The Socrates in Me

He wants to know why society is good. Well, he actually wants me to figure out what I think about the qualities of society and decide 1) why we decided technological advances are good, 2) whether or not these advances have benefited the people that this society is supposed to benefit, and 3) what I want to do with my life based on my findings.

I think the real answer to the first question of why we all decided that technological advances are good is a bit deeper than I will be going with this today. I feel like I haven't reflected enough on the sentience of man, and what it is about us that meant we were to develop such complex psyches (I can't find a plural of 'psyche' so I'll assume my word is correct) and dreams and goals and love, unlike that of any other species on the planet. This path of thought might get me closer to the real truth of this matter, but I also feel like the origin of the sentience of man is a discussion that I will need to have with others, it is not an answer that I alone am capable of discovering.

I think that it would suffice for today's topic of discovery if I go with a more simple answer to the question. I think that after technological applications were discovered, people believed it was a good idea because it could be applied to making resources more plentiful. Is bounty a good thing?

I think yes.

As technology advanced, so did the needs of people. And I think herein lies the first problem with our development of society. We let ourselves believe that we need an excess of things simply because it is available. This is the root of our money troubles as Americans. We let ourselves believe that we need things that logical creatures should be able to deduce that they do not need such as cars, big houses, frappuccinos, manicures, more than three pairs of shoes, newer clothes, and quick food. We pay dearly for all of these things simply because they are available. We need none of them. I need fruit, I need vegetables, I need beans and the occasional steak. I need a clean little home and an occupation that earns my needs. I need a means to have clean clothing and I need a shower, fairly often.

Just about every other thing I spend my money on are things I allow myself to think that I need.

The economic system in which I live is one in which the people with all the money decide what the people without all the money spend their money on. They can put us into their debt, and use our sweat and effort to make themselves richer, by selling us things that make us poorer.

So, is technology a good thing? I think yes. But I think we have exploited our sophistication to a point that it is now being used against us in a systematic process of our own design. So these advances in technology aren't aiding the people who belong to society, it is entangling them. Once we became capable of producing enough food to sustain our society without any fear of famine, those in the food industry discovered that this left them no room to grow their profits. They had reached maximum efficiency. So now agribusiness has spent the past 70 or so years figuring out how to waste our commodities and sell us far more food than we could ever need. This is going on with most of the commerce in the United States. Advertising is used to tell the masses what we have, how we feel about it, and what we still need. It's a system that should flabbergast us humans, but instead of being confused or even outraged, we just buy into it.

Society has given too much shit to too many individuals. So we squander what we have to make the rich richer, and keep the wealth away from the masses.

I have a very idealized image of the 1800's in my head. Just enough technology to make resources plenty and time for reading and politics plenty. But not so much technology that we lose sight of what our needs really are, and how gracious this Earth has been to provide us with them.

So what do I do about it? How do I live in 2010 if I'm trying to manage my resources in a way that makes sense? I have considered finding a commune. Seriously. I love my Facebook account and my blog and my frappuccinos and new cars just as much as the next guy, but they make me feel...unsettled. All of these things in my consumer world that I don't need but desperately want are haunting me. And I'm glad. This problem needs to bother me. If it doesn't make me feel unsettled, then I'm obviously not using my brain at all. But then again, I can't help but feel like all of these luxurious things wouldn't be so bad if we had a system that spread the luxury around a little bit. There are too many people who live in squalor for me to be okay with my economic market just the way it is. And there are too many people who live in absurd luxury while I'm sucking down a Big Train and listening to my iPod and feeling desperate about gas prices.

It's all too much. Society and technology have too much to offer me. I don't need it and I'm trying not to want it. I don't know if I'll be moving to a commune to earn a living by the sweat of my brow and sharing my resources with others who wish to share their resources with me. But it sure does sound refreshing, doesn't it? And if I don't go off to a commune and I decide to stay here with this society, then I will be working out a way to start eating plants again and stop buying into the cheap, synthetic, excessive, and unrealistic shit that they all want to sell me.

Some days I feel good about myself and how conscious I can be about where the wealth goes. And some days I forget myself and lapse into playing an MMO for an entire day while sucking down Code Red and vodka and eating Doritos for lunch and dinner.

I'm getting off of my internal soap box. For the time being.

A Compilation of 'Meh' Thoughts

I woke up just before 8am today, which is ridiculous for me. It's nearly 10 now, so I think I'm going to awaken my boyfriend soon. I wish I had some syrup for my waffles...

I feel like maybe I'm just avoiding my life? Does that make any sense? And for Pete's sake I just want my car back. There's a topic: my car.

So I have bought three $90+ parts for my car including a battery, an alternator, and a module (that's nearly $300 already on a twenty-year-old car). While replacing the module has helped (kinda/sorta) my car still dies after running for short periods of time. So I'm borrowing Blake's car ALWAYS to go to school, and I'm sitting around and playing video games and NOT running errands because god knows how I hate being dependent on his car. And what's even worse is that my mom thinks that since I use his car to go to school I can use his car to run all of her errands that I normally do in my own car. Well I'm not doing it anymore. I hate her for her dependency on me. Every favor that she needs me to do because she cannot do it herself drives me further away from her. It makes me not want to see her, or my sister that now lives with her, or her sister that now lives with her. It makes me not want to answer the phone for her and it makes me feel guilty about it too. I wouldn't mind so much if it was just doing her favors, but she NEEDS me to do them because she won't get a driver's license and she won't save her money for a car and she won't learn the bus system and she's making me crazy.

I want my car back. I want my independence back. And I want everybody's money back. I want to spend today with my boyfriend because it's his one day off that I have off too, but we have spent the whole week together because I have been in constant need of his car. So I feel obligated to go home and leave him the fuck alone. But I don't want to. That would leave me car-less and he has no cell phone at the moment.

Shit in one hand and wish in the other, right?

I'm making waffles. Boring ones.

I'm not ending this blog on a sour note though. I went to PetCo yesterday to visit the kitties and there was an organization there with adoptable cats and dogs called Rescued Paws. I got a volunteer application and I should start volunteering by next weekend. I've been looking for something important to do with my time, and I think that this would be a good thing for me. I need more structure in my life.

An Ode to the Automobile

I hate cars.

I hate fixing cars.

I hate the greedy parts industry.

I hate the greedier manufacturing industry.

I hate purposefully bad gas mileage.

I hate needlessly killed deer on the side of the highway.

I hate the unthoughtful demand for excess mobility.

I hate cars.

Now, where's my bike pump?

My Ego Dilemma

This conclusion has been months in the working. Nine months ago was when Steven and I broke up and I feel no more healed from the damage to my self than I did nine months ago. For the last half of our relationship he started remaking me. He told me flat out that I was heavily flawed, but he thought he saw some potential in me, so he was going to stick it out and make me what I should be. I was a disappointment to him. I was less intelligent than him. I was less talented than him. I was less emotionally supportive than him. I was inferior. Every time we had an argument he had to be right. There was never any agreeing to disagree. There was Steven's opinion, and there was wrong. That's all that he knew to exist in the world. I didn't believe that I was so incredibly...wrong...at first. But he made any disagreement something that we needed to break up over unless I could manage to "see the light". I thought it would be a complete idiotic waste of good companionship to break up over the stupid shit that he wanted to break up over, so I always just told him that he was right and that I was wrong and that I was sorry and that I didn't know how to change my opinions. That made me a project for him. I was something that malfunctioned and he was going to fix it.

I became terrified of talking in front of him. I couldn't contribute to a conversation unless he already knew the information that I was going to contribute, because if I said something that made him look wrong in front of other people then I was rude and mean for embarrassing him like that.

I couldn't do or say or want anything that wasn't preemptively Steven approved. I became very dependent on him. He got annoyed at how much I asked him to make decisions with me. But I was incapable of making the right ones on my own.

Nine months after I finally told him that I had to be me, I don't know who me is anymore. When he and I were dating I stopped listening to my music, or all music for that matter. My music sucked and he didn't like me for appreciating 'unartistic' music. I stopped blogging because he said I needed to work on my short stories more and make something out of them. I stopped doing puzzles because he thought it was a useless pastime. I stopped watching tv because that was useless too. I stopped reading because Steven didn't like reading for long periods of time and the fact that I did like it annoyed him. I stopped doing anything. He wanted me to learn soccer, guitar, and skateboarding. I was to take those hobbies seriously and become skillful at them. All three of those things were something I liked doing, but at my own pace. He made them into work for me because he wanted me to be skilled at them, when I was a noobie at them and just wanted to have fun with them.

The final conclusion: I have no functioning ego. The things I enjoy these days are eating and other such primal needs. I am very lazy and selfish. This is from my id. I feel guilty about never calling or visiting my mom, about putting off my homework, about being too lazy to cook most of the time. This sense of what I should be doing and the guilt that comes from not doing so are from my superego. But I have no part of me that makes me do the things I feel I should do, which would be my ego. The part of me that drives me to make conscious decisions to take care of business is stunted. I blow off my mom all the time even though I feel bad about it because my id just doesn't want to deal with her. Or with homework. Or cooking. Or exercising. And I feel like a bad an irresponsible person for not doing all of those things. But I don't want to, and I don't. I don't know what I like doing, and I don't do what I don't like doing.

I'm only perpetuating this with my attachment to my new boyfriend now too. In no way does he treat me that way that Steven did. But he doesn't need to. I just stay with him as often as possible so that he can effectively choose what I do and don't do. I get anxious and nervous when I know that I'll be spending my spare time without him. I don't know how to be me anymore.

I think the only place I can start is by spending more time alone. I hate the idea of it. But I've lost me. And I won't find me in anybody else but me.

Quick Little Rant, Then Back to Homework

When I'm doing my Health 250 homework I hate reading about health studies that differentiate the issues between ethnic groups. The rate of alcoholism in Native Americans has nothing to do with their ethnicity, but their social and economic status in the United States. This sentence in my book says "Scientists have also suggested that genetic factors may contribute to [unhealthy] patterns of alcohol use by Native Americans." Even if that is so, the real issue that should be addressed is. "The data shows that [unhealthy] alcohol use by Native Americans is caused at least partially by the white man raping and pillaging everything they once knew to be good and true."

Also, I don't like thinking of myself as belonging to the white demographic that this chapter refers to. Do their figures really represent me? Do they really represent anybody? Probably not.