Stop and think - what is it that you want from the rest of your life? More things? A new car? More travel? More holidays? More what precisely? And how do you intend to achieve those goals?
I feel that I know the answer - I know very well, although it took me a long time to get there.
In this final part of my personal de-growth manifesto, I want to dwell on the spiritual aspects of stepping back from materialist consumerism. As regular readers know, my personal identity is rooted in the conviction that my consciousness (or soul) has existed through multiple lifetimes on earth, and that after my biological death, it will abide, most likely in a new incarnation.
How this happens is beyond me; it is my life's quest to try to understand the mechanisms by which anomalous qualia memories (exomnesia events) happen and what they mean. I see these 'past-life flashbacks' which I have experienced consistently since childhood as conveying a deep significance. Strip away the Ego, and what is at the heart of experience of being alive - the Consciousness - is eternal. We are part of an eternal Whole.
If a future life on earth awaits our souls, our planet should remain comfortably habitable for our future selves - not a wasteland upon which life desperately tries to cling on, despite unbearable heat, depleted ozone layers, bombarded by radiation, living deep underground, wars for water etc. We can all imagine our own dystopian hells-on-earth. We should act to avoid such a future for our planet.
If we view humans as being conscious souls carried around within ego-driven biological bodies, we can grasp that sense of original sin, of the Gnostic duality of good and evil in one being. But if we merely view ourselves merely as constellations of trillions of atoms - matter, and nothing more than matter - then life is somehow empty, leading nowhere, with nothing beyond the grave.
But even if you hold no belief in any spiritual afterlife, you must surely hold that your DNA - the genetic information passing through you - should be given a chance to continue to thrive after your body dies? By denying climate change, by carrying on emitting greenhouse gases as though it was of no consequence, you are spitting on your own DNA. Your children and grandchildren will have to live on a planet which is getting less comfortable to live on.
And drawing back from materialist consumerism has another massive advantage - peace of mind and improved mental health.
Materialism and environmental despoliation go hand in hand. The people devastating our planet are doing do primarily for material gain. Material gain driven by a subconscious desire to rise up the status hierarchy. It starts with the individual. Petition, lobby, yes; but more important is example. Bottom-up, not top-down. Not hectoring those who steadfastly refuse to change their habits, but showing them that there is a better way - a slower, internally richer, healthier, more satisfying way to live one's life.
I am, indeed, a slow learner; it took me almost six decades to work out what life is for, why I exist, what the purpose of it all really is. Some get it much quicker. Others get it wrong. Others still never get it at all.
De-growth should be seen in futurist terms - our deep future as a species. We've been around for the tiniest fraction of the Earth's 4.5 billion years; the earliest neolithic settlements displaying hallmarks of civilisation being around 12,000 to 13,000 years old. Our star has a billion years of life left in it, if not more. How far will we have evolved by then? Or will we have driven ourselves extinct many millions of years earlier, the result of our collective folly, egotism and greed?
Reaching out to the Infinite and Eternal is a good start; to align your prospects, your long-term good, with that of the rest of humanity, the other species of animals and plants we share our planet with, and that of the unfolding Universe.
This time seven years ago:
In praise of ELO
This time eight years ago:
Making sense of Andrzej Duda
This time 11 years ago:
Work starts on ul. Gogolińska
This time 12 years ago:
Waiting for The Man
This time 14 years ago:
The Flavour of Parallel reviewed
This time 15 years ago:
Twilight in the garden
This time 16 years ago:
Late May reflections
No comments:
Post a Comment