The Contemporary Slave

Carin Miller

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I've heard it said before that the new form of slavery is capitalism. Living in today’s world it is hard to see the dawn before the day. Everything moves so quickly and there is this nagging voice in the back of your mind going “You have to keep up, hurry.” So day to day you get up and drone on. It’s hard not to feel like a lemming at times. You go to work and produce so you can continue to feed the corporate machine knowing that should you refuse to do so eventually you are certain to meet your demise.

Without the funds you reap through your tireless labor you no longer have the false sense of stability and comfort that the modern world has convinced you since birth you require for survival. The amenities afforded act as a drug luring you back in, believing that without such things as: electric, cable, or Wal-Mart you are no less than doomed. Of course you are. After all you need all of these things!

One day I stopped to fill my tank at Maverick and the power had gone out. The pump wouldn't turn on and so I went in to talk to the attendant. Inside I found a young man in nothing less than a frantic state. Not only had the power gone out but the backup generator didn't kick in. He was on someone’s cell phone obviously talking to his boss trying to explain that without the electric he couldn't even open the drawer to make change and people had already pumped gas. I grabbed a drink and walked over to the counter where I was informed that even if I was paying with exact change there was no way for me to be rung up and besides “I am not sure how to figure the tax anyway”

I couldn't believe that we have come so far that a little thing like figuring 6.5% on the dollar would be much too difficult to calculate without the help of a computer. I was actually turned away, along with many others. People who had pumped gas were being asked to leave their ID's along with a contact number to be reached at a later time when the system was up. It was to me, absolutely unfathomable.

When I consider the pitfalls that our current technological dependencies offer I am fearful for my children and for “generation: Right Now” as I have taken to calling them. Tomorrows children are so inundated with the immediacy of today that they don't even know the difference.

I remember a time when there was no Internet, no cell phones, no caller ID, or
Youtube videos to watch at your own convenience. If you wanted to watch a TV program you waited until it aired, there were no DVR’s for future viewing. As a matter of fact there wasn’t even VHS, only Beta and you had to have money to have those bad boys! Entertainment did not consist of PS3 or Xboxes but Atari was on the cutting edge. I vividly remember my parents being awed at the animation of Pac Man and Donkey Kong. I never had a microwave until I was in my early teens. They didn’t even exist when I was little. If you wanted to reheat last night’s dinner you used it in tonight’s dish.

Call me old fashioned but I miss those days. The days when you imagination was your best friend and the backyard would become some sort of deep Congo jungle where you could collide with a wild animal lurking around the tree trunk at any given moment. The days when you would do the simple arithmetic to a math problem in your head and you could turn out a correct answer, and if you couldn’t you just got out a pencil and a piece of paper, no problem. How about disappearing deep into the pages of a novel written by your favorite author. My kids have to almost be forced to read these days. Sure I enjoy some of the modern conveniences but sometimes I wonder what the payoff really is. I save more time yes, but in kind, I find more things that need doing, don’t I.

The happiest time in my life was a few short months in the summer of 1997. I had nothing to my name that I couldn’t fit in a backpack. It was just me, my pack, and the open road. I left home with $.63 in my pocket and no idea how I was going to get where I was going and even the destination was a mystery. All I did know was there was this feeling in my gut that I couldn’t ignore and the rest would unfold as it was meant to happen.

It was amazing. I felt more liberated more alive more at peace with myself than I ever had in my entire life up to that point! The idea that I had no place I had to be. There was nothing holding me back from exploring the world and no “strings and things” to get in the way. The plain and simple fact was, there was nothing in this material world that I needed, and what’s more I found that without these things staring at me all the time I didn’t want them either.

The people I met during this time were the most dynamic thoughtful people you could ever make the acquaintance of. I learned from every single one of them. I learned about the world, about other people, more importantly about myself. I found strength within me I had no Idea existed. Sure my father worried. He even tried “talking sense into me” but I knew what I was doing was exactly what I was supposed to be doing. There was just no getting around it.

I am glad that I had that experience. I can honestly tell you that if my house burnt down tomorrow and my family all made it out safely I would most likely feel more relief than anxiety. I would miss some of those things, sure. Still I don’t think that the event for me would be cataclysmic.

Some call modern day consumerists "cult members." You know the scariest part of a cult? The fact that, those who immerse themselves, participate in, and let it rule their lives usually don’t even know they’re in it!