Is the flood of daily media outbursts preventing all of us from stepping back and looking at the big picture of our modern global situation?

This bar represents the period of time mankind has had electricity in relation to the estimated 40,000 years since specialized tools first began to be crafted. Throughout the eons in the green portion mankind heated and cooked with open fires and walked or used beasts of burden for travel and transport. The tiny red sliver is the period since Franklin proved electricity could be harnessed. In that little fragment of our existence we have used electricity to push our world to a position whereby we can now destroy our own planet and we could not have done it without electricity. It is a blessing we are cursing ourselves with. We now take it for granted but have you ever stopped to wonder if we are responsible enough to manage it? Has mankind reached a point where our intelligence has created a world so complex we lack the intelligence to control it?

My own father did a lot of farm work with horses just 80 years ago. Family farms in those days saturated our rural areas and the families were largely self-sufficient. They were growing crops and livestock without chemicals that leech into groundwater and livestock antibiotics that create resistant bacteria. Those families were mostly decent hard working Christians who believed in personal responsibility and helping within the communities they were a part of. The little towns spaced conveniently around our counties were vibrant little business centers that held opportunity for any with a skill, a product and determination. Electricity enabled the growth of mega farms under corporate control using massive machinery and factory farm livestock buildings overcrowded with drug laden animals. The nice little towns die away as the big farms gobble up little ones causing Main Street to starve as the original families move away to find work.

Electricity brings so much good but will it ultimately ruin us because of the weakness of human nature? The world always had wars but right after man industrialized with electricity we burst into two great and bloody World Wars. Electricity made them possible as we were now able to mass produce horribly destructive weapons and transport them to battlefields quickly. Before electricity it took weeks just to cross an ocean. Wars were smaller and localized rarely reaching beyond one continent. So, the gift of electricity which improved food distribution, medical fields and expanded production capabilities creating new wealth also brought more death and destruction. Now it brings too much too fast.

Our cities and homes are now designed dependent upon electricity from vulnerable grid systems all the bad guys can damage easily. It will come. Even worse, our own governments now look to electricity and the technologies we rely on as they seek greater access and control of our personal lives. They grant themselves permission to use technology in ways that infringe on our privacy and increase their power over us. They now permit themselves access to our most personal health and finance records and demand the power to hack our secure devices. They are learning to use technology against us by claiming it is for our own security. They once sought personal ID of citizens and floated talk of ID chips etc but now we all carry them in our smart phones and they are perfecting their intrusions to all we know and do. Our own top national security managers put tape over their smart phone and laptop cameras.

Cameras are everywhere and traffic cameras are city, county and state cash registers. The leisure time electricity has provided our lives with has created the idle minds that become the fabled devils playground. We now have generations of families producing unproductive citizens who often live better than the working class that pays for them. Before electrical technology made excess production possible societies were not so willing to support the lazy or unproductive. He who worked ate. Towns used to banish people who had no visible means of support, there were vagrancy laws. Now the community is forced to provide for them while they often outbreed the working class. The social systems of abused safety nets could not exist at the enormous size they became if not for electronic administration systems. No nation could ever afford to manage care of one hundred million non-producers if record keeping and benefit distribution/management was done by hand on paper.

Global business and financial systems have used technology to create layered spider webs of wealth that only exists on paper or digital bytes and the funds can be moved anywhere in the world with a keystroke. The days of nations awash in success built by the hard work of small businesses run by owners improving their lives have shifted to economies controlled by enormous corporations trading companies, lives and futures in a flash. The controls made available by technology have enabled the growth of broad regulations that make starting a small business nearly impossible. Succeed in a small business and a bigger one moves in to buy it, and a bigger one buys that and on and on until wealth is gathered under control of a shrinking number of global corporations. They now control everything from our food, utilities, fuels, medicines and most of all.governments.

Can we still have true freedom anywhere in the world today? Does it exist or has it been replaced by total controls made possible by systems that technology first made possible? Are you comfortable with the privacy we now have? Every significant detail of your life is now available online and do you know who is looking? Before making basic decisions regarding your personal business life can it be done without first assessing how digital records held by government and financial institutions will affect your choices? Every detail is there for them to examine and more of your life is added to the cloud daily.

We have seen flash views of societies reacting to the loss of electricity they depend upon. Remember Katrina? Those people were helpless until outside resources were hauled in. Citizens of modern nations cannot exist without electricity, I know people who cannot cook without a microwave and the food they put in for 45 seconds comes out of an electric refrigerator. Take electricity out of major cities and the apartment buildings, especially the high rise, become unlivable. Without the electric ventilation and elevators you cannot stay there for long. Without electricity there is no heat, a/c or food, without electric pumps no water comes from faucets and without electric gas pumps there is no transportation. I had friends who came from Soviet Georgia after Russia shut them down and they walked 400 miles to a place where they could survive. Many didnt. Technology makes us extremely vulnerable even as it brings comfort and leisure.

Are we as comfortable as we seem? We are still no more than mammals on an earth where we survive by eating plants and other animals. We exist as part of a complex ecosystem we are now altering at a rate we cannot fully comprehend. The green world of agrarian societies has been replaced by technical production and transport of all things once natural but our ecosystem is still in charge. How far will it let us go? The vast majority of our food crops are pollinated by bees that are vanishing and no one knows why. No bees and we dont eat well. Technology of fast global transportation has enabled mankind to move plant and animal species to regions where they throw native ecology out of its delicate balance. Right here in America we have Asian snakehead fish taking over important fisheries and there is no known way to stop their destruction. Bighead carp are moving through our river system displacing native species and we have no idea what impact that will result in as the ancient natural balance takes a hammer blow.

More and more strange new diseases are showing up and when they are discovered in a population we all see the maps of their expected expansion as travel technology disperses them across continents. How long will this keep up until 12 are moving at once or one is so severe it cannot be stopped or mastered? What is the mechanism that initiates new diseases? How many are adaptations reacting to chemical changes in the environment which began in a laboratory but produced unintended consequences?

Beyond our ecology, what poison does technology enable mankind to inflict upon the hearts, souls and morals of a global society? I know good respectable American parents who mean well but now put smartphones in the hands of children essentially handing them the key to a world saturated by pornography and the influence of all manner of depravity and temptations. Even without porn the internet that saturates our planet contains instant access to weird ideas and irrational theories that suck in those with weaknesses, flaws or no critical thinking skills. The technology has produced global media and entertainment owned and controlled by a small group of powerbrokers who collude with strategically situated government officials. This results in societies being bombarded with news and information crafted to control the direction of public opinion, social priorities and morality as old traditions are erased.

Transportation in the past was difficult. Books are heavy and so only the best were worthy of moving around. The classics and those of such significance they were worthy of prioritizing. This is why most old Bibles were so small with tiny print, they were lighter for transport. With electricity enabling progress in transportation shipping issues were eliminated and any worthless nonsense of crazy ideas can be widely distributed. Jump ahead to the internet and now we are inundated with every type of thought humans have, good, bad or in-between. Wacky stuff is right there among the best and quality of input to the minds of kids and adults is diluted to near zero. Leaders know this and the media which is most frequented by us has come to be controlled by social/political concerns or those who desire influence for purpose. Input to our minds has shifted from the highest of thought to pointless entertainment or manipulation for agendas. It shows.

The leisure time provided by the conveniences of electricity has given us food within easy reach as people engage in soaking up entertainment while sitting and we now have an epidemic of obesity with the related health problems such as diabetes and heart problems. Autism in children is suspected of being linked to unnatural chemicals we now can produce as are a multitude of other ailments.

Change has been the one constant in the long history of our existence but the changes now come at a dizzying pace we can barely keep track of. All because of electricity. Now we have drones and they have cameras. Some are being adapted to carry weapons. As they are downsized their cost of production drops and we are headed to an age where many nations will have millions of tiny throwaway drones weaponized in cloud formations there is no defense against. Where did you think it was going? When man has a new weapon or device enabling control we make more of them, when have we not?

All new weaponry from the catapult to the automatic rifle begin as new tricks by one side then became available to all as technology continues to advance, the genies can never be put back in the bottle. Early Americans hung traders caught selling guns to natives, but the trade never stopped. It never does. When the bombs were dropped on Japan the stage was set so one day the worst bad guys of our world would someday possess the ability to take out entire cities anywhere in the world. They are not there yet but they are getting there, they always do. Look at North Korea and Iran, the progress is steady. Now we have aggressive terrorists with no allegiance to a homeland and they are just beginning to use technology as they test methods to wreak havoc upon a world they hate. Their numbers are growing, their technology improving and their tactics are advancing as their kill zones spread and no one has a clue how to stop it. You cannot take away the technology they are now learning to use. They use it to recruit, they use it to move about, they use it to destroy, and they are learning quickly because that is what technology allows.

Where can mankind be headed when technology empowers small groups of bad guys with global reach? When it permits us to alter entire ecosystems quickly and move new diseases from continent to continent? When a few at the helm in government can reach into the most personal details of a citizens life and location? When life depends upon grids that are vulnerable in societies with no Plan B?

This is what Einstein had pondered when he made the comment, I know not what weapons World War 3 will be fought, but World War 4 will be fought with sticks and stones. Technology has been lost before, look at the wonders of ancient ruins and how many centuries it took to get back to where the great powers had once been. The grandeur of the Roman Empire was followed by the Dark Ages. This cycle permeates history and now we are at another peak created by technology, and Einstein saw it. Mankind always survives but the technology does not. It reverts to a level where we must focus on living instead of leisure and self-indulgence.

Today we wonder if electronic voting machines can be trusted, if our media is telling us the truth and if our leaders spy on us as the technology that provides our sustenance and comforts produces problems we do not know how to overcome. Has mankind once again created a world for ourselves that we are not smart enough or moral enough to manage? Was electricity a gift we are not wise enough to keep? We are not human history; we are a ripple in the water of a flowing river of human history. How much wider will that red sliver get if we do not wise up very soon?