To make Comments write directly to Jim at jimt@quixotic.ca
23
Apr
2021
If this column seems a little lighter than usual, it’s because I completely forgot about writing it for the local weekly paper. Until today. Which happens to be Earth Day, 2021.
A few years ago, a visiting friend asked me what I thought of the state of the world.
At the personal level, I said, I’m an incurable optimist. I don’t know any individual who would refuse to help out another individual in need.
I know, I know, there are occasional stories of someone being murdered while 27 eyewitnesses did nothing. But those stories make the news because they’re the exceptions.
Most individuals can be, and are, compassionate to other individuals.
At the collective level, though, I am equally pessimistic. As a human species, we seem incapable of thinking beyond the present. We are terminally short-sighted.
Categories: Soft Edges
Tags: Earth Day, optimism, pessimism
30
Dec
2018
Here we are -- like deer on a road, transfixed by the headlights of 2019 bearing down on us. I don’t know anyone who’s looking forward to the new year.
Is it just me? Or is this a pervasive view in North America?
Climate change, hurricanes, floods, droughts, volcanoes, tidal waves, crashing stock markets, meaningless mass murders, price-gouging pharmaceutical companies, trade wars, toxic chemicals, crumbling infrastructures, refugees, terrorists, nuclear re-armament, computer hackers -- the news is as bleak as a winter day. And I haven’t even mentioned the White House yet…
The world, it would seem, is going to hell in a handcart.
What I am feeling, I think, is the death of optimism.
Categories: Sharp Edges
Tags: optimism, pessimism, taken for granted, unexamined