Failing natural disasters of epic proportions, such as this week’s monster tsunami, the post-Christmas week sees newspapers pad their pages not filled with sale advertising with end of year lists. Ranking the past, in other words. After all, politicians are on holiday, the courts are closed, schools are not operating, and anyone who has any opportunity to do so is taking time off from contributing to society.

That contribution these days is most often seen as an economic, not moral one. It is a line of thought that the younger generation is quick to pick up on. Although the Mike Harris Tories provincially tried to legislate a spirit of contribution by requiring that High School students perform a number of community service hours in order to graduate, that effort can be seen as a flop. A government simply cannot make anyone think one way or another as proven by many various systems of rule, both harsh and lax.

The increasing degree of complacency, coupled with the ever vocal culture of complaint in North America, so brilliantly outlined by Robert Hughes, makes one fear for the sake of our society at times. Add to this an often absurd bureaucracy, best exemplified within the addled workings of the European Union, and it becomes little wonder that an average citizen cares little. Problems are not being solved either at the governmental or at the individual level. The first shuffles together yet another report, the second waits until the Tories tell him to perform community service as a high-schooler for the betterment of the whole.

The Kyoto accord, discussed by the UN at a recent high level meeting in Argentina is one of those well-intentioned pieces of global legislation that just won’t fly, because of this malaise. Canada, a signatory, is expecting citizens to reduce personal carbon dioxide emissions while failing to take state level legislative measures. By all measurement standards Canadian emissions of greenhouse gases are not being reduced. Promises are made, but not kept, and the air is not getting any cleaner. The UN itself is an organization of once great promise that fails to meet its own standards.

Citizens of developed countries, economically better off than ever before, need to ask why our elected governments and international NGOs are not working towards designing far-sighted public-policy solutions. The divide between the haves and the have-nots of the world is increasing, and in the wealthy countries complaint and complacency are entrenched. Time is perhaps the most valuable commodity that a person could have as a luxury, yet it is the most elusive of prizes. Technological advances have been such that there are gadgets and gizmos galore keeping us connected, and far worse, — captive to the bleats of millions of others. Perhaps if more people got a chance to spend time without a cellphone or a lap-top in one of the fast-disappearing pristine regions of the world they’d wake up to what really matters.

By forcing rules and regulations that are not effectively monitored and equitably applied down individual throats the West is discouraging independent action. Thus suppressing what, on an economic level John Maynard Keynes termed “animal-spirits” — the drive that propels individuals to take risks in business that ultimately benefit others as well as the originators.

James Glassman, concerned about American economic woes addressed the issue in Tech Central Station on December 27th, asking whether this is the generation where growth stops. Throughout history children have lived better than their parents, usually by a wide margin. Citing analyst Byron Wein of Morgan Stanley, Glassman writes that children born in the 21st century may well be the first generation of Americans since the Pilgrims landed to live less well than their parents.

The craven nature of our political system, where re-election matters more than keeping promises is only partly to blame. Glassman is worried about the “general attitude of entitlement and irresponsibility spread by politicians who promise constituents wealth without risk or pain.” Add to this the expectation system put into place by well-meaning charters, such as the Canadian one of Rights and Freedoms, that fail to adequately outline the responsibilities of those granted such boons, and it is no wonder that Wein is concerned. Even if the pension and health care benefits provided today for retirees are cut and taxes are raised, by 2030, or 25 years from now, the standard of living of all groups will have declined. Yet we still expect to have our “rights” protected while anticipating that the golden goose will keep laying her eggs. Economic worries dominate moral ones.

Things have not always been so, of course. The history-defining event of modern man is the Great War, and David Fromkin’s book of earlier this year, “ Europe’s Last Summer” provides material to give pause. Summer is what the complacent ones wait for, the time of leisure and luxury. Before August 1914 middle-class Britons and many Europeans lived in an idyllic world. Keynes, for one, remembered it with wonder as an era without exchange controls and customs barriers. It was a time of free capital flow, free movement of people and goods. For the most part, Fromkin writes, people needed no passports, no ID cards. Forget about globalization as an economic motor and the prosperity of the 1990’s — Fromkin points out that the pre war world was much more globalized — much of the final quarter of the 20th century was spent recovering ground lost in the previous 75 years.

Ordinary Europeans and North Americans felt safe in their early 1914 world. Warfare was thought to be impractical, some even thought it obsolete. No apprehension, there was little need for government. We now have government everywhere, in every facet of our lives, and we fear the future. Fromkin identifies small governing cliques as being responsible for the Great War, today’s over-governing is an attempt to prevent that from recurring.

Complacency allowed the Great War to happen. It is a definite reach to suggest that we are on the brink of a similar wave of change — but during the summer of ’14, it was unthinkable. Something to ponder as some go over moronic top 10 song and movie lists while others wonder whether we’ll have peace (forget pension security), by next year’s end.

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