Reader Ingvar writes, in a comment on a thread that’s fallen off the main page:

We live in a many times more complex society than our ancestors did. If you shut off the power in my home city of Toronto in a winter with subzero temperatures for more than lets say two days tens of thousands will die. Heat goes out, elevators stop working, water becomes scarce (you can’t drink ice or snow if you can’t melt it), people can’t cook or dispose of waste in a safe fashion. Add to that social unrest which makes it difficult for the tradespeople and engineers to get around so they can fix things and you’ve quickly got a major disaster. Millions dead.

In Toronto I don’t think we have a collective story any more than can help us to weather this sort of thing. We don’t identify with any past or collective history that might inspire resilience or the necessary mutual social support. The Raptors or the Blue Jays winning championships won’t help us then. Churches and other religious communities might provides some support, but there aren’t enough of us I think to make that big a difference. All of a sudden, once our current prosperity goes, the survivors (probably grouping largely around racial lines) will be warily facing one another groping for weapons. And we’ll have to relearn, if we can, the civic virtues that currently mark our community (relatively honest police for example, something 80% of the world doesn’t have). If you asked the average Canadian what makes our government less corrupt than most in the world, they probably couldn’t give an answer. They don’t know. I don’t think we are mature enough anymore to even ask that question collectively and give an honest answer. We are turning our backs on the ideas and communal bonds that made our society possible. Not that they were perfect, but they got us this far.

I don’t want to catastrophize too much, but I really don’t know what to think. I don’t know that anyone does. We’ve never had a community like Toronto before in the history of the world. We’ve never had a society this complex. If a disaster does happen, I hope there is a sufficient remnant that can identify effectively with our Christian and British/European past to rebuild something based on those roots which have given us what we already have. And I hope capable of learning not to make the same mistakes we are making.

I don’t have anything to add to this, except I think he’s very much on to something. And heaven knows it’s not just Toronto. It’s most of us. Except you, Clear Creek.