Member-only story
Excessive production and consumption — and for all the wrong reasons — will doom us. We need to take a different approach.
We feel guilty when we aren’t working to make money. We feel that time spent on hobbies, on leisure, on enjoyment is kind of wasted. Oh, we still get pleasure from it…but it makes us uneasy.
That’s intentional. In what passes for civilization today, every human being has value only insofar as he is producing wealth for others — by making things or providing services, and by spending money to consume those things. Beyond this, human beings have no value whatsoever.
That’s why leisure and activities performed that have no commercial value are disdained. And we’ve internalized that disdain.
This is a really sick attitude. Think about it: Life has no value and humans are mere human resources. Similarly, the planet itself has no value, except insofar as its resources can be exploited for profit.
No wonder humans are routinely abused and the planet is used as a disposable toilet and garbage heap. We live under sick and destructive systems and values. And we actively support both!
Stunted Imaginations and Cowardice
We can’t even imagine a different way of doing things. Or, at least, we are discouraged from doing so.
