Old Man’s Thoughts.

 

 Old Man’s Thoughts.

When I was about 25, my boss told me I must join our pension plan. It did not impress me. It was a large sum, and I was too young to think about someday when I would be 65 and receive a benefit. I didn’t trust the politicians even in those days when they did much more for us than they do now.

More money in our pockets is a good election slogan, but we can’t do it. I couldn’t at 25 make a significant commitment to save for retirement. I truly believed that I would do something that would provide me with the money that I would need for retirement. I and some millions of young people bought into the American dream. We were going to work hard and get rich, and it didn’t happen.

Thank God someone wiser organized pension plans that were invested professionally and accumulated the money needed for the later years of life. That money financed some ventures that made more money and left us with enough to live the rest of our lives comfortably without asking the young generation for help. Yes, our pensions are financed by us and our employers. The money should be invested in our future and not for politician’s pet projects.

It worked well until politicians decided to dip into it for their own benefit. They could and did take over managing the money and lost as I expected. Good politicians are not necessarily good investment managers. By investing for political reasons, they lose but don’t care. In four or eight years, they will collect their pensions and go play a new game.

Now I am the last of my group of friends from the old days. My best friend, (and my best man), is dying from COVID and other health issues. For me, what’s left is isolation and prayers to stay alive a little longer. Each time that I go out, I meet some folks who tell me not to get vaccinated since they had some health issues after getting vaccinated. They feel justified in recommending not to listen to the doctors since they themselves know better. I choose to listen to my doctor.

However, all the COVID issues will be forgotten ten years from now. We have bigger problems to deal with. We live in a scary world which doesn’t have to be that way. Natural disasters, wars, baffling weather, hate, and vengeance are just a few things I see. Greed and competition for turf are more common than any positive emotions. Almost anywhere I look people are divided half against the other half. Yet the Earth can provide for all and people can solve all the problems we have without fighting. If we give all people what they need, not want, we will have a lot to spare.

When we search history and pre-history, we see a few interesting facts. There have been great civilizations before us. They either failed to protect themselves or destroyed each other and disappeared. Knowledge that we don’t yet possess existed on this planet several times over and was wiped out. It arouses my curiosity and makes me think about where we are heading.

All the past generations had a conflict between good and evil or light and dark. Only the difference is blurred out. Those who win always write history. The side that lost gets no air time. Yet, if we could ask those who lived before us, we would always find people believing that the side we are talking to is the side of good and the other the side of bad.

All sides have good and bad intermingled. All sides get corrupted by power and people feel sorry for the weak but join the strong. This is enhanced by those who preach that God is on their side. No, He isn’t.

God created not the same but equal and gave humans free will. Now, He is waiting to see what we will do. Will we join the dead civilizations or be the ones created in His image? We are living through the latest test right now. It is being tested around each kitchen table, in every community, and worldwide. None of us escapes the test. It is between my wife and me, and between America and China at the same time. It is decided by loving negotiations and by great modern equipped armies.

A relatively slight change in people’s outlook on life can solve problems and perhaps save the world. Why are we not doing it? Mostly because none of us wants to lose and all of us wish to win. Those are animal instincts, not human values. This is where we need help from God. If we all accepted that God wants us to have His kingdom on Earth, we could have it.

Sadly, we may have to fight for it. Rudolph will not give up his leadership position since he has the red nose. We will do what we must as well as we can not forgetting that peace and happiness are the goals.

Goodness can become a reality in some small place and spread throughout the whole body. People follow the example, good or bad. The actual fight is inside each of us and we must believe that we can win. Some day cooperation will eliminate competition.

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

A balanced life, for free.

 

A balanced life, for free.

If you ask me about my level of happiness, living in the Crowsnest Pass Alberta, I will rate it high. My place is beautiful, and friendly, has wonderful services, and is full of potential. Yet, when the UN does its World Happiness Report rating of how happy people are in their countries, Canada doesn’t score as high as expected. The northern European countries score the highest even without all the natural advantages that we have. The weather is the same and we all are educated and enjoy modern health care. Why are they happier than we are?

The other day I was en route back to Blairmore in the dark. The temperature was 6° C in Nanton, so I opted to take Highway 22. In five minutes, the temperature dipped to 1° C hovering back and forth to 0° C. A vehicle in front of me swerved dangerously in front of an oncoming truck and I slowed down to 60 km/h. It was going to be a long drive home. Once I cleared the foothills, the road dried up, and the temperature stayed at 1° C. It occurred to me that minute differences in our environment or even just thinking can make an enormous difference to our quality of life. What is one degree? Dry road instead of ice.

Take Sweden compared to Canada. It’s a smaller country with about ten million people versus our almost forty million, or the US, close to 400 million. They produce much of what they need. Their one brand of automobiles, Volvo, is competing with the other major brands in the world. People who want a good car for a good price buy it. Volvo invented the seat belts and provided the patent free to the rest of the world, saving many lives. Their simple sensible brands do well. You can find H&M clothing in most fancy malls. IKEA products are found everywhere.

The Swedes dress nice, but nothing flashy. It is considered bad manners for the Swedish people to flaunt their wealth. They have millionaires and billionaires, but you wouldn’t know it. No Mar-a-Lagos and golden staircases in Sweden. A few years ago, a picture became viral depicting their Princess Madeleine in the street picking up her dog’s poop. All they do is aim at moderation and practicality. People learn to say no to what they don’t need and consider equality in all they do. They have a perfect public transportation system and use it. Bus stops are fitted with daylight bulbs to help ward off depression in the long winters.

The owner of IKEA, who is worth around fifty billion, was once denied entry to a gala where he was supposed to receive a prestigious award because he arrived by bus. He wouldn’t have fared much better if he drove his fifteen-year-old Volvo instead.

Driving is a way for most people to show their wealth around the world. In Sweden, you don’t see many expensive cars. The people are content driving the dependable Volvo, which is very comfortable and behaves very well on roads like our Highway 22 on a freezing night.

Jealousy is a major reason for human conflicts. In Sweden, there is hardly anyone to be jealous of. Swedes don’t enjoy showing off. Everyone in Sweden is middle class, ensuring a balanced society. They have a different attitude toward work. There is no competition to avoid getting fired, as we often have. People do their work well without it and never work overtime. They value time with family, friends, nature, and the arts. At the same time, they managed to develop and produce one of the world’s best fighter planes, while Canadians will pay hundreds of millions of dollars for an American fighter that may arrive late.

All Swedes have generous holidays, free education, and healthcare they can afford. Taxes cover the payment for generous maternal and paternal leave that Swedes expect. They pay some of the highest taxes in the world, depending on their income. If you are a top earner, you may top 50%. There is no monetary reward for overworking, and people don’t do it. Much different, for example, from Japan, where work takes away all other values in life. Here, balance is more important than getting ahead. The Swedes will defend their choice to pay and receive what they do. They don’t need lawyers and accountants to file their taxes. They are happy the way it is.

Just like many Canadians, they are able to enjoy the long, cold winters. They take their vitamin D and play winter sports. They see the beauty of winter scenery and like wearing winter clothes for a while. An old Swedish lady told me that if they didn’t have the winters, they wouldn’t enjoy summer as much. Summer is a good time for waxing the skis.

A balanced life offers them the opportunity to enjoy their family, and they do. Many keep small summer homes and spend much time on the water. Moms can mother and guys can father. They don’t live for show; they exist naturally. In the sixties, we were mesmerized by their longer lives and began our fitness craze that is still going on.

A tiny difference in mentality can have a tremendous difference in life, just like one degree can change the drive home from stress to joy. Acceptance and balance versus a constant attempt to show superiority

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

The world or the Money.

 

The world or the Money.

About a hundred and some years ago, a smart man named Henry Ford introduced the assembly line. Cars were produced up to that point by highly skilled people who understood all the parts and developed their skills over many years. With the assembly line, many workers could learn how to make small parts and fit them together to make the vehicles. Each didn’t know how to make a car. It wasn’t a new idea. The Venetians in Italy did the same to build ships hundreds of years earlier. It was new for now and set up the US on the road to prosperity.

Mr Ford understood a very important aspect of economics. If you produce all those cars, who is going to afford to buy them? He insisted that those who build the automobile must make enough wages to purchase them. Of course, they must first have food, shelter, and other needs. The workers soon had enough money for indoor plumbing, entertainment, and many other conveniences that were invented, manufactured, and sold, creating economic prosperity.

The idea that Henry Ford started spread out throughout the United States fast and growth became synonymous with prosperity. Soon, people understood that increasing the population would catalyze economic growth. America didn’t have the European setbacks of wanting only what was good for its own nationality. They were open to any Caucasian people and made colored people available to serve them. Some races were more or less desirable than others. There were also fewer restrictions on space for growth. Other powers did not compete for space in the country because of its enormous size.

The United States was on the way to becoming a rival to the old colonial powers. New people flocked to get in and they built new economic centres on the East and West coasts. Some people became very rich while others enjoyed the American Dream as people marvel at dreaming about winning the lottery. All the prosperity and hard work didn’t save them from the great depression. Great wars were fought, and those who survived enjoyed a period of pleasant existence. The rich feared the spread of Communism and all were fearful of what Fascism could do. Hitler was fresh in their minds.

A period of peace and prosperity marked the time after the Second World War, even while the Cold War was raging in the background. The working people never had it so good. Now people learned how to use democracy to their advantage while the Elites focused on how to maximise their power and profits. They joined the religious fundamentalists for political reasons.

I remember discussing with fellow workers who were unsure about what benefits to request in the next union contract. Life was good and minorities, including women, felt reasonably good about how things were shaping. We fought, on many fronts, won, and now enjoyed the fruits.

Our European allies, including the defeated Germany, went the Social Democratic way, while America built itself on the Capitalistic model. The problem is that they didn’t read the end of the book about capitalism. Canada tried to stay in the middle lane.

The old British Empire, from which came both the US and Canada, ruled by dividing people. In North America existed many options to divide the population and set groups against each other. There was no firm sense of national unity. All the people had ancestors from many nations. There was no religious unity either. All faiths had strong representations. The elites chose to divide on economic grounds.

Soon we found ourselves in a new situation, with a higher Middle Class and a much bigger lower Middle Class. Blue collar shirts versus white collar shirts. Everyone was no longer seeking a better peaceful life but to climb on others for a higher position on the economic scale. The workers instead of savings had debt limits, while the others had investment portfolios. All wanted more government services and less taxes. GDP rose and resource extraction did as well.

The humans of Earth in the last few generations went on a rampage, exploiting natural resources as if there was no tomorrow. We forgot about future generations and the need for the planet to regenerate while we focused on competing for higher status.

No longer do people consider natural cycles to be the will of God, and we place our faith in our fledgling science. The planet groaned in pain. It gave life to so many life forms that now we are destroying its ability to sustain life.

A good example is oil. It bridged us from animal power to electronics, but now we are wasting it by unnecessarily burning it. The only consideration we have is the price per barrel and the financial dividends to investors or export taxes for governments. When we use all the oil, there is nothing on Earth that can replace it.

It is now the first time in human history that we have to sacrifice for yet unborn generations in the future. We may have to fight for their future. What will we do?

Worlds are created by what we call God. People make money.

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

Good versus Evil.

 

 Good versus Evil.

Each of us can go back to the earliest memory of our life. It may be a genuine memory or one that we were told about. We also remember “the bad guys.” Our parents or guardians pass on to us the fear and hate of some others. In my case, it was the Nazis, followed by the Communists and the Arabs. They were all bad guys. My parent’s friends and the people they dealt with were the “good guys’, but we had to watch almost everyone since they could cheat us.

We had good German people, Russian and Arab friends, and neighbors, but the nation or race was scary. Humans need a boogie man who is worse than us. We don’t manage to be as good as some people are, but we can always find someone less than ourselves. We cheat in business and call it smart, but watch the less fortunate noticing their deficiencies. There is a fear of homeless people, for example. We don’t help them since they supposedly will use our money to buy cigarettes and booze; we say. Some undoubtedly will. Some high-class people will cheat all of us out of a lot of money and we will try to gain their favor. The same with politicians who gain from their positions. We shower them with compliments and they provide political favors in return.

There are signs that humans like us lived on Earth as far back as 200,000 years ago. We have evidence of writings from over 10,000 years ago. It seems as if the fight between good and evil always existed. Also, there was always a competition for leadership. People naturally fight for the alfa dog position. This is animal instinct behavior. There are always people who consider it differentiating between animals and humans. It is a conflict between those who look for selfish gain and others seeking cooperation for the benefit of all. The Athenians were developing democracy while the Spartans wanted strength at all costs.

There are still many people around who remember the time that Star Wars movie became a hit. That sci-fi piece of art depicted the distinction between good and evil and humanity's interaction with the supernatural.

It had the appeal of new special effects, great cinematography, and talented acting. The movie took the world by storm. To this day, there are people in Great Britain who formed an official religion around the principal theme of believing in the “Force”. It doesn’t take much imagination to guess what the “Force” is representing. I call it the universal mind, since its other more common name is no longer popular.

In Star Wars we witness a corrupt dark lord using the force for evil reasons, wanting to win the leadership of all intelligent life forms. The Force is an invisible great power humans can use for right or wrong if they know how. It plays with humans, seemingly to let us learn some lessons that it alone knows.

We can easily see in the Old Testament how the Gods (rolled into one) can be mean beyond our comprehension. Take, for example, Noah’s flood. People didn’t listen, so a flood killed the whole Earth’s population, women, children, and animals. Sodom and Gomorrah were obliterated supposedly for sexual misbehavior. The Egyptian people suffered the ten plagues after God hardened Pharaoh’s heart, leading him to anger God. In the end, all Egyptian firstborn males were killed, and Pharaoh’s army was drowned. God, or the Force was also used to punish His own people in the cruelest ways. It was a world in which the power of a spiritual being kept law and order using powers not available to the opposing force.

The entire picture was changed two thousand years ago when God fathered a son who walked the Earth in a human form. Now, words took the first place and people used miracles only minimally. The power of God was diverted to the use of wisdom. The son taught humans to be shepherds and what they must do themselves to have a perfect society on a healthy planet.

We struggled but couldn’t achieve the goal. In came a new idea from the art world. The Jedi of Star Wars. Humans trained beyond anything known so far, who used the Force for good instead of evil. They could fight, but fairly and only for the good.

A new option was discovered. The conflict now can be not for dominating and subjugating the world but for making it better for all while controlling evil by the only thing it understands. The measured use of force dominated by intellect and good intentions.  

There is no need for a strong man or emperor in that world. Power could be in the hands of each community designed for their circumstances. An educated, well-trained super moral Jedi cast can serve the Force, and the people aimed to build the perfect society. To preserve our humanity, we would combine old biological technology with artificial intelligence. Otherwise, we may be another failed experiment and something else will take our place. Future archeologists will dust our bones and artifacts trying to figure out where we went wrong.

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