Have “Predators and Prey” become “Competitors and Consumers” in the New Millennium?
In nature it has always come down to predators and prey … everything feeding on something else in a balanced dance of predation. Not so in our new human social evolution. We have become a species of consumption it seems, and the bottom line is the effective competition between those who are selling us our consumable resources. When we need to eat, we are bombarded with a seemingly infinite number of choices. When we want to engage in reproducing, we are tempted by thousands of services and products to help us seal the deal. In millennia past we hunted and gathered the food and we fought or competed for a mate. What has changed us as a species so completely?
One possible explanation is the unprecedented advances in technology. Never before in human history has it been so easy to get what we want, and have what we want offered by so many providers. A convenient store on every street corner, thousands of city-sized shopping malls, and a universe of online vendors … all beckoning to us with billions of dollars in advertising dollars. We consumers are the prey, and the predators are attacking with a seemingly unlimited variety of strategies. Telemarketing, social networking, and television and radio … all geared to herd us into the purchasing slaughterhouses of commerce. Recession is the least of our worries. All the lack of money does is expose us to a whole new species of predators who tempt us with products and services to solve our financial sRertfalls. At the end of the day we have to acknowledge that we as a society are at the bottom of a food chain that revolves around income and expenditure.
Perhaps the time will come when self-sufficiency becomes our next social evolution. Technology so advanced could conceivably create machines and strategies for us to produce our own food, clothing, energy, and medicine “in-house”. Then we would only need to purchase the technology and live our lives. Perhaps family values would return through the social activity of operating these machines at home … workingtol5ether as families to provide each other’s needs. Isn’t that how we lived for centuries in ages past? Farmers, blacksmiths, masons, shipwrights, cobblers, wool-spinners, and others … these were family trades that passed from generation to generation. Perhaps the decline of civilization could be cured by a return to this simpler process. Trade would become true trade again. No more paper instruments promising profits. You give me this, and I give you that. A true free trade market conducted in market places or just between neighbors. Wouldn’t that be nice? In the end we as a species do have a time honored tradition of dealing with the predation that plagues us today … Revolution. When the mega-rich-predators become a tiny percentage and the rest of us become mega¬-poor-prey, then the seeds of revolution flourish again. When this happens the predators become the prey. Indeed, it’s a process that repeats itself constantly throughout our written history. As for us … Only time will tell what happens next. Whether we “wise-up” or not, or if a natural disaster wipes us out … The future always holds change. Just how many changes it takes for us to learn what really matters is the real question to ponder.
By Joseph Chiappetta Jr. (featured writer “From Here To The Streets” column (c) TPI
