MARCH 2003
"The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something and tell what he saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, and thousands can think for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion all in one."
John Ruskin
The Information Age
For more than 2 years now I have been trying to record happenings both here at Heimbu and around the world, but I would like this month to go a little deeper into what I have been wanting to say. As English is not my first language please bear with me; I also have problems expressing myself in writing, much preferring the oral form of questioning and answering. But anyway; here goes,
My first observation is that about 20 years ago we entered a New Age, the Information Age, which has taken over from the previus one, the Industrial Age, which in turn took over from the Agricultural Age. For thousand of years whoever owned land controlled wealth; then about 300 years ago wealth control changed from land ownership to production, and now wealth is produced by whoever controls the flow of information. Political power always follows wealth whether one lives in a so-called democracy or not. Also, anyone who does not understand and have the ability to use the system is effectively enslaved whether he or she realizes it or not. The so-called class system has very little relevance in the real world; the ability to see is all-important.
Myself, coming from a family whose wealth and influence were built on land-ownership, I can see how this was lost during the Industrial Age, which brought in a system which we did not understand nor wanted to understand. The same is now happening to the families who have dominated the world through manufacturing.
In this present age whoever controls the flow of information, controls the world. One need only to look at where wealth creation has taken place in the last 20 years. Names like the Murdock Media Group, Time-Warner, Microsoft and Yahoo are some of the more obvious ones.
Obviously we still need food and industrial production, but the balance of power has changed. There is now a fierce power struggle going on between the different players in the information game, both companies and governments are positioning themselves; alliances are formed, broken up and re-formed in one of the most ruthless wars in the history of mankind; a war of which most people are blissfully unaware.
Education
The education system is still built on the need and certainties of the Industrial Age. The working classes are being educated (or rather not educated) for a life working in the mills down on the factory floor, and the middle classes are still groomed for management of industy, banks and government. The idea is still to get good grades at A-level and University; join a decent company or the Government; work your way up and hopefully retire with some sort of pension at an age where you can still enjoy one. Only, things don't work like this in the Information Age. The wealth creators tend to not have a formal education; there is no longer any form of job security, not even in Government, and you can generally forget about getting a pension that you can live on if you are not a politician. What you will not learn at school is wealth creation or even how to survive, economically or otherwise; even a MBA or a degree in economics does not teach you anything much about the realities of life in this day and age. Quite the opposite; the system is now rapidly being changed to cater for what is now needed and you and your children is not going to like it much. As both farming and manufacturing more and more can be done without people we are now beeing groomed to service the elite. The Universities are being bullied into stopping to train their students in critical thoughts; the ideal now is to narrow ones knowledge so nothing is known outside ones field; technicians are now being produced, not thinkers. Students at Public Schools, which are now seen as the last bastion of independant thought, are now starting to be denied access to Higher Education, not that it is a serious loss to them anyway.
Housing
According to the latest statistics half the working population in the UK can
no longer afford to buy their own house, even a simple 2-bed-room one that was
built for factory workers in the previous age. As I pointed out in last month's
View the ones that manages to get the money together somehow are being conned
if you have to get a mortgage, which most of us are forced to do as it is almost
impossible to save up anything for the average salaried person. Most middle
class people's ideal life seem to go something like this: You finish school,
hopefully get a job, marry, take out a mortgage and buy a starter home, get
a rise, take out a higher mortgage to buy a bigger house because you need more
space or to be able to save a little in taxes on your interest payments, get
your kids through a hopefully decent school, retire on a small pension, go into
a nursing home, sell your house to pay for nursing care, then die. Sounds great,
doesn't it?
Anyway, the houses are getting smaller and smaller, the quality worse every
year, and the prices are getting higher and higher.
Food
Food production in the Information Age is being dominated by the Superstore
chains who are able to dictate the prices and produce methods to farmers and
food processors. We, the so-called consumers, have been trained to believe that
we are getting cheap, healthy and convenient meals, Those of us who realize
that this is not the case find that we have almost no possibility to take our
shopping elsewhere, as there is no realistic competition to the Superstores
left. As a result most of us now subsist on a diet that is damaging to our health,
overly expensive and completely tasteless.
Finance
In the Agricultural Age finance was built on the barter system, whether produce or real money in the shape of silver and gold was used, in the Industrial Age finance revolved round IOYs, also known as paper money which had no real value, but could be seen and handled, and now, in the Information Age almost all financial deals are conducted digitally. There are several trillion pounds of non-existant money sloshing around in the system which can be moved all over the world at the touch of a button. For the average person, however, there is little or no chance to be part of the new financial system. If you manage to save anything banks now pay so little in interest that for all practical purpose you lose money by saving, the stock market is a financial death trap and the tax man takes whatever little there is left. While many people have been made to believe that they are well-off they are in actual fact destitute.
Health
Medical plants have been in use long before humanity. Most animals, even carnivores, when sick will seek out certain plants and eat them, and there is proven use of herbal medicines from the time of the Neanderthals. But we are now being told that all herbs must go through a rigorous series of tests before they can be allowed to be used. The lenght and severity of these tests mean that only the big pharmaseutical companies can afford to do this, which in effect give them complete control over what medicines and treatment will be available from now on. They already control what the medical profession can prescribe and will soon be able to do the same with alternative healers.
Family
The core family in America and part of Europe will soon consist of a mother and one or more children. Grandparents, uncles and aunts and cousins no longer live together or even have much contact with each other. The system now discourage any extended family which an individual or a family unit can turn to if something goes wrong; one must instead enter into dependency on the Government. Now that most of us have done so, we are being treated with contempt by the powers-that-be.
Community
The general ownership of the motorcar has effectively broken up the concept
of community. Up until the 1960's most people worked within walking or bicycling
distance of where they were living, but this is no longer the case. People are
now encouraged (or forced) to live in the suburbs which are uninhabited wastelands
during most of the day with children at school or kindergarten and both parents
commuting to work. At the end of the day everyone is just collapsing in front
of the telly with some take-away food before going to bed. Few of us have any
energy left for community work, most of us hardly know who is living next door.
We are also being scared out of our wits by crime statistics which have been
used to take away any possibility of actually fighting back, and CCTV is now
everywhere, even in classrooms where they are being used to monitor the teachers
in case they should actually try to teach something that is not on the approved
curriculum. There seems to be a very short step now until the authorities will
start monitoring us in our own houses "in order to be able to safeguard
us". Sadly, when it comes to that, most of us have now been so conditioned
to depend on someone else that we will accept this with gratitude.
Conclusion
Reading through what I have written above it sounds pretty much like the rantings of somebody that has more or less cracked up, and I suppose I should hope that I have, but in case I have not there is still hope. During any great change in society there are always possibilities for someone who doesn't neccessarily want to play the role assigned to him or her. Possibly next month I will try to discuss what options we have in this rapidly changing world to play our own game.
Most lovely of all doubts
is when the downtrodden raise their
heads
And stop believing in the strength of
their oppressors.
From Brecht's poem: In Praise of Doubt.