I believe if we want to fix the root of our issues, we need to ask why things are the way they are. If we follow the chain of asking why all the way down, we can find a root cause that may fix all the other issues that spring from it.

So I don't feel good sometimes, because of anxiety or depression. Why?

Because I feel uncertain of my future, and it makes me uneasy. Why?

Because without income, I may be homeless and without food. Why?

Because our society is organized in a way where money is gotten by exchanging labor. But we have arrived at a time in history where there's a shortage of jobs due to automation and outsourcing, so there are many who simply cannot get access to a reliable income stream to survive. So why is there automation and globalization of wages?

Automation is happening because of the development of technology, which has to do with the human desire to control our environment. This desire seems to be in our genes, but we could probably culturally un-learn it over hundreds of years with effort. Globalization of the labor pool is allowed by technology too, airplanes and internet which allow for geographical distances to be less and less important. Because they have more money, companies can move locations more easily than citizens, and can manipulate law itself more easily than citizens. But why?

"I don't know. Stop asking why. It is what it is." say some who want to mentally check out when things get too deep, throwing out their preferred thought-terminating cliches.

But if globalism is made possible by technology, and technology comes from our desires to control our environment, and we can't find jobs because of automation and globalization, then why do we in effect keep desiring things that end up hurting us? Are we really that short-sighted? And/or are our genetic predispositions that ill-suited for modern society?

"Just shut up, kid. No one needs to be thinking about this stuff, do something real." I can hear it now.

My stomach still hurts though.

"Take some antacids."

So it goes.