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.

New Year, old problems.

 

New Year, old problems.

We will set the year 2020 in memory as one of the worst that people like me will remember. A few fireworks lit up the sky above our beloved mountain towns, and people will remember being alone during the holidays. Some will feel blessed that worst didn’t happen, but we know that so many suffered more than their share. The economy has been depressed for a few years, many lost their parents and grandparents, and the younger folks are struggling. Some must work in constant danger, (my daughter is a nurse) some work from home while playing teachers and child caregivers, and others simply lost jobs and businesses. This is made worst by all of us knowing some people who decided not to believe that there is a problem and are going around proudly spreading conspiracy theories and germs. That is their way to do “positive thinking” while spreading the killer virus.

The president of the United States was chief rumour spreader, and by the end of the year, over 300,000 of his people were buried. Here in Alberta, we found ourselves short on hospital staff with those still working demoralized by the news that they may lose their jobs as soon as things improve. If anyone cares for my opinion, we are suffering from poor management on top of the pandemic.

The new year started with a crisis in the capital of our big neighbours. A mob was set up by the outgoing president to attempt an armed coup. They failed, but five people died. My parents used to talk about revolutions. Their parents saw the Russian Communist revolution, and they suffered first hand from the Nazis’ takeover of Germany. I am scared of events like those. As the first month of 2021 is rolling by and I see the combination of pandemic and bad management seriously impacting my beloved province, I wonder if we are safe and if people reach their limits. I don’t know how it can play within the Canadian establishment, but there are ominous signs of trouble.

I came to Alberta from Israel, so I always compare the two. Israel 22,145 sq. Kilometers, 9 million people, half are original Palestinians, no natural resources, and the constant danger of war. Alberta 661,800 sq. km, less than 4 million people and lots of resources chief amongst them oil which we always knew will run out. The province has no concerns about defence and receives or contribute to the national welfare depending on need. Why is it that Alberta is not feeling on top of the world? We were set up to do so by our greatest Premier fifty years ago.

The problem as I said is bad management. We had a temporary injection of wealth and could have been the best economy in the free world. What we did instead is sold ourselves to oil interests, ignoring the future. We had oil locked up in sand, knew that it was expensive to produce, and unwisely placed all our eggs in one basket, thinking that we would be able to force the world to buy it. We were in such a hurry to make a quick buck that we failed to ensure that there would be a way to transport it to markets.

Bad speculation followed us. Towards the end of the 2020 disaster year, we invested the last of our savings financing a pipeline from the oilsands to the bottom of the continent while knowing that the soon to come US elections can render the project bankrupt. We set our revenue back by earlier tax cuts (not for me) and in my local community, we are facing a conflict between ranchers and miners.

The pandemic made us face other problems not unique to just us. We either shut down the economy now or lose vast amounts of money, and lives, later. If we stop the economy and not help people and small businesses, there is going to be hell to pay. Any help that would have been available from the Federal government in normal times will have to be reduced since all the provinces and territories are in the same dire straits. You can’t squeeze money from a rock.

I watch 2021 beginning and I fear that the last year may have not only been a terrible year but could be the beginning of a real test. What I need is some sign of hope. Like people who struggled with addictions, I realize that there are steps a person must take before healing.

First, you must hit bottom. We did. Next, you acknowledge that there is a problem and accept responsibility. Later you realize that you must make some changes or suffer to death. Well, it sounds harsh.

I don’t want to be ranting and demoralizing people, so I look for that silver lining in the dark clouds. It is always there if you look hard and long enough.

The pandemic will be over when enough people will be immunized. We only have to be careful and stay alive until we beat it. Then we have to deal with the problems that we caused in the last thirty to fifty years. Namely, we kind of have to go on a diet and get away from an unsustainable way of living. I say “we” but I mean those of us who took so much that the working people can’t sustain.

It is not impossible or even very difficult. There are countries that do it, and we can fly over and see with our own eyes. I go to popular tourist places just like the rest of you, and I meet people from other places. Two years ago I was talking to some Germans in Waterton.

They are comparable to my wife and I, working middle-class people, but they enjoy benefits that we can only dream of.

We can have an easier life if we only demand that our governments will look after our interests first and be less concerned with corporate profits. As simple as that.

A new economy may rise from COVID.

 

 A new economy may rise from COVID.

Spending Christmas without family and friends is new to me, but I thank the stars, or God, for my faithful companion in life, which I am blessed to have. I feel so sad about all the people who lately lost their companions because of the raging pandemic and other causes. I look at my many emails and identify some from people who wish to convince me that there is no problem and we should live life taking no action to slow the microscopic killer beasts off. Rage fills me hearing that the kids will go to school. The government is worried about their mental health or wish to allow their mothers to work. It’s now a contest between the economy and lives, mostly of the elderly, but spread by the young. Well, I didn’t run for any political office so I don’t have a right to complain, or do I?

All the people I know are wishing for the world to return “back to normal.” It upsets me since I don’t think that it will, ever. The last event I remember from before the pandemic was a raging community meeting in which the town people were trying to figure out how to stop the government from chasing away the rural medical staff by cutting their income. Some were worried about losing regional hospitals in the countryside. The world that we wish to go back to is changing and people were ready to fight. And then COVID came.

Our society is obsessed with saving lives. People spend a lot of money on looking for cures and discovering ways to prolong life. Some are very concerned with the lives of the unborn, but much less with those existing already. There is always pressure to save the lives of the rich and pressure to restrict care for the general population. Now, much of the general population is essential workers. Economics is often cited as a reason for the discrepancy. Economics also plays a major role in people’s ability to stay healthy and alive.

I look around and I see us managing to exist while a significant portion of the economy is shut down. That makes me reassess our priorities. I remember the last few elections here and everywhere. Aspiring politicians in our time always play the “jobs card.” Yet how many jobs do we must-have for us to survive?

A year into the pandemic we see that we can do many jobs from home. We can do a large portion of services over the internet and we already see that much of the manufacturing can be performed by robots. It will not be long before most “jobs” from the past will be mechanized. A few people with modern equipment can perform what used to employ thousands of people. We employ a large cheap labour force overseas to produce stuff that is used for a short time and fills up our garbage dumps.

Governments and large corporations employ people for political reasons but many folks do unsatisfying often useless work. You can tell who when they quote repeatedly: TGIF. “Creating” jobs is mostly not very useful. Yet we believe that if you don’t force people to work by impoverishing them, they will only stay intoxicated on the couch.

For as long as we have written records, there are stories of slavery. We used to buy and sell slaves and whip them to make them work, so we don’t believe that there is another way. We used to strap children at schools, yet now the children learn a lot more without corporal punishment. Husbands used to beat wives regularly and now we quit and they willingly do more than their husbands.

The other popular belief is that people will cheat to have free food and shelter instead of working. Some will. Yet from personal experience, I vouch that most will not. Our saving grace in the future, when there will be no more jobs for most people, is that they will develop small businesses and work for pride and to serve others. All we have to do is dig up the history of our great grandparents, and we will have ample examples of people working hard for very little money.

All we need to do is cut off the manufacturing of “build to fail” items, things that are cheaper to buy than to make or fix, and we will see a new economy emerge. My mother knitted my sweaters for free, and I still use some of them. It is the nature of humans to be productive if no one forces them to.

I think that it is completely possible to build an economy around honest work and reasonable pay. People wish to serve each other and make things that others will be happy to use and will last for a lifetime.

I strongly believe that we can build a new economy much different from the one that collapsed when COVID arrived. By maximizing our technology, we will reduce the need for labour. Laws could make it illegal to build things that are designed to fail. Reducing Marketing can eliminate our desires for useless goods and manufactured pleasures such as travelling pointlessly. Less marketing of unhealthy fast foods and needless medications will improve our health and reduce health care expenses. It will also make us spend less on ever-changing fashions of clothing, home “improvements” and vehicles.

Overall, we could build an economy that will provide the most critical needs and wonderful services for a fraction of what we have been paying. Our taxes could be reduced and we can sustain all of us cheaply and see if people will not work when they are not forced to. I bet that most will.

A few will suffer from addictions, a few will not contribute by working, while some will be criminals, but most will find ways to serve. It’s in our human nature. We have a big problem with COVID and another with political systems. It is possible that we will come out of it better than we were before. We will serve instead of win.

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

 

Peace on Earth.

 

Peace on Earth.

It’s a week before Christmas and I am locked in at home spared the pains of shopping on credit cards and all the rest of holiday rituals. It gives me time to think about the Jewish baby that was born destined to spread a message of peace, love, and hope. The airwaves are ringing with songs about Santa, Rudolf, elves, and gifts. Amazon is predicting huge profits and folks dressed up like Eskimos are dreaming about a vaccine that will allow them to return to “normal” perhaps without jobs and homes but, what the heck. They can say Merry Christmas instead of Happy Holidays.

I call my wife “my gift from God.” I don’t give platitudes, I truly mean it. Yet in the fifty years or so that we have spent together, we probably sparred or had arguments at least every two days. When I asked her once what she hopes heaven will be like, she said, I hope in heaven there will be peace. Why ask for peace instead of living in peace I asked? And a new argument erupted.

I agree with the idea that peace is the most precious thing on earth and possibly the hardest to get. I have two cats at home and we love those little animals dearly. They have everything a cat could dream of and there is enough food, space, and comfort toys for 10 cats, but they fight. The stronger male hunts the female and chases her away from the good places, including the litter box. I get after him and my wife gets defensive on his behalf, so we fight.

I look around the world knowing that we live in the most peaceful time in history. It has been seventy-plus years since the last big war and the weapon manufacturers are not happy about it. Almost all fights I am aware of start because someone can make more money on fighting than on peace.

We exist in relative peace, yet there are wars all around us where people really get killed, children starve and homes are wrecked. Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Armenia, Yemen, Miramar, most South American countries, most African countries, large cities in the United States, all have small or large wars going on.

My friends and I go on vacation to foreign places, see the tourist places and take a tour to the safe areas of poor countries assuming that they are backward and need better political systems. We never see the truth. We only see what is shown to us. When we meet the poor people who came here as immigrants we see them humble, trying to learn our ways and survive here the best they can.

To truly “know” what the other people are like, we must go deeper.

There are billions of people who do not have our wealth and all that comes from having it. The poor can’t go on vacations but they see what we enjoy on TVs, and even on the screens of little smartphones. They know that living day to day, not knowing if there will be food tomorrow, is unnecessary. They “know” that they work hard but can’t be sure about the next meal, that their kids don’t receive education and there is no help when they get sick and die. They think that we also “know” it and enjoy feeling superior to them. They hate the fact that we have clean water and they don’t since our corporations polluted it.

In my day, I met many of those who were not lucky enough to be born rich. Many, including me, were born into poverty, often in rich countries. I also met people who were well off and lost it all, sometimes in wars. The poor are not stupid, not lazy nor greedy, they only want to live. They want their kids and aging parents not to suffer and die. In an attempt to save their lives they imitate those who do well and often become greedy lying cheats and the war goes on. You can’t find genuine love amongst the very rich. They don’t know if it’s not faked for a price.

I had the “privilege” to be around those who do not need to worry about food for tomorrow or even a pension for old age. I smiled and showered platitudes like the rest of them and pretended to be somewhat better than the unwashed masses. I studied the Christmas story theoretically but didn’t learn a thing. Powerful folks always wish to maintain peace while the underprivileged are a threat to them. The weak learn how to join forces and beat those who oppress them. When they do, they don’t stop and everyone changes places. The cards are shuffled and a new game begins. So how can we obtain “Peace on Earth?” Half of my Christmas cards this year mention PEACE.

Instead of trying to figure out how to cheat to get ahead of others, we could see where we can help, especially those who can’t payback.

People learn by imitating, even animals do. When we do the right thing, we feel good and others copy. It starts like a pandemic, in one little place, and spreads. It is slow in the beginning, but huge later on. Remember the song “we are the world we are the children?”

This year we have the opportunity to spend some time thinking and evaluating what we learned, even from an awful experience. We start with thoughts, go-to words, and perform actions.

My wish for this quarantine Christmas is that in some little mountain towns, like Bethlehem, the message of the divine baby will take hold and spread, infecting maskers and anti maskers alike. Little acts of kindness go around this world just as fast as wars.

Humans will now go through the most significant change ever. We must make it positive or destroy ourselves. Accept the teachings of the one named Emmanuel.

Joy and Peace for the new year.