Imagine a world where we all stopped buying non-essentials for three months.
What power the masses could wield with such discipline. But that would be difficult.
The better move is gradual – over the next six to eight months, train yourself by heavily scrutinizing your spending, and slowly remove unnecessary purchases from your life.
Spending 10% less 8 months from now during the upcoming holiday season would be a win.
Then repeat next year.
Imagine a world where a landlord sends this letter to their tenants:
“Because I had such a great investment year and my needs are well covered, I am reducing your monthly rent by 5% for the next year, at which point we will reevaluate.”
A preposterous thought, right? I mean – what landlord in their right mind would offer such a ludicrous deal? A rent decrease? Not in our growth-minded system.
Pull that thread a bit. See what answers come to you. How did we come to believe that this concept is so ridiculous? Why is there a constant demand for growth that drives our current behavior?
Maybe it only seems crazy to us because the suggestion runs counter to our current mental models. What if we changed the system conditions to allow for it?
We are but mere stewards of the land we claim to own.
Care for it. Preserve as best as possible its natural state, slowly eliminating our impetuous decisions to reshape the landscape in the name of humanity.
I am oblivious to the current time as I type these words to you. I eventually made it about four hours before spoiling the feeling of liberation that comes with escaping the grasp of time.
I fought the urge to glance at the computer clock – a gesture I perform frequently out of habit.
I tempered the otherwise uncontrollable desire to constantly check my cell phone clock.
I dodged the myriad devices – all 13 of them – displaying the time throughout my home.
What slaves we have become, to a concept of our own creation. Liberate yourself. Periodically avoid the clocks and embrace your newfound – albeit temporary – freedom.
…at least not willingly.
Let us imagine a world where you can step outside your door and grab something nourishing to eat, at no cost to you, directly from nature. As an experiment, venture outdoors and see what you can find.
Chances are, you won’t find anything.
A home garden doesn’t count in this scenario. Gardens require considerable human input to generate food. We must coax the nutrients from the earth to sustain ourselves, because the earth is stubborn when it comes to growing what humans eat. I’m challenging you to find an unprocessed food source that occurs naturally in the wild that we can simply eat. I’m willing to bet that – excluding gardens and farms – you’d walk miles and still be unable to find a source that can sustain you. Hunters may have better luck, but what about the rest of us?
We’ve been relying on agriculture to sustain us for thousands and thousands of years, so I’m not necessarily surprised by the results of this experiment. What is concerning, however, is that over the course of those thousands of years, we’ve clearly been forgotten by the earth. We decided our way was better, and she has shifted her attention elsewhere to provide for other species.
If there were ever a long-term warning sign – relatively speaking – that our time has come, that our reign as apex species is over, this is it. The fact that this earth no longer naturally provides – in abundance – that which we need to sustain ourselves.
brainsbri 