truly.
The New Year's Resolutions thread that we just posted, originally started off as an annual satire thread. Whether its just me, or because levity seems to have evaporated from modern Western lives, this year's and the year before that have not been very amusing, and have been fairly serious.
Serious times, it seems.
This thread is somewhat in the nature of a series of resolutions, but it's not quite the same. So it has its own post. These are just things I'd like to see in 2022, or maybe hope to see. All hope, we are frequently reminded, is not dead. If we wish to see things happen, we need to hope for them.
So some hopes.
I hope to see in 2022 a real plan to deal with global warming and in the near term. By that I mean reverse it. It can be done, we're just not doing it in part because we seemingly can't grasp things that are long term and inconvenient. Well, it's time, and just proclaiming that it isn't occurring doesn't mean it isn't occurring. And even if it truly isn't, which seems completely contrary to what we now know about the climate, we don't really have the luxury of gambling on it.
I'd also like to see people take as sharp turn towards a more natural and less materialistic world right where they are. I don't want Californians relocating anywhere and buying up ag land. I don't want people from Ohio moving to Steamboat Springs.
I want people planting gardens where they are, getting out fishing, and hunting, where they are.
Also, I'm not opposed to travel by any means, but I'm personally opposed to the manufactured fun sort of travel. Let's just skip that entirely this year.
I'd like people to be authentic, I guess.
And on that, here again, a repeat:
2. Something old
It used to be the case, for some reason, brides were told they needed;
Something old
Something new.
Something borrowed
Something blue.
I don't know about that, but the entire society needs to try the first one, as we by and large don't know what works anymore. And by that, I mean something serious, and some things not so much.
What I more particularly mean is that everyone, and I'm serious about this, ought to look back prior to the Boomer generation and try something, and really try it, that your progenitors of that generation prior would have regarded as routine. Because this blog is directed at the faceless void, I don't know what that really means in your case.
In my own, that'd be pretty easy as my parents weren't Boomers. So for folks like me, I'd say go back one prior to that. I.e., if your parents were in the pre Boomer generation, look at least one back. If your parents are Boomers, look to the generation or generations prior to that.
And be at least partially serious.
Now, I know some people who think they've done this. Their great grandparents might avhe been immigrants from Poland, for example, so they've adopted Polish names for their newborn and they eat kielbasa on the Polish national holiday, whatever that is. And I in fact mean something sort of like taht. . . but more.
On the light side, that is what I mean. I don't care if you are a dedicated vegan. If your grandparents routinely had a hefty Sunday meal of roast beef, potatoes, and finished it off with coffee (and many people did just that), try it for a few weeks running.
Try it.
But beyond that, try something serious.
Did your grandparents always put in a garden? Put one in. Did one of them go fishing, and not in the weeny "catch and release" way, but in the "I'm eating that" way. Do it. Was one a farmer. . . think about farming if you can (which you probably can't, so put in a garden).
And beyond that.
Were your grand parents Italian immigrants and you think that you celebrate that heritage by having lasagna every now and then? You don't. Go to Mass for three months in a row. Were they Romanian? Well go to the Romanian Orthodox Church three months in a row or the Greek Orthodox or Byzantine Catholic one if you can't find one and see what that's like . . .seriously.
And are you living a life that your Italian grandmother would have regarded as an infamnia when she was 20. Well knock it and try to live like she did.
With all of this stuff, I think you'll find something. . . and something serious, real, and seriously real.
I'd really like to see the GOP become the nation's conservative party once again, and to get past Donald Trump, forever. I'd like to see the Democrats return to being a "liberal" party in the context of what that originally meant in Western history, rather than the social experimentation party.
As part of the latter, I'm not opposed to the Federal Government having a role, even a fairly extensive role, in American society, but I'd really like people to realize that money just doesn't flow out of a tap. People like Bernie Sanders who are comfortable with the opposite ought to really be sentenced to running an economically marginal business for the rest of their lives.
I'd like to see both parties also stop thinking that they can define the culture. This gets back into tradition and the democracy of the dead, but much about culture is more scientifically defined at the DNA level than we might imagine. This is essentially a conservative view, but you can't politically redefine human nature. You simply cannot. And, the definition of human contentment is neither getting to do whatever you want with your glands, or having ultimate personal liberty, or working for big bucks in a cubicle.
On the latter, we've been doing the capitalist uber experiment now for a little over a century. It doesn't seem to really be working out at the fundamental human nature level, and we ought to back way off on it. That means a smaller scale, less wealthy, and more local, world and society. So be it.
I'd like to see those people who use their background in agriculture as a selling point, as in "I come from three generations of ranchers" go on to say that they'll support finding a way to recreate what their ancestors benefitted from, that being a cheap and easy way, economically, for real people to get into agriculture.
I'd like to see those who supported now demonstrative falsehoods publically as part of a campaign of some sort to acknowledge where they were wrong, and why they advanced the falsehood. If they were just wrong, they can say so, but not saying anything is still saying too much. If they were simply lying, I'd like them to come clean on that.
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