Every generation always thinks the next generation is worse. They look at kids and lament their lack of discipline, hairstyles, or loose morality. Teens in the 50's who raced cars and made out on hilltops were scandalous to their parents and grandparents. Of course it was pretty tame stuff compared to what goes on today with teens and the internet and cell phones. We hear about global wamring but then there are other scientists who say it's just a natural cycle and we don't really need to be worried. Our leaders tell us that the inflation, economic downturn, and social instability people are feeling right now can all be fixed and the the U.S. will remain the powerful world leader it has been all my life.
I'm not so sure. As I look around, I see things happening that I have never before seen in my 42 years on this planet. Twice this weekend I saw stories about people in Haiti eating "dirt cookies." For those who haven't heard, Haiti is in the middle of an incredible problem with food, mainly that inflation has priced food out of the reach of many of the citizens. So to stave off hunger, many people are making, selling, and eating dirt cookies. These are literally cookies made with salt, a bit of cheap vegatable shortening, and dirt. Yes, actual dirt from the ground. It is 2008 and people are eating dirt to try to survive. Haiti is a desperately poor country that's been poor as long as I can remember but in my entire life I've never heard that its people had to resort to eating dirt. As bad as poverty is in many African nations, I have not heard reports of people making cookies from dirt.
To me, this is deeply disturbing. The older I get, the more disturbed I am by these things. The world has changed significantly, mainly as a result of technology. The internet and broadband connections have enabled commerce in places where it would have been unthinkable 20 years ago. One of the main engines driving the economic boom in India is the availability of such technology that allows Indian companies to setup warehouses for technical support, medical billing, and large scale document indexing.
But while this has all been good, for a minority of people, it seems like much of the world's population is barely getting by. Unemployment routinely hovers at double-digits in Europe. The economic hardships in former Soviet countries have helped those people to turn their backs on democracy and embrace more nationalistic governments again. In the U.S., the middle class continues to lose ground and kids in college today for the first time are facing a future where they may be worse off financially than their parents. In Haiti, Egypt, and other nations, there are food riots going on. In Haiti, people are eating dirt.
Some of these things will change. America will emerge from the subprime mortgage mess. We'll even find a way out of Iraq. But many of the things that are happening in the world are things I have never seen before in my lifetime and I really believe that profound social and economic changes are taking place. The Pope was visiting the U.S. this past week. 60,000 people attended a mass he served in New York. People sold all sorts of bric-a-brac with the Pope's face on it. Catholics talked about how much his visit inspired them and reaffirmed their faith. Meanwhile, people in Haiti were eating dirt. Humans are so full of hollow praise for themselves but when anyone in the world is eating dirt we are failing as a species.
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You stole my blog idea, Doc. Front page of the Pee Dee's Sunday Forum pages. There they are, the mud cookies.
It was about 6 a.m. when I saw that photo. I could not get that story, the image of the dirt cookies out of my mind all day. People are driving their doggie and two small children around in SUVs that look like armored vehicles just to go to baseball practice, while in other parts of the world, kids won't even live long enough to see a baseball.
Yesterday the lunch I had was practically a gourmet meal, prepared by a whole foods market for EarthFest volunteers. I had this delicious barley salad with currants in it, and some beautiful noodles with fried tofu. And I could barely eat it because the picture of the bowl with the dirt cookies was all I could see.
I'm glad the PD ran that story while the Poop was getting all that damn coverage. I hope that you weren't the only person to observe the disconnect.
I actually saw the dirt cookie story on TV last week before the PD article. They showed people making and selling these things as well as people eating them. Whenever I write something like this I feel a little weird, as if I'm becoming the middle-aged guy who suddenly has a social conscience. But I really do think things are getting worse and that, for a lot of reasons, they are not going to bounce back and be the same ever again. I'm not sure what to do about it but on a daily basis I'm starting to feel more and more uncomfortable.
I get your point with this. The older I get, the more all of these things bother me, as well. And yeah, it does seem worse than ever in so many ways. However, I'm wondering a few things.
Are the feelings we are having part of getting older? Is this natural, no matter how good or bad the situation? I'm guessing it is. So that does explain some of it.
But is the situation worse? I wonder. Obviously, there is "more" of this sadness and injustice occurring now than ever - the world is bigger and contains more people. That's one reason.
Another factor is the amount of information we can now receive on a daily basis, via the Internet, the media, etc. When we were younger, we lived in ignorant bliss. Sure, we had the media, but it was a far more limited picture of reality that was presented to us.
The world today saddens me, but I think it is a natural progression from the world we had as kids. It's just that there are more people and they are experiencing more pain. And, we are learning about more of it at a much faster rate.
That doesn't negate just how terrible things are, and how sad it all is. Things can really bring you down if you are aware. But I just think our generation is doomed to feel reality in a way the previous generations haven't had the opportunity to. It's overwhelmingly sad to get more and more info on just how unfair a place the world can be.
Ignorance is bliss.
MBB - I certainly agree with respect to the amount of information we have. Obviously there have always been poor people but you're right that we never had as much access, certainly immediate access, to information as we have now.
I also agree with the age part. There's the old expression that young liberals grow up to be old conservatives and I think there's some really truth to it.
All that being said, I do think there are some fundamental shifts going on that are changing the world. In other words, it's not just a middle-aged guy thinking it's worse now than we were kids.
For one, the whole global connectivity that allows us to get the immediate info you talk about has changed world economies. The subprime mortgage mess we're in now would not have been a world crisis 30 years ago. It would have been contained largely to US banks and investors. But everything is now so interconnected that a hiccup anywhere in the world causes a seizure somewhere else.
The other fundamental shift I see is that broadband has revolutionized the marketplace. Back when you and I were kids, the idea of tech support or medical billing being done in India was simply not feasible. But because most of the newest, best paying jobs in our economy are IT based and IT can now be done anywhere in the world, the US simply can't dominate the world stage like it used to.
My nephews and your niece belong to the first generation of Americans whose real income is like to be less than that of their parents (well, maybe not my nephews). This is a dramatic shift that will potential require lifestyle changes people may find hard to make.
I just think the US is in a period of decline and while some of my feeling may be due to getting older, I think there's a lot of real data to back it up. We all know that manufacturing jobs, the backbone of the middle class for many years, are gone and never returning. You simply can't make money paying US workers $20 an hour to do something people in China to for $1 an hour.
Supposedly, high tech was going to be our savior when we lost the manufacturing. The problem is that high tech jobs don't have to be located in the US either. And US workers aren't well trained for those jobs. Our kids grow up with computers but are far below Europe and Asia in math and science proficiency. So companies can get better educated and cheaper employees overseas and communicate with them instantly via email, IM, network virtualized, and WAN acceleration.
What the US is good at is buying things and selling fast food. There's not one other major economic engine in which we remain the world leader. This was not ture when you and I were kids and I think it will continue to contribute to the decline of our economy and thus our society.
Yesterday on the news they said that Sam's Club and Costco were starting to ration rice due to concerns about supply and pricing. You know the psychology of people. Remember Y2K? You start rationing rice and next thing you know, everyone is trying to "stock up," people start fighting each other, and a non-issue becomes a serious issue.
I'm not saying I'm completely doom and gloom. I'm not Ted Turner saying we're going to be cannibals in few years. But I do think that technology has made the world a smaller place and while that's been beneficial in many ways, it's harmful to a big slow moving economy like ours when some kid in Bangledesh can set up a website that can compete with major US companies. I'm not sure that US companies or citizens will be comfortable having to adapt to a world where we're not always #1.
Yeah, I get what you're saying. Things have changed and the nature of the problems have changed. In some ways, things are much worse.
I guess what I am saying is that I view this as a continuum. I see a continual line of hate and fear and evil and disregard that has always existed in the world. I think that, at any given moment, it has a certain potential to grow and strengthen.
The immediacy of today's world has simply opened up new avenues for this virus of cold indifference to spread. Where you see something possibly "new" in nature, I see the same old thing given new legs.
I definitely agree that the US is in a period of decline. The mess with the housing market, the soaring cost of gas, etc, etc, etc. Things here are just getting worse, and not looking to improve anytime soon; even if that savior Obama takes over the White House.
Nonetheless, it only seems "different" because we are coming from that privileged viewpoint of the happy American kid. We knew what it could be like when it was all going good. Now it's different.
But different for us, is the same old thing in other countries. And, as things "even out" in a sense between the countries, things will improve in some countries while they get worse in others. To me, this isn't about things being different as much as it is just being in a natural state of flux.
The US was riding high, and now it's in shit shape. It may recover, it may not. Eventually, I do think that the world will have to begin to blend economies, etc, in order for the human race to survive. The Internet is forcing the issue in many ways.
That said, the age-old fears and silly national pride thing, along with religious and racial hatred, will probably doom the whole thing to hell.
After being "human" for 43 years and coming to understand just how self-centered of a species we can be, I can't say I mind. Maybe the insects will do a better job at running the planet.
:-)
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