A vision for the 21^st century
by Giuseppe Gori

ABSTRACT

During the 20^th century we have seen some catastrophic and terrifying events for humanity, but we have also seen an increase in standard of living not only in western nations, but also in third world countries.

Unfortunately, the political paradigms we have been using were developed in the 19^th century. Our vision seems to be 150 years behind our actions.

While technology and interaction among peoples have drastically improved, we still need to solve some major social problems. While on some areas we seem to have advanced faster than we could have imagined, on other areas we seem to have returned to a level of incivility, where the life and dignity of human beings are being disregarded in favour of new values. An important institution such as the family, which was a determining factor for mankind to be where it is today, is being destroyed without providing a replacement.

Are our values changing for the better? How can we help society in the 21^st century.

This article analyzes the Canadian society in the context of western nations and provides a vision for a better political system and a better society based on decentralization from government towards a renewed, stable family.

The family is seen as the kernel for renewal in the way we work and do commerce, educate our kids, take our decisions and manage ourselves. It is the model for a prosperous and peaceful society.

Forget the struggle. Let’s work towards fulfillment.

Since the 19^th century, industrialization started producing “jobs.” 

Before then, life was tougher, but simpler. Families engaged primarily on survival. Each member of the family had its daily tasks to maintain the family unit with a roof over their heads, food on the table, and decent clothing. Opportunities were few, and needs were correspondingly simple.

By the middle of the 19^th century, we saw the emerging of new independent nations and new political philosophies around the world. The ever-growing size and power of corporations and the creation of “jobs” (people voluntarily working for someone else in exchange for a wage) suggested the Marxist idea of a socio-economic system based on the struggle between the poor and the rich, the workers and the owners.

In the last century we had a massive change in the way we work, in science and technology, in understanding and respecting others, in the laws we must obey, in opportunity and in needs.

But while the world has changed in so many aspects, political systems are still based on the idea of a struggle between “left” and “right”, the rich and the poor.

We are currently engaged in molding and bending social reality to fit an anachronistic model. We have to constantly re-define taxation levels, minimum wages and poverty lines to adapt to a constantly increasing number of goods and a constantly decreasing price of production. We have to invent new laws and regulations to make the people fit the model and sustain it.

Long ago the majority of families were living below average means, because of the limitation on the goods we could afford and needs we could fulfill. Today many families are still below the “poverty line” because this “line” has gone up, above the old standard of living, based on today’s available goods and perceived needs.

But, most importantly, our standard of living has lowered in the areas of interaction between family members because the time available for the family has decreased in proportion to the time dedicated to work for someone else, the size of our cities, the time required to commute, the time spent for “entertainment” and other factors.

In recent years, technology has created new opportunities. More and more people do not need to commute any more, but can work at home.  Digital communication has allowed interaction without “being there”. Research without travel. Influence without facing a crowd.

Re-acquiring our own time is now the challenge for a better life style.

The political scene has been divided along the lines of class struggle for over a hundred years. In this scenario, we do not seem to be able to use the opportunities that modern technology offers us.

People’s satisfaction is low. While many are turning towards mysticism, nature, positivism and “wholeness”, others unfortunately are turning towards drugs, the occult, self destruction, sexual promiscuity and a culture of death. While most still consider a happy marriage and close family relationships very important, they do not seem to know how to fulfill their happiness, or even how to maintain close relationships.

We need a new philosophy, matched by a new political reality, to incorporate the new technological opportunities and let people achieve more satisfying and fulfilling lives based on lasting family relationships.

The gap is not the problem. Let’s work towards justice.

In the past century we experienced political systems trying to impose their version of social order on their nation.

Socialism, nazism and communism did so to the detriment of individual life and freedom.

These systems of government, based on self-feeding growth and need for power, risked bringing down an entire civilization with them.

The reaction against totalitarian regimes made us appreciate individual freedom.

We have now shifted towards a concept of democracy based on whatever the people want. We govern by polls. We allow any social freedom to the detriment of respect for human life and morality.

We fulfilled the 1960 sexual revolution, but the sexual lifestyle is failing miserably.

The very same life and freedom that were threatened by totalitarian regimes, are now taken by the extreme obsession for individual ”choice”, by political correctness, by a media clan engrossed with permissiveness and by a tolerance that does not condone disagreement.

We are not freer than before. There cannot be social justice without freedom. There cannot be freedom without truth. 

Our governments tend to foster their own growth and power, more than helping families prosper.

We are in a spiral towards mental dependence and moral degradation: The media feeds junk to the masses; the masses form their “opinion” based on deception; the leaders of the nation take polls and portray a compassionate image to the media in order to stay in power.

How many people have been deceived by the nazis into thinking that a Jew was not a human being? Or by communism into thinking that people were disposable for the sake of “order”, or the “common good?”

How many people today have been deceived into thinking that a baby in the womb is not a human being? What happened to the truth revealed by science and technology?

How many people today think that some human life (old or useless) is disposable?

How many people today believe in Darwinism, after a century of scientific debunking of his theory and not one skeleton to prove it?

How many people have been kept in the dark about the link between abortion and breast cancer? 

How many people are more concerned about the gap between the rich and the poor in some south-American country, than about helping the people around them?

How many people believe that Canada is one of the best democracies?

How many people believe that “progressive” means supporting higher taxation, government spending, and bureaucratic power?

Many people have lost their sense of truth; as a consequence, they have lost their sense of freedom. 

We need to expose the truth, no matter how much it counters political correctness. If we do not, then the price to pay will be high. 

Above all, we have witnessed a break down of the family, because of the cheapening of marriage caused by adultery, divorce, promiscuity and, recently, by an organized extremist attack on traditional marriage.

The moral choices that parents transmit to their children are now perceived as bias and indoctrination. Permissiveness is equated to freedom. The Christian concept of “freedom to pursue virtue” is forgotten, because virtue has lost its attraction and its very meaning. Wisdom and respect for experience have also lost ground.  What a 20 year old “thinks” in today’s society is just as important as the truth discovered by his grandfather in a lifetime of experience, struggles, study and achievement.  Furthermore, the 20-year old has more disposable income and is courted by commercial interests, pollsters and politicians.

We need real social justice, matched by a new political reality, to pursue the truth exposed by technological advances, to respect life at every stage of development and to rebuild the family as the cradle of humanity.

The manifesto has been futile. Let’s work on respecting others.

A socio-political paradox is that while communist regimes have failed miserably, mostly because of economics, the 1948 communist manifesto has been largely enacted in legislation in every western country.

It seems that we cannot make up our minds, between the old paradigm that allowed the state to control us by force and the new paradigm that voluntarily delegates our conscience to the state, with practically the same results.

The economics of the old paradigm, a system without freedom, is doomed to failure, because of lack of motivation. There is not much creativity and production without motivation. Centralized power feeds itself until nobody can feed themselves.

The economics of a system without conscience is also doomed to failure, as people do not trust each other, enter into litigation, stop the exchanging of goods and services, mistrust their political leaders, start dealing in black markets and cheat their own government.

We substituted an economic system based on collectivism and centralization, with a democratic system that exploits individuals and enslaves us with an overgrown bureaucracy.

Both systems trample human dignity. They treat individuals as a means to either somebody’s definition of common good, or some political power.

We need a system that can funnel education into creativity, motivation into productivity, and personal ethics into excellence.

We need to create a society where respect of others is based on truth, love and understanding, not on tolerance, deception or political correctness.

Centralization is not the point. Let’s work with families.

In the past century we have switched from purely centralized systems of government (communism, nazism, monarchy) to multi-layer bureaucracy governments (federal / state-provincial / regional-county-municipal)

Did we really make a progress?

People do not really know what to do or how to affect their government. More and more decide to migrate to other nations, such as European and North American nations, before discovering that they have been cheated by demagoguery and propaganda.

The Canadian system of government is not an example of democracy for the rest of the world. The most fundamental threat to Canadian democracy is the current lack of independence between the legislative and the judicial branches of government. In addition, we have an unfair election system, an appointed Senate, a Constitution badly in need of revision, a federal government that extended its power into provincial matters, and more institutional problems.

Some political thinkers in Europe, almost two-hundred years ago have studied the role of federal governments.  Their conclusions are still valid today. Some of the functions of government need to be centralized, such as defense, legislation, judiciary and policing. 

Most of the other functions are best dealt with at a lower level of government, many at the local level. While management has become distributed and localized, communication has become global.

While long ago products and services were delivered locally, in today’s “connected” society, most people can buy product and services globally.  Some of the effects was price reduction and wider choices.

In the 21^st century, the family will be a micro-cell of life, education, production and commerce. An individual or a family unit can today manage itself, acquire knowledge, seek for social interaction with any others, and exchange goods and services globally.

Would it be unrealistic to assume that the trend towards centralization of super-sale centers (the Walmart  phenomenon) may one day be overtaken by individual/small-business oriented E-commerce (the E-bay phenomenon)?

The family fits right in the 21^st century model: from 2 parents working “downtown” to one family business, from centralized education to private or home education, from third party day-care to family care, from institutionalization of old people to family inclusion, from production-chain healthcare to personalized health care, often delivered with the aid of communication technology.

The family fits in with the principle of subsidiarity, whereby what can be done at the individual, family and local levels should be done there and not by some distant bureaucracy.

The family also fits a new concept of political involvement, from interests representing an electoral district, to interests of global concern affecting similarly every family in the province or the state. 

The family will be at the center of the new political system, because everything affects the family: health care, education, the economy, taxation. Both religious and secular associations will help the family in their quest for social fulfillment and justice. 

When families are more involved, their social responsibility increases.

A different concept of work, play, distribution of goods and social interaction will cause the process of urbanization to reverse. The artificial distinction between metro and rural residents will be reduced. Families will not need to scatter in separate directions every working day and the education, knowledge, maturity, wisdom and creativity of youth will accelerate.

Improved physical distribution of goods and communication of people, developed along the model of “packetized” digital communication, will allow more cottage industry, with the result of less need of movement of people for work purposes, more available time for the family, increased movement for tourism and pleasure, less congested cities, less pollution and a life more in contact with nature.

Furthermore, we need to rely less on “homogenized information”, filtered and packaged through “agencies” and major media outlets, and rely more on the ability of people and families to get information directly from the source.

The family is the building block of a prosperous society. Parents have the right and responsibility to produce, nurture and educate children according to their values.
We cannot fall again in the collectivist, equalizing trap of do-good social bureaucrats.

Anyone who chooses unconventional paths risks repeating the mistakes of the past, leading to physical, mental or spiritual decay.

The family is one of the most resilient institutions, as it has the motivation and ability to create and sustain life, and multiply itself. This gives us optimism for the future.

While liberal demographers are still talking about population explosion, we are experiencing birth rates lower than the replacement rate.

While the media and some government agencies scorn large families, we see these as a gift to society and the very foundation of our future.

The future of humanity lies in fecundity and in the renaissance of family values.

In most industrialized countries, a generation of children has been exterminated by their parents through abortion. Families with only one child or no children eventually disappear. Families with multiple children eventually survive and self-replicate.

The command in Genesis to “go and multiply” proves to be sound advice. 

While in previous centuries families equally multiplied, independently of their ideology, today this has changed. The families that are humble enough and self-less enough to “choose life” and make the sacrifices involved with creating and nurturing new life, are the ones that will prosper and affect society by default. 

We call for celebration of large families and policies that support the natural urge to procreation and parenting. Families will be the micro-cell fuelling the engine of the 21^st century.

Conclusion

In the last two centuries we witnessed many improvements in the standard of living and in human relations. In North America, the emancipation of blacks was a major milestone. 

The win of the democratic nations over the nazi regime, the following success of the west in the “cold war” against the USSR’s communist regime and the consequent drastic reduction of the fear of nuclear war were major positive developments.

More people are turning today towards spirituality and true Christianity. More people are aware of the dangers of drugs and promiscuity than forty years ago. All of this in spite of a media that is almost completely secular and liberal, if not overtly anti-Christian.

More and more the world is changing, not by imposition of values, but by democracy (the choices of the majority); not by wars against neighbours, but by demographics (the free movement of people); not by economic struggle between classes, but by the free trading of goods; not by the imposition of immoral behaviours, but by the recognition of the dignity of every human being.

However, more needs to be done to also liberate our society from a culture of death, from attacks on the traditional family and from the selfish exploitation of women in the sex and porn trades.  The Canadian media needs to be freed from the stranglehold of biased liberalism. World relations need to improve between the Muslim world and western societies, and many countries still need to be freed from dictatorships.

Both the US and Canada are well positioned to show moral leadership and to show the way to a vibrant future. They are freer and more flexible than other European nations, as they are less tied by old paradigms. They will have to re-acquire the trust of the rest of the world, if they want to take the lead, once again, in prosperity, peace and charity.

North America cannot rely only on economic prosperity. It has to morally re-group and become an example of freedom and respect for humanity.

The way towards the above objectives is through the family. A flourishing, loving family is the micro-model of a prosperous, peaceful and charitable nation.

We advocate a society built around people and families, not a society where people need to adapt to an imposed system. We advocate a governing system allowing individual freedom and social morality. We foresee a society with a de-centralized, but efficient system of government, so that more people can access true and open information and afford their own choices in life.

We are optimistic about the 21^st century and we are thrilled that our families will grow in it and shape it for the better for generations to come.

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