This is an amazing oped:
The pandemic was a brutal example of Canada’s chronic inability to plan for the worst. When Ottawa finally got around to releasing a report last October about how the various levels of government had handled the crisis, the report’s authors pointed out that its recommendations closely mirrored those in an exhaustive report on the 2003 SARS outbreak in Ontario, which in turn had closely mirrored a 1993 report on the HIV epidemic.
That same inability to focus on issues that don’t provide instant political gratification is exacerbating the threats coming from the Trump White House. The tariffs are all the more potent when applied to a Canadian economy that
Ottawa and provinces have been happy to coast on the fumes of North American free trade, never imagining this might come back to haunt the country.
Politicians of all stripes have repeatedly ignored calls to make the country more competitive and increase its productivity. That includes tearing down the ludicrous interprovincial trade barriers that have been shaving points off of Canada’s gross domestic product for decades.
…
And why? Because it’s easier to sell Canadians on immediate largesse the year before an election than it is to convince them of the need for long-term investments that will cost billions and may not be needed for years, or even decades.
Federal politicians of all stripes are guilty of this. We haven’t seen a serious response to climate change, the housing crisis, or Canada’s collapsing productivity. We get weird bandaids (immigration to pump the GDP/workforce, reducing GST on property purchases), but rarely do we see well thought out plans with multi party support.
Original: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/editorials/article-the-lesson-that-politicians-never-learn/
It’s quite hard indeed, especially given that the current, dominant North American culture is one seeped in a high degree of hedonism. We don’t typically hear stories of how people endured decades-long of hard work and inconveniences to achieve something significant. I know they exist; I’ve talked to a good number of people to know they do, but we just don’t all hear them in a manner where it’s broadcasted.
In East Asia, there are many such stories that go around, even as stories for children. The narrative around education itself is molded by it; study hard and well, and you’ll most likely end up with a good job, which means potential for a good and comfortable life. Outside of education, certain tv shows like to go into stories that span multiple years that shows the struggles humans go through in their lives, and how they will be rewarded or punished by their earlier actions. Take the Hong Kong, Taiwanese, Japanese, and Filipino dramas that span literally hundreds or even thousands of 30-to-45-minute episodes, some of which are still ongoing.
That said though, Western culture has taken a strong hold of the younger demographic in East Asia, so instant gratification is also a growing problem there.
While I don’t think East Asian culture sets itself out to dissuade people of self-gratification, it sets up people’s expectations of the different kinds of gratification you can get through life, some of which clearly require years to attain.
And I don’t think people don’t really know of it here either. We understand that teaching can be a very rewarding career, not in terms of how much you’d make, but that we’d better the lives of the young, and it may lead to them carrying that torch and passing it forward. It’s also slightly more tangibly rewarding when old students come see you years down the road and thank you for teaching and guiding them. These are stories that can be told, and they can stick because they’re touching, human stories.
So yeah, I’m not sure how we can actually tell people that we shouldn’t just focus on instant gratification, in a society where it’s so deeply engrained into their psyche. It would be quite the fundamental shift in culture. I think there are steps we can take, eg via education and messaging through mediums like entertainment and the news.