In a real sense, the issues that we face as a country are directly related to our clinging to those things that most damage our very souls. We have created a medical system that ignores the need and obligation of our personal deaths. We have a natural lifespan that we are ignoring, replacing the vitality of a healthy life for the long and tortured senescence of a life artificially prolonged by modern "medicine". We are mistakenly choosing length of life over quality.
Our economic woes as a people are rooted in the incessant need for more, when we choose to count our luxuries as necessities and constant growth and increasing wealth as an inalienable right. But by increasing our personal wealth and focusing on our personal comfort in the now, we are paupering the future and damaging the planet.
There is a necessary urgency about temporal things which is a duty to yourself and your kin, but it is critical that you not carry this too far. There is scarcely any sin against which the bible more warns us, than the disturbing, distracting, and self-centered clinging to the things of this life.
Sufficient unto the day.
A mature society keeps the comforts of this life in perspective, The will of the creator places bitterness or sweetness in our lives. For us to structure our lives and our society around the false idols of security and luxury is the mark of small souls, cowering in fear because they may somehow have less than their desires in the imagined future and thus lead a life of not enough.
We must reconcile ourselves to our place in the world and our place in the society that nurtures us. We can no longer strive for the material "more" that has poisoned our souls and makes us live in fear for its potential loss.
2 comments:
Good luck getting people to understand that... Any time I bring up a more minimalist existence, people look at me like I'm nuts. Our lives, our TIME is the most valuable thing we have, yet we squander so much of it in pursuit of some fictional "brass ring", hoping we'll get to goof off in luxury for the last few years of our lives. To this, I ask What the hell is the point in that? I'd much rather slow down, simplify, and enjoy my life today rather than kill myself working toward the off chance that I MIGHT get to enjoy my life 30 years from now..... It's asenine. But people are too brainwashed by the "American Dream", as packaged and market by the bankers, who make a killing from it. Sigh..... Wake up people! But I know I'm just fartin' in the breeze. Very few will listen, much less realize how they've been had....
This is your best post yet.
Quite a lot of philosophical punch.
Kudos.
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