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I believe all the idiosyncrasies we're discussing are a result of deliberate and persistent social engineering. Isolated people without support and safety nets are much easier to manipulate and keep under the government's thumb! Also, since all their "entertainment" comes from the media, they're also more susceptible to receiving all the "right" messages! Not to mention that when people gather too much and exchange ideas they can become dangerous... and the think tanks up there don't want that.
I agree.
Hey they knew seperating families, friends and breaking up long standing family ties, would give them more power.
Corporations are soulless entities often taht have grown too big. Small family businesses are under more and more opression all the time.
Entertainment is full of programming. I believe a lot of entertainment as well has "programmed" people to be desensitized--all the violence, the sex without love, the pure evil, that has come via TV. Even just on the secular level, Hollyweird has led to oppression and the focus on looks over character, imprisoning women in a beauty prison, where no one measures up and people in general, being trained to not just keep up with the Joneses but BE JUST LIKE THEM. [ie no emotions, work til you drop, shop til you drop, plastic surgery, and manufactured rebellion and opinions for all!]
[just so people know I consider CNN just as bad as Fox news]
My brother in law is from Morroco. He married my sister, and they live in a neighborhood of houses exactly like this one in the north end of San Bernardino (really the only habitable part left for non gang bangers, criminals, etc.). His brother went to France instead of America as a young man. They both grew up in Morroco and lived there until their 20s. His brother came out to visit him a few years ago. He was just shaking his head and laughing at how his brother was living. His main comments were a) he works waaaaay too much and too hard and b) his neighborhood is soooo boring. Nothing ever happens in the street. Where are the people?
Consequently, his brother, in his 40s, is now retired and travels the world. My brother in law is a working stiff and will be until he dies, I'm sure. So you go ahead and rag on the French all you want, they must be doing something right, right?
I can see why some people have moved overseas.
Seriously.
Husband went to Europe and told me it was much friendlier place, people were far more social. {He lived in England for a time}
A friend of mine from the internet moved from Portugal to the US, she told me she spent months crying because people were so cold and closed down and antisocial. She had moved to Tampa.
The Moroccoan relative definiutely was on to some major truths. What is the use of just working all the time, if you live some dead life, where you have no relaituonships, no hobbies, no joys, nothing of what is important in life? I made a cardinal mistake of giving up a community for a stupid "good job"; one husband lost three months later. He says to me now how could we have known and we had no money to pay our bills, what were we going to do. We should have stayed.
This is a very good post, and to add to it, I must say, corporatism has taken over America. For example, developers come into rural towns/developed neighborhoods and build mega shopping centers, with say, a CVS, Target, Starbucks, Autozone, Mcdonalds, Barnes and Noble and a Costco, all in one area.
What then happens ( and I see this with my own eyes) is that it drives many of the old small neighborhood stores/strip malls out of business; and it destroys the nexus of the community. Quality and customer service then goes down because nobody owns there own business due to the level of difficulty there is to compete against the mega conglomerates. And for the ones who do have jobs, they are only going to work so hard when they are only getting paid 8 bucks an hour! Gosh, these companies (e.g. CVS, Target) don't even do business with the local vendors that are left (such as myself) in the community that they bust into. Nor do they give back or give aid to the community like a local family owned store would! For example, back in the 80's, there was a family owned hardware store around the corner from my childhood home and the owner lived above his shop with his wife (like many of the other businesses in the area), and if my mom did not have money to buy paint, or a garden hose, he would just give her the supplies and tell her to pay it back when she could. Try doing that at Lowes!!!
So now, when people need to shop, get coffee, or just hang out, it's a rather cold experience because the interdependence that was built up over the decades, such as, barter and trading, IOU's, and ACTUALLY KNOWING the owner of the stores is gone! Essentially, we all patron in and out of decorated warehouses that are filled to the brim with cheap quality products that are made in China; to be frank about it.
But what is more scary to me, is that, the young people think this is NORMAL! For example, no, it's not normal when I walk into a shoe store (dsw) and people just point to shoe rack when in the 80s the Italians use to measure my feet and custom make my shoes for a fair price that lasted TWICE/3xTIMES as long as the ones they sell today!
I follow some rules in my own life, SHOP LOCAL and the SMALLER the BUSINESS the better.
I still follow it. If the business is small and family owned, I will purposefully choose it.
By the way being disabled, in souless big box stores where no one helps you is BAD. At the small family own stores, they will help me with my bags. This is one reason I try to stick to family owned businesses, their service is FAR SUPERIOR, and they WILL HELP YOU. I realized fast about Wal-mart if you asked any of the employees for help they got angry.
One thing that used to horrify me, is how many did not even care about their own towns [this happened in my old one] where many would leave town to buy at the corporate behemoths. Now some items yes you had to get elsewhere but not everything!
I hate the new stores, because they are so impersoanl. You are right they overly decorated warehouses full of garbage from China. By the way most of that stuff falls apart pretty fast.
I know this thread is long, and on many topics, but even here, we have lost the very soul of commerce and what it was supposed to be about!!!
This is true too many mom and pop shops are gone. I work for one and boy are they struggling.
They sure are. The small business man has been squeezed.
I find myself getting angry, what is wrong with people that they choose these souless behemoths to shop at? The money saved isnt even that much anymore. We are all being slapped down to the lowest common denonimator!
When I was in college I heard a girl say she did not have room in her life for any new friends and she sought me out on Facebook recently...funny how "open" her life is after all these years
I wonder if some of those people do end up alone, after they tell everyone go away. I even said to this lady, your daughters are 16 and 17, they are going to be out on their own soon. I do not think she had any other friends, the more I got to know her. There are tons of people out there now like that, they may see some people they are "social" with like at school events or church if they are in one, but they take it no further.
(Sidebar: if you have never seen this movie, you’re missing a great. The American Film Institute ranks it No. 66 on their list of the 100 greatest movies)
I feel like the whole working thing is such a catch-22. To get to the "ideal lifestyle" you need to work hard to do well in school so you can get into a great college. Then you need to do well there so you can get into a good grad/law/business/med school and eventually get a great job. Some people just go straight into their careers. Then you have to work hard in your career to climb to the top. However, by the time most people reach the top (or semi-top) their youth is gone and they've become desensitized by spending their lives on their career.
I'm struggling with this myself. I've always been ambitious ever since childhood and I want to do everything I can, but I'm starting to realize that I can't be an adventurous explorer and have a high profile career simultaneously, unless I manage to land in a talent field (writing, acting, etc.). What's my generation to do? I don't want to spend my whole life working to die!!
Sometimes I contemplate dropping all my grand notions and traveling around the world and writing for the rest of my life.
I feel like the whole working thing is such a catch-22. To get to the "ideal lifestyle" you need to work hard to do well in school so you can get into a great college. Then you need to do well there so you can get into a good grad/law/business/med school and eventually get a great job. Some people just go straight into their careers. Then you have to work hard in your career to climb to the top. However, by the time most people reach the top (or semi-top) their youth is gone and they've become desensitized by spending their lives on their career.
I'm struggling with this myself. I've always been ambitious ever since childhood and I want to do everything I can, but I'm starting to realize that I can't be an adventurous explorer and have a high profile career simultaneously, unless I manage to land in a talent field (writing, acting, etc.). What's my generation to do? I don't want to spend my whole life working to die!!
Sometimes I contemplate dropping all my grand notions and traveling around the world and writing for the rest of my life.
^^^ Your post reminds me of what an old man told me: "People spend all their youthful energy to acquire wealth, and when they finally do become wealthy, (in their 40's-50's) they now haft to spend all their wealth to say healthy."
^^^ Your post reminds me of what an old man told me once: "People spend all their youthful energy to acquire wealth, then when they finally do become wealthy, (in their 40's-50's) they now haft to spend all their wealth to say healthy."
It's a shame many of my goals and dreams contradict each other.
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Your post reminds me of what an old man told me: "People spend all their youthful energy to acquire wealth, and when they finally do become wealthy, (in their 40's-50's) they now haft to spend all their wealth to say healthy."
