Tue Jul 13, 2010
In the newspaper it says 5 guys where beating a 60 year old couple in a park in Helsinki last night for no apparent reason. I think talking about how things are getting worse is useless. But asking Why should help find a solution. Why some people go in the path of self development, looking for answers, learning and understanding, others go randomly hitting people in the street, and most just decide to not act and not do, just keep going. I don’t remember this kind of events happening when I was a kid. Did they happen? If they didn’t happen, what has changed? Well, lots of things have changed. The food we eat is different, some is genetically modified, some is probably healthier, we probably receive much more radiation from wireless networks, in this city there are lots of immigrants (I think there were none in the 80s), there is probably more violence in TV, there are computers, violent computer games, there is more aggressive advertising, more sex used for advertising, there is less religion around. Also these days the weather is very hot and Holland did not beat Spain in the world cup last Sunday… These are just some random changes and events that come into my mind, and I’m not implying they do affect, but maybe some do. My point is that it would be good to investigate the causes (I guess/hope there are people doing that) and then try to change the causes, instead of the typical approach of making tougher laws, which from the perspective of a software developer sounds like a bad hack: first making something broken, and then making it illegal to be broken, instead of fixing it. A not so beautiful reason for all this comes to my mind: there is no interest in fixing something that it’s not broken. People consume, and that’s what matters, not the well being and development of people. Now I ask myself how does fear influence consumption? How does anything influence consumption? I think that’s an important question in 2010.