Dear Editor,
My generation was born into an age of irony. Perhaps each generation has its turmoil, but my time frame is the easiest for me to understand.
The Boomers are categorized as having been born after World War II. So, I and my cohort have faced, all our lives, the fact that several nations possess the power to annihilate the human race with nuclear bombs. Only one nation has ever actually used a nuclear bomb in warfare, and only one other nation has felt the awful terror of its hellish wrath. If you don’t know which nations, then, ironically, you have missed a major milestone in the history of western civilization.
Nuclear energy has been used since then to produce electricity and ironically, by-products of that usage are used in cancer diagnosis and treatment and in the making of nuclear bombs. About eight nations are known to have enough bombs in storage to wipe out everyone in the world. A few others are suspected of having that capability and some others are hinting that they will go that direction. When a belligerent non-state actor obtains that technology, we may be in deep trouble.
Another energy that has come into the mainstream of society during this time period is electronic recording and transmission of sound and sight. This technology enabled The Beatles to perform All You Need is Love to a simultaneous television audience around the world. It couldn’t have happened before then.
The other technology newly-introduced to the mainstream is psychedelics, allowing millions to have a glimpse at how their minds process incoming information, quite literally, thinking outside the box. The plants, herbs, mushrooms and yogic methods have been known for millennia, but were limited to a minority of the population, the shamans and priests. Even if you didn’t partake in psychedelic substances or methods, the sights and sounds and recognitions permeated music and art and led people to undertake new directions in their lives, to circle the square, so to speak. That phenomenon is so mainstream now, that marijuana is legal and psilocybin is being used to help rehabilitate people with trauma-damaged psyches. I contend that, actually, we are a civilization made up of trauma-damaged psyches. We’re faced with tremendous ironies at every turn, every day.
One of those ironies is represented in the ‘back to the land’ notion. That’s the romantic idea that drew me and many others to rural Pontiac County — the idea that we could buy backwoods abandoned farms and build houses and raise families, outside the box. The modern offshoot of that is manifested in the urge that city people have, to move to the country, to get away from the hustle and bustle and noise. Ironically, the lakeside properties are now built up to the point that houses are side-by-side, and weekends are filled with the noise of lawnmowers and leaf blowers, ATVs and motorboats. Cottagers have managed to bring with them the suburbs they sought to escape. The new suburbs lack many of the conveniences of those that ring the big cities, including fast reliable internet service. If the workload ever returns to the old commute to offices in the city, ruralites will discover that distance is a major drain on resources. Then, ironically, begins the back-to-the city movement — if a nuclear bomb doesn’t get us first.
Robert Wills, Shawville and Thorne, Que.
