C/O Max Kukurudziak, Unsplash
We should rely on our humanity to navigate through hurt and sorrow
My heart is heavy as I turn on the news and see events that many of us know all too well. Some of us have read about them in history books, lived through them ourselves or been close to people who have had similar experiences.
Regardless of why we feel hurt deep within us, we must recognize the validity of these feelings and the best way to act upon them.
I am Bosnian-Croatian. Exactly 30 years ago, Sarajevo was under siege — just as Kiev is today. My parents and all my loved ones have directly witnessed events that are very much the mirror images to those in Ukraine today.
Having deep connections to my roots and my loved ones, I feel empathy for those experiencing it today. It’s still unfathomable to me that, after too many years, wars, conflicts, acts of violence and long-held tensions, we still fail to understand that war is not the answer.
Regardless of why, it is still valid to feel hurt and empathize with those experiencing conflict today. It does not matter that you have not lived through a war, a siege, bombings, violence or anything of the sort. The fact that we care and feel so much hurt is a testament to our humanness and the solidarity that accompanies it.
As humans, we are built to care for others. Although we are not all in the same situation, we still react in a trademark human way.
So, what do we do with these feelings? Although it is all too easy to make a few posts on social media to show we care, how much does this really do? Why don’t we start in the simplest way and discuss our feelings, thoughts, opinions, hopes and worries?
While a few pictures with a caption may not do much, sharing our humanness with others and allowing ourselves to feel will further bolster civilization’s unity in the long run.
What’s happening in the world right now can be viewed through a variety of lenses — political, sociological and economic. Let us begin by viewing it through a human lens.
Given the difficult complexity of our world, we can always find an anchor in our own humanity. This is the approach we should be taking to grapple with such a precarious event.
It should, however, be noted that those on both sides of every conflict are allowed to feel the same hurt, pain and anger at current events. Our differing perceptions are what vary dramatically, but we can still acknowledge that they — however different from ours — are also human and experience the same hurt that others do.
Human nature is unwavering, but it can be manipulated and conceived in many ways.
Understanding this is the first step to re-establishing peace in even the most turbulent times.
While what is happening is difficult to understand, we can look within ourselves to find the right response. Though our simple actions may not have tangible impact, finding the roots of our solidarity and being able to fortify it is invaluable in times of conflict. Regardless of how we feel, what we do or who we are, it is all built upon the foundation of the human being.
By: Areej Ali
This past November marked the launch of “Tax-Free Tuesdays,” an initiative proposed by McMaster Students Union president Ikram Farah during the 2018 presidential election.
The pilot project, created in collaboration with McMaster Hospitality Services, entailed offering students a 13 per cent discount at La Piazza during the month of November.
Farah initially created the initiative in effort to promote food affordability on campus.
“Food insecurity is real. The MSU invests in the operations of the MSU Food Collective Centre to offer immediate food support to students,” said Farah in a Silhouette article about the project from November.
With the winter semester coming to an end, McMaster Hospitality Services director Chris Roberts has confirmed that “Tax-Free Tuesdays” project will not continue in the future.
The aim was to have increased traffic flow in La Piazza, which would offset the financial losses resulting from giving students the discount.
According to Roberts, La Piazza did not see increased traffic in November.
“The data clearly showed that our transactions on the Tax-Free Tuesdays were no different than previous Tuesdays ,which resulted in a significant loss in revenue over the course of the pilot,” said Roberts. “This indicates that students continued their usual habits regardless of the discount.”
He cites Union Market’s elimination of their boxed water, suggesting that McMaster Hospitality Services must continue to operate in a financially responsible manner.
As such, the “Tax-Free Tuesdays” project will likely not resurface next year.
When asked for her comment on McMaster Hospitality Services’ decision, Farah did not provide a response to The Silhouette.
There is a lack of clarity with respect to McMaster students’ feedback from the project, including whether or not they believe there was sufficient advertising from the MSU.
Farah and the MSU have also yet to publicly respond to Roberts’ comments and McMaster Hospitality Services’ decision.
“I believe there are other initiatives that we could look at that serve the needs of students who are financially challenged that will not affect our financials in a negative way,” said Roberts.
An example of one such initiative is Bridges Cafe’s new “Cards For Humanity” program, a pay it forward initiative through which students donate to other students.
According to Roberts, students can expect to see various food accessibility initiatives emerge, but “Tax-Free Tuesdays” will no longer be one of them.
What is the value of an apology? That is one of the questions that JUNO-nominated singer and songwriter Khari Wendell McClelland is exploring in his new concert, We Now Recognize. The show, which consists of all new songs, will tour six Canadian cities for Black History Month. It comes to the Lincoln Alexander Centre in Hamilton on Feb. 19 at 8 p.m.
We Now Recognize is a partnership between McClelland and Project Humanity, a non-profit organization that uses the arts to raise social awareness. The two collaborated in 2017 and 2018 to create the documentary theatre musical of the Vancouver-based artist’s debut solo album, Freedom Singer. Freedom Singer interpreted songs that might have accompanied McClelland’s great-great-great-grandmother Kizzy as she escaped from slavery via the Underground Railroad.
This show is another personal work, although McClelland originally took inspiration from the current sociopolitical landscape. The number of political apologies that have occurred struck him in the past decade or so and especially in Justin Trudeau’s term. He began to question what constitutes a substantive and meaningful apology.
In writing the show, McClelland found himself reflecting on being wrong and the extent of his compassion for those who do wrong. He considered how recognizing wrongdoing feels and how to move forward from it. With this, he also thought about the relationships he has with the generations of men in his family.
“[I was] looking at my grandfather and my father and my brother and even considering what it would be to be… a father and what the implications might mean for a larger society… [I]t's men who are exerting power and have a lot of control in society… What are some of the ideas… I grew up with that I have at different times perpetuated in my own life and trying to figure out like what that might look like through a generational lens,” said McClelland.
The show explores other ideas that McClelland cares about, such as community and the way we wield power over the natural world. In bringing different ideas in proximity with one another, McClelland sees the work as an assemblage like a quilt or collage.
McClelland sees being able to explore a multitude of ideas as a way of celebrating Black life. Unlike his past work with Freedom Singer, which tackled the history of slavery head on, We Now Recognize, is a subtler approach to Black history that it more rooted in the present and in the future.
“I feel like there are ways in which black life can be can be understood as a monolith, that black people in Black communities aren't allowed to have a diversity of experiences and perspectives. I'm very curious… about creating some kind of radical subjectivity around Black life, like being able to be all these different ways that we are just as human beings,” McClelland said.
Not only will the concert allow McClelland a chance to bring forth the multiplicity of Black life, it will allow him to stretch himself and grow as an artist. The personal show will force him to be vulnerable in a way that he hasn’t been before with the communities across Canada that has supported him.
McClelland sees the connection to music as something that erodes for many people over their lifetime. For him, however, it is something that he hasn’t stopped doing ever since it became a part of his life as a kid growing up in Detroit. It moves him in a way that isn’t necessarily positive or negative, but just is. He also sees the medium as essential to building community.
“I feel like healthy communities move together. That they practice together, that they have rituals together… [O]ur connection to artful practices actually has the potential to heal us as communities and individuals coming together… has this real potential for a deep kind of healing… I think it is just a deep medicine in the way that we come together and make music and make art,” explained McClelland.
McClelland is looking forward to this tour to see how audiences connect with the new songs. He is eager to see the way in which people are moved by this meditation on wrongdoing and apology, whether positively or in a way that is a little uncomfortable.
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Kacper Niburski
The Silhouette
To the surprise of no one at all, I nearly failed grade eight art. I could pretend that I was one of the greats that were denied critical fame with avant-garde masterpieces, but I won’t. I think back to the artwork I submitted over the years and I remember them as bubbling masterworks of creative fervor and passion – whatever the heck that means. But this is just an abstraction of the past, where time makes complex situations simple and memories into ideals.
What they were, and what they will always be, are the deranged scribbles of a young boy whose brain moved faster than his hand, whose reality was a diluted failure to capture his imagination, and whose artwork was the result of grand ideas that lacked consistency and practise. In short, I got a D.
Maybe I’m still trying to justify the mark. I don’t think so, however. I am very aware that I’ll never be a great artist. I am no Van Gogh; two attached ears give me away. I’ll add that I’m not Picasso either – my best attempt at stenciling out a life portrait looks less like a caricature and more like a blunderbuss to the face would.
Yet despite lacking the panache necessary to paint or to draw, somehow and for some reason I am given the chance to comment on art as a whole. With no more weight than a feather, I can brutally, unrelentingly, dim-wittingly, shamelessly vocalize all my qualms about a given piece. We all can.
That is not to say my, nor your, opinion is worth a flying fuck, of course. In a cacophony of voices, I’d hope a voice as self-indulgent, prone to misspellings, and ridiculously exhaustive as mine would drown at the first instance. But it is as though by just being human, by just breathing, eating, and shitting like the animals we tend to grown into, I can judge all things human.
It is a metaphysical assertion at best. No more than some innate predisposition guaranteed the day we are born, even though everyone else we know was born once, we find our judgment. Whether it be the in the tomes of literary jargon, academic highfalutin, or those who believe that by tilting one’s head to look at a painting ruins the “regal elegance” of the whole piece, we criticize the world and its fruits as if we own both.
For the record, fuck those people. I’m sorry for such a vulgarity, and I should probably elaborate, so I will. Listen: fuck us humans. We’re no more entitled to judge art, books, or anything for that matter. We aren’t experts on anything. We aren’t even amateurs. We are all just chewing on broken glass while staring into the never ending abyss, hoping, praying, to make sense of it all.
Sure. We can read. We can write. But that doesn’t mean diddlysquat in a Universe, a World, a damn bedroom that is so much more complex than we can imagine. We are not the Rulers of the Universe, even though we can type that we are. Instead, as humans, we are worse than diseases because at least a disease looks after its own kind.
But some hope at an egalitarian diatribe is not what I’m trying to get at; rather by suggesting humanity’s limitation in judging art – a limitation that is both found and originating from our own birth – I am attempting to determine what makes great art. Undoubtedly my pieces in elementary school were far from it. As is this writing. But there seems to be some general consensus that such and such by so and so is great art.
Maybe it is. Who the hell am I to say different? But maybe in the same line of thought it isn’t. Maybe works are no longer reviewed but revered, and simply the name suggests an unquestioning greatness. Of course, I am not implying that Shakespeare, Michelangelo, Mozart, and the like aren’t great. To be honest, showing those three artist alone to an alien race would be enough to make it look like we were bragging. What I am saying, though, is that there comes a point when our paragons are accepted simply for being paragons.
Certainly I can say that Shakespeare was a twat that forced his plots and character foibles and didn’t damn near mean the things we attribute to him, but would I be right? Most likely not. Nor would any expression of my most outlandish statements about a given work be merited. I’m a nincompoop, and even that may be an insult to nincompoops.
Yet even though such works are unperturbed from any of the foolish and poorly worded assaults I could muster, are they still great? And if so, what makes them great?
I think there is no simple answer, and I won’t dissolve the discussion into some vague abstraction about human values and potential and the works. God knows I do that enough. Instead, I’ll admit viagra lowest price that great works differ by great margins and great people will have greatly different opinions on the matter. There will never be a sliver of agreement, and that is something you can agree on, dear reader.
But at the same time, great art is great for the same reason it is created: because we are human, and in between two milestones that are no more in our control than anything else, we feel, we need, and we die trying to digest an overwhelming amount of information in such a short amount of time. Most of us are lucky if we can even find a matching pair of socks in the morning.
For this reason, I purport that art is not know for its artistry, but for its humanity. A great piece – whether written, drawn, sung, or whatever else it could be – will not simply move you. A fart moves you, for heaven sakes.
Rather, a great piece of artwork will make you close your eyes and imagine that you were having breakfast with the author of the piece and they just told you a funny joke and oh how you both shared in the laughter and they decided to make a day of it and they told you why they painted this and that and why they didn’t paint that and this and why both really don’t matter anyways.
In the little time that you’re drawn into the microcosm of their work, you’re convinced the two of you are friends, author and audience, much longer than your gaze will last.
I have been lucky enough to have a handful of such occasions in my lifetime. The first time was with Kurt Vonnegut. Since then, I have drank with Heller, laughed with Bradbury, cried with Dostoyevsky, triumphed with Dante, entered hyperspace with Card, died with Camus, questioned with Burgess, danced with Bach, wallowed with Kafka, hummed with Chopin, wondered with Sagan, loved with Orang, and more. I have spent the few moments I could control with a lifetime of people who devoted themselves to something greater than themselves, and in that pursuit, became themselves a greater thing than they originally intended.
That is great art. It is a feeling like one’s time isn’t wasted despite living in a Universe that is as much as a hysterical accident as we are.
