1907 vs 2007

Yes, in the last 100 years, the world hasn’t advanced at all, as a race.

What is the world coming to nowadays?

What was said 100 years ago is true today, revealing that the human race has not done much improvement and evolution in the last 100 years. If anything, although our scientific knowledge might be at its peak, the human race as a whole, is nowhere near as enlightened, classy and innocent as it was in days of yore. Gone are gentleman, classy women, and educated people, and not just in the academic but also the cultural sense. Greed has become the number one emotion among human beings, with the chase for the green overriding all other concerns, ranging from the ethical to the environmental. Everyone is fighting to put themselves in their kids in the position to make a lot of money. The richest institutions are banks, and the biggest investors are banks. The richest paid jobs are banking jobs. But what do bankers do?

Bankers sell you crap financial products that you either do not need, or that are bad for you, all just to earn the commission on that. Insurance packages are designed to frighten you. Everything is designed to strip you of your hard earned cash. Nobody pays with what they have. Everything is done on credit, on loan, and when there’s nothing to borrow or sell, they sell trumped up marketing products, and long before the general public knew of the sub-prime woes that are today besieging the global economy, bankers already knew, but were still selling anyway. It is consumerism and capitalism at is frenzied peak. Buy, and if you can’t afford it, borrow!

"Modern man drives a mortgaged car over a bond-financed highway on credit-card gas."- Earl Wilson 1907-, American newspaper columnist

Institutions are all about making money. Trying to afford an education is getting harder and harder. It is probably more worthwhile financially to send your kid to TAFE than to university. At my alma mater, they are having an accommodation crisis, where university students are hot-bedding it, which basically means they take turns to sleep on the same bed.

We are hot property. Institutions are scrambling to decode what is in my head. Everyone wants to know what I am thinking. Everyone is trying to strip as many dollars from me as possible. As a Gen Y (is that even me? At 25 years old?) member, I am merely a statistic, a cross section of the socio-economical fabric of the population, and am targeted as a hot marketing prospect, an eager beaver consumer. Everyone is trying not to understand what makes us tick, how to harness our energy, how to make the world a better place with us, what is screwing us up, what makes us happy, what motivates us. No. everyone, every research dollar is hell bent on squeezing every drop of blood from us, and when we are broke and bankrupt to our knees, they will conveniently dispose of us, and move on to Gen Z.

Y'day, we fought over land. Today we fight over oil. Tomorrow, we will fight over water and food. Mark my words.

Yes, in the last 100 years, the world hasn’t advanced at all, as a race.