The best things in life may be free but you wouldn’t know it from looking at society today. Nothing is free! Everything is about making the almighty dollar. It’s most obvious when using the modern technology of the internet.
I will admit I am quite enamored of my cell phone. It is loaded down with apps, a lot of which I seldom use. Most of them were free to begin with and were fun or useful for a while, but if you want to go past stage one there’s always a price to be paid, and you are continually being bombarded with “upgrade to this”, “pay for this additional information”, or “buy this add-on” in every app and game. It doesn’t matter if it is a game, a diet app, calorie tracker, travel app, they are all looking for the latest revenue stream.Sometimes in their haste to make money the developers produce a product that is so convoluted one can longer recognize the original product or intent. I actually like it when that happens because then I just delete the entire app and go on my merry way. Although the developers must think the average person is stupid, I’m not. If I download an app it’s because I like it the way it is. Period. But when the drive to make as much from an app as possible kicks in even the most well-meaning developers succumb to the possibility of unlimited income from enhancements to an application and the users who have become dependent on it.
The developers of internet sites have also figured out the money making possibilities that lie within their grasp. Just when you think you may have ‘googled’ the answer you are looking for, you realize that there is an additional fee to be paid to dive in any deeper. The internet is no longer the free marketplace of ideas and information that it once was.
After a while you begin to realize that there is a motive behind every app and internet site and that motive is to make a lot of money.
It isn’t just the internet where you find greed overriding common sense. The same can be said for charitable giving. Who is really making out like a bandit? The people who are supposed to be the recipients or the people running the charity.
This is how governmental bureaucracy has developed at all levels of government from the Federal Government down to the City level. The prime measurement of one’s position is based solely on a monetary basis, so what drives behavior is not doing the best job they can serving their constituents and the community, but making sure that they get the most funding, the most tax revenue, the most reward. This is what happens when the only measure of one’s worth is based on money.
How on earth did we get so obsessed with wealth and money as if it alone provides happiness? This weekend we took a friend of ours who was visiting from Portland, Oregon to Cottonwood Falls. We had dinner at Keller Feed and Wine. It was not fancy, but it was filling with a reasonable portion and price.
Afterwards, we walked across the street to Prairie Past Times, where for a donation if you wished, one could enjoy the weekly Emma Chase Friday Night Music. Since it was the fifth Friday, it was songwriter’s night. There were songwriters from as far away as Manhattan, Newton, and Eureka as well as some familiar local musicians. There were people who had been writing songs for years and some who were introducing their songs for the very first time. Regardless of their level of expertise, they all shared something very valuable. They shared themselves. For a brief moment, each of them gave us a glimpse into their souls, a gift that is priceless.
Afterwards, our friend Richard, who lives in Portland where the musical offerings including jazz, classical, and indie rock, are as diverse as Portland itself, commented on how much he enjoyed the evening. It was real, it was community, it was sharing. Not for the sake of making money, but for the sheer joy of making music and sharing it with others.
It was a beautiful, peaceful night, the temperature was just right with a slight breeze blowing as we walked back to our cars in a small town that most of the world doesn’t know exists. Life doesn’t get much better than that and it is nothing that money can buy. So, regardless of what the world would have us believe, it’s still true that the best things in life are free.