Climate change, melting glaciers, the fall in biodiversity… are we talking to me? Yes, yes, I understood that it is important and that something must be done about it, but frankly, I feel so useless in front of such complex subjects.
I am told that I am responsible for it, but even there, I remain perplexed as to what I can do about it: I am nevertheless a good player, I answer the call of traders and I admit that I allow myself to be influenced by just a few of the thousands of ads I’ve been shown since I was a kid. We hear everywhere that it’s important, the economy, so I should be happy to do my job and yet! I recycle and I buy local, I would like to do better, but what? Go for a walk in the city center to campaign for the climate… if the weather is nice!
Maybe if people stopped talking to me about titanic issues over which I also feel like I have no control… I nevertheless have the intuition that the solutions are under my nose, but we want spare me or what?
From my small point of view, all the problems that we face come from a single phenomenon on which I have a very firm hold: consumption.
Its illustration is flagrant: the planet is struggling to satisfy all our desires and it is littered with waste. Raw materials that have been transformed and transported to temporarily satisfy non-essential needs lie everywhere – just think of packaging. Impossible to deny the great waste that we make of nature and not to make a direct link with the wall in which we rush with our big words to describe it. Can we really hope to reduce global warming and the loss of biodiversity without reducing the exploitation of the planet and therefore our consumption? Unless governments and technology fix everything? Unfortunately, as long as capitalism is the world religion, I doubt very much that economic systems will prove their raison d’être.
Yes, of course, we have to survive and we want to be happy. Fortunately, we now know that possession of goods does not bring happiness; even the largest study on the subject has proven it and its conclusion is eloquent: “To be happy, connect with your loved ones!” A short trip to Africa or India will convince the most skeptical. There, once survival is assured, happiness does not need a new object to manifest itself, smiles are generalized and free. In fact, suicide rates are lower there than in America – a statistic that says a lot about the downfall of materialism.
Not so difficult to push at the wheel, finally. If we want to save the human race, we just have to use our real powers; connect to others and reduce our consumption.
Please, at this time of Christmas, and every day of the year, let us all be powerful and happy! Let’s spend time together and solve planetary problems, one less gift at a time.