What did Freddie Mercury sing about…”We want it all – and we want it now….”
So, while I was attending the University of Guelph in the late 1970’s and studying toward a Master’s degree in history – specifically Canadian history – I took quite a number of courses in the politics department sort of for fun. And all the politics courses I took dealt with political philosophy or theory because I’ve always been fascinated by the way the world’s various and sundry political systems work…..even before university, I’d been reading guys like Henry David Thoreau – it’s always been a passion of mine. And without question, the most academically stimulating teacher I had in those days was Professor Fred Vaughn. And I can still remember him telling us way back then that Western society would be the most hedonistic in the history of the planet by the year 2000. He was bang on the money.
The society we currently live in drips of hedonism, where the pursuit of personal pleasure is what drives a lot of what goes on. Look at the way the restaurant and hospitality industries were off the map before the pandemic. As was travel, where people who are flat broke will borrow money to take a cruise or go to a resort in Mexico even without knowing how they will possibly be able to pay the money back. Everybody drives big huge and new SUVs and trucks with no real consideration about whether they’ll even fit into an average parking space. Big screen TVs….fancy, schmanzy cell phones that will pretty well cook dinner for you….what did Freddie Mercury sing about…”We want it all – and we want it now….”
I was listening to this social scientist guy on CBC radio a week ago or so and he was saying that one of the huge problems with the way our society works is that most entrepreneurs and inventor-type people are entirely too hung up on giving people what they “want”, as opposed to what they “need”….Think about that. He was saying that right now we “need” a lot of stuff to help out the environment or to improve some chronic health care conditions or to feed the billions of people who live with chronic hunger. The people living in poverty around the world don’t “need” a better, more improved cell phone, or a car that parks itself or comes to you when you call it. They “need” food, health care and place to live in relative safety and security. And they are getting none of those things right now. They are getting screwed, blued and tattooed by a bizarre socio-economic system that places the health, welfare and security of life well down on its list of Planet Earth priorities. Like do you really want to live like this, people?
I’ve often told my wife that when I finally do expire – well past the expected date – she should put the words, “Dazed and Confused” on my tombstone…..because that is surely how I’ve spent the vast majority of my life – totally dazed and confused that after over 10,000 years of recorded history, we have not yet figured out how to somehow equitably share the resources and wealth of the planet so that all people can live in some semblance of peace and harmony and so that all life – even the beasts of the field and the fishes of the sea – can be held precious – as it should always have been.
You know, these days, there is a whole lot of looking backward in time and being shocked and dismayed at the awful cruelty and barbarism exhibited by humanity throughout its history. The thing is that if you know anything at all about humanity’s recorded history, you should definitely not be shocked or dismayed by anything that is uncovered in the past. After all, this is the planet where the people of one country gassed to death over 6 million human beings because of their religious beliefs – I know it’s not nearly that simple, but you should get my drift. Planet Earth has been a wildly brutal place always. There has never really been a time of peace in this place. It has been almost totally brutality after brutality and there’s really no way to disagree with that assessment.
Doesn’t have to be that way. We have some smart people on the planet who know how things could be done better. But we never seem to listen to them. If we all followed something called the Golden Rule – do unto others as you would have them to unto you – things could be markedly better. We need to get it together people…right here, right now. As the planet gets more crowded and more congested and we’re more and more in each other’s faces, we need to figure it out. Time is running out – and quickly.