I heard an interesting statistic today. Actually, it was more disturbing than it was interesting. For the first time, the suicide rate as passed the murder rate. Wow. Now what does that say about our society?
Why do people murder? Well, I surely don’t know the answer to that one. But it has been something that has been posting big statistics for forever. What is unusual, is that people committing suicide is now posting a bigger number than people being murdered. This is not to say that the murder rate has gone down. This is saying that the suicide rate has gone up.
Our society has changed so much in just the few years I’ve been around. In the 30’s through 60’s (and no, I haven’t been around that long), you chose a company to go work for. You put in thirty years, and retire with the gold watch. Now, you’re lucky if you stay with the same company for five years. I think a lot of that may have started with the technology boom back in the 70s and 80s. With all the changes in computers, and their types, and the new languages that came out, it was much easier for programmers to change jobs every couple of years and get a large salary increase than to stay with the same company and be paid less.
Nowadays, companies are solely focused on the profit. They're so fanatical about it that they will throw away good employees just to save a few bucks. Where before, an employee was retiring at the age of 60, 65, or 70, today they are being laid off when they reach the age of 50 or 55. It's not that these employees are bad, it's just that companies can find people that work for less money in the same position. They throw away experience and a good employee to save a few bucks. One of the things they're not seeing though is that they are spending more money because the new employee doesn't have the experience the old one did and has to learn things from the ground up. (But, I'll bet that the companies feel they are spending less money in the training of this new employee then they were in the salary of the older one.)
What does all this create in our society? Pressure. More, and more pressure. The cost of living continues to go up, the cost of salaries continues to go up, and people are laid off at an age that makes it difficult for them to find another job. This creates tremendous pressure on an employee to do their job, do it well, and do it yesterday. But it is not just the workplace that has taken this trend. It starts in schools.
The pressure to compete, to be better, to excel starts at the lowest levels of our public schools. Students are constantly pushed, and the requirements are getting tougher every day. Not only do students have to deal with the changing social scene, which is also being driven by the pressure around them, they are being pushed to know more, to be able to continue on in school. I was talking to someone yesterday who had just set up their high school schedule. They now require three years of a foreign language to be able to get into college. Back when I was in school (no, not when the dinosaurs roamed the earth), only two years were required.
What we have created is a society that is in such a hurry, with such pressure to stay on top of things that we've hurt ourselves mentally. There are such pressures today to simply keep up with things that it's unbelievable. Yes, the information age has probably had the biggest effect on this. The fact that information can now move anywhere in seconds has people struggling to keep up with the machines that they've built. (Don't get me wrong. I like computers, and I like the fact that I can get things done quicker and faster and easier with them. What bothers me is that because businesses can now get their information quicker make changes quicker it has everyone struggling to keep up with the computers rather than having the computers work for them. And no, I'm not trying to make any arguments for humans versus computers.)
So what are all these pressures and society doing to us? They are making it harder and harder to stay afloat. The medical community has come out with all these wonder drugs to help us hang in there. They come with names from Prozac to Zoloft to Ambien to help us cope with what doctors call "necessary stress". Never before in history have the stress levels been to such a state that society needs to stay medicated to be able to cope with them. (The British science fiction TV series "Blake's 7" dealt with a society that was kept medicated to keep them subservient, and of course, the freedom fighters that were working against the oppressors.)
A saw an ad the other day for a weight-loss drug that claimed that when one takes their product, one doesn't have to change their habits. This to me makes no sense as one will never learn to eat properly and exercise properly to maintain the proper weight because they will never change their habits. Swiftly we are approaching an era that was foreseen by science fiction writers decades ago, an era where anything you want can be found in a pill. Instead of eating food, we just take some pills. If we want to learn something, we just take a pill (ahh, here's what I wanted, a pill on quadratic equations and how they relate to the universe in general). The problem with that society is that nothing is learned. Everything is just given to someone in the form of a pill. No one grows, no one learns.
Unfortunately, it makes sense that a lot more people can't handle the stress and decide that the only way they can get rid of the stress is to kill themselves. I know some religions preach that suicide is a mortal sin. I do not believe in that. I feel that every soul that inhabits a body is here for a reason, and that reason is learning. Maybe they are here to learn how to be good people, or to learn what it's like to have a disease, or to learn what it's like to die early, or even to learn what it's like to commit suicide. The only thing with suicide, as I have been told, is that when we decide to escape a life, we leave something unfinished. Therefore there will be another life where similar challenges will be faced until the soul can conquer them without leaving early.
We have certainly turned into a high pressured society which is being helped along by every new wonder drug that comes out on the market. No wonder there are more and more people turning away from modern medicine and looking toward holistic healing for their needs.
More and more, I see the need for lightworkers to help people stay well, to help them stay centered, to help them hang in there, to help them live. It is the lightworkers, with their holistic techniques and use of energies that will be the only thing that will counteract the "pill society". And even lightworkers are not immune to what is happening around them. They will also need help from other lightworkers so that they may be able to continue to help others.
It is important for those that are interested in healing and in helping to learn all they can, and be all they can. It is these people that will be the center, the grounding force of society in the future.