FREE BABY BOTTLES AND BOTTLED UP FREEDOMS
I was watching a twenty-two month old scream through tears tonight as he protested graduation from his bottle. As a parent you run through the ritual. Try to be nice, try to be mean without laughing, pretend to ignore while you secretly take a video on your iPhone, actually ignore, start to get upset, almost lose your mind, and finally give him back the bottle. It seems hopeless to fight when you imagine the most advanced mindset that he is capable of. The kid knows what he wants, doesn’t understand why he can’t have it, and causes a riot until he gets his way. There is no rational reasoning with him at any point in this process.
So as the performance unfolds I start thinking about one question in particular which won’t leave me alone. What if we still acted this way as adults? What if one day we just refused to sell our labor to an employer because we were unhappy with the working conditions? What if we decided to stop buying a cleaning product that was considered a hazard to the consumer’s health? What would happen if we stopped everything we were doing in our lives to march around the streets waving a sign and…well…you see what I’m getting at? It seems as though some of us still have a little infancy in us. I’m here to say that’s a good thing.
The legitimacy of the Occupy movement being in question, I was still impressed by the size, speed, and worldwide coordination of the initial phase of those protests. There were no leaders, no demands, and no platform. After a couple months there weren’t any people. As of today the movement is on life support after a slow decline caused by a lack of focus. And yet when you look at those first few days it’s hard to fight the argument that people were just ready. Ready for any excuse to get pissed off. Ready to start throwing a tantrum in unison with millions of others who feel that the deck is stacked against them. Ready to shed the chains of debt and stop living in fear of creditors and late payments. Ready to recalibrate our priorities to assist in fulfilling the purpose of what a human life is truly capable of. It was a flash of brilliance that made me smile. Then something else happened. They told us not to worry. They told us not to cry. They just calmly turned on the printing press and gave us back our bottle.
Now the economy is revving back in the red again. The Dow Jones set record highs on almost half the days the market was open this month. The S&P 500 is about to set an all-time mark. The unemployment number that they give us is as low as it’s been since the collapse. Housing prices have almost rebounded to pre-crisis levels. Everything seems to be back to normal and at first glance it truly is. The issue that needs to be addressed is the definition of the word normal.
If normal is being able to take your family out to dinner a couple times a week without any strain, then we are returning to normalcy. If normal is being able to afford Netflix without worrying where that $10 a month is coming from, then we are returning to normalcy. If normal is having a couple hundred dollars left over each month and being able to justify another car payment on an already overextended credit score, then we are returning to normalcy. It’s because of these trends that I think it’s simple for economists to make the same predictions they were making in 2006 without blinking. Nothing has changed except that the RPM’s are raging at a much higher rate and this time we are truly running out of road.
So for now we have returned to our old docile state of mind. The mindset that allows us to have our bottle now at the incredible expense of future bottles. A perspective that has us content in wasting our time staring at computer screens or being a customer service punching bag instead of teaching our children how to read or learning how to grow our own food. The same state of mind that allows us to pretend that the map they’ve given us doesn’t lead right off a cliff. No worries though. The good news is that every little thing is gonna be alright. I know that some people are losing their minds with the world’s fate hanging in the balance and I can understand that what is likely going to happen will look like the end of the world. That being said I’d like to offer a different perspective.
I believe that this is just the next step in evolution. I think once again technology will have an opportunity to deliver us into the next age of our species like it has done time and time again. Imagine the technology just waiting to revolutionize transportation, communication, horticulture, medicine, energy production, and any other advancement that has been hindered thus far by those that stand to lose from progress. It’s almost limitless.
So don’t worry about what’s coming. Look forward to the opportunity we’ll be given to rebuild. Think of all the disrepair in our social services that we can correct by decentralization and local accountability. Think about reclaiming our food supply and returning a balance to our environment by eliminating the need for factory farming. Think about reintroducing thousand year old social norms of spending the majority of time with our families and friends while enjoying the simpler things in life. What do I think about? I like to think about how we’re soon to be given back the single most valuable asset in the history of mankind. Time. I for one am excited.
A QUESTIONABLE THOUGHT PROCESS 