Editorial by: Roger-Luc Chayer (Image: Gay Globe)
Humanity, since its earliest beginnings, has always been fascinated by eras with varied themes, sometimes fanciful, sometimes more serious. The Egyptians worshipped divinities as their main purpose in life and treated their dead much better than the living. This may seem somewhat ridiculous to us today, but the Egyptians were a formidable civilization that developed at a rapid pace for thousands of years, leaving us remnants that we couldn’t even reconstruct today because of their mastery of technology.
In the era of the Romans, the conquest of the world and the establishment of civilization were paramount. Once again, the Roman Empire developed over a period of more than 600 to 800 years, leaving us not only impressive architectural remains but also a culture, a language, and styles of dress that are still with us nearly 1400 years later. Europe is still essentially Roman today!
And then there was Catholicism and the Vatican. An era that was sometimes enviable, but all too often dark, violent, abusive, and idle, it must be said. Belief in a single God, represented by a son whose existence has never been proven, but whose teachings dominated life on Earth for over 1000 years, and it’s not over yet. An era of contradictions where men could marry first and then be obliged to celibacy, where poverty was celebrated and encouraged by the very Jesus in question, while priests and other church princes lived in sumptuous palaces, at well-laden tables. Meanwhile, often at their doorstep, believers died of hunger, waiting to ascend to heaven to end their suffering, if not to be raped, molested, tortured, and so on…
The history of humanity has always been made up of eras, of modes more or less lasting in time. There have been short periods, like the Victorian era, where the industrial revolution developed around a consumption model perfect for the wealthy.
There was the post-World War II era, marked by social, technological, and scientific development unprecedented in history. Man learned to fly, to heal, to universalize education, to go to the Moon and even further in less than a century. That’s quite something.
For the past fifteen years, we have been living in a new era of fear, this time based on the fear of seeing the planet disappear, die, and destroy itself due to pollution, politics, territorial differences, etc. We are told that the planet is warming, without mentioning that warming and glaciation cycles are regular on Earth, occurring long before the appearance of humans, a fact well documented scientifically. An eco-anxiety is created at a level similar to that of Catholicism in its time, forcing the gullible to take measures that have absolutely no effect on the planet as a whole, but which enrich once again those who are at the head of these irrational fears.
This week, for example, a Canadian ecological organization published a photo of the city of Montreal under what was claimed to be smog resulting from the consumption and use of fossil fuels, in order to raise funds, yes, to make money with a Hollywood-style doomsday scenario.
However, the photo used was indeed of Montreal, but not only was it not recent, it dated back to 2023, when numerous fires in northern Quebec and northeastern Ontario generated smoke from burning wood, not fossil fuel. And it works!
I must admit that I have never been gullible about any subject. I have never swallowed what was served to me as information or education without questioning the truth, accuracy, and relevance of what I saw. I am even less gullible about any scenario, especially when money is involved and some seek to enrich themselves by exploiting the fears of others.
So, I wait patiently for the era of knowledge and intelligence, but I’m afraid I may have left life before seeing it arrive…