why walk to work when breathing is the most work to do?
June 1st, 2007 by Tristan
The lifestyle of a consumer is what is driving economies and placing a vicious circle onto our habits.
We need money to survive - i.e. to purchase food and to purchase living space. To get the money, we all are faced with work required to get paid the money. Where does the work come from? Other people who have set up solutions to their money sourcing problem have grown organisations that involve themselves in providing something that humans need to survive, i.e. food and shelter. These have grown quite complex and symbiotic with other industries.
We therefore are provided with food and shelter which we pay for. There is a chicken and egg situation here - need and supply are in an ever-more complex dance of proliferation. There are also more and more humans consuming.
How many of us would be ok with no education but that which we seek for ourselves? OK with making our own furniture? Ok with living in a community where we grow our own food, make our own clothes?
There seems to be a huge cost to pay for levels of comfort on a grand scale. Its about comfort, I suppose. Power supplier: turn off the electricity. Me: my ass is cold! Hmm - multiply by the 10 million or so people clustered into a typical large city, on top of all the pcs running at the well lit offices while our houses in the suburbs are blacked out.
How many of us would be willing to sit and have a conversation with others in the community? Just sit? Watching the sun go down? Or shower, put on mass produced clothing, drive to a club/restaurant/bar/friend’s house, eat mass produced food and drink, while the music plays, in a well lit mall/complex then drive home, watch some tv, go to the fridge and drink a cold beverage, or boil water and then cool it down with refrigerated milk.
What are we doing with our lives? Bill Watterson (Calvin and Hobbes) ponders on machines that do everything really slowly to give us more leisure time, rather than the other way round.
How can we change things ourselves? Is globalisation of the consumer culture a good thing?
If we are established in a community, are we happy to rely on human-powered transport or the community’s horse drawn carriage or few biodiesel vehicles to get us to an emergency room? Can we watch a loved-one die for want of a speedy ambulance or power for an ultrasound?
Would we need to spend billions and billions of whatever currency on cancer cures if all food was grown and harvested and consumed by us? Would we be able to decide on which industries should be run on mass production scale (medicines, communications technology, recycling, power, aviation) and which not (entertainment, infomercial production houses, human food animals, military)?
Or do we merely accept that to be human means to be a population on a planet as we are and to live our lives as messily, tragically, chaotically, mysteriously and joyously as they are?
Замечательно, весьма забавная фраза…
The lifestyle of a consumer is what is driving economies and placing a vicious circle onto our habits.
We need money to survive - i.e…..
вот и поздравили…=)…
To get the money, we all are faced with work required to get paid the money. Where does the work […….
В этом что-то есть. Спасибо за помощь в этом вопросе, я тоже считаю, что чем проще тем лучше:…
The lifestyle of a consumer is what is driving economies and placing a vicious circle onto our habits.
We need money to survive - i.e…..
Прямо в цель…
To get the money, we all are faced with work required to get paid the money. Where does the work […….