Tag Archives: history

The free world

The free world isn’t free. It’s not. When a privileged few get to decide what people can and can’t do based on their out-dated beliefs, that’s not free.

More Than 1,500 Books Have Been Banned in Public Schools, and a U.S. House Panel Asks Why

“Most books being targeted for censorship are books that introduce ideas about diversity or our common humanity, books that teach children to recognize and respect humanity in one another,” said the chair of the Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, Rep. Jamie Raskin.

When believers of religious dogma limit the choices of non-believers, that’s not free.

We don’t live in a free world, we live in a world of privileged and unprivileged. A world of bias. A world of inequity.

If I took headlines of today, like the article above, or headlines on abortion laws, or on free speech on college campuses, or on lack of social programs, and I stripped away today’s date, in 25 years you wouldn’t know when the article was written dating back as far as 75 years ago. It’s 2022 but if I told you that the article above was written in the 50’s, 60’s, or 70’s, you’d believe me.

Think about that. How much freer have we become? How much more civilized?

The stories we believe

We don’t perceive reality. We quite literally make it up. Our beliefs are fiction. It’s not an easy thing to accept. But this, unlike our beliefs, is true.

Religion, politics, relationships, even theories are all based on the knowledge that we’ve either had passed down to us or that we consumed. Relying on other people’s beliefs.

Then we make judgements and then we stand by them. Some are good, some are bad, all are judgements… not reality.

Think of the stories that have been passed down to us. From origin stories to cavemen to great floods. How many people believe that early humans lived at the same time as Jurassic dinosaurs? That’s just one story many people have wrong.

There are so many more. We should be more humble, and less susceptible to stories that don’t move us towards being more loving, caring, and kind people. We should worry less about tribal stories that keep us apart.

Why can’t the stories we choose to believe help us make the world we live in a better place to live? But then again, that’s the reason for religious wars… the strongly held belief in a better world. It’s an endless loop.

We need better, more believable stories, the current ones aren’t working.

Come Together

Today marks the 20th anniversary of the Twin Towers falling in New York. I’m guessing everyone over the age of 35 can tell you where they were and what they were doing when they found out about this. I bet they can also describe at least one visual from that incident that clearly sticks out in their minds. A few months later, I got to hear a first-hand story of an educator that was in a nearby building, and what the evacuation was like. Four years ago I visited the museum at ground zero, and what we thought would be an hour-long visit was almost 3 hours.

What strikes me now is not just the horror of what happened, but that this was a defining moment for so many people. It changed their perspective on the world. It made the world a more dangerous place, where just getting on a plane or going to work could cost you your life because of the decision of a few people intent on doing something evil, based on the illusion that they will benefit greatly in the after-life. How many people have died across the world, across the past few hundred years, in the name of a God that wants to punish non-believers.

It was also a time to come together. To feel a common pain, and to support those that needed help. It was a time when political affiliation and religion gave way to being a good samaritan, a good human being.

Why do we need a man-made catastrophe to make us come together? I think now more than any time since 9/11/2001 we could have people find a way to coexist with their neighbours/neighbors in a tolerant and caring way… no matter their political or religious ideologies.

If we don’t come together now, there will be a man-made reckoning soon… because we live in a world where a few crackpots can weaponize and wreak havoc on a scale that will make global news. And so I’d rather we find a way to use tolerance rather than violence to move us out of false dichotomies. I want to see us come together before the under 35 year-olds are put through their own defining 9/11 incident. I fear that if we don’t, the incident might be more divisive rather than unifying, and that scares me.

Canada Day redefined

Usually this day is a day when I would wear red and white. I am an immigrant, but I am a proud Canadian. I have met many people who, like me, were not born in this country but fully adopted it as ‘home’, and like me many people feel like the adoption is mutual. Canadians accepts us as Canadian, despite being born abroad.

But today I will wear an orange shirt. Today I find it challenging to show pride in a country that secretly buried its children on Residential school grounds. Today I stand with the people who did not immigrate to Canada, but who were forced off their land, and forced to send their children to schools that abused them and attempted to colonize them, and stripped away their different languages and their cultures.

This isn’t the Canada I’ve grown to know and love, but it is every bit my Canada. This tragedy is not a history to remain buried, it is a history to face, and reconcile. I will wear red and white again on Canada at some point in the future, but to heal the wounds that run so deep, and generationally hurt so many people so deeply, I choose on this day to wear orange. I choose to say that every child matters… those that died because of racist segregation at residential schools, those that are dealing with generational trauma, those that hurt knowing the truth and are awaiting reconciliation.

I am not wearing orange in defiance, I am wearing it in unity, in solidarity. I am Canadian, and as a Canadian I am not someone who can be proud of the history of buried and forgotten children that have recently been discovered. As a Canadian I will wear orange to represent the Canada I want to live in, one where we do not forget our past, and we remember that every child matters.

In the history books

We are only half way through 2020 and already we know that this year will be prominent in history books like no year in the 2000’s before it. It is the beginning of a new era, one that will keep us socially distancing from one another for a while; One that will make the wearing of masks and hiding our faces ‘normal’; One where handshakes and hugs are greeted with hesitation rather than warmth.

But it will also be a year remembered for bringing about social change. It will be remembered not just for changing our social interactions as they relate to salutations, but also for bringing about equity and making the world a more just place for those that have been disenfranchised and unfairly treated. Perhaps this year will be remembered as year a pandemic brought us together exactly when it was trying to pull us apart.

There is still half a year left, and many hints that economies and therefore people will struggle. The second half of 2020 will hold inequalities, political strife, and a death toll that will include those fighting against a virus, and those fighting against injustice. While the pandemic will surely be the lead story in the history book chapter on 2020, I hope that social change, and the battle against injustice is the focus of the chapter.

That is my hope, but if there is one thing the first half of this year has taught me, it is that this is not a time when it is easy to predict the future. If you don’t believe me, go back in your memory to the end of December 2019 and tell me that you could have predicted anything about the world we are living in today.

The year is only half over and it is already one for the history books.