I have been doing a lot of thinking about then and now. The time span between then and now really doesn't have to be that big to see drastic differences. Modern technology alone is hard to keep up with. Twenty years ago not everyone had a home computer, now your phone is one. Not that long ago your phone was attached by a cord. Not that long ago, I didn't know every move a friend made. Now they post it on walls for the world to read.
The thing is, something has gone wrong. I grew up watching the Jetsons and other science fiction like many of my generation. This is not how it was supposed to turn out. I remember watching people placing a little pill on a plate, putting it in a box, pushing a button and voila you had a steaming hot delicious meal. Now it is cheap microwave meals. You put in a box push a button and tada you have a steaming hot mess of stuff my dog wouldn't eat. The list of chemicals and preservatives out number the real food stuff in there.
Communication was push a button on your wristwatch and poof there is your friend all smiling and happy. Now it’s video messaging from your phone or texting and people walking around like zombies staring at their phones.
Robots were running around helping humans building and cleaning. Everyone had all this free time to do fun stuff and enjoy themselves. Now we have robots working on assembly lines making stuff. They are even putting kiosk in fast food restaurants to replace people taking your order and people out of work wishing they had a job. No money to do those happy things.
If you go back even further you see a family sailing to a new country to make a life for themselves. They had to find some land build a home, grow their food, farm the land, hunt and fish and garden. Sure times were hard but they did it and lots of them flourished.
Somewhere along the way a lot of the things that were supposed to make life better, just don’t. Those things took over their lives. People have lost sight of the basics. You don’t have to gather water or food or build your home. You don’t have to learn to fix things. Everything is disposable- so much so people treat other people as disposable. Got a problem with someone, unfriend them. Hell ten years ago that wasn't even a thing “unfriending”.
Now we throw away everything that no longer works or serves its purpose even people. People have lost value. No one fixes things, no one works at it; much easier to discard it and throw it out, get a new one a better one. Yet as each year that passes the number of unhappy people increases. The numbers of people who do terrible things to themselves and each other increases. If someone had told me 30 years ago there would be a heroin problem with teens in my area I would have thought they were crazy, but you know what we have that problem.
People just try to numb it all down. We are overwhelmed by constant tv, radio, computers and cellphones. Always connected and people just try to numb it all. They drink, do drugs and treat people like crap because they are numb. The world which wants to sustain itself also caters to this. Got a crappy life? Watch this person's drama unfold and feel better. Watch this ball game and forget about how crappy it all is. It’s like a perpetual motion machine the worse you feel the more you participate in. The more you participate in it, the more money someone else makes. We get so lost in the machine that we lose who we are.
Who grew up wanting to spend all day in a cube or working at a job to pay for apartments and houses and cars that we never get to use cause we work all the time? No one! Most of us had dreams of doing this or that grand thing. Then we went to schools and they fit us all into neat little boxes so we’d fit in the machine.
We are taught to do this it makes things so much easier and use this it saves time. Yet all the while having less and less time, getting deeper and deeper into the machine. We are taught to hate, to be scared and to follow along with the program.
Sometimes the program breaks and when it does there are those whom are so deep in the machine they can’t function. What you mean no food in the stores? What do you mean electricity maybe out 5 days? No water for a week!
Somebody needs to fix it. To take care of it. They are part of the machine that feeds on the people who make it run.
There is hope. There are those people, those outcast, those who are called crazy by the machine. Those whom are labeled dangerous because they question, They don’t follow blindly. Most of the time some event has awaken them. Others were lucky enough to have had parents that taught them the dangers of handing it all over to the machine. They are your homesteaders ,preppers, survivalist and tribalist , they are rewilders, primitives,and rainbow warriors. They are the ones who will actually look you in the eye.
They are the ones who take care of themselves and their families. They form Tribes that are as strong as any blood bond. They work outside of the machine helping each other freely. Their mottos differ in wording but in the end they all are the same “we take care of our own” and they do.
The machine no matter how deeply your ingrained to it will at some point let you down. You need to know how to take care of your own……..
Tribal Hawk
