The Second Time Around

Today, we upgrade to two Blaze classes a week. I tried this once before Christmas, but didn’t like the person who took the class. Amazingly it matters who screams at you to get in the Red Zone, who knew? This is also a night-time affair, thus freeing up days for more thrashing about with words. This whole exercise is a carefully-constructed set of move and counter move, as the world around me gets adjusted to most effectively sustain everything required in current existence.

Finding joy in the process of evolution is absolutely doable.

I see a lot of people getting angry about any challenge to their right to own what they please. This whole business of ‘finding joy’ or going minimalist (or indeed however you want to spin it) is important for two reasons. The first is that, without a slowdown in consumption, the planet cannot sustain us. There NEEDS to be a cutback in what you own, buy and consume.

Secondly, and more crucially, the more crap that surrounds, the easier it becomes to miss really significant problems because that material becomes… well, it’s like fat on your body. Sure, you can choose not to reduce it, but if that is your choice there will be consequences not just for you, but those around you. Human beings have evolved not as sedentary, but active. Excess weight can be damaging, both physically and psychologically.

It all boils down to making a choice that some people clearly resent being asked to do.

When you realise what a modern phenomena consumerism is, a lot of the issues become a lot easier to grasp. Corporations take our money, and in return there is the need to feel out money is well spent, that items are worthwhile and hold particular value… but eventually, there is only so much things can help us do. Many complex issues will never be solved with consumption: only by looking within ourselves as to why there is such a need to lose a grip on reality via immersion can the answers be found.

You don’t have to be lost in virtual worlds to be an addict, or unable to stop drinking. Food can be an addiction, dieting, collecting, buying things (and even selling them)… all these things were never an issue for our ancestors, because prior to the Industrial revolution there was very little to purchase apart from those things required to survive, and with life expectancy so low, it didn’t matter that much anyway. We are, as a species, at a precarious and possibly fatal tipping point in our history.

How we all act in the next few decades will dictate the future of planet itself.

It is important to find joy in as much as you can right now, because there’s a better than average chance we’ll be looking back on this decade wistfully, realisation these were indeed the last days of consumerism and greed and how both those things condemned a large section of the Planet to destruction. To those of you gleefully sticking fingers in your ears and deciding this is somebody else’s problem? It isn’t. We’re all in this together, and the sooner you grasp that the easier it’ll be for us all.

Time to evolve, and to help save the World from your own greed.