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I was sitting and waiting at the airport in the food court. Surrounded by the bright and inviting lights, the sweet and delicious smells, and of course the fried and unhealthy foods. I couldn't help but look at the people around me filling their mouths with the edible manifestation of the sights, smells and sounds. Eating fries, drinking coke, commenting on how hungry they were, never satisfied. It is a strange world we live in, it is not a natural world with everyone in a symbiotic relation with the earth, but a world of over consumption, with industrialized and unnatural products.
We are a society that thrives on marketing to the consumer anything that sells with little thought of the consumer's need or anything else for that matter. The bottom line drives. Now with our new Green Revolution in full swing, why would companies not use this gimmick to sell their products? Companies are driven to market (and of course sell) to us all the best energy star technologies that they deem we are required to buy, because in this Green Revolution, it is still all about buying. It is about consumers purchasing the best item and then replace it the following year with Version 2.0. This is the only way us, the consumer, can get even more savings year after year and thus help the environment more year after year. Forget about the environmental costs due to producing these items: mining for the materials, forging the material, transporting the item. All this needs to be ignored. The items have already been made, we need to focus on the immediate energy savings that buying the bigger fridge will save us (and the environment). It uses less energy than any other large fridge around and now that's an accomplishment. Of course smaller fridges use less... Not necessary. How about no fridge? Heaven forbid! These are not possibilities. In our Green Revolution, it is about buying more, the more we buy the happier we are and the happier the planet is, period. Our Green Revolution is not about what is logical and actually, gasp, reducing our consumption to save on energy costs around the globe.
With its faults, it would be unfair not the mention what is positive about our America and foremost is the freedom. Albeit some of these freedoms are hard to obtained because they are constrained by social control. All the social norms about consumption, body image and fashion to name a few make it harder for us, the obedient pack, to act outside of the self-loathing, self-gloating and self-satiation. We are never good enough in the eyes of others, so we compensate by continually telling and reminding people about how good we are, while always yearning to have more for ourselves to catch up to our neighbor. However, even with the ubiquitous norms, we are given the choice to write about what we think is wrong in the thoughts and actions of the world around us. We have the choice to sever the ties of consumption by living frugally and to giving our share to others. We have the choice to unplug from mainstream media and ignore the expensive dress code and accessories it requires from us and to instead live a simple more meaningful life. We all know that their will be obstacles to being an individual, to be the one who can step outside of the pack and to look at a social norms from the outside, objective view to see the illogical idiosyncracies that us humans in the obedient pack are conforming to. (Eating, drinking and smoking excessively, french friends, fancy cars, diamonds, red meat, and huge houses...) Its important to live the life we want and to think outside the framework that is provided by the norms. Choosing a lifestyle is akin to choosing a religion, how can we know which lifestyle we prefer if we know only one lifestyle and have not explored others.
Nonetheless, we have to be confident in our actions if they are led by compassion, we have to stand by our decisions to be nice to someone who has offended us. We need to be confident and drop our insecurities and realize that the person next to us has the same insecurities of inferiority as we do and lift these people up instead of putting them down. If we see arrogance, if we see pride, we need to see the mechanisms of defense these people are carefully constructing around themselves to enclose the true self that they are not comfortable sharing with others. We need to find their true selves and elevate them with kind words, not by fighting pride with more pride.
We can all do this, we can help someone around us and we will have changed the world for that one person. I hear many people talking about their grandiose goals to help others that are measured by numbers and figures and graphs and statistics. The person with the best numbers wins. Yet in the meantime, the people around them who are most important to them (or rather, who they are most important to) are treated poorly. This is a concrete change we can all make and instead of waiting for our ephemeral dreams that escape us further at the purchase of each new calendar and the building of new obstacles. We need to ensure those around us are happy and feel our positivity towards them now and not wait.
People selfishly say many times that they want to live for themselves right now before they change to live for others, but living for others is living for yourself. It is rewarding, meaningful, positive, fulfilling, etc. The yearning of wanting more is thwarted by these compassionant actions. So we need to ensure that those around us are happy before we go off and save the world for others far off. Let us all start with the world around us and change the world for our family, friends, acquaintences, strangers and everyone we encounter. That is saving the world little by little.
P.S. I saw a sloth crossing the road in a community. It was slow.
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