Christmas is a funny old time (and other thoughts)

Christmas is one of those times of year that you really become excited about, feel rather ambivalent about or at worst feel down right depressed about.  I think I largely fit into the ambivalent category.

It’s hard to escape the pressures of the media these days unless you don’t watch TV where the media onslaught is at it’s most potent.   The bombardment of messages telling you what a magical, fun, special and happy time of year has the effect of making some people feel worse than they normally would.  It’s the same kind of thing that happens in spring time; when most of us are feeling the joys of more sunshine, longer days and the blossoming of flowers and leaves, those who are perhaps feeling a little down may feel even worse when everyone else is feeling much brighter.

Luckily I don’t suffer from the latter, but I can sympathise with those who Christmas time is not the amazingly joyful time we are told it is.

Christmas, we are told is all about emphasising strong family connections but for those who don’t have that, through broken homes, deaths and general family bickering, Christmas can be a trying time as it emphasises what they don’t have.  I think in some cases it is this kind of enforced coming together at times like these that leads to such stress and arguments in some families.  Perhaps it’s better make what effort you can with your family spread over the rest of the year rather than cramming it into the space of a day or two.  Less pressure!

Oh and speaking of pressure, there is the whole issue of spending money on items that the person may or may not like.  Don’t get me wrong, I think giving presents to people in whatever form is a great thing, and this may not necessarily come in the form of a material gift – it could be the gift of spending time with someone, listening to them, cooking them a meal – anything that takes you out of our usual self obsessed mind set and focusses us on other people.  There is a hell of a lot of pressure around christmas to come up with something special for people which can turn into a panic spending spree on any old crap just for the sake of it.  A lot of people in one way or another may get into some form of debt around Christmas just to satisfy this pressure from society and family to be giving beyond they’re means and of course a lot of this money will be spent on items that will be discarded.  This all seems a bit crazy to me.

Of course Christmas is a special time for children we are told but the receiving of gifts at Christmas may in some way enforce our materialistic obsessions and solidify that our sense of self worth is in some way directly related to how many possessions we have.  From an early age kids often compare with their other friends exactly what they got for Christmas and I’m sure that those who’s parents couldn’t afford to get them presents with the same kind of monetary value as other kids presents, must feel in many ways hard done by and perhaps not as special as the kids who did get lots.  These are values that all add to our insane focus on material wealth and greed which is ultimately destroying our planet and our race.

Ok, so I’m not blaming Christmas for destroying the planet directly but you can see how it’s all inter linked with a certain attitude towards the way which we lead our lives.  Christmas was at one point supposedly a celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ – where did that go?  I’m not Christian but I’m pretty disgusted how big businesses have stolen this festival and turned it into a celebration of greed and excess.  Even those countries such as China and Japan where Christianity is in a minority, Christmas ‘celebrations’ are almost more excessive than in more predominantly Christian countries.  It really saddens me how the world, including Christmas and politics revolves around greed and big business.

It seems that corporations have hijacked every last value we have and turned it into an obsession with material wealth and possession.  We cannot go on living like this.  The world cannot sustain this.  Either we start making small changes in the way we live our own lives, or the whole system will collapse and we will be forced to live in a way that doesn’t satisfy our greedy instincts. I can’t say i’m a shining example by any means – I understand the internal and external pressures to live a certain way – and I enjoy money as much as everyone else, but i really think we need to start retraining ourselves.  Once we do we will all ultimately become happier people for it, as we will be living more with what we have moment by moment rather than looking to acquiring it through our external world.

A simpler life

Once in a while I head out to my local Buddhist Monastery to reconnect with a simpler way of life.  Here, the monks and nuns carry no money and have few possessions, eat nothing after midday and yet life very rich lives.  I find this simplicity very grounding when I compare it to how most of us live our lives.

In the western way of thinking we seem to thrive on the notion of growth, expansion – never having enough – never quite being content.  The consequence of this is the raping of the earths resources in the attempt to satisfy this thirst.  Most of us take our lifestyles for granted and feel we have earned and deserve our extremely comfortable lives.  We are so cut off from the consequences of this way of living that we pay little thought to the fact we may be playing a part in the harm of the earth and our eventual demise.

We are fed constant messages from the media through television, radio, magazines and advertising about our ideal state of living and we believe and buy into it – why should we not when few of us have experienced any real kind of alternative.

In the west most of us have more than we need.  This is a fact.  We can look to indigenous cultures to possible alternatives to our way of living.  Alternatives that allow us to live in harmony with our world and not against it for the cultivation of greed.  These cultures respect the earth and only take from it what they need and not want.  We on the other hand keep on taking and taking and taking until there will be nothing more to take.  Where is the sense in this?  Are we that stupid?  I’m sure we were taught human beings are intelligent – the most intelligent beings on the earth – perhaps we are not.  When our technological abilities advance way faster than our sense of responsibility and moral obligation to the earth that provides us life then we have a problem.

Humans for the most part have not concord this innate thirst for more that leads to greed, delusion and wars.  We have not cultivated trust, compassion and loving kindness to the human race and to the earth.  We do not realise that what we have in the west is more than we need and are blinded by getting the latest purchases to enrich our lives.  All we feel is a short lived sense of excitement and a strengthening of personal identity when we purchase these things.  We feel we have to keep up with everyone else – be as well connected as everyone else – constantly being on the end of a telephone line or inbox.  We feel we deserve to have our information brought to us at higher and higher speeds and have access to more and more NOW.

Looking at myself, mobile phones only became popular in the recent past and we managed perfectly well before.  The benchmark of expectation is being raised all the time and we as people are becoming lost in the process.  I really hate how dependent I have become on my iphone – now I can’t imagine not having one.

How do we – how do I step out of this dependancy on modern life?  It is my personal endeavor to learn more from indigenous cultures all over the world.  In many places though there way of life is being forcibly replaced by our own selfish desires for more.  There way of life is being forgotten and ironically it is that way of life that may some day save our race from extinction.  So if anyone is interested in preservation of our earth then we need to raise awareness of these kinds of issues.  It is hard to do bold things on our own – I’m frightened of changing my lifestyle because i don’t want to be isolated.  I’m trying to meet more people with similar thoughts so together we can start making changes to the way we live so that we can rest in the knowledge we have done something to further our conscious evolution and protect the world that sustains us.

So please get in touch if you have any thoughts or connections to people doing good things!

Illusions of progress

Having recently seen a live performance of Koyaanisqatsi followed the next day by an extremely over dramatic documentary on the 2012 prophesies and another program on one man’s quest to discover a Franciscan mode of simplicity, it threw my mind into a both sombre and panicked overdrive of thoughts on our modern existence and where we may be heading in the next few decades.  It reminded me of my concern and paranoia over how I live my own life and how I fit into a society that appears to be largely passive and blind to how it may well some day cause its own destruction.

From an early age I found myself questioning where and how I fit into our crazy world and what I can do make myself more conscious in a follow the leader society.  About ten years ago I was very passionate and adamant that I would not fall prey to passivity and complacency.  Ten years on and it seems in many ways I’ve become comfortable in my existence – living in a nice flat, eating well, buying the clothes I want, going on holidays and treating myself to various bits and pieces to fill the gaps in my short lived attention span.  Every once in a while I wonder if I should be doing something more to question this kind of existence.  Part of me thinks I should just sit back in ignorant bliss and if the world should start falling to pieces – so be it.  Why worry about something that is out of our control?  And when I start thinking about the implications of questioning our system of existence I begin to realize just how deeply a part of the global guilt we each are.

The world system we are a part of is so inter-connected at a deeply complex level that it appears we have little hope of changing how we as one person play our part in it, unless we literally go and live in the wilderness and live off the land.  Every part of our lives in some way seems to contribute towards the imbalance of the world and our society.  I almost feel guilty for the fact I am learning to drive – I will be just one more person adding to the already congested roads using up already decreasing fossil fuel supplies and contributing to the pollution of our atmosphere.  But even at a more subtle level – most of the food we eat will have been transported from great distances meaning I won’t even need to step into a car to leave a carbon footprint.  Most of us know this at an intellectual level but I think fail to grasp and understand at the deeply interconnected level.

Looking at the world it seems we are reaching a point of no return.  A point where the speed of our so called progress has moved beyond our planets ability to support it.  With a population in rapid growth and many of the worlds resources at dangerously low levels – something has to either change or break.  With most country’s refusing to take this issue seriously enough to do anything that will actually make a difference, it seems we will continue ‘progressing’ until we have completely raped the earth of all forests, sea stocks, fossil fuels and farmed the land until it becomes totally lifeless.  The balance of the world can be tipped by a number of factors including the ever decreasing numbers of honey bee’s – without which pollination of our land will be near impossible.  So many animal species are at extintion point and it is man’s arrogance to presume that we really don’t need them.  We do – the earth needs them if the balance of nature is to survive.

We forget we are animals too and are part of nature – here to live within it not to control it and destroy it.  For when we do, we destroy ourselves.  Now all these things have been written before.  Many of us know all this and then turn a blind eye – we become startled by some scary statistics on the plight of the earth and then jump in the car to go shopping.  I am equally as guilty in doing this and I ask what can I do to change?  What can we do to change?  The scary thing is that it will probably take something major to disrupt our comfortable existence for us to really stop and realize something needs to change.  By this point it may be too late anyway.

So can we do anything to help change the destiny of our civilization when it seems all the power to act rests in the hands of a select few who choose to ignore us.  The millions of people who marched against the Iraq war in 2003 is testament to this.  I was in London to witness the whole of this immense city brought to a stand still by peaceful protest.  And even after this incredible show of public opinion, our government sent us to war anyway.  This doesn’t fill us with hope.  What it says to me is that the people in power have their own agenda and will pursue that agenda at the expense of their own popularity and the wider good.  I hope I am wrong.

Of course ultimately we only know what we are told through the news and media  - be it that we are doomed or that the we have nothing to worry about.  You can construct all manner of conspiracy theories and drive yourself completely potty with paranoia and in the end if we probably have to admit we really know nothing at all.  But is to admit ignorance enough to warrant us sitting back and waiting to find out if the world will crumble?  Perhaps…..

Perhaps all we can do is become more and more conscious on a day to day level.  Moment to moment.  Becoming aware when we have become too passive and when there is a need to be more constructive or simply get off the couch to turn the TV off.  Maybe stop pressing the refresh button on your Facebook homepage and turn your attention to something else.  Only you can judge when you are distracting yourself from truly living.  You may think i’m talking nonsense but it’s my opinion that most of us get too caught up in lazy living.  Most of us in the west live very comfortable existences and this is really quite addictive in itself.  I think there is  great fear in moving beyond this comfort to actually learn and grow.

This much I believe to be true – and in growing beyond our comfortable existences we may start to see the world very differently. We may see it’s fragility and the part we play in its delicate balance.  From this point we can start taking more responsibility for how we live through growing consciousness moment by moment.  It needn’t be an overwhelming task of how we must change the world – merely be a part of growing consciousness starting with ourselves.  From this point change takes place as part of a natural process not as a sudden emotional response to something we don’t understand fully.

So any kind of real change in the world will only happen when the people that make up the global human population start to become more aware as individuals.  It is only then that change on a massive scale can truly take place.  We can’t rely on our governments to do it for us – if we do then we are doomed.  It is time we grow up and stop relying on a higher power to take responsibility for us – be it a government or God.  When we realise this then we become empowered as individuals and as a collective.

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