Many years ago, I had a conversation with a gentleman I will call, Greg. He was a mechanic.
We were talking about the younger generation and our perception of their viewpoints regarding their life.
It seemed that the expectation of being an individual was being compromised by the need to conform. The younger generation was trained so that they would conform with corporate expectations and values. They were to conform to societal pressures and norms.
If they were being asked to increase workloads, juggle personal and family lives, they would do it. And, in return, they would be given only superficial tokens of supposed appreciation for their efforts. Statements like “work-life balance” supplanted the reality of their busy lives. Companies expected work performance in spite of personal needs and pressures.
“The one thing I noticed,” I said, “is that it destroys the dignity of man.”
Greg looked at me and began nodding vigorously. “You said that right! And it’s stopped people from thinking and taking responsibility for themselves. 32 year old grandmothers, parents who want to be their children’s friends. I’m 60. My 30 year old daughter has a son. I’m a grandfather. But 33? 42?”
He sighed.
The modern problem
“And another thing,” he went on. “These new technologies are all designed to make people spend more money. You can’t fix these small cars anymore. It’s all for greed.”
Over the past 8 years, the response has been fairly consistent. Today’s technology has brought with it many problems. It disturbs the average person’s loss of privacy. Man can no longer do simple tasks like math and spelling. It has created a culture of laziness.
No one need think or do research anymore. Hardly any younger person can do research unless it’s on the top of a search engine or in Wikipedia. No longer are there physical card catalogs in libraries. Nor are there documents, books, historical papers available easily at hand to make any sensible discoveries.
And there is the singular lack of desire to even try.
Fixing the problem
If something isn’t right, it takes too much effort to go through the internet search engines to find exactly what you are looking for. It may be buried hundred of pages down, or removed altogether if it doesn’t meet the society’s criteria of acceptability.
And past documentations and books have been burned or thrown out. We are left with no choice but to try to find a remnant those old papers if we ever want to discover the original writings of our forefathers.
But even more universal is the response from the older generation. It is from those who still remember what it was like before the television and computer took over daily lives. And that was a mere 50 years or so ago:
All this has created a loss of human dignity – the dignity of man.”
We have now become homogenous society of individuals. Each of us has our own uniqueness and individuality that we could bring to the table. Technocratic overlords have told us that everything must be universally compiled in the databases of our own creation.
It is time we take back our own individuality. The time has come to find a way to express our uniqueness. We must embrace the gifts we have to give to mankind. It is time to be human again.