Conserve, Conserve, Conserve

If only we would voluntarily reduce our consumption we could avoid many bad outcomes as we move into our less energy intensive future. 

But NO! 

We don't do conservation. It has never been a solution in our waste-based consumer economy. 

It is our consumer given right to waste resources on things like ready-on televisions that use electricity even when they are "off". 

For convenience, of course. Who wants to wait 15 seconds for their TV to spring to glorious light-filled life?

Thoreau said "Simplify, simplify, simplify", but he could also have said, "Conserve, conserve, conserve". Same, same, same.

What if we did voluntarily promise to never use a lot when a little would suffice?

We could delay the building of new power plants, or might not need them at all.

We wouldn't have to continue to deplete all water, soil, air, mineral, and energy resources. 

We wouldn't have to worry and fret about waiting another 10 years for the fusion/modular nuclear/hydrogen dream to materialize. 

Old growth forests would stay standing and providing valuable ecological services to nature and humans alike.

We wouldn't have to flood valuable farmland and displace millions of people to build dams and reservoirs.

If only we would see the (sun)light and voluntarily conserve all resources. Be smarter about what we use. Cut all waste. Be as efficient as possible.

It would make an amazing difference to everything and everyone.

What if we don't have a resource problem, but a consumption problem? What would the answer be in that case?

Conserve, conserve, conserve!

Who Owns Whom?

Diogenes-approved downsizing.

Much of a person's life is spent purchasing, returning, taking care of, cleaning, putting away, moving, and getting rid of things.

If we saw objects as owning us rather than the other way around, we would try to own as little as possible. 

What would one want in such a Diogenesian life? 

Only the most essential of possessions, those things that were actually doing something for us rather than languishing in a dusty forgotten storage locker or box in the basement.

Our relationship with things can become abusive when  our link to those objects is harmful rather than beneficial. That describes much of what is sold in today's marketplace.

This is what happens when they spend over one trillion dollars a year to mind control the population by reminding them they are nothing without Products A - Z.

Now they, and all their useless stuff, own more and more of us. 

They promised that personal freedom would be attained through unlimited consumption, but their plan has only resulted in folly, pretence, vanity, self-deception, and artificial human conduct.

Diogenes maintained that all the artificial growths of society were incompatible with happiness, and that morality implies a return to the simplicity of nature.

Deep in our genetic material is a desire to live lightly. On a quiet day one can hear it whispering its invitation.

Its promise is harmony, contentment, and freedom.