politics, philosophy and boring things: rant

warning: this is boring. anyways, when i was studying political science in buenos aires, we had to read a lot of works that dealt with societal decadence and the role of the masses in shaping society; decadence is a subject of particular interest to me.

the word 'decadent' itself is interesting in that it can be defined one of two ways: 1. being in a state of decline or decay, or 2. marked by or providing unrestrained gratification; self-indulgent. i believe western society is already in a deep state of decline as a result of part 2 of the definition. i like technology and material objects just as much as the next person, but we are being set up for a huge fall because of our increasing dependence upon these kinds of goods for survival. for example, many people are becoming increasingly dependent upon GPS systems for navigation purposes; if this kind of dependence continues, we will stop teaching future generations how to navigate without the help of technological tools, and eventually arts like triangulation and celestial navigation will become obsolete and totally forgotten. now, i'm not saying this will happen tomorrow or anything like that; instead it will be a gradual process that we won't even notice until some sort of disaster strikes that prevents the use of the technological goods we've come to depend on.

if anyone is actually even reading this, which i highly doubt, i bet they're thinking i'm crazy and that this is impossible. but look at the romans...they lost much of their advanced technological knowledge during late antiquity, and a lot of this knowledge was never regained. the same goes for most of the great, highly advanced civilizations of the past. and the only ones who've really survived consistently are those that changed very little over the course of their existence, that haven't experienced high levels of globalization, and that never came to rely on modern technology as a means of survival.

one of the signs of a society in decay is a population shift from the countryside to cities. now, obviously not everyone is moving to big cities like manhattan, but land is becoming increasingly developed and urbanized. the reason for this rapid urbanization and development (as well as increasing technological advances) is because 1) we are dependent upon modern niceties, and 2) we are increasingly unsatisfied/bored with the things our surroundings have to offer. as a result, the masses begin to grow restless in their constant search for the next source of amusement. but progress is not limitless so this automatically is setting us up for a big fall. societal growth patterns mimic the human life cycle; it is born, it grows, and it dies, meaning an immortal society would be an impossibility; decline is to be expected. also, our extreme desperation for change and advancement will eventually cause us to open up the possibility for the rise of despots who will tell us exactly what we want to hear.

as a sort of side note about technological advancement, the government has been incredibly smart to make the internet limitless in terms of accessing information. there is so much information that we become distracted by white noise. it becomes much more difficult to see what is actually important when surrounded by all these distractions. also, the rise of social networking websites and blogging platforms has VERY smartly placed extreme emphasis on the importance of the individual. future generations will grow to be increasingly self-absorbed to the point that no one will be able to agree with one another, nor will they be willing to compromise. this means that there will be little to no possibility for mass uprisings, no revolutions. the government will be able to do whatever it wants without fear of dissent, and without ever censoring a single piece of information. kind of ridiculous.

well, i think i'm pretty much done ranting for the time being. you probably think i'm crazy but i don't really careee. THE END.