In the evolution of our society, as seen in history, our minds change, priorities change. Most of what causes our change isn't our evolutionary process as humans, but our economic and cultural changes led by the media and technology. Because of this our sense of ideals, creativity, spirit, and desire to be someone beyond ourselves is crushed. Most importantly is we don't even know it.
Our cultural ideals really aren't established by religion or by the origins of our country. They oboviously affect us in ways, but ultimately the power lies in one arena; economics. Economics has a power that none other has; the ability the preoccupy the individual with survival. With that preoccupation, your ideals change as you strive to follow something, that after time goes by, you're not sure why you're following it.
Take for example, the Industrial Age. It was a wonderful historical period of transforming how we lived and what our progress could be by using steel to build our infrastructure and of course cars and motorcycles. During that age was an immigration process unlike anything we have seen today. Immigration back then was needed and desired for these huge steel companies, Ford Motor Company and of course the railroads. We eventually became a society built on blue collar labor, all preoccupied with making those couple of bucks to feed their families. My grandfather worked thirty years for Ford Motor Company. As an immigrant around 1910, he came over as a teen, got married, found the job and starting his new life. Do you really think he had time or the inclination to discover his creative side?
The Depression obviously didn't help matters either. We know from history this even was well known to happen, and the rich, such as Kennedy swooped in after wards to buy cheap. Regardless, most of society spent most of its time preoccupied with survival and couldn't bother with any type of creativity or wonder about the world they lived in.
World War II didn't help matters, as survival then was based on women working in the American economy. People were more concerned about not speaking German in the next decade, and if their loved one was going to make it home okay to bother with inane ventures like "ideas".
Post WW II brought us an ideal, seeming to be established by the propaganda of our government, that we are safe, that our fight against evil won and now we can build safe societies and get back to innocence. The picket fence became the symbol of safety. Survival was less of a labor and opportunity for men to make an honest educated living was now available. With the so called advancement, was the concept we must have taken from the military, that everyone was be the same; same house, haircut, clothes, schools and taste in music. Well that didn't last long as creating robots of our children, eventually turns them into rebellious young adults. Elvis and James Dean didn't help either. Most importantly, this time in our history, we weren't preoccupied with survival as much as keeping up a face that we were a normal American family. That preoccupation, again took away any sense of creativity from the individual.
The 60's was a direct reaction to the 50's; screw the haircut and the sameness, I'm going to smoke dope and wear awful clothes. Do we really understand why this happened? Do we really understand why our society evolves the way it does? The 60's was a wake up call for our government's desire to control the masses. Music was getting into our children's minds and filling it with thoughts about suicide, anti-American ideals, not following the rules, etc, etc. Our minds really weren't preoccupied with how are we going to survive, we were thriving as an economy, however in our comfort we negated why we had the 60's in the first place. Did we understand that we can't program our children, make them into everyone else as if they are foolish enough to not understand why the feel such anger toward their parents and society? Their sense of future was in jeopardy as a war in which no one really knew why were were fighting, gave teenagers no sense of future or optimism in their world. Anger, depression, despondency and apathy preoccupied their minds.
The 70's brought about a new kind of preoccupation for American's; opportunity. Technology was developing to the point that new kinds of jobs were being created, and all the hippies put down their picket signs to study programming so they could live a normal life. All that protesting does get old after a while as you get sick of eating organic food. This decade was on the cusp of our problem today; computers running our lives.
One note about the evolution of computers in the corporate world. Big business by this time was pooring huge sums of money into mainframes and dumb terminals, all for one basic reason, to eventually eliminate jobs. Anyone who thinks its only about storing data is a bit naive.
As the 80's came about, our preoccupation was the Andy Warhol principle; getting our fifteen minutes. MTV provided a resource for individuals to become instantly famous and showed us how powerful it can be to not only provide such a tunnel into fame, but what opportunities it brought to the individual who had it. Billy Idol created the "I want my MTV slogan" and his career took off, not just because of that, but admitting, it had a large part in whole process of him becoming another image of the American dream, rebellious, rich and sexual.
Operating systems were being created at this time. Apple computer was flourishing in our school systems and inticing certain demographics to buy an Apple computer for home use. Occupying hours upon hours on figuring out how to create things and store information on a personal computer helped form what we have today. All those geeks you know reside at Apple and Microsoft were those same people back in the eighties working with the first versions. What people failed to understand or at least take seriously, was the effect of computers on us as individuals as well as our opportunities in the workforce.
At this time you could see the beginnings of a new kind of pressure placed upon the average american; live the good life, get a credit card, buy a VCR and big screen TV and get into a mortgage. All those things are well and good, but the credit card was the real demon of the bunch, as banks found a new way to squeeze money out of you with social engineering on their side; "give people the illusion of power by purchasing on credit, as the ability to rationalize the payments will ultimately be our greatest reward." Again when the credit card bills came and over a period of time, people realized they couldn't pay their bills efficiently and soon that turns into denial. Survival once again becomes the preoccupation in our lives.
Inflation, immigration, the avid growth of technology in the workplace as well as communications, all swarmed us in the 90's till now. Things have changed drastically with our government's shoulder turned to our immigration issue. I was aware of it as a problem when I as a kid, and yet the government didn't seemed concerned? That's more than a disconnect. Immigration was changing the climate of what opportunities there were for the average american trying to work from nothing (now competing with immigrants for those entry level jobs) and working their way up to being able to save money and provide for some sort of future. Not only that, but immigration has caused tremendous housing problems, crime, human rights issues, as well as attitudes towards those who are different from us, all because of mismanagement.
At the same time, banks were coming up new ways to get the average American qualified for a mortgage and boy did they get creative. Your mortgage used to be 25% of your net monthly income or you wouldn't qualify, now at 50% you can qualify. Even further are the interest only loans, which are the devil disguised. These loans are just like credit cards, you get something today, and rationalize tomorrow, because when rates go up, your mortgage payment doubles, at least eventually. So you refinance and spend another 15 thousand on a new loan that gets you out of that initial loan and the only one's you're making rich are the banks and the broker. This all boils down to preoccupation with our minds. We spend more time worrying about money, how to move it, invest it, modify loans, get out of debt, live for today by cashing out of equity to pay off credit cards, that we lose sight of our time and what we should be thinking about.
Another side note about technology. One of the effects of growing ways people converse is the use of the cell phone and computer to connect with others. His has been a real issue in how we learn to become social beings. As the next generations are born into using text messaging and the like, they never learn how to sit down with someone and just talk. I find more people preoccupied with the next scheduled event for the day, that you can't even get into a conversation with them deep enough to make the relationship grow any farther. Our minds today are so preoccupied with the next fix, who is going to make me rich with the next opportunity, that we never seem to focus on each other. Text messaging and cell phones have all preoccupied our minds with dialogue that has nothing to do with where we are going.
It would appear that the individuals who have the time for ideas are the people who don't face these issues; they aren't in debt, their family money holds them together, they are well connected, and are completely disconnected from the average American.
Ideas take time, but our society has been designed so you don't have the time to think of an idea, as you're too busy worrying about finances and your next job. At the same time, our minds become softened into thinking those things called "ideas" are foolish and unrealistic; make money now, for tomorrow may never come.
Why have we lost the battle? Because we refuse to understand the importance of our time, and using ideas to help create a better life for ourselves. Not only that, but to realize that ideas help us reflect on who we are as a society, what values we have, and preparing for what we will care about in the future.
I don't think we will win the battle for our minds. I'm not a pessimist, but I don't see Americans putting up much of a fight about anything, to care about the simple value of creating time for ideas, much less anything else.
The price for losing our ideas are great, for once you lose that right to create and think, you've lost the right to use your mind as an individual.
I guess the war is still on even though the battle has been lost.
