...I'll post this short blurb and see you next week, same place, same time(ish).

I have been undergoing a bumpy ride these last few weeks. The engines have stopped and I am gliding, uncertain as to where I'm going and unable to adjust my course. My muse stopped whispering in my ear and writing output has been reduced to editing, emails, and business correspondence. No new work.

That being said, last night was the first good sleep I had for weeks. I have been going to bed late and waking early for quite a while. In some ways, I enjoy the pressure of minimal sleep combined with the recovery from any excesses of the previous day. For weeks, I wanted to sleep well, but I couldn't fall asleep; when I did, I woke up half a dozen times during the night. When I woke up this morning, there was no tension nor a sense of a tsunami-like wave of work I needed to attend to. I had fallen asleep around 9pm and woke around 4.30am. For me, that was great. I stayed in bed until 5am, thinking I might even fall asleep again. Instead, I began to sense that my muse had forgiven me.

I have started and abandoned two manuscripts since the New Year. My muse began to show me in my mind how the two stories were actually one. Scenes began to appear in technicolor again.

I was afraid to jump out of bed in case I frightened my muse off (I haven't named it--it definitely isn't a she or he). I luxuriated in the images and then tested the scenarios presented to me. I then, cautiously, exited my bed and made my way to the computer. I refused to allow any distractions as I opened my abandoned files. I began to re-read with this new inspiration in mind. It worked. I began the process of reconstruction and started a list of notes and characters so that continuity wouldn't be affected. When I was done, I sat back and smiled. My muse was back.

Then again, maybe it was never gone. Perhaps the struggle is the most important part of the writing process. I'll let you know how it goes.

TTFN
​Baron