Church isn’t the only place they don’t show up to anymore.

In The 60s, attendance was governed by the 90-10 Rule. At least 90% showed up. Less than 10% were absent. This applied everywhere. Church, school, practice, work day, Training Day, Gameday. In my 60s, the 90-10 Rule reversed—t became the 10-90 Rule—10% showed up, 90% didn’t.

I coached football for 40 years. Over 90% of my football coaching career was governed by the 90-10 Rule of Attendance. Training Day was packed. Practice was packed. The Gym was packed. Same applied to College law-enforcement teaching. I was a College Law Enforcement Professor for 20 years, including 13 years as Program Coordinator of 2 programs. Over 90% of my teaching career was governed by the 90-10 Rule of Attendance. College classrooms were packed. Over 200 students per class. Jam packed. All of it was Life Size. Full of life. Until Post-Modern Society shrunk Life Size to Screen Size. My conscience is clear. I taught over 25,000 student-athletes before life shrunk to the size of the screens they were attached to most and longest. Many listened. Some didn’t. Those who did listen grew Life Size and reached the Next Level.

Life shrunk, attendance shrunk. And vice-versa. At football practice, at the gym, in College law enforcement classrooms, attendance shrunk. Same with Church. The 90-10 Rule of Attendance from The 60s reversed to the 90-10 Rule of Absence. All of it Emptied Out. Multiple meanings. Emptied Out in passion, drive, will to work, minds, bodies, souls. Emptiness—dual meaning—didn’t just happen. Nothing just happens.

Fifteen years in policing taught me that nothing happens coincidentally, randomly, accidentally, through osmosis, or overnight. Good or bad, nothing just happens without reasons, reactions, and actions. Everything, good or bad, happens purposely. Triple meaning. On purpose, with purpose, or without purpose. Remove purpose from life, watch what happens on purpose. Including crime, stress, anxiety, fear, pain and agony that causes crime and results from crime. Including the crime of “Fail To Appear.” Church, practice, gym, class wasn’t the only places. They made “Fail To Appear in Court” a criminal offence. They issued warrants to arrest those who “Fail To Appear in court.” They hold them in custody until they appear. The law even gives authority to use force if necessary, if the offender resists. Parents in The 60s used the same authority to prevent Fail To Appear at school, work, practice, and Church.

  

Post-Modern Emptiness is not exclusive to Church. Post-Modern Emptiness has spread anywhere that effort and exertion are needed in mind-body-soul. More work demanded, more emptiness. Post-Modern Emptiness has become an epidemic any place where relationship-building needs work. Post-Modern Emptiness became both a problem and a solution. Emptiness and absence became solutions in the minds of student-athletes and adults who had been taught to not show up when it was time to work hard. And then they were rewarded for not showing up. Absence has been rewarded with Absence of Consequence in the Post-Modern C.F.L.—Consequence-Free Life. How did it happen? Kids made adult decisions. Adults made kid decisions. AssBackward Mentality. Result? Life shrunk, attendance shrunk. The attendance-absence ratio reversed. Decision-making authority reversed. Result? Culture Shock.

Culture Shock is a state of disorientation that leads to dysfunction. Heading up the list of dysfunction is dysfunctional relationships starting with personal relationships of mind, body, soul. When mind-body-soul are not aligned, you align with no one else and with nothing else. No alignment, no assignment. Disconnected and fragmented. Dual meaning. What was valued in the 60s in not valued today in My 60s. Showing up was valued by over 90%. That’s why over 90% showed up. Presence was valued, absence was not valued. Absence carried consequence that worked from the inside-out, starting with the conscience. In the 60s, the most compelling consequence for absence was intrinsic. Your Inner Self felt the intrinsic consequence. In the 60s, it was called “guilt.” Back then, guilt worked. Dual meaning. When guilt stops working, conscience stops working. And vice-versa. Then, the will to work stops working. Result? Life shrinks, attendance shrinks.

One immutable, irrefutable fact has existed since the beginning of civilization: human development cannot occur though self-directed learning. Children are incapable of learning a strong Moral Base through self-directed learning. Same with adults. Self-directed learning is a myth, propagated by self-professed experts to avoid the brutally hard work of teaching inherent to every single form of leadership including the coaching establishment, the education establishment and most importantly, parenting. The only thing humans are capable of learning on their own is the wrong choice. Wrong choices lead to building neural pathways that wire you up to keep doing the same wrong thing repeatedly until you consciously decide otherwise. All elements of human development—physical, intellectual, emotional, spiritual—depend on which type of Performance Demand the mind makes on the body and soul.

There are two types of Performance Demands: good and bad. Here’s the good news and bad news. We supply what we demand, good or bad. And vice-versa. It’s humanly impossible for children to learn how to make mature, productive, moral, functional Performance Demands full of meaning and purpose, without being taught;  without a continuum of prerequisite external Performance Demands made by mature, responsible adults who have been Divinely Called to lead.

Post-Modern Society has taken its turn at using child development as a Social Experiment, using us all as lab rats. Reason? Post-Modern Society believes it’s smarter than anyone in the past. They even think they’re smarter than Most High God. We elect them, we hire them, we entrust them to make decisions about what our children will learn, how they will learn it, and from whom. They know more than any of our ancestors. Why? Because we have more screens. We can stick any size screen in front of a kid using the false pretence of learning, child care, babysitting, or anything else to reduce the Leadership Workload.

Leadership Fatigue. My generation suffers from it. We gave up leading, teaching, coaching, mentoring. We compromised. We sunk to Deep Complacency. We are all guilty of Code-Breaking. We broke Cultural Codes because of one simple reason: conformity. We conformed to Post-Modern Beliefs just to fit in. Why? Fear. Fear of being different. Fear of being original. Fear of hard work. Fear of being disliked. We lost our backbone, our nerve, our guts that we inherited from our ancestors who accomplished more than we ever have or ever will, with less.

The only thing we do better than our ancestors is complain. Make excuses. Blame. We complain about “kids these days.” We complain about how much it’s changed from The 60s to My 60s. But, we let it happen. We were handed a fortune by our ancestors who spilled their guts and their guilts building structures, multiple meanings. Instead of building on their structures, we destroyed them. We abdicated our leadership responsibility. We abandoned our cultural education and replaced it with Post-Modern Education that has dramatically increased illiteracy. Dual meaning. We can’t read or write. We can’t read the signs. We can’t even see the signs. Synchronistic Spiritual Promptings have been drowned out by our screens. We have relinquished discernment in favour of screens, hoping to fill voids and emptiness—intellectually, physically, psychologically, and spiritually.

Remove struggle, nothing improves. One of the top 26 reasons why attendance shrunk at practice, in the gym, in class, is absence of The Struggle. Same with Church. The human mind is work-averse. The Weak Mind associates struggle with real or imaged pain that will exceed it’s pain threshold. Left unchecked, the mind habitually responds to any challenge by pushing the wrong switch. It pushes the Flight Switch instead of the Fight Switch. Our ancestors fought. Our ancestors were fighters—we are Flighters. We’ll take any flight—dual meaning—to any destination, at any cost, affordable or not, to escape.

Here’s what I’ve taught over 25,000 student-athletes: there’s no escape when you take Flight. There’s just more Fight, dual meaning. 1st meaning: the degree of difficulty of the challenge you escaped from, gets worse. 2nd meaning: the Inner Fight manifests in Extreme Cognitive Dissonance when you ignore the voice of conscience. We pay a price that no one can afford with Killer Stress when we contradict our conscience, when we know better but don’t do better. The price skyrockets just like the price of houses, price of food, price of gas, price of education, in this out-of-whack Canadian economy.

Here’s the irony. Life shrunk to the size of screens. Attendance shrunk. But the cost of living didn’t.

Good news. Solutions are not shrinking.

Bad news. Voices are shrinking.

Continued in part 5

#MuchLove

Blessings & all good things

#peace

Gino Arcaro

February 25, 2025

I knew it was a sin, but I prayed for no one to show up at Church.

Back in The 60s, there was a 3-tier curriculum for teaching “sins” at St. Patrick’s School. The Religion teacher taught the Basics of Sin. Venial Sin and Mortal Sin. A kid in our class started a rumour that Mortal Sin meant you would die on-the-spot. The next level of sin curriculum was taught by the Principal. The highest level of sin curriculum was taught by The Priest during his regular visits. They taught us that intent mattered. Dual meaning. Did you mean to do it? And it was a sin if you intended for it to happen, even if it didn’t. Sin of Intention: praying for a bad intention or even just hoping for a bad intention. No one asked the teacher or the Principal or The Priest what type of sin it was if you intentionally hoped or prayed for a bad intention. We didn’t want to know. We rationalized that not knowing the classification of the sin sounded better and felt better.

I knew that hoping and praying for no one to show up for Benediction was a sin but I did it anyway. The altar was packed for Benediction. The Church was almost packed for every Benediction. Not one, not two, three altar servers were need every Benediction, every…single…Sunday. I prayed for an empty church hoping The Priest would cancel Benediction so we could show up on time for street-ball to prevent being harassed and insulted by public school street-ball teams for going to Church too much. In The 60s, everything was packed, including streets. Every sport, every season. And neighbourhoods were packed with kids—street-ball-aged kids.

Neighbourhoods had their own teams. All teams were territorial. Each team identified themselves with by their level of insults. In The 60s, insults were socially acceptable. And expected. They didn’t start calling it “trash-talking” until the 80s. Before then, they kept it simple. Dual meaning. Simple insults. And they simply called it “insults.” The 60s weren’t complicated. Getting to the point mattered. Being offended wasn’t recognized in The 60s. Insults were governed by an Exchange Rate. You were expected to exchange insults at par or higher. Showing up late for street-ball because of Benediction guaranteed intensity of insults exchanged.

My prayers were never answered. They showed up. Almost packed Church at 1 p.m. Nothing cancelled Benediction. No snow days, no heat days, no storm warnings, no outbreaks. There was no Weather Network. Just 13 channels if you had a modern antenna. And there was no air conditioning. Not one Benediction was cancelled. Not during the pre-season or regular season or post-season. Benediction affected street-ball every season.

Prayers didn’t work. They showed up. We asked ourselves, “Why?” Public school kids asked us, “Why?” Why did they show up for Benediction just an hour after 11 o’clock Mass? It was a mystery to us but not to them. They knew why they showed up. The real mystery would have been if no one showed up. That was answer to “why.” No one wanted to be part of a mystery back then. Being part of a mystery contradicted Culture. Whatever mysteries you had in your mind were private. You didn’t publicize your mysteries in The 60s. Mysteries were to be solved, not avoided, and never participated in. Reason? Alignment and assignment. The absence of mystery led to agreement, to shared beliefs, principles, and values. And vice-versa. Agreement lead to absence of mystery. The Culture Code was simple: don’t be a mystery but be a mystery.

There were no Screen Addictions on The 60’s. You didn’t walk around with screens. You didn’t stare at screens. The only screen that mattered was the one in the confessional between you and The Priest. Alignment and assignment. In The 60s, weekly Confession was the solution to all your sins, intentional or otherwise. The outcome of the intended sin didn’t matter. Even if they showed up, you showed up at 4 p.m. every Saturday. Lined up, fessed up. Sins added up but you weren’t allowed to add them up and go once a month or once a year at Christmas or Easter.

The religion teacher at St. Patrick’s School taught us not to lie about Sin Quantity or Sin Quality. Never diminish the severity of the sin. And never diminish the quantity of sins. Honesty out, honesty in. And vice-versa. Count them up because they all counted. Like with compound interest, lying about the number of sins multiplied Sin Quality. And they taught us that a low number of sins was suspicion of holding back sins. They taught us that The Priest was trained in Sin Credibility. So we padded the Sin List. It didn’t feel like a sin to lie about a higher number of sins. We rationalized that lying about sins you didn’t commit just to be credible to The Priest was good practice just in case you forgot some sins or underestimated the bad things you said or did or didn’t do. It always made you nervous, confessing to praying for an empty Church. You worried about being identified by The Priest. There was enough room on the left side of the screen in the confessional to sheild your face hoping to prevent facial recognition. Other “protect your identity” strategies were discussed with classmates: lowering your voice or whispering; using a fake accent; blocking your face with your hands. Mumbling, like when you forgot Latin during Mass, wouldn’t work because you had to confess that you mumbled during Mass when you forgot your Latin lines.

Even the incense was packed. None of us really knew the purpose of Benediction. If we were taught, we forgot. One reason was that Benediction made you nervous. Some kid spread a rumour that the incense would explode and kill you if you packed too much and too tight. They used to use incense pucks. Then they switched to powder. Or the other way around. They taught you to pack incense up to a line that was visible only on the inside of the Incense Holder that The Priest swung. And you were responsible for tightening the Incense Holder. Some kid spread a rumour that it was a Mortal Sin to play a practical joke by not tightening the Incense Holder. If the incense pucks flew out, you would die on the spot. Public school street-ball teams insulted you for smelling like incense. So did the Catholic street-balls teams. Incense Insults unified religious denominations.

Be careful what you pray for. They stopped showing up. Benediction was cancelled. Nothing is packed any more. Not church, not masses, not confession, not weddings, not funerals, not even streets. Street-ball disappeared about the same time as 1 pm Benediction.

Fifteen years of policing taught me that you can’t solve the mystery of absence with the absence of evidence. And before you search for presence of evidence, you need to identify the cause of absence. All absence boils down to a Relationship Break-up of some kind. There are 26 main causes of all relationship break-ups. The top four causes are:

1. Someone said something,
2. Someone didn’t say something.
3. Someone did something.
4. Someone didn’t do something.

Every change in a relationship boils down to a change of words and works. Too much and not enough. Too much of the bad kind or not enough of the good kind. Wrong choice of words, wrong choice of works. Pain versus pleasure. It’s easy to blame change on isolation and in isolation. But in reality, all change for good or bad always happens contextually…there’s always context, there’s always a complex interaction of tangible and intangibles that build an emotional network of inducement that affects intention. Intention to appear and intention to disappear.

All change, good or bad, is promoted by need. Needs change. We change needs. Every human shares a common list of Basic Survival Needs. Then we customize our own  individual list by constantly adding and subtracting Personalized Basic Survival Needs. When Basic Survival Needs align, places get packed. When they don’t align, emptiness happens. Multiple meanings.

Change alters needs. And vice-versa. Result? Adaption or extinction. Get stronger or get weaker. Applies on or in any field. The fight between adapting to changing needs and need to change is not won by the weak-willed. Lose the fight and the result is an extreme case of Cognitive Dissonance, defined as the painful inner conflict that burns inside an individual, a team, or an organizations when actions contradict beliefs. And vice-versa. And when works contradict words. And vice-versa. Cognitive Dissonance is inner conflict caused by crossing your heart, by believing one thing but doing another. Knowing better but not doing better. And vice-versa. Left unchecked, the Downward Spiral Effect. Structure breaks. Culture shatters with it. Cognitive Dissonance is a change agent. It forces change to relieve the psychological pain of inner conflict. There are only two choices to relieve Cognitive Dissonance: i) confess. Admit the truth; or, Or ii) justifying by lying, denying, and alibying. One choice raises the standards, the other lowers them.

The strength of every relationship spiritually, professionally, personally, and with self, always has been and always will be dependent on a four-letter word that frightens Post-Modern Society: work. Work strikes fear because of real or imaged pain of struggle and sacrifice. The easiest way to clear out any Post-Modern Room is mention work. Work complicates and threatens more relationships than any other tangible or intangible factor. The more it complicates, the more debates. The more debates, the more chance a relationship terminates. And vice-versa.

Good news. The Plain View Doctrine helps solves any mystery of absence. And of presence. There’s a 90% chance that the most compelling evidence is in Plain View. The evidence in Plain View is directly connected to Worldview and Workview. When attendance is down to a few, the problem is Worldview and Workview.

Good news. There’s a solution. I’ll explain in part 4.

#MuchLove

Blessings & all good things

#peace

Gino Arcaro

February 19, 2025

It would cost me a fortune to be an altar boy today, compared to The 60s.

Back then, they taught us it was a sin to pray for more funerals. And for more weddings. It was tempting. But I don’t remember ever praying for more funerals or more weddings. Reason? There were always plenty of both at St, Patrick’s Church. It paid off—dual meaning.

Five dollars in the 60s has the equivalent worth of $53.29 purchasing power today. Over 10 times the equivalent worth made it worth it to be an altar boy at St. Patrick’s in the 60s. No one ripped you off in the 60s. They paid for it. The “Youth Minimum Wage” in the 60s was 90 cents. The starting minimum wage for Altar Serving at weddings and funerals in the 60s was Five Bucks. Over 5 times minimum wage made it worth it to be an Altar Boy at St. Patrick’s in the 60s. It caused passive aggressive envy and jealousy among relatives and classmates who were altar boys at St. John Bosco and St. Theresa. Most of them called us liars. They didn’t believe we got paid 5 bucks per wedding and funeral. Even back then, money caused conflict with our peers even though we knew it was a sin and it contradicted our Cultural Code of Financial Silence. We all learned the Code of Silence: never talk about how much you make, never ask how much anyone else made, and never, ever show off that you made more. They called it “show off” back then. No one used “narcissist” back then. The word wasn’t in anyone’s vocabulary because it wasn’t allowed. Everyone was aligned back then. There was zero tolerance for narcissism. No need to even talk about it. Dual meaning. Narcissism or money.

I’m not making this up. A week never went by in The 60s without a wedding or funeral or both at St. Patrick’s Church. They paid for it.

Five bucks per wedding. Five bucks per funeral. Masses weren’t short back then. One hour. Guaranteed. Weddings, funerals, Sundays. All 4 seasons. Hot or cold. 60 minutes. There was no Altar Boy union. No Collective Bargaining Agreement. Just Honour Code. They paid in full every time. Not one grievance. Not one labour dispute. They paid on time, every time. They paid as soon as the bodies left the church. Dual meaning. Funerals and weddings.

They never paid by cheque or direct deposit. No credit card, no Debit card. Cash only. They always put the cash in an envelope. Southern Italians called it “La Busta.” I never threw away an envelope. Not one. It was part of my Italianomics degree that I learned and earned from my poor illiterate, southern-Italian immigrants, Antonio and Maria. We recycled in The 60s. And re-used. And re-sold. It all added up in dollars and cents. And sense. Common sense was taught back then. And used. And enforced. So was Common Cents. Sense and cents added up. The objective of Common Sense and Common Cents was to earn Uncommon Sense and Uncommon Cents. Alignment and assignment. Everyone was aligned back them. Our assignment was to  improve. Don’t rest and don’t rest on past wins and successes. When you did a great job, it was expected. So was doing it again and doing it even better.

Bank savings-account interest in The 60s was 5.75%. It was the same interest rate for a Canada Savings Bond. If you invested just $5 in 1965 and left it, it would double every 14 years. It would be worth over $80 today. They never gave altar boys T4 slips back then. I don’t know for sure what my career earnings were as an altar boy but it was a lot. I thought I was rich. My altar boy career earnings combined with manual labour jobs helped me buy a used car, in cash, when I turned 16. And it helped me buy a house when I was 20. I’m not making this up. I paid the cost of a 2025 tank of gas for my first used car. People laughed at it. They called it a piece of junk. But it fit Italianomics Principles: buy only what you need, buy only what you can afford. Cash only, no showing off. Just get the job done, don’t try to impress anyone.

A lot of people died in The 60s. And a lot of people got married. Every funeral, ever wedding was packed. Jam packed,. Standing room only. The more people, the bigger the mess, the bigger chance of financial success for altar boys. They paid to clean up messes back then. Bigger the mess, bigger chance of a tip or bonus. Littering wasn’t an offence back then so they threw rice at weddings. All four seasons. Inside the church and out. Rice Clean duties started during pictures. Windy days blew the Kleenex flowers off parked cars all over King St, Victoria St., West St. Kent St., Adelaide St. The bigger the mess, bigger the financial success. Tips, bonuses. Double, even triple income. People tipped 100% back then. No tips less than 5 bucks. It was tempting not to make more mess by ripping flowers off cars and throwing more rice when no one was looking. We discussed it. But it was a sin back then. And there were consequences. In The 60s, there was no such thing as The C.F.L. (Consequence Free Life). Everyone paid for it. Dual meaning.

Double-header weddings in The 60s were common. So were funerals. 10 am and 2 pm. Back to back weddings and funerals often earned $40. Cash. Two separate “Bustas.” Funerals were the only way to legally skip school. All you needed was a note from the Priest. The adrenaline rush was palpable before Sunday Mass when The Reader made the First Publication of Marriage. Three Publications were The Law in The 60s. Three announcements of who was getting married and when. You did the math with very Publication. Five bucks plus tips. But you had to be careful not to break your focus about the Latin reading at the beginning of Mass if you were named “Starting Altar Boy.”

When I forgot the Latin words, I learned how to improvise by either mumbling or speaking Broken Italian words I learned as my first language from my poor illiterate Italian immigrant parents. It was easy to get away with mumbling or speaking Broken Italian instead of Latin because of the Upper Deck. The Upper Deck at St. Patrick’s was jam-packed with the choir on the left side and those who arrived late on the right side. The full-blast singing was always loud enough to drown out Latin, mumbling, or Broken Italian. If you felt guilty enough, you added it to the list of sins during weekly confession at 4 pm… every, single, Saturday. In The 60s, I learned the 10-90 Rule of Sin: if there was a 10% chance it was a sin, it was 100% a sin. You were too scared to miss confession. Rumour spread that The Priest recognized every voice. Rumour spread that if your voice was missing, parents would notified. Alignment and assignment. Everyone in your world lived by the No/Go Principle.

No days off from confession.

Go to confession.

No days off from Mass.

Go to Mass.

Guilt was big back then. Dual meaning. Your conscience made you feel Big Guilt. And guilt was a Big Deal. Guilt was fashionable and acceptable in The 60s. No one sheltered you from guilt. Alignment and assignment. You were on your own, having to deal with your conscience 365-24-7. In The 60s, there was no WiFi Connection. They taught you Conscience Connection. It didn’t matter what language your conscience spoke. You learned how to translate, communicate, and relate with your conscience. Your relationship with your conscience sounded the same, looked the same, and felt the same as with every other relationship. Alignment and assignment.

Voices were big in The 60s. Dual meaning. Voices were loud and loud voices were a Big Deal. They were fashionable and accepted. In The 60s, everyone’s voice sounded exactly the same as the Voice of Your Conscience. No difference. Parents voices, family voices, relative’s voices, teacher’s voices, principal’s voices, guidance counsellor’s voices, school cleaning staff voices, Priest’s voices, boss’s voices, TV voices. Even news, sports and weather voices. They sounded the same as the Voice of Your Conscience. No confusion. No frustration. No temptation. Sure there was temptation in The 60s but No Temptation was the joint social mission. Alignment and assignment. Temptation was strong in The 60s. Just as strong as in 2025. Maybe stronger. But the Voice of Your Conscience was stronger because it was part of a Team. A Fighting Team. Alignment and assignment. Every voice was aligned with your assignment. Every voice taught you to fight temptation and not fight with your conscience.

It was never an easy fight back then. But they never backed down. No matter how tired they were, your Fighting Team never suffered exhaustion. They never suffered Fighting Fatigue. Alignment and assignment was big in The 60s.

There’s a big difference between The 60s… being “in The 60s” and being “in My 60’s.” St. Patrick’s Church isn’t packed any more. Why? The 60s Voices are not big any more.

Good news. There’s a solution. I’ll explain in part 3.

#MuchLove

Blessings & all good things

#peace

Gino Arcaro

February 4, 2025