Sometime in the mid 1980s, a television series called "Fraggle Rock" burst onto the scene, with its cast of fun loving muppets embarking on all sorts of zany adventures. With names like Gobo, Moki, Wembley, Booper and Red (so named for her wild mop of red hair), they provided a half hour of wholesome family entertainment.
One of the characters in the background of this series were not really muppets but a group of small humanoid figures called "Doozers" whose primary job was to go around building. They were dressed like people on a construction crew with little hard hats, and had cranes and all the equipment one would need to build a bridge or road or just about anything else that they needed.
The muppets for the most part ignored the Doozers but once in a while they would go on a rampage and destroy whatever it was that they were building - and it was a complete destruction. The funny thing is that the Doozers didn't seem to mind one bit - they never even made a pretence of fighting back, but simply went about re-starting the job once the muppets moved on.
This utopia of sorts experienced a mild collapse one day when one of the muppets felt guilty that the Doozers were being targeted in such a way and decided that it was time to stop their vandalizing ways. The muppets promptly stopped their destruction in order to allow the Doozers to life happily ever after.
Except that's not what happened - they found that the Doozers were really unhappy! A quick investigation uncovered the fact that the Doozers actually looked forward to the muppets destroying their work so that they could start all over again. Without any destruction, they ran out of work to do and so just sat around all day.
This fable of the muppets and Doozers is an accurate representation of our modern industrial economy which is based on constant activity - of production and consumption. We have built up our systems in such a way that we cannot stop factories for a second - to do so would bring the entire economy to a standstill. Similarly, the well meaning desire to reduce consumption is also fraught with danger - if you no longer consume, what would happen to the producers? This is the proverbial ride on the back of a tiger where you know that you cannot stop or else the tiger will make a nice meal of you. So we have no choice but to keep our head down and create activity even when it is not required. We are cursed as a species to be Doozers.
One of the characters in the background of this series were not really muppets but a group of small humanoid figures called "Doozers" whose primary job was to go around building. They were dressed like people on a construction crew with little hard hats, and had cranes and all the equipment one would need to build a bridge or road or just about anything else that they needed.
The muppets for the most part ignored the Doozers but once in a while they would go on a rampage and destroy whatever it was that they were building - and it was a complete destruction. The funny thing is that the Doozers didn't seem to mind one bit - they never even made a pretence of fighting back, but simply went about re-starting the job once the muppets moved on.
This utopia of sorts experienced a mild collapse one day when one of the muppets felt guilty that the Doozers were being targeted in such a way and decided that it was time to stop their vandalizing ways. The muppets promptly stopped their destruction in order to allow the Doozers to life happily ever after.
Except that's not what happened - they found that the Doozers were really unhappy! A quick investigation uncovered the fact that the Doozers actually looked forward to the muppets destroying their work so that they could start all over again. Without any destruction, they ran out of work to do and so just sat around all day.
This fable of the muppets and Doozers is an accurate representation of our modern industrial economy which is based on constant activity - of production and consumption. We have built up our systems in such a way that we cannot stop factories for a second - to do so would bring the entire economy to a standstill. Similarly, the well meaning desire to reduce consumption is also fraught with danger - if you no longer consume, what would happen to the producers? This is the proverbial ride on the back of a tiger where you know that you cannot stop or else the tiger will make a nice meal of you. So we have no choice but to keep our head down and create activity even when it is not required. We are cursed as a species to be Doozers.
