Trying to understand the world

There is something wrong with the way the world is functioning. Obviously, everyone knows this. We depend too much on electricity. We are causing global warming. We are encouraging GM food. The ecosystem is dying out and we have been hit by recession, as if its a tornado. But we're going down the same road, which may... just may lead to the destruction of the earth.

But every argument I've heard since birth regarding these issues of poverty, unemployement, nationailsm, work, the national parks, wildlife protection acts etc all seem very superficial. For some reason, no one seems to question the basic crux of the argument that we are all making as a culture, and therefore, we are not able to crack the real code, the real nature of what is going wrong with the world.

For the past few months, because of my exposure to Cultural Studies, I have been thinking about the nature of our arguments to explain what we do to ourselves, and I am trying to locate the answers...

Someone else said this, and it has probably been said before... Money has become the centre of everything today. For money, people stake their honour and pride on national television, as if all they want to do is embarass themselves. For anything to move, money is required. I've always wondered why it becomes such an important part of people's lives.

When we are at The Art of Living, or at other spiritual organisations, money just comes in, the right amount thats required, and everyone gets what they want... It's never the centre. And I know that people can live like that. I was going back to thinking how this whole structure of the economy came into place... That every country will have its' own currency and that there will be an exchange rate, and that exchange rate will be decided by the amount of gold that company has... And I was thinking, who came up with this brilliant idea? Why did every country have to run on money, and how much of it they had... It's so contradictory that we are taught, very superfially, actually, that money is not the most important thing in the world, and then, when we grow up, we are forced into becoming doctors or engineers and make a lot of money so people can be happy. It's so wierd. But the underlying problem I was trying to address is this-why is money the centre of everything, and it's okay if it is... But is there anyway to change that? Is there anyway to make, say, love the centre of the world? Because no matter how much you spend of that, there's always more to give...

Then, there's all the work we do. My god, people work so much... They work day and night and day again so that they can get money and make ends meet. Why are so many people in the world working when they don't want to work? Why is the majority of the population doing something that they don't like for something that will not give them happiness. (Btw, I am not talking about people who love their work). I told this to a friend. She said, "What do you expect? People to just sit at home and do nothing all day?" And I didn't have an answer. I just kept wondering why so many people worked. Most of the work people I know do involves creating things that will make other people's lives simpler. And in the process of outsourcing and simplifying things, I think we are forgetting that we are producing so many complexities that need to be constantly evolved.

So this is my attempt, at at least asking the right questions...

In pursuit of answers. If anyone has one, please comment. :-)