Human Problems

In order to live on this planet in a sustainable manner we’ve got some real human problems to overcome. On the surface, we can look at corporations only interested in this quarters balance sheet. It’s tempting and easy to blame the corporate powers that be but I think we also need to take a look at us and our habits.

Our entire economy is based upon consuming. Industries invent more “stuff” to market to us so they can make money. Most of this stuff is stuff we don’t need, after all we survived fine without it.

The problem is that manufacturing all of this stuff we don’t need takes raw materials from the planet and generates pollution and waste. Even more than that, it takes human time to make, consume, and dispose of all of this stuff.

We spend money on Ipods, cd’s, computers with audio, stereo amplifiers and speakers, so we can have music. But, wouldn’t it be better to spend that time and those resources to get together with our fellow human beings and make and share music with each other?

We’ll spend money on a bow-flex or some exercise machine, when we could be out playing games with our friends and neighbors and family and getting exercise in a far more enjoyable fashion.

Then there is the Internet and the computer I am typing this on. It is my belief that humans have the ability to directly communicate with each other but we lost that when we cut ourselves off from the all that is. That ability of communicating directly would be so much more transparent than the most advanced computer and internet interface ever can be.

What makes me believe this is that I’ve had little flashes of this. In high school, I had a friend that moved up from San Diego. We would have conversations that never had more than the first couple of words of a sentence because the other person would already know what they were going to say and start to reply.

One day, he was describing to me a strip-mall where he lived, and all of the sudden I got an absolutely visual image like I was standing in front of it, and I stopped him. I said wait, does it have this store, and then next to it, this store, and then this, and so on. I was dead on.

I think this is an innate human ability that we’ve somehow lost. I don’t know why we’ve lost it but if we could get it back, all of this Internet would be unnecessary.

I’ve had some other weird experiences like this. One time I was flipping a nickel while sitting in a radio class at high school and called it heads/tails correctly 31 times in a row. Never was able to repeat that or anything like it.

I’ve had a number of things like this, that happened to me only once, happen. I believe it’s God’s way of showing me what we are actually capable of. I haven’t been shown how that we can realize these capabilities.

I think though that we should start where we can. Think about the stuff we buy, is it really necessary? And if it is, do we need a new one? Or can we use one that someone else no longer has a need for. This would take some of the pressure off of this planets resources. We need to start treating our planet better.

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