Collective Trauma: The Fallout 18

Good morning, Gentle Reader, and Happy Friday. I am just sipping my morning cup of Costa Rica's finest and trying not to complain too bitterly about the heatwave this summer, though I have to admit that I am one of that silent majority that hates summer. At least when it gets much over 27 (80 for you Fahrenheiters). I do nothing but sweat and it is embarrassing, plus there is no air conditioning in my building since we live on the fabled West Coast and the summer temperatures here never rise above 22, so it's always like outdoor room temperature with air conditioning from our lovely ocean breezes. Well, let me tell you a thing or two. It does get hot here. Sometimes brutally hot, since global warming. Pardon me, Gentle Reader, but my allergies are kicking in on this fine heating-up August morning and I had to take a sneezing break (16 in a row. My record, I think, is 30!), though we never get up into the mid-30's, not yet anyway, and I do suspect that it'll take at least that long or longer before the evangelical Christian organization that runs my building will bother to even think about air-conditioning. They might be waiting for the first ten seniors to die in their apartments from the heat, but there is something very slow and backward about the thinking of evangelicals, in general, and having been one in the past, I just might happen to know a thing or two about this. For example, the slowness to accept the scientific evidence for climate change. But we live on the West Coast! And the fact that our summers are getting increasingly hotter, and this is documented peer-reviewed science. But we live on the West Coast! And the fact that there is still stigma against poor people, which could be interpreted as, we don't deserve air-conditioning because we are too lazy to work for it, though they are too kind and loving to actually tell us this to our faces. Beggars can't be choosers, you know, and besides, if we haven't worked for it we haven't earned it, and since evangelicals tend to worship St. Paul instead of Jesus, they are going to heed the words of the former (he who doesn't work, neither should he eat), rather than the words of the latter (Blessed are the poor... or maybe he means the working poor!). Anyway, it's hot out, these apartments are stuffy and poorly ventilated and they can't even provide us with electric fans (we have to work for them. Silly me) It can also be onerous opening our windows in this bloody heat because of the screeches of the damned that come from the construction sites nearby, and sometimes from the musical tastes of the mouth-breathers who live in the next building. I know, we could always go outside, but this is an unsafe part of downtown where we are living and besides, sometimes it is even worse having to put up with the noise and selfish chaos of the madding crowd, don't you think? I know of other buildings run by secular organizations that have air-conditioning at least in the common areas, and they give electric fans to their tenants. But those are all godless atheists. What do they know, and no matter if they happen to be nicer to their tenants that still isn't going to get them into Heaven! By grace are you saved, through faith in the words of Paul the Apostle. Jesus is just too embarrassing! Especially with all that awful love and compassion stuff! I am also thinking this morning about the removing of the statue of Sir John A Macdonald, Canada's first prime minister and architect of Confederation from the steps of the city hall in Victoria. Why, you might ask? He said and did mean things to our aboriginal peoples, and indigenous people say that they are not comfortable seeing his visage. Anywhere. Except maybe on a ten dollar bill? So, in this era of truth and reconciliation, we have decided that instead of everyone who is not first nations moving back to England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, France, Holland, Italy, China, the Philippines, India, Pakistan, Mexico, Iran, the Czech Republic, Poland, Greece, Egypt, Uganda, South Africa, and many, many more, then we are going to have to find much better ways of coexisting. A lot of native people find reminders of the colonialist genocidal presence upsetting and offensive. If I was Jewish, I would be traumatized by any reminder of Hitler. Even though I am not Jewish, and half German, I still find the guy upsetting. But he didn't found the German nation, and JA Macdonald, for all his offensive and arguably criminal acts, was a founding person of the Canadian nation, so how do we do this? I don't know. I am not indigenous, so I do not have their experience of trauma, but I can learn empathy. Removing statues and monuments? Don't know. I am not comfortable with the idea of erasing and rewriting history to suit the norms of the era. I also think that we have to make space for discomfort and bad feelings, if only to help stimulate conversation and dialogue and to keep us conscious of some of the very bitter errors of our history and of our forebears. But how to do it in a way that is going to please everybody? Good luck. We are in a new era and there is no going back and somehow we are all failing at this important need and obligation we all have to adjust and adapt to these changing times while fully accommodating one another and while also not sealing shut our memory of our own past crimes and offences. This is yet more of the bitter fallout, Gentle Reader, of our Collective Human Trauma.