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.