TRENDS - Ottawa

TRENDS began in Toronto in 2004, when four teen girls decided that something needed to be done in response to the growing uniformity in teen fashion and the increasing tendency to objectify young women. Along with a mentor, TRENDSs was their response: a fashion and image project was born. In their own words: "We want to empower ourselves to achieve fashion freedom: fashion that reflect our personal style and counteracts the objectification of women. Fashion should ocmmunicate who we are. We call it doing fashion 'from the inside, out'. Teens need a voice in the world of fashion so that we can be empowered to choose clothing that shows our self-worth."

Since 2004 TRENDS has grown from that initial group in Toronto with groups in Montreal, Vancouver, Belleville and Ottawa. This year in Ottawa our goal is to take 30 girls through the TRENDS project and build an effective Teen Board, further building and developing TRENDS Ottawa. We are currently looking for three (3) more girls to join our Ottawa Board. If you know of anyone that would be interested, please have them contact me: Nicole Scheidl - hawthorn.group@yahoo.com

What is causing the demographic winter of the west?

The western world faces a "demographic winter" with birthrates falling below population replacement numbers in most western countries. The consequences of a falling birthrate will be particularly significant for countries as their population ages. In Canada, as baby boomers retire there will be fewer and fewer working people to pick up the health care and pension costs plus service the national debt. If we think our current financial crisis is bad - imagine one where the government collapses because there is not a sufficient working population base to pay for the needs of an aging society.

I remember being teasingly chided by a single woman when I was pregnant with my sixth child and I reminded her that when she was lying in her hospital bed it would be my children that were paying for her medical care. But all joking aside - who does she think is going to be paying the taxes that will support her medical care and her government pension costs? The idea probably never occurred to her as she pursued her career.

The idea that children are an obstacle to a woman "fulfilling" herself is pervasive in this society. Every year we see the usual article in the paper outlining how much it costs to take a child from birth to a university education - and we never consider how much that person enriches the lives of their family, the common good of society or even on a purely pragmatic note - how much tax revenue that individual will generate over the course of their working life. It seems to me that having a child in western society and in particular having more than two children seems to require an immense amount of courage.

Loss of Moral Language

Has the sexual revolution caused us to lose our moral language? I was posed that question by a friend recently in a discussion and it caused me to think about the loss of moral language in our current culture. When I consider the current debate about marriage in Canada - particularly as it now relates to polygamous unions - I think the answer has to be yes. We have removed from the marriage debate the moral language that would have been so common to that discussion prior to the 60s and so we now have no grounds on which to challenge polygamous unions - "If they are relationships between consenting adults, who are we to judge them? Shouldn't they be just as esteemed by the state as a relationship between one man and one woman?"

Ian Hunter wrote a fine article on this dilemma in The National Post on Friday, Feb 13th. One particular comment that struck me was his statement: "A society can live for a time on the accumulated moral surplus of prior generations: like financial bankruptcy, moral bankruptcy is a gradual process". Our society is facing the moral bankruptcy we have created around marriage. Chipping away at the notions of fidelity, generosity, service, openness to life that should form the foundation of married life we have a bankrupt notion of marriage which serves no one well - not the men or women who are seeking to enter into it nor the children that rely on it to form the bedrock of their personal formation.

Cultural Consequences of Sexual "Liberation"

On March 20th I will be giving a talk on "What are the cultural consequences of sexual liberation?" Up until that time I want to explore different themes associated with that topic in this blog. Your thoughts and comments would be very much appreciated as I think through this topic and refine my thoughts.

Are we better off as a society and as individuals now that women have been "sexually liberated"? Liberation suggests freedom and that I would suggest is the crux of the matter. What is freedom? In the prevalent philosophy of the post-modern era, freedom seems to be couched in negative terms. I'm free from something....I'm free when I'm unconstrained in what I can and cannot do. This view of freedom is a superficial view, the "don't tell me what I can and cannot do" cry of the teenager who is thwarted by a parent and it is a false notion of freedom. It is false in the sense that we are always constrained by our dependencies and limitations. We are free to step off the roof of a building but we are limited by gravity as to the effect we experience after the first step. We are free to eat as much as we want but we are limited by the body's reaction to our actions through indigestion. Freedom is not the power to do what you want but rather the power to become what you should be - to realize your full potential as a human being.

A kitten naturally becomes a fully functioning cat but a child does not naturally become a mature, fully functioning adult. You do not reach full maturity merely through the passage of time; age does not an adult make - an individual must also develop their minds, wills and hearts to become a fully functioning adult. We all have the experience of meeting an adult who has an undeveloped mind - who is uninterested and uninformed about the world around them - who has a selfish, limiting view of people and events. We also have the experience of meeting adults who lack self-discipline. They have never developed the ability to discipline themselves and use their will-power to fulfill their potential. They are not free but slaves to their whims and passions - buffeted by events and distracted by trivia. Even in ourselves, if we are honest, we have the constant struggle to exercise our free will to choose paths, to inculcate habits and to make decisions that move us towards our full potential.