I’m beginning to have a growing fear of the way modern industrial society is heading.  The more and more I see of the way society is dealing with people the more and more I become scared that it is spiralling out of control.  In today’s society it is becoming more and more apparent that the only goal one should have is to make money.  It doesn’t really matter how you make it, it just matters that you make it, and for those that feel money isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be, there is no escape.  Society these days effectively screams “Money, money, money!” and this pursuit of money has successfully driven a wedge between family life often meaning that both parents need to work in order to make enough money and kids are finding it harder to connect with their parents.

With money comes the technology to be able to keep in touch without actually you know…  having to keep in touch.  This lends us the false feeling that we are being social, yet more and more of us are using this as a means to retreat from society.  At the same time it gives others the means to sell more stuff we don’t need.  It’s this stuff that makes companies money, and they need to sell it to you to make their shareholders happy.  These shareholders are people that have done nothing but provide money to a company so that they can in turn make money.  It takes money to make money, and more and more of the worlds money is flowing up the money chain, whilst more and more people fall out the bottom.  These people who fall out the bottom are useless to the cycle as they cannot contribute to the materialistic, stuff generating world we currently live in.

Whilst money itself isn’t the cause of the problem, I believe the fact that more and more laws and law precedents are applied each year that restrict everything down to a financial base is.  Money is becoming the only legal solution to any issue, if you don’t have money, you don’t have a chance in today’s society.  Not only is money becoming the only way to deal with society, it’s become more and more an acceptable means of righting ones wrongs.  This leads to the fact that businesses these days are even weighing up their risks with potential profits and sometimes choosing to continue with the risk rather than putting more money into development.  More laws directing monetary settlements, and monetary settlements themselves seeming to be the only way to a satisfactory end, meaning that there is even more of a need for money.

The ever increasing need to have money to make money means that the majority of society are only ever going to be struggling to survive whilst those with money will continue to succeed slowly gathering up all of the worlds resources until there are only a few large companies controlling all of us.  No matter how much Governments try and legislate against it, today’s society is in a slow spiralling decline to an industrial society where we are all just numbers, and a small group of people will be controlling every aspect of our lives.  I challenge those of you with the means of researching the rise of the mega-companies to chart it’s inevitable end.  The only hope I have for society is that the end of the Mayan Calendar in 2012 brings with it a disaster of such proportions that society is given a chance to start again.

Am I a nutter to believe this?  Possibly.  All I know is that I am extremely unhappy in today’s society and that I do hope for some major change that will stop society continuing slowly on this seemingly harmless yet oh so dangerous course.

I recently came to the conclusion that I spend too much time using so called Social Networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and even friends personal blogs for the purpose of keeping in touch with what friends and family are up to.  “So What?” I hear you say, that’s what they are meant to be used for right?  But what about actually keeping in touch?  You know…  Picking up the phone and having a conversation, or arranging time to meet face to face and enjoy peoples company?  See…  I’m the sort of person that easily falls into the habit of not staying in touch with people, especially if I can see that their lives are moving ahead OK.  Facebook enables that continued contact without it actually being a contact at all.  Sure, it also allows us to let a broad range of friends and people know what’s going on in our lives without having to you know…  be social.  But for some of us this just allows further separation from those “friends” who we may or may not choose to directly interact with.

The truth is there are a large number of uses for Facebook, and we all use various aspects of it each day.  Sometimes we use it to keep our friends informed of what we are up to, sometimes it’s used for advertising and sometimes it’s used to invite friends closer, in an effort to get people socialising more.  It all really comes down to how you yourself use it.  Yes, it is just a tool, but a tool that has so many uses that sometimes it can harm friendships as well as help them.

For me, facebook seems to enable me to become more of a hermit, more of someone who doesn’t get out, and doesn’t feel the need to get out as I seem to have all the friends I need on fthere.  But then, over the years the Internet has done that for me in various other technologies as well, starting with IRC which was the initial Internet addiction.  Yes, I have a problem but it’s one that I seem unable to beat as society keeps leading me back to it.  Sure, ultimately it’s me who has the final say in the end and me who keeps listening, knowing I have a problem but still returning…