Music and History in the making.

 

 Music and History in the making.

There are various ways by which civilizations dispose of the bodies of those who died, and often their artistic images outlast their physical remains. Sometimes the burial monuments are preserved for their artistic value. We form our opinions about past civilizations by studying their art and creating stories around the artifacts. 

Up to mid-eighteen hundreds, only visual art could be preserved, and then humans developed specialized equipment to preserve sound. The Phonograph and soon later the Gramophone were invented. No longer only the high society could enjoy the best musical performances like operas, symphonies, and concerts. A hundred years later I arrived on earth and was part of the first generation of sound consumers using “vinyl” records to reproduce the art of music. A kid like me didn’t need to be born rich to go to operas and concerts. I could save my money and buy a “45” record and listen to the most popular music. Millions of us did.

For the first time in history, we had a way to gauge the effect of music and songs on culture. In 1963 I purchased a recording of The Browns singing the song Three Bells, or as many called it Jimmy Brown.

There’s a village hidden in the valley

among the pine trees half forlorn 

and there on a sunny morning

Little Jimmy Brown was born. (Bells ringing.)

The song goes on describing the second time bells ring for Jimmy Brown when he “meets his love” and a third time when he passed away. “Then the little congregation, Prayed for guidance from above, Lead us not into temptation, Bless this hour of meditation, Guide us with eternal life.” The old system where people were bred to work, reproduce, and die was changing. In Quebec, Canada, the Habitants realized that they were slaves of the rich and refused to slave away for an hour of meditation and promises of eternal love. They demanded equal wages, unionized, and got it. The “quiet revolution replaced the Duplessis era.”

In 1968 I bought another 45 record named “Master Jack” by Four Jacks and a Jill. In 68 the world was going wacky. The US looked almost like a war zone with people fighting in the streets. African countries were gaining freedom from Colonial powers and music was breaking all the old rules. Master Jack was recorded in South Africa where people were fighting against apartheid and started with the words  “It’s a strange, strange world we live in Master Jack.” It thanked Master Jack for teaching but said that “I want to see the world through my own eyes and I will never come back.” It sold millions of copies and the world changed some more. Master Jack, the British Empire, has no more colonies. Humankind was freeing itself from servitude for the privilege of staying alive. 

The ”seventies” were not easy, people worked hard and got rewarded accordingly. Many of us poor people joined the middle class and social programs took care of the most vulnerable. There was an outcry about the costs which proved to be “fake news”. We Canadians were paying much less per capita than our equals next door. Those of us who benefited from higher education worked, innovated, and made our province into what you see today. 

The last 45 vinyl record I remember purchasing was “Don’t cry for me Argentina” from the movie Evita. Here was a beautiful young woman from modest beginnings who made her way to the top. She had friends in high places and used her extraordinary skills in public relations to hand Argentina over to the elite, trusting that she would be able to help her people. She died young, and another took her place, ending up being the first female president of the country. That approach didn’t work. The two beautiful women should have focused on organizing the poor people to use their numbers for gaining rights, freedom, and equality. I have witnessed the power of an attractive young woman telling people to each organize five friends to protest injustice, and it worked. 

The world now is in turmoil, and people have enough of being used. People are scared to lose the world to the greed of a few. A pandemic arrived, miraculously at the right time, to expose how much those who benefit most don’t care about those who give them the wealth. 

For the time being, the governments are using the fear to prevent social action, but it gives the masses time to absorb their situation and plan for the future. 

Here I see our “elected representatives” trying to reduce and demoralize our social medical program. If we lose that the working people will once again be enslaved to their employers who will provide group health insurance that you lose if you don’t have a job.  So far the conflict is less on the streets and more on the internet, but this may change. Young people are aware of what awaits them if they don’t fight for their rights. 

Now music is on electronic devices, carried easily in a pocket, and entering the brain through headphones.  It is not the romantic music that my grandparents so admired and my mother sung to me when I was a baby. The music I hear is disturbingly loud and very emotional. It gives away the mood of the huge number of people who now inhabit the earth.

If you talk to some people, you hear that our big problem is that we have too many people. Yes, we do if we sit back and not act. Poor, uneducated people multiply fast. If you ask the billions of individuals they all want to live out their lives as comfortable as possible. We don’t have too many candidates willing to give up life, so a few greedy people will have more. We must prepare for “post-capitalism” now.    

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

When to step on the brake?

 

When to step on the brake?

I was so tired as I have never been before. Another great effort and a few thrusts with my great big black wings raised me up into another air stream where I could coast for a while, but the air stream highways were not behaving in a normal way. Again I plunged in a downward vortex, speeding towards the scorched earth below. There was nothing green and familiar. There were no other ravens in sight or any other living birds.

Pain… burning my lungs, hurting my muscles, eyes dry and my cry was raspier than normal. I must have left the river I was following and now I was flying above a human city all black and dead. Nothing moved. My long fall was going to crush me to the ground, I didn’t care, but I heard the familiar swish of my wings and I was again rising to where the air was not so poisonous. A tall metal frame rose to meet me. It used to be one of the human skyscrapers once shiny with glass. I grabbed onto a beam and rested. There was nothing around that I could eat. A strange way to end life, even for an old raven.

I had a thought that persisted and I hung on to it. It’s a dream. Only a dream. I moved and felt my familiar bed and blinked. On the opposite wall, I could see the door frame and through it the hallway night light. Thank you, Lord, I heard my human mouth whisper. It was only a dream.

I know that we always dream, but since that night I never had another dream that I can remember. I never realized how important this blue water world is to a human, or even a to a raven, until I had that dream of the end of it. There was a strong emotional reaction in my brain. Before this, I believed that we would not be stupid enough to destroy our only planet, but now I believe it.

Humans began existence as a single cell organism around four billion years ago according to science. Some religious scholars estimated Adam and Eve starting “life as we know it” at creation less than twenty thousand years ago. It doesn’t matter when, what matters is until when. In both cases, we were given intellect, consciousness, and free will. Each of us can choose to end life at any point and figure out how to do it.

Nature is built around “natural” selection. The fittest reproduces and others disappear. The old testament glorified those who won wars, but we see some hints of compassion and cooperation in some ancient books. Still, competition is the driving force. Also, the idea of ethics and morality has seeped in. Cities and countries took advantage of the weak and were told to repent or be destroyed.

Two thousand years ago a powerful religion was created advocating sharing and cooperation as the solution for human misery. It was named Christianity and took over the world, gaining more followers than any other theory of governing.

In recent history, people harnessed competition to be the driver of growth. It worked like a charm and soon altered Christianity, but the basics remained in human consciousness.

We are the product of the conflict between two fundamental theories. Co-operation and empathy versus predatory competition. Do we starve people into working for our benefit or do we care for the least amongst us, trusting that all human life is beneficial?

So far, our drive towards populating the earth and conquering nature to serve humans excelled. The competition proved to be a substantial driving force useful in many ways. Where there is no competition there is stagnation. The problem is that we did not set a high limit shutoff safety device.

The race towards power derived from winning drove most of the benefits from human’s work and world resources into a few hands who have no sympathy for the majority of less competitive people. Hunger and sickness are used as a driving force.

When a pandemic hit, the world was thrown into a backspin. The few who own most wealth (1%) naturally devastated the many with no consideration for their wellbeing, and everyone took sides.

President George Bush summarized the situation preemptively. “You are either with us or against us.” Those who struggle to survive realized that being with “them” means the looming end of many lives of people whose labour is no longer needed while forgetting that they are also the consumers.

The rich countries failed to win wars against poor countries. All we can do is keep people sick to sell medicines, keep people poor, and use trillions of dollars to bomb them, and destroy the environment, settling our future generations with paying to fix it. We are also good at pretending that we are not, but COVID exposed our weaknesses.

Right at this moment, authoritarian regimes are using the rich private sector players against our liberal democracies to their advantage with China and Russia at the top of the list. We need to restrict private greed’s reach and power over governments. In the post COVID era, the “free world” must take charge, unite efforts and work towards shaping our world to be the haven of humanity that it was designed by God or nature to be. It is too late to always play the assumingly safe center position.

I see two shadows passing on the ground and lift my gaze to the sky above. Two ravens are dancing the mating game above the green mountains. They trust that we humans will keep this gift we call world safe for their hatchlings, and ours. Will we have the guts to do it or will we sell out to selfish, greedy short-term profits. Will we build a better Christian world or avoid conflict and lose the world?

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

Fake News and alternate realities.

 

Fake News and alternate realities.

When I was little the place to learn the news was the barbershop in town. Another place was the garage where the guys were waiting for their vehicles talking about the news. In the evening the men would come home and tell their wives the news, and thus public opinion was formed.

When I went to school additional news became available from newspapers and a few people even had radios. The mass media began to generate public opinion. Media became regulated and forced to express opinions and counter opinions. I remember clearly that time, but shortly after the regulations were removed. For a while, we had rules regarding presenting provable facts, and that changed. The market and self-regulating were assumed to do the job, but didn’t. People quit believing the news.

Fast forward a few years and advertising became an industry. Now the whole civilized world was connected, and the “professionals” understood more about human nature and how it could be manipulated. The Nazi party in Germany, the Communist party in the USSR, and the Fascists in Italy understood it sooner than others, but the rest followed closely behind. Coca Cola did as well.

By the time I become an adult marketing, statistics, and mass media were established and corporate entities could manufacture consent legally and efficiently. What we thought was “democracy” changed into a race of who can purchase most influence, and the people didn’t even notice. All major aspects of our lives fell victim to manipulation, often for monetary gain or political power.

Soon after, the age of Artificial Intelligence dawned, and people’s emotions became hackable. A small fraction of people with the right kind of knowledge can influence the masses while only being checked by similar groups competing against them. The folks who are manipulated don’t even know the name of the game they are playing.

I get irritated by people around me who become emotional about their families and brag about their kids while disregarding the future of the world. They wish to have the economic benefits that come from the “throwaway society” and the eternal economic growth while knowing that their kids will pay the price. It is not the monetary debts that will kill our kids and grandkids, it is the ecological debts that will do it. The quick profits from genetically modified foods, expanding carbon pollution, and eroding democratic systems are the enemy. Yet the highly politicized voting public is eager to face off against each other, each claiming that the other is fake news.

The field of marketing and shaping public opinions grew mostly with minor consideration for ethics. The business side paid for the discoveries and growth. People were the product, and later personal information became a commodity. Lying is now a strategy and opposing it is called fake news.

Just recently the masses have been introduced to something called alternate reality. It has been discussed in physics and philosophy, and in the hands of the less intelligent people became a tool for lying. The concept existed for thousands of years, yet now under the heading of Quantum Physics made a comeback. We can prove in modern laboratories that the most minute particles of reality are subject to human thought. Bang, we have objective reality, time, and space, behaving differently when observed or acted upon by human thought.

Alternate realities existed forever and still exist in primitive cultures. It is not some popular figure spewing lies pretending it is truth; it is the hardcore reality upon which religions and past civilizations were built and thrived. It is an alternate reality.

The Hellenistic Greek culture that we mimic, was living in what we call an alternate reality. Their reality comprised a model in which individuals didn’t exist separately but as a part of their family. Our capitalistic rugged individualism mixed with that culture where Gods were real, at the beginning of the industrial age that later became the technological era.

Now I watch some rich and famous people destroying the world for short personal gains. They claim that anyone who opposes them is fake news or that their alternate reality is different than the rest.

I believe in alternate realities. We don’t see reality as it is, and Lord help us if we did.

What I do know is that if I jump in front of a moving truck to grab a pile of money, my wonderful life will end. I refuse to follow those who regularly lie regardless of how big a reward they offer. They can show me money and power, tell me that foreigners are cheating or whatever they want. They can tell me they are my friends and try to bribe me. I am not jumping in front of moving vehicles or off a tall building.

I trust news that matches my reality as I see it without incredible explanations. I see someone messing up; I want them to clean it. A person is speeding around people, slow down. Someone selling dangerous goods, stop it. Cheating on taxes, prove that you didn’t. Careless about spreading contagious disease, pay for treatment, and damages. I think in simple terms. You break you pay and the rest is fake news.

I am old now and I know some simple facts. You get more flies with honey than with a hummer. You lead by good example. Children of thieves steal easily, and those who receive give help to others. You want power if you don’t enjoy working. You seek respect if you don’t act respectfully. Cheaters suspect all others of cheating. Lazy people try to force others to work more for less and so on.

Yes, there is fake news and alternate realities exist, and we can tell which is what if we are honest about it. 

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

Give me Liberty or give me death.

 

Give me Liberty or give me death.

Give me Liberty or give me death, are words attributed to Patrick Henry before the American war with England. It is a phrase that stuck in my mind for many years. Is it true?

People often surveyed soldiers who regularly risked their lives, why did they do it. Many fighters on all sides of conflicts said the same thing. We are fighting for freedom, democracy, king, or freedom of religion. Humans fought against fascism, communism, opposing religions, colonial domination and lately wearing masks.

I was raised amongst the first generation of Israelis. Their families and communities were exterminated since they were living in countries that were not their own. There was no hesitation amongst them. You have to fight viciously to be free or you die. Freedom ahead of life.

Now I see a big conflict coming, (so far peacefully,) for equality of minority groups in their own countries. Some are actually the majority but feel like minorities. People are not demanding special privileges, only equal treatment. Those who had privileges are fighting to keep things as they are. Others who have nothing left are begging for their lives to be spared. People first want life and second, they want freedom. Life and freedom get mixed up.

People used to shout “no taxation without representation.” Others wanted freedom from tyranny of ruling elites, churches, or slave owners. Workers wanted freedom to organize and fight for better living conditions. Many fought to be free from others using them or forcing them to assimilate into a stronger group. Its always either fighting for freedom or fighting to subjugate others.

When I was little I fought for freedom with all my tiny might. I remember being only knee-high and fighting my dear mom not wanting to eat what she set up before me. She took the spoon, and I shouted no, I will eat by myself. The next fifteen years or so I spent in a war for freedom. Parents, teachers, older friends, all made an effort to have me do things and I mostly fought back. By the time I was eighteen, I realized the truth.

I was free to do all that I could afford to do, but I was fully shaped by society. Now it was a race for the common carrots on the stick and I was in it for the rest of my natural life. Just like the rest of us, I towed the line, received rewards, suffered punishments, and enjoyed the little options that I could freely choose.

I always sympathized with those who had less power. Kids fight for freedom but often learn that conforming is saving them a lot of hardship. It’s a question of education. Young adults are a different story. They often discover better ways of doing things but are forced to conform to fit into the existing social order that their elders have set up. I’d like them to know that there are many options to improve society and that they have the power to do so.

What is most important in a human’s life? Some will say having various experiences. They often dismiss everyday life for passing well-advertised experience. Others pick a cause and fight for the freedom to do so. There are many who feel endangered and fight for life itself. All living things do that. However, we encounter situations when people sacrifice their own lives for others.

People make a great effort to have and raise children. Commonly they say that when they will get old the children will look after them. People do whatever they can to position the young generations to get ahead. We used to honor the old but we gave it up.

Now I am getting emotional. As we left the farms and the old family-owned businesses, the kids moved. Our daughters became career women and we built ourselves safe jails for seniors. Governments tried to save money and the end of life period evolved to just physical care often less than desirable.

I watched relative after relative get old and coerced to go to a Senior Care facility. They have to chose “life” or “freedom” and the family and doctors chose life. Save lives is our generation’s motto.

Last winter I passed by a gazebo in our local Seniors home. I saw a senior lady I know so I stopped for a talk. She is very old and well educated. She shivered in the winter weather trying to have a cigarette. In her late eighties, she knows smoking doesn’t kill her and if it did it would spell freedom.

I watched the seniors in Ontario care homes dying in misery and neglect. Some day, if I live long enough, it will happen to me. I will remember the words, “give me liberty or give me death.” My family will do what they can but there are no options that I would like available. I will join my crowd of babyboomers and pray to God to take me. Perhaps I will try to hide behind positive thinking. It can not work.

There is no way for an adult to become a toddler in daycare and not feel that their freedom was taken away. “Life” can become a curse instead of a blessing.

I think that the most important responsibility of a society is:

Protect and lead the population and provide the necessities of life. That includes protection from members of society who subjugate others with economics or by force.

We must consider all human beings to be ourselves and set up a system that takes care of all, or we will be the victims of inequality. (check the theory of Interconnectedness. By David Bohm).

A few will cheat and lie, circumventing the system, while others will pay with additional suffering. Life changes unexpectedly. I recommend, “Love each other as yourself” but who knows what is right?

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

How do we want to live our lives?

 

How do we want to live our lives?

I didn’t ask to spend my retirement years in crisis. The people of earth didn’t either. A hundred-year pandemic, looming threat of the globe warming, a possible deadly conflict between world powers, or possible internal fight in an empire situated on our doorstep, but we have it all.

All of us chose how to live our lives and try to make the best of it. Sadly, we are not born equal. Some are handed everything by the virtue of being born. You can be a white son or daughter of a rich family born with a perfectly healthy body and believe that God favoured you in some way. You will spend your life in leisure competing with a few others as lucky as yourself in isolation from the filthy masses. They are not as worthy as you. You can also expect that most people will try to behead you if they can. In time, they probably will.

Another option is to live life doing the minimum and trying to escape the misery of being poor and viewed as a useless human being. Often you may find yourself intoxicated and resentful of what life handed you. In your mind will be a story of being cheated by life. You will be defending your hurt ego unsuccessfully. About half of humanity is born disadvantaged with very little prospect of getting ahead without fighting.

Most people are not privileged or useless for society. They possess the ability to function and contribute, able to produce what they need, procreate, and shape the world to allow them to exist. They compete with each other in every possible way for a place closer to the top. Those who are not concerned with the plight of others have a material advantage. Others slow down to help the needy, which often is viewed as a weakness.

Human society has been experimenting with options of how to organize itself for optimum success since pre-history. Originally people followed nature and organized what we call “the law of the jungle.” Those who could enslave others did. Women suffered most. Sarah “gave” Abraham her Egyptian slave girl to impregnate. The father of Islamic people, “Ismael” was born.

As humans became oriented to logic and thinking, philosophies of governing advanced. After thousands of years of evolution, we witnessed the birth of Christianity, which introduced what today we call the political left. Under that theory, human society is accepting responsibility for all its members.

A person who is believed to be the son of the creator started a movement based on being considerate and fair. He preached helping the poor and disadvantaged until it hurts, advocated community, emphasized the importance of beliefs, and talked about nonmaterial spirituality being more important than all material things.

As history progressed casts and classes became less rigid and the common people on the “left” (of the British parliament) realized that they were human as much as the privileged few. Slaves rebelled, peasants rose, a middle class was born, and some excelled in learning. Some of the privileged joined them, and democracy handed them some power through governments. The most populous Christian religion, Catholics, even promoted the notion that a woman, the mother of the Saviour, is a powerful spiritual entity.

Now, modernized society witnessed signs of a new order where the filthy masses no longer were the property of the privileged but a power to be reckoned with. At the beginning of the twentieth century, many people knew that privilege and entitlement were not ordained by God, yet those who had power and privilege disputed the idea.

While the “left” aspired to Christian ideals of equality and compassion achieved by change and reform, the “right” also built a case for being on God’s side. Northern European Protestantism believed strongly in pre-destiny. What could be a better sign that God favours people than their wealth and success here on earth? The far-right movement unabashedly maintained racial superiority, patriarchy, and hate of weakness of any sort. They wanted freedom of the market to rule, small government, no tax on accumulated wealth, and little regulations hindering an individual’s ability to profit or even wage wars.

The two theories were both tried and failed. Fascism disappeared for a time with the fall of Nazi Germany and Communism all but disappeared with the fall of the Soviet Union. Both still exist and work hard towards world domination. The Right gets power by financing elections, and their candidates are selling the assets and resources of democracies to what used to be the communists. BC sold its coastal real estate and Alberta sold oil sands to China. (Lookup International Democratic Union.)

The human animals will only survive into the future by co-operation. The Christian message of doing it by “love” is competing with the authoritarian idea of forcing people to work. Selfish goals can only be gained by force. People are not willing to give up much for a few to gain from it.

Now the “right” and “left” are pretty even around the world, holding each other by the throat. Democracy is widespread, forcing both to campaign for votes and mass support. In China, authoritarianism is making the economy function well, while in the West people are divided, unable to decipher which is real and which is fake news. Lying is no longer considered a sin.

The “left” is enjoying the support of the intellectual class and removed itself from the religious base no longer popular. Now there is talk about going back to the original Christian teachings without interpretations.

 

Mankind tried all the ways we can envision. We became selfish groups fighting for power and wealth. We see the ugly end on the horizon. Will we accept the teaching of love and work together to obtain a heaven on earth? Only God knows.

The Enemy that we can’t see.

 

The Enemy that we can’t see.

You can fight what you see and you know your chances. It is much harder to fight what you can’t see and even worst what you believe doesn’t exist. That is the enemy that can destroy you and erase your memory from the history of the earth.  We have significant data showing that great human civilizations succumbed to it. All we have to do is look at the pyramids that exist around our planet. Civilizations of humans existed for thousands of years, built things we can’t build, and vanished. We know that it could happen to us.

There are natural disasters, pandemics, droughts, floods, enormous fires, and races wiping out older races. Some believe in asteroids wiping life away. It’s all possible, and most humans can’t fight worldwide disasters. That is why humans choose to blame God as a great punisher. I believe in a loving God.

He created consciousness attached to a biological computer called the brain. It is maintained by a body that feeds and heals, reproduces, and tells stories. The body moves on legs and does physical things with hands. It took millions of years to become what it is, but for me, it took only one day and I was born and had to learn and grow to be what I am.

He or she, as some prefer, created a being capable of being like him but not forced to do so. Just like every little child, humans wanted free will and God granted. Sadly, He watched us destroy ourselves time and time again until we became teens. He sent prophets, and we killed them. He sent his son, who told us the truth in a way we couldn’t forget… but we killed him as well.

Generations past and the words of the son of God became universally known. It became a religion and split into many more religions. The world will pass away, He said, but my words will not pass away. Leaders of every sort twisted the words to their own advantage, but the truth remains the truth. People die and new people are born and the words keep coming back.

The Great Creator who some call “chance” could have created us a tiny bit different. Instead of giving us the ability to reproduce, he could have made a body that will never get old and die. It is just a little neurobiological instruction that could be made different. When we took free will, he made it the way it is. We can create with our minds, but until we learn how, we create with our bodies. That slows down our ability to destroy ourselves and our world.

Humans are divided into males ruled by cold reason and females sensitive to emotion. All have some of God in us. Not exactly, but close. The humans have developed into races, cultures, religions, age groups, and a variety of abilities.

I am a historian, and I pay attention to history in the making. I have been around for many years and witnessed the change. I saw most of the world gain freedom from colonialism. I met people who took part in revolutions. Never did I seize to wonder why God didn’t save us all the pain and just create a few eternal people. Why did he even bother to give the souls a body at all?

The answer is easy. Creating a creature who is in the image of God can be done in God’s laboratory of the universe quite easily. He is a master at making things that grow and evolve. Not as easy is teaching a creation how to act like God. Try to teach a child how to drive and you will see. God was not going to give the unlearned humans the keys to the car. Yet he created us to be parents and learn why he did what he did.

By making us into many entities the creator caused competition which sent us forward but brought about exploitation and wars. His son told us to be strong and overcome our violent, selfish nature with love and compassion. In that, we failed and our great civilizations imploded. Each time humans got closer to self-extinction and the recuperation periods lengthened.

God, who created time but is unaware of it, waits to see the results of the final test. Events are all polarized into this historical period in human development. Is it going to be me, myself, and I over the cliff, or is it us and we continue on the road. We are close to understanding our spiritual potential, but heading forwards at a dangerous speed.

Both selfishness and love have substantial support amongst individual humans. A great war could destroy us fast and thoroughly or slow and painful. If all the “have not” people march, they will equal the power of those who “have it all” and forever want more.

In a cave in a Greek island, archeologists discovered ancient words from the period before Christianity. “just take what you need and leave the rest.”

 

 

Now my generation is older and became an endangered species. We sit isolated and watch the young people demonstrating, not wanting to wear masks or sacrifice to keep us alive. Their signs say they want freedom. They are everywhere feeling sorry for us saying, die in peace, but we want our jobs and social life back. We didn’t raise them to be “us” but to be selfish “me” people.  On the horizon, there are others fighting them, caring about all of us. Those are people willing to suffer a bit now for the future of all people. We watch helplessly, not knowing who is going to win.

I never asked God to exist during what could be the last days, when the earth will destroy humanity in self-defence. Did He choose for me? In his universe, all things are left to chance that is influenced by human action.

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

Labour Day In Crowsnest Pass.

 

 

Labour Day In Crowsnest Pass.

There is a unique history embued in this place. I no longer remember the details, which I learned at university a long time ago, but I feel a shiver when I see the old places. People fought and died here a long time ago. Maybe it wasn’t so long ago. Some old people remember it.

Labor Day is not another holiday like Christmas when we have a family meal and exchange presents. The young people are grateful for a long weekend at the end of a short Canadian summer and another chance to use the trailers and boats. But it wasn’t always like that. Labor day is a celebration of labour winning a decent life for a while. A hundred and thirty years ago they were fighting for a nine-hour workday.

There was a time when the hard-working people of the deep coal mines had to fight to stay alive. Dad was listening for the mine whistle to announce if there will be work and pay the next day. Weekends were not a joyful time with the family. The guys were often away working on a farm in exchange for food for the family. Mother took care of the many kids and couldn’t ever have a day off or anything close to it.

In 1932, a bitter strike in Coleman made the news. Coal prices were down and competition for employment and consequently for life became bitter. Labor clashed with police. This is still a reality today. It is the poorest people who are almost crushed to death and find themselves fighting with the police. The police are often poor people who wear uniforms and are trained in crowd control. They fight for “law and order” which often are not laws that favour labour. The revolutionists in Europe fought kings and Tzars while today they fight corporations.

I watch labour in its eternal struggle to survive, and I see great gains during my lifetime. Working people are better off than we used to be. Longer life, more toys, improved education, and health care. I wonder why are we fighting? Why are black people fighting about police brutality, kids fighting about global warming, women over equal rights, First Nations about sovereignty over their reserves?

They are all fighting about beliefs. People believe what they want to believe, not necessarily the truth. Those who lie unabashedly and gain all the wealth and privileges tell them things that are not true while the poor can see smell and feel that their lives are not as rosy as people believe. This became obvious now in the pandemic.

People describe a good vision as 2020. The Labor Day in 2020 came when the eyes of the workers, “labour,” have just been opened. A few still believe that supporting the big fish will place them closer to the food, able to get crumbs, but most chose to believe science and what they truly see.

It was just a short while ago when we were working together like never before to reduce the spread of a dangerous virus while our hospitals and other primary services were getting ready. They should have been prepared, but they weren’t. People all over the world were beating pots and pans, cheering labour in the form of essential workers.

Another truth stood out clearly. The small business we call “Mom and Pop shops” went under fast. People now know that most North Americans are only $400 away from bankruptcy if they have their own little business or are employed and renting. Our labour force is a slave to debt.

There is an illusion that we are the best, that in God we trust, but truly we suck up and kick down. We learned to worship a fake. Labor fought and lost the class war waged against them and didn’t even know it. They blamed governments, not the corporations who outsourced the good jobs, and we miss the fact that the politicians don’t work for the voters.

Now “labour” is facing a bleak future. Throughout our history, the majority, which was always deprived, existed by selling their work. Work provided food for most, plus wealth for the few powerful people. Slaves, serfs, industrial workers did it, and as it is today, providing services to the rich and each other. Now technical advancements are quickly removing the need for labour, both physical and white-collar. We no longer even need the large population of soldiers to kill each other.

People demand that elected governments will provide jobs, but we simply can’t dream some up. The economy is growing without more jobs. The “labour” which is celebrated is now surplus. When they/we lose our ability to create income, the economy shrinks faster, as we see now with COVID. We must find alternative solutions fast.

The first option I foresee is to face our problems and not believe that we have no problem. The days of having the luxury of believing what is not provable are gone. Humankind has grown up and make-believe games are out. If it doesn’t walk like a duck, quack like a duck, it’s not a duck. Call it what it is.

The new world will have to accept that we don’t need the labour or work of all the people. The value of people is in doing what they are good at and like to do, and the creative powers of the human mind. We will not need to force each other to suffer through many hours of performing unwanted tasks and producing manufactured junk.

In my youth, people used to appreciate skilled handiwork and great craftsmanship. We used to be proud of a high-quality, well-trained service. We must come back to it, cherish it, and pay what it’s worth. Above all, we must recognize not what makes the most profit for the big fish, but what advances our society towards the next step in evolution which we can’t avoid taking.

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