The Canadian Memory Championships is a memory sports organization in Canada in the age of the climate emergency. We haven’t always officially acknowledged the context in which we operate but recent events in Canada, including the burning of large sections of our Canadian forests, reminds us that all of us need to take steps to curb greenhouse gases emissions as we run our daily activities.
As we are re-starting after COVID-19, we don’t want it to be exactly as before. We want to put the emphasis on fair play and on playing safely. We also want to be a progressive and innovative organization.
Before COVID-19, we worked to highlight the memory achievements of competitors, of the most successful ones. We were doing just as other memory sports organizations are doing. And looking back on this, we can see how things need to change.
There is a number of key reasons that have been highlighted as the root causes of global warming. Very rich people (predominantly men) cause more greenhouse gases emissions in their pursuit of wealth. And we see a parallel here to the pursuit of excellence in sports. To be the very best in sports you need to travel to where the competitions are. You need to specialize and focus all your effort into on quest at the expense of much else. And often, athletes aren’t doing that in the interest of or for the love of their sports but simply to put themselves ahead. So, the kind of attitude that very rich people have is often mirrored by athletes. So, we need to create a sport that is aware of the bad example that athletes may end up setting and find ways to make it harder for them to end up doing so.
Since men in general are the ones who pump up more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, we could want to try and attract less of them to sports. This can be done by adding a bonus to any score achieved by a woman.
We, the Canadian Memory Championships, need to redirect our focus, which was mainly onto raising the profile of memory athletes who achieve the best individual memory records and performances, onto something else.
New records are meaningless if they aren’t helping the organization achieve its broader goals. Our goal is to survive the climate crisis but we want a world with memory champions. To ensure that this is possible, we must adjust what we mean by “champions”. Given the climate emergency, we know at this point that we don’t want to inadvertently help create any kind of greenhouse gases champions.
Therefore, we impose a penalty on the scores achieved by any sports people who can’t come to our competition by self-propelled means, or local public transportation.
So, those that we want to crown as champion here at the Canadian Memory Championships need to demonstrate their value as a wholesome caring human being and not anything else.
As a matter of fact, given the times we live in, anyone achieving more to fight against greenhouse gases should be recognized as a memory champion because that person remembers important things. When the house is on fire, it’s autistic to try and memorize cards; we won’t call you a champion for doing that–even if you’re the best at it. And so the title of Canadian Memory Champion from now on will tend to drift towards those who are truly worthy of rewards, from all of us living in the age of the climate emergency.
Sports can be a good thing because they can bring people together, and help bring solidarity and friendship between them. And this can be a springboard to achieving more, and perhaps even help people to cooperate better in times of emergency as we are now. And so despite that no body will ever consider memory competitions an emergency we, as a sport, can be a springboard for other activities that are more urgent. We can also help to shape values that will help us deal more effectively with the climate emergency.
The Canadian Memory Championships wants to
- Give Canadians one more reason to go vegan: Get bonus points at our competition.
- Encourage people to use climate-friendly transportation: Bonus points!
- Help raise the profile or more climate friendly people: Bonus points for women!
- Help more people see the value of memory techniques both in their daily lives and as a hobby.
- Encourage education reforms to ensure that every student is proficient in memory techniques as they graduate from high-school.
- We seek to have more sports organization acknowledging the climate emergency by taking the kind of steps that we’re suggesting here.
- Find ways in which a better memory could be used to do more climate friendly activities and then remember to take action.
- Have fun doing all of that.
There is a price to pay for being selective in determining who is a champion as when you make change like that, people complaining that you are rocking the boat! But we have to do it. As a matter of fact, it should have been done decades ago. Unmitigated climate change is expected to rock the boat in much more troubling way.
We have removed a rating page for Canadian Memory Athletes. Now that we change the way we’ll be rating memory athletes, we can no longer publish that page. We will once again have that page up immediately after our first competition featuring our new scoring approach with fresh new scores only.
Simon Luisi
Chairperson
contact@canadianmemorychampionships.ca
Canadian Memory Championships 