The Rise and Fall of Mankind: We are Dooming Ourselves

"Go to college", they say. "You don't want to end up like your poor uncle. He became a laborer, and will never have the kind of money we will."

Assume that you like your "poor uncle". Sure he has made some wrong decisions. But you've always liked him, whether or not he's done well for himself financially. You look at him, and then you look at the big-shot politician directing the traffic of the "successful" peoples' thoughts. Your uncle has been working hard; his body shows signs of wear and tear, but he is strong, eats well, has few health problems, besides, of course, the occasional broken toe from dropping something heavy. He's been nothing but nice to you. He's sympathetic.

You look at that politician: gut sagging over a 300 dollar suit that he's banking on you to like. He has diabetes, is clinically obese, couldn't do a pull-up to save his life, takes five pills every morning to take care of his erectile dysfunction, restlessness, sleeplessness, hyperactivity, depression, on top of a multivitamin, and is constantly talking about how he needs to "work on his abs".

Abs? What abs? "Gut", you mean, sir. This politician is looked upon like a success, like he has made something of himself. He has a large house, even though he's never home. He has a lovely, loyal wife - who just happens to be cheating on him with his running mate. He doesn't know it yet.

This political man doesn't know it, yet, too, but he will die tomorrow of a heart attack.
"A donut never killed anyone," he said, right before the sloppy, acesulfame-K ridden cream filling dribbled down his bare, flabby chest as he eats breakfast over his marble-lined kitchen counter, before he slaps on his monkey-suit and heads of to the campaign trail.

He's so proud of his success. He stews in it.

A donut never killed anyone.

This is the American Condition, as I have come to call it. And it's vaguely Orwellian: ignorance is bliss, conformity is strength, and consumerism, capitalism, and the looking down upon those who don't spend 12 hours a day behind a desk, having to sit a foot back from the computer screen - not because of their farsightedness and cataract and fading vision, no; because their layer of "protective padding" is in the way (I believe that's an appropriately American euphemism.).

We have become lazy. We wait for others to do our work, and when they do it, we step on them on the way to the realization of our own dreams, disregarding them, breaking them where they stand, never imagining that that was our first step on the way to the damnation-on-earth of our own species.

Capitalism, outsourcing, consumerism, conformity: the ideals that seem to embody an overwhelming majority here in the great US of A. We like to think that if we can get up high enough, we can stop having to bother with physical tasks, like, say, walking. Or going out to get groceries. Or chewing our own food.

That last one was an exaggeration...for the most part.

It's all true: We are becoming continually lazier and more lax, and we are slipping because of it. 2/3 of America is obese. Most everyone has no idea how to do a pushup, and more than plenty of the people that I've seen jiggle when they run, and become red in the face and begin dry heaving after not even an eighth of a mile.

It's a shame, isn't it?

Our long-dead ancestors were proud warriors, fighting off wild animals and each other to protect their mates, their children, and their food. They migrated with the seasons, on foot (Yes. Automobiles hadn't even been thought of yet.), hunting what they could kill, and eating what they could hunt. And they didn't complain. The complainers, the whiners, those who couldn't survive and couldn't adapt, all died. The gradual and progressive culling of our species made us into what we are: the dominant species on the planet.

My fear is that we are slipping and about to plummet from the pedestal that we as a species have worked for thousands of years before the beginning of recorded history to step up upon.

We take the easy way out, now. If we can, we probably will. If we don't have to lift something, we won't. If we can go to McDonalds and get something, we'd rather do that than cook it ourselves. Instead of hunting for something with a knife and a rock (just kidding; but you catch my drift.), we started using guns and knives; now, we don't even have to go look for the animals we kill.
We have domesticated them, encaged them, desecrated them. They starve and suffer so we can have the chance to thrive and succeed. The only problem with this little model is that we aren't thriving, and we aren't succeeding. Our progress has come to a grinding halt - in terms of evolution that is.
Technology gives us the opportunity to grow lazier and weaker and dumber.

There are a frighteningly large lot of people who, when asked, "Would you like to live in a computer simulation, like the Matrix, except where everything you want is given to you?"
answer yes.

And the nature of man is revealed in his image of Paradise: Heaven, some say, is where everything you could ever want is given to you. Handed to you on a silver platter.

With the advent of man's realization that he could become his own false, self-gratifying idol, we seem to be seeking kingdom-come. And our kingdom is one of greasy frenchfries, foods that with a life expectancy greater than any three average humans combined, and more automation now than ever before.

Nietzsche once said, "Science is the enemy of God."

I say, now, "Technology is the enemy of Man."