I am closing in on 50.
A few more years and I will be at half a century old. What this means is I have seen a few changes in culture over the years and my childhood environment was quite different to that of many kids today in the western world. The biggest difference is almost certainly the "tech stack" that dominates so many of the activities, and with this, comes a cost.
When I was a kid, we had a TV from the early 70s and the first VHS machine arrived in the early 90s, with a CD player coming a couple years after in 93. I know this as my first album on CD was Lethal Injection, by Ice Cube. We never had cable TV at any stage, and even though some of my friends were starting to get onto the internet proper in the mid 1990s, it would take me another couple years before I had a connection at home.
But childhood prior to the internet was quite different, where "boredom" meant time to be creative, to explore the world, to get up to mischief, to try to build things, and to ride around the town on bikes - under the power of leg muscles, not batteries. There was very little "fancy" in terms of anything, and school holidays were filled with being outdoors when the weather permitted, and being indoors when it didn't. No trips abroad, no trips interstate, the occasional picnic in one of the national parks close by, or down to the playground by the river.
It was all pretty simple.
There were challenges of course, because the "consumer competition" was starting locally and by the end of primary school, kids were getting teased if they didn't have Nike's or Reeboks (remember when people liked Reebok?), but all in all, it was pretty limited and the "bullying" made people stronger and better able to handle a range of personalities.
Times have changed.
These days the expectations on what is "needed" in order to live has changed a lot, with everything from how much entertainment activity people expect, to the house sizes and what they contain. For instance, there is a "housing crisis" in Australia and the cost of homes have increased significantly. However, the average births per 1000 in 1950 was 23, and now it is 11 - more than half. But, the average house size in Australia was 100 m² in 1950, compared to 236 m² today, despite block sizes getting significantly smaller. Kids don't share rooms like I did with my brother, there has to be large entertainment areas and high ceilings, and appliances have to match perfectly, with all the screens and gadgets synced up and connected to a subscription service.
Is cost of living really more expensive?
Granted, in the modern world in which we live we probably have to have some level of technology, an internet connection, a phone, a screen of some sort - but do we really need what we expect to have and believe we require? I suspect not, but our desire to have all of these things and conditions, pushes up prices across the board for everything. Because while it is nice to be able to think of things as independent, the economy is intertwined and pressure on one area puts pressure on another and at times, the attraction of spending in one, will create a vacuum in another, disrupting the equilibriums of products, services and general living.
We have a consumer culture.
And we have had one for many decades, but what we consume has significantly changed. In the past the consumer goods and services we bought were largely actively used, but now a lot of what we buy is passive. Not only that, a lot of what we buy today doesn't stand alone as a product, as it requires a connection, a subscription, constant charging and even after all that, we just sit in front of them, staring. In addition, the "out of home" entertainment has increased significantly, where a movie once a twice a year and a restaurant perhaps similarly, has become a weekly occurrence, with eating out, concerts, theme parks and all the other superfluous activity to take up our time so we aren't bored, or have to think much at all.
We are consumers by nature.
And what we consume matters. Because it is what we consume that indicates where our attention is being spent, and our attention might actually be the only thing we have that is ours. Yet, most of us have had our ability to control our attention compromised by what we consume. Instead, we spend it passively, absorbing more conditioning that reinforces the beliefs that we need to consume more, have more. We have been convinced that we can't have a good life unless we have all the unnecessary extras, which means that the components of a good life often go begging, because they come after consuming enough.
I get that many people don't see this, because the majority of us are conditioned not to. We have literally bought into a belief system that makes sinners of those who do not consume enough, as if they are pagans sacrificing goats for godly favours. The majority of us can't imagine life without all the accoutrements we have been told we need in order to enjoy life, and we can't stand the conditions of being without them to the point that we become anxious, depressed and unable to cope with the stress of life.
We have surrounded ourselves with convenience, and surprise surprise, we have become weaker, less social, more disconnected and more volatile.
You don't have to believe me, just walk around your house and make a mental note of all that you don't use, and don't need. Take stock of how you spend your time, where you spend your time, and what you get for your time spent. Consider what you create, who you connect with, and what percentage of your day is entertainment activity.
If we consume differently, the entire world changes.
But that is not how we have been conditioned.
Taraz
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