Life has gotten a bit easier amidst more problems. Oxymoronic. But you can’t deny that prior to the latest different faces of technology and the ensuing Disturbia that seems to rattle its advents, things seem a bit more easier to handle these days than they were some decades ago. Discoveries captured the zeitgeist of the past century, and launched in an era of consumption–of both humans and goods. Sex is now daily food, tablets a must have, Facebook an addiction and tweeting has turned into a micro-blogging ritual. Lest we forget Instagram, the iPhones and blackberry mobile devices which has so far seen our Washrooms become the world’s best photo studio—and of course our mirrors serve a more meaningful purpose now than what they were originally made for.
I don’t know how it feels to be offline for a whole day. I actually cussed out my Internet Provider once for going 2 hours without an active connection–how sad it must be to work in the customer service department.
The original intention is to make this a hybrid post, but let’s hope I can still do that by the time you are done reading. I have a chronic illness called ‘deviationism’. Doubt it? Read the title of the post and have a second look at what you reading now. See! Ok, now do not be angry, just keep following. You’ll catch my point soon–that’s if you’re as smart as I think you are.
Over the past years, the population of the world has doubled, tripled..whatever-led. Let’s close our eyes to what the big media houses say or will say for a minute, we are doing pretty well. The poverty level has dropped considerably; the so called third world countries are taking up the baton and becoming more responsible as opposed to outright dependence on aid funds and loans. But its difficult to see these changes, thanks to the human brain’s propensity to always focus on ‘what’s not going right’. Credit the media, our brains doesn’t seem to be turning from that direction anytime soon. The quality-of-life has been on the positive side, a reason why we have seen the increase in life-expectancy rates. Infant mortality is at the lowest it can ever be, sicknesses now do not have evil spirits as their causative agents. Medicine has given us so much hope for the future, and while there are no prime-time ads to showcase the awesome wonder of how this artful science has so far been responsible for the betterment of humans, it’s handiwork is evident to all. Over the past decade, more than ever, we have seen an increase in the amount of lawsuits against doctors. I do not think that any right thinking human would pass through the educational torture of a medical school only to have his license withdrawn. Like you can find in any profession that makes use of humans and not robots, mistakes are always going to happen. Some mistakes just happen to cost a life–that’s part of life’s unfairness. Life is slow and steady, and so is progress. We grow into life, so does change. Forget the utopians and their dystopic views, everything can never be all perfect. What the hell happend to wear and tear. It isn’t rocket science; the more you use a machine, the more wear and tear. The world is a machine, it can never be better than it was at creation. We work towards modification rather than total transformation. And why Everyone always seems to have this ‘better place’ view all worked up inside their brains? I don’t know. Forget Mj’s ‘heal the World’, that’s just a song. You sing it so people can buy your record. #Respect to Mj tho, but improvement is slow and steady as opposed to what doomsayers think.
Forget about the climate, whether you like it or not, the world will end maybe sooner or later–but energy has to change form. Wars will always abound, peace does not come without a price tag; infuse a bit of human greed in there and you see the reason why people just don’t stop fighting. Everyone cannot always be a CEO and the gulf between the rich and the poor will always be. So instead of focusing on the declinist’s comments, we can make do with the fact that even life itself has stages…Change is no different.
We are actually living the dream, we just don’t know that we are.
Victor Effiom 