That's It

I'm done. I have finally seen the light, and come to the realisation that this society is for the birds.

Actually, I think birds would probably be a more logical option than this society.

Does anyone know where I can check out/get off/join a strange cult living in the mountains behind no-where-in-particular?

I'm happy to go mainstream - as long as mainstream is Amish or Mennonite.

I was sent a new credit card today. It came with a "new feature" - Pay Pass. Apparently, as a society, we have progressed beyond being too lazy to lather our own soap. Now, it's too much to even expect us to sign our own name.

This is supposed to make life better: instead of signing for a credit card transaction under $35, you just tap your card against a reader and walk out with whatever you've bought.

I find this problematic and disturbing for a number of reasons. For one thing, some clever bunny is going to invent a reader that can pick up the information on your card by "accidentally" bumping into you in the street. I don't care how secure the bank says it is, this will happen. For another thing, if someone manages to get their hands on your card, they can just fritter away your money in small transactions and no one is going to check if it's actually their card (yes, I know, most shop attendants don't check any way - that's not the point).

I'm also concerned with the fact that this will make credit far too convenient - at least when you paid for the "small stuff" with cash, you could see how much you were spending and make value judgments one what to buy as a result.

Mostly, though, I think this whole idea stinks because it's yet another step towards oblivion. Why is our supreme goal "nothing"? Why are we striving so hard to get to a place in our lives where we don't do anything at all? Why is everyone around us telling us it's a great idea when everything is done for us and we don't have to lift a finger - and why do we believe them? Our quality of life is supposedly "improving", and yet we are fatter and more miserable than ever - and like muscles that are never used, our life-skills are atrophying.

We need to keep ourselves busy with the business of living. When we don't need to do anything for ourselves any more, we loose something of what makes living worth doing. Whether we like it or not, we do have to do "something" (rather than "nothing") with our time or we rot.

Of course, the same people who are "kindly" taking away that nasty "living" stuff for our convenience are also "kindly" providing us with something else to devote our attention to: to-of-the-charts music, blockbuster movies, fashionable clothes and other ethereal, slippery things we need to spend money to have (in small payments of less that $35 that can now simply be tapped away) until we get bored in five-minutes time and need something new.

Aldous Huxley's Brave New World seems closer every day (I even got a spam email the other day trying to sell me Soma), and I can't help but feel we've all missed the point. This isn't a better world we are forging.

Let me lather my own soap, sign my own name and live my own life. It's not like I've got anything more important to do.