This is the season of excess: excessive spending and socializing, perhaps more this year due to the release from pandemic restrictions endured over the last two holiday seasons. Afterwards, we hear about people’s plans— or announce our own intentions — to eat healthily, drink less, exercise more. The resolutions launched to recover from overindulgence are typically uninspiring; we simply want to look and feel better about ourselves to start off a brand new year, especially if mandated to return to the office.
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resolution is a firm decision to do or not do something. I won’t eat any more cake. I will declutter my closets. I will join a gym. The act of resolving is to find a solution to a conflict or problem, such as overconsumption. But does anyone make a New Year’s resolution about the society we currently inhabit? Can the average person recognize the plethora of conflicts and problems occurring across our nation and globe? Even the blissfully ignorant cannot, I imagine, be indifferent to economic anxiety — or political polarization, environmental insecurity and social divide.
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Canadians are renowned apologists, yet gaffes and blunders abound as sensitivities rise and terminologies change. In lieu of seeking explanations and mutual understanding, we quickly seek to label — and then annihilate. Attacks are hurled at strangers based on the virtual realities of Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Snippets of online information are manipulated and misinterpreted. Twitter’s new owner opened the vaults of political interference and censorship, in order to control select narratives about vaccine efficacy and the race for political leadership.
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The World Wide Web casts its net even wider as we stream entertainment ripe with human dysfunction, balanced by the illusionary worlds of popular culture. Phones have cameras to document anything from how to ice a cake to crimes in progress — all striving for thousands of “likes.” Social media trends feed conventional journalism struggling to stay afloat, putting into question the standards of the once-worthy profession. We are hyper connected, but with an inability to communicate effectively and a preference to work remotely. The digitalization of the contemporary world is moving so fast it is rewiring the human brain. Hate crimes are on the rise and lawyers grow fat with defamation cases, while laws cannot adapt quickly enough to navigate online slander.
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We inhabit a world where anonymity has clout and mob mentalities prevail. Society is bursting due to self-isolation, stifled voices and the fear — or lack of fear — of death. The killing of George Floyd broke the floodgates of protest open, regardless of physical distancing restrictions. Across the globe, truckers and farmers gathered to demonstrate their opposition to government control, supported by thousands. Protests exploded in Iran after the death of Mahsa Amini for having improperly worn her head scarf. Yet, an Ontario teacher’s abnormally large prosthetics with protruding nipples are tolerated due to an inability to enforce (or define) professional attire.
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Mental illness is at an all-time high; our health care is at an all-time low. Euthanasia is opening up to injured war veterans and the depressed. Our prime minister invested $8.5 million into an insect farm to tackle food insecurity. The military and the NHL are plagued by sexual scandals. Our society races to ensure that a child or youth’s sense of being a boy, girl, both, neither or somewhere along the gender spectrum is respected. Meanwhile, Indigenous identities must be government sanctioned, and those who exist outside politically driven definitions are bullied into assimilation.
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2023 is on the horizon. Let’s please resolve to exercise simple common sense, human civility and mutual respect. Let’s meditate on it, then model and expect it in all walks of society. Let’s commit to these values beyond the failure rates of typical New Year’s resolutions. Otherwise, when the mob — of all stripes — collectively cracks and cries out for common decency, the powers that be may just respond with: “Let them eat cake.”
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Suzanne Keeptwo is the author of “We All Go Back To The Land.”.
If you’d rather find it online here’s the link
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