Is it all for not?

Sometimes I wonder, what makes us think we are more civilized than nomadic tribal peoples. Just who is more civilized? We have taken over the world, with our computers, big fancy hospitals and globe trotting jet planes.

Almost always the conquerors have thought they offered more to those "uncivilized people", from the Kings of Europe, To the Soviet Empire, to the Chinese "improving" Tibet, to the USA and Canada teaching American Indians how to be "civilized."

But just what have we accomplished? Before we came along life was simple. Everything revolved around the community and family. You could not survive a day without your tribe. Now we cant survive a day without our computers, and we could go a lifetime without actually seeing people.

I think of those times and I long for that. I long for a day when every hour "I" am surrounded by the community, raised up by all the life from the young playing and dancing to the old spinning yarns of what it was like in days of old.

As it is, I live in a cold building with few if any actual connections to the people that live around me. People of the earth, what have done? The global economy failures are a testament to our greed. The massive dump of consumerism spreads out from the sea to shinning sea. Our cities are cold, giant masses of life broken by walls. Walls that keep us bound, not to each other, but from each other.

Why? Why? What have we done? Why can't we leave it behind and go back to the days of neighbors and simple lives?

I would give it all up to live in a tribal community. I would give it all up for a simple life of lost connections.

Can we go back?