This is the symbol of our trip?

I have started this trip with my wife Christiane at the end of 2022. We intend to spend about 3 & ½ months in Arizona and then tour a part of the Southeast United States. I intend to report in this blog on what I have “observed along the way”, to use a phrase my cousin Roy Vogt used to call his regular column in the Mennonite Mirror about 50 years ago. I loved that column; I loved that title.

I will comment on many things from many places depending on where my meanderings lead me.

I am calling this the “grand finale” tour. By that I don’t mean that this will be our last trip.  I sure hope it won’t be our last trip. Such words are too ominous. Yet, in many ways I feel that the world, along with me is at a sharp precipice. Some pundits have even spoken about being at the edge of the apocalypse. Is that possible?

Often the world seems under assault.  I have often called this the Age of Anger. Or the Age of Resentment. Both of those emotions seem to fill the air.  Who is assaulting this world? Not foreign invaders. At least not in Canada or the US, the two countries most relevant to this journey.  In Ukraine we know that this year Putin led a Russian invasion of that much smaller country. They certainly felt the sting of assault.

But we in North America don’t have reasonable fears of invasion.  Interplanetary invaders also don’t seem nearby.  So who should we fear? As cartoon character Pogo said, “I have seen the enemy and he is us!” That is indeed the preeminent attacker we must most fear. We are the enemy.

 I remember the first time I tried to watch YouTube a few years ago. I wondered what or who I should try to watch. For some entirely inexplicable reason I picked on Professor John Moriarty who taught English literature in 1967 at the University of Manitoba during  my first year of university. He was not even one of my professors. A friend of mine was his student. I was taught by another fine professor, namely, Professor Jack Woodbury. Both Professors were brilliant and we were impressionable.

I believe John Moriarty was a first year professor who quickly gained a substantial following of young students, particularly young women. He was a campus star, but as I recall, he only stayed 1 year or so at the University of Manitoba and left to go back to Europe. What a pity.

About 50 years later I decided to search for his name on the YouTube platform and was stunned to find an old lecture of his someone had been recorded and placed on the Internet. It was an astonishing find.  By then he had gone back to the United Kingdom and was teaching in either Ireland or England. I was not sure which country. There he was in front of me, through the magic of modern technology, and  bringing me back to the days of my youth.  They were grand times challenged by grand ideas. Those were the ideas of the 60s that will forever be with those of us who lived through those times. Many of those ideas had to be modified and rejected, but an important element has stuck with us. Thank goodness for that.

And there he was with the same long hair that was an essential part of the costume for us sixties radicals. And what was Professor Moriarty talking about? He was talking about us. Us the enemy. Just like Pogo! He called humans “a virus on the earth” like the aids virus.  Moriarty was speaking before Covid 19 or he might have likened us to that virus. Instead he likened our species to the Aids virus that attacked the world’s immune system. He said we humans are like a toxin on the earth. We are ravishing it.  And once again, I found it difficult to disagree with the Professor. We, led by a vicious cartel of capitalists, are relentlessly attacking nature.

There is a second and closely related theme I want to explore in a meandering fashion of course, on this Grand Finale Tour. That is the apparent serious decline of western civilization evidence for which seems ubiquitous.

By now we know clearly and irrevocably, that civilization requires a reasonably stable environment. And we don’t have that anymore. If nature as we know is destroyed, we could create a new civilization, but it would take millennia. These two ideas are therefore inextricably entwined.

To avoid civilizational collapse, we desperately need a new attitude to nature. We need to turn away from our destructive ways. We must cease to be the toxins of the earth, the careless predators of the earth, we must become the champions of a new way to work with nature, rather than against it.

At the same time, we must turn away from the current path on which our civilization seems to be on an inexorable decline. Those two paths are closely intertwined. By destroying nature we are destroying ourselves. Together, these two trends are leading us to our doom.  On this trip (and beyond) I want to explore those two important themes. I have always thought an important part of travel is to learn new things. We travel to learn and become different people. Not completely different, but significantly different. That is what knowledge does. It changes us.

By the expression ” the Grand Finale Tour” I don’t mean mean that in the sense of it being the end of life or nature or civilization. But I must admit such thoughts have entered my mind. Particularly of late.

I hope we have many more trips to come. But it is the finale of my legal career. I gave notice to the law firm SNJ where I worked for nearly 50 years that I would retire and withdraw from the practice of law on December 31, 2022. I did that  and now I can no longer practice law. Since then I am no longer a lawyer. I have simply devoted enough time to that career. It is time to move on.

Christiane and I have noticed that we are not getting better and stronger each year. Funny how that happens. Each year seem to be a bit of a step back. We are no longer the healthy vigorous people we once were and will never be again. That is life (and death). We must face that. We hope to have many adventures before we pack up our tents for good and hope to enjoy the journey until then, but the future is of course uncertain. We want to make the best of it. This journey is the start of that finale. But as I do that, I also want to take a hard look at this world in which we find ourselves. Can it be on the edge of doom? Why? What can we do about it? Where do we stand?

I have chosen the sunset as the symbol of the trip. I am in my sunset years. Yet there is some light left. It may be fading, but it is not gone. Not yet.