So I Say I Want a Revolution. Well, y'know . . . (Part 1 of Many)

                When you get old enough (as opposed to just “old”), you start to notice the patterns. You start to see that culture, society, nature, life in general, all turn on great wheels, intersecting with each other at certain points, and in certain variations. Given time, a wise enough person or a good enough scholar of history will note the number of variations is finite, and repetition is inevitable. One can predict literal and figurative revolutions, if I can get Asimov-y on ya.

                Those of us who are feeling particularly jaded with today—those of us who are anti-war, anti-capitalism, anti-Harper, pro-environment, pro-Occupy, pro-the future—see that we’re at a very ugly out-turn of the wheels. We are saddened by this and anticipate—crave, even—a revolution, a change in sensibilities.

                Everyone who reads my blog frequently or interacts with me via social media (digital or no) knows my opinions on this. Having lived through the greed and materialism of the 1980s, as well as its constant fear that the end was near, I then lived through the subsequent hope of the 1990s. Politically, Reagan, Bush and Mulroney gave way to Clinton and Chretien (not to say the latters were without fault, but anything was better than the formers). Walls came down, Cold War ended. There was a real sense of hope in many ways as the 20^th century wore itself out. It would be foolish to ignore the Rwandan genocide or the war in the former Yugoslavia (as examples), but as a young man living through that time I felt an awakening hope that the First World was going to start doing the right thing for the Third, and that the Second would rebuild itself. But all the hope in the world means little when—within a decade—the wheels cycle and we enter the world of W. Bush and Harper, of Islamic fundamentalism, of the War on Terror, of tarsands and environmental apathy, of banks acting like banks and the economic (insert noun indicating anything from a slowdown to an all-out, grab-your-monkey-and-run-for-the-hills-crisis here).

                We want a revolution, those of us. But who, exactly are we? Who exactly am I because I’m not, strictly, one of them. I have friends on the poles (or wings, if you’re chicken), right out there in the extremes. I’m extreme in some regards, less so in others. I can say that I feel that if you find the current similatrities with our world and that of the 1980, politicially, socially, culturally are good things, then you don't love your children. Fact. 
              Over the next little while I’m going to be posting some bloggity blogs detailing the revolution that I see and crave. These will range from the global and pertinent, to the trivial. Whatever tickles my fancy.