Oh, you poor thing, Lyle!! Do you enjoy being a Pisces? I cannot imagine being anything else, but it seems like such a dreamy, mystical burden, sort of like always lapping at the shore of life. I find it a little intense. How do you feel about it?
I would totally agree that some degree of industrialization is required to achieve the basic wealth to provide for basic needs. But I think consumerism is somehow programmed into us as the ideal by all advertising media, and in countries without enough resources by exposure to western television programs. We rarely hear the message that buying and consuming more, more, more might not lead to increased happiness.
I have now read in MoneyWorld, that giveaway hyped up stock promotion rag, the often predicted thing about the future holding very reduced options, in the sense that we will be living very close to public transportation or to the workplace, in stacked-up communities. This will certainly make life simpler, in that what we need will be consolidated in one geographical locale. As the population grows our personal space will shrink, so fewer consumer items will only make sense.
That sounds pretty yucky to me. I like the idea of European country life, where you are growing some of your own fruits and vegetables and taking care of chickens and maybe grazing animals, and bicycling or driving a very small car to work close by. This is of course, romanticized, also. In Ireland now, as it finally becomes prosperous, the small cottage I would like to live in is viewed as undesirable by many of the natives who want to move to the suburbs and live in brand new tract houses with all the modern conveniences. It's the blow-in artists and craftsmen from Europe, and the returning Irish who spent most of their adult lives in America, who want the quiet pastoral stuff.
It is really hard to explain to anyone that something they have dreamed of achieving might not be that wonderful. Sort of like telling children what is good for them, when in reality they have to experience life themselves, and make their own mistakes, to grow up. |
