I fish therefore I am

Sometime in my youth, my father returned from a business trip with a gift... a grey t-shirt that read, 'I fish therefore I am' across the chest in marine-green stylized lettering. I don't know if he realized that this joking play on Rene Descartes' famous line, 'I think therefore I am', would spark my interest in philosophy and the Arts. Loving fishing, it also had a personal significance… I wore it proudly as often as possible.

Since then, my interest in the esoteric has lead to a formal University education in History, Anthropology, Political Science, Philosophy and Communications. A unique combination of subjects, knowledge and skills that I believe have become somewhat of a curse.

A curse because studying these subjects has taught me to analyze everything around me. To see through arguments and understand why, for instance, someone like George Bush, the President of the United States, would intentionally deceive the American public by attempting to link Iraq with the 9/11 attacks, Al-Qaeda and Bin Laden.

All fabrications President Bush finally acknowledged tonight… five very long years later.

As reported on GlobeandMail.com this evening:

Mr. Bush, in a prime-time address from the Oval Office, staunchly defended the war in Iraq even though he acknowledged that Saddam Hussein was not responsible for the 9/11 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people.

He said Saddam's regime, while lacking weapons of mass destruction, was a threat that posed “a risk the world could not afford to take.” At least 2,600 U.S. servicemen and women have died in Iraq, which Mr. Bush calls the central front in the war on terror.

“Whatever mistakes have been made in Iraq, the worst mistake would be to think that if we pulled out, the terrorists would leave us alone,” the president said. “They will not leave us alone. They will follow us.”

… “The war against this enemy is more than a military conflict,” the president said. “It is the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century and the calling of our generation.”


Let me say simply that I disagree. The war against terror is not my idea of the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century, and it is certainly not the calling of my generation.

I want no part of it. This is not what I've spent 40 years working towards.

I never believed there was a connection between Iraq and Al-Qaeda. Nor did I believe the ‘weapons of mass-destruction’ argument, simply because there was no substance to it.

And now, what are we supposed to think? That the religious war George has created is the ‘calling of my generation’? Sorry, that’s just not in my plans.

Rather, I believe the calling of my generation, of the next 50 years, is to figure out how we, the global community, can correct the errors and mistakes we’ve been making. Mistakes that have led to global warming, cancer epidemics, air and water pollution, Aids, poverty, increased violence… the list goes on. Its up to us to do the heavy lifting -- investing in the future by begining the process toward establishing a global economy that is sustainable and that respects all life on earth.

It’ll be hard work, but I believe its time we started to put our collective hearts and minds into something positive, something beneficial, something we can all take pride in doing. Destroying the Muslim nation is not it. We can co-exist with each other and with nature.

It’s just a matter of mind over matter… or of fish over philosophy.