It's a question I keep asking myself. Is it even possible in today's heavily technology dependent western society? Well, it is possible but the irony is you need a lot of money to achieve it which kind of defeats the point. If we are to become less materialistic, less dependent on natural resources and not slaves to the wage then (in Britain anyway) it seems to be a case of "Sorry, you dirty hippy, but you're going to need loads of cash and to wade through a shed load of bureaucracy to get that house with a ground source heat pump. And even then you might not get the planning permission."
I am currently one of the little cogs in the machine - paying my taxes in my cosy office job but feeling incredibly guilty about how much I get paid for what I actually contribute; which is very little. No doubt there will come a time when the guilt will finally reach a tipping point and I will have to radically change my life, my values and my principles. Or not do it all and carry on being a massive, energy sucking hypocrite.
My counsellor says there is value in waiting, adapting and seeing the change gradually occur. Your attitudes evolve and so does the world around you. I really value this perspective but I guess I am impatient as well. I admit that. What can I really do in this moment to make things better? And why do I forget what I can do and carrying on doing unimportant stuff instead.
It's a problem I need to work out for myself, I guess. But I also feel it's a problem a lot of people in the west experience. How many actually act on it I wonder? At the moment it feels like a small percentage and it's probably because its such a small percentage that we have run out of time, environmentally, to save ourselves.
"...Our comforting sense of the permanence of our natural world, our confidence that it will change gradually and imperceptibly if at all, is the result of a subtly warped perspective. Changes that can affect us can happen in our lifetime in our world--not just changes like wars but bigger and more sweeping events. I believe that without recognizing it we have already stepped over the threshold of such a change; that we are at the end of nature. By the end of nature I do not mean the end of the world. The rain will still fall and the sun shine, though differently than before. When I say 'nature,' I man a certain set of human ideas about the world and our place in it."
Bill McKibben, The End of Nature
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