While waiting for the bus (wonderful things happen at bus stops), as watching the flow of traffic move on the expressway, with all those different models of cars, different people riding them, each trying to make his/her own statement in his/her own peculiar way, I fell into a rolling thought that had bothered me for days in the past week, and had gained momentum as I moved closer to the day I quit my job. As this thought played through my head, I began to realize how we give too much value to quantity, how monotonous we have become, the diverse, yet superficial and distasteful quality of our hopes and dreams, and finally: where we were in the past, where we are in the present and where we will end up in the future if these trends follow the same pattern. We live in a world of diversified quantity, a world where numbers rule the charts on people's minds, a world where everything is taken at face value, a world where products have lost their authentic value and have given way to a new market of mass production of duplicates, cheap imitations and flashy gimmicks: a mass genocide of value.
There used to be a time when you were certain of the quality of the brand you bought, and things had a unique quality back then. There was a time when the particular car you bought had style, character, and made a statement about the driver: the heavy duty pickup was for the working man, the fuel-efficient Japanese was for the economic Joe, the family van was for the family guy, the sports car was for the young and restless, the luxury was for the rich and retired. The same goes for any type of consumer good including apparel, electronics, furniture, kitchenware, food and the list goes on… there were the few well-recognized giant name brands that produced quality products but as we approached the age of global markets and mass production, these names started to lose their meaning. Soon, everyone got into the game and before we new it, they were pumping out duplicate brands with the same name but no quality, duplicate products with new names that looked better than the original but didn't work half as much with half the price and less than half the value. Cars, cell phones and beepers became a mass produced commodity and before you knew it, everyone was able to buy that sleek new ride, the brand new cell phone and wear that beautiful alloy necklace that looked just like the real thing! This phenomenon has even affected the fields of science and knowledge, with more people getting into universities and receiving degrees, and more universities and educational institutions popping up here and there for profit, it has become easier to get an education and claim to be a doctor or engineer; nowadays, there are so many phonies that one can't trust one's own education anymore.
Now there are so many name brands and consumer goods that you can't tell the difference between that alloy necklace and the 24 karat original model. A product that people used to attach so much meaning to, suddenly became meaningless, as if even gold cannot be trusted anymore to give the owner a high self image built on the social paradigm of gold as a statement of power, class and wealth. When the image of their products lost its power, they then started patenting and commercializing anything they could get their hands on to make a meager profit. They began commercializing our colors (Pepsi Blue?!), our water (bottled "spring" water), even beauty has been commercialized into a typical physique which lures people to conducting plastic surgery by cheap doctors to help them look like Jennifer Lopez, and even wars are now commercialized by "war companies" (the Iraq war). What happened to our world?
What happened to the open blue sky and the running meadows with that endless horizon? Why can't we even trust the water we drink, the very basic element, the very blood in the veins of life, and have to turn to some bogus company with a phony name to give us "pure", "spring" water from the heights of the earth? Why have we become so alien to our surroundings and ourselves? Why can't we tell the difference between a real apple and a genetically modified one? Why can't we find satisfaction in that same old gold watch?
Why?
Because we know someone else can work half as much, and buy the duplicate brand for half the value and cost and no one can tell the difference between the original and the imitation. Because we realized that the same watch which was made by a qualified and experienced craftsman and guaranteed lifelong service could now be effortlessly made by a lifeless machine in a fraction of the time using less expensive material and sold for a fraction of the price. Because what we used to confide in, the material possessions we so cherished have lost their meaning in the face of technology and diversified quantity. Because the unique characteristics of people, the bonding factor that pulled us together suddenly pushed us apart, as we realized we were all becoming duplicates, cheap imitations of one another and even cheaper movie stars and shallow role models and desperately try to cover up our uniqueness by getting a nose-job or going through life-threatening liposuction. We now face a society of faceless, lifeless zombies, all wearing the same brands all driving the same cars, all listening to the same loud music, all running for the same goals, all giving empty promises to one-another (because we know the duplicate always exists… in mass quantity). A world in which artists must exploit the nadir of human sexuality to sell their work, where cheap broads with no musical/artistic talent dance across the stage and sell their albums in the millions simply because of their sex appeal.
It has become increasingly hard to differentiate the good from the bad in these times; the quality is lost within the diversity of quantity. Unfortunately, this trend will continue to get worst as the competition between names and consumer goods heats up, each claiming they're the real deal, when even the old names have turned to the new tricks and hooks of attracting customers with showy, flashy products that deliver only half the promise. Fortunately though, in this circus of chaos that has given our earth the worthy name of the "Insane Asylum of the Universe", there is an emerging order, a harsh reality that will slap us hard in the face if we haven't woken up already.
It has been said that within a few years time, we will reach the limit of our capacity to eat crap. In other words: the upheaval of modern cultures, the tremendous movement of technology around the globe, the revolutions in physics, archeology, linguistics, and all of these things which are acting to complexify our world will reach a focal point of density in time to characterize a new definition of the relationship between man and nature. After the time we have realized that art, science, idolatry, consumerism and etc, have failed to deliver their countless promises, we will shed the old skin of quantitative values to discover the unique qualities hidden beneath each flower pedal, behind each sunrise, within each dew drop and beyond the reach of our wildest imaginations through the eternal expanse of the human soul. It is then we will learn the direct connection between our suffering, misery and disease with our own perceptual framework; we will learn to heal the worst illnesses with a single glance; we will feel the presence of the Universal Consciousness (the intelligent order throughout the universe); we will understand the unified structure of our world by feeling the strong bond of attraction between our body, a distant star and a molded clay pot; and finally, instead of wandering through the chaos of diversified quantity, we will be immersed in the intense connection of the Unified Quality of Existence.
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