The Alpha Pumpkin and The Humanitarian Movement

For Halloween, Ryan and I bought a pumpkin at a convenient store that was selling these medium-sized, apartment-friendly pumpkins. We named him Alpha because he was clearly superior to the rest in terms of colour, shape and intellect.



Tonight, I attended my first political activist group meeting. It's a group called Humanize Toronto, part of the Humanitarian Movement. From what I understand, they believe in social change that starts from personal improvement, which is something I believe strongly in (consider The Ripple Effect). I met a lot of very interesting people, most of whom are teachers, and we got into discussions about teaching theories and how our society was brought up on the idea that positive reinforcement means that you can get people to do things by giving them tangible encouragement (this may or may not have been the original idea, but it's certainly how our society interprets it). So teachers give out things like stickers and candy to try to encourage kids to do things, but the result is that people are becoming too individualistic and materialistic.

Anyway, it was really neat to meet such likeminded people. I doubt I'll have much time to help them, but I've been meaning to participate in some form of politics, and this seems like a very interesting group to be a part of.