Sunday, March 18, 2007
Location: Piikani Reservation, Alberta

Last night Ken, Shar and I went to see that new movie 300 in Lethbridge. On the way to the film Ken and Shar made a few stops for some big city supplies that aren’t available in small town Pincher Creek. While they were running errands I sat in the car reading a book on the industrial revolution.

What I found interesting is how quickly things can change in our world. When the industrial revolution began, almost overnight people had to change their way of life. People from rural areas moved to cities in search of work. Small cottage industries that had been around for centuries were put out of business by large factories and industrial machinery. People who had relocated to cities were forced to work long hours at the mercy of the big business owners. Women and children also worked the machines that enabled industry growth. People, under economic pressure had been forced to exchange a simple slow-paced life out on the land for a fast and technologically complex life often living in crowded industrial city slums.

We’ve come a long way since then. Or have we? We’ve now built what seems to be a solid industrial machine, and as a result, our lives are seemingly good, comfortable and very stable. As long as we keep feeding the machine, it grows, and although we rarely question where it’s all going, growth is recognized as a very good thing.

This giant economic machine we’ve built is managed by hundreds of thousands of people all expert at making sure things go according to plan. But what is the plan? In the end I wonder if the machine’s survival has become our sole human purpose, and what lengths are we willing to go to ensure it lives on? Environmental destruction, human exploitation, global warming, war, terror, increasingly large gaps between the rich and the poor, are these some of the costs?

Or maybe it’s not about supporting an unsustainable machine, but instead about making adjustments to the mechanism to make it more sustainable and sane. Maybe we’re just in a transition phase, and maybe we can actually modify the model however we wish. To be honest I’m pretty skeptical, since I feel that just as throughout the history of human civilization, we have again found ourselves in a situation where the few are making self-serving decisions that are seriously impacting the lives of many. Throughout history this has always led to an eventual collapse. I don’t know if that’s where we’re headed, but I honestly feel that much of our civilization’s future is frankly out of our hands. It’s in the hands of big business and big government, the latter often heavily influenced by the former. Maybe the machine has become a monster, and maybe we're simply unable to stop feeding it, for fear of what it may do to us.

Or maybe most of humanity isn't even thinking about these things.

peace,
d

PS. This was supposed to be a blog on the movie 300. The film is pretty ultra-violent, and I always find it strange to see all these comfortable people, who have never known war, to be crowded into movie theatres thirsting after ultra-violent acts. I was once told by one of my professors that films often foreshadow the future. I hope it's not the case here. In that movie theatre seeing the audience's hunger for death and destruction, the old saying came to mind, be careful what you wish for. Or somehow, be careful, if you look for it, you may just find it.