Perspectives on the Times

Hi Paul,

I wrote this some time ago but got distracted with other things. For some reason your e-mails provoke longer replies.

I hope your New Year is starting off well. Many here have had to deal with hardships because of the weather which in the near term may prompt some serious thought about our “national security” when it comes to the real threats we are likely to face from weather and crop disasters.

 

From your “packages” in the mail I notice that you are making a future for yourself with the future. All the best.

 

With the anniversary of the outbreak of WWI this year, there will be much speculation about modern parallels and the usual ‘what ifs’. W.L. Morton, who taught me historical method, used to say that 100 years are needed to gain enough perspective for historical writing. It seems that the true horror of the “hundred years war” of the twentieth century is gradually being recognized. But the projection of “what ifs” are as dangerous as ever. They can’t change the past and the lessons of history are often mere projections of present values on past events.

 

I have read Margaret MacMillan’s, “The War That Ended Peace” and it is well-written and generally even handed but the language still makes Britain the good guy but the very notion that the 19^th C was a peaceful one under the sun of the British navy and empire belies the evidence. There were dozens of wars perpetrated by the colonial powers but the victims were not white Europeans and often not considered fully human whether because they were coloured or heathen. For them it was peaceful when they died. And of course the US civil war and the subjugation of the first nations were among the first modern mass wars. But I  enjoyed going over old territory with my perspective of 70 years.

 

 

 

I don’t know what you make of the ” Philadelphia Trumpet” but since you include it I hope it is because it is an example of the egregiously skewed views of reality prevalent in certain quarters- attitudes that allowed the disasters of the 20thC to occur. It appears to be the spawn of the late H.W. Armstrong and the “Plain Truth” which was a jumble of scholarship, eschatology and wishful thinking. The worldview projects a vengeful god of the Old Testament who will save the good guys--- sounds a lot like traditional American foreign policy since the Munroe Doctrine.

 

The article blaming the teens for the state of society is pernicious at best, malevolent almost. Why blame teens for what their parents did? 1000 years ago we had successful leaders who began in their teens; in fact, teenagers were a product of post-WWII prosperity and delayed adulthood was partly encouraged to keep teens out of the labour market. Referencing the god of Isaiah isn’t very helpful either since he ordered genocide and condoned the mass rape of those defeated in war. So I’m not likely to want to go back to those good old days.

 

I don’t even want to go back to the 1950s when children were beaten and sent to reform schools to keep them on the straight and very narrow views of their parents. The ‘teen culture’ is simply the consumer culture which is in part a product of the protestant ethic where prosperity is evidence of being among the “elect” of god, which blends nicely with the notion of a nation as a “beacon on the hill’. When you are predestined to rule it is easy to find evidence that god approves of your actions (confirmation bias). Wealth is the easiest evidence to see so rich becomes good and eventually consumption the new religion. (George Bush- go shopping to save America)

 

Why blame teens not parents? Desperately seeking Susans and Sams (Zoomers) are everywhere trying to prolong the illusion of youth while waiting for a new body at the resurrection of the good guys, but living a daily hell of denial in the meantime.

 

Give us this day our daily delusion.

Sceptical as ever,

Walter

On the question of good jobs. We (greed enterprise) made a Faustian bargain that we would export our jobs to unregulated, desperate societies so we could get cheap stuff and pollute somebody elses backyard not our own. Now the worm turns as we have global crises of pollution and economic entanglements.

There is structural change happening in western societies that make getting reasonable pay to build a life problematic, but I hope we also focus on quality. I have a nephew living in Saskatchewan who commutes to work in oil fields 1000kms away. (Thousands make the same commute from Newfoundland) While at work he lives in a dorm for weeks at a time and then commutes home on his bike for a few days. He makes "good" money- more than a teacher and luckily he learned not to spend his money on drugs and gambling in the evenings on the job. Many of the tech jobs put people like rats into a virtual cage where every keystroke is monitored. Not surprising if they explode at raves.

The language of jobs has always been a problem for me. It is the language of the factory and it makes humans into resources just like cash and machines. We should be talking about work which provides both the necessities of life and a meaningful occupation. The meaning is less in the exact work as in the focus people have in their lives. If the focus is money we simply feed an addiction because there will never be enough. By definition wants are infinite and resources finite. And if the focus is jobs rather than work, we don't pay enough attention to the actual activities being performed. I think that the reason so many people are distracted constantly by technogadgets is that what they are doing both on the job and in leisure is devoid of meaning--T.S Eliot's "Hollow Men". People need as much help with making a life as with making a living. Can you really have a boot camp for meaning. Are we really preparing for a war on life?

To paraphrase a famous saying: "the least efficient thing to do is to improve something that should not be done in the first place".