The March 4 issue of the Peninsula News Review points out to me the real dilemma in Sidney and in our culture generally.
There is a disharmony that continues to prevail and get louder to the point of being almost deafening: On the one hand Coun. Sara Duncan points out that “more people died of fentanyl overdoses last year than COVID.” The editorial acknowledges the 100 per cent increase in overdose deaths last year and that for the most part, these people died alone. We learn that Health Canada has approved a third vaccine, pumped out – along with two other experimental vaccines, in record time – to alleviate the ongoing fear of COVID.
Amid this news, our mayor announces that he hears “the majority of residents” (read vocal majority of residents) favour the marketing of a substance that is used to chemically alter the state of mind of those who cannot handle their present state of mind. Death, loneliness, fear, and now another quick fix remedy is being pedaled/championed by government to help people feel better.
How has the human condition in our culture fallen into such discordance? How long will we continue to pick our human condition, our society, our world apart by focusing on one aspect of what we are, who we are, and coming up with quick fixes to remedy a much deeper problem?
“I Can’t Get No Satisfaction” seems to be the theme song of our culture as the discordant notes get louder and more intrusive, perpetuated by governments full of politicians who get there as people pleasers, then too quickly, become puppets for a power that perpetuates the dissatisfaction and disharmony. That theme has been championed by decades of cultural indoctrination that has constantly isolated and fed only one aspect of the awesome human nature of man: his libido. So, music, media, fashion, books, movies, new religions have followed. Their one focus has been to objectify only one aspect of the wonder and beauty of the female: her sexuality. So follows the promotion of promiscuity, drugs, prostitution, sex slave trading, the destruction of the family (which is the only basis for a strong society) and the wanton destruction of human life itself. It has been the age-old strategy of “divide and conquer” that now uses fear to push out all right reason.
Confucius once taught that where there is harmony in the body, heart and mind, there is harmony in the person; where there is harmony in the person there is harmony in the family; where there is harmony in the family, there is harmony in the society.
Surely the answer to promoting harmony does not lie in cutting off or throwing out the discordant notes. Rather it lies in filling the music with more true notes so that the sound of the disharmonic becomes so blended, it becomes part of a rich and wonderful symphony. So how can we accomplish that? The answer lies only in the silent majority waking up, standing up and speaking out for right reason in a world gone mad with disconnects in both reason and reality as to what we are, who we are and who we should be – rational human beings, not afraid to live and give of ourselves for the sake of each other.
Mary Moreau
Sidney