1968

 

1968

When we are young, we believe in immortality and feel invincible. The future is ours and the world will provide, or God will. That is how I was in 1968, the year that changed the world. It was my first full year in Canada and I paid only a little attention to the news.  I never guessed that in Ontario a baby was born who will later purchase an election in Alberta, the province I helped build, and try to take away my health care, possibly gamble with my pension, and remove the protection I receive from the RCMP. 

In 1968 there was no internet and the news came from three TV stations, radio, and newspapers. Most of us were only slightly aware that there was a pandemic which was named The Hong Kong flu. It was brought over by the American conscripted soldiers returning from Viet Nam. It was not over before killing 100,000 Americans and many Canadians who were not involved in that meaningless war that the US lost. 

I was very busy learning English, finding dirty low-paying jobs available to newcomers, and assimilating into my new environment, so I missed a lot of the news. I didn’t miss the hundreds of thousands of people demonstrating in the US, the country which I left the year before. I saw the young black students being escorted into schools, other students being shot, and so much more. The entire world was watching the American Gandhi, the Noble prize winner Dr. King, and he was shot. I remember Robert Kennedy on the news telling that the great man was killed and a little while later the young Kenedy was assassinated as well. 

1968 was the year of change. I was in the US in 67 and it was a great place, the America that people dreamed of. You couldn’t tell that it had all the problems it did until violence and huge demonstrations began, but there was no internet yet. Now we are witnessing a worst situation but many people are covering their eyes and denying what is happening. 

I remember the book “1984” by Orwell. He wrote it after witnessing the rise and eventual fall of the Nazi Party in Germany, the horrible outcome of the Soviet experiment in totalitarianism under Stalin, the rise of Fascism in Spain, and the rise of Communism in China under Mao. It was a prediction about a world in which governments have full control of the people, and people have no say about their faith. President Kenedy said that people must have a peaceful way to express their concerns. In 1968 we saw what happened when they don’t. Now we are seeing it across the world.

I have hope. I have been close to death for a long time now, and it doesn’t scare me. Time after time something comes up and I wake up on a sunny morning able to enjoy life. The message I get is that I may be destined to see with my physical earthly eyes an appreciable change. 

In the summer I watched a caterpillar grow, feed, and thrive. One day the crawly friendly creature was gone and in its place was a cocoon attached to a branch. A little google search thought me that the caterpillar is completely dissolved in the cacoon and that no physical aspect of it remains visible. One nice day the cocoon was opened and empty. There was a beautiful butterfly nearby possibly emerged from the cocoon. It could fly amongst the flowers, tease the cat, and mesmerize my human eyes, creating a story in my brain. 

The brain never sees the light. It creates a reality based on the messages that the sensory organs send it. What is inside the cocoon never sees light also until it flies as a butterfly. The butterfly will breed or create other caterpillars that will end up being butterflies. That is the physical side of the wonderful creature. What about the life force that animates it, I wonder? I call it the soul and I know that it exists but is not visible to the human eye. Does it also go through a complete transformation? Since it is not visible what could it be doing? The cosmic mind's thoughts are what we perceive as matter. There is a way more to “life” than what the eyes can see or the brain recreates in pictures. 

I am an old man now, closer to the end than the beginning. I worked hard to set things up so I will enjoy old age and I do. I need the support of the medical profession. That is what I paid for over long, hard years. My ex-roommate is sick. His kids set up a Go Fund Me page to help cover his extra expenses. He is on a waiting list and surgeons will operate on him after they do the private surgeries which offer more profits. The list will be shorter since those with money will go first.

When I see some young political opportunist destroying our health care “to save money” which he didn’t earn, (I did) I get upset. He is stealing our savings and openly giving it to those who have more than enough, often not because they worked harder. I and the older generation of Alberta citizens are the real investors who formed Alberta into a great place. 

We are old-style people who have hope because we truly believe in God’s justice. If it exists or not remains to be seen but I wouldn’t fool around with it. There is a God, and he is watching. 

Dear leader: Keep our medical professionals and don’t mess around trying to get more profits from the poor essential workers. Help the poor and disadvantaged and follow the old teachings. That is the real meaning of being “pro-life.” Those who do that don’t get kicked out of Jesuit universities. 

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

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.