Discuss: Forget Shorter Showers

I am astonished at how bad this economy is. We lost a gold star all because of the finical and enviromental problems. Even worse, the goverment is making food farms, such as aqua farm, produce farm, where they place dye and chemicals in the food to make it last longer but those cheamicals, I’m afaird, cannot be digested by the body because their not natural! As a teen, 15, I was highly disappoint, furious infact and devasted to touch my food at all now that I heard there’s chemicals in it! I know we must save the enviroment, but really, chemicals?? How bout switching the huge energy making companies to less harmful resoures, such as the old fashion way.. Because the oldern days had NO enviromental problems cause they DIDN’T cause any. Why can’t we be like that?

An Alternative to Capitalism (if the people knew about it, they would demand it)
Several decades ago, Margaret Thatcher claimed: “There is no alternative”. She was referring to capitalism. Today, this negative attitude still persists.
I would like to offer an alternative to capitalism for the American people to consider. Please click on the following link. It will take you to an essay titled: “Home of the Brave?” which was published by the Athenaeum Library of Philosophy:
http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/steinsvold.htm
John Steinsvold

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.”
~ Albert Einstein

I think it’s important that we do our part and try to concerve and reduce our waste but in the end it’s up to the government to make decisions that not only benefit us now but don’t come back to bit us in the ass or our childrens ass in the future.  Decisions such as Canada’s removal from the Kyoto is just another example of a government thinking of only the short term and not taking steps to insure the survival of our race.

Simple living came upon me when I started asking myself to draw the line that divides the NEED and DESIRE. It’s a fine line that helps one to stay focussed on the Life’s moment.
So, my definition of Simple Living is the process of learning the art of ‘feeling’ rather than ‘thinking’ 
Considering the enormity of the problem in hand, perhaps we need a solution that’s too big to be comprehendible by human minds;  a solution that involves multiple stages of implementation spanning across a few generations/ages.  And changing the course of humanity’s evolution towards ‘feeling’ (and not ‘thinking’) is the first stage of the solution and its implementation is already underway. Next stage perhaps is about aligning the consciousness of these simple living individuals to that of the Earth Consciousness (I strongly believe and feel vaguely that EARTH is one living organism)
Another dimension to look at is the DIVERSITY. In Nature, no two things are alike (every life has its own signature) whereas in the man-made world, mass production is the norm (the only difference between the cars from a car factory is the chassis number) and we haven’t learnt the algorithm of mass producing things with unique identity yet.
Globalization in the Industrial civilization is our first attempt towards achieving Unity in the Diversity and we need not be ashamed to tell that we have failed this first time. But we have learnt from our mistakes.
In the next civilization of Simple Living,  the individual learns to feel the individuality (I am sure my definition of the DESIRE Vs NEED line is different from that of yours) and those diverse individuals form patterns by uniting together to grow stronger and SURVIVE as a species! And that seems to fit with the Darwinians reason for evolution :-)

Dear Bala,
i’m glad that you brought up the topic of ‘feeling’, yes i think feeling has a great potential to explore as thinking is limited by default. in the context of transitioning to the next feeling-based civilization - i think we need more inputs from experts/specialists or anyone with authority in the field of ‘feeling’.
i also think that in the face of imminent collapse the speed of [consciousness] transformation is in revolution rather than evolution. hope all aboard on the new ‘feeling’ based cultural train :)

here is a link to Dr Ted Trainer a strong proponent of simple living from UNSW Aust: http://socialsciences.arts.unsw.edu.au/tsw/