I write this in early 2003, in a difficult time for not only North America, but the world at large. In the midst of a so-called "war" in Iraq that could more rightly be called a takeover, and an America that has just barely begun to stop reeling from the effects of September 11, 2001, I am amazed, every single day (indeed, several times every day) by the impossibility of life in our world as it exists now. Thousands upon thousands of people, already barely managing to keep their lives together as they try to work to get enough money for shelter and food, have lost their jobs as a result of the dramatic and severe economic downturn our global economy is experiencing. Even worse, it is very nearly impossible to get a job right now, for companies are still actively getting rid of employees, meaning there is a shortage of needed employment positions, and an excess of recently laid-off workers seeking jobs. This is obviously not a desirable combination in the economy of any country. Still worse is the fact that this condition existed long before September 11, and the attacks were merely a sudden event that greatly hastened the tumble of the economy, a tumble that had already started more than a year before. The result is that getting a job, a process that was already challenging (to say the least), has become well nigh impossible. The notion of finding a job, of getting any kind of sustainable, livable employment is no longer a dream so much as an insane delusion. This, combined with the paranoia surrounding possible future terrorist attacks, seems to have pushed the global population well past the edge of unease and deep into the realm of pure hysteria and desperation. This has led myself (and doubtless many other people) to ask, yet again, what our direction in life is. Okay, so maybe there isn't much money to go around. So you're not going to buy a Ferrari this year; That's acceptable. But then what *are* you going to do this year? If you don't have a job and are having a hard time finding one, what else can you do with your life to make it worth living? Where is my place in this world, and where is yours? Surely we have a place in this planet, surely there is a place where we belong, where we can be among people whom we belong with as well. But how do we find our place in this unstable world? The problem with almost everything is simply that there are too many people. The world still has room for its people, but not the resources for them. There exist more people in the world than food to feed them. And there surely seem to be more people in the world than jobs to employ them. Especially in a time of collective minimalism like this, when everyone is more concerned with just living than anything else, there is not much in the way of jobs for all those people in the world to do, since jobs tend to depend on the extravagance of people who are willing to hire others to do something unnecessary but profitable. There are times when I feel like saying "Damn this tired, inefficient body of mine! Damn its energy needs, the fact that it requires hundreds of calories every day just to live! How wasteful! How much easier it would be if we could all simply lie down and go to sleep and have need of nothing except maybe oxygen (which, thankfully, still seems to be in decent supply)!" I can only reason that our Creator had a good reason for creating us all with a need for daily (or near-daily) nutritional intake; More than a couple of days without food and most people cannot function very well. Perhaps this is exactly to prevent such sloth, since if we did not need anything to live, anybody could (and many probably would) simply lie down and waste away their lives. Perhaps our need for food exists to force us to do something with our lives, to urge us to go and do something rather than simply existing. If that was the intent, it's not working too well for some people. In any case, I see a primary cause of human destruction in the reckless breeding practised by many people. In our world there are still people who have children for no apparent reason; Some of them simply do not care whether they have children or not, and then seemingly by magic attain them after careless living. Many, many people, for no logical reason whatsoever, simply decide that "they would like to have children", then proceed to do so, without any kind of preparation for child-raising. This happens in America, where many absurdly poor people breed incessantly even though they have no resources to feed or clothe growing children. It also happens in many third-world countries, where people who have literally nothing whatsoever still decide to breed, producing children who also have absolutely nothing. I cannot fathom what inspires people to have children who are not prepared to support those children; But people can't seem to stop doing it. How much easier it would be to live in this world if people prepared for their children! How much more pleasant would life be for nearly everyone, if people did not breed until they had established themselves in livable houses with a way of supplying food and other basic needs! For how can you support children if you cannot support even yourself? Yet many people do not ask themselves this question, or do not seem to care that there is no answer to it. And so they breed, like mindless animals. Speaking of mindless, there seems to be a tragic lack of any kind of reasoning involved in much of parenting today. I see hordes and hordes of people, in every major world country, having children who should never have been allowed to have them, simply because they have no clue how to raise and teach a growing mind. The other day I was listening to a discussion over whether a certain couple of parents should keep their children in a language school that was teaching the children their parents' native language. The school took up a great deal of the childrens' spare time, and those children would have preferred to do something else with their non-regular-school hours than study a language which they believed they were likely to not use in their lives. Yet one man who insisted on teaching his children his native language gave the following simple justification: "I believe that all children should know their parents' language." One question could not be erased from my mind: Why? Why should children learn a useless language, simply because it is the language of the place where their parents came from? The thinking is that those kids simply come from this culture, and so they should be immersed in that culture. There is no reason given; It's just assumed that that's the way it should be. The fact that parents honestly and sincerely believe that this is correct, without stopping to think of any reason why, is absolutely mind-boggling. The fact that many parents actually force their children to learn a useless language, simply because it is "our language", gives a dreadful lesson in humanity's mindless conformance to tradition. People who are raised a certain way truly lack the reasoning to question how they were raised or to wonder if perhaps they should raise their children a little differently. Another part of their tradition is that they simply should have children. Again, there is no logic involved, no reason given why; They are adults, now it's time to breed. It says a lot about human nature, and nothing in what it says is very positive as far as I can tell.