Buying Friends

I was saying over lunch at the w/e that I thought all these courses and books on using windows and windows apps are a scam given that the GUIs are especially designed to be no more complex that child activity centres (just buttons in fact not even any dials!). My uncle who works for Age Concern pointed out that mostly people go on these courses and get people around their houses for the company more than the computer.

I figured that really this is what drives most people's work and consumer behaviour. I have a rule never to mix work and friendship. It seems an odd thing to do for me. It is fake in the sense that you have been brought together under the guise of work colleagues: so, therefore that is what you are, you are not friends. If you were friends then you wouldn't need to meet under the guise of work! I always see having your friends at work as a very sadly reflection on your life. Now it doesn't mean that friends don't form through work; how else do you meet people in this society where you spend your whole life in the work environment. But the test of this friendship is when you meet on friend terms and not work terms.

Now extending that analysis to what my uncle said: it is a very sad reflection on this society that elderly people feel they need to engage with people under the guise of learning about computers in order a sense of companionship.

Rather than let it go, as most people do, I will highlight here the way that work and economics have so dominated our existences in this society that people now have to misuse them in order to get even the most basic human qualities out of life: namely just meeting and spending time with people. It seems unless you pay someone these days they won't even be your friend!

The more I look at this the more it seems that the current economic paradigm is dead in the water and it is our choice whether to sink with her or just swim for dry land.