The Constant Expansion of the Blind

Posted on May 16, 2008
Filed Under Fake Culture, Society |

Profit. Everyone thinks about it in some form or other; whether a specific action or way of living will profit us or others, how we may profit from this new idea or book. The idea of profit covers most things, however in our modern world profit is generally considered to be purely about money. Most aware people will agree that the pursuit of money over all else is spiritually bankrupt, and does something to an individual which somehow makes them ‘less’.

Yet profit is the drive for our culture, it is what many believe has got us to this technological marvellous time of abundance. It’s of little consideration that in order for one group to profit in the financial sense, then another group has to lose something. Hence there is always the ‘poor’ individuals and nations, and the constant drive for expansion only serves to exasperate this situation.

I came across a reasonable example of ‘blind profit expansion’ this week. Of course there are many of them, but this one is about eBay - that organisation which has for a long time allowed the stay-at-home mum, or the hard-pressed to make that little extra income. For years eBay was about ‘the little people’, yet in a world that is becoming entirely connected to the Internet - where everyone has heard of eBay, there has to be a point where everyone who is going to use eBay is already using it.

For a capitalist corporation, that poses a problem; how do you increase your profits once there are no additional customers? Easy, you start targeting the ‘richer’ section of those customers. In short eBay have created a new system whereby auctions listed by people / companies with a large turnover gain much better visibility than those individuals who only sell a small amount. Basically the eBay search engine now works a lot like Google, where it searches through all the listing and only returns the listings it deems ’suitable’ for the search term. That suitability is heavily influenced by the auctioneers turnover.

So eBay is moving away from being a place for ‘joe average’ and effectively becoming a shopping mall for the largest sellers. I find the timing of this intriguing has it is happening at a time where much the same thing is happening all over the world. As prices of food and fuel continue to climb the average person is finding it harder and harder to get by. The sad thing is there appears no let up on the horizon.

However complicated some may try and make this issue of global slow-down, it really is very simple. It is a net result of the ever constant pursuit of blind profit-expansion. The earth is a finite place, with a finite number of people…decades ago it may have seemed possible to tap into a vast world of markets. Yet now technology has made the world a much smaller place - and thus the idea of expansion hits walls very quickly.

As I always advocate here, now is a time where we as individuals should once again turn out focus inwards - towards ourselves, our family and community - because in the end those are the only things that count. It is no coincidence that those are the very things modern society is trying to rip apart, with its rules of division.

Eventually we will find ourselves facing a period where we will only have what we are capable of creating with our own two hands. And in such a time community will be infinitely more valuable than consumerist society.

Comments

3 Responses to “The Constant Expansion of the Blind”

Jared on May 24th, 2008 3:16 pm

Hi there, I agree with this entirely. The mass of people are at the present moment thinking outwardly not inwardly. Material things are high on people’s lists in life than what really matters. To many thoughts are superficial nowadays and many people are cocooned in their own make believe world. It all starts within ourselves first but everyone loves to hear of quick fixes. Patience to learn and understand ourselves is the key.
This is such a good site, who may I ask writes these?
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Marcus on May 24th, 2008 6:23 pm

Hiya, thanks for the comments! I write all the pieces on this site. I have a number of projects lined up in the future which will expand the topics here onto another site where other writers, painters, musicians and indeed anyone else will be able to contribute.

As for this specific subject, patience and learning how to learn really are something we should be taught from a young age. It really would make a world of difference.

I feel a lot of the problems start with the constant drive towards conformity. What do you think?
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Jared on May 25th, 2008 12:32 pm

Hi, those projects sound very interesting can’t wait. As for the constant drive towards conformity I agree. We are subjected to a conditioned pattern of thought from a very early age, to be almost robotic/mechanical in our thinking.
We have to think this way or that way and so on it goes. Then later in life we are easily controlled through government, media, practically anyone but ourselves.

To learn about not dividing people into categories, into labels, to learn spiritually to be good to one another would bring a radical change.

As you have stated in earlier topics, it starts from self-awareness, breaking that mechanical process. Mankind needs a whole radical change but are people ready for it?
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