“Modern Times” is a masterpiece by Charlie Chaplain. He had the ability to force one to laugh or cry without one having any choice in the matter. The first few minutes of the movie I was literally falling over from laughter.

Charlie’s character is a cog in a large machine, impersonal and inhuman. He performs repetitive and monotonous duties in the name of the organization and the ‘greater good’. When I first watched the movie I laughed well, because, we are no longer in such times, right ?

Wrong. The Red Queen effect is at play – We are running so very fast but actually staying in the same place. Equilibrium will always be maintained no matter the cost. Our present times are very much the same as Chaplain’s movie except disguised somehow, Our nice little cage has IKEA furniture, a 52″ Plasma TV and a foot massager but we’re running even faster on our little treadmills..

People perform monotonous duties daily with little challenge. Even people who believe they have challenging jobs with variations in instructions, duties and projects are kidding themselves.

No matter the change and variation you are still a drone waking up early to do business, having your Low GI breakfast, packing your protein shake / lunch / money for the day and synchronizing your calendars while you go wait in the traffic (GREEN MEANS GO, AMBER MEANS BLOODY WATCH OUT YOU CRAZY BASTARD, and RED MEANS STOP)

I even think it’s worse than we feared. In “Modern Times” there is a whip, there is Big Brother watching and shouting at you if you slack off. Now it is survival of the fittest, you be your own whip. If you don’t have the ambition after high school no one is going to push you, you can go be a failure who lives in the streets…

These whips are forever in our heads now. Anxiety, Depression, Stress are byproducts of such mental conditioning that Capitalism has delivered.

The only people who do not have the whips really are the proles, the middle class, the people who seem to live a tentative life which is balanced between miniscule amounts of pleasure and larger amounts of suffering living out the biological programming AKA the rat race.

What is the solution ?  I don’t know. Don’t look at me, I’m going to go have my Protein shake and hit the Gym while i check my email on my mobile and prepare for tomorrows meetings and maybe squeeze in some Two and a Half Men before i go sleep…