In my 4 years in PLP, I haven’t seen failure as the end of the world. The same goes for the past 6 weeks. Posed with the question, “how should we govern ourselves?” we’ve been building an answer using newfound knowledge and systems, emphasis on new. The video above is the official press release for the Egalitarian Party of Canada. Getting to that final product required my know it all self to become more flexible and accept that, in fact, I do not know all there is to know about the Canadian government. I knew so little, I was barely scratching the surface. My immediate confidence in my ability to answer the driving question plummeted at the realization that I had an immense lack of understanding of the inner workings of our government. Of course now, weeks after the fact, I can provide an elevated answer to the driving question.
Our Press Release v.s.
The Liberal Party’s Press Release
The Egalitarian Party, founded October 2021 by myself, Fraser H, Kaia R, and Emily M in our PLP classroom is what you could call a very basic foundation of a real world political party. We spent time brainstorming, or rather repeating ourselves time after time in an attempt to verbalize our individual values, and examine them under a government lens. In my post on our press release, I went into detail on a few of the big aspects of our parties plan that stood out to me. I believe that those aspects are what our current government is missing. Reflecting upon that opinion, I see how liberal and socialist my beliefs come across. There is still a lack of understanding of the economic, typically “conservative,” side of our government that I can build upon in future.
Tracing back even further, our first milestone took place hours after the 2021 election results were announced. It was my job to reflect upon said results and demonstrate an understanding of how the Canadian government works. As I said before, my lack of deeper knowledge on this particular subject (6 weeks ago) was rather upsetting. When doing research on our government structure and the electoral system, I found that I became better and better at forming an opinion on the election and providing evidence to back it up. This was the foundation for my entire understanding during the project, and my ability to draw ideas from other sources in milestones like my press release and even the campaign video came along with it. Like any PLP student, I try to utilize the sources provided to us as much as possible, but sometimes they just don’t hit that note in my brain that sparks sophisticated ideas. This is why our newest system has been beneficial so far.
First knowledge building assignment
Niklas Luhmann paved a new path for academics seeking to have a structured and organized notes system. We’ve only just been introduced to this concept called the Zettelkasten. Essentially it comes down to being able to make connections between random tidbits of information that seemingly have zero similarity. Now if you’ve known me for a while, or have read this blog at anytime in the past, you might be aware of the fact that I am not the most organized person so to say. For years I’ve been working towards solutions for problem areas and honestly the Zettelkasten, while tedious at first, seems to be an extremely beneficial way for me to process past ideas and transfer them into posts like these.
All in all, while I do feel that this project wasn’t a peak moment, it also wasn’t a weak one. I think that as a class and in our groups, we may have missed the mark by a bit when it came to our campaign videos. Nonetheless my biggest takeaways have been very personal to my learning. I feel that I can provide sophisticated and well thought out answers to questions like, “how should we govern ourselves?” and back them up. All of the work I’ve done over these past weeks has been the answer to the driving question. It’s difficult to summarize in one sentence, and I’m in no way hitting the political target, simply because there isn’t one. Politics are messy, and involve a multitude of opinions and when you think about it, answers to our question. Any citizen that chooses to vote, has an opinion on how we should govern ourselves and conveys it in casting their vote. I’m so grateful and excited by the fact that by the next federal election, I’ll most likely be eligible to vote. Our right to it is fundamental to how we actually do govern ourselves. Our voting system may be outdated, but as time goes on change is a must. It’s up to every Canadian citizen to govern our country, maybe not literally as we have a parliament for that, but in the small acts, like voting for the change you want to see in your community and all of Canada.
Thanks for tuning in
– C
