You may believe that there's no afterlife - death snuffs out consciousness for eternity, and that's all. You may equally well believe in Heaven - life after death in a body/soul dualist universe. One way or another, you have no personal stake in the wellbeing of Planet Earth after your bodily demise. Sod it, YOLO, let's fly to Tahiti and hire an SUV and some jet skis for the fortnight.
But if you harbour a monist view that all things physical and metaphysical exist in the same universe; if you harbour any kind of belief in reincarnation, you will feel an innate need to ensure that Planet Earth is comfortable for future generations.
We are stewards, mindful custodians of our environment, and for its sake, we need to ensure it does not suffer from our over-zealous consumption. We should aim to live in comfort, not luxury - and it's crossing that line that plunges the earth into an unsustainable chase for dwindling resources.
My ascetic approach to life stems from an acute concern about the environmental damage caused by mindless materialism. Like my late father, I do not like waste - of food, of energy, of raw materials, of time. The burning of fossil fuels, use of unnecessarily big cars, the dumping of household rubbish into the environment - it pains me to see it.
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| Will such egregious behaviour be punished? In the afterlife? |
I class myself an environmental illiberal - your freedom to pollute the planet ends where my freedom to live on a sustainable planet begins. Yes, there is an aesthetic reason to dislike pollution and polluters, but there's a metaphysical one too. Our planet can sustain us and our descendants as we evolve from Homo sapiens to Homo superior thousands of millennia into the future. Our actions - and inaction - have the difference to decide what this planet will be like to live on then. We have a destiny to fulfil, watching and participating as the Universe unfolds around us. It would be stupid of us to kill the very planet on which we live.
If you're one of those people worried about impending climate change, ask yourself what actions you have taken to curtail emissions of greenhouse gas. Are you part of the problem or part of the solution? "Whatever happened to our snowy Polish winters?" bleats the SUV owner. "YOU happened, mate, that's what."
Will I be around to live on our planet in the future? No. The 'I', the ego, will be stripped away with death. Consciousness belongs to no ego - rather it's the other way around. The pure consciousness will, I believe, endure, to observe the path to enlightenment. Unless there is a jumping from parallel universe to parallel universe, but that's Possibilianism, about which I shall be writing shortly.
Meanwhile, will those who mindlessly pollute and waste face some retribution? Karma?
I shall discuss karma - instant and otherwise - tomorrow.
This time last year:
Salvation or peace of mind?
This time six years ago:
Spiritual evolution - are we in a New Age?
This time nine years ago:
S2 - a year from completion?
This time ten years ago:
In praise of blue skies
This time 11 years ago:
A piano, tuned
This time 13 years ago:
Four weeks into Lent
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