Bert Hielema–Columns and Writings

Year 9-17

For me life is interesting, even though Bell Tel. sometimes makes matters miserable for me. I am in this technologically advanced country on dial internet service. Can’t get wireless, and too many trees make it impossible to sight a relay tower. So I am stuck with grandma Bell. The connection between our house and the highway goes dead when snow melts or rain falls, while the line to the village – 5 km away- suffers from nobody knows what- perhaps squirrels or black flies or raccoons eating the wires, giving me p.p. internet service. The p.p. you can either read as pretty poor or as a shorter version where the first ‘p’ is exactly that, and also another 4 letter word, conveying the same meaning.

But life is good and even afterlife gets good publicity nowadays.

Afterlife? Yes, life after death, is very much in the news nowadays. Perhaps not surprisingly the typical American believes not in evolution or global warming but does in Doomsday and an afterlife, in heaven, of course, wearing white robes and clutching golden harps, I presume.  The average American – not Canadian – adult sees the earth as a 10,000 year old evil matter whose substance may be abused – hence the denial of global warming – and sees Doomsday coming and regards afterlife a heaven-bound certainty. Yes, in these dark days they expect Doomsday to come knocking at the door anytime now, abetted by the combined crush of economic collapse, peak oil and global warming, the latter not human-induced, of course,  but an act of God. This trinity of evil will, they believe, be so severe that society as we know it will never recover, our lifestyles be seriously compromised and survival become a life-or-death issue.

I can back this up with statistics. The surveys vary a bit, but for the longest time, something in the order of 90% of Americans say they believe in God and an afterlife in heaven.

It’s now been 200 years since Charles Darwin came up with his evolution theory. I think that he was partly right. Of course I believe that God exists – as did Darwin – and created the cosmos. I also believe that this took place millions if not billions of years ago – with God one day is as a thousand or million years and a billion years as one day – so that, since that original concepts took shape, humans and animals have gone through development stages (don’t we all): what we see around us is too convincing to assume otherwise. Yet two-thirds of all Americans believe that the earth was created 10,000 years ago.

The church-going crowd over there is mostly Republicans. Among them only 21% think that we are at fault causing climate change. That too fits in with the heaven-thing. To them “earth is a foreign strand, wilderness waste” quoting a hymn. In other words, most Americans don’t think their use of fossil fuels causes this Greenhouse Effect. They blame nature.

Fortunately there are still a lot of religious people who think otherwise. On February 21 Globe and Mail had an interesting exchange between Ian Brown and Jean Vanier. I love Jean Vanier, and I have many of his books.

In that article both mention life after death. Neither mentioned ‘heaven’, which, seen as a human destination, is a very unbiblical concept. Let me give one example: The last verse in the book of Daniel says, “As for you, go your way till the end. You will rest, and then at the end of days you will rise to receive your allotted inheritance.”  Jesus too sees death as ‘a restful sleep’. That inheritance, by the way, is a cleaned up earth.

The church is wrong when it portrays heaven as the after-life abode, a lie the Devil has successfully sold to organized religion, weakening the resolve of church people to whole-heartedly care for the earth.

Vanier writes that, in thinking of life-after-death, he visualizes “it will be a wonderful moment of peace, of joy, of ecstasy of love, a fulfillment of love. It will be more wonderful than anything we could have imagined.” He repeatedly mentions the beauty of the earth, which reminds me that “God made no junk and will not junk what he has made.” That’s why we must now live so that when the renewal comes we will have no trouble making that transition.

So how will it all end? I don’t refer to Doomsday – the Bible calls it “The Day of the Lord” – but I do mean the current economic and environmental crisis. If the majority of Americans deny any direct responsibility for Climate Change, then our planet will certainly keep on deteriorating at a rapid rate, with China and India, taking their cue from America, continuing to pollute.

So, indeed, the American collective psyche definitely has a Doomsday mentality, enhanced by their heaven-heresy.

Oh, yes, we live in interesting times.

This column can be seen at https://hielema.ca//, and is regularly viewed in more than 25 countries, with the USA in the lead, followed by Canada, the Netherlands, Russia and China.

Year 9-16

Is nothing sacred anymore? Is everything to be challenged? A doctor-friend told us years ago that since plants today are grown in poorer soil, they contain fewer vitamins, fewer minerals and fewer anti-toxins, so he advised us to supplement our diet with all these health aids. Now I read that swallowing these supplements is basically useless, a waste of money since several responsible studies have shown that extra vitamins, at least in pill form, don’t prevent chronic disease or prolong life.

Of course everyone needs essential nutrients that the body can’t produce on their own. Due to lack of Vitamin C sailors in their wind-driven ships got scurvy and the Royal Navy fed them limes: hence the name Limeys for Brits. A lack of vitamin D can cause rickets and all sorts of diseases can be prevented, apparently, by chewing or swallowing D, the sudden wonder drug. It is now claimed that high doses of it could lower risk for cancer and other chronic diseases. So do we need some vitamins but not others?   

I was reminded of all this when last week I saw CBC’s Peter Mansbridge interview President Obama in the White House. You may wonder what the connection is between Obama and vitamins. Well, my brain is a jolly jumper: it was something that Obama said that triggered this train of thought. When Peter Mansbrige asked him about the obnoxious Oil Sands his simple reply was: “Technology will find an answer.”  “AHA”, I thought, “there’s where Obama comes from.”

Most of us see the world and our bodies sometimes as well, as a sort of machine we can manipulate so that it will keep on functioning. There’s no doubt that Technology rules our world. And here is where the vitamin connection comes in: it flashed through my mind whether the use of technology too could backfire just as the use of vitamin tablets, also a product of technology, suffered a setback. Maybe there too we are wrong to place all our bets in technology.  

When in Ottawa, both Harper and Obama sang from the same song sheet, aspiring to device ‘clean technology’, fully convinced that sequestering the CO2 and burying it is possible: technology will save us. But will it?

Things out there aren’t so simple: for every freight car of coal gone up in smoke – the biggest source of carbon dioxide- CO2 –  and the main fuel for electricity in the world and the main source of Green House Gases – three freight cars of CO2 are released, which then must be captured and transported to a safe place underground. Can it be done?  Would it not be a lot easier if we reduced energy use? No, that’s apparently not an option because “our way of life may not be compromised,” Obama said during his election campaign.

Back to vitamin pills. A much better way to robust bodies is to go back to our grandparents’ diets: lots of nutrient-rich fruits and vegetables, which will lower rates of heart disease and cancer. The catch: their produce was grown on organic soil. Simple solution: go home-grown: produce your own 100 feet diet. Michael Pollan, starts his “In Defense of Food” with: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. That, more or less, is the short answer what we should eat in order to be maximally healthy.”

But how about technology? I  know, it has its benefits. I love my computer. I spent more time with my laptop than with any other tool, but it also has drawbacks. The current financial disasters can directly be blamed on computer technology gone amok. The hedge funds, the disastrous derivatives, the fatal financial fakeries were only possible because of the World-Wide-Web and the simulations suggested by enhanced computer power. What we see at work today is an aspect of what Joseph Tainter describes in his 1988 book, “The Collapse of Complex Societies.”

There are other downsides to technology as well. The immense population growth is owed primarily to the growth of carbon-based technology. Also, for all its blessings technology has accelerated the disappearance of social taboos and globally caused the demise of native cultures and rural communities and has spread pornography everywhere. Also, due to its indiscriminate use of technology, China has become one of the world’s largest polluters.    

The direct result of the current collapse of the financial system has been the rise of government influence. The State is now the Banker of last resort. If the past is any indication, this new phenomenon could have disastrous consequences as it will boost bureaucracy, introduce stifling regulations and halt creative innovation. It certainly will lead to greater complexity, exponentially increasing the dangers of societal collapse.

The word ‘vitamin’ has as its root the Latin word ‘vita’ which means ‘life’. We must use ‘technology’ wisely so that it does not endanger ‘vita’, ‘life’ the source of all that lives because it is beyond challenge that all life is sacred.

Year 9-15

Leave it to Gordon Brown, the British Prime Minister. This severe Scot, son of a Presbyterian Minister, the closest you can get to being a dour Dutchman like me, is also not afraid to face reality. Brown’s most loyal ally in his Cabinet, Ed Balls, said last week – with the express approval of his patron – that we face “The Worst Recession in over a hundred years”, that includes the one in the 1930’s.

Before that, the longest depression was from 1873-96. Then my great-grandparents lost their money, forcing my maternal grandfather to quit university, then an elite matter, and becoming a small farmer. All because of an energy crisis: 90 percent of the world’s horses died from equine flu.  

If you want to survive the next long slump, become a small farmer also, go back to horses, because the 21^st century version of the downturn will also involve an energy crisis, a double one actually: Peak Oil and Climate Change.

My grandfather farmed on 15 hectares, some lush grassland for his dozen milk cows and some beautiful sandy loam for the cereal crops, a horse of course, a flock of chickens, a pig, little money but enough to eat and to share, a pillar in the church and community. I am named after him.

Then – 1873 – the world had about a quarter of the people it has now. Number 1 billion of us arrived sometime in 1803 during Napoleonic time. It took 125 years to see Number 2 billion arrive, in the very year I was born. Since then, with carbon-based energy replacing horse power, the world population more than tripled, while their baggage increased twenty-fold.

Brace yourself: disappearing are endless credit, plentiful jobs and life-time occupations. Nothing will be forever anymore, except the unusual such as freakish weather and the unwanted such fuel scarcity. The sooner we confront the coming reality, the better. When Gordon Brown openly admits the truth of our situation – and Barack Obama also warns us that we face the worst – that really means that the problem is beyond the capacity of our rulers to cure: we are on our own. No wonder The Economist commented: “The notion that [America] might never recover was previously entertained only by bearded survivalists stockpiling beans and ammunition in remote log cabins.” It’s now commonly considered.

Nevertheless politicians must give the appearance of action, however useless so the USA is digging itself deeper into the dollar doldrums.   

How long will this malaise last? Ed Balls says 15 years for Great Britain. The LEAP think-tank, publishing the Global European Anticipation Bulletin, in its latest report rates the economic severity by regions. It says that the USA and UK – both the world’s most indebted nations – will suffer a combined economic and social crisis for up to 10 years; Canada and Mexico will undergo a severe recession for 3-5 years. Europe will escape the worst, contracting from 2-3 years. Africa will not be affected: having nothing anyway, it can lose nothing.

 Frankly, citing a time frame is futile. Here is my take for what it is worth: with the inevitable onset of Peak Oil, the inevitable coming of Climate Change, the inevitable growth of the middleclass in China and India, the inevitable surge in the world’s population, both taxing resources even more, with all these factors exerting pressure on an ever more fragile planet, I can only conclude that a return to the good old times of the Twentieth Century will never occur again.

In the Great Depression of 1873-1896, it was the country side that suffered the most because of the horse die-off, while cities suffered less. This time it will be the cities that will bear the brunt because of the energy die-off.

Two things call for action now: first, we have to abandon petro-agriculture and embrace locally grown and self-generated food, meaning physically working the land: digging, planting, hoeing, weeding and harvesting by hand, while, second, to be most effective, the bailout billions should go the European way of electrifying and expanding the railroad system. To expand the paved highway network even more is a wanton waste of ever scarcer resources. We have squandered too much already.

In a word: we have to reactivate our small towns and cities and prepare for manufacturing at a much smaller and local scale.

Yes, that means tariffs. Yes, that means going against all current economic wisdom. That sort of thinking has brought us where we are.  Yes, that means “buy Canadian,” or “buy American.” The wasteful ways of having our toys shipped in from Brazil and China and India is no longer feasible.

We still have time, but not much. Talk to your friends, your immediate family. Do things together. Pull funds. Plan wisely and read the signs of the times. Gordon Brown did us a service by stating the obvious, a refreshing gesture from a politician. It’ll probably cost him his job, because voters like to be deceived.

Year 9-14

“I screwed up” said President Obama last week. He also admitted that if he can’t solve the money crisis, he will be a one term president.

Why is there a money crisis? The simple answer is that money is debt, which, in fact, makes it a debt crisis. When I go to the bank to get a mortgage, the bank quickly creates that money in the form of a debt, for which I, in return, give my house as guarantee until I have paid the debt back in full.

Yes, money is debt. And there is no dearth of debt. We have come to the point where debt is doing us in. Debt, unsecured debt, depreciating debt, deflating debt, ecological debt is today’s bane, is society’s death knell. Will it make Obama a one-termer?

I am reading a 400 page long somewhat boring sermon – not unusual for sermons – by New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman: “Hot, Flat and Crowded” in which he explains in daunting detail how global warming and an expanding middle class world-wide with a rapidly growing appetite for bad things such as cars and air conditioning, spells disaster unless we all go green. In his latest column he concedes that this means a much lower living standard. Welcome to the 21^st Century.

One of the laws of ecology is that “everything is connected to everything else,” and this applies to climate change and money meltdown as well. Both have their origins in the notion that it is perfectly acceptable to burden the world with mammoth amounts of malignant material: in the case of the credit crunch, with trillions of dollars of sub-prime lending, and with climate change, with millions of tons of carbon. In short: bubbling consumerism has boosted emissions.

Admit it: our monetary gods have failed us. The globalization of the US dollar has been the last straw. Money is nothing else but an agreement to use ‘something’ as a medium of exchange. That something is ‘trust’. That trust is disappearing.

In saner times gold guaranteed the bank notes in circulation. These could be redeemed – until 1972 – for a fixed $32(US) per troy ounce – 31.1034 grams. Having gold as the money basis would have greatly curtailed debt creation, which would have forced society to live within the limits set by the available gold, reflecting the finite world we live in, which, incidently, would also have prevented pollution overload.

Over the very, very long term, gold holds its value. An ounce of gold today buys about as much stuff as it did during the reign of Julius Caesar, 2000 years ago. This is because we have increased the amount of gold above ground at about the same rate as we have added other goods and services. Throughout the centuries gold has been the world’s most reliable, most universal store of value. No wonder gold is now the only rising commodity.

At any rate, Obama has bet his political future on the soundness of the American Dollar. He needs a lot of prayers, because it looks to me that he hasn’t got a prayer. Now every important country has bailout fever, so the world at large no longer has the surplus funds to finance the US trillion dollar deficits, while the American citizens themselves also lack the cash to help Uncle Sam. This will force the Federal authorities in Washington to print the missing dollar bills, signaling hyper inflation.

We live in new times. I can foresee that barter will again become fashionable. “I have a load of wood, you have a bag of flour, since I need to eat and you don’t want to freeze in the dark, after some haggling, the proper exchange amounts are arrived at.” The variations are endless.

Willem Buiter of the prestigious London School of Economics writes that: “We can go down in history as the generation that created the Great Depression”. He continues that, if they go ahead with unsustainable fiscal stimuli in the US, the UK and elsewhere this will spook markets, push up long-term interest rates and raise the spectrum of default everywhere.

The US President appropriately apologized for a mistake. It’s about time that we Westerners admit that we too have screwed up badly in letting money mesmerize us, to the extent that we have sacrificed all things, precious air, water, soil, our very health, our family structure and spiritual welfare on the altar of money.

Everything is connected to everything else, with the human mind central to it all.

This column and earlier ones can be seen at ‘hielema.ca/blog’. He can be reached at ‘hielema@allstream.net’.

Year 9-13.

“What is the aim of education?” or “Why do I write my column?”

A Harvard University report says that “The aim of a liberal education is to unsettle presumptions, to de-familiarize the familiar, to reveal what is going on beneath and behind appearances, to disorient young people and to help them to find ways to reorient themselves.”

Harvard’s approach reminded me of a book I have by Dr Herman Fiolet, a Dutch Roman Catholic theologian, who wrote, in a passage dealing with prophecy, and I translate:

“A prophet is a believer who is open to what’s happening in this world and accepts complete responsibility for the immense challenges our fast-changing society faces.

“A prophet is a believer who deliberately re-examines decisions made in the past, including confessional statements, and test them on their relevance and viability for today.

“A prophet is a believer who, rooted in the present, takes steps to keep nature intact for our children while also engaged in working for a church and society in which future generations can thrive.

“A prophet is a believer who through reading the Scriptures recognizes what God, in the long history of the human race, has done to keep our world through Christ in the grip of salvation. That’s the reason why he or she, in spite of all evil and sin in this world, is able to look to the future in full confidence.

”A prophet is a believer who, even now, can sense what the future will bring and dares to criticize past inactions that prolong the status quo, and strives to influence the present to embrace renewal.”

The Harvard report wants us to unsettle presumptions, one of which is stimulating growth at all costs, even though this leads to resource depletion and climate change. The same holds true for global ‘stimulus’ packages, which merely transfer immense financial burdens to the future, and, paradoxically, want to cure overspending with more spending. When Jesus was faced with something similar, accused of casting out devils in the name of the Devil, his reply was that “a house divided against itself will fall.”

Another glaring presumption is that we will always have access to energy. By de-familiarizing the familiar, it is revealed that beneath and behind our need for light, heat, fuel and comfort, Alberta sees seas of sludge and clouds of contamination and so speeds up world-wide warming. Moreover based on Energy obtained by Energy Invested – EOEI- 80 calories of clean natural gas are burned to obtain 100 calories of dirty motor fuel, not counting the pollution it causes in the process, which more than annuls any gains.

Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626), the father of the scientific method wrote that Nature was to be “placed on the rack”, “enslaved,” “bound into service,” and “forced out of her natural state and molded.” Rene Descartes (1596-1650), the fellow famous for “I think therefore I am,” saw the human race as “masters and possessors of nature.” Our own tar sands are a clear case of such cosmic cruelty.

Current government and industry actions are founded on these ancient heresies. Here’s what the celebrated John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) – he is everybody’s favourite now- once wrote: “Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.” Indeed, the voices of Bacon and Descartes are still echoing in the minds of politicians and industrialists alike, even though the Bacon-Descartes doctrine has led to the present plight of the planet.

Just as our planet is a living entity, now suffering from a multiple range of diseases, so the economy too is a complex, dynamic, non-linear system, which refuses to be manipulated by trillion dollar infusions here or there, and is molded more by the moods and minds of the masses than by men and women in power whose aim is growth at all cost.

Are there still prophets today? Yes, going by both the Harvard and the Fiolet statements, fortunately there are, because:

Those people are prophets who assume responsibility for past and present actions, and take steps to ensure that our children and grandchildren can experience ‘shalom’ , that beautiful Hebrew word that conveys ‘harmony’ and ‘being at peace with the human race and nature alike.’

Those people are prophets who reorient themselves, stand still, look around, perhaps even take a step back to seek wisdom, and make sure that they are on the right road to the future.

Those people are prophets who dare to choose the “Road Less Traveled”, the creation-friendly road, in the sure conviction that this is needed to safeguard our planet’s future.

I hope my column contributes to that.

Year 9-12

Remember Dr. Henry Kissinger former Secretary of State under President Richard Nixon? Even today when this esteemed diplomat speaks, the world listens. Last week he stated that we, as a global community, either solve our problems together or, failing that, court disaster.

President Obama in his inauguration speech voiced a similar message.

The harsh truth is that we, collectively as the world’s inhabitants, are broke, insolvent, unable to make ends meet. That, in short, is the predicament we’re in. Liquidity, access to ready cash, has melted away in spite of governments everywhere pumping in dollars, pounds and euros, because the minute they do, these moneys vanish in the quick sand of debt.

Here’s what triggered this money-drowning affair: both borrowers and lenders assumed that real estate, stocks, tangible assets would always go up in value or at least remain stable. So people bought stuff and then some, and banks loaned money and then some, using the stuff as collateral, when, suddenly, the Black Swan of deflation dived down to destroy this delusionary dream.

Now everything is over-valued, and many loans are no longer covered, so banks don’t know where they stand. That’s why, until they determine their real value, if any, they – the USA and Great Britain in particular – have suspended lending. Fortunately Canada never went overboard that way.

Lowering the interest rate to next to zero and pumping trillions of dollars into the lending bodies makes the problem worse, because all that cash is simply sucked up in the black holes of foreclosures, overvalued collateral, corporate bankruptcies, and public deficits, simply postponing an even greater reckoning.

I have read that these so-called ghost assets now amount to $30trillion (US). By trying to salvage these ‘investments’ governments are choosing short-term band-aids over long-term solutions.

Here’s a personal illustration. I gave a person a small loan, even though I was fully aware that it would never be repaid in full, because economic conditions would make that new activity unprofitable.
The banking world did the same thing, but with a difference: it did not expect, of course, that this money would not be repaid. I could afford the loss, but the banks cannot, because they kept on lending and borrowers kept on borrowing assuming that in the end matters would rectify themselves, because “the future will always be better”.

That assumption is now proven false: the banks have run out of money and the borrowers can no longer repay, thus both parties to the contract are broke: the global financial system is insolvent as liabilities exceed assets.

That’s why banks are hoarding their cash while anxiously scrutinizing their balance sheets, trying to figure how much deeper they will go in the red. They perfectly realize that all aspects of real estate – the McMansions, the office towers, the shopping malls, hotels and warehouses – are still dropping in value, while consumer and car loans and credit card debts are also deteriorating.

The banks are not entirely to blame. They were also fooled by the rating agencies – Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s – that gave liar’s loans triple A recognition. Nevertheless the buck stops at their doors. Now wonder bankers everywhere, from Tokyo to Beijing to Saudi Arabia’s Riyadh to New York and London, have sleepless nights.

To make matters worse, customers all over the globe are canceling orders or stop buying, in spite of discounted prices, while governments world-wide face higher deficits and possible bankruptcies. Russian billionaires are begging the Kremlin for help, and even some wealthy investors commit suicide, as if the possession of money is a matter of life and death.

So what is President Obama going to do? Follow Kissinger’s advice? There were hints in his inaugural address, while his promises of telling the public the true state of the economy, even when it hurts, is a healthy development.

In front of me where I am writing is a batik which I bought in Malawi. It pictures three colorfully dressed women pounding away at corn in clay pots, while a flock of chickens roam around them pecking away at the scattered grains.

These hard-working Africans are closer to self-sufficiency and a responsible life than we, spoiled and spoiling westerners. Henry Kissinger is right: we either solve our global problems together including with our African neigbours, or court disaster. President Obama in person embodies that message of inclusiveness. I am sure he will reach out to Iran, Cuba, China and Russia, because only when we together as world citizens are bailing to keep the global economy afloat, will we succeed.