Today’s musings are admittedly dark, but I think I’m merely pointing out the seamier side of the Zeitgeist

Sometimes I think we spend too much time trying to figure things out. We simply must understand. I’m watching a Brazilian comedy, A Super Femea, from 1973, in Portuguese. Ostensibly about contraception for men, as demanded by feminists, the film moved from one comic scene to another. It carries a juvenile obsession with nudity and sex, so characteristic of that time. Those of you who remember the time should think Rowan And Martin’s Laugh-in, only with bare breasts and buttocks. After 20 minutes, the film became tedious.

Bored with streaming, I move back to FIOS TV. A couple on HGTV have discovered their dream home. It has indoor plumbing, running water and electricity! Yet their dreams demand more, a pot filler spigot over the stove, a waterfall shower for two bathers, a gas fireplace have become the new must-haves. Now happiness awaits them.

There was about fifty years separating these two vignettes of modern culture. Modern time is a world of ease and convenience. And these two objectives are ever moving targets. Sex without consequences prolongs adolescence into senescence. And all we want are toys.

What we’ve come to understand are our desires, which we conflate with needs. What we desire, are suggested to us. They aren’t some internally generated desires. At one time, public relation pioneer Edward Bernays suggested we wanted cigarettes. Then someone else suggested we should want private passenger automobiles, then oral contraceptives, personal computers, global connectivity.

And here we are. What Klaus Schwab and Bill Gates want should be what we want. We should want to eat crickets, have only two children and when we get old and sick, we’ll choose to be euthanised like an arthritic cocker spaniel.

Progress.