I am stunned. Really. I don’t get it. I just don’t get it……….

You see, I read. I read voraciously. Politics, climate change, social trends, history and, on occasion, how-to stuff (sadly, I find the how-to stuff the hardest to understand).

I read non-fiction only because, well, it is more interesting and I leave my fantasy needs to the movies – better special effects (Tom Clancy leaves me cold but the movies his stories inspired are a lot of fun).

And all this reading has been going on for some time now. Most of my life, actually. The latest: Jared Diamond, Tom Friedman, Naomi Klien, Bill McKibben, Malcolm Gladwell are just the latest amongst the many, most of whom I have since forgotten.

Still my favourites: Harry Brown. Robert L. Hunter. Amory Lovin.

If there is a theme to it all, it is a bleak one. Seems we are either doomed or soon to be. Planet is ending, oil is running out, crooks control everything……..you know the line. Think Michael Moore writ large and often.

At the very least it seems, we are as a species, stupider than hell and likely to win the largest Darwin Award in earth’s history sometime very soon. Very depressing, really.

But once you get past the obvious dark side (and find out there is only the dark side), you can at least plan with the dark side in mind. Think of it as bringing your own little flashlight to the end of the dark tunnel.

And yes, I confess that, to some extent, the move to Read is partially in response to the view that we are all going to hell in a handbasket. NOT entirely but a little.

I even know that such a view is irrational in many ways. For instance, the government now propagandizes its own people by fear mongering on just about everything. “Keep them frightened and keep them in line. Plus we can charge more taxes.” We are bombarded by so-called threats from pandemics to economic collapse, from environmental devastation to series of serial killers. Our health care and educational systems are hopelessly flawed. And our food and water supply are either running out or are poisonous in oh so many ways. Woe is us!

The message that sells is, “you are doomed. Vote for me, pay this fee, tax or levy and buy this product and service to protect yourself.” Pathetic, really. But it works.

And, despite knowing that there is this dooms-day, government-backed industry and that fear sells, I respond, if not fearfully, then at least with concern. Like a Pavlovian dog, they have raised my level of concern to the extreme end of Defcon 1 verging on Defcon 2. I am a bit worried about the future to say the very least.

Put another way: maybe Chicken Little was right?

Anyway the point of all that is this: why are not more people leaving the city? Rats leave a sinking ship, everyone flees a burning building, even Sully Sullenberger crossed himself as he attempted to land on the Hudson river. Indeed, the exodus of millions of Africans to Europe is the theme of many recent doomsday trends. It seems we have a survival instinct and we should be showing it.

But I don’t see it here. Not in the GVRD. To my way of thinking, the boomers are retiring and, bombarded by fear mongering (if not real fears) and having less energy and motivation to run with the rats, are utilizing and enjoying the city less and less while fearing it more and more. But they are staying put.

I didn’t.

I became blasé about the urban smorgaasbord soon after having sampled most of it. And the whole urban thing lost the vast bulk of its lustre from the news broadcasts of the day featuring the likes of Willie Pickton, GW Bush, Gordon Campbell and increasing drug gang wars. It was easy to leave.

In fact, I have concluded that the city’s real attraction of more people was for the young to have access to a larger gene pool but I may be off on a tangent, there. Many people are motivated by making money and would argue that it was lucre not lust that attracted them to the metropolis.

Whatever.

Still, no matter how you cut it – money or marriage or both – you either have it by now (if you are a boomer) or you do not. A lonesome, poor 65 year old is not likely to get lucky downtown these days. Shot, maybe.

So why are more people not seeking refuge in the country? Why is there not a run on cottages? Why are people still commuting an hour or two to go nowhere to shop or drink Starbucks coffee? I don’t get it.

Now, to be fair, habit, comfort, familiarity and family and community ties would make a good argument for staying in the burbs. I understand that complacency. But, what with all the messages I have read and the things I see, it feels like that inertia comes with a huge price.

Like a civilization being taken over by a despot, do the people really need to feel the pain before they see the writing on the wall?

Years ago a friend of mine had his house broken into. Lots of damage and theft. He called a security alarm firm. We had not been broken into and so, seeing what that was like for him, I asked the same firm to install a system in our house. “By the way”, I said, “how many people get an alarm system before they are broken into versus those who need the experience first?”

“I can’t recall ever installing an alarm system before someone has been broken into” said the installer.

The point? Of course rural is not for everyone – I understand that – but shouldn’t I be seeing more people looking for cabins to go to? Shouldn’t more boomers – as the most obvious group – be looking to shed the umbilicals of the ‘plugged-in’ society? Do not the increasing controls, regulations, rules, strata councils, commissions, government officials, bylaws, policies-cast-in-stone, robot-voices, security cameras and other manacles-to-living free make you want to head for the hills?

Or, is it just me?