Lessons from Vancouver 2010: Go world!
February 28, 2010
The Vancouver Winter Olympic games have come to a close and the flame has been extinguished until the next Games…
The world stopped to watch, to listen, to feel and to share…
Some amazing things happened over the past 17 days…
The initial tragedy of Nodar Kumaritashvili, Jennifer Heil’s silver medal (Canada’s first medal), Alexandre Bilodeau’s gold medal (Canada’s first gold medal), Petra Majdic’s triumph (skiing to bronze with broken ribs and a punctured lung), Melissa Hollingsworth (her tears), Jon Montgomery (enough said!), Shaun White’s amazing performance, Hannah Teter’s generosity, Sven Kramer’s lost gold, the courage and grief of Joannie Rochette, Team Canada’s men and women hockey teams’ gold winning performances… and the list goes on.
Over the next few weeks, I will reflect on some of the more powerful messages and meanings from these Olympic stories. Millions of people experienced these events almost first hand (can you say mirror neuron?), they will have (of course) a mediatherapeutic spin to them… The gold medal men’s hockey game was the most watched event in Canadian history. We all shared the moment!
From this Canadian’s perspective, these Games were much more than sports and medal counts… I believe it has awoken an entire nation… nationalism and patriotism at this very moment have never been higher… and I’ll postulate, if we take these lessons and apply them… we may finally rise to celebrate globalism…
Go world!!
Dr.P
BTW We will explore paradoxical thinking and consider what would have happened if Canada won silver instead…
The mediatherapy in Avatar
February 14, 2010
The largest grossing movie of all time turns out to be mediatherapy at its finest. It’s entertaining and has a message. James Cameron’s epic 3D-adventure is a fable about love, greed and the environment. Our “mirror neurons” fire as we experience the Na’vi’s plight especially in 3D (seeing, hearing and feeling) and come to our own conclusions about humanity.
Cameron has stated in interviews that our “industrial society” is “causing a global climate change” and “destroying species faster than we can classify them.” Humans have a “terrible history” of “entitlement” in which we “take what we need” from nature and indigenous peoples “and don’t give back.”
Many critics (political, movie, etc.) have lined up to tear this film down, stating that it is “trite” and “unoriginal.”
Hmmmmm.
Before we all go out and get “post Avatar depression syndrome”…
The best rebuttal to this is that with worldwide box office ticket receipts at $2,266,696,179 and counting… the numbers speak for themselves.
Bravo Mr. Cameron! My only critique is that by 2154, cigarettes will be extinct… with books like “First You Smoked Now You Live” and movies like “Quit Quitting: Hospital Bedside Smoking Intervention” and more mediatherapy to come, we as a planet will have wiped out addiction!
Dr.P
