Discuss: The Gospel of Consumption

This should tell us,that no one idea by any group is supreme.
I am talking about the
republican party and their
non-sense that came up with all
this global greed,global exspansion.

Dear Peter D. Slaughter,

Some day soon, I hope you and other splendid commentators in the Orion community will find adequate ways to directly acknowledge the global challenges of our times by helping us “connect the dots” between human overconsumption, overproduction and overpopulation activities on one hand and climate destabilization, natural resource dissipation and and environmental degradation on the other.

It seems to me that any “truth” about Earth’s ecology and climate science need to be coupled with the best available science about human population dynamics and the human overpopulation of our planetary home.

When the moment of ‘throwing out life preservers’ occurs, it will probably be too late for human action to do anything meaningful about the human-forced global threats that once loomed ominously before the human family. Time will have been wasted. We will have been fiddlin’ while Earth’s environs were destroyed for human habitation and its resources were being recklessly depleted. Father Greed will have effectively ravaged Mother Nature. Although global threats had called out to leaders for global interventions, there were no transformational leaders (except Barack Obama) and international institutions (including the United Nations) empowered with adequate authority to promote necessary change.

At bottom, while there was still time to make a difference, many too many leading environmentalists, politicians, economic powerbrokers, talking heads in the mass media and other public opinion shapers colluded in stony silence and did not speak out loudly and clearly about the colossal threat that is posed to the family of humanity by the gigantic scale and skyrocketing growth of human population numbers now overspreading the surface of Earth.

Threats to human wellbeing and environmental health cannot be reasonably addressed and sensibly overcome until the root causes of the threats are acknowledged, validated by science, and widely shared in the human community, I suppose.

Very best regards,

Steve

As an artist working in precious metals and gems I realized several years ago that the strip mining, degradation of local environments at the source of precious gems was something I could not ignor. Since 2007 I have only created from recycled seaglass (I have hand gathered) and am cutting gems from rough using only water that I have sourced from mine dumps and old collections. I refuse to purchses newly mined materials. As this is Christmas day the gorgathon of consumption, I thought I might mention another way to be a responsible citizen. My boyfriend needs an additional USB key so instead of buying him one I collected mine and consolidated them so I have one to give him. I made cookies for my family and friends. I have cleaned and am giving my grandson his uncles old Legos for Christmas and I’m giving my rat pack holiday cds to some friends who were thrilled to hear them. I am giving my daughter the gift of one month of my time to clean and organize her new life in New Orleans. I am alos giving Irish linen napkins as gifts to replace disposable napkins at the dinner table.I am helping my mother prepare for her party as her gift and for another friend I played server at her Christmas dinner party. I have been able to enjoy myself knowing I am not adding to the landslide of personal consumption, toxic wrapping paper mountains and appreciating what is already here. Until people react to the way industries violate our earth and the people in it, we won’t make much progress. Ask your jeweler how the gems he sells are mined and the conditions of employment. Maybe that diamond won’t look so impressive when you know about the oppression and strip mining. Earth google any major mining activity. I agree the dots must be connected in order to show the huge responsibility of our choices each and everyday. When I was in economics in college I remember arguing with my professor that the ideal of production is to make every last widget for which there is even one cent profit. It doesn’t make sense on so many levels. We have so many products in our midst and yet as Americans we run out and buy new and improved as if once the package is opened on something it is no longer useful or desirable. The one-upmanship of the consumer lifestyle if shameful not hip or cool or da shiz. For those who truly believe in Christmas, remember Jesus didn’t hit the mall for going away gifts for the disciples and he didn’t get a new set of clothes, nor did he travel first class on his Gulfstream. The man had a message about the simple life and its many benefits. Happy recycled year!

Dear Ellen Scott Grable,

Your way is a way that leads to sustainability, I believe.

Please, please, do keep going.

With good cheer and hope for movement toward whatsoever is sustainable in 2010, so that a single generation does not ruin Earth as fit place for the children to inhabit,

Steve

The human family cannot keep recklessly overproducing unnecessary stuff, hyperconsuming and excessively hoarding limited resources, and overpopulating the planet as the leaders in our not-so-great generation are advocating so adamantly. Everyone in the human community appears to be implicated in the work at hand of finding a different way from the patently unsustainable “primrose path” set out by those who extol the virtue of greed and arrogantly proclaim that their greed-mongering is God’s work. The most dangerous fraud consciously perpetrated in our midst is the widely shared perception that insatiable avarice is an inherent aspect of human nature. Unbridled greed may rule the world in our time but such behavior is contrived ..... a willful, foolish and selfish result of a consensually validated misperception of what is real about the nature of being human, I suppose.

I am seeing that time is running
out in getting this straight once
and for all.
If not the country and the world
might be in a for a suprise they
might not like.
I see some type of high tech
genocide,population control
going down.

Dear Peter D. Slaughter,

Thank you for being here just as you are and for all you are doing to protect life as we know it on Earth from huge human-induced threats. Surely you are probably correct about the formidable challenges to human wellbeing and environmental health that are likely the result of human activities borne of stupidity, arrogance and greed. To be a species with such remarkable self-consciousness, intelligence and other splendid gifts and to do no better than we are doing now is a source of deep sadness and occasional outbreaks of passionate intensity (likely signifying nothing).

Still I believe in remaining engaged with you in this necessary struggle for the future of life as we know it, a sacred struggle in which so many human beings with feet of clay have been involved for a lifetime. The first fifty years of my life were lived as if in a dream world, the profane one devised by the self-proclaimed Masters of the Universe among us. I had no awareness a single generation would elect sponsors of powerful, greed-mongering economic powerbrokers who would formulate policies and implement business plans that irreversibly degrade Earth’s environs, recklessly dissipate its limited resources, relentlessly diminish its biodiversity, destabilize its climate and threaten the very future of children everywhere. My failures include not realizing that I and my selfish generation were ravaging the Earth and effectively behaving in a way that could lead to the destruction of our planetary home as a fit place for habitation by the children (let alone coming generations). Even though it is discomforting and difficult to responsibly perform our duties to science and humanity, at least we can speak out loudly, clearly and often about these unfortunate circumstances and in the process educate one another as best we can. Like you, I do not have answers to forbidding questions related to the patently unsustainable ‘trajectory’ of human civilization in its present, colossally expansive form.  Much more problematic, however, is the ruinous determination of many too many experts who have colluded to consciously obstruct open discussion of the best available scientific evidence of “what could somehow be real”. If what could be real about the human condition and the Earth we inhabit is not confronted with intellectual honesty and moral courage, how is the family of humanity to adapt to the practical requirements of “reality” in a reasonable, sensible, sustainable and timely way?

An ecological wreckage of some unimaginable sort is likely to be the end result of experts choosing to remain willfully blind, hysterically deaf and electively mute rather than examining extant science of human population dynamics and the human overpopulation of Earth. This refusal to respond ably by acknowledging evidence and accepting responsibility for the distinctly human-driven global challenges that have emerged robustly and converged rapidly in our time could be one of the greatest mistakes in human history.  After all, what mistake in history could be greater than the ones made in our time that lead humanity inadvertently to precipitate the demise of life as we know it and to put at risk a good enough future for the children?

Sincerely,

Steve

Given a planet with the size, composition, frangible ecology and finite carrying capacity of Earth, could someone comment on how much longer the global limitations of Earth can be expected to sustain the unsated overconsumption, unbridled overproduction and unregulated overpopulation activities of the human species in our time?

Despite every effort to appear reasonable and sensible, the self-proclaimed Masters of the Universe among us approach economic and ecologic problems in patently unsustainable ways by adamantly advocating and recklessly pursuing greed-driven schemes based upon the seemingly endless growth of human consumption, production and propagation that will lead humanity to precipitate, however inadvertently and soon, the destruction of life as we know it and the Earth as a fit place for human habitation, I suppose.

If the human community is in a race against time, even at this late hour when pathological arrogance, greed-mongering and elective mutism rule the world, is it ever too late to speak of what is true to you or to do the right thing, as best we can?