Taking the red pill
In the last few months in which I have been stumbling towards a new way to live my life I have been struggling to put into words what sort of life it is I want to live. I've been looking through the posts I've written and a theme I think that comes up again and again is the necessity not just to live simply but consciously. Voluntary simplicity is an integral part of living a conscious life but not all of it.
There are many factors in our society which wish to influence us to do things that are not good for us as individuals and for wider society. Don't get me wrong, I do not believe in a conspiracy just that in a capitalist society there are business, media and political forces who are forever trying to get one to live a life that suits them - to turn one into a passive consumer instead of an autonomous individual. It is the nature of the beast.
The more I have seen of the way we are sedated by television, socially acceptable (and illegally available) drugs, cheap goods with which to amuse ourselves while other human beings are exploited to make our consumer goods, animals forced to live hellish existences and the countryside poisoned to provide us with cheap food, and our entire plant rapidly approaching a point of no return that will see the quality of life of future generations seriously impaired, I am not longer able to distract myself with what the consumer society offers.
We are drugged by the comforts of our lives and do not see the harm our comfortable lives do to others and to ourselves. Somewhere along the way I, like Neo in the Matrix, seem to have swallowed the red pill and cannot go back to sleep. I think most people who are turning to a life of voluntary simplicity these days are no different. We should be awake to what we do. We muddle along in a selfish dream concerned only with fulfilling a fantasy given to us by people who do not have our best interests (or indeed their own) at heart. It is no way to live.
There are many factors in our society which wish to influence us to do things that are not good for us as individuals and for wider society. Don't get me wrong, I do not believe in a conspiracy just that in a capitalist society there are business, media and political forces who are forever trying to get one to live a life that suits them - to turn one into a passive consumer instead of an autonomous individual. It is the nature of the beast.
The more I have seen of the way we are sedated by television, socially acceptable (and illegally available) drugs, cheap goods with which to amuse ourselves while other human beings are exploited to make our consumer goods, animals forced to live hellish existences and the countryside poisoned to provide us with cheap food, and our entire plant rapidly approaching a point of no return that will see the quality of life of future generations seriously impaired, I am not longer able to distract myself with what the consumer society offers.
We are drugged by the comforts of our lives and do not see the harm our comfortable lives do to others and to ourselves. Somewhere along the way I, like Neo in the Matrix, seem to have swallowed the red pill and cannot go back to sleep. I think most people who are turning to a life of voluntary simplicity these days are no different. We should be awake to what we do. We muddle along in a selfish dream concerned only with fulfilling a fantasy given to us by people who do not have our best interests (or indeed their own) at heart. It is no way to live.
posted by voluntarysimpleton at 11:57 AM
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