Cultivating civilization

Who’s being civilized, materialized, or trivialized? We all are!

"lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: for where your treasure is, there will your heart be ..." Matthew 6: 19-21

This past weekend I took a trip to beautiful Saskatchewan with three generations of women: a mother, a daughter, and a significant other. 26 hours of being cooped up in a car together can be taxing on the mind, body, and soul, but, for me, the time was beyond special. These three women have all touched my heart, and words can never explain the deep-rooted love that encases my feelings. My love and desire for each of these women is different, yet strangely enough, not different at all. I want to take care of each of these women and never see them cry. I want their hearts to be filled with uncompromised joy and happiness. I never want them to worry about the future, yet the unforeseeable is worrisome. I want to protect them, provide for them, cherish them, and mold them, but it is impossible, as we live in a world that is cultivating greed, gluttony, temporary happiness, and superficial love. This being said, no women in a man’s life are more important than these three, the mothers who gave men life, the daughters who accepted men's life, and the significant others who share men's life. 
 
Each of these wonderful ladies is in a different life cycle. My mother is getting older and determined to hold on to a life she has cultivated for over 70 years. Her worldview through the lens of a woman who grew up in seven decades of turmoil is overflowing with tremendous anxiety and hopelessness. Deep in her mind and soul is an idealistic blissful life without turmoil, she believes it is just within reach. However, time is running out and reality is setting in, she’s losing hope. My significant other is in the same predicament as my mom. They have paralleling stories of the chaotic and oftentimes cruel life that they have had to endure. They both hold on to anything that once gave them pleasure, memories have them stuck in the fight, flight, and freeze response. It is difficult to move into the unknown, and unfulfilled expectations are preserving the slow death of the mind, body, and soul. There is no anticipation for their possible future, as getting older is not embraced, it's disgraced.

​My daughter has the opportunity, or so she's been told. She's been a hard worker, but of late been the victim of unfulfilled expectations. Her anticipation of getting into the real world, making money, and buying stuff has turned anticipation into anxiety. Competition has ruled, especially in a woman's world. Bigger boobs and nicer lips entice the noobs with bigger tips and nicer trips. I feel sorry for my daughter's generation, as wholesome women are rarely exalted. Guys are confusing, my daughter tells me, and she is losing hope that her prince charming exists. All three women, whether they understand it or not, have been growing up with this type of cultivation of our civilization, dare I say, since the beginning of time.

Women want to nurture by nature, but the new civilization being cultivated is to have the unnatural nurture. What do I mean, you ask? 

Look at the device you're on. It's unnatural, it has sucked our souls and destroyed our minds. We keep saying it is a tool, but for what? What is it a tool for? More business, more connections, more life, to catch the bad guys, to keep us honest, etcetera??? How about progress?

Driving through the prairies I was shocked by the volume of wind turbines. Years ago I was excited to see such progress in the farmer's fields, but now it is a reminder to me of the insanity of progressiveness. The landscape has been highjacked by turbines to create more energy, so we can enjoy more stuff. Is this progress? The fields also had the ruins of progression. Old trucks, tractors, farm equipment, homes, and barns. The progression was rusting, rotting, and spoiling, it was turning back to the soil. The fiberglass, concrete, and plastic that these wind turbines are made of will take centuries to decompose. This will be a reminder in the future of the chaotic madness we were cultivating. The problem is being trivialized and ignored because of progress.

How do we decivilize, dematerialize, and not trivialize the rapid growth of centralized control of progress? If you are confused by this, it's okay, I will do my best to explain. Civilize means to improve an individual's or society's way of life through education, a collective of people believing the same thing. Materialize means to make something appear or happen that was not evident or seen before. Trivialize means to make something less complex, less important, or less significant than it is. The moment that you walk into a Wally World or Cost Co-op you are exposed to civilization, materialism, and trivialism. Our worldview has been programmed to believe that the corporate world of stuff is progress. Corporations control industry, industry controls government, government controls societies. 

You enjoy science and technology you argue, and so do I. But like my mom and significant other, we remember a time before the internet, smartphones, video games, and social media. We remember a time of sharing and caring for one another. We were less concerned about our granite countertops and more concerned about our neighbor's well-being. Men worked in the garages, barns, and shops together, while the ladies nurtured the men with freshly baked cookies, cakes, and pies, oh my. No, it wasn't all Little House on the Prairie every day, but it was better. We were cultivating civilization by not promoting materialism. As trivial as it may sound, we believed that people were more civilized and more important than stuff.

Where are we focusing our energy, the past or the future? Can we cultivate both, and glean the segments of the past that were good? Can we focus more on building a utopian future of less materialism and more self-sacrifice? Like our forefathers and mothers before, where we didn't forget to care for people and share our stuff. 

Have a blessed week. 

By the vessel, 
​William John

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