Have Our Innovations Imprisoned Us? Thoughts for the 2008 Presidential Election and Beyond..

Have our innovations imprisoned us? This is a question I ask myself today, and a question I pose to you. I hope that at least it will get you thinking about what commitments we make each time we find a way to make something easier. (Also, consider how this will affect who you vote for in the 2008 Presidential Election. And what New Year's resolutions you will make.)

What do I mean by our innovations imprisoning us? What I mean is that to get something, we give something up. And this has become the theme of our modern society. In order to be able to practice individualism (which we ALL do but not everyone will admit to), we commit ourselves to the common good.

Here is the first example. We want to be able to travel by ourselves to go somewhere. So, we want a car that we can drive, whenever we want to. For this to happen, a whole process begins. Someone invents the car, invents how it will run, and a company is born. There are now commitments. Commitments to the employees, to give them money to raise their children, and to give them healthcare benefits. There is a commitment to gasoline. To run the car that we built that only can run on gasoline, we now have to purchase gasoline. If we get it from the US, then the US has to commit to using its natural resources until they could be depleted. If we get the gasoline from another country, then we have to keep up positive ties with that nation so they will sell us the gasoline.

So, the individualist motivation to own a car now has a wide array of commitments tied to it.

Why is this bad, you ask? It's bad if we want to be free again. Picture this: We want to now stop using gasoline. Well, there will be many unhappy people out there. People who pay their bills by working at Exxon, or countries who sustain their economic state by manufacturing oil. If we try to use an alternative gas, there will be outrage! As if we don't already know this.

Now here is a second example. We want to be able to live healthy lives without too much of a threat from disease. So, we need antibiotics to help us if we get a treatable disease. So, someone has to research a drug to cure the disease. A drug manufacturing company is born.