Our Future: 2009 & After

This piece was posted as a note on Facebook, by my dear friend Azlan.

Analysts have commented that the current global (it's not just American)economic crisis is a direct consequence of unsustainable consumerism. Factories in China are closing down every day due to canceled orders from the US & Europe; China being the cheap 'sweatshop factory' of the world.

The solution to all this is the simple central message in THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS by the Dalai Lama - fulfill your needs, not your wants.

AN EXAMPLE
All humans need hydration, best fulfilled by plain water - yet the doctrine of consumerism insists we purchase from a whole host of unwanted products from Coca-Cola to Lipton to Starbucks to Carlsberg to Dom Perignon.

Unless you're a baby, in which case milk is a sensible drink (even then, breast milk is free), there is no nutritional need for you to drink anything but plain water. Everything else is a want, all unwarranted by your body's needs but insisted upon consumerism.

It them comes as no surprise that post-modern man suffers a host of diseases unknown to our forefathers - we have been feeding our bodies with preservatives, food enhancers, coloring, conditioners and other gunk (all processed meat, including sausages, contain sodium nitrate).

One in four people will contact some form of cancer within their lifetime. Pancreatic cancer is the forth largest killer among cancers, yet no progress had been made towards finding a cure since the 1930s. It would not take too much funding to get this cancer licked, not too much compared to the huge amounts we spend on things we want, rather than need.

Please do a big favor to yourself and to the rest of humanity: spend a few minutes listing down the things you purchase as a result of thinking it is something you want, rather than fulfilling an actual physiological, nutritional or emotional need. Then promise yourself never to purchase them again. It may be the most profound New Year's resolution you'll ever make....