We’re pattern seekers.
Perhaps it’s all we know.
That or a well-worn path.
But it won’t do — not now, not ever.
Look around you. The answer is there in the making; namely, climate change, the pandemic and an earth that’s slowly dying.
To some, this message is all wrong. I mean, we’re god-like and can engineer ourselves out of every conceivable problem. Really? I think we’re a long way off that escapade. Instead, our actions will slowly but surely catch up with us and sad as it is to say, we’ll be rubbed out on the horns of a huge f_ing catastrophe, unless of course you’re Elon Musk or the like and have already fled mother earth.
You’d think (as do I occasionally) that I’m a misanthrope that or utterly depressed by the state of the world but I’m not. I know we can’t go back but that doesn’t mean I’ve given up on a new story, one where man/woman/us isn’t the centre of everything.
But it won’t be easy to escape the grip of the neoliberalist elite, nor our comfort-seeking predilection, nor the incessant need to be all we can be.
Less. That’s what we need — including me and everyone I know.
What a message: “Hey, you know what we need: less.”
I’m deadly serious though.
Surely, it’s such an obvious place to start. And I’ve got form in this area by dint of my forebears and they weren’t any less content. In fact, arguably their lives were a whole lot better.
Imagine it though. I’m going to rock up to a business and tell them to stop growing. Or is that surviving in the current climate?
Tough, tough sell.
You bet. But then again, we also need to ask what work is all about, why we’ve become so utterly dependent on it and all the supply chains that feed its existence and us and what it might mean (as lofty as it might sound) to live closer to the earth.
I know I’ve much work to do.
So much work.
But then again, where else should I start?
At least this way, with a mantra of less, we can see or at least talk about something that’s material and also, if implemented, might make a difference to the very survival of the human race.
PS. Here’s a film that I like very much.