Thursday, March 21, 2013

Take me back to the Stone Age


Useful things not properly used: So who says what it and what isn't their proper use? Who defines useful and rewards it and sentences that not so useful to be useless? Who measures the boundaries between those two nebulous points? That is if such a boundary exists in the first place. Meanwhile small groups of people develop more and more useful things. A larger group of people then make and build those useful things and ship them out all across the world. A huge group of people are told that they should want these useful things. At first they are a little puzzled but intrigued, then they take the bright shiny bait and suddenly want those useful things. They purchase the useful things thanks to the wages they earn making other useful things.   Once they have the useful things and use the useful things  they quickly get bored with them. It seldom occurs to them that they don't really use up much of the capability or power within the useful things.  Then, one day the useful thing is superseded by another more useful thing. The people decide they want that thing, then they think think that they must have that thing. The old useful things are discarded, thrown away, scrapped or lost somewhere. They are in a big pile nobody ever sees. The people have bought into the idea of the next more useful thing by now anyway and go and get it. Meanwhile a very very small group of people are making a very large amount of money from the design, manufacture and sale of the useful things. They recognise that these things are useful but they know that the larger process and cycle that they operate is much more useful than the useful things ever could be. And so it goes.

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