Was life always this hard?

It seems that every decade, society accelerates even faster ... forcing "changes" upon society. This is largely the result of the free market mentality which has become too efficient at allocating capital. We only saw beginning in the '80s the displacement of the blue-collar class in America as jobs were shipped overseas. Now there is a huge uproar as the white-collar class (largely code monkeys and support technicians) is being outsourced to other nations. When is it going to end? When can people finally feel secure about their jobs so they don't have to keep searching for the "next new thing?" Perhaps slow progress is a good thing.

As society becomes increasingly complex, we take on more jobs with higher and higher levels of specialization. But these increasingly complex roles are not being supplemented with better education. Education is horrible in the US. Education in the US teaches you how to do a specific task; it's akin to simply teaching someone how to use a tractor without explaining how it works. I've written about this before, but I've found my educational experiences largely unsatisfying; I didn't learn a thing in school that could not of been read in books.

As society grows more complex and education becomes marginalized to the lowest common denominator, people coming out of college seem to be increasingly confused as to what to do. Most people are starting to adopt their parents suggestions: "Just go to grad school." For what purpose? What is your end goal? To get a better job that pays more? I think this whole issue with Generation Twixsters is the manifestation of a poor education system which doesn't education people on what they really want to do ... while the expectations of the free markets is that of high specialization.

I wonder with more and more people coming out without a clue of what to do is going to lead to a greater rift between the elite classes and the middle class. Change for human society has almost never come from the middle class, but the lower classes. Lower classes always try to tear down the whole of society, while the middle class always try to tweak society to give them a boost into the elite ruling class... while the elite ruling class always attemps to free the status quo.

I wonder if the combination of poor education and the increasingly complex rules governing society will help freeze the status quo ... and forever freeze the rich into being the cream of society. The growing economic rift between the upper and lower classes (this is evident in not only US society, but among nations as well...) seems to be indicative of this. But perhaps I'm just confusing cause and effect.

What makes things worse is the fact that society is forcing us to join families at a later and later date. It used to be people got married in their early to mid-twenties and had kids in their late twenties. Who does this now? Not many people. The increasing specialization serves as a double-sucker punch ... we grow increasingly isolated as individuals doing specialized tasks ... while we're expected to not create families.

Perhaps the pangs of emptiness I feel are vestiges of human nature ... the urge to create a family. To join and create life. It seems that even as I strive to work on projects that I enjoy working on ... my life is essentially purposeless.

Perhaps part of growing up is acccepting the fact that we live, we do something that we justify to ourselves as important, we create life, and then we die. Maybe I just have trouble accepting that fact - maybe I just want to do something more.

I guess it doesn't really help that I've largely abandoned religion and thus have foresaken any thought of an 'afterlife.'

Or maybe I just need to quit listening to this goddamn Moby song.

One of these mornings / won't be very long / you will look for me / but i'll be gone