The era of fear
The American Department of Homeland Security has 230,000 employees, of which 30,000 are equipped with electronics that monitor every telephone call and every e-mail: be careful what you whisper or write, because the CIA now stands for “Collecting Information Anonymously.” The total cost for spying on all of us is $49 billion, more than twice the entire Canadian Air Force-Navy-Army budget of $22 billion.
In the past the U.S. government mobilized for wars, and de-mobilized after. No longer: the war on terror is “War without end. Amen.” The U.S. may have declared victory, but it looks more like a victim than a victor. It resembles a scared security seeker, prying into every person’s private prattle.
Welcome to the new era of fear and of a future failing any safeguards. Gone are the days when the skills with which a person entered a profession or job would last a working life time. Gone are the days when a person could reasonably expect a comfortable retirement after a successful career. Gone are the days when good health care was guaranteed, when weather was predictable, when governments provided financial security in old age.
Our fears span the globe. We fear that Islam will overtake the world, so we view every dark face or every burka with suspicion and suspect bombs under their belts. After decades of openness we are back to barricaded borders. Our fears are local too. We fear that dangers lurk in polluted water, in incurable infections, in tainted meat, in minute microbes, in tricky ticks, in dengue fever, in yet un-named ailments for which no cure is available.
Europe fears that the entire concept of the Euro was a momentous mistake, pushed by Germany , the main beneficiaries of this move. Everyone fears that the welfare state that my generation has enjoyed is coming to an end.
Not unreasonable
These fears are well founded. How can we save for retirement when money earns less than the rate of inflation? How can young people save anyhow when jobs have gone global, going to the lowest bidder? How can the next generation pay off the national debt and its educational debt when incomes are down but costs are up? And what about climate change with more drought, flooding and food insecurity?
The 20th century saw not only the fight against fascism and communism, but, in the second half, liberal provisions for public health care and universal pensions that gave people protection against all ills, whether economic, physical or old age. This was made possible by high taxation and by religiously banking on economic growth. Now staggering deficits prevent governments from being everything for everybody, while the unintended consequences of century-long extravagance, courtesy of carbon-based living, are evident in booming populations, weird weather, sharply reduced growth, and looming commodity shortages. All this signals extreme uncertainty. Whereas familiarity breeds contempt, unfamiliarity fosters fear.
We just have had another G-20 meeting, this time in Mexico. The press releases stated that the world’s leaders discussed economic stabilization and structural reforms as foundations for growth and employment, vowed to strengthen the financial system and strive for financial inclusion to promote economic growth, and promised to improve the international financial architecture in an interconnected world while pledging moneys to finance food security and address commodity price volatility. All of this is pure bull’s bowel products. They even talked about promoting sustainable development, green growth and the fight against climate change: equally empty expressions, because no state still has the money or the political power to implement these lofty goals. We might as well call the G-20 the G-ZERO as zilch is the result.
Is all doom and gloom? Of course not. 1 John 4: 18 says: “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives our fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.”
Is that a cheap way out? No. I do believe the solution lies in loving each other, and loving God’s good earth. “The greatest of these is love” is Paul’s famous saying. “God so loved the world” indicates that we too must cherish the earth, which means going back to fundamentals. Our basic needs are food, shelter and clothing, the three essentials we need in addition to love. With all institutions in the process of failing, faith must continue to fashion our actions, faith that God looks after us when we “prepare the way of the Lord.”
Bert Hielema worked all spring to prepare his 2000 sq. ft. veggie garden, this year also mixing in five years of accumulated compost. His blog can be found at www.hielema.ca/blog.