What do we want?

 

 What do we want?

The first thing that every living organism wants is to stay alive here on earth. We may say we believe in eternal bliss and life after death, but we do all we can to stay alive here, even if it’s not an ideal life at all. Some people suffer greatly and wish for an end, but others step in to keep them alive. I hear over and over the saying, ”save lives” and no one dares to end lives since it’s a crime to do so. People say only God can give life and take life away.

The quality of life is another story. Nations exploit other nations to take away what they can. Corporations exploit countries and communities. Groups, races, and religions force others like them to live in poverty and misery, often making them hand over not just their natural resources but also the fruits of their labour.

Some years ago, the Western nations, including Canada, waged war on one of the poorest countries, Afghanistan. We avenged 9/11, which they didn’t do, changing the goal midway to change their culture, treatment of women, and political system. They won the war and we take revenge by freezing their savings and causing starvation of the poorest amongst them. We know we will not change them that way, but we need to feel superior even if women there will suffer the most.

When people don’t need to fight to stay alive, they strive for a better quality of life. Any and all humans would like an easy, safe way to live if possible. In my experience, very few people say I have enough and I will give the rest away. We are all insecure hoarding for the future, which is a mystery to us.

I was born into a world of roughly two billion people. The world was considered limitless. My kind of people, mostly referred to as white, viewed the earth as our possession. We had a dream. Working people like us didn’t dream about being millionaires since a class system governed our kind. Royalty and the real high class was a stuff for stories. For us, there was the American dream. People didn’t strive to go to Communist-controlled areas, but all eyes were on the US, including Canada, as a part of it. It was the America that rose from Roosevelt’s dream of the New Deal.

Working people who came back from a long war wanted union jobs, little homes in the suburbs, a car, and basic needs guaranteed. Medical and educational facilities, shorter work hours, a little holiday, often camping, and the newest gadgets that were now mass produced. I remember the adults talking about getting things that are well-made and fixable. Shoes and suits often were made by local craftspeople, and there were millions of little family-run businesses. America and Canada were campaigning for emigrants to come over.

The American dream was achieved, but the population didn’t stay at two billion people. The rest of the world, which was not “white,” began to catch up. People in what we viewed as poor remote places, such as Africa and Asia, bought into the American dream also, but without being set up to achieve it. All that humans needed was the idea of the dream.

Now we have eight billion people in the world. Communism is mostly gone and where it still exists, like in China, it is mostly only a name. No longer does the highest class of people fear the hoards of workers organizing a revolution and executing the elites to take their wealth and share it. It never worked in the first place. Cheating, stealing, and bribing work much better. Money can buy politicians, judges, media, and all other tools of power. Socialism, which birthed Communism, can be used by the rich, like in the case of “too big to fail”, and portrayed as the enemy of the working people.

A good example is a medical system in the United States. It serves only some of the people, leaving many millions of people to fend for themselves, yet it costs more per capita than the Canadian system that serves 100% of our population unless the government starves it.

I find that most people want the comfort and living conditions they see the rich enjoying. They know they can’t have it, so they settle for cheap imitations. Not everyone’s grandfather had a chain of pleasure houses as grandfather Trump is alleged to have operated in New York. Some luck out and make a fortune by their own merit, but most make do serving the rich.

Those who serve, or live where there is no hope, are just waiting for an opportunity to turn the tables and be on top. They know from history that it will come. Those called “The have got” try to fortify their wealth and protect it, but there is no way to do it. The leaders of the Roman Empire hired foreign mercenaries who took over the Empire, and it was forever repeated. The only way is to limit the temptations and be reasonable with how much each takes. This can only be done voluntarily since we don’t start the game with an even playing field.

Humans must kill the ego or give the Earth to the next life form that nature will provide.

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

 

 

Moral compass…

What we humans of the year 2022 call space, the ancient ancestors called the world without end. Also, the World, or Earth in English, is a ball of rock that has no end. Living in a town on some natural land where I can observe animals, I see that they have creative abilities but are far below the human level. I see signs of love, hate, and jealousy, but not morality. Humans make choices based on morality and even in the age of science, morals or lack of morals plays a part in what we do, or do not do. Groups of people, nations, religions, political parties, cults, and others claim superiority over each other. They all struggle with morality.

I look at the world today. Putin is using the huge Russian army to threaten the world. The Russians listen to his propaganda and believe that they are fighting for a moral cause. They fight to defend the motherland. The western business that owns western governments is setting up to take over their country. They die to protect their freedom, or so they think.

In the US, there is turmoil that could start a civil war over who is the rightful president. That is a moral issue. The evangelical churches believe that “Socialists” who stole the elections from a president that they worship threaten their freedom of religion. If the laws and constitution stand in the way, the moral thing to do is change the constitution. They want to stop separating Church and State. A dangerous move, in my opinion.

Here in Canada, we see a new breed of people. Mostly less educated folks who “educated” themselves through conspiracy theories on the internet, demanding an end to our democracy. They want to install a government that will not force them to do what they deem unjust regardless of elections, laws, and the majority’s opinion. If the government tries to protect the people from a deadly disease, the government must go. They claim moral authority to pick and choose laws they are willing to obey and damage the existing system in the process.

I can go through a list of countries where some group or another, even the military, fight for what they deem morality, to gain political power. Often, morality is used for gaining wealth or prestige. It is also used to remove people from powerful posts and destroy careers that took a lifetime to build. It seems as if humans are born with a gene for morality, but what is moral or not is still being debated.

We translate morality into religious beliefs or atheism, which became just another religion. Those who were traditionally tasked with teaching morality, mainstream religions, are found to be some of the major offenders against morality. In a few years, court cases accusing priests, teachers and other people of authority grew to alarming proportions.  

I have a book from the seventies that was used for training managers. It clearly states to touch subordinates and tell them what you appreciate. Now I heard a woman who is suing an Archbishop for harassment saying, “he touched me on the shoulder and I felt uncomfortable”. I personally always felt uncomfortable touching people but was trained to do so as part of the art of managing people. Somewhere morality changed while we were using it.

Now, morality is seeping into business. Self-driving vehicles are available and have fewer accidents than human-driven cars. We hold them back from production because we can’t agree on moral issues that would have to be programmed into the vehicle’s computers.

The war in Ukraine exposed another problem. Both warring armies are using unmanned drones and fighting robots. Mistakes are happening since there is no human pulling the trigger on the killing machines. You and I are voting on the issues as part of political parties' platforms. We have no idea what we are voting for, so we chose a political party with the most popular leader at the time. Look at how many people in the West are voting mainly to defeat Trudeau regardless of the issues governing the country. I am also guilty. I should join the leading party and vote for a leader of my choice.

My church took a public side in the proposed laws regarding euthanasia. As a human with many health issues, I prefer to have an escape hatch if the pain becomes unbearable, but I am voting with my group on issues of morality. I am a hypocrite, I know it, and still do it.

In the West, the moral code of humankind was developed from one book in two volumes. The Bible, Old and New Testament. The Old Testament talked about punishing people if they disobey or defame God and the New about forgiving, sharing, and sacrificing material things for a glorious reward. That reward was a promise of a “Kingdom” yet not available. Both books deal with morality in terms of helping the needy, sharing, and treating others as we wish to be treated. We can easily assume that the Heaven we strive for is the same world with ethics and morality, beating selfishness and cheating.

The Bible doesn’t mention abortions, euthanasia, or other political matters but is concerned about love, faith in God, and treatment of the less fortunate or those unable to win in the game of life.

 

What is attractive about little mountain towns?

Many years ago, I drove through the Crowsnest Pass towns and was so impressed that I told people about that nice place that I found. Now I am one of the old timers here. It was a place that, according to one visitor, “time has passed by”. It had the historical look and all the amenities that a person needs. Hospital, mall, grocery stores, hardware, and lumber.

When I arrived, a herd of mountain sheep greeted me by an old white Anglican church. Cars were slowing down and folks taking pictures. Now uniformed public servants chase them away. The place was old but clean. I remembered visiting the towns some years before when mining was still going on. The same streets and buildings, but coal dust dulled the colors. Now the sun looked brighter. Beside an old home on the main street, a deer was napping in the shade and two fawns were grazing. “Free lawn care included”, crossed my mind, but there was a fence keeping creatures out of the flowers.

It was clear that the place was changing. The whole world was transforming. No longer we need many people for menial jobs and not everyone can be technicians or white-collar workers. Those were quickly disappearing as well. Computers were doing the old jobs. The new interest now was around traveling, recreation, and jobs are in the service industries. The Pass is an ideal place for it.

In the mornings when the sun rises, the mists lift over the mountain trails, lakes, rivers, and forests, drawing people. People are good for the economy. We should not be trying to do all things with less labor, but the opposite. We must realize that we feed each other or we all be gone. It is good for the economy if many people have good, well-paying jobs. Here in the Pass, there is a feeling of healing in the air. In the period after the first world war, they sent injured veterans here to a sanatorium in Frank.

It was amazing to look for a retirement place where moose and bears roamed and half of the population owned pets. Here in the mountains, there was an obvious relationship between people, animals, and nature that didn’t exist in the city, but it was under threat.

After I moved here, some old people told me about their worries. An old friend expressed the sentiment in a few words. People come to visit here, he said, and they are impressed by what we have. They like our way of life and some move here. A short time later, they get busy changing the place to be exactly like the places they moved from. You can see it in everything.

People talk about shopping locally to keep the place going. The new business owners bring the city business attitude in. Soon prices here are rising since competition is far away. They forced the locals to go to big box stores away from town, and when they get too old to travel, seniors move. Our community is changing. He pointed out the fact that we had a lot of little self-sustained businesses and they disappeared when Walmart arrived in a nearby town. True enough, I met many of our locals at Walmart, Costco, and other chain stores.

Slowly, in front of my eyes, the little community that attracted me began to change and the friendly little town atmosphere dissipated. My son-in-law came for a visit and said, grandpa, what is happening to your little town? I drive through the main street and every business has a for sale or rent sign. Is the place going to survive? I was wondering myself.

The town didn’t realize what was really killing it. Instead of working to retain the little community atmosphere, they tried to make it more like the city. Soon we saw new bylaws forcing people to not have pets. Another old resident called me to complain. He lost his closest relatives in a short time and was denied his ability to drive, for his safety, of course.

His lifelong friend, his cat, was sentenced to life in prison by the authorities. Might as well be stuffed as decoration. There must be a cat hater on the council. The guy had a dog that took him for walks. When all public spaces were taken off limits for free, well-behaved dogs, he had to give the dog up. He can’t drive to an “off-leash” place. You know Avner he said, our environment determines our life span. Studies prove that people who attend church live 15 years longer, and married and pet owners live 8 years more. I could not argue. He is right.

As I watched, things were changing again. The hills filled up with new homes and the for sale signs disappeared. Older homes are being renovated and people move in to work from home. Others are coming to spend their holidays here, close to animals and nature. I hope that our local leaders will notice and act quickly.

Let people have pets and relearn how to live with nature, not be at war with it. That is our edge. Reward little businesses that don’t gouge residents and welcome competition instead of killing it in its infancy. The best council is one that removes useless laws not enact new restrictions wholesale. Let us be what we are, a little community that lives with nature and provides what cities can’t.