Stealing food 2023

 

Stealing food 2023

STOP Sir! Last Monday my wife and I went to Calgary to celebrate the sixteenth birthday of one grandchild. On the way, we stopped at a Co-op to get a cake. In the front foyer, I noticed a young man leaving the store holding a basket of unwrapped food. I saw eggs, lettuce, bread, and in his other hand, a small bag of potatoes. Still looking, a store manager passed beside me shouting, stop Sir. The young man started running away and the bread from his basket flipped onto the pavement. An elderly lady picked it up and called after the young man, excuse me, sir. I went in, realizing that I just witnessed the theft of food. I felt sorry for the young thief but another old guy beside me said, “we will pay for it.” He was right. The prices will rise to pay for food thefts and some seniors who worked all their lives and now live on a pension that is not enough to pay rent, medicine, and basic food will pay or do without. Shouldn’t the young man work as we did and pay? There is a shortage of workers in our province. At the bakery, I saw the same loaf of bread, whole wheat toasting bread on the counter. The manager brought it back. They will probably toss it in the garbage, I thought.

The young man at the door looked homeless and could easily suffer from some mental illness. His eyes looked haunted and his movements were jerky. Could be a drug addict, I couldn’t tell. What are we to do with people like that? A person in jail costs society hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Should we just pay the price? I bet we will. The old lady who picked up the bread may live on less than twenty thousand a year pension. A homeless person on the street, if we consider police, ambulance, emergency doctors, and other related expenses, may cost the city just short of two hundred thousand a year. There is no easy way. The young man I saw could have full-time employment at minimum pay and be short on food. Just check the cheapest rent in the city and draw your own conclusions.

 We could point out that we have excellent shelters in the city but it can’t solve the problem. We cover only half of the homeless population and many of them can’t use it. If they have mental health issues or drug addictions, the shelters probably can’t or will not help them. Look for places like drug rehabilitation clinics and you will find less than a hundred spaces for thousands of people. The governments throw money at the problem, but we need leadership, not just money. How much money is allocated for subsidized housing and what portion of it truly translates to poor people’s housing? Someone should investigate and do the math. It reminds me of the money spent on carbon capture technologies. We will not see favorable results in our lifetime, but it’s sold as an alternative to reducing emissions.

On our way out of the giant food store, I saw two police uniforms coming in. Property taxes will pay for their time, and store insurance will go up raising food prices. If they apprehended the young man, which I doubt, he may get a meal or two and sleep in a warm jail, which he may have wanted to begin with. You can’t live long on a few eggs, lettuce, bread, and some potatoes.

What happened to cause the problem is critical for poor people in many ways, one in particular. During COVID, governments tried to shore up the economy by throwing a lot of money to businesses (some to workers) with no strings attached, trusting that they will help with the emergency. They didn’t. They bought their own shares, causing more privatization, and financed new investments. A major investment was in Real Estate.

Here it began with foreign investors buying homes and quickly spread to everyone who had some free money. First Vancouver and Toronto and soon later adjacent communities were bought out at inflated prices. Interest rates went up and the dream of regular people owning a home went out of the window. As the pandemic receded, we saw that rent and or mortgage payments were up by an average of 25%. People could no longer have a roof over their heads and eat at the same time. Many little “Investors” bought two or more homes, often renting them for recreational pursuits for short durations. Many working people simply gave up on the rat race and quit even trying to work and make ends meet. Inflation set in to cover the losses and things went from worst to impossible. Add to it problems with the supply chain, a war in Europe, and the growing instability of governments in many countries, and we have a disaster.

The main political forces resorted to lying, to stay in power, and hope disappeared. One political ideology advocates letting the market solve the problem by privatizing even more and the other is not better. They expect the working class to rescue the situation, forgetting that there is an end to how much we can shoulder. The “fix” would take restructuring of the economy, which can’t be done in the election cycle of four years with the constant changing of leaders and governments.  

The guy who stole the bread didn’t get to eat it. I wonder what he will do next.

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

Help me, I don’t understand.

 

Help me, I don’t understand.

My son, my youngest child, came to visit after a long COVID break. He feels that the world is not fair to him, since the employers pressured him to get vaccinated and the government restricted his mobility. He is also a smoker, but restrictions on smoking don’t bother him.

As we sit after years of separation, we compare notes. He tells me the opinions of the oil workers from the north. They live on oil exports and the sale of Canada’s forests. He complains about the lack of job security, unpaid overtime, and scarcity of housing. In his book, there is one reason why he and his co-workers are suffering, mainly named Trudeau. Trudeau didn’t have vaccines when other countries did and later was responsible for employers forcing workers to get vaccinated. Trudeau caused inflation and supply chain problems and lineups in airports when pilots were sick and planes didn’t fly. Trudeau caused a rebellion in Ottawa by not meeting with people who blocked the city and caused a slowdown of the economy. He knew they demanded that he and the government will resign. My son thinks I support Trudeau regardless of my denial. I support anyone who makes life better for the average people like me and objects to the abuse of common people. To some, this is socialism.

A better life for me is impossible without considering the well-being of the planet, inequality amongst people, and spiritual health. Civilization will not survive unless we take care of our home, our planet, our family, all the other humans, and understand that there is a universal mind greater than our billions of scattered minds competing for self-importance. He disagrees. We must get rid of Trudeau. Sadly, we just had an election.

The temperature dropped, and it got darker outside. I am no longer used to visitors aside from a few on Zoom. Sitting with my son and listening to a litany of complaints stresses me out, but we need to find a way back to normal if there still is a normal state. After three years of isolation, I am not sure I know what “Normal” is. I worked for over fifty years, live on a pension that I saved for, and my golden years are stressful. I can’t make sense of what is going on.

Dad, my dear son, starts again. In the old days, everything was easy. Now we, the young generation, are all screwed up. You, the old people, got everything. Wow, I am alarmed.

The people who survived the worst war were my generation. My parents suffered worse than my son can even imagine. My generation has been through hardships, the kind he has never seen. We worked, studied, invented, and got killed, demonstrating for human rights and social justice. We elected leaders like Franklin D. Roosevelt who made prosperity for the masses possible and set the world up for a period of affluence. Now the young lament that they don’t instantly have the material goods that we painfully acquired over an entire lifetime. They think that the world owes them a living, air travel, and cheap homes.

I know what the problem is. With population increase and automation, people’s roles decreased. A shoe is no longer made by a shoemaker and so on. Governments provided jobs by increasing bureaucracies, and so did giant companies. The people got smaller roles and no longer have pride in what they do for a living. Most people no longer enjoy work or feel that they make a meaningful contribution.

We developed a new norm where people value leisure time more than work. TGIF was born and spread like wildfire. Even business owners began to complain about the time they must work and spend working time dreaming about other activities. Work now is just about making money, not accomplishing things. People talk about vacations more than about achievements at work. Countries moved into shortening work time. The young spend more time often pretending to study, and the old retire younger and younger. People want to spend more time on the beach in exotic places. Those who don’t are considered freaks. In France last week, they had huge strikes over the government trying to make retirement start at 64 instead of 62.

We must sit down and discuss where society is going. A person’s value is attached to their contribution to society. We should tie our happiness to what we do, not to how much we make or accumulate, or the size of our homes. What we do for society is more important than the power that we have over others.

None of us knows where we may end up in life or where we will be if a few things change. That is where spirituality comes in. Today I may be on top of the world, but a year from now, through no fault of my own, I may be handicapped, bankrupt, homeless, or in any other undesirable situation. That is when I will need the help of society. The time to set things up for that possible event is now when I can do so.

As far as my son is concerned, he should consider that he will get old and frail someday, and now is the time to try his best to plan for then. It will come.

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

Holiday cards.

 

Holiday cards.

Thirty years ago, we used to get, on average, fifty Christmas cards. Some were from people that we only heard from on the holidays and often some notes told us what was new in their lives. Now it’s a week before Christmas and we have six cards. We sent ours some time ago. Holiday wishes on the screen are not the same. They come and go, leaving an empty feeling. Of course, the price of postage plays a role, but it reflects on the relationships between people as well. There is less commitment and less time for each person. We want a superficial relationship that is down to the bones. Like all things, we go for quantity, not quality in our modern life. Some of my Facebook friends have thousands of “friends” and they are lonely.

Out of the six cards, one impressed me the most. It is a painting depicting a couple of homes in the forest by mountains in the light of a full moon. Could have been taken in the Crowsnest Pass. The written message is, “Peace on Earth.” No religious sayings, just one wish. Rick and Joan, who sent it to us, have no children. They are Christians and lived in Calgary most of their lives. Now close to eighty years of age, why is their number one wish for peace on Earth? Don’t they care about prosperity, the sad state of health care, or our deteriorating safety with all the cheating and crime that is going on? Don’t they want fewer taxes and more services? Why did they drop the mention of our Christian heritage? Don’t they worry about other races taking the country over as they used to?

My research shows that Earth at different periods had over twenty-four kinds of humans, some coexisting at the same periods. Some go back hundreds of thousands of years and we have bones and artifacts to prove it. Modern science improved our ability to investigate those past societies and even reconstruct how they lived. The planet changed and the climate also changed. There were floods, earthquakes, and droughts and changes lasted much more than a human’s lifetime. At times, human populations almost vanished, and at other times experienced overpopulation in some areas. Humans of all sorts and sizes adapted and survived much longer than we homo sapiens existed in the current period. However, we are the winners. All the other types of humans disappeared, and we flourished. There were humans with bigger brains and stronger bodies, but we were more adaptable and capable of working together. Now we are approaching eight billion individuals on Earth and risking the collective suicide of human civilization. I pray not to be the last human on Earth.

I had a dream once, where I was a raven flying over a destroyed Earth. There were cities broken down, ships half sunk and trains overturned. I was exhausted looking for a place to land, but there was none. Everything was broken down and there were no people or other living things. I cawed, as ravens do, but an answer never came.

Peace on Earth, or the survival of our species, should be everyone’s top priority and we have had warnings and instructions on how to achieve it for thousands of years now.

If we want to research, using the latest technology available, the information is free. The Earth is full of evidence of past civilizations assumingly of human societies that often surpassed our present. It’s underwater, under the ground, and frozen in ice. Much of it is simply existing in the open, but people are so used to it they do not see it. When I was in Israel, I saw old ruins that were built by ancient technology that we can’t repeat today. Egypt has a lot more.

There is no way to deal with all the available data in a short newspaper column. We are vulnerable to extinction, but also close to perfect existence as described by dreams of heaven. If we look at the world today, we see great danger looming. Wars, natural disasters, and evil people with enormous power at their fingertips. Our weapons can destroy humankind, and so can our personal want of power. Those who are comfortable are under siege by those who have nothing. Look at the borders of most rich countries. When in trouble we say “God help us”, yet we don’t follow His instructions. It’s simple. We are to love our neighbors as ourselves. Do it and you have peace on Earth as written on the Christmas card.

In the beginning, God or “Holy Spirit” hovered above “Tohu Va-Vohu” or “formless void” in English, and later He created humans in His image. (Genesis.) We are a spirit that can have a material form created from the dirt of the Earth. A spirit is eternal, but bodies are not. To survive in material bodies, we are instructed to function as one body that takes care of all its parts, which are all needed in some way.

Christmas is coming, and I have a wish. I wish that people, regardless of their religious affiliations, will spend time contemplating the spiritual message that all faiths have. Go with your community, thank God for what we have, and figure out how to spread the goodness. Go to your temple and contemplate what the Christian faith is about.

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

What I want for Christmas.

 

What I want for Christmas.

Christmas 2022 is coming into a world that I hardly recognize. All that I have learned in over seventy years here on Earth is changing faster than I can process the information. Possibly my human brain wasn’t built for that much data to pass through it, but I have computers to help. Almost all the information that I need could be searched at incredible speed, but there is no guarantee that the results are not tainted by fake news. I am expected to know what there is no way of knowing. What I have is my opinions based on the best information I can obtain and a quick assessment done in my head. The old brain is struggling to discover the truth, and like it or not, I sometimes must change my opinions when I discover previously unknown facts. Much of my conclusions are based on what I believe, and I just trust that if my intention is good, I have a fair chance of drawing the right conclusions.

What is special about Christmas, and why do we even have a day off with family and friends? Why do we go out in mid-winter and shop for presents which often are rarely used? Is it to support the low-wage workers who make them often for close to nothing to beat the competition that may sell them for less?

I sit here in my mountain retreat little home studio. That’s the way I like it. Nothing fancy. The walls are lined with shelves, mostly loaded with books. I read the books, but I keep them since they are filled with ideas that over the years made me who I am. Some shelves have gifts from people I worked with. I was a supervisor and my workers used to buy me gifts for Christmas, which I relish to this day. It had little monetary value; it was from the heart. They did it since I treated them fairly and never had favorites. I didn’t take advantage of my position and people were rewarded evenly for contributing what they could. My business is people.

Looking at this year’s first few Christmas cards, I am reminded about the baby whose birthday we are celebrating.

I go back to the reason for Christmas, not considering that it is a solstice festivity that existed since before Christ was born. The babe became a man who walked the same paths that I did long after, but he had a message. The message was so simple, yet it captured the world and changed humans forever. We see people from all walks of life, rich and poor, respecting him regardless if they believe in his divinity. Was he right-wing or left in politics? We don’t have a definite answer. He was pro-people and cared not if they were useful or not. He considered the intentions of the giver higher than the monetary value. Thousands joined His new religion, later millions, and now billions. We should remember that even the Muslims who came away after His departure believe that He is very special and will play a major role in the future of humanity.

What would Christ, the Saviour, ask for on Christmas? I think I should ask for the same. Ukraine is a big issue where many people are killed and many more suffer each day. I wish for an end to it, while there is still some Ukraine undamaged. The Ukrainians are so brave and they deserve to be rewarded, but the suffering is too great. If the Russians and Ukrainians get guarantees for nonaggression, peace may work.

I wish for humans to forget their local origins and races as a reason for war. The human race can retain cultures, art, languages, religions, you name it, and quit wanting what others have. There is enough for everyone and if all are educated, there will be a slowing of population increase. We have proof. What we spend on wars and preparations for wars would be enough to keep us all healthy, fed, and educated.

Our main worldwide problem now is getting the energy to do our work. It is time to quit using the energy from burning things and use better, less damaging sources we know of and can develop. One example is nuclear, but there are others. It’s time to take the big step. It will happen anyway, so let’s plan the change and do it properly. I am not advocating useless delays but real action.

I would like to see us pay less for what we need and more for garbage disposal and recycling. We are drowning in garbage, solid, in the air and water. Taxes shouldn’t pay for garbage removal but by those who make the trash. No trading of responsibility should be allowed.

I would like independent media that would be exposed if they tell lies.

Above all, I think the Christ would like to see more equality. He talked about it. In the last 40 years, about 50 trillion dollars of wealth that could have gone to regular working people went to the richest 1%. In the US, mortality has grown and poverty became a norm. It would not sit well with the one born on Christmas. If I could, I would ask for a cap on wealth. It would go far towards making our home planet more like the Kingdom above or below, depending on the point of view.

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

 

 

 

Worshipping Possessions.

 

 Worshipping Possessions.

Two thousand years ago, gifts were amazingly expensive. There is a good list in the Christian Gospels around the story of the first Christmas. We have reasonable accounts of gifts from archeology and even written history. The most valuable goods were those from faraway countries and were imported by merchant caravans over long distances, often defended by armed servants riding camels, horses, and donkeys for months at a time. Silver and gold made into intricate jewelry, spices, and incense topped the list. There were fine textiles, with silk being the most coveted: ivory carvings, rare gems, iron weapons crafted by one-of-a-kind masters, and pearls. Herds of livestock and slaves fetched a good price as well. Pretty young maidens, even from one’s own family, were often traded, sometimes for salt or tea. Humans valued material possessions and gained favors by giving gifts.

I just spent almost three years in isolation, not because it was mandated by the government but strongly recommended by my physician and a specialist. Amazingly, I discovered I could be thrilled with life without shopping. I never realized how much time and money I was devoting to buying stuff I didn’t need and getting rid of the garbage soon after. Johnny the barber told me I was spending money on junk, but I didn’t believe him at the time.

There is an interesting new book on the market by Paul Berton, the son of the famous Canadian author Pierre Berton, titled Shopomenia. It deals with our obsession, or better, our addiction, to possessing things. There is definitely an attempt here to have us contemplate some of our primary motivations in life. It deals with the psychological aspect of shopping. “We shop because we are happy, we shop because we are sad.” We shop to be accepted and keep up with the neighbors.

Borrowing money and shopping is not bad. It is the grease that moves the wheels of our economy. We demand that all people will work for their pay and regularly try to make others do more work for less pay, but expect them to shop for services and goods. It starts with the raw materials. Humans mine or grow them. The product is transported, refined, and shaped to become consumer goods. Packaging design and manufacturing are added, marketing takes place, and storage plus delivery to retail locations completes the picture. The item is taxed, and the wages that were invested in it are also taxed. This ensures a great deal of employment and profit-making.

The entire system works wonderfully well if we ignore some glaring problems. It is unsustainable. It is based on addiction to things and money. Money translates to power. Most of those who contribute do so for low returns and hardly any acknowledgment, while very few reap the most rewards. The miners, farmers, drivers, and salespeople, to name a few, find it hard to have a roof over their heads and food in their bellies, while those who do the least work are drowning in riches. We can all see them owning many mansions and all other symbols of plenty. Stories about people owning hundreds of pairs of shoes, hundreds of expensive cars, yachts, and mansions are often not just fake news. The systematic cheating of workers and on taxes is true as well.

Why do people feel a need for so much stuff is another question not easily answered. I guess that is why we pray, “lead us not into temptation.” Paul Berton answers it with “people like stuff”. He gives an example about a family he stayed with, in the Himalayas, northern India. They had no manufactured toys, TV, games, or puzzles, and had very little furniture, or any other western-made items. As far as he remembers, they were some of the happiest people he ever met. He also remembers people who won the lottery, some millions of dollars. So many used up their winnings very fast and had nothing to show for it. One said, “Life has more meaning when you are not shopping.”

Now we have new ways of shopping, like over the internet. Many of us realize it can easily become a risk to our existence when overdone. The cheap unneeded goods, packaging, advertising materials, transport, storage, and energy used for manufacturing, are all together threatening our existence on the planet. I am excluding overeating, related pollution, make feel-good drugs, as well as artificial beauty achieved by cosmetics. A little is great, but we don’t use only what we need. We go overboard.

The world has changed significantly in the last few years. Wars are raging, natural disasters are more severe. There is a lot of suffering and all can see it on electronic screens. We would be foolish to ignore the signs, and “Positive thinking” will not save us. We must learn self-control and empathy. Not doing so is not weakness but stupidity. This is a Christmas like no other coming our way. There is a new meaning to the old prayer, “Deliver us from evil.”

Evil brings suffering and love brings joy to those who give it and those who receive it. That’s the Simple Raven’s way of thinking.

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

 

What is a Canadian?

 What is a Canadian?

It was 1967, and I stepped off the airplane onto Canadian soil, intending to become a Canadian. Eagerly looking around, I searched for what Canadians look like. At the Calgary airport, I couldn’t identify even one. Being a teenager, I noticed other teens were wearing shorts down to their knees, while mine were shorter. Canadian boys at the time also had longer hair than what I was used to.

A year later, I knew that there were hardly any Canadians in Canada. All the people here identified by other nationalities that became Canadian but retained some traits from some old country. People were expressing a need to not be British, and there was a new flag with a red Canadian maple leaf. The indigenous race also had many faces and spoke a variety of languages. They were not the most popular members of the Canadian social order.

As soon as I understood a little English, I was bombarded by ethnic jokes. How many Ukrainians does it take to change a light bulb? I can’t remember but it was the same number as Newfies if told by an eastern Canadian. People joked about Wops, Gays, and Polacks, and they had annoying names for every nation, skin color, or country of origin. I was called a Camel Jockey even though I only rode a camel once in a fair. I rode an elephant twice.

People from English-speaking countries fared better than others, but they were also ranked. There were the Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Australians, Jamaicans, Africans, Indians from India, Americans with a variety of accents, and of course Londoners who could be identified by their speech right to a neighborhood in the British capital. One young woman said she was a true Canadian for many generations, but her last name was German.

I saw several fields with white crosses in cemeteries. Here were the Canadians. Didn’t matter where they came from, when Canadian freedom and way of life were threatened, they all donned uniforms and took guns. Fascist ideas that now are making a bit of a comeback were not popular with Canadians.

A couple of days ago, a program aired on “The Agenda” TVO, examining reasons young people in Ontario are leaving Toronto in great numbers. Many are heading to Alberta and Nova Scotia. According to them, the number of young people leaving Ontario grew by 94% from 2019 to 2022.

The main reason for leaving is the price and availability of housing plus other economic reasons. The COVID pandemic played a big role. Young professionals discovered they can work remotely. At times, they can work for Ontario wages, living for Alberta expenses. One young lady mentioned that her husband and her can save a thousand dollars a month on rent, saying that it goes a long way towards daycare and paying student loans.

Millennials who are now approaching forty and wish to have a family can no longer afford to live in Toronto. They may lose family support and familiar communities, but find living in a new place exciting. Calgary and Edmonton no longer seem as backward as they used to be. Alberta also is doing a marketing campaign geared to draw them. There are posters on the public transit system that they don’t miss. Others, such as electricians, plumbers, roofers, and new immigrants, see the trend and also move. The interior provinces are being built up at the expense of the larger economies in the east. Smaller communities, such as ours, don’t get the bulk of the population movement, but even a small percentage makes a big difference. Many are looking for public green spaces. It’s hard to beat tiny mountain towns in green spaces and proximity to wildlife.

There is some movement away from Alberta, offsetting the dominant trend. We all know about the doctors and nurses discouraged by the government’s attitude towards them. Some folks consider moving here but fear the negative reputation circulating. They worry about separatism, unbending Conservative attitudes, and the possibility that all the jobs here are oil-related. People are scared to find themselves without public health care or the availability of doctors.

This trend is offset by the fact that after a move, the new folks will be able to change things. They know that the major cities in Alberta are progressive thinking and that even global warming is considered important by much of the population. The wind and hydroelectric projects here are not invisible. Energy companies are not hiding the fact that they are involved in clean energy. Politics can change.

Years ago, I was looking for a typical Canadian and had a hard time finding one. Now, fifty years later, they are more obvious. Canadians are more or less the Europeans of North America, regardless of their skin color, accents, religions, or nations of origin. We are not the European imperialists of the past but a modern, well-educated new nation that 

The story that we tell ourselves.

 

 The story that we tell ourselves.

I was carrying my hotdog, fries, and drink in Costco and there was no free table to sit at. A voice by my elbow said, “You are welcome to sit here. I am almost finished.” It was an old guy with long hair and a beard, much like me. Thanks, I said, sat down, and introduced ourselves. There was some fierceness to him. I knew someone with your last name, I said, he was my professor at University. The old guy surprised me and said, yes, he was my brother. He is gone now. It made me sad. He said he was in Lethbridge for a class 50-year reunion. Wow!

He told me he visited the Crowsnest Pass the day before, to see a friend who couldn’t travel anymore. Tomorrow, he said, he was going back home to work. Work? I took a deep breath. He was at least eighty years old. Apparently, he is supervising some task force to save one of the Great Lakes on the American side. His brother, who was teaching me in the mid-seventies, exposed me to the idea that we will be fighting for the planet’s survival now, trying to prolong human civilization against people willing to destroy it for short-term gains. What a family! Why are some people willing to devote their lives to future human beings whom they will never know? They have a story that they are living here on earth. This guy had a good story. I know many who have dreadful stories. They accumulate wealth and care nothing about others of their kind. They attach their lives to their “investment portfolio.”

Everyone has stories, and to some degree, the stories form their reality. The reality is not what we want it to be, but all our thoughts. Your story includes all your fears, dirty thoughts, deceptive actions, hopes, and dreams, and yes, also your wishes. Those of us who pray mostly tell the cosmic God what we wish for or ask for forgiveness for things we shouldn’t have done in the first place. Often, we include excuses forgetting that the God we are praying to knows all that we are hiding. When we say “God” we have a story in our mind about what God is. He or she, if you wish, is all of what the story says, but there is no cheating. Cheating is only available for living humans and there is a price for it. He is a loving, forgiving God, but we call Him Father or our Father in heaven. A loving father is always concerned with how the children are brought up. If he teaches them to cheat, steal, and so on, he is not a good father. He will pay a price just like anyone else.

I invested a good portion of my life in studying subjects like memories. It is fascinating how it works. A game is played in each human mind. The experts say that we are our memories, but it’s not as simple as that. We forget much more than we remember. “How soon we forget.” What we remember is not what really happened, but the last version we made up the last time we focused on it. The reaction of others who may have the same memories also becomes a part of our memories.

When someone is telling a story, we often hear them say, “everyone has seen it. It’s true.” Not so, as any court official can witness. People remember the same event in different ways. The memories are tainted by what they want to prove, which will match their personal interests. They will be convinced that their story is true, but a camera may prove otherwise. Even a camera is not foolproof, since a human interprets what the camera records. Interpretations may not be the same. The angle of the camera matters. A portrait can be complementary or damning. It will change the story.

Now, in the year 2022, the story of most humans has changed. The story of the last hundred years was full of hope and promise. All eyes were trained on the West and its ever-growing economies. The political system of democracy insured a fair chance of success. People willingly worked, saved, and invested. Billions of people not fortunate enough to share in the good life could see on the newly invented electronic devices’ screens that a better story is possible, and they dreamed. The bubble of hope grew thinner and busted. The elite class consolidated its power and democracy lost the ability to guarantee a reasonably good life in exchange for work.

Beginning in China, a movement started spreading amongst the young to give up and do nothing. Young people don’t foresee a future like their parents had and give up on the American dream. They don’t have children, don’t buy homes and work to improve them, and rarely bother with higher education. They expect the world to burn down, flood out, or be destroyed by nuclear weapons. Many live on a trip of illicit drugs or alcohol. In China, they no longer are willing to work 9 to 9 for $10,000 a year and here they don’t wish to work for the benefit of large monopolies and billionaires.

There is a better story. People working for a better world for all. It can start somewhere and spread amongst all humans. It must start amongst those who have got; not fought over by those who have not.

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