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| The Rose Garden at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver |
1.
The thing to remember about giving up old values and accepting new values is that you are changing to the unknown and giving up what has sustained us for hundreds or thousands of years. The values you throw away create a vacuum and you don't really know what will fill that vacuum. You might think that change is for the better, and sometimes it is, but did we expect that we'd end up with the fragmented society that we now have? What we have is a world gone wrong, it's a society in decline.
2.
The Industrial Revolution, World War One, and the Great Depression were turning points in history, another turning point is Covid-19. People were sequestered during Covid, possibly needlessly sequestered, and people are social beings, we need contact with other people. We were mandated into social isolation and what amounted to a kind of solitary confinement; the truth is, people need to be with people. Sensory deprivation starves the brain for sensory input; how long would any of us last in a sensory deprivation chamber? It is not long before the brain manufactures images, thoughts, and your emotions become unstable, extreme, and negative.
3.
Covid-19 will have long-term consequences; as an example, and there are others, some children are suffering intellectual, emotional, and psychological problems from their time in Covid lock-down, but other people have also suffered. Some re-opened schools have become more violent; hospitals have an increased number of children as patients for emotional and psychological problems; there is random violence on public transportation in Toronto and New York City; meanwhile, homeless encampments are in every city; incidents of random violence have increased; sexual identity is under attack. Society is in decline and we won't get back what we have lost. But have we also lost our humanity?
4.
We have traditional values, for instance honesty, faith, and family; but these are being cancelled and replaced with gender fluidity, diversity, and climate change. The adherents of these other values don't want to live in peaceful coincidence with the older values, they want to cancel these older values. And that is what is happening to society. One day good people will wonder what happened, how did they allow their core values to be destroyed, how did they allow these changes to occur that they never agreed to? But what we lose we will never get back.
5.
What we give up, what is taken from us because we have amnesia and assume all will be well . . . but we haven't agreed to these changes; we wake up one day and find we've been stripped of our older values. Change crept up on us and we weren't watching, we didn't let it happen, it just happened and in retrospect it was an enormous mistake. There they are in the streets or in television studios, the media, movie actors--entertainers seem to originate new values and the public follow them--and the educated middle class, consumers of the media, they've also made the conversion to the system of new values. And the politicians are along for the ride, and always out for more power. We are surrounded by displays of these new values and a new mentality that goes along with it; and if we don't agree with them we are cancelled, you can lose your employment, your friends, even your family.
6.
What you lose you will never get back. There were great social changes in the 1960s and some people celebrated these changes but what if we were wrong and these counter culture values have only made life worse and not better? Back then, students occupied administration offices in universities, some people were marching in the streets, other people were smoking dope, there were changes in moral values, changes in every aspect of society, and now sixty years later we are living with the consequences of these changes; they did not create a more creative, loving, or free society, it is the opposite of this that has happened. We surrendered, we gave up, we acquiesced. What you lose you will never get back; change is not always for the better, it may end up being change for the worst. And are the people supporting change the best people, the most intelligent people, or are they out for themselves, politicians, intransigent moralists, ideologues? We know the answer to that question.
Note: This has been revised and edited several times for clarity. I am a compulsive editor, I edit until I've said exactly what I mean.
