Grumbling about Crumbling

Every now and then I lapse into a crotchety old man line of thinking that goes something like, "I can't believe how much things have changed in my lifetime.  At the rate we're going our country is going to be history." Well, it occurred to me recently that really--a lot has already changed in our country in a short amount of time.  I was trying to think of different times of our past when something important in our history was taking place.  Then I decided that all of our country's history had things that were important taking place in it.  Our country seems to be in a constant state of flux--continually trying to "find" itself.  Or change itself.  Or reinvent some facet of itself.  We're never satisfied.

As odd as it sounds when I type it, I have already been alive for a pretty good chunk of time (percentage-wise) of the total of the age of the U.S.  For example, I've been alive during terms of 11 of our presidents.  Another interesting way of looking at things is if you break the country into 50-year blocks.  Imagine how much change has taken place in any single one of those 50-year blocks.  Maybe things changed a lot slower early on in the history of our country--maybe not--but it seems that the more people, industry, technology, media--the more anything you add into the mix--the faster the rate of acceleration of change.  Basically, the more ammo we have, the greater the chance that we're going to use it to affect our lives.  Or shoot ourselves in the foot.

When did people start to grow concerned with how fast things were growing and changing in their new country?  50 years into it?  100 years? 150 years?  Given that practically everyone that came to this country came from places much worse off they may not have felt that way at all--who knows.  I wonder sometimes.  I'm sure there must have been some kind of roller-coaster ride going on ever since we founded (stole?) this country in the first place.  You know--good times, bad times, growth times, war times.  Partying & prosperity, drought and famine.  I think we're just more connected with everything that is going on nowadays.

That may or may not be a good thing.

I get the impression now that our country has changed too fast and it has contributed to an increased amount of unrest.  People seem to have stopped trying to figure out what they need to do to grow as a person or what they need to do to succeed in life.  People seem to be focusing less and less on personal growth and more and more on holding their hands out.  Our priorities seem to have shifted a lot.  Do people really need to pay upwards of $100 a month for a phone?  Of course, they're not phones any more--now they're complete portable lifestyle assistants.  Still, society has seemingly forced that expense onto people that can't necessarily afford it.  They can't afford them and yet they still have them.  People that can't afford cars and yet they still have them.  They can't afford insurance for their cars and yet they still drive them.  They can't afford the cable bills they pay every month for their television and movies, but yet they can't live without them. It's a 'keeping up with the Joneses' kind of thing.  These days it's not about what you've accomplished in life--It's about how good you look while you're alive.  Borrow money you can't pay back so you can put that $3000 set of wheels on your already-financed car.  You'll look good.  If you can't pay for all of it just declare bankruptcy and start over.

In some cases, the companies have priced us into our corner of spending our money on things we don't need.  Buy "eliminating support" for a tried & true technology or product, they force people to have to upgrade to continue using the product.  Remember analog?  All cell phones used to be analog.  But if we wanted to continue using our cell phones (which itself was a massive money spree) we had to dump our perfectly-operating phones and upgrade to digital versions.  Same with televisions.  All television signals used to be analog, but they forced us to upgrade our televisions even though they worked fine.  Don't get me wrong--all of these things came with new features and things, but to force the whole country to upgrade was ridiculous.  Lots of people couldn't afford those upgrades but had to do them if they wanted to stay in the mainstream.

Lots of our recent behavioral changes are a direct result of the computers we have all adopted.  You hardly ever see anyone physically look for a job any more.  If there's not one listed on the computer, it's not there.  No job exists.  Considering that hardly 25 years ago you had to actually convince someone that a computer was a useful item to own.

So I wonder about our direction.  Are we on a path of self-destruction?