Addiction!

At what cost?

I am reading Nial Ferguson’s excellent book Empire: The Rise and Demise of The British World Order.

As the little island nation of St. Kitts & Nevis is one of my clients, I was astonished to read that Nevis produced three times more British imports than New York between 1714 and 1773.  The value of British imports from Jamaica was five times greater than those from all the American colonies in the same period.

That was shocking to read. I have been to Nevis. There is not a lot there – except sugar cane.

And it was sugar that the British were importing.

Lots of it.

Prior to the 14th Century, almost no European had even tasted refined sugar.  It was simply not known.

By the 17th Century, the average European was consuming their body weight in refined sugar every year.

Sugar was the heroin of Europe. And Europeans would increasingly do anything to assure their supply of sugar.

The only places where sugar cane could be grown were the West Indies, and the work was backbreakingly hard. The heat was killing. The only workers who could survive the sugar cane fields were black slaves from Africa.

So the British began to transport slaves to the Indies. Lots of them.

Between 1662 and 1807 the British transported more than 3.5 million slaves to the New World. That was over three times the number of European whites who made the trip during the same period.

Slavery corrupted the British, tarnished any claims to freedom and democracy that the British or their American colonists might lay claim to, and destroyed countless millions of African’s lives.

And all for sugar.

For an addiction.

Addictions don’t have to be for heroin.  There are other drugs.

Like sugar.

Or video.

In 1945 almost no one in the United States (or the world for that matter) had ever seen television.  The notion of spending time staring at a glowing screen was simply an unknown activity for humans.

Sixty-five years later, (a nanosecond in human history), staring at glowing screens and watching images flash by is the number one activity for us.  The average American today spends 8.5 hours a day, every day, staring at a glowing screen.  4.5 of those hours are spent watching TV.

It’s an addiction.

If you think it isn’t, try taking cable away from anyone.

or their blackberry.

Just as sugar addiction warped British civilization, how will screen addiction warp American culture and society?

I don’ think we’re headed for a restitution of slavery.

But I do think that screen addiction warps American society, just as surely as sugar addiction warped British or opium addiction warped China.

The British poured vast resources into their navy to facilitate the sugar/slave trade that kept Europe in refined sugar.

Vast resources.

We pour vast resources – financial, creative, human, intellectual.. into the never-ending creation of content to fill those glowing screens to which we have become addicted.

TV shows, reality shows, video games, web sites – an almost incomprehensible volume of material that must be created and consumed endlessly. We must feed the beast.

And it’s expensive.

But what are we actually creating with all this time and money and effort?

What do we have to show for 65 years of effort?

What are we building?

And to what end?

Just curious…..