Society presses on. Lead by a few nations with technological solutions to problems we never had before, the rest of the world tags along like a pooped-out bulldog on a jogger's leash. In the name of progress, we have civilization, technology, human rights and democracy. What has it gotten us? We're unhappy, stressed out, bored and complicated. We fight for our rights, but we are never satisfied. We invent things to simplify our lives so that we have more room to complicate them. We create complex social structures that we struggle our whole lives to navigate. Humans: forever chasing the carrot that we hold before ourselves.
Informed of a study which revealed that women are more unhappy now than before the feminist movement, I chuckled. No, this has nothing to do with my misogynistic streak. It is simply a small example of how badly we understand happiness. 40 years ago, we thought happiness was freedom, equality and respect. Now, we stand here in a society where women are capable of competing for the highest offices in the world. We've got life and liberty, but we seem to have lost sight of the pursuit of happiness.
The other day, I was talking with a friend about the existence of villages. From what I have seen, villages are almost non-existent in the USA, with the exception of a handful of states. The reason for this is because society is overdeveloped in this part of the world that even in the most rural of areas, townships have been established to govern lands and people. Now, shift your focus to Europe, where villages are much more common. It isn't that civilization hasn't reached them yet, it is simply because formal sovereign government isn't necessary. Many villages are governed by nearby towns, but aren't considered town proper. Do villagers who find work in cities ditch their homes for the bright lights and decent wages? No, they go back home, where life is simple and straightforward.
My roommate has a friend who she went to school with for computer animation who now lives on a hillside in Thailand, raising goats. He could be making 6 figures right now working for some video game or movie production company like most of his classmates are doing now. Instead, he's enjoying his life with a beard like Jesus and his finest goat pals. When you look at how hard you work every day and how unhappy you can be, you wonder why all of this excessive civilization is even necessary.
Technology is just as funny as civilization. If you think of all the technology involved in getting a stick of butter to your fridge, as opposed to churning it yourself, you may become grateful because it saved you so much time and effort. Well guess what, all that time you saved can now be spent on another element: the bread. No worries. Instead of growing the grain, harvesting it, mixing the ingredients and throwing it in the oven, you can pick it up at the store with the butter. That frees up even more of your time and by god, you're going to fill it. My point is that technology may simplify things for us, but we fill the time we saved with even more things. Without technology, our days are simple, consisting of a few basic elements. With technology, our lives become universes of happenstance and appliance.
Do we need everything we have? What makes us submit to the rat race? Our jobs devour our days while we spend our nights in our filing cabinet apartments. We masturbate to dull the monotony. We vacation to admire the lives we don't have the courage to lead. We push forward, letting our smart phones and net books fill the voids we created for them to fit inside. We fight hard to have a say, and when the podium is finally ours, we've forgotten why we fought in the first place. So why bother?
Its easier to do what is expected than not.
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