The End of Bliss As We Know It

A while ago, I had written "Knowledge is power... but ignorance is bliss?" as a Facebook status because I wondered if there was such a thing as too much information, and that being a feed into the rise of power-trippers. On a more personal level, the more education I undergo and intake, the more hyper-aware I become. And while yes, it is probably a good thing to be knowledgeable and to understand what is going on in the world, it is also slightly obnoxious that most of the time I can't seem to accept things the way they are. (I know, woe is me.)

The other day, I walked into a store in Harvard Square and then found out that all of the products were made by artisans in Mexico. As I browsed, I couldn't mute the voices in my head wondering how the store started, how they were able to get the capital to start everything (although I guess there are such things as small-business loans...), and how they were able to decide on the design, set-up, and sourcing of the store and its products. Instead of being an ignorant consumer, I was now so empowered by my knowledge of behind-the-scenes product/business development thanks to Nomi that it has changed the way that I think about the way the world works. Even when I just want to do some retail therapy.

The starkest realization that I've made as a result of this "over-thinking" is how much of our world is just a social construct, produced by our human instincts and initiative. And how things that we see which may seem to just be a fact of life really have a many more layers to them--primarily, layers of people. Sure we have certain rules, but it only takes a certain amount of bribery and personal nudging to get things our way (welcome to Corruption 101.) It only depends on how hard you are willing to work for it, or the measures you are willing to take.

But in terms of looking at things and thinking about the people behind it, here's an example (if you can excuse my borderline over-analysis...) There is a cabinet in my dining room that is storing some of my family's collected items, and then also some junk. But behind this cabinet is a person, and probably a certain number of lives that were affected by its manufacture. Do I know the person who made the cabinet? No. Do I know what his life is like right now? No. I do hope that his life was made better by the original purchase of this item (that was not made by my family because of course we are bargain hunters and found this at a used furniture shop), but that rests on the fact that I believe that the more money that one accumulates, the better one's life can be. This even goes into the paint that is on my walls, the food that is sitting in my refrigerator, and the roads that are paved outside my house: it's all man-made, and the people who made them are only a certain (perhaps large) number of degrees of separation away from the person who is enjoying all of their hard labor, me.

Sometimes I even forget that the food on my plate when I eat out at restaurants was actually produced by a cook in the kitchen.

Practically speaking, this detached operating system is of course a simple fact of our lives. But how much of that is a result of the system of capitalism, and how much of it is true only because of the direction towards which our humanity has veered?
I'm not saying this because I have a deep-felt urge to return to our hunter-gatherer ways or that I want to go all Jeffersonian and demand a return to an agrarian-based system. I'm just making an over-privileged complaint about the overwhelming amount of knowledge available to me, the even more over-privileged whine about the pressure of needing to have even more knowledge and then the just-plain obnoxious pressure of what to do with all of this wealth of information (which certainly does not come for free--thank you Barnard and your $50,000 per year price tag.)

Essentially, I think life as we know it is just headed down an unnecessarily more complicated path. And that as a political economy major, it is now my obligation (curse) to think about all the ways that the evils of capitalism and economics has warped it all.

Can I just quit and become a farmer? (Except being in agriculture is not a walk in the park either, thanks to agribusiness and the economics of food production...)