To survive the changes that are coming we need to fundamentally change the way we live our lives.
The essence of this change will be to downsize, to realize just how much of life is about being as opposed to having, we will have to buy less... and learn how to live low maintenance lifestyles.
We have around 6,000 million years worth of consuming, building, wasting and general living to do before changes in our sun ends all life here.
We have seen exponential growth in almost every area of life over the past 200 years.
There are 6,000 million potential years of such growth ahead of us. This is an unsustainable prospect... and extremely dangerous if we try to continue on the pre-covid path of ever more economic growth.
Economies across the planet have stalled. But the risk attached to simply getting economic growth going again is immense. Why? Because it is one of the main reasons why pandemics such as the novel coronavirus begin... by humans making new pathways into nature to exploit and disturb it.
We need to change course, change our behaviors, to downsize and to live low maintenance lifestyles for the greater safety of all.
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The mindless game that the producers and marketing men are playing must surely be obvious to everyone.
Buy. Consume. And do it, and more of it, forever....
To survive in the long term and make the post-covid world safe we must disconnect from their game plan by adopting a low maintenance lifestyle.
A Low Maintenance Lifestyle solution consists of several integrated elements:
i. The self-created pursuit of a low maintenance lifestyle
ii. Government support and underpinning of a 'Be All You Can Be' culture
iii. Introduction of a nation-wide, then world-wide ‘Universal Basic Income'.
iv. Resource release from all subsequently redundant government agencies
v. A planetary community
i. The self-created pursuit of a low maintenance lifestyle
This is the oldest form of lifestyle on the planet. Through it, everything possible was used to aid survival. Energies were used wisely and nothing was wasted. If these principles were not adhered to you died. It was as simple as that.
We are realizing that we are not immune to these realities, that we were fed an illusion of security in order to make it seem safe to buy. This dream-state is rapidly turning into a nightmare. Now it is starting to become very real to us that, just like the ancients, we too must survive the future.
This is the broad background to the long history of low maintenance lifestyles.
In the modern world there are several possibilities available to us that were unavailable to the ancients:
Use the collective energy as focused through government to provide the basic essentials for your daily survival.
Seek to maximize Being as opposed to Doing and Having.
Organize the communal use of tools to maximize utility and to minimize waste.
The essence of a Low Maintenance Lifestyle is: Buy Less.
The cycle we are on now is that we must buy ever increasing numbers of goods to keep everyone employed so that they are able to buy ever increasing numbers of goods and so on ad infinitum.
The final product is of course everyone owning everything on a concrete planet and feeling totally miserable due to one crisis following another, more pandemics and climate change on top.
Madness! Yet that is the future we are facing. The politicians call endlessly for "More growth. More growth." But we can already see and feel what is growing all around us. We already feel sick of this modern world with its stress, greed, criminality and selfishness.
The marketers want to fill you with the obsession to have. They want you to be consumed with longing for their products. They want you to be endlessly dissatisfied with what you already have. They want you to be in a state of constant longing for satiation and to never achieve it.
Keep in mind:
Most of the true happiness you ever find has little to do with possession.
Most true happiness is gained by useful co-operation with others.
Points ii, iii & iv would begin to weaken the hypnosis of the mass marketers:
ii. Government support and underpinning of a 'Be All You Can Be' culture
iii. Introduction of a nation-wide then planet-wide Universal Basic Income.
iv. Resource release from all subsequently redundant government agencies
All four elements above contain the essential ingredients for a sustainable life for the indefinite future.
There is no avoiding the fact that government will have to be the agency which creates any reform. We and our immediate ancestors have transferred almost all real power to this agency - so now it must work for us and for the almost endless generations to come.
Element ii. is easiest to achieve - but it would need to be a constant within governments and deeply integrated into every area of government policy - from education to conditions of work to social policy.
Elements iii., iv. & v. are the essence of how the future can be survived.
The largest change involves a move to a Universal Basic Income.
Every citizen deserves the basic foundation on which to build a decent life. The only agency available to control such a task is government. We all know that the resources are now available on this planet to do it. We have seen how money governments can create if they need to. Only the lack of the intention and will to make these changes is stopping them.
A Universal Basic Income will ultimately come to be seen as the natural solution to a whole range of our problems now and into the future.
To offset the initial costs of a UBI nations will need to revolutionize their areas of control.
This is where point iv. comes in - resource release.
In a long transfer process, once citizens have the fundamental resources to live automatically supplied, then government can start to close all its offices dealing with unemployment benefit, health and social security and many many other departments.
Most jobs have are quite soul destroying and with minimal creativity or inspiring change about them. We need to change our whole focus from having and doing (producing and having) to being and participating. The UBI would mean you didn´t have to work if you were willing to exist on a basic threshold where you had the fundamentals of life but not many, and certainly not all the frills that become available with ever more money. If you continue to work you would also receive the UBI. Those wanting much more than the basics of life would have the incentive to continue to work to earn more.
v. A planetary community.
This is a vision for a better future planet-wide. Winning a decent life for all people. Resource planning & redirecting. The whole world focused on being and sharing cultures communicating - sharing ideas, songs, dance, stories, experiences - a harmony of being.Connection, communication and cooperation... worldwide. No more brutal economic migration, as this has become unnecessary due to the receipt months of a Universal basic Income.
First and foremost: BUY LESS.
Apply: Minimum is Maximum - Reduce to the Maximum.
Change to: Practice Voluntary Simplicity.
Live a Low Maintenance Lifestyle.
Recommended reading:
`To Have or to Be?´ by Erich Fromm (ISBN 0-553-23100-6)
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