Reaching the half-century mark a couple of years back, I've witnessed my share of change; in the communities and societies I have grown up in, in the greater world beyond and the many nations that comprise it, and in my personal life along the journey to now as well.
"Life is about change", as someone at some time or another is undoubtedly credited with having observed along the way, and accordingly that reality is not in itself extraordinary. But if one stops to ponder for a few minutes on the historical changes in technology, lifestyle, societal values and cultural norms that have taken place over the past five decades in Canada, as well as around the world, I think one has to concede the half-century I have lived is pretty mind-boggling in comparison to most if not all earlier generations in human history. 'Survival of the fittest" has taken on a whole new meaning, literally and virtually.
I type today on a wireless keyboard to my IPad, using an App that backs up all my files to an Internet storage location, transmitted wirelessly. When I started College in 1985 we were just starting to see computer labs introduced and most all of my term papers were still done on a typewriter through Under-graduate studies in College and University. If you messed up a page half way down the text, you had to re-type it. There was no auto-correct and a Dictionary on the desk was your best friend in a slow, deliberate key-pecking process. As a child there was one phone in the house and a black and white T.V. made by Zenith. It had 3 channels as I recall. We were allowed one hour of T.V. a night and the rest was time spent on homework or playing outside with friends in the neighbourhood.
Today I have Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google, Pinterest and Instagram accounts, to name but a few, and if it weren't for needing to walk the dogs a couple of times a day I likely wouldn't see much of the great out-of-doors at all. Even when I do, I could easily get a half dozen distracted walking tickets a day with my IPhone in hand, practically always. Pretty much all of the familial ties and friendships I have in life are now more virtually present than physically present in my experience of daily living. My 'Social Network' is global today, but my 'Social Circle' seems to have shrunken proportionately. I have a 'small' 32" colour LED flat screen T.V. with at least 30 channels to watch, and I can never find anything I want to see on them. It all seems like a backwards kind of 'progress' to me at times, and in many ways it is! These are also only some of many ways our country and our world has taken one step forward while taking more than two backwards along the journey to now.
As a Missionary's kid in Zambia in the mid to late-60's, my early years were shaped by an environment where being 'white' meant you were in the minority, with gated properties and bars on the house windows being the norm. I have childhood memories of being inside our home when burglarly attempts were in progress. I was then transplanted at the start of the 70's into Southern Alberta, where the kids in the neighbourhood were pretty much all shades of beige. We watched Westerns at Saturday Matinees and then played 'Cowboys and Indians' around the neighbourhood for "fun". The only 'Indians' I actually met in person were ones experiencing hardships, who came to the Manse we lived in looking for lodging and food stamps. The only 'Savages' I ever saw were on horses, dressed up in their war paints and feather head-dresses and riding in the summer Rodeo parades. The only 'black' guy in the community I knew about was a homeless man I'd see around town from time to time.
I don't recall 'racism' in Africa or feelings in respect to it, perhaps because I was still too young then to understand. I also had parental guidance that respects and champions the equality of all people and the value that each has in teaching and stewarding the commonalities shared between us. I was raised to know that wherever 'racism' exists, it is most certainly wrong and must be challenged.
In contrast to my early years in Africa, I certainly saw and heard no shortage of racism in the communities I lived in on the Prairies during my childhood and in young adulthood while attending College and University. Sadly, as with the 'Cowboys and Indians' games I participated in as a kid, as a young man I even told a few disparaging jokes about 'Natives' as well. It was not until I read and studied the Rolf Inquiry Report, The Manitoba Justice Inquiry Report, and then the subsequent Royal Commission Report on the experience of First Nations peoples within Canada and it's 'majority' Anglo-European inhabitants and Institutions that I really started to appreciate, and feel pathetic about, my part in perpetuating the indoctrination such games and jokes were aimed to serve; namely the denigration and genocide of fellow human beings based solely on skin colour and being defined as a "them" distinct from and inferior to "us".
I ultimately pursued post-secondary studies for eleven years, undertaking a host of courses in law, politics, history and international affairs in respect to First Nations peoples and the Canadian state, to glean an in-depth understanding of the impact of Colonialism and European migration to North America. It is not a historical legacy that any of its ancestors should be particularly proud of in my opinion, and demonstrates hypocrisy to stand on soap boxes professing the 'barbarous' nature and tactics of ones adversaries today. The contempt is clearly well earned from any measured reading of the annals of 'Discovery', 'Settlement' and 'Conquest'.
I certainly came to appreciate through those years of post-secondary studies how naive I had been, and still am today, about the plights that many good people have faced and still face today in Canada, as well as globally, in striving to enjoy the basic needs of Maslow's Hierarchy. I read it reported recently that there are over 50 Million people on Earth today living in Refugee Camps! Are you kidding me? That is more people than live in Canada, by another third at least! In Canada the evening news regularly features stories month to month, year in and year out, decade on decade, about the third-world conditions many First Nations peoples continue to live in within their communities, with no or minimal basic services available.
It is a sadly observable reality that while 'progress' may have been made in leaps and bounds in technology, when it comes to achieving a 'civilized' global community it is most definitely stunted, if there has indeed been any 'progress' in my life-time. Canada is lagging well behind the curve of where it should be for the pronouncements it makes in support of Human Rights in Canada and internationally. It is unacceptable failure and a perpetual example of hollow words and unfulfilled values to my reckoning, and based on many an official governmental inquiry report and tribunal decision rendered over the decades as well!
When I was a lad looking out at the awe-inspiring starlit nights on the Prairies I recall feeling the fear and contemplating the very real threat and the 'doom's day' propaganda of that era; namely Nuclear devastation of the Planet. I spent many a night falling to sleep, or not falling to sleep, thinking about what I would do if ever the news came, and looking and listening for planes coming in the night sky from our Russian neighbours to the North. Today that threat and the fear associated with it still exists, but it has been muted by the "War on Terror", and the more recent sensationalism and barbarism in beheadings of hostages to serve a defined 'Extremist' group's political, social and, purportedly, religious aims. In more recent months tensions in Ukraine and global tensions between Russia and the 'West' rip scabs from latent childhood fears of mass devastation. I can well imagine children today are falling asleep, or not falling asleep, the world over with one eye a bit less tightly shut than before all this nonsense took centre stage again as adversarial events and regional conflicts within the global community wax and wane, and wax again.
ALL of my life's education and experiences impress on me ever-more each day that OUR collective problem as humans is OUR propensity to focus on the differences that define a narrowly conceived and constructed 'US' rather than the commonalities that do exist and can serve to harmonize a global WE and serve aims that are in OUR common interests as fellow human beings on Earth.
There have been an enormous number of past, and present, injuries that have been and are being perpetuated in defence and defiance of states, races, ethnic or religious identities that in some way or another claim 'insult' and 'persecution' as the measure of the justness for their atrocities and to rationalize root causes for their hostilities and violent aggression. The motives in reality were and are most definitely all driven at the core by human greed and primal survival urges for 'supremacy', and by it the achievement of physical and economic security of ways and means to better ends than what people had before.
It should be clear by now that the rush to 'progress' at any cost has and is exacerbating and not marginalizing the distinctions between US and ensures that WE cannot ever get past acting out our humanity's "Grumpy Amygdala" like our cave dwelling ancestors; with a destructive and vicious reaction to each new insult and injury triggering mob insecurity and absurdity the world-over of one form or another in one group or another every day of the year!
Mass candle-light ceremonies following the most crushing atrocities affecting the collective human psyche are an example to my mind of Humanity's capacity to achieve brotherly love, tolerance and compassion the world over. I have witnessed such mass movements on nightly news casts in recent weeks that have included countries in a diversity of regions and on different continents standing up for equality, justice and the virtues of respect within our shared human community, and standing in protest of those who would try to utilize fear to achieve divisive, destructive and audacious means for political and 'Extremist' ends. The will of the masses is most certainly there to over-come the grievances of the marginalized and disenfranchised, but the leadership to date is devoid of actions that are genuinely intended to achieve mutually advantageous resolutions and outcomes.
There is a seminar being held presently in Washington, hosted by President Obama, that is addressing the very real concern of 'Extremist' movements throughout the world. I applaud the initiative if the intent is to gain greater understanding of the concerns of one's adversaries and if a genuine interest in seeking their win/win resolution is the guiding intention. Otherwise, it is akin to having a conversation while the Elephant is out of the room. It's flaw is in thinking it will arrive at possible resolutions absent of the offended parties and instead only perpetuates the opportunities for Intellectuals and military strategists to sit around agreeing with themselves about their interpretation of how others feel and why they are acting the way they are and doing the things they are doing because of it.
Lets face it, my Canada and my world are not the nice, welcoming, caring, secure and 'progressive' environments they should be for all the human knowledge and international principles and proclamations that exist in print that we and all nations are signatories to. WE need to get better at practicing what is agreed to and holding our leadership accountable to support the values and pronouncements of Human Rights, rather than think they have a mandate to amend them to their defined group's interests.
To my mind the usefulness of political parties has outgrown itself in the contemporary era. Smart Canadians need to sit down and think about how fellow Canadians can be better served than through an adversarial political system designed to perpetually stimulate conflict and confrontation and take valuable time and energy away from cooperation and collaboration in the day-to-day affairs of those elected to represent further micronized communal interests. With a business approach, we need to undertake a 'Situation Analysis' and work through a process of consensus building to achieve a renewed Mission and Vision, along with an agreed-upon direction for the country and its citizenry that can be voted upon through trust-worthy and transparent on-line election processes.
There is an opportunity existing today for Canada to renew its historical reputation as a peace-keeping nation, with an international rainbow of citizens proudly comprising its societal and cultural mosaic. WE need a process that achieves an updated 'Social Contract' and a renewed commitment to walk-the-walk on internationally agreed-upon Human Rights principles and declarations. In so doing it can provide an example of the possible and a testament to it for the rest of the global community.
WE as Canadians need to focus our collective energies with a renewed sense of urgency and priority on achieving acceptable living conditions for all Canadians in communities from coast-to-coast-to-coast; with basic services of electricity, water and sewage systems, adequate housing, schools and employment opportunities. WE need to ensure that the people of our northern regions can receive their goods and services at reasonable costs comparative to all southern regions of the country, and that they can receive their governance and justice in ways that best serves their communities as well. We need to address homelessness and addiction with compassion, to aid and nurture recovery and reintegration. Restorative justice needs greater exercise in achieving genuine resolution of some crimes and offences as well. In reality the whole Justice system needs extensive reform to achieve restorative rather than punitive Justice aims. Holistically, WE need to renew our commitment to 'Good Governance'; binding it less to 'Institutions' designed to control people and attaching it primarily instead to serving the 'Greater Good' by adapting and modifying the institutions and tools of governance to meet that objective.
WE have had enough experience with looking forward while taking steps backwards as a country and as a global community. WE need leadership that genuinely cares about the fellow human beings they serve. WE need to strive diligently to utilize tools such as the Economy to achieve the 'Greater Good' through renewed instruments of 'Good Governance', rather than the self-interests of the wealthy, political and military 'elite' that today make it quite clear they have not earned OUR trust and confidence to steer OUR course forward well, nor seem to be genuinely trying to do so with much earnest.
That is what I will be looking for from those who want my vote in coming Federal and Provincial elections. I am a champion of change after five decades of experiencing it, so long as it for the better, and not a continuation of OUR backwards 'progress' simply dressed in renewed rhetoric that is rooted in divisiveness and promotion of a 'fear' agenda.
Andrew Gilchrist B.A., C.C.M.
Member of the Canadian Society of Club Managers since 2002
Internationally accredited Certified Club Manager (C.C.M.)
No comments:
Post a Comment