Industrialisation

If you could erase one trend from history, what would it be?

Industrialisation is about more than pollution, it’s also about slave labour. Rather than eradicate poverty, people in the 21st Century still work for a wage they cannot live on while the owners and big bosses live a life of extreme ease.

The more things change the more they stay the same. The rich thrive and the poor starve, and there is a mindset that the less fortunate just won’t try hard enough to succeed. Not everyone is naturally intelligent and creative, with a natural born skill set. But they are useful to over work and under pay.

Many wealthy people have started out poor, worked hard, done well. I’d like to say credit to them, but how many of them, knowing what poverty is like, also know that some of their workers are using food banks because they can’t afford food?

How do you award yourself millions knowing that? It doesn’t compute to me.

There is enough and there is excess. Then there are billionaires! Need I say more.

I’ve been the slave labourer. My husband has been far better paid, but it’s sucked the life from him, he’s permanently tired and stressed, and it’s also sucked the life from our life.

He hasn’t taken a fortnight off in as long as I can remember. Except at Christmas because the company is often closed for the holidays so a couple of extra days gets him a fortnight and things are slow at that time.

It’s sucked the life from my life. The money is fantastic for peace of mind, especially to keep the cats safe. But the price is astronomical, and even at his level he isn’t one of the bigwigs coining it at the expense of others. We’ve definitely been getting worse off financially for years, as prices have gone up and 5% doesn’t cover the price rise in food alone. That’s even before he was made redundant and we lost a third of his wages.

I’m not complaining, we are very lucky compared to so many, but it’s a fact that industrialisation followed by commercialism has favoured the few not the many, solved few problems and created many more.

On a human level we also know that some of the uber rich will happily sit on the budget of a small country while the poor die.

NOT all of them of course, it’s never fair to say that all poor people are good and all wealthy people are bad. That is never true, and never will be true. But taking the world as a whole, things are not good for far too many.

I’ve seen the toll the top roles take on people, their lives, their families. They just suffer in more comfort, but they do suffer.

It’s also not true to say that all the outcomes of industrialisation are bad, far from it. But overall I feel there needs to be big changes and a levelling out in most societies. More sharing the wealth.

Ultimately, and humanely though, we were not born to be 9-5 slaves, we were born free.

Best love

Amorah – Deb