It doesn’t matter who or where you are, it’s almost impossible to imagine any other world, any other way of life. You could be an isolated hermit in the deep jungles of Brazil not knowing how a city-slicker 100km away may live. Good, white-bread Christian folk in Sydney could not imagine how an indigenous Australian would live in the remote far north. Simply, unless you are immersed in a culture for any length of time, it is inconceivable to you.
Is it possible that we also have a tenuous understanding of ourselves? Of our history, of our way of life? In a relatively short time our way of life has changed so dramatically, our own history is so far removed from us; the lifestyle of our forefathers unrecognisable to us as ours would be to them.
Our way of life toiled along for centuries before lurching forward noisily and grimily with the industrial revolution’s steam engine, speeding up economically with the combustion engine and being optimised by the computer chip. In the 21st Century we live in predictable comfort (usually at the expense of people who live out of our immediate field of vision) with no natural predators or real threats to survival. We have so many tools at our disposal, to perform a variety of tasks from simple everyday chores to complex specialist tasks. We are uniquely placed to fulfil our potential.
But so what? At what cost? I think the external costs to our environment and to other populations have been discussed pretty extensively across all facets of the media. I’m talking about the cost to ourselves. How many essential skills have we abandoned to acquire trivial skills that seem indispensible in our world? Are we doing any better for it?
Physically
You don’t have to go far to observe the consequence of living in the lap of ease. Western society likes to call it an obesity epidemic, like it was something unforeseen, something inflicted upon us. However the very way we go about our everyday lives is responsible. We almost always elect to take the easy route. Convenience. How easy is it to grab a packet of chips or go through the drive-through? As much as it may seem like a chore, how easy is it to drive to the shops and go grocery shopping?
Our brainpower has enabled us to make food available to a lot of people with little effort on their behalf. However our bodies have not adapted as rapidly as our food production methods. For hundreds of thousands of years humankind has needed to expend a sizeable proportion of their energy in obtaining more food. Hunting, gathering, preparing food, repairing tools, seasonal migration to more fertile areas assured that man was always behind the eight ball, always needed to invest themselves physically in securing food. These days a great proportion of people work jobs that are not only far removed from direct sourcing of food, but also does not require expending much energy. Arguably we would be a lot healthier if we had to chase down or dig up every meal. We would probably also appreciate the meal a lot more, having put so much effort into getting it and would probably waste far less.
Rather than people’s health needs being met by the demands of everyday life, in the modern world you have to put in extra time. People who are so compelled spend hours after work everyday at a gym, answering their instinctual call to improving strength (or at least half-heartedly forcing themselves to use some of that 6 month gym membership they signed up for after the Christmas holidays).
Mentally
If I were to choose a word to describe modern society, I would chose disaffected. It seems ironic that the closer to each other people are (geographically), the more isolated they tend to feel, the more isolated they feel they have to make themselves. With a few exceptions human beings are social animals; we draw a lot of our happiness and mental well being from healthy social integration and conversely, loneliness is a risk factor for increased stress and poor coping skills.
Traditionally societies were small, close-knit communities, comprised of one extended or several families (which, knowing my family, would present its own…umm…challenges). Every aspect of daily life was done with each other - finding food, chores, entertainment. Skills were passed down, improved over years, from father to son, mother to daughter. Your identity was inextricably linked to what you did, the skills you possessed, your role in society. One had purpose in life, even if the meaning of life was as ambiguous as it still is.
These days most people just go to work to “make a living”. It could be worlds away from what they actually would like to do. Or maybe they are so distracted by conflicting messages from different sources – school, media, peers – that they just don’t know what they want to do. Their disconnectedness from what they do everyday slowly grinds down sense of worth, sense of identity. What they do everyday probably does not have any appreciable, measurable effect on the world they see around them, and hence see all their efforts as a waste of time. They have forgotten the skills that made them relevant, gave them purpose.
Some people attempt to fill the void of purpose with the emptiness of meaning, peddled by any number of spiritual salesmen. It seems to work for most people at least in the sense that they learn to stop worrying and love the con.
Will we ever relearn the skills that made us relevant, at least to ourselves?
No comments:
Post a Comment