Before mankind had fully entered the industrial age just over one hundred years ago, he must have been unduly burdened with hard labor beyond any comprehension of our contemporaries. We still marvel at the majesty of the Egyptian pyramids and continually speculate as to just how those governing Pharos of Egypt must have achieved one of the greatest wonders of the world without the benefits of modern machinery and technology. We understand from their own recorded records that at the very foundation of these colossal accomplishments was the tragic employment of human slavery inspired by devotion to the Pharos.  Slavery is still very much alive and prosperous though it has taken on many new faces.  Many modern purveyors of mass deception have simply disguised this often-unseen oppression and convinced us multitude of slaves that we are actually free. Free that is to slave for what too many of us call a minimum wage amongst other heavily opium-laced perks.  Most of us simply abdicate our autonomy willingly out of need as we have been separated from the natural garden and have become dependent on others for food and shelter; economic survival that often involves a life-long commitment to the work force.
     The tools and machinery of our modern technological world have become the latest additions to the slave-owners' immense stable of laboring workhorses. Technology has become the other slave. I choose to sometimes call some of these technologies a blessing of sorts because they significantly aid even us human slaves in our daily struggle to keep body and soul together. Those of us who have learned how to benefit and take advantage of many of these artificially engineered slaves have enjoyed far more freedom than most of our very hard-working forefathers. Every segment of our lives has shown great advances because man has employed his ingenious mind for the invention of labor-reducing machinery. Not only labor reducing but also timesaving, which affords many of us to indulge ourselves in activities that are not otherwise necessarily related to our basic survival.  I am grateful for those little blessings despite their greater costs and only wish that I had enough surpluses to share with my neighbors.
     There is an underlying dilemma and it's best understood as a problem involving both conservation and efficiency. There has been the observation that our middle classes are shrinking with the majority of its constituency loosing the struggle and ending up with less and less as time passes. Simply, as limited resources are consumed or reserved in greater amounts by those that are already economically overly endowed (greed), it necessarily leaves less for those of more modest means. While technology is certainly a blessing on the one hand, it has been unfortunately transformed by some into a dreadfully abused instrument of unrestrained greed. Man now posses the instrumentation to totally devastate this once bountiful Garden of Eden, and one of the most dramatic examples to convincingly demonstrate this poignant point is the daily shrinking of our green belt's tropical rainforests around the entire world. This relentless devastation has the ominous feeling of global suicide. This tragic dilemma has become so intertwined with our very daily existence that it tenaciously resists any reasonable amount of intervention. We have created a technology and its accompanying industrial base that can only persist by being constantly fed additional natural resources and at an alarming rate. Amongst other endeavors, I have been a building contractor much of my life and I know that the building industry can consume say lumber products at a veracious rate much greater than the any reasonably expected rate of natural reforestation. One of the most commonly used products is red wood and the giant trees that are usually harvested for the market's unmerciful demand require hundreds of years to reach any reasonable size.
     With the unchecked sprawl in population there is a greater and greater demand placed on our naturally limited resources for shelter and food. We have the awesome technology to rapidly clear the land of its indigenous timber to build the shelter, but we then too often fail to make efficient use of that cleared land for needed crops to feed the hungry or at least make the effort to replant trees. There is too often simply no orchestrated coordination between the right hands and the left hands of these greedy barons of industry and the mass exploitation of our natural resources. I realize that as a matter of public image and to some degree an attitude of conservation that some American companies actually make a concerted effort at restoring the forests that they have un-compassionately stripped. But their primary selfish focus is most certainly one of economics and not the altruistic economy of human and natural resources. It has been and will always principally be all about greed and money.
     I have certainly attacked the impact of modern technology on natural resources, but there is the other side that can easily boast the obvious advantages reaped by almost everyone in the world. The established proposition that forms of human slavery still persist in these modern times is admittedly and significantly impacted by our labor-saving technologies. I concede that most humans in our non-third-world countries have the opportunity of a rather satisfactory standard of living even if it frequently requires two incomes to meet the basic needs of today. The modern conveniences particularly in the home have made it possible for women to take those second-income jobs needed for family survival, but not without some sacrifices at the expense of their children.  I'm not at all convinced that the trade off is the best thing for a coherent family, but at least this sometimes-oppressive economy offers the opportunity of a higher level of economic survival, given those inherent sacrifices.
     This technological economy plays upon what appears to be a strong propensity for humans to become addicted to almost anything. There's no question that we can develop a physical dependency on all kinds of consumed opiates from actual pharmaceutical drugs and cigarettes to some of our fundamental and basic needs like food. Some of us demonstrate our addictive tendencies in other forms that can sometimes be just as destructive to our overall well being. There are also behavioral addictions like gambling and even the excessive physical physique development of weightlifters. But possibly the worst of all and often well disguised are some people's obsessive additions to the simple accumulation of material things. We have all been exposed to the synonymous meaning of Madison Avenue with those New York City advertising agencies having that notorious reputation of marketing almost anything that man can produce in such a slick manner that they can often covertly establish an intrinsic need for almost any product in the unsuspecting consumer. I have defined greed as the unfounded wanting of more and more than what we really have need of and this artificial establishment of needing something that is very likely not really needed at all employs the same dynamic of mind bending and subsequent action. The entrepreneur's fondest dream is to come up with a previously undiscovered product or service that will have mass appeal because of some intrinsic quality. Whatever this quality might be, the idea is that it will soon be considered as a product or service for which everyone will soon develop an insatiable need or dependency.  It's a wonder to behold that any of us were able to survive before the cell phone.
     These most blessed technologies are too reprehensibly notorious for an often-exploited paradox that appears to exist between their noted advancement and refinement of products and the almost cognitively designed obsolescence or the limited life expectancy of so many manufactured commodities. Nearly all products that are offered to the consumer come with some well-defined but to often abbreviated period of warranty and with this concept of limited life expectancy has grown an auxiliary business centered on what is marketed as the extended warranty. Consumption of products begets more and more consumption. When outdoor halogen light fixtures were first introduced to the general public you could actually purchase the fixture with a 300 or 500 watt halogen bulb included for less than the cost of a replacement bulb. It was sort of like buying that razor with a supply of razor blades for approximately the same cost of the blades themselves. Once you had purchased either of these consumer products your future patronage was assured with the continued need for refills/replacements. I believe that Hewlett Packard probably makes more on the repeated sale of ink cartridges than the original cost of my printer.  The idea seems to have always been to manufacture something that needs constant updating or total replacement, market it, and sit back while the orders continue to stream in. Doesn't that sound just like that infamous drug-dealer that gets his client hooked on his particular addictive drug with a few freebies and then cashes in on the awful addition indefinitely unless his poor client should happen to overdose.  Is it not a grim picture of humanity?
     We have examined the world of the individual to this point and it sadly doesn't end there. As I was originally writing this chapter there were major improvements being made to I-40 between my home in the foothills of the Sandia Mountains and Albuquerque. The massive piece of machinery that fabricated what appeared to be a two-lain concrete roadway was impressive in both size and its amazing ability to construct quite a stretch of concrete roadway each day. Of course, this was only replacing a stretch of the interstate that was probably no more than fifteen years old. Our public intra-structures require very much the same constant upgrading or replacing as those products designed for individuals. Whatever the case may be, we have become totally enslaved to keeping the wheels of progress perpetually turning at almost any costs. We have become accustomed to so many material advantages of this modern world that it has become quite incomprehensible to even consider having anything less.
     What we haven't been able to successfully manufacture is happiness (unless you're talking to a drug dealer!) and many of us devoted humanists have continually speculated that our increased materialism is unquestionably infringing on our spiritual well being. There is neither a singular cause nor reasonable solution to our predicament, very sad to say, and I emphatically suggests that those who may have initially conspired to oppress the masses had no idea that they were laying the fundamental groundwork for the massive and possibly irreversible dehumanization of our very species. Certainly our blessed technologies have offered some needed relief to the awesome physical burden of modern existence, but unfortunately too many of us haven't had the spiritual guidance that is an imperative to our even knowing how to find and establish a meaningful existence in this ever-shrinking Garden of Eden. The illiberal devils of this world have in effect won out, not necessarily by design, but more probably by default. We have not necessarily been so denied the truth or even reasonable access to the truth. What has inadvertently taken place is that most of us simply don't either have the time to explore the alternatives available or we have simply chosen to spend any available time with some social opiate necessarily employed for our recovering from the daily chores and tribulations associated with basic survival.  And for many of those who do take some time-out from their daily chores are apt to encounter only those traditional purveyors of deceit that are bend on perpetuating only this oppressive state of lost identities. The makings of a more fulfilling life is certainly out there for anyone that is interested in discovering the truth. The problem still remains that there are just too few freedom seekers or published roadmaps that offer legitimate directions.
     With the turn of the century and a new millennium there was a program on one of the cable networks, A&E, that suggested the top one hundred contributors to the last millennium. I found it so unexpected, but certainly so very well thought out that the selected number one contributor to the entire second millennium was Johann Gutenberg. It was rightfully pointed out that all the great discoveries and contributions of the other ninety-nine individuals of this past age would have possibly had no broad impact except that the printing press had initially and solely provided for the wide distribution and preservation of their ideas and inventions. I am reminded of that philosophical paradoxal question of whether there is actually any sound from a fallen tree in the forest if there had been no one present to observe and actually 'hear' the event. The technology that may in time be considered the greatest hope for mankind's survival may also be something very akin to the printing press as in the creation of the World Wide Web (w.w.w.) publications that are accessible to almost anyone anywhere in the world. Of course, does truth or reality exists if there is no one to encounter it or perpetuate it. Of course, does truth or reality exists if there is no one to encounter it or perpetuate it?
     The technology that has given such great rise to this marvelous means of the unrestrained distribution of ideas, the computer and its integral part of the Internet may some day be rightfully heralded as the modern-day savior of the truth and acknowledger of reality. The exercised verbal power of just one man some two thousand years ago was exactly in that vein, and it was only the magnitude of his chosen words that survived over time. Some of those misguided ministers of the Gospel will even pay due homage to this idea when they naïvely refer to the power of the word.  It is precisely in those chosen words that one can begin to comprehend what is considered as the truth.  And not to repeat myself too often, I remind you that this great spiritual teacher profoundly declared that, "Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free." I keep returning to this most simply stated axiom because I can find no sounder premise on which to suggest a viable solution for the multitude of problems that mankind has so inadvertently created for itself. We have most certainly discovered the technologies for a potentially meaningful life, all we need add to this physical scenario is an appropriate accompanying spirituality that is equally established on these realities and not those sorely outdated and terribly misconceived mythologies.
     If mankind through some of its more devious members had actually had the misguided presence of mind to have so unwittingly set a course for destruction, perhaps it is now time to put away those fabrications and redirect our course towards some more optimistic extrication. I know full well that this is something far more easily said than ever accomplished. Like any great movement or change, it can all begin with just one step and even one person; there'll be at least two if you join with me!  And with that in mind, I would like for just you to take that first step with me and I would hope that in time we might just be joined by at least one other. What I profoundly expound and enthusiastically embrace is the idea that we don't need to establish another ideology or religion. We simply need to expose the truths that have been with and within us from the beginning of time. And then we have the greatest need to learn to love that benevolent god within all of us with all of our heart, soul and, most importantly, our miraculous minds that are so fully capable of bring us to and accepting only the truth.