Chaos, fake news and easy living.

During the past month I have been working on a youth model government exercise. The need for such an exercise hinges on three factors.

One, there is an onslaught of harmful chaos griping the world at this time.

Two, the life of instant gratification is doing a tremendous amount of dammage.

Three, our individual responsibility towards governance is being used against us as a weapon of war.

These factors are a very real threat to peace around the world. In all truth, the threats are not new yet they do take on a different form. We have the trojan horse situation taking place within the technology sector, we have planted news stories in our social media and we have the groups inciting apathy, idiocy, ignorance and/or hatred.

Having worked at building societies which endured years of war, these tactics are easily noticed. What will always remain is the ease in which youth become influenced. That is how we get youth joining Daesh in Syria. This is where the point three comes into play. Each of us must do our part to counter the chaos, give support to the fact the road of happiness is unending – not instant and that each of us relies on the other to ensure a peaceful society.

For years we have seen the efforts put into studies that say one thing and another study which points to the exact opposite side of an argument. If you want, you can get a study done that points to the impact of Jupiters orbit on the size of eggs. Should we be concerned about such a study? Well not to any great extent but it might be good for a laugh and the math would be of great interest. The point is not so much the content but the reality of such a study being done.

Part of living in a society is that we must understand where the information we receive is coming from and for what purpose. This is the trust we have seen eroded in the sources of information. What is so alarming is that we have been through this erosion of trust many times and yet we still fall for it. At present the RUSA is dealing with the Russian media influence. Here in Canada we had to deal with the same thing when the RUSA conducted similar operations during the late 1950's and early 60's. Now it comes back and we must be prepared for the same influence from more places.

We need to sort through the chaos of information, we need to work hard to gather the best intelligent information and we must know to stop spreading harmful information. These three points are the reasons for youth to be educated on proper research, proper debate, proper conflict skills and proper community building.

We have experience what happens in Syria, Libya, Yemen, RUSA and even in our own communitites when we lose focus of the diligent hard work needed to maintain a peaceful society. How often have we asked politicians to stop the partisan mud slinging? It takes a strong dose of calm resolve to pull back. It takes each of us to act in good faith. That is our responsibility to each other and ultimately, to our own selves. Our communities do not unravel unless we actually do the unravelling.

 

In the end we find out that easy living is rarely satisfying nor easy. We find out that our hard work is more rewarding for us. We also find out that being peaceful is not about just getting along. Peace is about valuing each other, supporting those who falter, knowing when we falter ourselves and having the courage to face up to it.