And also:
The Wright Brothers, Galileo Galilei, Leonardo DaVinci, Abraham Lincoln, Michelangelo, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Rene Descartes, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Pythagorus, Archimedes, Socrates, Aristotle... (and of course any women, or anybody else born before about 1850)... all have something in common:
None of them ever had "electricity", or drove a car, ate a frozen TV dinner, or even had a TV... (or a freezer, for that matter), or sent an e-mail. No A/C, phones, or microwaves. Same goes for running water, etc., etc. etc.
Yet somehow, inexplicably, they managed to make something meaningful of their lives, and in fact seem to have done rather well by their existence... in my humble opinion.
Perhaps if we weren't working 40-60 hours per week just to make the compound interest payments on the car and house, pay the power bill, hire a nanny, etc. we would actually have time to write a symphony, discover a new planet or two, or even start a constructive new form of government. (it could happen?)
Ok, Washington and Jefferson were both pretty rich, and may have had servants or slaves (or both) to handle some of the chores, but that is totally not my point.
Drop it.
My point is that about 99/100 of the conveniences(?) of "modern life" seem to be self-serving, (or dedicated to debt maintenance) and rather circular in nature. The necessity of having a car so that you can get to work, so that you can earn enough money to afford a car, so that you can get to work, being just one small example.
It seems to me that most of "modern life" has little to do with meeting our basic human needs, or fulfilling a rich and creative existence. Except maybe for farmers, just about everybody else seems to be going in circles to nowhere, like the gears in a large machine...
Ponder this.
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