From late April, actually

Of Money, generally

“Globalization: the development of something, so as to make it’s influence felt all around the world.” Which often leads to the homogenization of peoples and cultures due to increased travel, trade, and communication. There have been and are many cultures on our planet, some of which had/have really great environmental ethics. Some examples are, traditional cultures in East Africa, including the Maasai, and most of Kenya’s old traditions. Native American cultures also often had respect for the other inhabitants of the planet built into their culture.

Our current generalized global culture doesn’t do so well. Money talks, and it talks a whole lot louder than the various ‘Loraxes’ out there. Success—as measured usually by possessions, acclaim, fame, beauty, and comfort—that’s the most important thing. So, people climb the social ladder, cutting corners if it saves them money, thinking only of the immediate future. So we figure, well, if I cut down that entire forest and sell the wood, it’ll grow back. Eventually. I think it will, anyway… sure it will! I need the money, I need it bad. Besides, if I don’t do it, someone else will. So I might as well get the benefit… better me than someone else, right? Never mind how steep the slopes are, never mind the animals and plants that depend on those trees, never mind that the sheep will eat anything new and green that grows, never mind the people who need that wood to heat their houses in the winter. They can buy wood from somewhere else. Or heat with gas. The money is more important.

So, having and aquiring these markers of success has become a main goal in life. We all strive for it on some level, and thus we justify it to ourselves: everyone’s doing it. And heaven forbid anyone should imply that the having or the getting of these things might not be as ethical as one might wish. It’s my right to take the opportunities I see! And my right to enjoy what I’ve got! After all, if you got it, flaunt it, right? Sometimes I find myself cynically thinking of all this as socially sanctified greed. I know it’s not quite that. I know, but it’s too close to that.

The thing is, the more we trumpet to ourselves that we have the right to acquire, the right to keep what we get to ourselves, the right to enjoy our hard-earned spoils in comfort… the less frequently we find ourselves content. Content. That means actually relaxing in the present, enjoying what is around us for what it is; happy where and who we are.

I see it happening around me. People see someone else with something, and they think: I want that, too! Of course, that’s human nature. People see it on TV, especially. Over and over they see these values, the supremacy of money promoted, and eventually, they buy it. The drink the Koolaid. They adopt those values, and become less and less satisfied, less content, with their own lives. It’s all about perspective. If everyone else’s life is as hard as yours, it doesn’t seem so bad. But let you see someone else living in rich comfort while you struggle with floods and cold and difficult terrain just to feed your family… and it suddenly seems unfair and awful and intolerable. It is unfair. And it is awful sometimes. And there are intolerable inequalities in our world. But is the answer really to try to attain the same fool’s gold of “success?” I think not.