Generational Thinking

Audrey's father was born only four days later than my late father, which means they were both 13 at the end of WWII, but their experiences could not have been more different.

Dad grew up on a farm near a tiny town in southern Manitoba, hearing about the war, and seeing veterans of it, but never truly impacted by it.

Audrey's father lived on a farm too, but in Nazi-occupied Holland. His family struggled under actual oppression, and Gerrit's brother narrowly escaped being hauled off to a labour camp when his father told the Wehrmacht that he was needed on the farm. 661 men were taken from his hometown of Putten in October of 1944, and only 48 came back when it was all over. The town's name became so associated with this tragedy (a retaliation for the Dutch underground killing two German officers) that for years afterward, when people asked Gerrit where in the Netherlands he was from, he told them he was from the neighbouring town of Nijkerk, and not Putten.

Both our fathers were grateful for the sacrifices others made on their behalf. My father went on to spend ten years in the Canadian Armed Forces while Audrey's parents emigrated to Canada, bought a farm they expanded greatly and raised a family. 

Both our families instilled in their children a tremendous sense of gratitude and appreciation for the price paid for peace, and Audrey and I have passed that gratitude on to our children as well, expressing it publicly on Remembrance Day each year.

We have enjoyed peaceful lives, knowing of armed conflict as something that happens somewhere else, and I selfishly hope and pray that it remains that way, especially for my children. 

But there are days I worry that peace is perhaps fleeting, even here.

Last week, anti-Covid demonstrators left a noose outside the house of a UCP MLA painted with the message "END THE GOVT - NO TO MASKS - HANG EM ALL." 

Of course, there are those who say statements like this are not really threats, just empty hyperbole and the ragged edge of free speech. And I suppose this might be so. But my gut tells me that the burning of Black Wall Street in Tulsa and kristallnacht and every other angry mob started with one person saying, "y'know what we should do..." in order to see how people would react. If the quantity of shocked faces is outnumbered by nodding heads, you may have a problem on your hands - or perhaps a solution, depending on how you feel about mob justice as opposed to the rule of law.

Misinformation about the pandemic response is rampant, with some people convinced that masks and vaccines are the first slippery steps to a future of tyranny under a New World Order. Both Canada and the U.S. are now home to malcontent groups dissatisfied with the current order of things, and actively looking to promote conflict and agitation. Militias and paramilitaries train right here in Alberta, sometimes not just anticipating a race-based war, but taking action to make such a conflict more likely.

I keep thinking how frustrating this must be to Audrey's dad, who grew up under actual tyranny, not hypothetical. Or how my dad would have felt, growing up with rationing and rubber shortages, hearing people supposedly willing to fight the authorities instead of putting on a mask or proving their vaccination status.

How did we get here? How did we move from a society that was willing to sacrifice individually in order to make gains collectively, from willingly accepting blackout rules or opening our borders to "dispers" and boat people, to refusing to put a piece of fabric across our faces and sealing the border to people with different faiths than us?

Strangely enough, my feelings on this were stirred by a television science-fiction story.

The Expanse is set in a very plausible near-future where humanity has slowly begun leaving Earth and exploring the solar system. In addition to Earth, major human communities exist on the Moon, Mars, and in the Ceres asteroid belt. Earth struggles to support itself in the face of a global welfare state and rampant pollution, while Mars has begun a long and painful terraforming process, resenting Earth for squandering the fresh air and water Martians are working to create.

A diplomat approaching Mars from Earth following a brief but fierce armed conflict looks out the window of the luxurious spacecraft he is travelling in and reflects, "They made their own clouds... it brings to mind the people who built the great Gothic cathedrals. Knowing they’d be long dead before their work was finished, trusting their great-grandchildren would lay the final stones. We’ve lost that kind of generational thinking on Earth. Here, you see it in everything they do."

This show takes place in the 24th century, but I fear this fictional person's observation has already come to pass, reflected in people with no experience of war clamouring for it as a means to resolve conflict and assert their own philosophies on all for the greater good - and all in the name of freedom, ironically enough. Perhaps a more applicable quote is George Santayana's: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

I will not give up all my optimism for the future - after all, it is the place where I intend to spend a significant part of my existence! But because of that, and because I wonder and worry about the world my daughters will live in when I am gone, a peaceful future will be much on my mind, as will the experiences of my father and father-in-law as we observe Remembrance Day this Thursday.