August 4 2013
LEARNING, UNLEARNING AND RELEARNING
Early memories
When I was in the third grade the teacher told us about the first ever train in the Netherlands, one that operated between Amsterdam and Haarlem in the year 1839, just a short distance of some 15 km. What really made us laugh as 9 year olds was that there were people then who called this new invention the work of the devil.
Another memory: my father owned a factory run by his manager and his helpers while he and others traveled to drum of business. Each morning before he set out in his car – this was in the 1930’s – I went to the nearby tobacco store and picked up 2 packs of cigarettes – North State was the brand name- and a box of 10 cigars: Hofnar was his favourite smoke. With the small bakers- he was in the bakery raw material business – he shared a cigarette, and with the better clients a cigar. So each day he smoked at least 20 cigarettes and 5 cigars. That was very normal in those days. That’s how I learned to smoke. The slogan then was “You’re not a man if you’re not a tobacco fan.”
He also was a member of the church council and when they met twice per month, once with the deacons present and once with the elders only, everybody smoked cigars there so that these brothers- all men of course- could hardly see each other in that dense smoke. Nobody questioned this practice.
When I was 10 years old I contracted a bladder infection. The doctor ordered me to stay in bed and asked my mother not to give me food with salt or vinegar. I have no clue why. He visited me a couple of times per week and after 6 week – in which I read 100 books – I was declared healed. Of course there was no penicillin in those days. Women who gave birth stayed in bed for 10 days. This past month Mrs. Kate Windsor, also known as the Duchess of Cambridge, was up and active, showing off her baby boy within 24 hours of giving birth.
The times, they are a’changin
Why do I recite these personal happenings? There is a Latin saying: Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis. I know I am a bit of a show-off, here demonstrating that I have had Latin drilled into me for six years. That school also taught me a measure of discipline- which took about five years. Oh yes, the Latin means Times change and we change with them.
Learning is difficult. Un-learning is even more so. Take the stubborn apostle Peter. For the longest time he clung to the notion that the Laws of circumcision and Sabbath worship, the dietary regulations and the belief that salvation was for the Jews only took precedence over Jesus’ all-embracing teaching. He needed a special dream from the Lord and later a verbal fight with his colleague Paul to make him change his mind. Paul himself required three years of closeting with the Lord, first to unlearn all the Torah drills he had undergone for perhaps decades as a pious Pharisee, and then to re-learn what the Scriptures said about Jesus and him being the very focus of the Scriptures. Unlearning is difficult. In 1959 I had an insurance agency. One of my clients was dying: couldn’t stomach food or drink anymore but still smoked. Then and there I vouched to quit smoking. Yes, my father too died of lung cancer.
Now it is our turn to unlearn and re-learn.
On Chris Martenson’s blog Amanda Witman has written a series of articles dealing with the changes we have to make in the (near) future, and wonders whether we are still capable of doing so. Her main warning – and my constant thesis as well – is that the last 20 years are not the template for the next two decades. The times are changing. Are we still able to change with them?
The examples of my pre-war experiences show that everything is different now in the field of health, technology and business. However my grade school teacher’s ridiculing that the early trains foreshadowed the work of the devil does not look so outrageous anymore. I now believe that the entire technological development in our lifetime has had a satanic stamp. Each day we are experiencing “the law of the unintended consequences of our past and present life style”.
It is my sincere conviction that teachers and preachers, parents and politicians, must all look ahead, assess what is in store and act accordingly. Fact is that “we are heading into a future that does not follow the rules and expectations that the past few generations have been raised to expect…. We are all newcomers to this changing landscape. How can we teach young people to thrive in a future we do not yet fully understand ourselves?” wonders Amanda Witman.
Last Monday – July 29- I read in the New York Times, in an editorial by Anthony R. Ingraffeas, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Cornell University, that the so-called ‘fracking’ way to obtain natural gas which supposedly will cause the USA to become a net energy exporter, will increase Green House Gases emission to intolerable levels due to the resulting methane gas emission. Over a 20-year period one pound of methane traps as much heat as at least 72 pounds of carbon dioxide.
Hard Times Ahead
Each day now we sense anew that something is amiss in society. Last week we learned that the number of honey bees and monarch butterflies are in free fall. I am beginning to think that the coming collapse may not be caused by big banks going belly up but by the disappearance of something totally different and unexpected. Just imagine a solar storm that will knock out all electricity for weeks.
Today there are two opposing trends at work: on the one hand we see accelerating developments in technology – robotics are the current rage – and software that can mimic much of human action. We already know how China and the Far East are taking over factory jobs and that the world population and peoples’ expectations are rapidly increasing. On the other hand the middle class is disappearing while everywhere available energy, water resources, soil fertility and weather stability are quickly decreasing. This guarantees that for those of us who still have some decades to live life will be drastically different. The changes we will experience will be greater than the ones which triggered the Industrial Revolution. Nothing was easier than to embrace the carbon revolution and nothing is more difficult than to unlearn our prodigious life style and to relearn how to live on less and cope with rapidly diminishing resources.
We, the 21st century humanity, at least its Western section, are facing a super-human challenge. We have to let go of everything we have taken for granted because we have to learn how to live with less energy, less food and less income while governments need higher taxes. No more lavish holidays or disposable income or all-you-can-eat-food or the use of automobiles. We also will have to learn how to deal with weather-related disasters without government or insurance bail-outs.
Some hints
Writes Amanda Witman: “We must lead by example, and we must begin now. Know your own values and actively explore your own expectations and how they are shifting as you help the children in your life to develop new perspectives on preparing for what will likely be a different kind of future.
- A smaller/moderate/slower/less kind of future.
- A future in which reduce/reuse/recycle goes without saying and goods are valued for their longevity and reparability.
- A future in which people who can make or fix useful and necessary things are valued more highly in the workforce than people whose businesses and/or skills relate only to luxury living.
“As we cling to what is familiar, we must make resilience familiar. Families and communities in which kids experience a higher level of self-sufficiency as the norm will have an easier time adjusting to changes that limit their consumer power. If your kids have grown up thinking that vegetables come from the backyard and the best presents are handmade, they’ve been given a gift of perspective. If they grow up in a vitally supportive community, they will be likely to cultivate community wherever they land. If they’ve spent their lives eagerly awaiting hand-me-downs from others and taking care of their clothing so it can be handed down, they will innately understand the chain of giving and receiving that operates outside of the fiat economy. If they grow up taking energy and resource conservation for granted, those habits will carry them through an adulthood of potential scarcity. If your family uses many modes of transportation – walking and biking, in addition to or instead of driving or public transportation – your children are already thinking out of the ‘oil’ box. If you and your friends are in the regular habit of cultivating gratitude and finding the good in your situations, the young people in your life will follow suit. They’re going to have an easier time accepting that their needs will be met in creative ways, they are likely to feel less deprived than their peers might under the same circumstances, and their outlook and positivity will remain higher.” So far Amanda Witman.
Back to war-time conditions
Her writings remind me of the war 1940-45 when the Netherlands was occupied by Nazi Germany. We were exceptionally well off during that period with lots of farmer relatives and with my father being in the bakery supply business we had ample access to the necessities of life. There was a solidarity then that made that period, in spite of the cruel treatment of many, a most memorable time. Then too we had to cope with little or no electricity, for many little or no food and only secret radio news, so that entertainment had to be home-made. With a curfew from 10 p.m. till 6 a.m. and later from 8 p.m. till 6 a.m. we were forced to be home. We played chess, checkers, monopoly, read, mended clothes, knit, told stories. The highlights of those days were listening to the BBC world service, following the wars in Russia, in Africa, Italy, later in France and the Allied forces coming closer all the time. The excitement when thousands of troops were dropped near Arnhem and the let down when this bold move failed.
We always used the term: “After the war.” That prospect kept us going. Now there is no such an outlook. There will be only more hardship and more destitution, more desperate people, and more uncertainty.
Writes Amanda Witman: “Personal resilience will be an extremely powerful tool in the future that we face, and we must begin cultivating it now. Honestly assess what you are modeling for the children in your life, and make sure that everything you teach – through both your words and actions – is fully aligned with your beliefs about the future. The example of adults is an extremely powerful force in the lives of children and youth, and so we must start with ourselves in raising kids for a resilient future.”
As a Christian I have definite views on the future. She is right that we must prepare ourselves and our children for a totally different future. The bible has foreseen all this. Our world dominated by the devil will not last, but the final struggle to wrest it out of his hands will be horrible beyond description. According to Jesus (Matthew 24:22) “if those days had not been cut short, nobody would survive.” Revelation, the last Bible book, also paints a most gruesome picture of the days ahead.
Let me finish with a quote from the Apostle Peter (2 Peter 3:11) “Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the Day of the Lord and speed its coming.”
That holy and godly life includes staying cheerful, not succumb to despair and always being ready for acts of kindness: “loving your neighbour as yourself” remains the basic law.
In July more than 5600 visitors came to my blog:www.hielema.ca/blog.