Spirituality, the Ego and the Environment: Lent 2024, Day 28

Looking back over this blog, the topic of human spirituality is becoming ever-more important to me. This is my 33rd Lent, in the meaning of a conscious effort to change my habits over a continuous 46-day period. My first Lents, back in the early 1990s, were little more than exercises in abstinence – giving up alcohol, meat, confectionary, salt snacks and fast food for the duration. Indeed, it was only in 2011 that I started labelling blog posts about Lent with the tag 'human spirituality'! 

Age, acquired knowledge, wisdom and an increased sense of physical mortality prompts an ever-deeper philosophical investigation.

Several threads come together to inform my spirituality and philosophy, including psychology, cosmology, physics and metaphysics, all of which I've touched on. The environment is another thread that I want to discuss today. 

I am concerned by climate change and that concern has led to significant changes in my lifestyle, behaviour and outlook. 

I have come to see materialism (both in the sense of physicalism = belief that there's no more to reality than physical matter, and in the sense of materialism = a way of life focused on consumption) as the path to perdition. For the individual consciousness, for humanity and for our planet. Materialism rids us of hope and replaces it with a vacuous contest to see who can acquire more toys before they die.

Talking to friends and colleagues, I appreciate that most people do understand that the climate is changing, that human activity is foremost in driving that change – and yet they are not showing any willingness to adapt their behaviour accordingly, to help to mitigate the effects. Holiday plans still mean jetting off to exotic destinations! A new car is a must! There's a million and one household gadgets we absolutely need! The acquisition of more and more things, leading to stuffocation. A materialist treadmill from which there is no escape, driven by the ego's desire to be admired. To be socially respected, to be appreciated as top dog in the status hierarchy.

The ego is needed up to a point; it drives you along, but only up to that point when you realise you have achieved material comfort and no longer need to chase the next dollar, thousand or million. But so few people can do that.

Surrounded by the człowiek, który się nie zastanawia, the person that contemplates not, I worry about our fate as a species. 

Surging on in life without pausing to check the map. Where are you going to? What's your aim?  What's your purpose? How does the way you live your life affect other humans, and the animals and plants with which you share your environment? What do you want to achieve and what mark do you ultimately wish to leave on the Earth?

Out unthinking consumption creates a powerful demand, a vacuum that extracts raw materials from the earth, and burns fossil fuels to power their processing into the goods that we crave to own. This has been going on for two and half centuries, and over the past half century the greenhouse gas emissions that our consumption creates has escaped our control.

How much of what we buy – including food – do we waste? How much of the money that we earn by working so hard do we spend on what we waste? A life in which we consume less and waste less creates a profoundly virtuous circle; less money worries, less need to work so hard/so long, more time to realise one's potential – and that's what really counts in life.

If we, the two billion people of the rich world, dialled back our consumption, we could quickly reduce the greenhouse-gas emissions that are threatening the stability of the ecosystem on which we depend. In the meanwhile, I'm watching the world around me consume its way to climate catastrophe.

We all really need to re-think our lives and consider the future. I really like Canadian artist Sarah Lazarovic's Buyerarchy of Needs. Scale down, good people, now. For your descendants' sakes. 

Lent 2023, Day 28

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Lent 2021: Day 28
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Lent 2020: Day 28
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