Let me just start off by saying that I love capitalism. I love the free market. Globalism? Huge fan, pleased to meet ya. Internet, technology, having entire segments of the economy devoted strictly to my entertainment- can't complain (although I still find time to do so). Life has never been this easy.
And so obviously I'm writing about why it all seems wrong to me.
The other day, I had a realization of sorts. I've spent the past 5-6 years (with some time off in there) having some sort of direct care work as my primary means of financially supporting my family (other than student loans....eek!). Basically, I have been receiving financial reimbursement (essential for continuing on with life as I've known it) for spending time with other people's children. So in exchange for my time that I'm not spending with my own children, I have helped raise other people's children. So that I can "make it"- whatever "it" means.
What an odd concept. I don't mean to deride daycare- it's necessary for some people so that they can keep the jobs that provide them food and shelter. Lord knows we've had to tap into the Babysitter Pool so often our figurative toes are shriveled up like prunes. But it's frustrating that this economic system that I admittedly am very fond of is responsible for destroying human existence.
Wait, what? That's right. I said it. Boom. Human life the way that God/nature intended it has passed through the digestive tract and now only contains bits and pieces of its former glory.
I think if we were to try and look this a little objectively, we'd acknowledge that we're probably supposed to be a little more like Tarzan and a little less like Wall-E. Instead, we live in an economic system that has distorted the human existence. We are no longer a part of an ecosystem that is symbiotic, but rather we have become the parasites. Except that we have completely bypassed consumption for survival and gone straight on to consumption for the sake thereof.
Sometimes I wish that technology as we know it had never developed. I wish that I was a menial laborer in a small clan somewhere in a rustic setting. I wish that I was playing some sort of simple game with my children instead of finding a new show on Netflix or teaching them how to play Angry Birds. Actually, it'd be pretty cool to play real life Angry Birds, now that I think about it. Using a sling shot to shoot birds at various wooden structures? That's amazing! Oh, someone's at the door. Look, it's PETA. Fudge.
I know that there's probably a degree of 'old days nostalgia' in my wishful thinking. Life wasn't easy back in ye olden days. Life expectancy was shorter. The chances that your children would die before they hit five years old was so much higher that it's a wonder that any children lived past five years old. Not to mention the dinosaurs and lack of oxygen in the atmosphere and the poop on the streets and...okay, I better stop before I convince myself that it's much better to have access to heating, indoor plumbing, and home entertainment centers.
I hate to beat a dead horse (actually, I don't condone the beating of any dead animal. I don't need anymore PETA involvement) but I look at the upheaval in the Middle East, and the crisis in Japan, and I wonder just what the heck I would do if something like that happened here. I have virtually zero survival skills. I exist on food that is packaged for me, preparing it thanks to the instructions that it comes with. I have never hunted, and I'm not sure that I could gut/skin a deer without passing out from wussyness. Shoot, I can't even make a fire without some matches, kerosene, and a weeks worth of the New York Times. I can live in the conditions that have been created for me to live in- but if those conditions are removed, I am effed.
A while back, I touched on the idea of overpopulation (an idea that I still mean with all of my heart to address with empiricism)- and I think that for me, overpopulation has more to do with this style of life that we've created than it does with the number of people that our planet currently houses. Sure, the planet could probably be fine with the number of people that it currently houses- we just need to drastically overhaul how we do everything.
And isn't that what this whole Washington budget/government shutdown thing is about? We have a finite amount of resources that we're trying to allocate, and there isn't enough money to go around, and so there needs to be sweeping changes made, except no one is willing to make the changes because it means a drastic overhaul of how things are done. That's why I believe that overpopulation is a problem- because we are, by and large, unwilling to cut out the things in our society that contribute nothing to our survival other than comfort and pleasure. At least our descent into hell comes on a shiny new roller coaster!
Can somebody just throw a bucket of water at my face (only the water is secretly some sort of acid that melts things)? What a world, what a world indeed.
I'm not trying wax doomsdayical here. After all, the events unfolding in our world today do that well enough without the humble musings of this tiny blogger. But I feel like I am the little pig who tries to keep safe from the big, bad wolf by building his straw house on the sand. Eventually, the whole thing is going to come crashing down and I'm just left there with a goofy grin on my face and a hungry wolf all up in my grill. I have hope for this world, I really do. But right now, it just seems like a fools hope.
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