When I first met Jonathon and Suzanna (founders of Thought Bubble), there were a handful of things we had in common; the books we’d read, documentaries we both liked and our love of Democracy Now! Soon the conversation turned to authors and activists we admired and I quickly told them how much I respect Naomi Klein. Seeing Naomi in The Corporation and reading No Logo opened up my eyes quite a bit as a teenager and led me onto the path where I am today. I was very pleased to find out Jon and Suz were fans too. After that, we often talked about creating a Thought Bubble for Naomi as soon as we could. Two months ago, the opportunity arose when a video was published of Naomi giving a speech where she spoke of how absurd it was that Canada’s Tar Sands oil had begun to brand itself as ‘ethical oil’.

You might have heard it before (and if you haven’t, it’s worth looking into), but Alberta’s Tar Sands are a true embarrassment for us Canadians: a human rights crisis for the Indigenous communities living in Alberta and British Columbia and an environmental disaster of epic proportions. Many pipelines transport this dirty oil all around North America, and our exports make us the United States’ biggest provider of oil. In the last few years, a new extension to a current pipeline has been proposed to carry Tar Sands oil all the way to Texas, putting some of North America’s most fragile ecosystems and waterways in serious peril. Recently, Bill McKibben and his team at 350.org helped spearhead a movement called Tar Sands Action and enlisted the help of people all over the US and Canada willing to express their dismay and anger about a possible new pipeline. As of November 6th, thousands of people have risked arrest, standing in front of the White House, as well as Canada’s Parliament in Ottawa, to protest.

When we heard this impassioned speech that Naomi Klein delivered at the Washington, DC Tar Sands Action Rally back in September, we knew it should be our next Thought Bubble. We hope this video will help spread this message and pay homage to all of the people fighting this cause. And for those who know little about it, we hope you will do as much research as you can and decide if the Tar Sands represent a healthy future for us and the Earth.

The truth is our time is running out. We should seize the moment and demand that we come off of dirty oil and push our politicians to hear our voices: No to the Keystone XL Pipeline.

Please take a look at Naomi Klein’s Thought Bubble and feel free to spread the video around, we’d sure appreciate it!

As a university student, most of my friends and acquaintances identify themselves according to their program of study. Psychology students, engineering students, business students and political science students (just to name a few) are all very different people, with very different outlooks on life. As young adults, our minds are being shaped according to the lenses through which we are taught to see: schools of thought in social sciences (Freudian psychology, Liberalism, Positivism etc.), free market ideologies in business, and mathematical analyses in sciences. We rarely stop to questions these “lenses” and trade them in for a more realistic and current take on issues. These types of vocational studies have done much to form us, but are simultaneously discouraging us from looking outward for information, and are creating separations between young people based on their field of study.

Our tendencies to devote almost every part of our being to what we study (or what job we have) is increasingly making us feel more comfortable in our complacency. A journalism student, for example, is the only type of person likely to make a habit of watching the news daily, and to care about the state of our democracy is only a trait shared by politics students.

Vocational schooling methods have removed us from the idea that on top of formal education there is self-education; the opportunity to learn by our own initiative, to read the news (and several sources at that) and to take a critical look at the institutions and people who govern our surroundings.

Ethics and consideration for social issues and current events have a place in all disciplines. Adbusters has made one of their most important campaigns, Kick It Over, a call to action for economics students to question their professors (and entire discipline) about their teachings of neoclassical economics. Smart Bubble Society’s core values center around the idea that there are career options for graphic designers beyond working for big corporations and advertising agencies (Jon even wrote a blog post about it here!)

Young people have inherited institutions and systems full of flaws and inequalities, a fact that should only help fuel our desire to look beyond what we are told and dig furiously to come to our own conclusions. Now is the time to break down the barriers separating social science students from art students and science students, and acknowledge not our differences, but our similarities; to look beyond our schooling for a more critical take on the state of things.

Education is at the heart of all of the issues facing us. One of the most important skills that one should acquire through education is critical thinking. Without a doubt, if everyone were to look at what is thrown at us every day with a critical outlook (notably pop culture, advertising and junk thought), we might witness a considerable drop in our level of distraction and apathy, and a rise in our awareness of the world. As Neil Postman warned in his book, Amusing Ourselves to Death in 1985, it’s not the Orwellian future we should fear as depicted in the book 1984, but rather the one described in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, where, for one thing, it’s not access to information that’s a problem in society, but the fact that we “drown in a sea of irrelevance.”

I had an outstanding education. Critical thinking was fundamental in classroom discussions, projects and papers, and an integral part of getting a good grade and proving our understanding of a topic. Nowadays, I don’t know how much of that goes on in a classroom. You hear about high schools installing wireless networks, allowing mobile phone access, internet and computer access, all throughout school hours. We tailor education to fit the model of our technological consumption. Computer games or online courses are constructed to provide lessons in the place of real-live teachers. Traditional lessons are shortened to mimic our kids’ shortening attention spans. Texting breaks are implemented to facilitate our addiction to our cell phones.

At a time when our education is undergoing alarming changes as it stands, it’s even more disheartening to see just how little respect and reverence it receives from politicians and administrators.

Take the recent reforms to public schools proposed by Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Luna in Idaho (one of three actually, and two of which just passed in Senate). An incredible witty, talented and (clearly) well-educated high school student, Jonny Saunders, takes on this bill with a vengeance in front of his classmates and teachers. In the video below, he brings to light one of the programs within the education overhaul plan, where all ninth graders will be given a laptop and required to take four online classes during their high school education. And in true political fashion, the most nefarious part of it all is the firing of 770 teachers in order to serve a corporate agenda so that Tom Luna can thank his corporate campaign donors.

Jonny Saunders shows us how powerful civic action can be, and how crucial it is to maintain and constantly improve our education system, not tear it apart to serve the needs of our society’s ailments and politicians’ needs. There’s a lot of work to do in the field of education, and it doesn’t start with the firing of teachers and favouring corporate interest. Enjoy the video below, where the superintendent in question gets schooled by a seventeen year old.

And as a side note, yes, she can sing (you know who I’m talking about, and if you don’t, good). Sure, she’s cute. But why isn’t Jonny Saunders receiving a staggering 14 million views of his video and appearances on daytime talk shows?

Image source: Pepper Design

The word propaganda is difficult to properly employ in our discourse these days. It’s often disregarded as an over-exaggeration, a practice that no longer exists in our modern world, at least in the way it used to. Like the word ‘genocide’, it comes with a slew of associations that make it very difficult to garner acceptance around its (proper) use. But discussion of sensitive events needs to happen, and comparisons to similar situations in the past, as shocking as they may be, need to be contemplated in the new context offered, rather than immediately being dismissed because of their shock value alone.

Take for example one Democratic congressman, who compared the Republican party’s ways of myth-propagating about Health Care Reform (the one facing possible repeal now) to the tactics famously established by Joseph Goebbels, the Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany from 1933-1945.

Instead of debating the issue of whether or not the Republicans are using approaches akin to propaganda or not (Nazism aside), the argument was centered around how appropriate it was (or was not) to invoke the name of a Nazi, period. To which Congressman Cohen replied that he felt it was fitting to draw a comparison to somebody who was “the best or the worst at it.”

Even if the rhetoric used was misinterpreted, I can’t help but think that the history books will relate what we passively let happen in our media, to the perfected models of propaganda employed by the Germans. However, it is true that Congressman Cohen would have benefited from Noam Chomsky’s eloquence when presenting the same comparison.

What is difficult to understand is why the media, an institution in charge of informing and creating dialogue within the public, would try, so rapidly, to disassociate something as serious as propaganda from the rhetoric within the US Congress. (But then again, not so surprising given the corporatization of the media). Why shy away from the reality of things just to discuss a superfluous issue? It is no lie that the American right-wing has proliferated myths which the left has struggled to debunk. (See here and here)

When discussing problems within our society with friends who may not be as passionate about the topic, I often hear “it could be worse.” But this is doing a tremendous disservice to us all. It’s important to know that simply because something is happening in the west (within what we refer to as a democracy), and that there must still be “worse out there”, does not mean that it should be deemed without fault and sheltered from criticism. In the end, we are the people that politicians are supposed to be accountable to and (no matter what some say) we have the power to remind them of that.

For another comparison worth contemplating, check out a doc we watched recently during one of our doc day Mondays, in which Naomi Wolf compares America to a Fascist society:

I remember holidays many years ago, when I’d think to myself that I must have been born into the wrong family. Christmas seemed to become less and less like it was on TV, and more like a tradition I couldn’t understand, and therefore tried my best to resist. Gone were the days of decorating a tree, and us kids receiving dozens of presents. But nowadays, I couldn’t be more thankful for the change.

When the holidays come up in conversation, my friends often tell me how sorry they feel for me, considering my family omits Christmas music, traditional decorations and a tree. But I’ve come to greatly appreciate how my family celebrates, and how we spend our off time together.

In my opinion, the true culprits of the holidays are not the cheesy music and the kitschy sweaters, but traditions like Black Friday. Much like the diamond industry has rooted itself in the process of engagement and marriage, the holiday season is now defined by the discounts we manage to snag, and the presents we buy one other.

I first discovered what Black Friday was through Adbusters’ annual Buy Nothing Day campaign (now expanded to a full week of challenging the holiday status quo via the ‘Carnivalesque Rebellion Week’). Their creator and editor, Kalle Lasn, had done an interview on CNN about Buy Nothing Day, and it was only then that I realized how harmful this season of unabashed consumerism really was. When Lasn brought up the consequences of our shopping on the rest of the world; and notably the environment, the “news” anchor replied “Oh come on! If someone wants to buy their kid an Elmo doll, what’s the harm in that?” Unfortunately, we have become so far removed from the “externalities” of our way of life, that many of us cannot even fathom the idea that a talking doll (whose parts were most likely mined and manufactured in war torn countries, then assembled under terrible conditions and shipped across the world) could have a considerable effect on both people, and our planet.

Criticism of these traditions is often dismissed as mere bouts of over-intellectualizing. But questioning the conventions that are ingrained in our lives is one of the many ways we can move toward creating newer, more conscious traditions. Perhaps then, we could truly come to value these holidays for the time they grant us with family and friends, not shopping malls.

Illustration source.

As a progressive vegan “fighting The Man”, it can only be expected that I often run into some challenging situations and debates. In fact, I might be better at giving tips on how not to argue, so I’d be glad to take my own advice.

Recently, I’ve heard over and over that when it comes to ideas on the left, there is no debating to be done. Climate change is fact, the global economy is a pyramid scheme, fossil fuels are bunk, and the like. Although it is easier to think this way, debating is a good place to start to create movements based on strong ties and understanding, and pushes us to educate ourselves. But sometimes I have to wonder if ‘debating’ is synonymous with ‘stalling’. Instead of debating whether grassroots movements are the answer, why don’t we engage in them? Instead of wondering whether organic, local food is better for us and the planet, why don’t we choose them and see how they make us feel? Instead of spending all our energy to figure out what the tipping point for climate change is, why don’t we push ourselves to live a life that eliminates our dependence on fossil fuels?

The answers seem so clear to some of us, especially when you’re surrounded by like-minded individuals day after day (like here, at the Smart Bubble Society studio). But when it comes time to share your ideas with a new group, it’s often surprising to hear completely opposing opinions (especially views that one would expect to see on a network like Fox News).

So, if you run into your own personal Glenn Beck, or your mom who simply doesn’t think the planet is facing a crisis, or your friend who says they just don’t care, here are some tips:

Listen – The easiest way to fully engage is to sincerely listen.

Ask them for their source – Although this type of question is often demeaning (depending on the tone in which it’s asked), it is important to find out where your adversary is getting his or her facts. We know that nowadays, media is manipulated by only a few corporations. Whose interests are being looked after in the news stories we’re using as reference?

Don’t take it personally – This is probably the most difficult challenge in debating an idea to which you feel devoted. We most often argue with our friends and family, which is a whole other ballgame than debating with strangers, something I’m sure many consider a much easier feat.

Don’t lose hope – Debates and arguments tend to take on a whole new dimension as they progress; it turns into a winner-loser battle. And sometimes your “opponent” may just want to see you lose hope. It’s hard not to walk away with your chin down when someone tells you you can’t make a difference, but in the end I always keep in my mind one of my favourite quotes:

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” – Margaret Mead

Our latest project is a mission to create a Thought Bubble for the Facebook Users Union, but we need your help to do it. The way our business model works, is that we subsidize (pay for) our Thought Bubbles with commercial work (more info here). One day, we hope to function solely on donations, thereby eliminating our dependence on commercial work completely. At times, it’s a challenge to meet the necessary costs of creating a Thought Bubble, and so a lot of them don’t get made unless the organization has a budget to spare.

The Facebook Users Union is asking the question, “how much do you think you’re worth to a social network?” As Facebook users, we create content and provide personal data that’s used to generate profit. Without us, there is no Facebook. Facebook has 500 million members, and is currently valued at about 13 billion dollars. The Facebook Users Union wants users to demand that 10% of their annual value to the company gets donated to a good cause. Simply put, if you’re worth $1 to Facebook a year, you’ve generated $1 of value. If you ask them to donate 10%, that’s 10 cents. Multiply that by 500 million Facebook members, and the figure becomes quite substantial. (Check out this article about the cause in The Guardian).

At Smart Bubble Society we believe in the need to educate people about their role in Facebook’s success, and more importantly, in Facebook’s social responsibility. With a company that large, social responsibility has to come into play. And as assets to the company, we have the right to demand it.

We need to raise $2500 by the end of October. When we reach our goal, we’ll make a Thought Bubble that will not only cover this compelling topic, but we’ll credit you in it as well! Our top five donators will also get free Thought Bubble tees and mugs. Click below to pledge a donation, and only once we reach our goal and the ‘jar tips’, will your donation actually go through. If you have any questions, email us at info@thoughtbubble.org!

If you can’t see the widget, you can go directly to The Point to pledge.

Illustration source.

I attribute a substantial part of who I am to documentaries. I often recount my experience of watching Joel Bakan’s The Corporation when I was in grade 11, and coming out of class an entirely new person. Or of watching the HBO special I am an Animal two years ago, and becoming vegetarian (now vegan). I am a documentary junkie.

A few weeks ago, I was excited to see an interview with the director of the The Cove on DemocracyNow. When asked how he had come to make the film, Louie Psyihoyos said,

“You know, documentaries are like brussels sprouts of cinema. You know it’s going to be good for you, but you’re not really looking forward to it. It’s not the main meal; it doesn’t seem like dessert.”

This idea was demoralizing to me; apparently I was unaware that people might not be as tempted to look for information that goes deeper than the nightly news, as I thought. And the reality that most of the public is apathetic to the serious issues we face, is more alarming to me than any headline or news story I’d read.

Increasingly, the public is being deceived by the nearly inescapable messages that surround us. Not enough of them are devoted to encouraging us to use our critical thought, and too many of them suggest we should spend all our time being distracted. According to Zenith Optimedia’s 2007 estimates, the global advertising budget for 2010 is about 530 billion dollars, and there’s no doubt that a figure like that is hard to compete with (the amount of relief funding requested by the UN for Pakistan is 2 billion). After spending a morning commuting downtown, I’ll have seen enough candy, phone providers, sugar water and American Express promotions to leave me exhausted by the time I get to work (and let’s not even delve into the matter of newspapers laden with celebrity gossip and rhinoplasty clinic advertisements.)

Thankfully, there is solace in alternative media. While some may find it to be the last thing to help them put their mind to rest, documentaries and news programming aimed at broadcasting the truth can offer great comfort and empowerment.

At Smart Bubble Society, every Monday is “doc day.” We collect a list of documentaries that any of us want to see – and for the purpose of educating and inspiring our work, and minds – we watch one each week.

A lot of us feel like we don’t have time to educate ourselves or to learn about the overwhelming assortment of issues our society faces. But a lot of them are actually connected, and brought on by the same root cause. Secondly, we seem to have lost touch with the notion of continuing our personal education past the structured institution of school. Barbara Strauch, deputy science editor at The New York Times and author of The Secret Life of the Grown-Up Brain, says that as our brain ages, in many ways we actually become better learners. So why stop educating yourself, ever?

Listed below are some great docs we’ve seen so far. Together, they represent a solid tool fit for this generation, a visual depiction of a growing concern that offers perspective and inspires its audience, all the while demonstrating how pressing an issue is and how to address it.

So join us in setting aside one day a week to focus on educating and inspiring yourself. Watch a good doc, or dip into a non-fiction book. Forget the TV, computer, cell phone, and spend time with your brain instead. We’ll tweet what doc we watch ahead of time (or after the fact), and if you need any suggestions for more, just ask!

The Corporation

Using the diagnostic criteria of a psychopath, this crucial documentary helps the audience understand the way the corporation has infiltrated every aspect of our lives and used its personhood status to take advantage of resources and people all over the world, with no remorse.

Collapse

An interview with Michael Ruppert regarding energy issues, and the importance of being prepared for a post peak-oil America.

Consuming Kids

An insight into the targeting of children by advertisers to create consumers from the ‘cradle to the grave.’

Food Matters

Based on Hippocrates’ famous quote “Let food be thy medicine, and medicine be thy food,” this film demonstrates how drastically we’ve shifted into a culture invaded by pharmaceuticals and band-aid solutions, and away from nutrition and food as medicine.

GasLand

The HBO documentary explaining the process of hydraulic fracturing for natural gas throughout the United States, as well as the hazards for homeowners caught in its destructive path.

I think we all have moments where we question whether what we’re doing is making an ounce of difference, or at least, I hope we do. Smart Bubble Society is quite new-new in its take on activism, in the sense that our mandate is to make a difference through raising people’s awareness through infographics, something that we have to define to most people before we can explain its impact. But if we woke up tomorrow and the internet was reduced to a smoldering cube, we would be screwed. What would we do then? Motion graphics would obviously fail to survive. Would we tell stories in person? Create traditional art to convey our messages instead?

Sometimes, when I see footage of an overwhelmingly huge protest or march, I wonder if I’m in the right place. What’s more powerful? My computer? Or my feet? To remedy the perplexing, seemingly unanswerable question, I remind myself that we all have different tools with which we communicate our desire for change, and make a difference. Some people do use their feet. Some use their voice, others use their paintbrushes, and we just happen to use our design talent. But there’s a second part to the question, and it relates to us as a whole. Why are we as a global community, so seemingly ineffective at battling today’s issues (forgive me for the momentary pessimism)? We’re seeing several simultaneous wars, a impending global catastrophe that I don’t even need to explain, and more. Much more.

Micah White speaks to this problem in a recent article entitled, The Future of Activism. In it, he discusses the necessary marriage between physical activism and mental activism:

“Untangling this difficulty begins with acknowledging the complicated relationship between our interior reality (the mental environment) and our external reality (the physical environment). Mental pollution is not just an annoyance; it is a tool in our oppression. The interjection of advertising and other info-toxins into our mindscape neutralizes our attempts to construct an alternate future because from a poisoned mind spring only poisoned deeds.”
(If you’re intrigued by Micah White’s passage here, be sure to check out his Thought Bubble on Junk Thought).

Indeed, our minds our poisoned. Everyday we’re barraged with advertisements selling us an overwhelming assortment of THINGS, and illusory concepts (‘buy/do this and you’ll be beautiful’). In Canada, I’d say in a very general sense, we’re comfortable enough that there’s no real need to rise up and fight for anything as a country, though there are plenty of reasons to stand up and scream. What Micah also explains, is that we can’t fix the world by fixing only our minds, and we can’t fix the world by fixing only the world:

“If we burn the world without a change of heart, it will resurrect; if we change our hearts without leveling the world, it will persist.”

So we have to address both frontiers at the same time. But I think it starts with our heads; our Thought Bubbles, if you will. If we’re indeed too distracted and comfortable, then we simply need to regain our focus. We need to clearly see what’s wrong with the world, rather than ignore it and pretend everything’s a peach. Peaches are wonderful, but they have pits, and you need to appreciate both aspects to see a peach for what it is. Ha! What a random analogy, but it works eh?

If we can at least allow ourselves the SPACE in our Thought Bubbles to see the world as it is right now, that’s enough to pit us (pun intended) against any ridiculous attempts by certain entities to take advantage of our ignorance. Because such entities will likely stick around, it’s how WE choose to live each day that matters. That’s how we begin to change our Thought Bubbles. It’s about every single decision we make, from whether to buy tomatoes from across the planet or from that farm across the street (which if you have one that close, lucky you!), to whether to spend two hours looking at what our quasi-friends are doing on Facebook, or reading a book about our country’s history (real history, please). WE are our most powerfool tool, but it starts with our Thought Bubble.

Micah White continues to say that:
“Each of us knows that a tremendous crisis is looming, but it is so large that we are paralyzed. Knowing that our future constitutes a world without ice caps and fish, a world that is dominated by constant starvation and hordes of refugees, we can only continue our day-to-day lives if we suppress the fear of collapse.”

I think our tendency to ignore what’s going on in the world is very possibly rooted in our fears about it. Like the peach analogy above, we have to see the pit, and it doesn’t mean we have to eat it (it’s bitter and gross), but we definitely have to acknowledge that it’s there before we can enjoy the glorious sweetness of that peach flesh. And the pit doesn’t have to be all that bad (apparently is has health benefits): Check out some alternative news sites, turn off your TV a few nights a week, open a good non-fiction book, engage in a meaningful conversation with someone, think about what you’re about to buy, who made it, how they made it, what the value is, and whether you really need it to be happy. And to round it all off so that you don’t end up depressed in bed at night, snuggle with a loved one, human, or furball. That’s the peach flesh. Yum.