Time and money are becoming increasingly intertwined and more difficult to manage.
If you are over 40 you may well remember the days when most goods and services had a roughly standard price. Technology was comparatively in its infancy and life could be lived within relatively simple human equations. Work may have been arduous enough but retirement was a realistic goal with a comfortable pension or superannuation to see you through your old age.
The world has changed in a blink of an eye. People are forced to gamble with their retirement incomes by choosing safe, moderate or aggressive portfolio investments. The ordinary man is forced to make extraordinary and difficult choices. The wrong choice will condemn him or her to miserable twilight years or early extinction.
Even the simplest of tasks such as shopping now involve considerable intellectual endeavour. Prices for items or services vary wildly from one outlet to the next and sensible purchasing involves extra research and time. As well as traditional stores there are now thousands of online ones. Except for the wealthy few, choices for all purchases from food to big-ticket items are matters of vital importance. The weekly grocery shop involves looking constantly for specials and only buying those. In all probability, the price of a special is what the price of the item should be in any case.
Simple financial survival in the day-to-day world is becoming an increasing headache. The countless advertisements bombarding us further damage our equilibrium. We are continually told that brand X sports drink will save us from dehydration and damage, while in truth simple tap water will do just as well for all but the most extreme of athletes and even then it is a toss-up.
The very vitamins that we used to intake with a healthy balanced diet are now being marketed to us at a high price as a “must have” if we are to avoid ill-health.
The web of lies, disinformation and complexity doesn’t end there. Politicians bend the truth with increasing alacrity and the mass media are ready to support their chosen ones with all sorts of distortions. The unfettered support of the Murdoch Empire for Australia’s Abbott government beggars belief. To see past all this spin that threatens our own and our children’s existence requires a considerable effort and time on our part in doing our own research. It is now no longer sufficient to read a newspaper and believe that we are basically receiving facts and truth. Now it is necessary to search countless sources, including social media, to arrive at reasonable conclusions.
Life appears to be becoming more complex by the minute. Let’s just hope we are all close to being geniuses and can accomplish all the tasks required of us in record time. If that is not the case something big will have to give. It will either be the excesses of capitalism or own wellbeing if not actual survival. On every front from intellectual, to economic, the world is becoming one categorically divided into winners and losers. Mind you, if the environment goes, everyone and thing will be a bigtime loser.
cassandradoom 