Do you remember?

 

 Do you remember?

A lot of wonderful conversations begin with a question. Do you remember? Strangely, two people who were in the same place at the same time often remember two different things. I never believed it until they proved it to me beyond any shadow of a doubt. Sadly, we tend to use what we remember to shape the future.

I watched a video showing a Postman some years back. Do any of you remember the postman? It was a person who walked from house to house delivering the mail. He had a simple job, but everyone knew him. He also knew the entire community and could tell you if Mrs. Johnson two blocks down is doing OK or needs help. He knew who was in love with whom or if someone was having an affair. I still remember that we all had a mailbox by the door and if we missed the mail carrier, we checked the box over and over.

Another was the milkman. Most people didn’t have a fridge and fresh milk was delivered to the “Milk shoot”. Another place where people met was the Barber Shop or its equivalent for ladies. This was the place where people waited together and discussed local politics and important stuff. If you wanted to know who has the best chance of becoming the next Mayor, you went for a haircut.

Every few blocks, there was a grocery store, a butcher shop, and a vegetable store. No one in their right mind would dream of hitching up horses or starting a car to shop for everyday needs. Bigger places had specialty stores, like a candy store, sewing, and notions or even a clothing store, often together with a seamstress and a tailor. There was a shoemaker, mostly for repairs, but he could “build” a new pair of shoes.

The guys met during the day at the garage or mechanic shop and later at the tavern. Money was at the local bank, not on a plastic card, and the Post Office was a serious government institution, not a tool of Amazon. Most places had a local newspaper or two, plus a community bulletin board. The newspaper had comments not only about local events but also about the rest of the country and the world. They reflected local opinions and sometimes formed them. Their integrity was important. That’s why often there were two or more.

Rightly or wrongly, people were often attached to their family groups. One cared about the family name. On Sunday, they would show up at church wearing their “Sunday’s Best” and marched in to the sound of bells. That was a community. After service, friends would frequent local restaurants or coffee shops, and plans were made for the coming week.

It was families, communities, towns, and cities that formed societies. I remember from history lessons that the Crowsnest Pass was known for miner’s strikes and for being a Red Place. Here was a center of the Communist Party of Canada, and some street names commemorated it.  

Strangely, history doesn’t remember this beautiful place as a revolution cradle but as a place where people fought and won human rights. It was a place that broke prohibition.

Things began to change. We started to value money more than community. Didn’t want to pay ten cents more for an item available in a store close to home or pay more for a car made in Canada. All the little businesses went under to be replaced by big business from somewhere else. Each time there was a saving to begin with and less service or community. The factories moved overseas and you could no longer get shoes made for you. You couldn’t get freshly baked bread either.

Took a while to realize that all those little business owners were friends and neighbours and they moved to city jobs. The streets became empty and parking lots got bigger. For a while, big stores employed friends and neighbours, but they went under as things came by mail. All that time, fewer people around us could make a decent living and others did in other countries. They came as tourists to look at our ruined communities.

We paid a heavy price for getting more for less and shopping where the lowest price is the law. We pay less, but we have no service. We don’t know the store owners and they don’t come to our church anymore. Most places don’t have a little newspaper discussing local affairs and the average wage is barely enough to live on. Hardly any of our kids live close to home and when they get holidays, they “travel” making other countries rich. We end up in Care Homes where someone counts how many bites we eat. Everywhere is “self serve” and we chose which garbage we will throw out. The packaging, delivery of what we buy and the marketing cost more than the items. Our average income ends up in the landfill heap while the quality of life diminishes. In the city, you don’t even know who lives three doors down.

I miss the postman and the neighbours who used to drop by for coffee. I loved knowing my neighbours and paying for their work as they paid for mine. Now I see us moving to work from home. Immediately home prices go up.

We allowed the market to rule and depleted our resources, poisoned our environment, and isolated ourselves.

I think that the experiment of governments running everything (Communism,) didn’t work. The experiment of the Market dictating everything (pure Capitalism,) didn’t work either. The natural way of family, community, and a little bit of both is the best. We do best living in the balance.

It’s time to reevaluate how we want to be and head that way. It won’t work unless we decide that it’s the best and believe that we can do it. Like all things, it will start with a seed and grow if we help it.

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

Aged and Compromised, in a pandemic.

 

Aged and Compromised, in a pandemic.

I live in paradise and don’t crave travelling or any other modern temptations. All my working years I managed on less, paid for a pension, and planned for the “golden years”. Now I reside in a little home in the forest on the Canadian Rocky Mountains, in a historical little town that provides what I need. The pension is enough for food and taxes, a working vehicle, and health needs not covered by our Universal Health Care program.

I paid cash for my education, lived modestly, and raised two self-sufficient kids. I took no government assistance like unemployment and regularly donated much more than the taxes consider a write-off and I still do. As I am getting older, I need some help with difficult tasks so I save to pay for it. Never went on a cruise or even visited my birth country. I am a happy Canadian who loves the snow on the mountains and the Alpine meadows in the summer.

Not in my wildest dreams did I consider having to put up with a killing pandemic in my old age, but if it’s here, I am willing to do my best and not only survive but help to curb the spread, even if it’s inconvenient. Took my vaccinations, wore a mask the few times I went out and promoted responsible behaviour. Here I ran into snags.

I live in a world of people who are motivated by reasons that I don’t consider important. Some believe that they can wish the reality to be different and want all of us to do the same. They want to “enjoy life” and if compromised people like me will die as a result, so be it. Others simply resent anyone telling them what to do, regardless of the reasons. I understand both but wish to stay alive and enjoy what I worked and saved for.

The campaign to risk death is not just an opinion expressed by a few but a well-organized and financed effort backed up with lawyers, organized public protests, marketing, and politicians motivated by political donations. For two years, while I sat in what is almost house arrest, I have been racking my brain trying to figure out who has an actual reason to promote against safety and responsible behaviour. I finally got a clue.

It came from a film published after the second world war. It is a 10-minute film called Disabled Holocaust. Apparently, the Nazis before and during the war exterminated disabled people and others who were not contributing to the economy. Sadly, it even included their own maimed soldiers from the fight in Stalingrad. The program was secretive to avoid public outcry. The liberation soldiers exposed it, including Canadians. Fifty years ago, there were still a considerable number of survivors of eugenics.

We may consider this a weird, ugly phenomenon that existed in prewar Germany, but we have our own skeletons to deal with. Eugenics was considered “science” here and in other enlightened countries. Alberta and BC had a program to sterilize humans of lesser value (Handicapped) right until 1972. I remember the news discussing the end of the program and the people who witnessed that it was not always voluntary. I knew a person who was rumoured to have been a victim of the program.

We live in a wonderful country amongst people whom the world calls nice. Yet prewar Germany was known to be a most civilized country and their advanced science still serves us today. NASA became what it is using ex-German scientists. The Russian technological advancements were built around other German inventors. Can nice people be cruel to their own? Ask the veterans who proudly display stickers that say, “Lest we forget.”

I walk away thinking that I may have found a reason why some mystery people are organizing and financing a campaign against vaccinations. COVID is a light flulike sickness for healthy strong people and a natural killer for those who cost money to health care and possibly increase taxes.

What people don’t consider is the reason why we take care of those who need help. It’s as easy as understanding how insurance works. You don’t even have to consider Christian or religious morality. We will all get old someday. Many of us may find ourselves disabled at some point in life. The wealth we accumulate may dissipate fast if some conditions change. Best financial planning is not guaranteed to save us from all possible events in life. If we are thinking as Hitler did, we should consider what his end was like and how he is remembered. Christ advocated helping the needy, not being greedy, and billions of people follow him thousands of years later.

Others may seed weeds amongst our crops. China is keeping itself almost COVID-free. Could they be sabotaging the west? I don’t know, but someone is financing the efforts to fight against vaccinations and to open the economy prematurely again and again. The pandemic would have been just a memory by now if we tried harder and were less concerned about profits. I am not talking about restaurant owners but those with shares in large Pharmaceuticals.

COVID is stealing my retirement years and exposing some negative aspects of our society, perhaps for good reasons. On the other hand, some of what is happening may be a good thing. It is showing how we undervalued some workers who should be paid more. Now, with trucking problems, it shows that we should grow and make things at home and pay what it’s worth. The governments are learning that teachers and nurses are important for the well-being of society and the economy. We are learning that care homes shouldn’t be a revenue generator but necessary social service.

Below our gaze, there is a new generation. For the first time, the young are teaming up with the old going against the dividing forces for no less than a better world for all.

What happens when safety and freedom conflict?

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

Coal versus Water. Who wins?

 

Coal versus Water. Who wins?

I first heard about the Crowsnest Pass in University history lectures. The coal miners made the news by organizing some bitter strikes demanding human living conditions and there was a mention of the women of the Pass being very brave standing by their men. Archived Calgary Herald editions showed pictures. Much later, after coal mining stopped, I found myself seated next to an elderly woman in Chris’ Restaurant. She wanted to talk.

I expected her to be upset over the ending of coal mining, but the opposite was true. She lived her whole life in Coleman and she told me the horrors of coal mining. She lost the men of her family to something called black lung. The “Laurentian Elites” Canadian owners of the mines mistreated her. She cried, describing how she worked so hard to do the wash by hand and it would all turn black while they did some process in the tipple. Her life was centered around fluctuating coal prices that she was expected to absorb by not feeding the kids.

I was reminded of her story by letters to the last Pass Herald of 2021. There was a doctor who treated the victims of coal. Because he used handouts from rich coal mining companies to obtain hospital equipment, he was deemed an untrusted source. I remember him coming from home at night to save my life when I had double pneumonia.

There was a letter from a person who used to work on the tipple in Coleman. He blamed everything under the sun on the loss of coal mining. Car dealerships left. I remember when the big car manufacturers closed down little town dealerships all over, not just here. He talked about the closing of grocery stores. I asked the owner of the last grocery store why he was closing down. He said that people here were shopping in Walmart and Costco expecting him to be a convenience store with big store prices. “I am tired of playing this game,” he told me.

I asked around how come we don’t have wind power generation here in the mountains. I was told that whenever businesses expressed interest in opening in the Pass, our local councils chased them out. You tell me if it’s true.

Now the talk of the town is “we want coal back.” A foreign company moved the golf course and donated some money so everyone is fighting for coal. “I love Pass coal” signs are everywhere. If any of you want some I have a big pile here.

The West was opened up not because of coal but because of farming and a threat that the US will take it if it wasn’t populated quickly. Canadian agents went around the world looking for immigrant farmers “with strong backs.” South Alberta had land but was too dry for cultivation. Mormons from the US who knew how to build and use irrigation canals were recruited and did green up the land. It was later that coal became a commodity and was discovered in Lethbridge and the Crowsnest Pass. Oil and gas came later.

We have all of it. The actual fight now is not between coal lovers and a few ranchers situated above mediocre coal reserves, but about water versus strip mining. We love to accommodate those who romanticize the days of coal mining, but the most valuable resource we have here is the Crowsnest and adjacent mountains water. We will not see a government that’s lacking popularity take the side of 6000 people against one-third of the province.

I could be wrong, but I heard that there are people who own and sell water rights to the folks down river and that they are taxed by the government. I am not against or for coal, but a little bird told me that water is very important. Water wars are going on in the world and there will be more to come. I have been in wars and I didn’t like it. I also know that those who cause wars are most often not those who fight them.

In my opinion, the government should make sure that the guardians of the water, us,  receive proper benefits for doing so from those who enjoy it. We are here in the playground of southern Alberta. With some compensation, we could develop the place to be a world-class tourist destination that will outlast any temporary mining industry. We are fighting for our survival and we need help. That should be more than some philanthropic handouts.

Right now we have trails, lakes, and minor tourist attractions. With some imagination, the little historical towns can become the biggest historical landmark in Canada. All aspects of the place, restaurants, movie theatres, hotels, and places to shop could be made into a historical marvel better than Heritage Park and Calloway Park put together. It’s all here and we could add fireworks shows every last day of the month. We could buy and move Heritage acres to a location where people will see it. Above it all, the people who don’t want to change could be put on display and live out their dream of living in the past.

Businesses under the right leadership can import handmade goods from all over the world supporting poor, less advanced places and old-style craftspeople. What we need is seed money and political will. That can be done with a well-organized marketing plan.

Imagine a historical main street with horses and buggies, a windmill grinding flower for your stone oven bread, and young page boys selling old-looking Pass Heralds printed by a widow on an old press. People speaking foreign languages staying in a hotel by mineral springs and a steam locomotive pulling a pioneer train. A native cultural centre where you can learn how to smoke tan hides and smell the sweet aromas from pre-European days.

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

The year of hope.

 

 The year of hope.

Life is a collection of years, beginning from nothing and finishing with nothing. If you do the entire journey, it’s mostly short of a hundred years. Somewhere at the end of the first third, you are young and full of hope, while in the last third you think about the future of those who will follow you. Mortality is a hundred percent guaranteed.

I wanted to write in the last edition of the 2021 paper a message of hope. Since I couldn’t find a reason to hope, I asked some other people what can we hope for. My generation witnessed some of the biggest changes that ever happened in human history. Fertilizers beat hunger back, no major world wars, advancement in health science (like vaccines) are prolonging life, and people in my part of the world can enjoy life better than only royalty could a couple of hundred years ago. What we hoped for sixty years ago was accomplished, but fresh problems were created.

When I try to remember the things that changed my life, I seem to focus on disasters. The great war was finished, and the Fascists were defeated. In its place came a cold war and we, the children, were told to hide under the desks if a nuclear war started. J. F. Kennedy was murdered and his mission for a diverse, more equal world died with him. Canada celebrated its 100-year birthday when I arrived.

It was a dreamland where simple people like me could dream and hope. We worked hard, studied, and developed an economic system that worked for most people. Even the communists in the Soviet block were thriving. A few years later, Reagan, Mulroney, and Thatcher got power. Our means of making a decent living were privatized and exported. Here Peter Lougheed was replaced by Klein and good union jobs disappeared. My kids didn’t have the opportunities that I did.

As the people who used to be middle class were milling around trying to figure out what hit them, we developed new methods of cheating in politics. George Bush presided over the fall of the twin towers which plunged the Western nations into a war against Afghanistan, which was lost 20 years later.

As we watched, while our population sold their freedom on credit, China changed. From a source of cheap labour, it became the new superpower rivaling the USA for world domination. In 2020, a new virus infected the world. The American president tried in vain to dub it “The China flu” but he failed. His efforts towards convincing people that to stop global warming we need to use more oil and coal failed as well.

If someone would have told me that a virus may kill more people of one political persuasion than another, I would have laughed at the idea. How can a dumb virus know about human political aspirations? Yet observing what is happening in the United Kingdom opens the door for exactly that. In the United States, where a political administration belittled the pandemic and people refuse vaccinations, we may yet see an explosion of cases of the Omicron. It didn’t happen yet and we hope it will not, but time will tell. I don’t wish this kind of death on anyone.

Looking for hope, I am lost in messages of gloom. In winter, the most unusual weather flattened parts of the United States. British Colombia is trying to reopen destroyed roots to the rest of the country. We add this to the problems we have with a shortage of labour and the hamstrung supply chain. Talking with my 18-year-old grandson I said, well it could be worse, and he answered, how grandpa? It left me speechless. On TV, our political leader was saying he would not cancel Christmas since people would break the rules. I remember him saying that mentioning blowing up pipelines is inviting people to do so. If omicron spreads as predicted, he will have to do political gymnastics again.

In the search for a message of hope, I researched some scientists who deal with related subjects. Some said that our follies will not harm the world much. Ocean warming, killer pandemics, destroyed civilizations, all happened before. The world bounced back and new species became dominant, humans being one.

Another option is humans under stress achieving their true potential. A Christmas song predicts that the son of God will become “the great I am.” The Bible said that through him we may have all that the Father has. Ancient civilizations and primitive cultures always believed in magic and miracles. Could esoteric knowledge be our hope? If it is, then we must go an extra step yet. Nature, the universe, or God can’t hand us supernatural powers before we learn that we are all one.

Could it be that we are learning an important painful lesson now? You know, “it tastes awful, but it works” kind of lesson? I don’t wish to see an example of a biblical disaster, but nobody asked what I want. I am just an observer.

I write to make people think and entertain them. I am in the same boat as my readers and there are lots of them. I will tell you about my splinter of hope. I live in a small community where people are nice to each other, animals roam the streets and there are many examples of kindness and caring. I hope little communities like ours, if the “stuff” hits the fan, will be spared like Noah’s ark.

Also, we can all look at beautiful Christmas art, listen to Christmas music, and send a wish to God. Please use your superior mind and find workable solutions. Don’t let the Grinch, me or anyone, steal Christmas. May this holiday be a preparation for a much better holiday next year.  

Merry Christmas to you all, and many more to come. Use the telephone, computers, and other devices until we meet again.

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

Imagine, understand, and Gurdjieff.

 

Imagine, understand, and Gurdjieff.

An adult told me that Jesus probably walked on the path I was walking on back in Israel. We found a Roman coin, but it was after someone dug a hole in the ground. Jesus may have walked under the path. When my mom wanted to show the kids what a Christmas tree looked like, we couldn’t find a tree like the one in the pictures anywhere. They don’t grow in Israel. People in Israel didn’t celebrate Christmas and the word “Betula” didn’t necessarily say virgin, but a young woman. The total story sounded a bit far-fetched to me.

We emigrated to Canada and Christmas became alive. Downtown Calgary had lights with tinsels over the streets and I saw a real shopping mall decorated for the holiday. People were shopping as if a disaster was coming. Carts and bags full of stuff disappeared into vehicles and shoppers went back for more. The first midnight mass I saw in a church was something out of this world. People all dressed up filled the cathedral, live choir music, and tons of decorations. The birth of a saviour (Yeshua) was celebrated and we wish you a merry Christmas, Peace on Earth and other slogans appeared everywhere especially in the black-and-white TV commercials.

I knew the figure of the saviour from the tortured figures I saw on crosses in churches in Israel, but now we were celebrating the virgin birth and the pretty little baby under a German tree (Weihnachtsbaum) with lights. Father Christmas changed from a forest hunter to a hefty guy in a red suit, drinking cola and smoking a pipe. Later on, a priest tried to explain it all to me, but the explanation was insufficient. Beautiful music, shiny decorations, lots of stuff, and dressed-up people couldn’t explain the Joy to the World that came from the young Semitic Israeli Rabbi who taught simplicity, selfless giving, forgiveness, sharing, and taking care of the less fortunate. This guy told his uneducated followers to go on a journey without spare clothes or extra provisions.

How did the message get mixed up? I knew Christians did the worst atrocities in the Second World War, some of who even went to church on Sunday and sang beautiful hymns to the sound of a pipe organ. My generation knew Nazi hunters and families who lost all their relatives and were seeking justice.

I remember mom talking to a friend who said. If Jesus came back, the Christians would crucify him again. They would call him a socialist, progressive, or whatever is the lingo of the day and send him back (by crucifixion) upstairs while selling shavings of the cross as souvenirs.

In my early days, people talked about the most popular philosopher from Europe at the beginning of the century, Gurdjieff. An Armenian name. Like most serious philosophers, his work was pretty intricate, but I will simplify. Gurdjieff believed people exist in some kind of sleep or perhaps dream state. Something similar to the modern idea of the Matrix where we are existing in a supercomputer. Both ideas assume that reality is inside our brains. Gurdjieff talked about three brains controlling mind, body, and emotions, yet having a hard time connecting the three. He emphasized our natural short attention span as proof. We jump from one thought to another and act as if we are different persons each time. In his opinion, we all have some level of split personality.

When we read the Bible, we get a story about a young Jewish teacher who told people that being rich and powerful, possessing material things, and winning fights are not the most important things in life. Life in another dimension, he called the “Kingdom of the father” is eternal and valuable. Although there are details about his origins and birth, he seems not to talk or brag about it.

I try to think what the Messiah would teach if He was to return today. First, he would want to know why we are destroying the world we live in. To live life without physical work wouldn’t be an acceptable answer. The number of people employed to kill each other he would not welcome. That so many children don’t have reliable homes because of poverty and/or genuine commitment from the adults wouldn’t sit well with him. Seeing that a small percentage of humans own such a huge amount of humanity’s wealth would bother him. Realizing that banks and large institutions create money, lend it at interest, and don’t practice the Jewish law of Jubilee would bother him. Realizing that millions of people have no safe, sustaining piece of the world to live on wouldn’t be welcome. The wealth hoarded and squandered by some religious institutions, now more than ever with TV evangelicals would hurt him more than the nails in his hands did. We can go on.

Christmas or a celebration of the turning of the season existed for much longer than any known religion. It is a time to celebrate hope. A new beginning.

I decided to make a list of what I would ask Jesus for Christmas. Surprisingly, all can be obtained without miracles.

Solve the energy problem. Reduce wasting it., like walking instead of using a golf cart. (if we can) Develop clean energy and discourage the dirty kinds.

Do away with military built-up and divert the money and talents to peaceful means.

Block the efforts of those who compete to rule humanity by setting limits.

Give all humans a way to stay alive, but let them improve their condition by working with the most rewards for the most beneficial work.

Eliminate COVID by sharing the vaccine formula with the world.

Maintain good honest information for all. Begin by supporting little local media outlets available to all. We could start by giving subscriptions to local papers as gifts for Christmas.

A Christian Christmas is available to all if we only want it to be.

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

Positive attitude is enough?

 

Positive attitude is enough?

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas, everywhere we go, but I am hardly going anywhere. 80% of humanity is unvaccinated and I (foolishly?) wish to remain alive. People accuse me of being a “slave to the government lies”. Somehow my mind is stuck on the idea that all the world’s governments are not trying to reduce the population by injecting us with slow-acting poison. Our governments invested heavily in developing means to combat an alien life-form that kills us. Now we are discovering a new old truth that we are not OK unless all of us are.

It’s tempting to make a lot of money on selling a vaccine, but we may die if it keeps mutating in those not vaccinated. A mirror is placed in front of our face and a voice is saying. We can't be OK unless all of us are OK. Strange message considering that we learned something else. Beat the competition. Each for himself. On the other hand, a chain is as strong as its weakest link.

If we consider my age and health, I should be more interested in sales on funeral services than what may destroy humankind in a few years, or perhaps the world’s atmosphere in a hundred years. However, I have an intellectual interest. That and a bunch of grandkids. In my days, there were still people around who were willing to die with honour or die for the country. The country I always thought of was the Earth and its people. Archeologists so far never discovered which race or nation Adam and Eve came from.

The latest threats popularized by our instant but not perfect media are pandemics, this one or the next, and economic collapse and damage to the thin layer of air we call atmosphere. We don’t need to worry about any of them. Long before they kill us, we will kill each other.

When there is trouble in the world, a strange thing happens. The people demand that the governments will fix the troubles if they caused them or not. We pay little attention to the news and what the governments are doing until there is trouble and we blame them if they don’t fix it fast. They are hammered from both ends. Above them, there is the high society that usually finances their being in power. They demand a return on investment. Below them, there are the billions of people who always want better conditions, easier life, the things that the high society has and they do not. What should the governments do? They try to get people’s attention away from the problems that they can’t solve. A proven way that always worked is to go to war. When we are busy killing each other, we rally behind the leaders. The high society finds ways to make money on wars.

Most things that humans used to associate with the powers of gods now can be done if you have the money to make it happen. We fly, see in the dark, raise the dead, level mountains, beat pandemics, you name it and we can do it. The hand of a very rich man can smite nations as well. People worship money and its power. Money can finance scientific research and buy technology that yet doesn’t exist. The world is being shaped according to what the few with most money desire.

I receive messages from people telling me that the way things are is not bad at all. Looking around, I see that the train we are on is speeding towards disaster unless we take action to stop or divert it. There is a bright future but we must aim for it.

The prophets of old used to say, repent and God will solve the situation, and at times, people did.

Global Warming is hurting us tremendously but it only just began. We can take hard steps starting now. Our existing technology is such that in a few moves we should be able to develop and use cleaner and soon clean energy. We must divert many resources to it starting immediately. Thorium reactors, small nuclear cores, new vehicles, and so on, can go on the production line. With some coordination and global will to unite efforts, the dream can come to fruition.

Changes to consumption habits are another solution. We know that our treatment of food and its use are major pollution producers. First, wealthy nations can develop and popularize less wasteful habits. We don’t have to discard half of the food we produce. It can be controlled simply by not trying to use food as a major money-making source but a needed commodity. It happens naturally when there are shortages. Next, we can easily get our proteins from less polluting, less wasteful foods and distribute them more evenly. Easy to do if we convert public opinions. We know how to do it; we have done it in the case of smoking. Yes, we will have demonstrations and crying over freedoms, but yes we can.

All we have to do is champion a new way. We built our entire history around groups of people, nations, and races competing with each other for resources and world domination. The competition served us well by advancing human civilization to where it is now. It is time to apply the breaks and start filling the gaps we left behind in every aspect of life.

We could apply the Canadian experience to the entire world and make it into a quilt of enormous proportions. All the beauty and usefulness of all the pieces can be preserved, but the primary goal would change. Instead of fighting, competing, and winning or conquering the world, we would aim to make it a better place for all. Using the united power of all, we can transform the planet into a Heaven for all. Just the money that we spend on wars and weapons is more than enough to do the job. The entire world could be like our little paradise in the mountains.

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

Education, Science, and Religion.

 

Education, Science, and Religion.

When I was little and on the farm, I saw more animals than people. Animals lived life reacting to what the world did with them. Farm animals waited for humans to decide their fate and wild animals did some things instinctively to help themselves. It was in Israel and we had lots of sheep. Domestic sheep seemed to have very little initiative of their own. Years later I learned the Bible and in it, there was talk about lambs or “Peter, feed my sheep.” I realized that there are two kinds of people, shepherds, and sheep. Strangely, the shepherds are not always about taking care of the sheep. Many of them are living to compete with each other and only care about the sheep as a commodity.

The humans, who are sheep, learned over a long time to fend for themselves to some degree. First, it was by developing religions that competed against each other, and lately by using science, which is the learning of how the world works. In the last five hundred years or so, our present civilization decreased its interest in religions and reinvested it in science. Sadly, the vast knowledge of spirituality was lumped into one category and found itself competing against science. People either believed in religion, even the parts that made no sense to many, or science that now often is divided against itself, as religions used to be, and still are.

Religion and science became tools in the hands of the competing shepherds and both strove to keep the sheep busy working to stay alive, with no time or means to contemplate the big picture. However, necessity and increasing population brought some great advancement to the general population, the sheep. With that came easier life, to some, and exploitation of resources that should belong to all future generations. The competing shepherds or leaders only care about winning the game they are playing now. At the same time, the common people, now exposed to science, began to assess the ongoing situation and do what only religions used to do, considering where all this is leading us. Will we even have a future in the world?

Learned people banded together and began questioning what the leaders were doing. The religions for different reasons also entered the fray. Some wished to follow the examples told in the ancient books literally, while others joined science to preserve a future for humanity. They call it stewardship of God’s gift, the world.

Science, now treated as a new religion, became the target for the leaders of some industries and big businesses. They sought to devalue its influence upon the common people. Around 1995, a new theory was popularized, advocating living in one’s own reality. Around the year 2000, we saw people denying the thing we call reality and believing something else. First, a few boys believed they were girls and vice versa, (without biological justification) creating uproar and it expanded. Fake News became a legitimate industry propelling people to fame.

It pitted science against Alternate Reality. What used to be fiction became “other people’s reality.” The “truth” became an option resting on “beliefs.” Creationism, Intelligent design, Anti-vaccination, Holocaust revisionism, Police conspiracy, Alternative medicine, No Global Warming, Flat Earth movement, and thousands of other ideas became Skeptical Movements, according to Michael Shermer author of Heaven on Earth.

Margaret Atwood tells about a child that had a monster under the bed. Nothing could convince him otherwise. She told him that if you place a cabbage at exactly this spot, the monster can’t come out. He slept wonderfully.

Between March and September in 2020, 200,000 Americans died from COVID-19 and people were not vaccinating. In Canada, there was a shortage of vaccines, so a much higher rate accepted the vaccine, saving countless lives.

 Until a short time ago, people refused to believe that there is Global Warming especially here where we sell fossil fuels. When we saw the outcome and evidence, North Americans pretended that there is nothing we can do, therefore can’t change. Now when we realize the cost of not acting, and we begin to see that money can be made on changing to clean energy, options are changing.

We are left with a new thriving industry that makes people popular by producing and selling fake news and alternate realities. Reality shows make large profits and politicians win elections by fighting against science. Newspeople ride the wave by giving the imagined realities, what they call, equal time. Logic is no longer a decisive force, but another option. The scientists that we educate and employ must waste time arguing against irrational forces, while lives and property are being destroyed.

Any of us can get a thriving platform by selling falsehoods on Social Media. If the lie we tell is what people who hide from the truth want to hear, it goes viral. Yet, the universe is going as it should. Stars follow their paths, the weather follows atmospheric conditions, viruses mutate and evolve to increase their chance of survival, and the sheep….graze and give wool, meat, and milk. The shepherds only care about the growth of their business. The few who care are drowned in the crowd of those who don’t.

As a child, I watched the sheep milling around, getting organized by a dog, and heading to the mountain to graze. At night, they came home. They never questioned the shepherd. People study the world through science and religion, attempting to improve their situation. The leaders sometimes want to help and improve, or only want to compete with other leaders. At this point, there is only one option left. Let nature reduce the herd or take control, use knowledge, and direct action in the right way.

The right way is to care for all sheep and use their united power to gain a future. We took the knowledge and we have no choice but to use it.

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