Someone once said that for these goods and services which I provide, I should receive items back for equal value to the goods I sold or services I rendered. Then someone said that these items are far too general or not everyone has that item, for it to be a fair exchange. But what if we created a common item whereby a value is placed upon the item so goods can be bought and services provided will be fairly charged.
And then you go around hoarding little slips of plastic that you exchange with other people to get meaningful goods.
And then what happens? You say a few words to a person of the same/opposite gender, slip on a piece of metal with shiny things onto your hand, and spend hopefully the rest of your life with this person. After that you miraciously conceive and are successful in producing a fully self functional carbon based life form from inside the human body and raise this - lfie form - into what can be a strikingly close resemblence to you.
It is well established fact that we want what we do not have. We long for material goods that we don't have.
We either want something that everyone else has, to fit in ("I need the latest iPod or else I'm not cool!"), or something no one else has, to stand out ("I need the brand new iPod nano so I'm cooler than everyone else.")
Capitalism harnesses this human characteristic to benefit the country's economy. While everyone is striving to get more and more, the country will benefit. Capitalism is a cyclic condition. Once someone has topped a metaphorical social ladder, someone else would build a higher wrung and climb it before another comes to establish a higher place. Born from our desire of what we do not have, comes the condition whereby we seek to improve existing items into a better and more valuable product. The more valuable item allows its maker to be (most likely) temporarily, on top of the world. But once the new product completely replaces the obsolete item, then it turns from something 'no one has' into something that 'everyone else has'; then the search for a better product that would render the now top product, obsolete, ensues again.
In essence, this is the society that is across the world. And it isn't going to last.
"Rome was destroyed, Greece was destroyed, Persia was destroyed, Spain was destroyed. All great countries are destroyed. Why not yours? How much longer do you really think your own country will last? Forever? Keep in mind that the earth itself is destined to be destroyed by the sun in twenty-five million years or so."
Step back a second. In this frantic society which we live in, what are we living for?
Doubtless you would have all read or thought about what is the meaning of life. (Forty-two, nay.) No, that is too broader question to answer. A more specific question would be what is the purpose of life?
We are born.
We are taught.
We learn.
We earn.
We spend.
We teach.
We die.
On the social and economical scale: Is there no greater purpose in life than to 'spread our seeds'? Surely, making wealth and going through life trying to accumulate praise from peers can't be the purpose.
In the big big picture: I refuse to believe that humanity is by some freakish coincidence where the conditions are just perfect for life to exist. I refuse that the complicity of the human mind is just the consequence of millions of years of evolution. However, realistically, I don't believe there is capacity for pure Intelligent Design. (I believe there is the capacity for a greater higher power, but I'll believe it when I see it. Blind faith is a dangerous commitment, suicide bombers for example.)
This topic has been bashed too many times. This article isn't worthy of repetition, but the point to it is this.
I hope there will be a time when I will have an answer to this question:
What am I doing here?
