Here we all are, sitting here on our timeline. Somewhere around the early part of the 21st century, in western calendar terms, or the 4,500,000th millennium in planetary terms. What are we all doing? No, I don't mean to ask that question in practical terms, but in terms of a civilisation. Where are we going? What is the final objective? This isn't a "meaning of life" question, rather a "meaning of society".
The majority of the developed world's population is either engaged in, or aspires to, the accumulation of wealth. Either for themselves or for somebody else. We get up in the morning, we go off to work, we come home after having done our bit, and spending money on things we need and things we don't, and the world keeps on turning. The people of the world seem to have accepted this as the right way to live, on the assumption that if we keep doing it, eventually everyone will benefit. Because the mantra goes that as the capitalist economy spreads across nations, their people are lifted out of poverty, and become consumers. I guess that I have accepted the logic in that, without ever really thinking it through deeply enough. In fact, I've swallowed it pretty much because I couldn't imagine the world being different to that. And I've got to a certain point in assessing it as a working model, and I've accepted it as something that works, and that fits in with "human nature". In any case, the alternative as practised in the Soviet Union didn't seem to work in the end, and that seemed to prove it to me that we are on the right track..
Now, I haven't had a great grounding in all things philosophical from an educational viewpoint. Neither have I studied politics nor sociology to any great degree.So in pursuit of finding a way forward on this track, I googled "the purpose of society" and I found this...
"The evidence of society's current failure is in the fact that people must work 60+ hours a week to make ends meet. Is that living? Is that progress? What a life! You get to miss out on your children being raised and only travel every other year for one week while you spend the rest of your life producing some junk that no one even needs, they just think they want it. High crime is more evidence of the failures of society's current direction. People would not commit crimes if their lives were actually being improved by society. More jails and more laws are not the answer, a better society is the answer! Maybe higher taxes and forcing people into hybrid cars is the answer to improving society, but I don't think so. Maybe people just need better education? Then again, maybe they just need to have time to live rather than slave away for some mysterious concept called "progress"? Maybe instead of making better cell phones we should be producing food for the hungry or building up their societies so they can have a better life? How good do our cell phones need to be? When do we take a pause in our technological progress to lift the very people supporting the system up out of their condition? When both parents have to work now just to feed a family, we are not progressing. When more people are working less, but living better, then we are progressing." 1
...and I realised that I agreed with it 100%.
Now, none of this is new, so I don't know what it is I'm getting excited about. But something inside me is very excited, a switch was thrown somewhere. Something happened to me that doesn't feel as if it can unhappen.
Let me just go back to that paragraph again. What I found different between that and the vast majority of rhetoric on the topic of a better society is that there are actually some ideas about how things could be better. Most of the time, all you find are negatives, people ranting about what is wrong, there are no positives ideas to take you in the right direction.
So what do I do now? Keep on thinking about it, I guess. This is probably the moment in my life when I should drop everything to read Das Kapital, but I don't think I have the time right now, so I'm going to have to keep that for later...
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