For quite some time I have questioned the value of all of our inventions and whether they improve life or detract from it. I look around our culture and American society at large and I watch my fellow humans and I just do not see them as better off than they would be without all the gadgets and stuff.
It seems everyone has designer clothes. I suspect this is the China/Malaysia/Vietnam effect. Clothes are being made overseas in sweat shops and transported on giant ships while the cost is offset with bad foreign trade agreements and favorable tax exemptions, creating a false market that destroyed the US garment industry while expanding over seas slavery. This is not an improvement.
Does anyone drive clunkers anymore? Not even high school kids with brand new licenses drive a car they bought off the side of the road for a pocket full of cash. Gone are the fixer uppers people spend as much time tinkering with as they do driving. What we have are tiny and shiny brand new cars that cost three times the price of a new car only 2-3 decades ago that are filled with gadgets and toys and barely get a few more miles per gallon. These cars cost way too much to buy, way too much to repair, and are near and far ugly little under powered hatchbacks. I would prefer ripping all that jazz out of my vehicles and only having AC and an FM radio. Just drop the price $30,000! or more.
Have you bought kitchen appliances? I have been on my own and paying my own way for about thirty years now. I have bought 3 stove/ovens, about eight washing machines, 2-3 dryers, and thankfully only one fridge, although there might have been a second one, I am not sure. These things meet all the government standards for efficiency, but they fail the efficiency standard of lasting. Is it really better for the environment to fill landfills with these boxes every couple of years as we replace appliances so often? I sure would like to have appliances that would last two decades or more. Now they are so poorly made and so cheap it is easier to buy new than repair and treat them properly. This same standard and usage style goes for almost everything we clutter our lives with. Lots of money and resources spent, but very little value added.
I do not even want to go into the medical profession because these blood sucking leeches are so blinded by their degrees, I can barely stand to even be in their presence. A good doctor should look at his overweight patient and instead of giving them more hypertension, blood thinning, diabetes, and on and on drugs to treat the symptoms of being fat out of shape corn syrup consumers. Tell them to stop eating garbage and exercise more. Put down the phone, stop watching porn, go outside and walk, hunt, run, garden, lift weights, or whatever it is. Just get outside and do it. These pill pushers can do some amazing things to treat the grossly out of shape and get them to live 60-70 years. But their medical victims scramble to pay bills, medicare supplements, and buy drugs with their prescription drug plans.
These are just some of the lowest hanging pieces of fruit in our sick society. Do I think our culture and standards of living have improved? Absolutely not. Sure, it is harder to find a picture of a kid standing out front of a coal mine covered in coal dust, but it is a lot easier to find a kid who has self mutilated their body and has such self loathing they will take any kind of drug and any kind of medical butchering to try and find value and meaning in their pathetic lives. You would not have been able to find that kind of kid even fifty years ago, but you can find them everywhere now. Do I think suicidal, drug addled, mind rotted kids are better off in this culture? You bet I don't.
So I have been feeling pretty pessimistic about what I am told are such great times we are living because I do not share the view. Then I read Isaiah 44 this morning. The chapter describes Israel as a corrupted, bloated, idolatrous group who has ignored their true king and leader to chase after filth. Truly, there is nothing new under the sun. It is time for me to be a better Christian. It is time for me to eat better, live better, and do better and maybe, just maybe, my example will draw more people out of the filth that surrounds them.