Optimistically Eckhart Tolle believes that an increasing number of people are becoming self aware in the true sense of the concept. More people are understanding that material wealth is not the path to happiness.
He describes this as the next step in human evolution. We are evolving both physically and mentally all the time as a race but Tolle and many others like him believe if we do not evolve in this way more rapidly we may well destroy ourselves in the near future.
OK – let’s wind back the clock a bit to when we came down from the trees and began to fashion tools and basic clothing
My guess is that at some point someone fashioned something that they could wear that wasn’t actually necessary – say a necklace. Others thought it looked pretty good and the game was set.
From this moment on we were in a constant race against each other to have more stuff or more of the latest stuff. What is almost always referred to as our Ego.
There are few critics of this, not even Tolle. The Ego allowed us to develop a more comfortable lifestyle providing the motivation for inventing ever and better buildings, modes of transportations, systems of information sharing, technology in medication, etc, etc.
Basically without our egos we would have been quite happy to just hang out in caves for ever more.
But too events are now colliding. The first is global population growth and its increasing wealth. This means there are ever more people demanding ever more stuff.
I’ve seen this in a pretty dramatic fashion during two trips to Poland – once in the mid nineteen nineties when the streets were empty and the shops were sparse, and once quite recently when traffic jams of modern cars clogged the shopping mall lined streets.
All that ‘stuff’ had to come from somewhere and we are all very much aware that we live on a planet with limited resources.
But that ‘stuff’ doesn’t end there. Having ‘stuff’ is the carrot dangled to developing countries. As soon as they have the wealth required to get the ‘stuff’ the new message is then bent to how important it is to have the ‘latest stuff’.
The over arching message is that ‘stuff’ makes you happy and if you are unhappy you should try getting some different ‘stuff’ or more modern ‘stuff’.
The ‘stuff’ we are supposed to give each other on certain events (Birthdays, Christmas, whatever) needs to be ever more complex. What you have to buy your child in order to be a ‘good’ parent is way more, in both volume and content, than what it was 50 years ago.
Our problem is that the natural environment in which we live is now struggling to provide the resources needed to keep up with this demand for ‘stuff’ and the by-products of making the ‘stuff’. Try this icky story for size.
Furthermore it isn’t coping that well in terms of breaking down and disposing of the ‘stuff’ we don’t want any more. In Britain, for example, we tried to bury the ‘stuff’ in the ground but now nearly 3,000 rubbish tips are at risk of coastal erosion (it will all just fall into the sea) or on flood planes that, if flooded, could contaminate water supplies.
Tolle and many others argue there are a growing number of people who realise that ‘stuff’ does not bring true happiness. I agree with it. I need a new car because my current one has just turned 17 and is beginning to become more rust than metal but where my search was previously influenced by what others might think of my new purchase, that influence has gone.
To some degree considering what others would think was borne in the idea that positive feedback would make me happy. Now I’ve been able to remove that from the equation I do feel happy (and relieved!).
I got rid of my TV this spring and feel a great deal better for it. That is one less piece of ‘stuff’ I won’t have to replace every few years when it conks out or they introduce some kind of new broadcasting system that makes it obsolete (again).
But as a race we find ourselves on a cliff edge, or perhaps between a rock and a hard place.
Our entire global economy is built on making ‘stuff’ for people that, more often than not, don’t need it. We could make less ‘stuff’ and make it better so it would last longer and we see embryonic signs of this with enterprises such as buymeonce.com .
But weaning our egos off the latest ‘stuff’ has far reaching consequences. It would mean large scale unemployment which in itself could turn into social unrest.
Both industry and governments around the world have a vested interest in avoiding that.
On the other hand if we continue to produce and consume ‘stuff’ at ever growing rates we could end up like the bacteria in my compost heap – literally burning ourselves out by exhausting the planets ability to sustain us with even basics like food.
That too would lead to social unrest but we almost feel better to let that happen than to be the instigators of it happening by changing course.
Mentally, I believe, the thinking goes that it is better for things to go pear shaped because we didn’t do anything, than because we did.
However industry and government are ultimately controlled by the masses, if the masses can organise themselves and perhaps in the internet we have a last chance opportunity to do this.
Many hope, myself included, that there is a rapid spreading of awareness so that decreasing demand for ‘stuff’ turns a torrent into a trickle that the planet can sustain and we can actually all come out of it happier at the same time.
Then we would have evolved as a species.