PREPARING FOR COLLAPSE (8) (with some help from Ilargi Meijer)
I have lived in Canada since 1951, thus more than 63 years. I had 16 years of formal education in the Netherlands, but am still learning every day. I also did my military duty in my motherland from September 1949 till April 1951, leaving the army with the rank of Sergeant. Crazy business, actually, being a soldier, being taught how to kill. I even had bayonet drill, sticking a sharp piece of steel, attached to my rifle, into a bail of straw, while yelling at the top of my voice. That sort of thing was a left-over from World War I when millions of young men faced each other in Flanders Field and Northern France and died for the greater good of whatever. Generals always prepare their underlings for the last war. With so many young lives eliminated in 1914-18, World War I, and from 1939-1945 in World War II, surprisingly there was a surplus of male bodies in the 1930’s when the Great Depression hit.
People feared that the aftermath of WWII would be the same: instead the Great Consumer Society emerged. When I landed in Canada in July 1951 I right away had work. When factory work proved not to my liking, I quit after one day and started work in a feed mill. After a few more different jobs I became self-employed in October 1952 and remained my own boss the rest of my life.
Suppose I would arrive in Hamilton, Ontario, today as a 23 year old foreigner, reasonably well educated, a few thousand dollars in hand to tie me over. How would I fare? Would I find a job right away? Not very likely judging by the millions of young people looking for work and burdened with debt. During the 1950’s and early 1960’s I raised a family on a modest income. Our five children all sailed through school, got married, are all professionals. Our grandchildren too are doing marvelously well, but what sort of future are they facing?
Last week I saw our Prime Minister, a so-called Christian man – I deeply dislike the word “Christian” because it has ceased to have little or no connection to what I think “Christ” stood for – gave young peoples’ parents a tax break for buying sports equipment, appealing to middle class voters to help give their kids more incentive to play sport and so become healthier adults. If he really were concerned about our future generation, if he really wanted to have children grow up to be productive people, he should have said: “I also have two young children, and I fear for their future because of Climate Change, destructive Capitalism, pervasive pollution, and disappearing resources. Therefore I now put a halt to tar sand oil, promote renewable energy, and greatly expand funding for mass transportation.” Actually he is doing exactly the opposite. He says that he loves his children, but he loves being re-elected more because his financial and moral bankruptcy shows nowhere better than in the way he treats his and our children. Ask any parent and they will swear to God and cross their hearts and hope to die that they love their kids to death, but the facts say otherwise. We only love them as far as the switch to the thermostat or the air conditioning, or as far as the trip to the garage or driveway to start the car.
While we swear on our mother’s graves that we love them so much, we leave them with a world that lost half of its wildlife species in 40 years, that can expect to make coastal areas around the globe uninhabitable during their lifetimes, and a world that is so mired in debt just so we, their ‘loving’ parents, can hang on to our dreams of oversized homes and cars and gadgets so that all there will be left for them are nightmares.
This past weekend was Canada’s Thanksgiving Day. We had 12 extra guests for a couple of days, including 2 children and their spouses, a brother and his wife and 6 grandchildren, ranging from 6 to 30. Let’s be honest: we all depend on economic growth to make a living or enjoy our state pensions. Solid Middle Class as we all are, our grandchildren too will receive an excellent education, but for what?
What I see in my own family is that we are totally unprepared for Collapse. The harsh truth is that we can continue our lifestyles only because we have shoved all our problems on the unprepared shoulders of our children and grandchildren. In the meantime we continue to kill more species, at home but mostly abroad, because we never get in touch with any of those species anyway. We can drive our 3 cars per family because we only see the ice melt in the Arctic on TV.
Yes, we also allow ourselves, and our governments, to get deeper into debt every single day because we’ve been told that without more debt – not our own of course, but corporate and public – we would all die. We don’t understand what it means that our governments increase their debt levels by trillions every year, and we choose not to find out.
They – my children and their children- see me switching off the lights after them, closing the doors behind them, but the bulk of us, we, the most pampered parents and grandparents ever to raise offspring, have, by and large, by our example, failed to prepare the next generations for the Collapse to come, which brings me back to me.
Sorry to say but my generation is the last of the luxurious class. Indeed it is: Apr?s nous le déluge. We are the last one for whom that is true. It’s been a short blip in human history, let alone in the earth’s history, and now it’s over. Ours is the task, the duty, indeed the holy obligation to be an example of what we are going to do, knowing that not doing anything will make our, yours and my sons and daughters futures even bleaker than they already are.
Noah was in the same predicament. He was told by the Lord Creator to prepare a refuge for all land-based life. He built an ark, believing that, since the world had grown so wicked that reform had become impossible, he must prepare for total collapse.
I see it all around me. I talked to a former member of our church who now has a Bachelor of Arts degree and works as a clerk in the liquor store. I am not sure how much debt she has – I did not dare to ask – but the average young person with a university degree has more than $30,000 personal debt and responsible for on an average $40,000 in National Debt. Should I mention the Environmental DEBT, which is beyond calculation?
Re-election for politicians depends on the Middle Class. Politicians vie for the votes and campaign donations of the parents, not the children who don’t count because they don’t vote.
The October 10 issue of The Economist gave an overview of the three waves of technical revolution, starting with the First Industrial stage which began in the late 18th Century, with the second influx about a century later, and comparing it to the current one. Where the previous periods of innovation were more or less helpful for the job market, with the initial power loom in Great Britain replacing a lot of textile workers, but generating much more employment elsewhere, and with the automobile taking the place of the horse and buggy, the current invention of computing and information and communication and robots leaves a few super brains on the top and the masses on the bottom, making the middle class almost disappear. Young people are squeezed, doomed to McJobs, with minimum wage and often no benefits.
Welcome to Century 21.
The only solutions in the minds of our political leaders are reforms (make it easier to get rid of the older people and let the young do their jobs at half the price) and growth. Both of which have failed for all those years. With pensions in jeopardy, the old hang on to their jobs, leaving no room for the young who fight squalid working conditions and miserable low pay.
There used to be growth in the economy. In earlier times growth gave the young a chance to fit in. But the world is exhausted: growth is no longer possible because we are trying to live life abundant on a planet that is pumped out, scraping the bottom of the barrel in many ways, fish, trees, water, soil, you name it. The planet needs a long rest- many millennia – to recuperate from the human plunderers who have everywhere harvested the easy stuff, exploited the earth everywhere, depriving her of the fertile top soil, the potable waters, and the fresh air, leaving the youth with the dregs.
Sorry young people. No luck.
So we parents, what sort of lives will our children have if growth is gone, and what are we going to do for them? How are we going to soften the blow for them? How much are we willing to sacrifice for our children lest they be sacrificed by society?
Let’s face it: it is obvious that we teach our kids the wrong skills. If we had trained them properly we would have lots of jobs for them. If J.H. Bavinck in his Between the Beginning and the End- a radical Kingdom vision, is right, then we must train them for the coming of the Kingdom, for a steady state economy where we can learn from our indigenous forefathers who lived in symbiosis with creation.
Of course our kids need history. Of course they need to know how to write and read and do math. They need to know the Bible and Shakespeare and appreciate the great works of art. But there’s more to learning that what happened in the past. They need practical skills, need to know how to grow food organically, how to work with their hands, how to live on less, how to exist within the means of creation, how to live without electricity, and the Internet, and ready-made entertainment, because that is going to be their future. It basically means that they ought to be prepared for eternity where no pollution, no waste, no senseless actions will be condoned. Much of what we do today makes no sense, has no other purpose than create waste, only fosters frivolity and folly.
No, tomorrow will not be like today and yesterday. Schooling is for the future, a future totally different from the way we lived.
Christian education means “Kingdom Training”, means getting ready for the New Creation to Come!!! That is what is meant by preparing for collapse
Next week: Is Ebola a sign of the Last Days?