What the hell is wrong with the planet

Why are we so disconnected from each other? My theories are wide ranging. From the excessive drug use to the misuse and misguidedness of so called spiritual and religious leaders to the excessive reliance on modern technology. I am here to share my views and thoughts as someone who has suffered severe mental illness ranging from depression and anxiety to self loathing which eventually led to hating society to hating the planet and beyond.

First point I’d like to point out is our over reliance on self medication – I have been scrolling YouTube for years now – especially since the days when video game playthroughs were all the rage – although I admit I got into it relatively late. Well nowadays there are videos awash with cities awash with so called “zombie” drug addicts – junkies is the street name for these types of addicts. Well I believe and have always believed that anyone that relies on illicit substances to get by is just fuelling society’s downfall. The reason being that dealers are unscrupulous in my experience. They murder, get arrested and imprisoned and those prisons get ever more and more overcrowded leading to lack of ways of dealing with the numbers of incarcerated peoples and the graveyards get stacked ever higher. The other problem as you’ll see in an example of a video – these people they can’t get help, if they are helped their lives are tricky to repair and well as dealers keep selling there are only more and more of them on the streets creating a problem that can’t be contained – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBJscoaWHWA – this is in Canada! A country once considered a safe haven free of these kinds of problems. Look at it now and no Government or private enterprise has any answers! This – this is why I take a hard line approach to drug use – even myself being medicated for several years for my mental health issues don’t really wish to keep taking my medication – not because this leads to society’s downfall unlike illicit substances – although it could be argued that pharmaceutical companies have so much blood on their hands in other ways such as price gouging, collusion and many other white collar crimes – no the problem is far worse when you see the condition of where society is headed. Even where I live the types of illicit substances are worse and worse – tranq, crystal meth, cocaine, heroin – all of them are evil and no amount of banning them can ever fix the damage once people start using.

The second point I raised – so called spiritual and religious people and religions in general. I have no problem with spiritual practices – I have every problem with religions as a whole and the fracturing of society they have created – especially since the early days of the organised religions – the so-called Abrahamic ones. There was a religion before those that had simple practices and had much more to do with spiritualism and although not perfect by far, was much better overall as it didn’t prescribe death and destruction to those who are “infidels” or anyone else who had differing ideas. It did create something of a caste system but overall was much more peaceful as it spread. Zoroastrianism isn’t widely practiced anymore and was all but wiped out by the Abrahamic religions but could make a resurgence if people truly wish to make it happen. Other spiritual practices – I refuse to call them “religions” as they are so removed from the likes of the Abrahamic religions – are also just as peaceful, if ruined by what I would call modern ideology. The fact that some of these such as Buddhism also have an over reliance on precious materials like gold also irks me though. Why is gold considered holy? Why not make them out of something even more natural like wood or clay? Isn’t the Earth’s spirit also important? Why not say thank you to the planet that gives us life while praising your so called “wise minded and enlightened” beings? This being the sort of thing I am talking about: https://www.theroadtoanywhere.com/golden-buddha-at-the-golden-triangle-thailand-travel-photo/. How much energy – what I call unnatural energy such as fire and metallurgy went into the making of this? I’ll leave that for anyone with an open mind to ponder…

The third point I made – over reliance on technology – well this started in the earliest days of the industrial revolution. What was once seen as amazing and world changing is now seen as world ending and destructive. Now I admit in my youth I made mistakes thinking that cars are awesome and everyone deserves something fast and beautiful to drive. Now I see things very differently – however I do not agree that electric vehicles are the answer. In fact most petroleum is not actually used in the burning of fossil fuels. It is in fact the production of materials – especially roads and plastics – that make up the bulk of our usage of crude oil. However, I also recognise that burning this fuel in any form is a problem. Now the only solution seems to be wait 35 – 40 years and see what happens because our crude oil stocks are being depleted by the second – what comes out of the ground isn’t infinite. This one unfortunately is one of the hardest to tackle. I keep asking so called experts – what replaces all the crude oil products – especially bitumen and the like – once it runs out. No response other than “we’ll think of something”. Even I think about this question a lot – I have tried searching to see what technologists can come up with and so far nothing satisfactory has arisen. Now the other problem here which I almost forgot to add is how cities are built and seem to be meant to divide us. Also roads themselves are a problem not just to human life but also wildlife. Again though most will argue that the “convenience” of being stuck in traffic outweighs the benefits. I myself like the idea of so called “15 minute cities” but I see lots of opposition from some corners – particularly car owners. I really wish I didn’t have to live in a city sometimes.

I have also not linked this to connection. The other aspect of technology as it stands now – well IT systems have definitely connected the world however mostly in all the wrong ways.

Social media – so called connections that allow people to post or comment or follow whoever they like. Mostly leads to celebrity worship and most of those celebrities are toxic and hateful or pretend they are doing the world good. More on this in later posts.

Text apps and SMS – yes they connect you to people – who you already know. This doesn’t expand your social network – that’s my major complaint here besides the fact they take all your data and sell it most of the time.

So called get-together apps and dating apps/sites – these can work well in some countries. My problem is that most of them are either scams and are presented as “solutions” – especially this seems to be the thing these apps do in Western countries. Again, mostly exist to collect and sell your data. Yay capitalism *eye roll*.

I have very rarely made genuine connections online and I know there are some that do and great for them but these are the minority for sure.

More posts to follow soon.

So far I have only listed problems. These are the obstacles I see to achieving a truly happy and healthy society. How do we go beyond them?

How do we get the devoted Catholic or Muslim to stop going to “prayers” by donating their possessions and very lives to their so called “cause”?

How do we go from wanting connections to actually building them?

How do we tear apart society so we stop being so wasteful – think of the billionaires that demand ever more money in a world that’s shorter and shorter of supply as skyscrapers demanding more and more resources to build that are increasingly depleted? – See for instance the types of sand needed for glass and concrete manufacturing.

What can be done?

Well, people are running away from the countryside as jobs are increasingly becoming city based and work from home is increasingly seen as “bad for business”. Not only that but the crime and poverty rates go up as demand for locally made and sold products decreases thanks to the internet. Not only that but the amount of drug addiction goes up as hope goes down.

So what to do?

Government investments are contentious. If they invest in poorer areas they are seen as “wasting money”. If they invest in wealthy areas they are seen as “wasting money”. No one’s suggesting dissolving all Government. I believe the root of this systemic problem is the fact community no longer exists in the traditional sense. Government is disconnected from the realities of many living and struggling day to day. We’re back in the days of the Victorian era in terms of wealth and community disparity. It’s not good. Children even in first world countries are being forced to work young even. Source – https://www.cbsnews.com/news/child-labor-laws-migrants-illegal-jobs-labor-department/

Strong Government ties to communities – NOT business leaders is what’s required. I can see that this is slowly happening here with some independent candidates. I believe that big money – I am talking large sum private donations and other types of privileges afforded to politicians by business leaders cheekily seen as “lobbying” be totally illegal! This would help curb the rise in totalitarianism and finally allow politicians to see that the average household is seriously struggling.

This would also stop big industry groups such as oil, gas, technology and natural resource sectors influence our leaders as much as they do. It would also be good to take such funding away from Universities and put it back in the hands of actual philanthropists as how it used to be done when Universities meant something.

Strong connection to land. This is really missing. We need to take stock of not what’s left but how to reuse TONNES of materials. Billions of tonnes of waste happen in the construction and other sectors globally. Even financial waste is absolutely RIFE. This needs to be stepped on severely and clawbacks made from businesses by Government to have proper wealth inequality stamped out. Stop making rich people wealthy. Seriously this isn’t rocket science. This used to be a fair and equitable society, what’s gone wrong is the strong influence of American and British capitalists as well as others making a mess of society for their own personal gains that they really don’t need.

Lastly – stop fighting. Wars are EXPENSIVE. Seriously how many conflicts since WWII did nothing but make things worse in many countries and make billions – even trillions – for weapons manufacturers. Now even war memorials are funded by weapons manufacturers to the outrage of some – https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/feb/15/australian-war-memorial-accepted-more-than-830000-from-weapons-manufacturers-in-three-years

Since WWII the number of conflicts that have made the world a worse place is around 285 and counting – source – https://www.visionofhumanity.org/highest-number-of-countries-engaged-in-conflict-since-world-war-ii/
How many terror groups have been created and destroyed and recreated and destroyed and how many millions of lives – mostly innocent – have been caused by wars such as these?

These are some of my ideas for how to make the world a better place. More posts to follow.

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