- 11 Sep 2017 11:21
#14842513
If we wish to hold on to calmness and peaceful exsistence here in the west and 1st world, we have to be ready to let go from most of our comforts.
If we want to truly make a better world, preserve the environment for the generations to come, we must act right away. That would essentially mean that first we should give up eating meat, which is quite simply the easiest way for a person to minimalize his or hers carbon footprint with very little effort.
That is not enough though, we should be prepared for life with a lot less comfort, without all these gadgets, electronics, stuff in genereal. We cannot keep consuming this way if we wish to preserve the world. We can't go get new winter clothing every winter, it's these very simple, almost fundamental aspects of our lives, that we have to be ready to give up.
And that is going to be so difficult, and I think, impossible, because most of us here in the west, don't even think twice about these things, we're grown up in a world that encourages us to buy more, and buying more is making us happy, and buying is pretty much our only purpose here.
Also the status quo doesn't want us to stop the consumption of useless goods. So to preserve the world, we must get rid of the establishment that is keeping it's positions by having us polluting and consuming the planet.
The "Great Change" that is coming, it could be the one where people can put aside the meaningless problems between themselves and go all out preserving the environment, the coral reefs, oceans, fresh water reservers, widllife and forests. Implementing universal basic income which will liberate us from the perpetual competion between ourselves, taking down the ladders that help people to climb over others and so on.
Or the great change could be the one where we're too busy being mad at immigrants, looking for someone to blame because deep down, we don't want to give up the luxury of having hot, drinkable water coming from our taps instantly or being able to just sit down on our asses while moving 80km/h in our vehicles, or having that bloody steak and having shop shelves full of stuff 24/7 which is preserved so that it will last there for years.
Nationalism will rise in some places, other places will just try to hide the horrors of the world and just keep on consuming and hoping it will all go away. The war will come, the horros will come and there will be panic and the screams of rape and murder will echo in the streets of our cities because we didn't do anything, we were too busy buying more stuff, decorating our homes and having fucking goat cheese salad for lunch.
Refugee crisis showed how unprepared even a massive institution like EU was. And how we all have been just fine with all the war and terror and horror in so many places, and now, that kettle is boiling over and we're having a little taste of all that panic, and we can't handle it. What happens when in 40-60 years there will be hundreds of millions of refugees on our borders if we can't even take care of this.
We slowly realize how helpless our institutions are, how clueless our governments and leaders are.
And everyone just keep on buying, keep on browsing each others online, keep buying more clothes to feel more identity, to decorate our homes with the same stuff as everyone else to feel different.
I live in Finland, a place of absolutely fantastic quality of life. People are so wealthy, we have everything we need, life here is so, so good. And what does Finalnd have to show for all this prosperity?
What does this country produce, or give to the rest of the world to sort of, justify all this abundance?
Absolutely nothing, we don't produce energy, we don't have natural resources, I have no idea why we're so "succesfull" besides that our politicians have made sure that things are this way.
And what do people do here? When I walk the streets I start feeling ill. No one is stopping to appreciate all this, the clean air, the drinkable water, those almost un-noticable things that instantly puts everyone here on top of the pyramid. The social welfare, free universitys, free education in general, there isn't even a chance for rich people to put their kids to "better schools" they have only the one option, which everyone, immigrants, poor and rich alike have to attend.
And what do people do? They just consume fiercly, with acceleration. No one is willing to give out a piece of their cake. People here think they've somehow "earned" this quality of life, and others in less fortunate countries, just haven't, I don't know, worked enough? It's ridicolous!
Sorry for ranting, I think I'm quickly losing my mind.