“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”
― Rumi
You can’t change the world without changing yourself.
When over-consumption leads to the sorts of environmental and social problems we face in modern economies it is not enough for a few people to reduce their footprint and leave it at that. As I have written in this blog before, if you are hurtling towards a cliff just slowing down isn’t going to help in the long run. You need to change and go in another direction.
What is to be done?
We simply must stop equating well-being with consumption. They are not the same thing. Some consumption definitely aids well-being, but after that, more consumption is a waste. Over-production and over-consumption cause environmental harm and they can also detract from well-being in a myriad of ways. These problems are systemic, meaning they are inevitable. We can’t fix the system to get rid of these problems because they are ‘built in’. We need to build a better system that, in the words of Buckminster Fuller, will make the old model obsolete.
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
― Buckminster Fuller
Be the change
The sorts of systemic problems that modern economies have are described as ‘wicked’ problems because there is no one, easy change. There will be many solutions, some will be easier and some will be harder.
The solution involves not waiting for others to change things. Instead heed the call made by Gandhi: be the change you want to see in the world. As I wrote at the beginning, meaningful change only happens when people change themselves.
If you choose to be the change, I believe the most potent thing that a person or family can do is to live simply, with as much self-sufficiency as possible. There is plenty of information on this website and elsewhere on how to make this transformation.
Perhaps it could be the new normal where people aren’t driven by concealed, systemic and nefarious forces to produce and consume but are instead driven by the innate need to be active agents in life, true to themselves in harmony with others and with nature.