Armageddon. Is it coming?

 

Armageddon. Is it coming?

I am pretty used to looking at a mountain. Here in the Pass we more or less see the Crowsnest Mountain from everywhere. A very long time ago I lived in another place, The Jezreel Valley, from which we could see a hill called Armageddon. It is called “Har”, mountain but it is only a hill with a flat top. The significant part of it is that three major religions say that a fight between good and evil will happen there and it will be the end of the world. By the way, Armageddon is on the way between Iran and Jerusalem.

Why do I tell you this? Because mountains are a place of safety, an area where spirituality heightens, and also a reminder of doom. Look at the Frank Slide and remember. Also, a mountain gives a person the feeling that they can see farther than others. Others feel more closed in. In historical times, mountain fighters were the hardest to beat since you couldn’t use chariots in the fight.

Now there is a feeling in the air that we should consider the possibility of the end of the world. So many people died in a relatively short time, and many more will. No longer we believe the so-called leaders who convinced people that there is nothing to worry about. We know that those who perish reach the end of their own world often to save money for someone who has too much of it. What good will money do for us if we die to make a budget look good for the government?

Humans are a relatively recent phenomenon on earth, and modern humans existed only for a tiny fraction of the life of this planet. We came, grew, and can disappear with hardly a trace very fast. Just another extinct species. We are doing well, but our faith is in our hands and we devote a lot of effort to engineering our extinction. Now in the twenty-first century, even a child could look and say that collectively we are acting stupid. Just look at what we are doing and don’t tell me to see the bright side. I will believe in a positive side when we unite and help each other and the planet.

The US recently decided to spend many billions of dollars on modernizing nuclear arms, forcing the Russians to do the same. Great Britain announced the same measures and the rest will follow. Those missiles have only one possible purpose, to destroy human civilization. Of course, that money could finance significant improvements to people’s lives, but that is not considered important. The millions and billions of people who are barely managing to live, (some don’t) present another danger. Before people die, they most often try to fight for their lives. A war between the developing and developed nations will be our end.

Next comes the danger that we all contribute to. Our technology came to a point where we can use tremendous amounts of resources very fast but haven’t figured out what to do with the garbage that’s left behind. The worst is the damage to the atmosphere. Satellite pictures show that we are causing the polar caps to melt, which will bring flooding to large swats of dry land. Logically we should take major steps to correct the problem, but economic and political concerns stop us. This will be an unimaginable catastrophe that our next few generations will face and can end our civilization.

If we survive the first two problems, the next is socially oriented. In our recent history, we witnessed two world-changing revolutions in Russia and France. Now when the population is much bigger, communication is faster and education more widespread, we are facing a possible worldwide revolution that will probably involve modern-day weapons. We allowed the gap between the rich and the poor to become impossible to sustain, between countries and between individuals.

Another old reason for possible extinction is the conflict against microorganisms. We see a sample of it right now with the Coronavirus. Nature can produce an invisible enemy able to destroy humans and effectively overwhelm our defenses before we react. We could deal with the threat, but we are not organized enough to do so.

Your body is made of trillions of live cells that eat, breathe, multiply, die, and shit. They form a lot of tiny organisms that are all needed to make you you. All the parts are important. All must do their part for us to live. The bacteria in our stomachs are necessary for us to exist. Humanity is also made of many parts. Life on earth is made of many more parts, all with a job to do. We didn’t figure it out, but it works. People shouldn’t screw it up if they don’t know how to create something better. We know it exists on cooperation, so we should try to cooperate until we figure things out.

I look at the mountain and remember that Armageddon can happen at any time. I love to “eat, drink, and be merry” or trust in the Lord and not have bad thoughts. Yet there is no life without making an effort. We can live pleasant lives on this beautiful planet, but we are tasked with making good decisions, or we will bring about our demise.

All of us prefer to believe that saving the world is somebody else’s job, but it’s not. Every word that comes from our mouths counts. Every thought in our minds has real consequences. If we all fight instead of cooperating, future archeologists, humans, or another, will be studying our extinct civilization and write books about it.

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

Princes. Black or White?

 

Princes. Black or White?

When I was young, people talked about the US as the outstanding achievement of democracy, but we considered the British queen the most powerful person on earth. It was embedded in the culture of the adults that I, as a child, overheard talking. I am OK with someone who symbolically oversees the politicians, or in churches a figurehead above clergy and so on. We are social creatures and we need leadership. In the case of politics, I like to see a balance. The monarch should be able to fire the political leadership and guarantee that a new group representing the will of the people will be installed. It is better than civil war, as we almost witnessed in the USA recently. Yet it doesn’t have to be someone rich beyond compare.

Another adult conversation that I overheard as a child was about genetics and racism. My mom was talking with her friends, saying that if you have a black person in the family lineage, a baby of different skin colour may be borne at any time. It was not considered discriminatory, only a scientific fact.

Being the most famous people in the world at the time ensured that the British royal family naturally feared the birth of a dark skin future monarch. No royal would have considered marrying a commoner, never mind a person of mixed or other race. At that time many people suspected that all black-skinned humans may be primitive cannibals. People used to believe strongly in eugenics. We had songs on the radio saying that Africans eat each other.

I know some mixed-race couples. They signed on for some abuse when they joined up and freely talked about it all the time. Some people befriended them and others didn’t. However, the royal family lives their entire lives on a stage and they must maintain their aura of being superior humans. They have no special qualities, only the image that the media gives them. There is a partnership. News reporters wish to be close to power, and they derive power from being on the news.

 

Not long-ago people believed royalty had blue blood. The monarch never says “I” when talking about themselves, they always say “we”. They don’t mean I and the royal family, the Firm, as Meghan refers to it; they mean I and God. God after all ordained the royals and if we mere mortals don’t protect the monarch, we sin against God.

The media could ruin the royal family if they unite against them. The royal family controls the media by giving them access. If a reporter is permitted to interview the Queen, the paper will sell a lot of copies. The Firm, (royals) plays the game expertly. They are stumped by Prince Harry and Meghan. The young couple is loved by the common people yet doesn’t play by the royal’s rules.

Now the sweet young mother Meghan stunned the world, accusing someone in the firm of being racist against her baby, and the world is holding its breath. The royals said sorry, and the media is trying to milk it for all it’s worth. We see a repeat of Princess Diana’s story. Will we see her younger son Harry walk in her footsteps? He captured the world when he marched as a child behind her casket. Will he survive if he no longer pleases the firm?

Prince Harry and his beautiful combined-race wife are now some of the most famous people in the world and able to do what hardly anyone else can. Their words and actions are “news” in every corner of the world. How will they use that power? Will they prolong the concern that their children didn’t receive a title and related income, or will they use their fame to help others? If they are concerned about children suffering for no fault of their own, the Prince can help by bringing media attention. There are so many children not born into rich families who face the reality of starvation.

Take, for example, the children in Yemen right now. The World Food Program is warning that children in Yemen are facing the biggest food famine in history. This is caused by the US-backed Saudi blockade, which is a fight between Suni and Shiite Muslims. Saudis and Iranians are vying for oil dominance in the Middle East and millions of children are starving. Their sad pictures are available to all on the internet. Not too many people can help them, but Harry and Meghan working with Oprah could.

Harry most likely can’t become the king of the British Empire. If he did, he would be awarding medals and cutting ribbons for the rest of his life. Yet, using his star power, he could make a difference in the world, but it would not be easy or safe. Let’s see what he is made of. Does he care about his babies not receiving titles and security, or does he promote justice for children?

Princess Diana brought attention to the victims of Aids. I hope that Prince Harry and Meghan will do something equally important.

Source. Internet.

https://www.bing.com/images/search

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

We are sick and dying because:

 

We are sick and dying because:

I read a letter from my member of parliament and it left me speechless. I am not used to agreeing with the party he represents, but here it is, black on white. We are a rich advanced country, why do we not make our own vaccines, tests, and all the necessary safety equipment. Why did we get caught in a situation where we were unprepared for a pandemic when we know pandemics occur regularly with severe spread every hundred years or so?

Well, I can try to explain with the limited information at my disposal. Our problem is stretched over a much longer time than one government. It is spread over Federal governments, provincial governments, and even corporations. I can summarize it by saying it is our idea that Austerity is the answer for everything and our false belief that if we help big corporations prosper without control, they will solve all of our problems. You see, big corporations saw no need to prepare Canada for a pandemic, and many found ways to benefit from it when it happened. Others spend a lot of energy demanding that the government will act “socialist” and bail them out using tax money.

Preparing a country for potential disasters is more like buying insurance, and it costs money. You must have civil servants in charge of it, stock of materials, trained staff, built and equipped infrastructure and contingency plans. Countries that do weather the storm and those who don’t will suffer as we do, or even worst as the US and Brazil are right now. You will spend a lot more if you are not prepared. It is similar to people who choose not to invest in winter tires. You save a little, but you pay big if an accident happens.

For many years now, government after government, of both main political stripes have been reducing our preparedness in a big way. Can anyone tell me what is the average time right now for an ambulance to reach me here in Blairmore? If I am suffering from a stroke, how long will I be on the road before I reach the proper hospital equipment to help me? Those are decisions governments, not health boards make. (In Calgary, it used to be 7 to 9 minutes.)

Every government attempts to be more efficient than those before, and they always promise not to reduce services. Good idea, but never happens.

I became convinced that the provincial government was against universal health care in 1998 when I witnessed Ralph Klein’s attempt to significantly reduce our care by imploding the only downtown hospital in Calgary. He had a long fight with the health providers trying to make them work for less and showed that he was boss by demolishing the fully-functioning General Hospital. He sold the land for high-end condominiums. Soon after waiting times in Emergency Departments became impossible, Private clinics appeared and many services like hospital food and cleaning were privatized. It didn’t cost less, but the service now was provided mostly by new immigrants who often worked two jobs to make ends meet. The good jobs were gone.

Seniors assisted living facilities faired the same. Amongst other things, what used to be private rooms now became shared accommodations, and medium-priced homes were no longer available. It was either you can afford the rich places or else. In the rural areas, couples were split up when they needed different levels of care.

Higher learning institutions were no longer built, and many spaces that would have provided education for middle-class students now were marketed to students from other countries. The new rich class from Communist China capitalized and filled spaces up. (I don’t blame the Chinese.) Graduates from our excellent institutions are quickly gobbled up by other countries while we have a shortage of professionals. We know it since they come here on vacation.

I think we should counter the Brain Drain with our own measures. First, we should finance government-owned institutions for advanced science and technology. Students who pass the tests should study free of charge and only pay back the cost of education if they leave. Investing in our youth, health and education are insurance for a bright future.

Canada should be a place so great to live in that the lure of higher income will not convince most people to leave. You see it in Northern European countries. We can afford it if we don’t give our money away to People who come here offering us temporary jobs to serve their interests (i.e. Build pipelines) and enrich them with our resources.

I don’t care if Canadians are free to invest in publicly owned companies that make them money. I only care about Canadians who are contributing to the well-being of all Canadians. I would like to see us lead the world by legislating that politicians who lie in campaigns or do not do the work we hire them to do will be taken to task. Remove their pensions and hold public investigations. If a person is not interested in making sure that our money is wisely applied for our benefit, there should be some price to pay. Being a leader involves using all you have to introduce and supervise measures that will make your country great.

I can’t stand a system where hundreds of so-called representatives are meeting just to end all disputes by voting as they are told on party lines. We take our brightest and shut them up, letting the Prime Minister rule like a king. The leader of the opposition is a lower king keeping his valuable MLAs muzzled in the same manner, and the voting public is never heard.

It is our governing system that is responsible for our suffering and now dying from a perfectly predictable pandemic.

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

Will a bug end human slavery?

 

Will a bug end human slavery?

The Earth which we are made of and live on is truly a great recycling system. Billions of years ago it was a hot soup of melted everything whirling in cold space. According to the laws of physics, it started cooling off, and eventually, some separated into elements. Billions of years later, but no-one was counting, it developed dirt and air. With the water, a habitat for life was created. Some billions of years later there were living, breathing biological creatures, plants, and an eco-system. Humans evolved from primitive animals into thinking conscious creatures aware of themselves. They lived, died, and recycled like the rest, but formed and communicated memories and ideas. Stories were told, making us what we are.

As time went by, humans made a choice to live differently than the animals around them. The agricultural revolution made us able to specialize, grow food, have armies, and develop arts and culture. Land became the most coveted commodity, and nature was tamed. Man was making food “by the sweat of his brows.” People enslaved other people, built cities, and some escaped slavery for a duration.

Civilizations came and went. Outstanding achievements were made and art became important in shaping humans’ thoughts. Eventually came the industrial revolution, expanding our ability to conquer the natural world that gave us birth. Mankind transitioned from dependence on the natural laws to using and abusing nature.

This entire process harnessed most of the humans’ work, often without proper compensation or care for those who made it possible. The next stage in evolution took place, enabling people to use artificial beings (robots) for work threatening the existence of the billions of workers. The individual components took priority from the collective goal. Individuals formed groups to compete with other groups. Nations were created.

A new revolution called “digital” gave superiority to some, diminishing most others until it spread amongst all humans to some degree. Artificial Intelligence is now the tool for some humans to dominate others. The advanced apes, as some call us, took control from nature and used new powers to compete against each other. We ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Division barred us against becoming Gods. History repeats itself.

Artificial intelligence lately is being developed to have more and more individuality and also to amalgamate with human intelligence. Self-aware weapons are pitted against each other. Recent developments are making the tool “AI”, capable of competing against its makers, even self reproduce. Robots can build robots.

There is an enormous gap between God’s intellect and ours. That is why our most critical functions are co-ordinated by the subconscious. There is no doubt that a human mind combined with artificial thinking machines can take us closer to becoming what we call God. We would achieve new heights if and only if we are united instead of fighting each other.

Recent events such as the present raging pandemic and Global Warming highlighted the issue for most advanced humans. Unfortunately, they are often blocked by others who are motivated by a quest for power and nothing else. We have been warned about the problem for thousands of years.

Artists of all sorts messaged that humans must work together while combating selfish sentiments. One need not go far to see the messages. Tour the great cathedrals, for example, that took the efforts of many human generations to build. Listen to historical classical music written for large orchestras. Read your New Testament. The message is always the same. Work together and care for each other.

While our ancient fore-parents had very little access to works of art, now the situation flipped. Our present generation is exposed to limitless information available to all at their fingertips. Now we are dealing with people not being able to decipher all the ideas and latest knowledge. The volume is overwhelming and humans shut their senses off trying to resolve important issues of faith or beliefs. They join camps, often called parties, and let self-proclaimed “leaders” make their decisions.

I have become convinced that the catastrophe we are currently dealing with is manufactured to teach us what we must learn (if we are willing). Conflict is built into our world. Male and female, people with various skin pigmentations, even mountains, and prairies which depend on each other’s existence for mutual survival. With an increase in human’s abilities to reshape nature, additional problems surfaced.

The test is to discover if humans can care for each other and the world, and failing means extinction. Most people are sheep while a few become shepherds. The order from God to shepherds is “feed my sheep.” We can try, but we will not get away from it. The sooner we understand and act, the better it is for us.

Every human can believe what comes from within or not. Do what is natural without convincing yourself to ignore nature’s directives. See that every human being is that, a human like yourself.

Our technology is growing exponentially and soon will do what a few years ago would have been called miracles. These developments can make life great and even defeat death. It also will have a dark side. We can destroy human civilization quickly and efficiently. Judgment day is upon us. It is time to act or risk annihilation.

The COVID pandemic made many people more generous and helpful towards each other. It also served to expose the mislead individuals who would destroy the rest if able to. We can clearly see who refuses to take measures to save others’ lives, such as not wearing masks, refusing vaccinations, reducing funds for health care, not feeding starving unfortunate people, and so on. We have relatively a short time to convince these people or figure out what to do about them.

Now the long-predicted “water wars” began, right in our backyard in Southern Alberta. Here is an opportunity to unite behind solutions that will serve us all.

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

DEATH!

 

DEATH!

It’s an old story told billions of times. I was perhaps in grade three when we learned the story of creation. First God created the world and all that is in it and finished with Adam in God’s own image. Later, out of the first man, he created the most precious gift for humans, a woman. Men exist through the efforts and pain of women. In High School, they taught me that the way creation worked is by evolution. First primitive life began, and over time it evolved to what there is today. The teacher explained that a day for God in his space is not the same as a day on Earth. We measure creation in God’s days, not earthly days.

Later educators even explained in a convoluted way how life reproduces and ends. It was the fifties and no politician even dreamt yet about forcing teachers to teach that science is wrong and the world was created in 144 hours. In the fifties, we had a lot of reasons to thank science.

The beginning of life explained, leaving the question of the end open. There is only one known human planet and if nothing dies, where will new life resides. Every living organism needs a piece of the Earth directly or indirectly. As hard as it is, all things must die and be recycled into a new life. Yet, we have an embedded instinct to preserve life and fight for it.

Humans, created in the image of God, can keep consciousness existing, as God does, but didn’t yet discover how it works. There is a veil mentioned in the Bible between Heaven and Earth, and we neglected to learn about its meaning. We know it was torn but can’t say where. In the meantime, we just try to prolong and save lives, which brings us to this day.

Humans suffered from epidemics and pandemics throughout history. The worst of those survived in stories, especially since the invention of writing. The Black Plague in London killed more than half of London. It was caused by cat haters (like we have even today) and mice and rats spread the plague. The last worldwide pandemic happened roughly a hundred years ago, killing between fifty to a hundred million people on Earth. We don’t have accurate numbers from the most densely populated areas.

Now we are dealing with another virus that is a very mild form of a killer. SARS a few years ago was killing around 15% of those infected, Ebola killed about 50% but was contained, and COVID-19 so far is killing less than 1%. This time God or whatever you wish to call Him seems to use the pandemic as a teaching tool for humanity.

Every death is tragic, but all that happens in life serves as something that people can learn from, including deaths. We are approaching a time in which humankind will learn to be much more like God. Our species’ advanced knowledge about material life is far beyond what we knew a hundred years ago, and we are learning about the spiritual reality. Now if we can learn how not to kill ourselves, we may reach the goal God set for us.

Since humans are only starting to realize that we can combine spiritual knowledge with physical existence, our best bet is to keep up the effort to improve the life we know. For a long time now, we have been struggling to find the right formula to divide our resources to benefit most of us. Yes, “our money” should benefit most of us. Fighting for a few elites is not in most people’s best interest since most people will never become the elites.

Most great pandemics happen once in a few generations. We make efforts to fend them off and after a while, money-saving measures entice us to quit. Big mistake, in my opinion. Our enjoyment of life on earth rests on a few facts. We all need some basics like food and shelter, and we can only move forward if provided with health and education.

COVID-19 taught us that those needs must be attended to regardless of the ability to work, which is quickly disappearing. The latest news shows that when people’s lives are threatened, rebellions and social discontent cause significant problems around the entire world. The reasons named are varied, but the result is disastrous. Once the order is broken, to restore it takes great effort and time.

I think that soon after the COVID-19 threat dissipates, but before the next disaster, we should make some changes.

Our tax system should change. Taxes are meant to provide funds for the government to do things that improve the lives of all the people in the country. It should be harvested from where it's plentiful. Amazon for example doesn’t need to make billions of profits every month.

We must strive to retain COVID levels of air and water clarity. We should do reopening with human and planetary health in mind. More lives have been saved by the virus causing cleaner air than the lives it took. Our behaviors changed to be less wasteful and our world started cleaning itself.  

Kindness has improved around the world from paying higher wages to helping neighbours and family. We should maintain it. We should admire those who serve, not those who exploit others.

 It was never a question of will there be a new pandemic, only when and how deadly. While human beings are debating if to destroy the world while saying that the children will find ways to save it, preparedness for the regular cycle of death should not be slacked off. It’s the same for the economy. We know that ever so often there is a crash and should be perfectly poised to handle it. For some strange reason, deadly pandemics and economic crashes always catch us by surprise and always make the rich richer and the poor worst.

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

The future is ours to see, and plan.

 

 The future is ours to see, and plan.

We all know the feeling of being forced to work and do things we do not approve of doing or wouldn’t do. We have a system that works, and none of us are willing to throw a monkey wrench into the machinery. It’s our economy.

A young person finishes grade 12 and needs to find a way to make a living. If he or she is not intellectually inclined, they go to work mostly for lower wages. The best students go to university. A few parents can finance the studies while most can’t. The young person borrows money to secure a better future. They start their working lives with debt that from graduation on is accumulating interest. If they find a job in their field, they will work for years to pay for their education and will try hard not to make waves. Jobs are not exactly waiting for them.

Both the university-educated and those who are not will be offered credit cards, easily borrowed money, and be pelted with advertising. “Fly now and pay later”. By the time that my generation often bought a house and began to save for retirement, today’s young people are in debt, often working in situations that they don’t enjoy but must endure.

Yet our kids are living in a reality that most people in the world envy. Many receive help from us, the older generation who lived in a better situation, received better wages, and knew not to get into debt over their heads. We often have old-age pensions, homes that are paid for, and some savings. This is not the reality that our kids are living in.

However, they are managing not too bad. Here there is Canadian Health-Care, a reasonable social safety net, self-improvement programs, and above all cheap imported foods and goods. The country is at peace and the infrastructure that we the elders built for them is holding. Every few years there is an economic crash and austerity-centred governments rip the floor from under them, but they make it.

It is not the same in the countries that are home to most of the world’s population. Those are the countries that enable us to have our lifestyle. When we colonized them we built our prosperity on their resources and now we use their cheap labour. Life here is not as good as fifty years ago, but it is the envy of most humans. That is why we have such pressure at all of our borders from refugees clamouring to get in.  

Most of us look at the people in poor places with disdain and say, you screwed up your place and now you are trying to come here and take what is ours, which we built by hard work. Please go to those places and look beyond the tourist places. Don’t expect it to be easy. Those “poor countries” guard their secrets.

You can easily see the rich people from China, India, wherever, but you will not see the people who work to produce all the cheap goods that we buy with plastic money. It is very easy to see now during the pandemic how we enjoy the products of modern slave labour and why we don’t buy Canadian or local.

Consider the masks and gloves that we use for protection. Mostly they are used for a short time and discarded. If they were produced here, they would be much more expensive. Or consider what you pay for vegetables in the supermarket. If we had to pay Canadian wages to our young people to produce it for ourselves, prices would double or more.

The CBC sent a team to Malaysia to investigate the manufacturing of disposable gloves. They found workers from Bangladesh and Nepal working for as little as $2.00 a day, in dangerous appalling conditions. The workers borrow money to get the jobs and endure abuse regularly.

Other Media outlets investigated the conditions of the Uyghur (Xinjiang) people working in China while being “re-educated,” forced to abandon their religion and way of life. The average Canadian looks at the smuggled recordings depicting rapes and beatings of those who produce what we need with skepticism. We find it impossible to believe how badly humans can be abused to benefit us.

There is good and bad in every corner of the world. Right now we see some countries with authoritarian regimes winning, the most visible is China. They developed a mixture of Capitalism and Communism that works in today’s environment but suppresses their people.

We watch with dismay the Chinese economy doing much better than our Western economies. We see on the news that Wuhan where Covid first struck had no new cases for months and life is back to normal. China also spends most in the world to reduce pollution. I still don’t recommend Communism or authoritarian Capitalism.

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I wearily watch here in my community a conflict building up between farmers, ranchers, and coal miners. The miners wouldn’t do well without food and the farmers without water or steel produced from coal. Why are the two hurting each other while the hotheads amongst them happily throw fuel on the fire? It is our idea of competition, which is based on winning. Competition could be different. Economics can be built to improve our lives instead of destroying them. We just have to pay the cost.

Both groups of people desperately need each other here in southern Alberta. What we need is a way to go forward without hurting each other, even if there is a cost attached. We can do it with proper planning and some effort, but profits will be reduced for the financiers who currently benefit from low taxes, a safe central well-serviced location, and an educated workforce.

Our young people deserve a good world and should learn the benefits of co-operation and the security that comes from living in a caring country where everyone is benefiting from their work. Ranchers and miners should be on the same team.

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

The power of believing.

 

 The power of believing.

The teacher in school gave us a form to take home for parents to sign to allow us to take swimming lessons. My class was ecstatic, and we all talked about nothing else but swimming. The teacher also told us it was a life skill and that many people have been saved from drowning since the Red Cross developed a learn to swim program. She also explained how swimming is one of the best physical exercises suitable even for people with health problems. I was sold on the idea and gave my mom the form. She put it away……………

I asked her if I will be allowed to go with my friends and she said no. My world crumbled in front of my eyes. Why mom? I said with tears choking me and she said. When I was young, I went playing on the frozen river and fell through the ice. Some people saved me, but it was the most horrible thing that happened to me. I am scared especially about you son since you have medical problems and you are not very strong.

I am strong mom I cried and swimming makes you stronger. I don’t want to risk losing you she said. But if I know how to swim, I will be able to save myself if… and she replied, sorry son, I don’t BELIEVE your teacher and I don’t trust some young lifeguard to watch you properly. My class went, and I stayed in the school office doing some boring homework instead of swimming.

It wasn’t until I was 18 when I could go learn how to swim without my parents’ permission, and I did. I BELIEVED my teacher. Two years later I was a lifeguard, had the highest swimming qualifications, and made recreation my career choice. My body responded, and I became much healthier than I ever was. It taught me that belief can be good but also can be terrible.

I was born in the cradle of the most popular religious beliefs, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. I was young when I realized that those were BELIEFS, and often the only difference between them was what people believed. Yet being a child of the second half of the twentieth century, I soon discovered that there was something that we all had to believe the same and that was science. We base science on proven facts and disputes are solved by proving things that could be repeatedly proven and peer-reviewed.

I am a great proponent of faith and beliefs and know the significant role they play in human destiny. What people believe determines what happens to us in life. However, it has to be verifiable, and not make-believe theory. One can’t just say I believe and it will materialize.

I watch the people who see folks dying obviously from a communicable disease and say that they don’t believe it. Their BELIEF is as good as murder. They also happen to be a group that is less affected by the particular virus for the time being. I see folks fighting against wearing protective masks and refusing the hard-earned vaccine. They BELIEVE it is going to change their DNA, or that microchips embedded in it will make them lose their imagined freedom. Their actions directly cause the deaths of the elders who built a beautiful world for them, but they don’t care.

Others are ignoring an immense body of accumulated evidence that the earth is warming up thanks to the amount of carbon we inject into the air. Instead of making an effort to stop it, they personally benefit from inventing ways to delay action. Again, selfish reasons dictate their BELIEFS. Others yet advocate building more superweapons and invest in companies that manufacture the mega killing machines.

The worst of all are the enemies from within who pose as investors and skim most profits and benefits from the productivity of the low-paid workers who produce wealth. Those watch essential workers live in objective poverty and convince them with targeted marketing to vote against their own interests. We are used to seeing a few collect millions enjoying food provided by many others who earn starvation wages. We BELIEVE that the lucky few work harder or are smarter in some ways. We don’t BELIEVE that farmers, ranchers, servers, and cashiers work hard or have important qualities. Well, science reveals that there is no physical difference between the lucky and the poor.

People don’t choose where they are born nor the colour of their skin or the social standing of birth families. Some of us choose to be moral while others don’t. Some choose to help others and others to take advantage of the less lucky. That depends upon what we BELIEVE.

Some chose to work towards making the world a better place for most or all, while others BELIEVE that caring for others is a weakness. Many BELIEVE that they were born into privileges prepared for them by their ancestors. Others KNOW that their place in the world was taken away from them and with it all its resources. Some First Nations still dispute the fact that natural resources should belong to Her Majesty instead of to them.

The argument is that the original people in most places didn’t develop the resources. Mind you, those who now own resources often hired others to develop them. Anyone can do that, but mostly they need a powerful army to take it over. Is taking what you can by strength legal? Depends on who is making the laws. Even more, depends on what we BELIEVE.

I know that what I BELIEVE will not change the world. Some will call me a dreamer. Yet I BELIEVE that if enough people will change their BELIEFS, we may yet have a better world, preserve what is most beautiful, and together will end wars, help all the children, make life wonderful for the hard-working mothers, and whatever else we can dream of.

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