Is modern society truly the best for us?

Think of what you do for work. Okay, now: Think of how you are compensated.

Do you truly enjoy what you do? Is it your calling, your destiny, your truly fulfilling career you feel at home with? Is it the best possible activity for your health seeing as you do it for 40 hours a week?

You’ve most likely answered in the negative to one of those questions if you work any sort of menial or retail job (and are anything like most of the people I’ve experienced working in both of those over the course of 7 years) and hate it. You probably ask yourself one of those questions seven days a week before you can go home and open a bottle of wine.

Whatever sort of work you may do, even if it’s something you may enjoy, or something that brings you an income leaving you financially stable; whatever you may capitalize on during your work week je te voudrais demander une question, is it what’s best for your health? Un suivi, is society promoting what’s best for your health? This leads into the main statement this article is focusing on.

Society (mainly Canadian as that’s all this writer is familiar with) does not care for your wellbeing; the ability to exploit what purpose you have to society is the essential focal point this writer believes western society is most passionate for when it comes to her citizens.

If you perchance find a career or calling that you are agreeable with, that’s all the better for both you and society at large, but is that the case for the majority of people? Methinks not.

It is the belief of this author that the modern western society we live in is extremely malevolent for our health and happiness, through both the ever increasing prices for the cost of living, and as our western ideas of a need to constantly sample the world around us by consuming and purchasing ever more frivolous and unnecessary geegaws. Take a look around you, at your children’s toys (perhaps you’ve thought of them as plastic junk), at items around your entire house that you don’t need, don’t use, and will probably throw out. This leads into the next, but also connected, thought experiment:

Does society care for our children’s health and safety?

First and foremost we assume they do, as children are always and simultaneously the most fragile and precious futures we have in society. This is not a correct assumption as most may think.

Just like the majority of other government commitments in Canadian history, it’s that, plus a way of being taken advantage of. It’s not even a promise, there has been no federal agreement signed - yet I have heard praise this commitment as honourable. But there comes a malicious catch. This writer believes the only reason is so you can work more efficiently and for longer hours at home or at work.

Of course the idea seems very well proposed: $10 a day, affordable childcare. Now think of a room that you stay in for 20 days a month, 8 hours a day, that you pay $10 for. What would you expect the condition of the room to be? The utilities, the food, the environment, the attitudes of those with a sudden influx of children to take care of, who most likely won’t see a pay increase - I am not at all blaming them, simply staking the coals of thought that lie burning inside you like the ashes of yesterday’s fire in the backyard pit - think of what the conditions will be like for those who are expected take care of 30 plus children?

This was and never is FOREMOST a concern for the wellbeing of your children as you as a passionate person may perceive it to be; that is the comfortable afterthought as you work more efficiently.

Furthermore, think of the documented intelligence of our predecessors, think of cursive writing, the fabulous and compulsory grammar and vocabulary even the youngest of folk had. There were people in this country who could survive with a sixth grade education. For a minute think of what passions our newest and most vulnerable generations may have right now compared to what might have been a century ago. The education system in this country simply doesn’t care for the wellbeing of our children either - only turning them into consumers able to work effectively. Those intelligently and emotionally gifted children with the ability of foresight will do fine, but what for the majority of the other children we hope the school may help?

Once again as in the meta-economical children care argument, the teacher’s do not have control over this and do not be upset with them. They have voiced their opinions many times, that they need both more finances for the schools as well as a more stable financial environment for themselves at home.

To finalize this piece, think of if those most sensitive and vulnerable in life, or those ignorant or arrogant of what wonder life has to offer, or those who still to this day have not acknowledged what traumas may still affect their daily lives and those around them, think of those depressed without the want or care to cook a real meal: is working 40 - 80 hours a week the most beneficial lifestyle? Is this the carefree attitude we assume and expect those up top to have for “their” people, those who really have no need for a care for you after all; one has to be well off to be in power, why care about a poor man when you have a country to run? Meetings to get to? Papers to sign and photographs to take? Summits to go to and ambassadors to flirt with?

Perhaps the dainty towns and villages, the hunting and fishing and traditional ways of our pre-industrial revolution antecedents held more wisdom than we believe those “poor” people to be?