There are two great evils in the world: religion and job specialization. Religion is a dead horse that still needs beating, but for now I'll jump on the latter.
'Berry and The Jake have each made similar posts about progress for progress' sake. There comes a point when we simply don't need things to be any more advanced, when there is no significant logistical or productive purpose to this progress. I'd venture to say that the point in question occured 6,000 or so years ago, or even so much as 10,000, but somewhere back in there, somebody decided it would be a good idea to engage in job specialization. As soon as that happened, everything went downhill. We developed the idea that little chits of some rare metal could represent the value of a good or service, and economics was born. Somebody got rich, the rest didn't, and we still haven't sorted out how to fix that, or even if it can or should be fixed. That's one result; the other is far worse.
Once we started specializing, folks were free to engage in other tasks. We invented implements of the hunt, which, when the rich guy decided he was king of everybody around him, became implements of war. We invented the arts for communication and to preserve our honorable culture, and when we saw that ours was different from theirs, it became a call for war. We kept inventing new technologies and going through shifts in theology, and we could never draw a line. There have always been conservatives trying to maintain the present way, if not the past, and there have always been liberals pushing us to new depths. This pattern can only end if we draw the line somewhere. We must say "Wait, friend, is this really doing us any good, or are we as well off as we need to be?" Is that possible, or will the liberals keep pushing us until we destroy the world?
The destruction of freedom has already occured, what with religion and currency and government and other things I discussed above. It's a system we can't escape, no matter where you are on the political spectrum or where you live in the world. But what's worse is that modern technologies and practices are encroaching on the destruction of the very Earth on which we reside; they have been for 6,000 years of human "acheivement."
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