The other day, I was thinking about how everything is cyclical. There are seasons which circle back to each other and stages of life that are either negative or positive. Everything relies on each other. It would be interesting to see what would happen if somehow humans ran out of resources. What would happen if there was no electricity, no medicine, and no Internet. At first, I thought that it would be a good thing, because people would have to rely on other people, really communicate, and live in harmony with nature.
Then I realized the nature of humans is so far removed from nature itself that the chance of people ever being forced to communicate and live in harmony by some catastrophic event is miniscule. That would require everyone to be open minded and not completely selfish which is impossible. I want to know how to help people see how beautiful the world is and how important it is to connect. I want an end to individualism and a new beginning where people see themselves as part of a whole. I think that might give nature a fighting chance. This just goes back to the need for education. My question is, how can a person come to be open minded and truly affected by information and not experience? How can respect and love for everything be taught?
Hi Sarah. There is no way to be affected by pure information that corresponds to nothing in experience. The thing to do is change your experiences and those of others, and this involves activity. You can't teach what you don't do.
ReplyDeleteLet's say you work for a big overseas aid agency. You can't live in a house with a demented energy system, drive a Mercedes 50 miles, go to work in a giant concrete building with diesel engines in the basement going all-out just to keep the building cool enough to work in, to build mud huts for people in Africa. That's not aid, it's criminal. You'll get the mud-huts wrong because you don't know how to live in a way that doesn't depend on imports of resources and exports of waste. You should just stop living that ridiculous lifestyle and give all the money you save to the people in Africa, who could take care of themselves just fine if the West weren't stealing everything they have.
Thinking ecological thought in an abstract way is different from living ecologically. You can do one without the other. I talk about this stuff on my blog a lot. pefkfl.blogspot.com