The year of hope.

 

 The year of hope.

Life is a collection of years, beginning from nothing and finishing with nothing. If you do the entire journey, it’s mostly short of a hundred years. Somewhere at the end of the first third, you are young and full of hope, while in the last third you think about the future of those who will follow you. Mortality is a hundred percent guaranteed.

I wanted to write in the last edition of the 2021 paper a message of hope. Since I couldn’t find a reason to hope, I asked some other people what can we hope for. My generation witnessed some of the biggest changes that ever happened in human history. Fertilizers beat hunger back, no major world wars, advancement in health science (like vaccines) are prolonging life, and people in my part of the world can enjoy life better than only royalty could a couple of hundred years ago. What we hoped for sixty years ago was accomplished, but fresh problems were created.

When I try to remember the things that changed my life, I seem to focus on disasters. The great war was finished, and the Fascists were defeated. In its place came a cold war and we, the children, were told to hide under the desks if a nuclear war started. J. F. Kennedy was murdered and his mission for a diverse, more equal world died with him. Canada celebrated its 100-year birthday when I arrived.

It was a dreamland where simple people like me could dream and hope. We worked hard, studied, and developed an economic system that worked for most people. Even the communists in the Soviet block were thriving. A few years later, Reagan, Mulroney, and Thatcher got power. Our means of making a decent living were privatized and exported. Here Peter Lougheed was replaced by Klein and good union jobs disappeared. My kids didn’t have the opportunities that I did.

As the people who used to be middle class were milling around trying to figure out what hit them, we developed new methods of cheating in politics. George Bush presided over the fall of the twin towers which plunged the Western nations into a war against Afghanistan, which was lost 20 years later.

As we watched, while our population sold their freedom on credit, China changed. From a source of cheap labour, it became the new superpower rivaling the USA for world domination. In 2020, a new virus infected the world. The American president tried in vain to dub it “The China flu” but he failed. His efforts towards convincing people that to stop global warming we need to use more oil and coal failed as well.

If someone would have told me that a virus may kill more people of one political persuasion than another, I would have laughed at the idea. How can a dumb virus know about human political aspirations? Yet observing what is happening in the United Kingdom opens the door for exactly that. In the United States, where a political administration belittled the pandemic and people refuse vaccinations, we may yet see an explosion of cases of the Omicron. It didn’t happen yet and we hope it will not, but time will tell. I don’t wish this kind of death on anyone.

Looking for hope, I am lost in messages of gloom. In winter, the most unusual weather flattened parts of the United States. British Colombia is trying to reopen destroyed roots to the rest of the country. We add this to the problems we have with a shortage of labour and the hamstrung supply chain. Talking with my 18-year-old grandson I said, well it could be worse, and he answered, how grandpa? It left me speechless. On TV, our political leader was saying he would not cancel Christmas since people would break the rules. I remember him saying that mentioning blowing up pipelines is inviting people to do so. If omicron spreads as predicted, he will have to do political gymnastics again.

In the search for a message of hope, I researched some scientists who deal with related subjects. Some said that our follies will not harm the world much. Ocean warming, killer pandemics, destroyed civilizations, all happened before. The world bounced back and new species became dominant, humans being one.

Another option is humans under stress achieving their true potential. A Christmas song predicts that the son of God will become “the great I am.” The Bible said that through him we may have all that the Father has. Ancient civilizations and primitive cultures always believed in magic and miracles. Could esoteric knowledge be our hope? If it is, then we must go an extra step yet. Nature, the universe, or God can’t hand us supernatural powers before we learn that we are all one.

Could it be that we are learning an important painful lesson now? You know, “it tastes awful, but it works” kind of lesson? I don’t wish to see an example of a biblical disaster, but nobody asked what I want. I am just an observer.

I write to make people think and entertain them. I am in the same boat as my readers and there are lots of them. I will tell you about my splinter of hope. I live in a small community where people are nice to each other, animals roam the streets and there are many examples of kindness and caring. I hope little communities like ours, if the “stuff” hits the fan, will be spared like Noah’s ark.

Also, we can all look at beautiful Christmas art, listen to Christmas music, and send a wish to God. Please use your superior mind and find workable solutions. Don’t let the Grinch, me or anyone, steal Christmas. May this holiday be a preparation for a much better holiday next year.  

Merry Christmas to you all, and many more to come. Use the telephone, computers, and other devices until we meet again.

Here is a link to my blog: https://thesimpleravenspost.blogspot.ca/  Feel free to check other articles and comment.

Imagine, understand, and Gurdjieff.

 

Imagine, understand, and Gurdjieff.

An adult told me that Jesus probably walked on the path I was walking on back in Israel. We found a Roman coin, but it was after someone dug a hole in the ground. Jesus may have walked under the path. When my mom wanted to show the kids what a Christmas tree looked like, we couldn’t find a tree like the one in the pictures anywhere. They don’t grow in Israel. People in Israel didn’t celebrate Christmas and the word “Betula” didn’t necessarily say virgin, but a young woman. The total story sounded a bit far-fetched to me.

We emigrated to Canada and Christmas became alive. Downtown Calgary had lights with tinsels over the streets and I saw a real shopping mall decorated for the holiday. People were shopping as if a disaster was coming. Carts and bags full of stuff disappeared into vehicles and shoppers went back for more. The first midnight mass I saw in a church was something out of this world. People all dressed up filled the cathedral, live choir music, and tons of decorations. The birth of a saviour (Yeshua) was celebrated and we wish you a merry Christmas, Peace on Earth and other slogans appeared everywhere especially in the black-and-white TV commercials.

I knew the figure of the saviour from the tortured figures I saw on crosses in churches in Israel, but now we were celebrating the virgin birth and the pretty little baby under a German tree (Weihnachtsbaum) with lights. Father Christmas changed from a forest hunter to a hefty guy in a red suit, drinking cola and smoking a pipe. Later on, a priest tried to explain it all to me, but the explanation was insufficient. Beautiful music, shiny decorations, lots of stuff, and dressed-up people couldn’t explain the Joy to the World that came from the young Semitic Israeli Rabbi who taught simplicity, selfless giving, forgiveness, sharing, and taking care of the less fortunate. This guy told his uneducated followers to go on a journey without spare clothes or extra provisions.

How did the message get mixed up? I knew Christians did the worst atrocities in the Second World War, some of who even went to church on Sunday and sang beautiful hymns to the sound of a pipe organ. My generation knew Nazi hunters and families who lost all their relatives and were seeking justice.

I remember mom talking to a friend who said. If Jesus came back, the Christians would crucify him again. They would call him a socialist, progressive, or whatever is the lingo of the day and send him back (by crucifixion) upstairs while selling shavings of the cross as souvenirs.

In my early days, people talked about the most popular philosopher from Europe at the beginning of the century, Gurdjieff. An Armenian name. Like most serious philosophers, his work was pretty intricate, but I will simplify. Gurdjieff believed people exist in some kind of sleep or perhaps dream state. Something similar to the modern idea of the Matrix where we are existing in a supercomputer. Both ideas assume that reality is inside our brains. Gurdjieff talked about three brains controlling mind, body, and emotions, yet having a hard time connecting the three. He emphasized our natural short attention span as proof. We jump from one thought to another and act as if we are different persons each time. In his opinion, we all have some level of split personality.

When we read the Bible, we get a story about a young Jewish teacher who told people that being rich and powerful, possessing material things, and winning fights are not the most important things in life. Life in another dimension, he called the “Kingdom of the father” is eternal and valuable. Although there are details about his origins and birth, he seems not to talk or brag about it.

I try to think what the Messiah would teach if He was to return today. First, he would want to know why we are destroying the world we live in. To live life without physical work wouldn’t be an acceptable answer. The number of people employed to kill each other he would not welcome. That so many children don’t have reliable homes because of poverty and/or genuine commitment from the adults wouldn’t sit well with him. Seeing that a small percentage of humans own such a huge amount of humanity’s wealth would bother him. Realizing that banks and large institutions create money, lend it at interest, and don’t practice the Jewish law of Jubilee would bother him. Realizing that millions of people have no safe, sustaining piece of the world to live on wouldn’t be welcome. The wealth hoarded and squandered by some religious institutions, now more than ever with TV evangelicals would hurt him more than the nails in his hands did. We can go on.

Christmas or a celebration of the turning of the season existed for much longer than any known religion. It is a time to celebrate hope. A new beginning.

I decided to make a list of what I would ask Jesus for Christmas. Surprisingly, all can be obtained without miracles.

Solve the energy problem. Reduce wasting it., like walking instead of using a golf cart. (if we can) Develop clean energy and discourage the dirty kinds.

Do away with military built-up and divert the money and talents to peaceful means.

Block the efforts of those who compete to rule humanity by setting limits.

Give all humans a way to stay alive, but let them improve their condition by working with the most rewards for the most beneficial work.

Eliminate COVID by sharing the vaccine formula with the world.

Maintain good honest information for all. Begin by supporting little local media outlets available to all. We could start by giving subscriptions to local papers as gifts for Christmas.

A Christian Christmas is available to all if we only want it to be.

Here is a link to my blog: https://thesimpleravenspost.blogspot.ca/  Feel free to check other articles and comment.

Positive attitude is enough?

 

Positive attitude is enough?

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas, everywhere we go, but I am hardly going anywhere. 80% of humanity is unvaccinated and I (foolishly?) wish to remain alive. People accuse me of being a “slave to the government lies”. Somehow my mind is stuck on the idea that all the world’s governments are not trying to reduce the population by injecting us with slow-acting poison. Our governments invested heavily in developing means to combat an alien life-form that kills us. Now we are discovering a new old truth that we are not OK unless all of us are.

It’s tempting to make a lot of money on selling a vaccine, but we may die if it keeps mutating in those not vaccinated. A mirror is placed in front of our face and a voice is saying. We can't be OK unless all of us are OK. Strange message considering that we learned something else. Beat the competition. Each for himself. On the other hand, a chain is as strong as its weakest link.

If we consider my age and health, I should be more interested in sales on funeral services than what may destroy humankind in a few years, or perhaps the world’s atmosphere in a hundred years. However, I have an intellectual interest. That and a bunch of grandkids. In my days, there were still people around who were willing to die with honour or die for the country. The country I always thought of was the Earth and its people. Archeologists so far never discovered which race or nation Adam and Eve came from.

The latest threats popularized by our instant but not perfect media are pandemics, this one or the next, and economic collapse and damage to the thin layer of air we call atmosphere. We don’t need to worry about any of them. Long before they kill us, we will kill each other.

When there is trouble in the world, a strange thing happens. The people demand that the governments will fix the troubles if they caused them or not. We pay little attention to the news and what the governments are doing until there is trouble and we blame them if they don’t fix it fast. They are hammered from both ends. Above them, there is the high society that usually finances their being in power. They demand a return on investment. Below them, there are the billions of people who always want better conditions, easier life, the things that the high society has and they do not. What should the governments do? They try to get people’s attention away from the problems that they can’t solve. A proven way that always worked is to go to war. When we are busy killing each other, we rally behind the leaders. The high society finds ways to make money on wars.

Most things that humans used to associate with the powers of gods now can be done if you have the money to make it happen. We fly, see in the dark, raise the dead, level mountains, beat pandemics, you name it and we can do it. The hand of a very rich man can smite nations as well. People worship money and its power. Money can finance scientific research and buy technology that yet doesn’t exist. The world is being shaped according to what the few with most money desire.

I receive messages from people telling me that the way things are is not bad at all. Looking around, I see that the train we are on is speeding towards disaster unless we take action to stop or divert it. There is a bright future but we must aim for it.

The prophets of old used to say, repent and God will solve the situation, and at times, people did.

Global Warming is hurting us tremendously but it only just began. We can take hard steps starting now. Our existing technology is such that in a few moves we should be able to develop and use cleaner and soon clean energy. We must divert many resources to it starting immediately. Thorium reactors, small nuclear cores, new vehicles, and so on, can go on the production line. With some coordination and global will to unite efforts, the dream can come to fruition.

Changes to consumption habits are another solution. We know that our treatment of food and its use are major pollution producers. First, wealthy nations can develop and popularize less wasteful habits. We don’t have to discard half of the food we produce. It can be controlled simply by not trying to use food as a major money-making source but a needed commodity. It happens naturally when there are shortages. Next, we can easily get our proteins from less polluting, less wasteful foods and distribute them more evenly. Easy to do if we convert public opinions. We know how to do it; we have done it in the case of smoking. Yes, we will have demonstrations and crying over freedoms, but yes we can.

All we have to do is champion a new way. We built our entire history around groups of people, nations, and races competing with each other for resources and world domination. The competition served us well by advancing human civilization to where it is now. It is time to apply the breaks and start filling the gaps we left behind in every aspect of life.

We could apply the Canadian experience to the entire world and make it into a quilt of enormous proportions. All the beauty and usefulness of all the pieces can be preserved, but the primary goal would change. Instead of fighting, competing, and winning or conquering the world, we would aim to make it a better place for all. Using the united power of all, we can transform the planet into a Heaven for all. Just the money that we spend on wars and weapons is more than enough to do the job. The entire world could be like our little paradise in the mountains.

Here is a link to my blog: https://thesimpleravenspost.blogspot.ca/  Feel free to check other articles and comment.

Education, Science, and Religion.

 

Education, Science, and Religion.

When I was little and on the farm, I saw more animals than people. Animals lived life reacting to what the world did with them. Farm animals waited for humans to decide their fate and wild animals did some things instinctively to help themselves. It was in Israel and we had lots of sheep. Domestic sheep seemed to have very little initiative of their own. Years later I learned the Bible and in it, there was talk about lambs or “Peter, feed my sheep.” I realized that there are two kinds of people, shepherds, and sheep. Strangely, the shepherds are not always about taking care of the sheep. Many of them are living to compete with each other and only care about the sheep as a commodity.

The humans, who are sheep, learned over a long time to fend for themselves to some degree. First, it was by developing religions that competed against each other, and lately by using science, which is the learning of how the world works. In the last five hundred years or so, our present civilization decreased its interest in religions and reinvested it in science. Sadly, the vast knowledge of spirituality was lumped into one category and found itself competing against science. People either believed in religion, even the parts that made no sense to many, or science that now often is divided against itself, as religions used to be, and still are.

Religion and science became tools in the hands of the competing shepherds and both strove to keep the sheep busy working to stay alive, with no time or means to contemplate the big picture. However, necessity and increasing population brought some great advancement to the general population, the sheep. With that came easier life, to some, and exploitation of resources that should belong to all future generations. The competing shepherds or leaders only care about winning the game they are playing now. At the same time, the common people, now exposed to science, began to assess the ongoing situation and do what only religions used to do, considering where all this is leading us. Will we even have a future in the world?

Learned people banded together and began questioning what the leaders were doing. The religions for different reasons also entered the fray. Some wished to follow the examples told in the ancient books literally, while others joined science to preserve a future for humanity. They call it stewardship of God’s gift, the world.

Science, now treated as a new religion, became the target for the leaders of some industries and big businesses. They sought to devalue its influence upon the common people. Around 1995, a new theory was popularized, advocating living in one’s own reality. Around the year 2000, we saw people denying the thing we call reality and believing something else. First, a few boys believed they were girls and vice versa, (without biological justification) creating uproar and it expanded. Fake News became a legitimate industry propelling people to fame.

It pitted science against Alternate Reality. What used to be fiction became “other people’s reality.” The “truth” became an option resting on “beliefs.” Creationism, Intelligent design, Anti-vaccination, Holocaust revisionism, Police conspiracy, Alternative medicine, No Global Warming, Flat Earth movement, and thousands of other ideas became Skeptical Movements, according to Michael Shermer author of Heaven on Earth.

Margaret Atwood tells about a child that had a monster under the bed. Nothing could convince him otherwise. She told him that if you place a cabbage at exactly this spot, the monster can’t come out. He slept wonderfully.

Between March and September in 2020, 200,000 Americans died from COVID-19 and people were not vaccinating. In Canada, there was a shortage of vaccines, so a much higher rate accepted the vaccine, saving countless lives.

 Until a short time ago, people refused to believe that there is Global Warming especially here where we sell fossil fuels. When we saw the outcome and evidence, North Americans pretended that there is nothing we can do, therefore can’t change. Now when we realize the cost of not acting, and we begin to see that money can be made on changing to clean energy, options are changing.

We are left with a new thriving industry that makes people popular by producing and selling fake news and alternate realities. Reality shows make large profits and politicians win elections by fighting against science. Newspeople ride the wave by giving the imagined realities, what they call, equal time. Logic is no longer a decisive force, but another option. The scientists that we educate and employ must waste time arguing against irrational forces, while lives and property are being destroyed.

Any of us can get a thriving platform by selling falsehoods on Social Media. If the lie we tell is what people who hide from the truth want to hear, it goes viral. Yet, the universe is going as it should. Stars follow their paths, the weather follows atmospheric conditions, viruses mutate and evolve to increase their chance of survival, and the sheep….graze and give wool, meat, and milk. The shepherds only care about the growth of their business. The few who care are drowned in the crowd of those who don’t.

As a child, I watched the sheep milling around, getting organized by a dog, and heading to the mountain to graze. At night, they came home. They never questioned the shepherd. People study the world through science and religion, attempting to improve their situation. The leaders sometimes want to help and improve, or only want to compete with other leaders. At this point, there is only one option left. Let nature reduce the herd or take control, use knowledge, and direct action in the right way.

The right way is to care for all sheep and use their united power to gain a future. We took the knowledge and we have no choice but to use it.

Here is a link to my blog: https://thesimpleravenspost.blogspot.ca/  Feel free to check other articles and comment.

Canada at war, 2021.

 

Canada at war, 2021.

My mom used to tell a story about a soul that found itself in the afterlife with everything turning to gold. It may have been an opera in Europe. It occurred to me that someone may write about people around us being condemned to exist in a Hell where everything turned into black gold or bitumen. Art influences people.

There is a pandemic going on, economic disaster looming because of supply chain issues, drought affecting food supplies, racial problems, migrant crisis, democracy failing in neighbouring countries, and now floods and fires right next to us. Hospitals full, shortage of homes, food banks stretched to limits, labour shortage, medical professionals leaving, and above all, people fighting each other over politics or how to combat the disasters. I remember myself as a child saying, mom, why is God letting bad things happen? She answered, He is not doing it; we are.

Canada was at war just a few years ago against Afghanistan on the other side of the planet. 40,000 Canadian troops were deployed, 159 died and over two billion dollars were used up. This morning I heard on the news that Canadian armed forces are being deployed in BC and saw videos of soldiers, planes, and helicopters. Not far from here, there is devastation greater than what many wars cause. Fires caused by a Heat Dome and soon after floods by an Atmospheric River, destroyed many Canadian lives. Meteorologists agree that the primary cause is global warming. The manufactured news financed by my taxes and fossil fuel industries is working overtime to dispute. We have been broadsided, and the crew is arguing if there really is a problem.

While we focused on the news from the destroyed Fraser Valley, some black-clad military force attacked the Wet’suwet’en first nation in northern BC. The gas pipeline company made a deal, ignoring the hereditary chiefs government of the nation that owns the land. They installed another government and told the nation to be happy with some jobs.

From space, you can see a blue planet that is perfect for life as we know it. On the dark side, you see lights, mostly where there is a concentrated wealthy human population. The world of humans was all dark half a century ago. Now humans harnessed sun energy stored in the ground and made life easier for the lucky few and the others wish to share in the bounty. If they all do without changing the source, they will damage the host and the game will be over. Nature is testing us.

The test is serious and failing is an option we shouldn’t even consider. It could easily become the final test. Many of us have been enjoying the good times and not doing our homework. Some are panicking while others are ignoring the writing on the wall, letting someone else handle the problems if they will. The sad reality is that we already used up the time we had to study for the test. We are facing many tests. We slept in and the car broke down. Thankfully, humans don’t normally break down in times of despair, instead, we strengthen our resolve.

I dug up an old documentary by the National Film Board of Canada.

“OUTBREAK: Anatomy of the 1885 Montreal Smallpox Epidemic”

It showed the same situation as now. People were dying, but a stubborn minority was going wild in an attempt to stop the vaccinations. Some places instituted mandatory vaccinations but a lot of damage was done. The way that pandemics work is spreading through the path of least resistance. It looks like people are getting the upper hand until close to the end when large numbers are infected spreading it out of control. At that point, it’s too late.

I tested the theory (not really) that our rights are being taken away. I tried to fly to another country. No, they will not allow me without my shots. Well, I tried a smaller test. I went to a restaurant with no pants on. They stopped me even as I was complaining about my constitutional rights. I showed them a study confirming that pants can restrict my ability to have children, and they laughed at me. How insulting. Now I realized people are more concerned with potential death than my constitutional rights or freedoms and gave up.

Next, I took aim at the supply chain problems. It must be the Lefties demanding too much pay. A kind old economist told me to look again. It is a problem with capitalism trying to be too efficient; he said. We used to store goods for sale until it was needed. Now we order what is presold and expect it to be there when we need it. Any disruption stops the flow. We have such disruption with labour he said. As long as we kept unemployment at about 5% we could always hire some desperate unemployed people. Now when we were forced to pay people to stay home or face massive bills for health care, while we also couldn’t find proper care for children, we lost that edge. Austerity and efficiency provide very little flexibility. We went overboard; I concluded.

The world is a mess, so I look again at The Pass, where I live. It was named paradise by a wise woman who now passed away. Here live older people and the average income is low. I don’t see poverty, nor great wealth. There are no signs of war. We have fewer cases of the pandemic than most places. People express their differences while helping each other regardless of opinions.

Paradise is where people share, help each other, tolerate differences, and we have it here in a mountain pass. No one is filthy rich, and no one is left behind. The local government has honour and traffic stops in the middle of the street to let you cross. I found Heaven without dying. Thank you, great creator.

Here is a link to my blog: https://thesimpleravenspost.blogspot.ca/  Feel free to check other articles and comment.

The Lord hears the cry of the poor.

 

The Lord hears the cry of the poor.

I think it was 1955. We were sitting around the kitchen table on the farm with light from the kerosene lamp. There was also a candle with a lot of wax drips around it that we could take to the bathroom. I was little playing with a little wooden truck and my parents were playing cards. It was quiet, aside from some horse noise from the barn. No electricity, telephone or a car. All that we had came from the little store in the town about a mile away. I could hear the rain on the roof and window.

This same scenario was repeated all over the world, including rural Alberta. Most people lived like that. I had been to the city a few times and knew that at night there were lights in the windows, cars in the streets, and people walking with umbrellas. For us, there was a hand-cranked World War II flashlight that I couldn’t operate yet. The stars on a clear night were outstanding. Mostly we lived as people did for thousands of years, but there was a bus twice a day and sometimes we heard a prop airplane and used to run out to see it. People read books and the occasional newspaper when it was available. Everybody did some crafts. I was wearing socks that mom knitted. Our energy footprint was tiny.

Now more than half a century passed, and the world changed a lot. Many people still use candles and lamps but we are playing with new toys. Nomads in tents have cell phones. Two of us, my wife and I, have seven computer-like devices, two vehicles and God only knows how many lightbulbs. Hardly anyone makes things by hand. I live modestly yet I possess more things than a whole town used to. Most of the “things” are made somewhere else in the world. If I had to pay someone here to make them, it would bankrupt me many times over. Mom invested a week to make my socks and now I am wearing socks I bought for a couple of bucks at a two-for-one sale. In 1955, the world had less than half the people that we have now.

The US and Canada industrialized years ago and people moved to the cities to work in “jobs” while farms and small businesses disappeared. When I entered the market, there was still a need for skilled workers, but the jobs were slowly broken into components requiring less skill. Some thirty years or so ago, a transformation occurred. It became more efficient to move our jobs to less developed countries and transport finished goods back. The less developed countries took advantage of the situation and here workers were left with less ability to make a good living.  

Soon our tradespeople no longer could make things, they mostly replaced components made in China. The high skilled people no longer could apply their skills without machines made somewhere else, and we were competing with people living in poverty in faraway lands. We elected leaders who promised more “efficiency,” and at the same time more well-paying jobs. While they flooded the market with cheaply made goods, there was no room or need for skilled highly pay workers. Only one solution remained. “Create jobs.”

How can you do that? Our automated industries hardly need most of our workers. Cheap workers for service industries are imported and our folks don’t do cheap jobs, but the economy needs their buying power to continue working. Most created jobs depend on revenues from dwindling or dangerous exploitation of natural resources or on government injection of money. We could solve the problem, but it would require withdrawing from addictions we formed. Addictions to using what we can no longer produce and selling raw materials or stored energy that we dig up.

Our other addiction is our fanatical devotion to the few amongst us who “made it”. We look at them, taking the meat and fat from our economy, by tax manipulation, admiring them, and dreaming that someday we will be them. They enjoy our admiration and risk our species’ survival to get more.

When all the manufacturing jobs were exported, the related pollution went with it. Now it gives the corporations an excuse not to curtail pollution. China and India are blamed. Fantastic schemes are named saving graces. The future generations will filter carbon out of the Earth’s atmosphere. Other possibilities are, increased production of pollutants will enable us to afford cleaning up the planet. Another, we will “promise” the poorest nations money in carbon credits for their rescue and let them burn or drown. We will promise them vaccines against a pandemic also in the same breath.

The new situation, where the world is changing thanks to the effects of pollution is creating tension at the borders. There are additional factors that make some parts of the world uninhabitable and it’s growing. People who are hardly equipped to deal with change are squeezed, often losing the traditional farms in areas that no longer can provide the necessities of life. We left them with one option, to migrate to new areas, including the more prosperous West. This creates fights and armed conflicts. Those fortunate to exist where conditions are somewhat better rise to defend their way of living. We spent more money on defending borders than on improving the situation.

Solutions are developing like Mycelium (mushroom roots) to replace plastics Perovskite (sand) Solar Cells to make electricity from windows, but we do not divert the money that keeps polluting industries to make them viable. Existing industries fight back.

I listen to my favourite hymn; The Lord Hears the Cry of the Poor, Psalms 34, and wonder. Where will He take it from here? We can’t go back to 1955. Is the Lord going to abandon us and start working on a new race that will do better than us?

Here is a link to my blog: https://thesimpleravenspost.blogspot.ca/  Feel free to check other articles and comment.

Prophets and doomsayers.

 

Prophets and doomsayers.

In the bible, or more accurately the Old Testament, there are people called prophets. When I was a child in Israel, school trips often took us to places associated with prophets. We were used to the prophets of old being talked about as historical figures. Seeing the locations made us believe strongly that they existed and acted as they were portrayed in the scriptures. Although prophets performed several important roles, we children considered them fortune-tellers. Often they would warn kings that if some behaviours and practices didn’t change, there would be hell to pay. If the scriptures are accurate, it happened.

When I was going to university, pre-computer days, more than a few professors touched on the issue of global warming. At the time, it was so far away that we didn’t become alarmed. We knew that someday the sun will burn out, and it didn’t scare us. The idea that it will force our society to move away from burning things seemed ridiculous. Computers in our pockets were just as unbelievable. It was all Science Fiction. The invention of fire was still considered the greatest human achievement ever.

As we were discovering more oil and coal, people started debating if using natural gas wasn’t a better option. I invested in a propane vehicle and saved some money. When a few people raised the alarm, lobbyists paid by energy companies shut them down. Environmentalists said that the atmosphere is not our big toilet and oil companies answered that the world is so big that we will not see a change in our lifetime. We believed the side that fed us. I encountered many people who blame environmentalists for the loss of good jobs. I also know people who made a career in renewables.

Signs of global warming showed up and created interest and fear, especially amongst the youth and women. Women who bear children and often sacrifice themselves for future generations are more interested in forming a safe future. Fighting bravely against all odds, environmental movements gained momentum. Governments addicted to dirty energy profits pretended to be sympathetic. The UN started COPS, Climate Change Conference Of Parties. It is a big conference in which high ideals are discussed and sometimes little bits of action are taken. The underlying goal is to pacify environmental concerns while keeping the economic goals fuelled.

Generally, those who profit from dirty energy try every possible trick to prolong its use, leaving the people after us to solve the problems. Most commonly, they say that we are not ready for a change. Of course, if they took the resources from carbon energy development and applied them to clean energy, the problem would have been history. Building clean energy would provide more jobs than oil does. Research, engineering, construction, financing, all provide work. It would cause an unwanted wealth transfer that only poor people support. That is two-thirds of the human population. The silent majority has much less of a voice. India and China are saying, let us come up to your level of development and we will join you. The thin layer of air around the earth doesn’t get to vote, and the climate is noticeably changing.

Some years ago, I was reading in the Old Testament the words of some prophet. I can’t remember who. It said that at the end of days, men will abdicate their leadership responsibilities and women and children will attempt to take over. I look at COP 26 in Glasgow taking place these last two weeks. Some truths are obvious.

The poor nations most affected by global climate are not there. They don’t have COVID vaccines and are not permitted admission. Rich nations like Canada fill up the seats. Women who lately are making gains in leading countries are underrepresented. Youths who are hand chosen are not in decision-making positions. Most of them, many thousands, are outside demonstrating. Those who can make a difference, like our Prime Minister, are men wearing expensive blue suits and they control the money. I should rephrase, they promise money. The checks are not in the mail.

It seems as if COP is a forum for the pretenders. They promote the idea that they know that human civilization is in danger, but unfortunately, there is not much we can do about it, or if we do, it will take a long time. Yet, every minute that passes by is a moment closer to our doom. It is the little time that we have left to take action. It is the time that we are partying on the Titanic as it heads towards the iceberg. Their orchestra will keep playing as the ship goes down under the icy water.

In the Bible, the prophets Jeremiah and Isaiah predicted the destruction of Israel and Judea. Isaiah accurately saw the end of Babylon. Others foresaw great powers turn to dust. The sad journey of the Jewish people was outlined and their return to the land of their origin was told before it materialized. Now people are expecting the second coming. It is related to the end of the world as we know it. Like the old prophesies, it offers options. Words of the Christ appear on a screen in my mind.

Mothers, don’t cry for me, cry for your children. Sorrow for women with children. Two brothers will sleep in the same bed, one will die and the other survive. Father against son and daughter against mother. There are scary revelations that I have not read in many years. Remembrance day is here and I remember scenes from movies about the great wars. If and when the temperature of the ocean rises and the water will flood the lowlands, it will be worse than what I can imagine. I see thousands of kids in Glasgow marching with banners, warning the world leaders, pleading for their future. The entire picture fills up with smoke from huge chimneys. A clock is ticking, showing that there is still little time. Money drifting in an empty street……………….

Here is a link to my blog: https://thesimpleravenspost.blogspot.ca/  Feel free to check other articles and comment.

What we see is not what it is.

 

What we see is not what it is.

My good friend works in Northern BC. If what he tells me is true, the people there are tougher than in the south and are united in hate. He hates Trudeau and also hates the premier of Alberta. Trudeau is making him take the vaccine and Kenney caused him not to be paid overtime when he worked in Alberta. Kind of strange, but he swears that all his co-workers know about the vaccine causing harm. Well… there aren’t many intellectuals he works with and they get the news from sources that we don’t. He mentioned Rebel News and Tic Tok.

Since I am compromised, I have been waiting for him to get vaccinated. Yet he swore he will not let THEM inject him with poisons and some kind of electronic tracking device. Finally, (For the fourth time) he announced he was getting the shot. He plans to place a protest sign on his chest saying that his freedom was taken, etc. etc. A comment under his note said that he may die of blood clots. He wants the “news” to video his protest. Perhaps he and his co-workers think that they have a very original idea. Well, I will be happy if he is immunized and I may see him for Christmas.

The present pandemic hit the world at a bad time and place. The US came to realize that it’s losing the economic game to China, and the President made China the scapegoat instead of dealing with the real problem. They lost precious time while the country further divided itself into political ideologies, enhancing the damage the virus can inflict, and it did. Three-quarters of a million Americans lost their lives. It is relatively easy to confuse the human mind.

Those of us who study the human mind learned much in the last few years. We learned that genes do not control what people see and do. The environment and a person’s willpower do. We choose whom and what we want to be, but we don’t know it. The language we use and the actions we take on a day-to-day basis dictate our direction in life. Belief is our driving force. Our imagination is not only projecting our dreams, but also our reality. The sub-conscience mind is pre-programmed early in life and we end up living the programing. That is why most poor people remain poor and rich people stay rich.

That which we call reality is also what we expect. You may say with conviction, I know it is so, I saw it with my own eyes; and be wrong. The human eye is not what we think it is. For example, one of the primary colours that we see is green, yet green doesn’t exist. We mix a combination of other colours in our human mind and we call it green. The engineers who designed the Hubble telescope knew it. Only one of the sensors they installed is detecting light. The universe is full of radiation that our primitive eyes can’t see. Those beautiful pictures we see from space are a combination of waves that we can’t see without special filters.  

We argue about the story of creation. That too now became a political point. Was it an evolution or creation story? How dumb. It was a creation that we are only now beginning to understand. Our minds don’t let us believe the truth if it doesn’t fit our limited knowledge we call science. We will learn more. The great “I am” creates but the simple minds yet don’t understand how.

Our rudimentary understanding of time doesn’t cover even a portion of reality. Memories are only a small, inaccurate portion of reality that keeps changing all the time. When we say “I” we shouldn’t mean a skin bag full of bones and parts. We should refer to the entire universe. “All that belongs to the Father belongs to me and all that belongs to me is yours through me.” (Bible.) Why do we say it and not believe it? We interpret the knowledge with limited resources, politicize it and fight over it to make a profit here on earth. If we followed religion or science, we should be OK. Just forget the statement about six days. When the earth was forming “days” were not 24 hours on a human watch.

Now, in my old age, I am facing a possibility that someone will change the beloved province I helped build and call home. A political group is working hard to change my reality. Nurses and doctors are leaving. Private surgeries will provide care for people with money, leaving more complicated cases and poor people to wait longer for care and die. They will force our public schools to teach the curriculum thought in private schools skewed to one religion, contradicting science. Mentioning polluting the environment will be investigated. They will curtail help for disadvantaged people. Insurance will be out of reach for those who need it most. Canada’s pension will be replaced to focus on investing in carbon-emitting industries instead of on those who live on it. The one that hurts most, we will no longer have the security we always enjoyed by using the RCMP. The red coats will be replaced.

Those Neo-Liberal ideas are ruining our economy, as we are presently witnessing. The focus is on selling raw materials and buying finished goods made by cheap labour somewhere else. Where will our jobs and high standard of living come from? Now the Neo-Liberals teamed up with the anti-vaxxers and infected my friend and his buddies.

We must realize that we need to protect ourselves, produce what we need here, and look after our brothers, sisters, kids, and parents. If others do it, they will ruin us. Our investors will go wherever they make more profits while we will not be able to feed ourselves. We need small businesses, little farms, and vaccines.

Here is a link to my blog: https://thesimpleravenspost.blogspot.ca/  Feel free to check other articles and comment.

Six minutes on National news.

 

Six minutes on National news.

It pleasantly surprised me to see the CBC National doing a piece about the Crowsnest Pass. I can remember only a few times when we were on the news. The first one was over twenty years ago when someone reopened the Roxy theatre for a play (about Filomena?). We came to see it and guess what. A couple of minutes on the news then and we are retired here now. Being on the news makes a difference. We were on the news during the big fire when the volunteer fire department was praised and there was some coverage when the council deleted the famous Thunder in the Valley and some people objected. Other times, the news was not positive, like when murders occurred or a developer left investors in the cold and disappeared.

This time, the talk is all about coal and folks being upset that the provincial government removed important regulations on a long weekend’s eve. When you make a move that may affect an area as big as a country, you can’t expect it to go unnoticed. The one old rancher whose family has been here for generations said, this is the water tower of all of southern Alberta. It amazes me that the provincial government couldn’t figure it out. By making that mistake, they managed to create a tear in our social fabric. Could it be the old British “divide and rule” idea resurfacing here?

The People who were interviewed presented both sides of the argument, which is a sign of good journalism. Those on the coal side were frank. Looking for prosperity, said one. We have a hundred and twenty years of coal mining history, said another. Can’t live on a few tour guides said another. The mayor, who is a local business owner, said, I don’t see any other industries knocking on our doors. In my eye, here is the problem. Both provincial and local governments believe that the way to succeed is by waiting for private industries to take initiative and give it their blessings. Pay others to do our job.

I think that the examples above provide an answer. In the old days, when we needed fire departments, someone organized volunteers who were the pride of the towns. We had an excellent fire protection system that not only rivaled the professionals, but made the news by doing more. The volunteers managed to set up a fireworks show that put us on the map. When someone came in, more interested in fighting than solving problems, the entire house of cards collapsed.

Governing is not a cheating game like poker, nor a spectator game either. It’s not a game where the players can spend all the time reading the rules. That is the bureaucrat’s job. It’s a game for people able to formulate a vision, build teams, organize action and see results. I saw it done with the revitalization of the Coleman downtown here, but I don’t know where it went from there.

I was active in politics a long time ago. I was a vice president of a union and I knocked on doors for the Progressive Conservatives. I am proud of our achievements, including the coal policy and I am not against developing our resources, Mr. Premier. I am pro Albertans working together with all Albertans. Now I am ready for what may be the last big fight. There are many reasons to be concerned and the future of Pass residents, Albertans, Canadians, and humans is being decided.

On the world stage, there are disasters lined up. The climate is changing. It changes everything. World leadership is being challenged. China is overtaking the USA in economics and racing on the military and technology track. A worldwide scarcity of freshwater is building and soon may also include fresh air. A pandemic is building up and will soon reach its climax in the underdeveloped world. A supply chain issue can destroy our economy. It already started. What do we need to do to fix our problems?

I found a list of ten things in the news, stated by the Pope. The world’s problems are his business. He prayed publicly. In the name of God: 1. Reveal the patented vaccine formula. 2. Cancel debts that can’t be paid. 3. Control the extractive polluting industries. 4. Deal with the food-producing corporations. 5. Reduce the money financing the arms manufacturers. 6. control the technology giants. 7. Deal with the communications industries. 8. Deal with the dishonest media. 9. End colonialism-related aggression. 10. Stop the speeding train hurling us to the abyss. (I am paraphrasing a lot.) All leaders, political, religious, and others, pretend to want to fix the world’s problems. Pope Francis’s list is most conclusive.

We can’t do much about global issues. We are a small mountain community and most of us are older. The best we can hope for is to be a good example for whoever is looking. We can stop the hate and look for better solutions. It is rumoured that Montem is looking to build a “gravity battery” using water and mountains. We have it and can support the project. Do we have the political will?

Will our politicians on all levels do their job? They should direct events so the coal removed from the basins of the future energy storage plant will pay for its construction. They should refuse political donations from the project and only have the well-being of their constituents as their motivation. We can lead by showing a good example.

If we do, the Crowsnest Pass can be on the news many times yet. Nothing is as newsworthy as a group of people demonstrating in real life that moral integrity can beat being selfish. We can be the living proof that humans are truly superior to other life forms.

Here is a link to my blog: https://thesimpleravenspost.blogspot.ca/  Feel free to check other articles and comment.

Together we stand, divided we fall.

 

 Together we stand, divided we fall.

In situations of war or danger, the best friendships are formed. At least that is what I used to think. People who face danger often band together and most often help each other. After wars are over, it is common for folks to retain friendships and there are examples of the comrades going into business together. There are advantages to that. Although we gain from competition, we also can benefit a lot from togetherness, as long as we don’t try to cheat. We have an in-built mechanism that guides us towards belonging to a group. Groups, towns, cities, and countries are to our benefit. We pay for the benefit with some lost individuality.

I was raised by people who fought together, survived by helping each other, and thrived by working together. I was born right after the biggest war that humans ever fought. It took many years, but the spirit of togetherness gave way to the well-popularized idea of rugged individualism. Most of my adult life took place in the longest period of relative peace in the world. The generation that raised me disappeared and the new people didn’t have first-hand experience in the strength of friendship or any other form of working together. Thirty years or more after the great war people grew up on a diet of a new culture where individual winning is the coveted prize that everyone seeks. It is visible with families, churches, communities, and all aspects of life, all breaking apart.

The movies after the war were portraying famous battles of freedom-loving American soldiers, pilots, and sailors. There were movies about the great suffering of the Jewish people who sprung back up and built themselves a homeland. There was a period of glorifying the tough pioneers who fought the native population (Not here) and won a new life in the west. Seeking more heroes to talk about, movies and plays told the stories of historical figures who excelled and made self-sacrifices for the freedom of all. Women heroines started showing up as main characters. Romantic love replaced arranged marriages. Kids were now dreaming of being princes and princesses. The world went on turning.

The new humans, who mostly didn’t know war and suffering, turned their attention to the American dream. Millions were mesmerized by movies depicting glorified American suburban life that treated those nonwhite Americans as servants or savages. In that climate, stars were born. Movie stars, sports stars, rock stars, business stars, all made kids want to be stars. Working together for common good gave in to building personal fortunes in any way possible.

Soon we had an inflated cast of stars and Hollywood invented “superstars and superheroes.” Those often were fictional characters existing only in the imagination. The one sport all people took part in by default was business. People had to work to eat and competed for a good placement in our economic system. Most lost the race before it started. New industries sprung up to help individuals get closer to stardom. Sports shoes, faster bikes, machines that can mimic professional jobs, and gallons or tons of makeup to make women prettier. All that star-making material made some people millionaires and a new star arrived, the billionaires.

With billionaires came hoards of professionals to help them avoid paying taxes and for the common people, computer programs to do the same on a mass scale. I have the accounting program, but not the money to hide from the taxman. The superstars, superheroes of industry, and all other popular few found ways to siphon resources from the greater population, and the forgotten surplus people, at times entire countries full of them, worked harder to pay for luxuries they could hardly even imagine. Those benefiting from their involuntary sacrifices and poverty demanded not to see them or hear about them. I heard a friend comment: “I am sick of Social Justice.” And he was.

I am sick of social injustice and glad that nature, or God, is finally taking steps to correct it. We had our chance and now it’s happening without us. Our kids and grandkids are taking matters into their own hands. They are sick of us risking their future for a few people to get good returns on their investments in dirty energy sources. Women are taking over our political systems, intending to make a better world for their children. Essential workers are quitting and looking to unionize and get fair compensation for their risks and efforts. Their food prices went up like anyone else’s. People are refusing to work with others who may spread a deadly virus.

Tragically, the controversy about health and safety was politicized by an unbalanced but popular politician. The Right chose to ignore the problem and the Left to use all means to promote and enforce safety. I am not OK with it. Here the political Left is using the Right wing’s methods. Starve them into submission is and shouldn’t be our method. If we kill people to save people, we are not being Christian.

To me, it’s enough if we gave people a limited edition pin saying I am vaccinated. We can designate some seats in public places as Unvaccinated Sections. We can’t fix a “wrong” by doing what’s wrong ourselves. That is where I may differ from some others who come from Israel.

Humans know the benefits of togetherness but forget the power of jealousy and the need for revenge. It ruins friendships, does harm, and even kills. At this point, when we are being tested, it will serve us well to be considerate with each other, as we wish others to be with us.

Here is a link to my blog: https://thesimpleravenspost.blogspot.ca/  Feel free to check other articles and comment.

My body, and the illusion of freedom.

 

My body, and the illusion of freedom.

 I was born with no input from me. People picked me up, slapped me around, and didn’t give me a break. It was cold and my new set of sensors came online. I was introduced to light, sound, touch, and I noticed a smell and ugly taste in my mouth. None of those things existed before, but now I had no choice but to deal with it. I wanted to go back, but there was no way. My new body that now I was aware of couldn’t follow my instructions even if I knew what to do with it, which I didn’t. Hands washed me, tied me up, and handled me like a package that has no will of its own. They were big human hands and I couldn’t do a thing. I tried to move my own way, but they wouldn’t leave me alone. 

They eventually placed my new baby body on my mother, but it didn’t feel like anything that I knew before. I had to use muscles to breathe and do other things like swallowing my saliva and scream. In this world, I pushed air through vocal cords and noticed that it produced a sound that I could hear. No one paid attention to what I wanted, but I understood they were keeping me alive. Not being alive was an unwanted sensation. In my baby's brain, I had a question I couldn’t express. Are they doing it for me, or to make me useful for someone else? I am an individual, but can’t survive without my tribe.

 We spent our first seven years learning how to be human. Since I was in danger, I went from surgery to surgery. I learned better than most that I was not the boss of my life. They tied me up, put me to sleep, and did what they and my parents decided was good for me. I had no freedom. School, which I had to attend, shaped me more towards what society considers “normal” and later some basic army training completed the job. If I wanted to live in society, I followed orders. When I started working, it became critical. You don’t obey, you don’t eat. When my kids arrived, I did the same to them.

What is the difference between animals and humans? Humans can do so much more than any other animal. It is our ability to communicate with each other and do things together. We also learned how to share knowledge with future human beings using writing.

We complained before COVID but life was OK. The effects of Global Warming were considered, but mostly hurt the poorest people somewhere else. Here we suffered some setbacks from fluctuating energy prices but had the freedom to deal with it without a threat to our lives. World politics could safely be ignored. When we locked down and buried the old generation, the assumption was that things would soon be back to normal. Quick government actions diverted the worst blows and if the news was stressful, we turned it off. Things were not OK.

Food prices increased by 10%, gas went up, not because of a carbon tax, and the cost of housing went up, cushioned for a while by government temporary actions. The cost of health care went through the roof. Those who watch the news began to realize that there was no way back. The longer it takes to beat the pandemic, the worst it will get. Our medical experts, fuelled by government money, miraculously found a solution that works but, so-called freedom fighters damaged our progress. Falsely assuming that they are safe, they declared war against vaccines.

Now, the doctors and nurses and other health care workers who are publicly abused by people who deny the pandemic and refuse the most effective treatment, are holding the hands of unvaccinated dying “freedom fighters.”

Every action that spreads the virus is hurting the economy. When the economy is damaged, the poorest people suffer most and those with means feel the pinch on the bottom line. Society decided now let’s go. How can we solve the problem peacefully? We tried dialogue and failed. Our toolbox is empty. If I want to see the end of it, I must stay alive and if I get infected, I probably will not be. My unvaccinated son wants to visit me and my doctor says don’t do it. I look at my emails and a friend sent me a letter from Jesus warning me of eternal damnation if I am vaccinated. Too late for me. I got the jab, and it didn’t harm me in any way.

I rationalize. This is a fight between beliefs that people choose. There is no way to make someone believe what they don’t wish to believe. People made the issue into a freedom fight, but we never really had freedom. We always must go by what most people believe and the majority dictates the rules. We live or die by the rules. Why should it be different this time?

Jesus didn’t write this letter. He told people to look after the poor, to treat others like yourself, and to do a bunch of good things. You may not need a mask or a vaccine (I doubt it) but I may die (probably) if you don’t do it. I die, there is less business for you. A lot like me will die and the economy will crash. Why not just take a deep breath, as I did when I was born into a world where I am not free, cry aloud and live by society’s rules?

It’s too late to have the world back to where it was, but we can “take a pill” and make it better. The other option is less attractive. My son, who suffers from a phobia about needles, can stay up north for a few more months and I could send him food packages until we beat that smart virus that has no brain.

 Here is a link to my blog: https://thesimpleravenspost.blogspot.ca/  Feel free to check other articles and comment.

How are we going to pay for the best summer ever?

 

How are we going to pay for the best summer ever?

 The year 2020 is blurred in my mind. In the beginning, a new provincial government announced that we were going to trim the fat off and make the Alberta economy more efficient, reduce taxes and all will be happily heading to a brighter future. It was easy to do. A few major cuts to all the budgets and voila, Albertans were going to do more work, for less pay, have fewer services, and be happy. Schools, hospitals, municipalities, people on social assistance lost income, and many lost their jobs. Doctors had community meetings to warn us they would have to move and nurses were checking jobs in other provinces. Threats to do away with the RCMP demoralized even the police force. For the time being, police budgets were cut, and the expense added to the municipal tax burden. That is what the governments call heavy lifting. 

Before we could react, a pandemic hit us like a ton of bricks. People, especially those living in under-funded care facilities, were dying. It would have gone unnoticed like some other less reported disasters, but those were parents and grandparents of voters. Measures to slow down the spread of the new disease had to be taken, and we realized who was important in our society. People who do things with their hands become “essential workers.” The majority of the population understood now how vital are healthcare workers, teachers, drivers, food producers and so many more. It is the low and minimum earners, the people with two or three jobs who were forced to risk life and keep working. 

Others, like hospitality, the restaurant industry, and related workers, were simply let go to figure out for themselves how to go on living. The Federal government, partially fearing riots and mass discontent, stepped in to help, borrowing or “printing” money to do so. All the major parties supported the measures, but many people, more to the Right than the Right, began protesting.

A new industry sprang up on the internet, people publishing made-up stories claiming that COVID is a hoax, that wearing masks and later, getting vaccinated is an infringement on their constitutional rights and that the hoax makes money for the rich drug companies and computer billionaires. They claimed that the vaccine is a vehicle carrying a Nanochip which will enable the government to trace people who wish to hide their whereabouts. Investigations about the source of the damaging misinformation, done by MIT, recently revealed some previously unknown sources of the anti-vax campaign. Using Facebook, it originated from Kosovo and Macedonia assumingly designed to destabilize the Western political system. The originators were using Christian fundamentalist names.

 When I was young an old woman told me: if you are going to tell a lie, make it a good one. If it’s truly unbelievable, people will fall for it. The whole freedom argument against protecting ourselves from COVID sounds like one. While the fight was going on, I followed strict doctor’s orders and remained isolated until a new lie surfaced, this time one that I wanted to believe. I remember the Premier unveiling a billboard promising Alberta the best summer ever. My intellect screamed, Stampede, no restrictions or contact tracing? Man, you are going to kill us! Yet after over a year of isolation, my emotions said, trust the guy, he probably checked things out. I forgot that when you get something you should ask the question, how are we going to pay for it. Now thousands of my fellow Albertans are paying for it in the worst way. People who were wearing hats “Best summer ever” are overcrowding ICU beds causing all other sick people to go without proper care.

I am back to isolation, but it’s not that bad. I sit in my studio overlooking some of the best views possible. The flowers are giving way to a fall picture. Dark green fir trees providing background to all shades of orange and yellow. In the last two days, I saw below me a mother moose with a young one, a brown-black bear, many deer, and smaller animals. Some are very attractive, black and white, yet smell pretty bad, sometimes. Some politicians do that at times, on the higher levels.

God provided me with what looks like heaven. I am vaccinated and only have to follow a few easy steps to stay safe. My son who works on pipeline construction calls. He follows some Tik-Tok news and believes that Bill Gates is trying to kill him with the jab. It’s a screwed-up world.

It occurs to me that politicians were not classified as essential workers. Many other highly paid positions were not. Some of them work for very high income but would have a hard time answering the question, what do you do for a living. Ask for a description, not for a title.

My friend Jack asked me about some government workers who make his life miserable demanding useless papers and slowing production. I explained about politicians promising to create jobs where there is no need. They don’t get sent home when times are tough. However, we will have surplus workers in the future.

 I watch inflation creeping up on us, especially on food, and I wonder. Will the government remember to pull back some of the money they dished out before it’s too late?

The idea was to inject money when the economy slowed and tax it back from where it’s not benefiting society. Make our money work for us and pull it back. Will they do it now?

Hundreds of Albertans and now Saskatchewan people are paying with their lives for a political game that failed. From my studio I ask; will we use this opportunity to fix our economy’s failures? Or will it just be another session of blah, blah, blah while leaders are vacationing.

Disclaimer: I accumulated all the above from news and published interviews. Some politicians are the best people I know.

Here is a link to my blog: https://thesimpleravenspost.blogspot.ca/  Feel free to check other articles and comment.

Air, water, and food spell happiness.

 

Air, water, and food spell happiness.

To go home, I drive by the Crowsnest Pass Food Bank. It is a relatively pleasant building with a good size parking lot that is never full. We often contribute in some ways, but hunger is not a glaring problem here.

I worked around homeless people in Calgary for a while. There were obvious problems, but we didn’t see people starving. It was not that rosy when I used to visit the United States. Statistics reveal that 38 million people there are food insecure every day.

We have our problems, but Canada is still one of the best places to be in, and our beloved mountain pass scores high even in our rich country. Anyone living here probably never witnessed the hunger and deprivation that is so common in other places.

As I am writing, there is a summit in the United Nations trying to address how to end hunger around the world by 2030. The world can produce all the food that we need, but there are millions, perhaps billions, of people who don’t know if they will have food on the table tonight.

If we have what people need, why are so many people migrating around the world and often fighting only to survive? Why do we need all the armies and very expensive weapons to secure our borders? How come millions of people are displaced with no place to call home? To me, it’s a question of management.

Everywhere in the world, people used to live on little self-sustaining farms. The efficiency of farming improved with modernization while jobs on farms disappeared. The same happened with industry. Until my grandparents’ generation, labour was a resource that we could not do without. Automation and offshoring took over. The goal of capitalism is to buy cheap and sell expensive, so we pushed the vast majority out of their sources of income. They had no work, and we had fewer customers.

People still need to eat, get medical care, and pursue happiness, which fuels the economy. What is left to do? Perhaps government jobs and service industries. Those jobs are simple to obtain, so their pay is being lowered. It does not motivate society to improve the situation, opting to chase the “surplus people” around and even exposing them to premature death. That is the rationale motivating people not to use vaccines and other life-prolonging measures.

I survey “news” from around the world and see a bleak picture. Life is good, but can’t stay that way. The world around me is literally burning, so I turn to professional help. The advice I receive is to restrict how much time I spend watching the news. It makes me feel like the cattle on a transport truck going to Cargill to be butchered and turned into Big Macs and Teen burgers. I search and find other solutions.

In 2015, a story went viral and soon disappeared. It resurfaced recently. It had the solution to our current problems, but it got buried in other news and people never followed through with the idea.

A young self-made millionaire named Dan Price changed the pay system in his company “Gravity Payments.” While he, as the CEO, was making 1.1 million a year, some of his employees who made less than 35,000 a year were having problems keeping food on the table and a roof over their heads. Dan Price took a scientific approach to solve the problem. His research revealed that people’s optimal income at the time was 75,000 a year. At that income level, they had a good life. Increasing the income did not add to their enjoyment of life. Dan met with all the employees and announced one pay for all the workers, including himself, 70,000 a year.

A few people lost pay and quit, his brother sued him, but the business went on and flourished. The media had a heyday. Fox News condemned him as a communist, but he was invited to the White House after winning business awards. All of this happened not far from the Crowsnest Pass, in Seattle. Now they also have an office in Boise, Idaho. There is much more information on the net.

The idea of changing society’s focus from predatory selfish goals to social caring and sharing is not new at all. When the focus is on people’s happiness instead of prestige and accumulated individual wealth, life becomes different. One can look at our neighbours, for example, the Hutterite Colonies around us. Although not everyone is cut for agrarian simple living, there is evidence that humans do well when freely sharing with each other.

Now Canadians have spoken clearly and decisively, choosing a minority government the second time around. We know that a third of us are believers in making the rich richer and waiting for it to trickle down. They also have other beliefs that may be the reason our hospitals are full to overcapacity. A third want to continue the way we are, and the last third wants a more progressive approach.

The Prime Minister is driving on a road paved for change. We have distributed money to many regular people and small businesses, which will alter the course of the country’s economy. Many people are choosing not to work for the barely livable income they had before. Many are choosing to work from home and others are starting new little businesses, choosing to be the masters of their own faith. Young students are begging to go to school. (Safely of course.) The Trump-engineered rift with China is healed and kids are out in the streets demanding solutions to the climate crisis. It’s a brave new world.

A person I don’t know said: “Let’s see if the whippersnapper has the guts to fight for food, water, and air for all Canadians.” I listened without saying a word.

The elections are over, yeah.

 

 

The elections are over, yeah.

If there ever was a time when I felt we didn’t need an election, it is now. In my long life, I saw some bad times, but it seems as if now it’s the worst. I will not bore you with the list of crises that we must promptly deal with, since you all know them. (A few deny it.) Can I prioritize? Hardly. I guess that the worst on the list is the attitude of some fellow humans that nothing should be done and things will improve on their own. I calculate this to be our worst enemy. When they say nothing should be done, they forget that most of our problems we caused and we must fix.

At the time I am writing these words, the election is three days away and when you are reading, it will be three days gone. We may have some results. The big question everyone is trying to answer is, did we need elections now. I didn’t think so, yet the strategists tasked with determining if we do or not did. We can blame Trudeau for it, but we know he wouldn’t decide such a step without careful studies and arguments amongst the experts, followed by the caucus and the party hierarchy. The results are a calculated risk that they felt they had to take.

We had a strong minority government enjoying opposition support for most measures needed for dealing with the crisis the country and the world are facing. No credible political party wanted to see the country plunged into chaos, despair, and possibly fighting. The solution was to pump money into the economy in such a way that the economy would not collapse. How it should be done was debatable.

If you pump money in, you stimulate whatever it is, but you must eventually take it back out or have other problems and it hurts. People demand politicians give them good times constantly.

Whatever comes out of the 2021 elections is now determined. The people will have spoken. Now we must get ready for the next elections, which I believe will be Civic elections and after that, the big one, the Provincial elections. We are called to make choices all the time and if we make wrong choices; we pay dearly. As proven in the last little while, some will pay with their lives.

How should people choose who should be handed the reins, be the leader, decide governing all aspects of our lives, even life itself? At the same time, how can we recruit suitable candidates and retain them?

Some will run for the prestige of being leaders. A guy fixed my washing machine and told me he was the mayor of a tiny hamlet. Why? Some may do it for the pay, directly or indirectly. Some have a hidden agenda. They wish to achieve something that will pay off and can only be done if there is political will. They may have pure intentions like, for example, building a new Seniors Centre in town, or may want to sell some parklands to a friend who will reward them somehow later. These days people get into politics often to promote the political or economic core beliefs of an established party.

The Right believes that private enterprise will stir society in the best way and the Left is the opposite. They want people, through democratic controls, stirring society in a predetermined direction for other reasons than personal gain. Each has advantages and setbacks. Some politicians wish to advance a religious way of life or open the door for making profits where they are now restricted, like in health care, for example.

 The opposite would be those fighting for Pharmacare. Drug companies will lose billions if governments will negotiate the best prices for their products and charge them for the publicly funded research constantly done.

We are back to the base question. How do we get politicians who will act on our behalf and be competent? I would say the first step is to pay for what they are worth. Second, have a system to recall them if they fail miserably. Third, make the Media accountable and demand accountability. They/we used to be that way much more than we are now.

How do we choose who to vote for? We could have professionals develop a test that each citizen can perform on every politician. Computers can help a lot.

I watched the last provincial elections here and in other provinces. It was easy to determine that some leadership hopefuls either didn’t publish their platforms or promised things that couldn’t be achieved. This, in my opinion, should be published for all to see and possibly punishable by law.

Elections should not be a contest for who is the best in telling lies but for who is willing to do the most work towards making life safe and enjoyable for all voters. Consideration should be given also for fairness and good moral standards. We should have leaders who are capable, hardworking, and give us a good example.

I watch the news to see what I can learn from these elections to help me decide my actions in the next two. Right now, I may live or die by the actions of those “free” to spread a virus. Only politicians with backbone can save me.

I watch and memorize which of them chose steps to let me live. In the next two elections, that will be the first bar they must clear if I may vote for them. Did they take steps to protect me and the millions of Albertans who are like me? Will my representatives publicly take a stand to choose “Life,” my life. If they coddle the “freedom terrorists” (My opinion), I am not even considering the rest of their opinions and let the people speak.

Here is a link to my blog: https://thesimpleravenspost.blogspot.ca/  Feel free to check other articles and comment.

Old versus Young.

 

Old versus Young.

What a breath of fresh air to have an editorial from a young adult in the paper that I contribute to. My job is that of the opposition and I work on it. For a long time, we dismissed the political power held by young people who just became eligible to vote. There are millions of them, but we assumed they are not interested. I have a nineteen-year-old grandson and I know that they have opinions, analytical minds, and often a strong interest in the way we lead the country.

Their elders dismiss them, as Aiden Douglas said. In the past, people said the same about women. A known argument against women’s suffrage was that it will give every married man two votes, his own and his wife’s. I have been married close to fifty years and am still guessing how my wife may be voting. My grandson proudly told me who he was voting for. He is not voting for his dad’s favourite party. His dad, who runs a small business, thinks that he is a big entrepreneur and votes for big business against what my grandson Kaydan considers his group, the students and working people. His mother is a nurse risking her life daily while watching politicians cut her pay.

There are differences between the old and young. The old have more life experience, gather more information, but often have loyalty to someone or something that is changed or gone. They/we are also short-sighted physically and mentally. Why, for example, should I worry about fifty years from now? Kaydan and Aiden should be concerned with the future far beyond my limits. In politics, I may vote for a party that helped my parents 70 years ago while the young guys probably will be alive seventy years from now, if Medicare isn’t privatized. I may be concerned about coal while they will need microchips. Older guys may be concerned about their constitutional right to spread a communicable disease while the young are affected by cuts to education.  

Young people today are facing decisions that I never did. The world is a different place than it was in my youth. They are doing it bravely, but they base their choices on the information they learned from us older folks. They follow the examples we set for them. Is that freedom of choice? Do they have the tools they need for building the world of the future?

We the old, engineered world wars, a dog-eat-dog world, machines that  use up all the air and water that young generations need for their future. In 30 years, they may have to pay for air. We already pay and fight for freshwater. Here in our little paradise in the mountains, we see the fight shaping up today. We are facing up with our neighbours downhill about water as I am writing these words. Politicians are making the choices based on votes. Do the young people have the background needed to choose what will be their future?

Douglas wrote in his editorial about “Greta Thunberg, who is 15.” Sorry young friend, she is now 18 and still fighting. Canada is emitting only a small percentage of CO2 for its size but check the per capita figures. A billion-plus people in India and another billion-plus in China are emitting much more, but they are trying to survive while our emissions give us a life most of them can’t even dream to live. We need heat and they need cooling and food. Per capita, they do more to curb the atmospheric damage and there are no walls on earth to separate them from us. All we can do is start a nuclear war and destroy your future forever.

I am so impressed to see a young person calling other young people, who now have a vote, to dive in and do something about the way the country and the world are going. Lifeguards are especially good at it since they are trained to risk it all to save others. My generation fought to end wars, bring equality, and have the freedom to make moral judgments. We lost some but won much. At the time, we didn’t foresee the troubles the world will face now when the population doubled, corporations grew at the expense of little businesses, the Media bought by private interests to no longer give a complete picture and so much more.

I also, just like you, want young and old to take an interest in politics and have a say in running the world. We only have one. I encourage people to see who in politics are the habitual liars, who demonstrably do something for most of us, and who are concerned with what we will leave for you young people. Don’t be fooled by those who ask “who will pay for” the needs of the majority of people while giving away all of what we have to a chosen few. Ask who chose them to have what they can never even spend.   

Aiden, Kaydan, and others like them will run the world at the time that I and the dwindling group, who are now the “elders” will no longer have a say about our destiny and the world’s future. Looking into the crystal ball now is not promising. The neglect of the elders, the selfish squandering of the world’s resources, and the ruthless race for power by power-hungry people are scary. Go on like that and our civilization is lost.

It is not the only way. There is a theory, now 2000 years old, where people voluntarily take care of each other, not hoard wealth and power, while improving the world and what people will become. We must set our goals towards what is good and work for it. Elections every few years are the stepping stones to achieving the goal if we choose it.

Here is a link to my blog: https://thesimpleravenspost.blogspot.ca/  Feel free to check other articles and comment.