Dollars to Donuts and Back Again

My friend Lee Distad has weighed in on the subject of the Canadian Loonie attaining parity with the US Greenback. I've commented already at his blogsite, but I found the whole subject so fascinating I decided to place some of my comment here and expand further.

What I found really interesting was how much has changed culturally since the last time our dollar was worth the same amount as a US dollar. As my beloved Professor of Church Leadership and Pastoral Theology, the Rev. Dr. Gary Nelson, reminded us, "Only three things matter in ministry. Context. Context. Context."

It has been a generation since the last time the Canadian Dollar was worth as much as the US Dollar. At that time -

- the Canadian dollar was not called a "Loonie".
- Prince Charles was still single, and by all accounts, not even dating.
- Oprah was unknown and middle-class.
- there were no cellular telephone networks in North America.
- the three best selling home computers were the Commodore PET, Radio Shack TRS-80 and Apple II and they all had just been introduced.
- no one had a debit card and "bank machines" did not exist.
- other than friends or family, no one knew who Johnny Depp was.
- all of the members of The Tragically Hip were too young to go to the bar, let alone play music there.
- it had already been a decade since the Leafs last won the Stanley Cup.
- there was no MTV.
- more people watched TV broadcasts off antennas than cable in Canada.
- Pat Robertson launched the first satellite-delivered basic cable service, called the CBN Cable Network, in the USA.
- no one had e-mail.
- the Toronto Blue Jays launched their franchise.
- "Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope" was in theatres for the first time.
- fuel injection, front-wheel drive and airbags were not standard equipment on most cars sold in North America or worldwide for that matter.
- Michael Jackson was still a member of his family vocal group - "The Jacksons"- and no one even knew they had two sisters named Latoya and Janet.
- Lloyd Robertson's hair was still a "natural" colour, he had only been with CTV for one year and was the co-anchor alongside Harvey Kirk.
- the only people on the "internet" - which still didn't really exist - were the US military, some government agencies in North America, Europe and Asia, a number of universities around the world and a relative handful of scientists.
- no one was worried about AIDS, West Nile Virus, Lyme Disease, SARS, Bird Influenza, Mad Cow Disease or Superbugs.
- the video console game "Pong" by Atari had only been in bars and arcades for two years.
- Microsoft Windows did not exist.
- there was no such thing as "reality TV contests".
- "environmentalism" was a minority lifestyle choice - not a growing worldwide political imperative.

Economists, social & political pundits are making much of this "Loonie" issue. This morning the CBC reported that the Loonie had slipped just below the Greenback only a few hours previously. People, media, governments and institutions will start watching the dollar now with all the neurotic regularity we display when we check our wristwatches. And they will tell the public what will happen and how they should react. And many, many, many of them will do just that. I think we have to realize that for a huge number of people the Canadian economy has crossed over onto uncharted ground, despite the fact that people like myself can remember "the day when".

Like it or not, we now live in a society where the majority of people have the attention span of an over caffeinated squirrel with ADHD. And when our politicians, economists and cultural pundits are also part of that group then I say it's time to listen to Bette Davis -

"Buckle up kiddies. It's going to be a bumpy ride."

When issues like this one pop up and we see that there is a history we can draw upon for wisdom, yet most don't, I wonder if the postmodern rejection of the "meta-narrative" - the story that tells us how we got here and why - is such a smart idea. The philosopher Charles Santayana observed that, "Those who refuse to remember the past are condemned to repeat it." My friend Lee observes that what has happened to our dollar has happened before - things go up in economics and they come down. But this present generation seems to make the myopia of my generation (called the "Me Generation" by some) seem like a momentary lapse of focus by comparison. It hasn't happened before "to us" so therefore we have no way to know how to deal with it. The media echoes that sentiment every day if not in every story they report.

The wise author of Ecclesiastes wrote, "There is nothing new under the sun."

This is especially true of money.

Jesus talked about money - a lot - because money was just as important to people 2000 years ago as it is today. His bottom line was basically this - who is in control, the money or God? One of them will be. You get to choose.

Choose wisely.

Shalom