There are things that you can do that give you more of a warm, fuzzy feeling than paying a thousand per month into your mortgage/investments will ever do. We collectively are doing very little to improve life for much of the living things on this planet.
Lately, I have been pondering a fair bit about human nature, and have a theory that the sort of self-absorption that seems so prominent in society at the moment is probably what spurned religions thousands of years ago such as Christianity (I know too little about other religions to comment on those). Wise people realised that we achieve more when we work towards the common good, and when we look out for only our own interests, we self-destruct.
What is most disappointing is that we don’t show any signs of being much better as a whole than people were 2 millenia ago – wisdom doesn’t seem to have kept up with knowledge. We are unable to reach a standard of living and say “that’s enough, I have everything I need, and I will be satisfied with making other people’s lives better now”.
I myself am sick of having stuff, accumulating stuff, being sent stuff, being given stuff I don’t need just because it’s Christmas, and a society that doesn’t know when it’s taken things too far for the sake of income. Symptoms include:
- useless gadgets that you use once then forget
- needless remakes of films and re-recordings of songs with nothing new or interesting about them
- culture that is either brain-deadening or increased noise, but not at all enriching
- a satirising and cynical sense of humour that makes us feel witty, but seems to smother the urge for serious and constructive critique
- lack of long term policy and public planning
- having better technology but opting for the cheapest model
- packet food that takes just as long to prepare as the real thing, but with 5-times the ingredients, and 5 times the waste
I am party in doing or enjoying so many of the above things. However, last year we gave my in-laws a world vision Christmas card (which had a donation attached), and my Ma-in-law told us that it was the best, most true-to-the-spirit Christmas present she has ever been given. She was truly chuffed! That’s pretty cool, don’t you think?
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