Lullabies from La-La-Land

On the whole, I'm a pretty easy-going guy. In general, I don't get too upset about too many things. But, like everyone else, I have things that can just set me off and having to deal with things that could have been easily avoided is right up there at the top of the list.

OK, I'll admit it: what irks me is that fact that most of the folks I know would rather sit on their well-padded backsides and tell themselves that everything's OK instead of recognizing that we're all being taken to the cleaners. We're being duped, and dumbed down to boot. I'm not saying there is a conspiracy. Power doesn't need a conspiracy, it only needs to take things as they come. We've been deluded, and most of it has been our own doing. Because we love to be deluded ... it takes so much responsibility off our own shoulders.

We like to think that life is so much easier these days, that we've somehow progressed as a species, that we've overcome so many limitations that our forebears suffered under. This is largely untrue. Some societies have suffered long and hard, and have suffered more because others, allegedly more civilized societies, have made life miserable for them. Just ask the Africans or Native Americans. They both enjoyed more freedom, health, and natural wealth than we like to admit. And for all the comforts of modern living, like indoor plumbing and the Internet, we're not really all the better off for it. We've got gene-modified food and we have no idea if it's good for us or not; we have industry processed food and we know it's bad for us. We have artificial light and no more natural routines, be they daily or yearly. We have bad air, bad water, and a whole lot of bad ideas. Our life expectancy is longer, yes, but that's simply an actuarial bet, not a fact. And who would want to live in Hell for 80 years?

No, life is a struggle. It was very early on in our history as a species, and the one thing we really haven't changed -- but could have -- was our struggle for life. Yes, we are barraged by stimuli our ancestors couldn't imagine in their wildest nightmares. Yes, we are faced with food and environment that makes us sick instead of nourishing us. Yes, we devote inordinate amounts of time and energy trying to "get ahead" only to realize we are slowly sliding behind. Oh yes, we've come such a long, long way and life isn't any easier today than it was 100,000 years ago. The specifics have changed, but the big picture really hasn't. Oh, don't we have so much to be proud of?

And you see, all of this was avoidable. It doesn't have to be this way. Again and again throughout our history people have tried to get others to see that we weren't doing all of us a favor. But, we haven't been smart enough, and lord knows, not wise enough to stop and listen.

All of the ills of modern society are the result of rules we have made for ourselves. Yes, we made it up. It is, in the truest sense of the word, a fiction. We are in a position to make the world into just about anything we want, and we can do it to the benefit of all or the benefit of the few. Why we have chosen the latter path is incomprehensible to me.

The clock is ticking however. It is precisely all those things that we thought had brought us further that will be the seeds of our undoing. We simply believe it is otherwise. But, we love to be deceived.

Why do only catastrophes motivate us?

Exaggeration? Hyperbole? The title sort of sounds like it, doesn't it? Unfortunately, I don't think it's all that far off the mark.

Think about it: most of us "have ours" (whatever that really means) ... we've got a job or a decent retirement, a house, a nice car, decent prospects. If nothing really bad happens, we'll continue doing OK. Life can be tricky, we all know that, so purposefully rocking the boat may not be Option #1. Admit it. That's how most of us think.

What most of us don't think about, however, is that we make up a rather small minority of the world's population. Oh sure, we'd like to think that just about everybody in America or Europe is getting along pretty much like we are, but we know -- at least in the back of our minds -- that this is not the case. So, there's only 6% unemployment in the US these days; in Germany it's around the same; but, we all know that the way the statistics are counted is for the sole purpose of making things not appear as bad as they really are. We all also know -- whether we like to admit it or not -- that wages have been stagnating, that inflation is still making itself known, that the disparity between rich and poor is still growing steadily in the entire developed world. In other words, economically, we tend to put on our rose-colored glasses whenever we think about these kinds of things. After all, acknowledging that so many others aren't doing so well doesn't really do much for us when we're trying to be satisfied with ourselves.

And, in the back of those same minds, we know that the planet is warming, the climate is changing, and it doesn't really matter whether we humans are behind it or not. Any change, any significant change, is going to disrupt our peaceful, and rather oblivious, way of life. We know that we've got infrastructure problems, energy problems, that the housing and banking industries are still shaky, that the US, at least, as a massive crime problem ... in other words, the future is not exactly set on a positive trajectory. We know all of this, but still we act if there weren't any real problems at all.

Don't get me wrong, I know full well that many people are living paycheck-to-paycheck, that others are saddled with crushing debt (and not just students), that taxes keep going up for the most of us and that we are too often just busy dealing with the squeeze that all of us are feeling. And that's my point.

Let's be honest: as long as we're busy keeping our heads above water, we're not all that "worried" about the big picture. I, for one, can understand that, but it doesn't help. You don't have to be either a genius nor a conspiracy theorist to recognize that the more I have to deal with the details, the less I can deal with the big picture, and those who allegedly represent us have done so much to allow that big picture to fade, to ensure that we have more than enough details to deal with that things will most likely just keep going on as they are till they finally go down the chute.

I'm not exaggerating when I say that it will most likely take a catastrophe -- environmental, social, economic -- to get us motivated. I'm not talking about a scare like happened in 2008. That was a wake-up call, and guess what? we're still sleeping. Pleasant dreams.