It may be a little late to suggest making a New Year’s resolution, but I hope a few have been made in the direction of cleaning up their act, and I hope a few of those will be sincerely adhered to.
I’m pointing the tip of my blunt, rustic pencil in the direction of those considered to be in high places, and I am not talking about mountain climbers.
If I listed the shenanigans that have swamped the media lately from federal, provincial and municipal levels of government, I would be shouldering a scroll, the unfurling of which would shadow the entire equator. The missing CPP funds are just the tip of one iceberg. How long do they think the general public will stomach such stupidity?
Whether we care to believe it or not, we have slipped into social and troubled times. We are now with little doubt experiencing a seeping of political dictatorship into the democracy that built this country, which was once proudly known as Canada.
The so-called free trade agreements rapidly being pushed worldwide are nothing more and little less than the tools by which the rich can legally roam the globe and randomly exploit the poor while throwing the middle class into complete unemployed chaos. Contrary to the bragging of bringing Third World countries’ standards of living up to equal ours, they are, and will continue to, drag our standard down to a cowering level equal to theirs.
There is little doubt in my mind that we now live within a country that is ailing, in a challenged and threatened world. But that need not be so in the future. The flood of social comments that are drifting, courtesy of the internet, to each nook and cranny of the world, has given the widespread quiet upcoming thinking youth of our nations a chance to group and voice their opinions.
And let me tell you, they are showing the guts to falter in following the footprints, fostered by greed, left by their foot-stomping forefathers.
What they want is plain and simple. They want a new era of true democracy. They want world peace. They want a roof over their heads. They want adequate food to fill hungry stomachs. They want freedom of religion. They want equal rights between men and women. They want equality, regardless of creed, colour or orientation. They want an environment as it was meant to be; sustainable and self-regenerative. They want a life that is worthy of living.
We are not small-brained. We are no longer hanging from the bough from which we originally dropped. None of these things are unreachable. We have the technology, we have the natural resources, and we have the ability to feed the nations. We know the needs. We have the ability to transport whatever is needed. The only thing that is lacking is the determination to so do.
It certainly won’t happen in my time, and it probably won’t happen in the time of many of my readers, but there is a stirring among the worldwide generations of both our great and grandchildren that global peace is their ultimate goal.
I can foresee the formation arising. The writing is there, if not scrawled as artistic graffiti on back alley walls, it can be easily read between widespread lines.
When the youth of our nations step beyond the limelight, the environmental crisis is going to be challenged. The foot that will trod where our forefathers stomped will be wearing a moccasin shoe.
If humanity is to survive, we require a united effort. To do this, a cooperative global assemblage of government is needed. When such is so, there is no doubt in my mind that peace will envelope, as God so intended, the entire surface of this earth.
Take care, ’cause we care.
barrie@barriehopkins.ca
519-986-4105