There’s an old joke about a man who confesses to his close friend that he is into flagellation, bestiality, and necrophilia, but lately he isn’t getting any satisfaction from it all; and tells his friend that it all just feels like he’s flogging a dead horse. Some days I understand this when I try to preach abut sustainability and then make the mistake of watching some mainstream news, where it seems like I’m listening to some Roman soothsayer proclaiming “Woe, woe, and thrice woe!” With all this negative news it can be hard to think a positive future is but a decision away and ours for the taking. Unless you have some masochistic dream of being a serf in a neo-feudal future, then you should be asking if you are here to serve a global cabal, OR yourself and collaboratively with the rest of life on this beautiful planet. If it weren’t for all the shitheads at the top, it really would be an incredible place live in joy, peace and happiness.
I posted this long quote on Facebook recently and was surprised at the large and positive response. It obviously speaks to us! “What is my purpose in life?” I asked the void. “What if I told you that you fulfilled it when you took an extra hour to talk to that kid about his life!” said the voice. “Or when you paid for that young couple in the restaurant? Or when you saved that dog in the traffic? Or when you tied your father’s shoes for him?” “Your problem is that you equate your purpose with goal-based achievement. The Universe isn’t interested in your outcomes – just your heart. When you choose to act out of Kindness, Compassion and Love, you are already aligned with your true purpose. No need to look any further!”
“A king, who loved to go on barefoot walks, decided one day to make all the land he had influence over ‘perfect,’ for this strange habit of his. But the roads were a mess. He went about carpeting them all, and jailing those who made messes of his pristine walking paths. Until one day, someone convinced him to wear shoes.
- The king is your tendency to think you’re truly in charge.
- Walking barefoot is your overly sensitive nature.
- The carpet is your delusional, stressful effort to change the world to suit your ‘needs.’
- And the shoes are the insight of your own (fixable) inner faults being the main issue in life, not a list of external complaints.”
Like the Buddha said, we’re all walking around with minds impaled by arrows. Why not perform the essential care we need, rather than building whole cultural systems geared toward ways to “cope” with our condition?” Rami Dhanoa.
If you feel ‘stuck’ in life, consider that your focus is trying to be successful in the wrong way. A satisfied life is better than a successful life. Inspirational psychologist, Ambreen Nadeem, says, “One of the biggest dilemmas of our time is that many people chase success not for their own fulfillment, but to impress others. Society often defines success through status, titles, and visible achievements, yet those things do not always [indeed rarely] lead to true satisfaction. Real satisfaction comes from a sense of fulfillment. It is the quiet joy that comes from doing work that feels meaningful and aligned with your values. Interestingly, many of the things that truly satisfy the soul are not expensive or glamorous. What they require instead is courage. The courage to accept that you do not have to chase the version of success the world celebrates. Sometimes, all we truly need is peace, purpose, and a deep sense of contentment in our lives.”
I keep meeting people who really want a sustainable future but want it ready made and on-the-shelf ready to use. I can offer all the ingredients for this future but wherever you live, you and whatever community you create have make it yourselves. That takes some wisdom and foresight. I can offer those two ingredients but the effort for change must be yours. The Serenity prayer, “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change [or control], the courage to change the things I can [change or control],
and the wisdom to know the difference” -Reinhold Niebuhr.
One site I sometimes go to is Films for Action; a grassroots media library dedicated to empowering citizens with information and perspectives essential for creating a more compassionate and sustainable society. Regardless of who you are listening to, empowerment never comes from anyone else, it comes from deep within yourself. We can offer insights, guidance, and ideas, and motivation, but empowerment comes when you feel motivated to create change.
The hedonistic and dominant worldview that currently infects our minds has its roots in how we perceive money. A friend reminded me of an old metaphor about money and its purpose in our lives. Money is like animal manure. If you just pile it up without doing anything with it, you just have a stinky pile of shit. If, however, it is spread out on a field, it gives nourishment to whatever you plant. The hierarchies pile up their money but no longer offer its use, erroneously focusing on growth as acquisition of money and not real productivity of something tangible. Life doesn’t have to be a struggle. I believe we are here to live happy lives and thrive together – all of us, all the time. This isn’t some kind of utopian paradise that I envision but a world where we a re sovereign and can aspire to be all that we can be and want to be. Sounds kind of Star Trekkie, but serfdom certainly isn’t that.
I have said it often and I am not alone; in one of the Films for Action, they talk about the problems of our modern economic system. “Growth under capitalism is a bit of a misnomer: it’s the correct word, just not the correct usage. Capitalist growth is better understood as “a growth,” that is to say, “an abnormal proliferation of tissue (such as a tumor),” rather than the implied meaning, “progressive development.” That is because capitalism has a single, completely amoral value: profit maximization. It is incapable of caring about anything else, and it does not pause even if the consequences of capitalist growth threaten capitalism itself, such as in the case of climate collapse.
‘Progressive development’ means the continual improvement of the human condition, and that is what we are really after. Post-capitalist ‘growth’ (meaning the expansion of human activity) is necessary to an extent to support progressive development in some instances—medicine, education, and recreation, to name a few—but not in others. Our economy, as it exists today, cannot be sustained. The only way to fix this is to reduce economic activity overall, even as we grow underdeveloped sectors. This is called degrowth. The word may sound austere until you consider that much of our activity under capitalism is useless or destructive or both. We will not be impoverished by having less busy work or toxic garbage or weapons of war or advertising or planned obsolescence; we will be enriched by it.”
Despite the overall reduction in economic activity called for by degrowth, it paradoxically offers us much more than capitalism. It does this because it is oriented towards human need, rather than profit and productivity. If a good life could be measured by the quantity of energy and resources used by the economy, then capitalism might indeed triumph. But the two issues raised above—the vacuous, precarious nature of life under capitalism, and its inability to stay within planetary boundaries—mean that is incapable of offering a good life even to the most privileged among us…Degrowth eco-socialism means an abundance of life’s best features: public goods, healthy environments, free time, good food, relationships, meaningful work, education, artistic expression, medicine, recreation. In short, it is for the efficient production of joy, not GDP. It is a political economy that serves us and our ecosystem, not the other way around. It is also our only path out of this mess, and there’s still time to make it happen.”
The take-away from this week’s post can be summed up by some sage word by Dan Millman, “…focus on your actions. Ask yourself, “What needs doing right now?” Then do it! Do it whether or not you have positive thoughts; whether or not you feel motivated or inspired.” So what needs doing right now and how do you begin the transformation we need.
0 Comments