This morning I read a post that explained that the current president of the US said that he 'didn't want to be neighbours with Russia'.
About that...
The current president has also said - repeatedly - that he wants to destroy my country economically so that he can annex it.
Why, if he doesn't want to be neighbours with Russia?
He is so confusing. Because taking over Canada would mean that he would be even more 'neighbourly' with Russia than the US currently is.
I constantly see posts by people who don't believe we live on a globe. And yet even Google knows that we do.
People don't understand why flights take such stupid flight paths - because they don't ever look at a globe and find out that things in reality are different than what a Mercator projection makes it look like. Compare Greenland in this photo to what you see in a Mercator projection. And think about how perceiving things changes depending upon your view.
I grew up in a 'remote' town in the middle of the province of British Columbia. The nearest big city was 500 plus miles away. Edmonton could not be reached by road until the 1970s - unless you went south to Kamloops and used Highway 1 through the Rocky Mountains - a journey of around 800 miles (we were still using Imperial measures until the mid-70s - or north to Dawson Creek and then down to Edmonton - another 800+/- mile drive.)
On the other hand, I benefited from some really excellent teachers and they addressed things like the role of that radar base just outside of town, and how the US and the USSR would use Canada as their battleground instead of fighting on their own land. It was a sobering perspective during a sobering time. Kind of put international 'relations' in perspective when you realize two other countries are perfectly willing to destroy a 3rd (yours) because it makes a convenient battleground. (And USians wonder why I'm not a big fan of US international policies.)
On the other hand, I read. I read voraciously. I read things that were far beyond what my life looked like, or what it promised me - a child of a blue collar worker who never actually attended school, and a 8th grade drop out from Montreal.
Living in a remote mostly forestry based resource town, far, far away from any large metropolitan centre, there was no higher education to speak of until the 1970s when a college finally opened. The university was started in the early 1990s, because the community worked to make it happen. The locals petitioned both provincial and federal governments, who stonewalled and stonewalled, and finally one of the locals asked what it would take to get the government to be open to funding a university of the north. The government spokesperson whiffed and said "$1,000,000". The spokesperson flew home from Ottawa, jumped on the local radio talk show and said 'ok, people, we need a million dollars to show Ottawa and Victoria that we are serious. Send your donations asap." I forget how long it took to raise the money but it was a matter of weeks, not months. In 1994 the university opened their brand new campus high on the hill overlooking the valley the town sits in. And now? We have some professors doing incredible research, pertinent to the north of Canada.
All because there were enough people in this town who knew how to look at a globe and see the connections to others that we should never forget.
Over the years I have made a specific effort to break down my reality bubble. Learning how to weave was the first step because I quickly learned that when it comes to weaving, change one thing and everything can change. When I learned to begin to apply that to life, generally, I began to understand what was going on. When I then started to apply that to human behaviour, I really began to see how people build barriers to understanding each other.
We cannot keep going the way we are going with 1/4 of humans more than willing to kill off the rest of us. We cannot assume that every person has the same motivations as we do, even when they proudly, loudly, proclaim they are followers of this religion or another. Because most humans have little understanding of the very religions that they profess to follow. (Sad, but true.)
I have turned into a curmudgeon in my later years. Because I am old, I'm in my twilight years. I have no family beyond me and my spouse. (I do, however, have many many younger friends, who I care deeply about.) So I have little to lose by speaking out when I see injustice.
For decades I have stood quiet when I saw things that were wrong, not feeling that my voice would - or could - (or did I even *want* to) change anyone's minds.
But there is a meme going around that finally rattled my cage: I do not speak out to change the others; I speak out so the others do not change me.
My speaking out has made a number of people uncomfortable. I know, because they have angrily let me know.
Their anger is displaced. I am not the one doing these things. I am merely pointing them out. If the Nazis came to rule Germany - and attempted to rule the world - built on the shoulders of good people who did not object - well, then I am going to make sure that I let people know that what is going on is wrong. It is wrong by every metric humanity has attempted to build into human society.
As one single voice, I have zero to no power. But if I can make just one person think? Well, I can still write. I can think. I can share my conclusions. I can encourage others to break out of their reality bubble and look at a globe instead of a Mercator projection to begin to really SEE our world.
So, no, I will not be quiet. Not any more.
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