Modern Human = Addicted to Change

Modern Human = Addicted to Change
sg micheal, 08/MAR/2009

Our media bombards us hourly: buy buy buy. There is no escape. We can try to 'turn it off' but it finds us: it's insidious. It's relentless. Instead of 'advertisement', we should call it 'the borg'.

It is not just "buy now!" that is screamed at every sense of ours, implicit is "buy new!" or "Change now!" And we comply. We submit. We are after all civilized. ;)

Civilization might as well be a synonym for domesticated: civilized man = domesticated man. And that simply makes us sheep. Clever sheep but sheep nonetheless.

The danger is not being sheep. The danger is our system. Our present system is based on debt/growth/exploitation and that cannot last. Unless we switch to a more sustainable paradigm, we are Doomed. A deeper issue is our addiction to change. And our current system feeds off / feeds this. It is a downward spiral/cycle of death.

New car, new wife, new boyfriend, new family, new friends, new school, new job, new religion, new science, new god,.. New dress? Do we really Need that new dress??? Do we really Need that new job? New boyfriend? New life? YES.

We need that new life or we are going to die as a species.

Oh there may be remnants and pockets of 'civilization' but more like strongholds or fortresses than anything else.. We are swiftly moving into a 'fortress world', see Great Transition by Raskin etc, with the expediency of a soul down a 'greased chute to hell'. This I can see as plain as the nose on my face.

'The great Hari Seldon', see Foundation Trilogy by Issac Asimov, predicted the fall of the Galactic Empire but no one publicly listened to him. The Empire did secretly set up the Second Foundation to guide and 'safety-belt' civilization, but.. There is no guarantee such an organization could/would save ours. As a 'silly aside', in university days, I did try to form such a group because I saw the need. But at that university, at that time, no one else did.

Unfortunately, we humans always do things too late. We put a bandaid on a bullet hole. We give a snack to a starving person. This way of thinking must stop or it will surely be our Doom.

Let me digress to the subject: are you special?

My mother, bless her soul, contends "we're all special". But I don't buy that. If we're all special, then no one is. And I don't buy "some are more special than others" because that implies racism or class-ism which I refuse to subscribe to. There are four possibilities:
A: special and know it
B: special and not know
C: think special but not really
D: don't care
Many of us would like to be D but we are truly A. It is 'unfortunate' that As want to be Ds in much the same way that smart/good people should have children but they usually don't. It is a 'crime of human nature'. Or you could call it a sin - whichever you prefer.

There are too many Cs in the world. If you look inside, they are revolting 'no matter the packaging'. My wife told me the story of a prostitute 'friend' of hers .. She wants to be the star gogo-dancer of Chiangmai, Thailand. I knew her for a brief period a few years ago. I used to call her the 'beautiful monster'. Let me make clear she's not a monster because of her profession or her desire to be a star. That is not why. The reason she's a monster is how she treats her Thai husband. She treats him like a dog. I've seen it in action.

My wife and 'the monster' don't usually associate but they ran into each other at a dance club. And she obviously was compelled to 'lay it all out' for my wife.. After a few days of discussion over the phone, it came to me 'the monster' was after three things:
1. show my wife - she could never have her financial security
2. show how happy she is
3. show what a good person she is
Now this all relates to my wife because in a way, you could say, my wife stole me away from 'the monster' (in reality, I decided against the monster because of how she treated her Thai husband). It was very simple to me. The thing is - it's all a freaking lie. The monster is not happy, the monster is not good .. She may have financial security, but that is ALL she has.

The unfortunate and sad and crazy thing is, the monster is a reflection of our society. All we care about is appearance and financial security. I have argued in other essays that $ is an illusion - it's a figment of our collective imagination. Money isn't real. It's in our hearts - what is real.

My wife knows I love her. All she has to do is close her eyes and think of me and she knows. When she says "you still love her!", she knows it's not true. There was a long time I felt sorry for the monster, but no longer.. The monster rarely enters my thoughts.. What preoccupies my thoughts these days is our dying civilization.

I'm reading a book now called Before the Dawn by N Wade. It's an excellent insight into our origins. To know where we're going, we should know where we've been. There's a diagram on page 15 which illustrates things nicely. Study it; understand it. It does not show one important thing: what was before ape-humans .. I wish I could draw a real branch on that diagram called Neo-humans or something like that. I believe it would be branching off right about now. Very soon, if conditions allow, we will modify our DNA for the better. We will create super-intelligent 'humans' or psychic-'humans' or super-compassionate 'humans' (my vote is for the latter). The reason I put human in quotes is because likely - they won't be recognizable as human (by themselves or psychiatrists). We could call them simply Neo (new). See how addicted to change I myself am! :(

It should be obvious to the reader-aware that I propose to break that addiction now! NOW! Turn off the TV. Turn off the computer. Look into your child's eyes or husband / boyfriend / girlfriend / wife's eyes.. If you cannot see love, then perhaps you are with the wrong person. Perhaps you should be alone right now.. I cannot predict your individual futures. But I can predict our collective path if we 'stay the course'. We are doomed to living hell if we don't change for the better. We are standing at the edge now. We can do one of three things: jump, turn back, or hold hands and walk to a safer place. There is no turning back unless we really lose it and everything is gone. If we jump we all die.

We must all hold hands and walk to a safer place.

love, sg micheal