We Can Change

Last night I had a mini birthday party with a bunch of my friends and we all saw the Imax movie "The Day the Earth Stood Still."  It was basically about how aliens come down to our planet and tell us we are killing it.  They said earth was the last planet capable of supporting complex life and they could not risk letting us destroy it.  Obviously, knock on wood, aliens are not going to come down and kill all of us for polluting our planet to death, but I think the idea of is not far from the truth.  Personally, I find the whole global climate crisis to be no more than the fluctuation of earth's temperature patterns, but that is not my point.  My point is that once something like global climate crisis gets worse and we actually start noticing the terrible things we predict might happen, maybe then we will all be re-awakened and finally, since possible death is looking us in the face, be able to change.

I know this does not have too much to do with what we are talking about, but at the same time this whole idea of what humans call progress has really got me thinking about more than just that.  It has got me thinking about bigger things as well, and in some ways has actually opened my eyes to faults our society has and has the ability to change.  So as I have said recently in all of my blogs, it might be a good idea for us all to think about what we are doing and may be think about how we can change as a whole as well.

"Killer Cars"

There is a song by one of my favorite bands named Radiohead which popped up on shuffle the other day when I was listening to music and doing homework.  The song is called "killer cars," and is basically about how simplistically dangerous cars are.  I urge you to take a step back and think for a second, think about how people would all agree cars are a form of progress; everyone.  Is it really? 

How can something that is so unmistakably dangerous be considered progress?  I could tell you numerous ways to get in an accident while driving a car: sneeze, yawn, phone rings, brakes  give in, lose control in bad weather.  If those things are all true why do we still do it?  Why do we put our lives in such grave danger by sitting in a two ton hunk of metal supported by four pieces of rubber which separate us from life or possible death?  Honestly I could not tell you, but what I can tell you is that we will all keep doing it regardless.  In the words of Thom York, (singer of Radiohead) "Going out for a little ride, and it might be the last time you see me alive," just think twice about speeding down that suburban street at night.

A Society Molded

I was recently searching for suitable quotes in Emerson and Thoreau to put into my editorial and I kept running across the idea of materialism.  That is when I started realizing how dependent our society has become on material things and how materialistic we really are.  It is not just a select group of people either, me as well as everybody in this world are uncontrollably sucked into this blind love for Internet, cell phones, Ipods, Tivo, etc.  

I say uncontrollably for a reason; as I was pondering this realization I also realized that it is not our fault we are this way, all of us are born into this madness.  The sad realization is that one can not function in society and not be materialistic.  Yes, people can have different meanings for "functioning in society," but no matter what a person thinks is his or her way to function, the fact is that that path is not without materialism.  I have thought about this for a while, from many different viewpoints, and have found no way to escape the death-grip of materialism.  The reason is simply this; our society has already experienced and lived with all of these things and become so attached to them that giving any of them up is mind-boggling and considered insane.  None of us will admit it, we all say and agree upon the fact that we are too dependent on material items, but the second the idea of change from that dependency is brought up, something happens and it is put on the bottom of the list.  I am not writing this because I have a solution, I wish I did, but I am writing this to open our eyes to our own problem, and maybe being that much closer to, instead of moving that idea of change to the bottom of the list, moving it to the top.