A Deeper Look | Issue #17 Jan 02 2022
Hello Friends
Happy New Year! I hope that you were able to take some time off and enjoy the time with your loved ones and those close to you.
This week’s edition consists of the following:
Reflection
Looking Ahead: The World in 2022
The Pandemic and the Challenge of Education
From the Kitchen: Photo Gallery
Reflection:
The period between Christmas and New Years is a strange one, it is a time for family, rest and relaxation but also a time of transition, hopeful optimism and reflection. This year COVID-19 has made travel, social gatherings and visits with extended family even more difficult. The holiday period here in Canada has been one beset by a new round of restrictions by the provincial governments marking a difficult end to what has been an extraordinarily challenging year.
A new habit of ours is to sit down and watch the Queen’s Christmas Address, (a habit picked up after having watched too many episodes of the Crown). The Queen spoke about the changes to her family, the state of the world, and the impact of Prince Philip’s death but she also had some interesting reflections on tradition and the New Year:
While COVID again means we can’t celebrate quite as we may have wished, we can still enjoy the many happy traditions. Be it the singing of carols (as long as the tune is well known); decorating the tree; giving and receiving presents; or watching a favourite film where we already know the ending, it’s no surprise that families so often treasure their Christmas routines. We see our own children and their families embrace the roles, traditions and values that mean so much to us, as these are passed from one generation to the next, sometimes being updated for changing times.
While our family does not have any particular Christmas traditions, there are several end of year habits that now characterise our holiday period. The first is that my brother and I tend to re-watch our favourite movies and TV shows, shows which I have now come to associate with Christmas (the Harry Potter Series, the Lord of the Rings Series, or Band of Brothers (a 10 part historical HBO miniseries). The second is a visit to Cafe Zen on Yew, a comfortable and diner in Vancouver’s Kitsilano neighbourhood - a local hangout and quite popular at any time of the year for local families, young and old alike. The third is an extended family dinner - cancelled this year - but one where our extended family gathers for dinner (usually turkey with some requisite Indian food) providing a chance for all of us to catch up, glimpse the progress of our family’s newest and latest additions and enjoy (or put up with) each other’s company.
The Queen ended with a reflection on Christmas and the life of Jesus, and though I am not Christian, I find her observations universally applicable:
It is this simplicity of the Christmas story that makes it so universally appealing: simple happenings that formed the starting point of the life of Jesus — a man whose teachings have been handed down from generation to generation, and have been the bedrock of my faith. His birth marked a new beginning. As the carol says, “The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight”.
With this in mind I leave you with three of my hopes and worries for the upcoming Year.
Three Hopes:
Cooking with Comfort: My first hope is that I will be able to cook slightly more dishes than I have been able to this year. Having lived alone for a number of years I like to think I am relatively self-sufficient in the kitchen, but I have resolved to make a bit more progress this year. It has been my experience that with food comes people, conversation, laughter and good memories. The more of this I have in my life, the happier I tend to be. So heres to more cooking in 2022.
Making Fitness a Priority: The second is to make fitness a priority. I have realised (I hope not too late) that the quality of my life is improved markedly by what I do and put into my body, and so, if I am to live a happy, healthy life I should take care of the basics and will make an effort on three levels 1) improving the quality of my sleep; 2) watching and improving my nutrition, and 3) improving my physical fitness and activity. This unfortunately has been my hope every year for the last five years - but this is different)
Stability: This year looks to be one of transition on several fronts, my current graduate programme is set to end in June after which I very much hope to be gainfully employed. I will likely have to move cities, find a home and navigate the accompanying transitions in life, friendships and relationships. Having said this I hope to write to you at this point next year with some sense of stability, with a clearer sense of direction and comfort.
Three Worries:
Uncertainty: With transition there is excitement but also uncertainty. I have up-until very recently thought of and lived life as very sequential. Sequence brings comfort, it brings predictability, and provides order. I realise now I must live life in parallel and this is an uncertain exercise. I must navigate questions of school, career, life all in parallel, and this brings a certain amount of worry.
Isolation: I worry that the relationships and friendships I have established will fade and wither. The pandemic has reinforced how important a support system is. I am grateful that I have a strong one here at home, but also in the various places I have lived. But I fear this will not last, for as life moves on people change and age, and grow apart. I am lucky to have a few close friends in each of the cities I have lived but as time passes, this network becomes more distant, more spread out and harder to keep together.
Unpreparedness: I worry about unpreparedness. This year many in my community have suffered loss, sometimes utterly unexpected. In BC alone we also have suffered wildfires, a heatwave, flooding, and bitter cold. This has reinforced how fragile our world and life is and how quickly ones circumstances can change. My worry is that I am unprepared. That I need and must have a plan in place for myself and family in the case of an emergency or unfortunate accident.
Happy New Year, to you and your families, I hope it is one in which all your hopes are realised and your worries never see the light of day.
Hopes and Fears - Reflecting Back and Looking Ahead
At this time of year, the world’s press tends to come out with a series of predictable articles, half of which summarise the major global events of 2021, and half of which look forward, projecting the world as it could be in 2022. In keeping with the Queen’s advice, I have trawled through my library of the more interesting and often under-looked sources, websites and enclosed below is a summary of fears and hopes as we look back on 2021, and look forward to 2022.
Fear: A Bleak Outlook for Global Development: The UN’s OCHA (Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs) released its Global Humanitarian Overview for 2021 and has projected a bleak future. Global development has stymied:
“As we look ahead, we face the prospect of a return to a world in which famine – something we thought we had consigned to history – is commonplace once more. Where the rights and prospects of women and girls are set back. Where parents cannot confidently expect their babies to reach their fifth birthday.”
Among the world’s challenges: a) COVID-19 triggered global recession; b) increase in political conflict; c) rise in internally displaced peoples; d) hunger is on the rise (with conflict as the main driver); e) disease outbreaks are occurring with increasing frequency; f) an increase in gender-based violence and gender inequality; g) an increasing number of people in need of assistance (in 2021 this was 235 million people, or 1 in 33 people worldwide).
Fear: Leadership in 2022: The Barcelona Centre for International Affairs has released a paper on the 10 issues shaping the international agenda the preamble of which observes:
The world does not have a problem of diagnosis. The necessity and urgency of the ongoing socio-economic, technological and climate transitions are well-known. Where there is debate, it concerns which type of leadership is best equipped or has most legitimacy to pilot this change, how the process should be conducted to ensure the lowest possible social costs and where the point of no return lies.
The issue of leadership in 2022 the paper notes is likely to coalesce around two key issues; 1) scheduled elections in 2022 will provide citizens the opportunity to provide their opinion of pandemic recovery and 2) democratic and authoritarian leaders will both seek to consolidate their support bases and improve their international reputations.
Fear: Rise of Misinformation and Threat to Institutions: Pew Research’s Report on The ‘New Normal in 2025 lists the threat of misinformation, its impact on public trust and confidence, and its potential to undermine the stability and trust in democratic institutions. The report cites Barry Chudakov, founder and Principal of Seratin Research who observes:
We will struggle with factfulness, the antidote to global ignorance. With problems waxing even more complex, and invasive technologies such as facial recognition or predictive policing advancing to esoteric levels, we will be forced to address pressing issues using verifiable facts – otherwise democratic institutions will not survive. Thus, the new normal will encompass refereeing a facts-scrum: truth, lies, distortions, assertions, contradictory information, datasets, data streams from emerging technologies, analyses – all vying for our embrace and attention. This will foster a new media literacy, including a ‘truth valuation’ set of protocols, which will serve as a reality foundation and foster resiliency to organized disinformation. This ‘truth valuation’ is necessary because we are moving from the real world to the meta summation of the real world – a mirror world - brought to us virtually on screens where distortions and untruths can easily slip past our five senses, which we no longer use solely as world navigation tools.”
Hope: Faith in the Next Generation: The same Pew report highlights an area of hope - the hope that the next generation will be more attuned to conversations of social justice, quality of life, climate change and sustainability, and reconciliation with the worlds indigenous populations.
We are facing a stark choice between two futures, and I choose to be optimistic about how it will come out, though I am not willing to predict how likely that outcome is. The dire future involves everyone making choices to maximize their own benefit. The optimistic future involves people recognising that the welfare of everyone is important to the success of our society. In particular, everyone needs to trust, justifiably, that the processes in society are working for everyone’s benefit. This trust is necessary for widespread cooperation, which is required for society to thrive. Without that widespread trust, society is likely to devolve into a dystopia. Our society will fail, and we will be taken over by others. The average person must be able to count on having a meaningful job with adequate income to support a family. Each person must be able to count on health care, child care, education and elder care, even if those are not economic profit centers.
The Pandemic and the Challenge of Education - Pontifical Academy for Life
This concept note presents an alternative view of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on education for children and adolescents.
Parallel Pandemic: The note points to a “parallel pandemic” that has accompanied the COVID-19 pandemic. This parallel pandemic is one of “psycho-social stress” that has been exposed by “dramatic shifts in lifestyle.” The impact of COVID-19 the closure of schools, the decline in social interaction, increased anxiety and uncertainty about future prospects have deeply impacted the mental health of children and adolescents across the world. “This parallel pandemic, which affects the generations in the phase in which the energies aimed at feeding the imagination of the future are developed, is destined to have a profound impact on the psychology of children, especially adolescents. The disorientation generated cannot fail to attract the attention of adults.”
Resources for Children and Adolescence: The note turns its attention to areas of opportunities for the education of children and adolescents. It notes three areas in particular which educators should take note of:
Sensitivity: The pandemic has revealed the sensitivity of children which in turn opens the door to the development of a child’s moral education. “Sensitivity increases for questions and answers regarding pain, illness and treatment. This sensitivity represents a first and relevant step in the development of a moral conscience. One cannot think that children, even very small ones, do not have a sense of empathy and the ability to understand the pain of others: they perceive it as a morally relevant experience. It is a human quality, which always emerges and always amazes us. However poor in experience and adequate reflexivity, in fact, consciousness is human from the very beginning.”
Resilience: The pandemic has revealed the resilience of children. “Children are capable of resilience: psychic distress and resilient reaction can also coexist in children and adolescents. For this reason they should not be left alone: it is necessary to activate paths of re-elaboration of the trauma, recognising a sense and a meaning of the shared human experience, made difficult by collective traumatic events. The exercise of an adequate empathic dialogue and narrative elaboration are an indispensable aid for attention and participation: and in the forms of family cooperation, between parents and local communities.”
Confidence in Science: The technological and scientific advancements over the course of the pandemic offer an opportunity to reaffirm the importance of expertise, and the benefits of science. “The younger generations, grown up in a highly technologized and scientifically explained world, can be helped to recognise in science a process of failures and victories through which solutions are approached. At the same time, at a time when a dangerous denial of the value of scientific research is emerging, the pandemic presents itself as a great opportunity to reaffirm the value and height of the human being and the gift of one's intellectual abilities.”
Guarding Family Relationships: The pandemic has brought children and their families into closer proximity. Reconnecting children with their parents and their grandparents. This offers the family, both the possibility to “rediscover shared time as an opportunity” and “the vision of a responsibility, that of imagining with imagination and creativity a renewed presence in the lives of children. “Being a parent isn't just about sending your kids to school and worrying about them going to school. The closure of schools has relocated the vocation to be parents and grandparents at the heart of families. Parents play a key role in supporting the children and helping them overcome the difficulties they experience in the new situation. This season offers itself as an opportunity to review the contents of the educational challenge starting with families.”
Transmitting Faith: The note explains that the pandemic has presented an opportunity to re-examine and ground the role of faith in the lives of children. “The pandemic itself, as a complex event, cannot fail to be considered an opportunity to deepen and focus on topics of enormous importance for education in the faith. COVID-19 offers the opportunity to propose to the youngest issues that have perhaps been too relegated to the margins in the ordinary pastoral care of the time without a pandemic: Where does the evil come from? Where is God in the time of the epidemic?… What words in front of the disease and what gestures to accompany the sick?”
From the Kitchen
As mentioned in the reflection I have been trying to add new dishes to my list. Enclosed below are some new additions.
Hi Farhan, I enjoy your personal and political reflections. I hope 2022 holds many good things for you.