David Warren Lloyd's webfolio  
  • editorial column
• SEE Magazine
• MA thesis
• IASPM paper
• resume & publications
 • contact
• home 		Like it is

28 October, 2000
Family-oriented community?

St. Albert is a family-oriented community. It's a good place to raise children because it's free of the ghastly things that make big cities unsafe. In a large metropolis there's things like vandalism, drug use, racial tension, and people with all different sorts personal lifestyles from which one must protect the little ones. In highly urban areas, people are cold, callous, selfish, and petty. They're always trying to step on each other to get a bigger piece of the pie. The spirit of neighbourly community is replaced by blatant materialism.

Only occasionally do bored St. Albert youths deface large murals, destroy tombstones, break the skylights of elementary schools, beat and stab innocent pedestrians, terrorize vulnerable High School newcomers, and gang up to verbally abuse gifted students. It's good how there's so much emphasis on sports, on achievement, and on being better than other people. That really helps to quantize human worth. For impressionable youths, it gives structure and meaning to a world otherwise prone to uncontrolled openness and exchange.

In a big city a child could become confused about who is acceptable. With so much chaotic variety, a child would risk growing up to be different from their parents. That's why I'm glad to see so many people in St. Albert criticizing each other publicly. It's refreshing to see so much energy invested in the family-oriented activity of pointing out the shortcomings of others, in condemning their personal choices. We must all be perpetually vigilant about setting a good example for our kids.

If the people really work at it, they may even gain total control of the newspapers in St. Albert, thereby restricting the free flow of truth and reality through the minds of the citizenry. What better way to protect our mindless sheep teenagers from the possibility of knowing what the rest of the world is doing?

It gives me a strong, proud feeling when, after playing hockey against a St. Albert team, my young cousin says the athletes representing my hometown are cruel, savage, arrogant, and disrespectful. I wouldn't want other cities to be calling our sporting lads wimpy or weak. No, we're a tough town. We play to win, to beat the other team no matter the price! Down with silly, soft sportsmanship!

Our city engages in a healthy insistence on rigid conformity. Any deviance from the abstract set of choices we hold as "normal", and thus good, is ruthlessly and efficiently squashed. It's the ideal way to prevent new ideas from sprouting up and changing things. And it helps prevent irritations like variety and self-discovery.

We help give our children all the material decadence they deserve when we crusade against anyone who might lower the price of our luxuriously valuable property. Children learn to function well in the adult world when they are taught that the look of a neighbours' house is more important than their contributions to the community. We have to keep everything the same so that our children grow up refusing to live harmoniously with all the different cultures and races in the world.

St. Albert's emphasis on material possessions, salary size, and outward appearance help defend the next generation against things like human compassion, love, understanding, cooperation, and peace. We teach our children that what matters is where you end up in life, how successful you are. Our kids will be well-off, and their kids will be raised by televisions and daycare, alone and independent.

[top]


 




Content and design of this web site ©2004 David Warren Lloyd