Centre of Gravity

I grew up in this small town in the south of this island, with a population of less than 19,000 people, where we got more Italian channels on TV rather than local ones, where everyone knew everything and/about everyone else in town, and also where different stores were still catering for different items and the first supermarket didn't open up before I was at least ten years of age. We had (and still have) a couple of grocery stores, a computer store, a pharmacy, a couple of clothes stores, so on and so forth. And if anyone needed anything, they'd just go to the store that sold it ... it cannot really get simpler than this. 

However, something quite interesting that happened to me last week. I was working on my laptop when my mother told me how she needed to buy a particular shampoo. I also realised that it is high time I bought a mouse for my laptop, and also a new pair of jeans. The thing is, if it were fifteen years ago one would absent mindedly just head out the door, go around town to the different stores, buy the stuff and head back home.  However, even though that roughly the same stores that were open in town fifteen years ago, are still open today, instead of all of this, I just opened a new tab in my web browser ... hit a couple of keys on my laptop ... eBay, Amazon, ASOS ... and after entering the magic 16-digit number, it was done. And this morning, I woke up to find everything delivered to my door step.

I'm sure everyone has done the above more than just once or twice, it has become the norm and one of the most common things to do without even thinking about it. But no one can ignore the fact that the dynamics of society are changing, where a lot of people do not go out to the store any more but simply buy their stuff online and have it delivered. And with that, the contact with the outside world is always being more and more restricted ... at the store, one would run into the neighbour or an acquaintance and exchange a couple of words, but now, the most communication one would have if they would be on Facebook chat with someone else while shopping online. We all agree that society is changing, due to various reasons mainly the development of new and better technologies for everyday use. All over the world, people are calling this progress, but is it truly progress? Are we going for the better, or for the worse? 

During last week's edition of Swag FM, my friends played a particular song that made me think more about all of this. Cerco un centro di gravita` permanente, che non mi faccia mai cambiare idea sulle cose sulla gente ... that is what the sixty eight year old, Italian artist, Franco Battiato, sings in his 1982 single Centro di Gravita Permanente. For all the non-italian speaking people reading this post, that translates to "I am looking for a permanent centre of gravity, that doesn't ever shift my opinion of thing and people". But in modern day society, one does not simply do that. We're in a society that is constantly changing and as a result, it becomes quite difficult to establish such a centre of gravity. Was Franco Battiato aware that society had started to change back then when he was writing the lyrics for his song?

With the development and evolution of the internet and wireless devices in the past few years, nowadays its all about being connected. Adverts are not seen on the TV, radio and the newspaper only, but on web pages as well. And a lot of money is spent so that one does not see random adverts on the internet, but only adverts regarding items of interest. People no longer gather outside a store and look at items and ask for advice about it in person; but now all of this happens online and reviews are read on fora while the items are rated on the sales websites.

This also limits the amounts of human-to-human contact one used to have when buying something, now everything is done on a laptop and contact with anyone else is basically zero. The internet has brought us closer together, creating a global village, in which people are only a couple of reception bars away on Skype from anywhere around the world and where thanks to networks like CNN and BBC, nowadays news travels faster than ever before, crossing the world in just  a matter of minutes. People from all over the world do not develop in different ways their society but since we are connected to one single network, society's ideas are becoming more and more the same all over the world. And its not only ideas, even businesses and sport and products ... one can find the McDonalds, football (or soccer for people on the other side of the Atlantic pond) and the iPod all over the globe.

So in what can we fix our respective centre of gravities, that does not shift our opinion on things and people? A few years ago, people did not need to do anything of the sort since the traditions and norms of their respective societies rarely changed, and when they did ... change was very slow. But now it is not so any more and because the norms and values of modern day society are changing rapidly, some people try to fix their centre of gravities in religion, others in the love and the relationships around them, while others do so in their personal experiences that might have had a big impact on them through out their life ... in my case, like Franco Battiato, I am still looking for something, to anchor me down and to fix my opinions and views about things and people so that they do not change with the values of society. And what about you ... do you have a permanent centre of gravity ?