4 ~ Sunday, October 4, 1992 - North Shore News New World Order leading into Dark Age? IT IS the final despair of the 20th century: we are all a bit like Stephen Hawking, the genius-level astrophysicist trap- ped in a deteriorating bedy he can no longer contrel. The horror of it is that no mat- ter how vegetable-like his bady becomes, his mind will remain as clear and sharp as ever. He would see and understand, but not be able to communicate or move. It’s called Lou Gehrig’s disease or, more precisely, motor neuron disease. It seems to me that the world’s body politic has developed motor neuron disease. Look at the difference between what our best minds can imagine and technically conjure, and how stumble-bummed we are when it comes to creating political order instead of chaos, or even merely trying to get on with the job of easing human suffering. It was fashionable just a year ago to buy into the notion that we had reached the ‘‘end of history,” that liberal democracies commit- ted to market economies had basically triumphed around the globe, and there was nothing more _ lefi to happen except for us all to plug in our credit cards and doze away the rest of our lives indulg- ing in conspicuous consumption and exatic travel. Actually, I don't see the New World Order as proctaimed by George Bush as having done much in the last year except flounder about, losing control over one region after another, both in terms of not being able to shore up some semblance of central government capable of at least feeding its people, or even keeping them from each other's throats. Where is Henry Kissinger when we need him? How many geopolitical pieces has Somalia broken into? Yugoslavia? Czechoslovakia? All those dozens of squabbling little countries around reborn -. Mother Russia -- who factors them into foreign policy? How can you? Ye: ome of them have nukes, which means that sooner or later, a lot of people are going to have nukes, Why now, of all times in histo- ry, should there be a resurgence of Hunter STRICTLY PERSONAL blood and soil thinking? Of trib- alism? Of atavism? Is a Dark Age opening up? Sometimes it feels overwhelmingly as though that’s the case, and vir- tually nothing can be done about it. A world symposium of car- tographers and historians recently predicted that within a century there will be at least 400 countries on Planet Earth. Why do I have a feeling it wouldn't take anywhere near that long? The contradictions today be- tween what we can dream and build and what we can achieve po- litically are wilder, more extreme than they have ever been. You can argue that savagery and vandalism are absolutely nothing new, but until your era there was very little that was truly wonderful and amazing in terms of the human experience to com- pare them to. Life had been brutish and short. The average lifespan of a male in the Roman Empire’s heyday was 22 years. Today, on the one hand we are seriously organizing a mission to Mars (for a mere $100 billion), yet on the other we cannot stop the brutality in the Balkans or the torment in Somalia. sb s pleased toa announce an exhibition or ELEMENTARY ENRICHMENT MONOPRINTS and WORKS FROM THE PERMANENT COLLECTION Plus the publication and sale of wo outstanding new prints GATHIE FALK "Norih Shore Roses” ALAN WOOD “Beach Wolk’ offer prints available for sale from the ‘Artists for Kids” Trust include: BILL REID “Haida Grizzly Becy* GORDON SMITH = "Sea Edge after Goya" R¢ SERT BATEMAN JC 2 FAFARD *Great Blue Heron’ "Barb" Thursday October 15,1992 7:30 - 9:30 pm. North Vancouver Cl 341 West 14th Hail Gallery freeat the exhibition continues through November 28,1992 For more information about the ‘Artists tor Kids* trust contact Its Director. Bll MacDonald, c/o the North Vancouver School District, 810 West 2ist Street, North Vancouver, B.C. V7P 2C1 Phone: 987-6657 We have Virtual Reality machines, but less grip than ever on reality itself. t don’t know what is ultimately more evil: a Serbian terrorist pull- ing a Bosnian prisoner’s skin off with pliers, or a child, the last of her family, dying of starvation within view of the cameras, but out of reach of food? But I wonder if the truly evil thing is the decision to spend $100 billion to go wave flags on Mars, while allowing starvation to swallow hundreds of millions, if not over a billion people in the next decade? We read serious magazine arti- cles about the possibility of ex- tending human life to a 400-year span, yet we cannot even over- come interprovincial trade barriers in a country on the verge of fall- ing apart. Political paralysis, or what? While most papers treat the large-scale damage done to the ozone layer, for instance, as a minor science-pages story, we sec that they all happily run smutty pictures of a duchess’ bare breasts. Tit shots, pure and sim- ple. Sheer sexploitation. To spend even halt ai: hour channel-hopping through the in- tellectually abandoned industrial zone of American television is to deserve karmic punishment for wasting valuable time when you could be saying your mantras, do- Discover... LEVOLOR 1226 Marine Drive North Vancouver 984-4407 Canada's Best Blinds! CONTOUR WINDO''/7,\: amma Blinds of all kinds, to suit all budgets ing good in the world, or at least having a bath. As for day-by-day history, which is the news, is there any- thing we can believe any longer? The nature of what passes for re- ality — our shared assumed reality — changes from day to day. { had just nicely gotten used to the idea that we weren't going to be nuked by the weekend when, months after Boris Yeltsin told the U.S. Congress that Soviet missiles were no longer aimed at American cities, a Russian general casually admitted, oh by the way, com- rade, some missiles are stili targeted as before. To describe Canada as being more paralysed by political motor neuron disease than any other country would be unfair, even for a despairing and disgusted Cana- YOUR WATER water .. Take the LEAD, CHLORINE and DIRT out of your MATH . quickly, safely 84. vi and economically. g64- 4. “003 | How? With Purified Water Systems’ dian to say. We have not yet sunk back into the jungles and swamps and windblown deserts of our ancestors, but we could. We could yet. 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