Root Causes
I had dinner with friends the other day and the main topic of conversation was happiness. I think we hit upon the main reasons for the increasing lack of happiness in our society...
The first one is the economic and marketing machine that has evolved over the past several decades to ENSLAVE people around the world! This may sound like an overstatement, but I assure you that it is not.
The key aims of this economic and marketing machine are to: 1) brainwash people into CONSUMING ever more goods and services so that global economic growth continues unabated, and 2) encourage people into using more and more CREDIT so that they get into DEBT and spend the rest of their lives servicing this debt (this is the enslavement aspect of it).
The first aim is accomplished through the use of media (for example, film and television) to inject wants and desires into our collective psyche. To aid in this goal, the machine employs sexual imagery (after all, sex sells!) and the glamorization of wealth and power. Our lust for lotteries is a natural offshoot of this phenomenon. Our obsessive pursuit of wealth is the fallout.
The second aim is merely an extension of the historical practice of indentured servitude. In olden days, if you were in debt and couldn’t pay it off, you had to work it off. Today, the machine strings you along indefinitely with high interest rates and continuing credit use (see aim #1) that force you to work and work and work, just to discharge the interest payments on your debt principal. The machine does NOT want you to catch up and discharge the debt fully. Thus, they have you in their grip forever, milking you incessantly, sucking the lifeblood out of you!
All of this is to say that the machine undermines our ability to achieve true well-being.
The second reason is URBANIZATION. With more and more people migrating to large urban centres, the subsequent loss of “community values” serves to isolate us and take away our spiritual base. People living in big cities just DON’T CARE about their neighbours. There is no sense of community. Households look inward for their emotional sustenance.
So again, we are deprived of the foundation for finding real happiness in our lives.
But even if we were not DISTRACTED and DIVERTED from our search for genuine happiness by economic enslavement and urbanization, the question remains: What is it that we seek to fulfil in order to be happy?
Ultimately, I believe, it is to relieve the empty void that we feel within ourselves. So it really boils down to the age-old and ageless question of spirituality...
Which, of course, has no final answer. :-(
The first one is the economic and marketing machine that has evolved over the past several decades to ENSLAVE people around the world! This may sound like an overstatement, but I assure you that it is not.
The key aims of this economic and marketing machine are to: 1) brainwash people into CONSUMING ever more goods and services so that global economic growth continues unabated, and 2) encourage people into using more and more CREDIT so that they get into DEBT and spend the rest of their lives servicing this debt (this is the enslavement aspect of it).
The first aim is accomplished through the use of media (for example, film and television) to inject wants and desires into our collective psyche. To aid in this goal, the machine employs sexual imagery (after all, sex sells!) and the glamorization of wealth and power. Our lust for lotteries is a natural offshoot of this phenomenon. Our obsessive pursuit of wealth is the fallout.
The second aim is merely an extension of the historical practice of indentured servitude. In olden days, if you were in debt and couldn’t pay it off, you had to work it off. Today, the machine strings you along indefinitely with high interest rates and continuing credit use (see aim #1) that force you to work and work and work, just to discharge the interest payments on your debt principal. The machine does NOT want you to catch up and discharge the debt fully. Thus, they have you in their grip forever, milking you incessantly, sucking the lifeblood out of you!
All of this is to say that the machine undermines our ability to achieve true well-being.
The second reason is URBANIZATION. With more and more people migrating to large urban centres, the subsequent loss of “community values” serves to isolate us and take away our spiritual base. People living in big cities just DON’T CARE about their neighbours. There is no sense of community. Households look inward for their emotional sustenance.
So again, we are deprived of the foundation for finding real happiness in our lives.
But even if we were not DISTRACTED and DIVERTED from our search for genuine happiness by economic enslavement and urbanization, the question remains: What is it that we seek to fulfil in order to be happy?
Ultimately, I believe, it is to relieve the empty void that we feel within ourselves. So it really boils down to the age-old and ageless question of spirituality...
Which, of course, has no final answer. :-(
posted by Darkest Knight | 11:12 AM
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