Ibon wrote:Buddha aside, you only have to go back a few generations and folks lived in a much different day to day rhythm prior to consumption culture.
Very romantic Ibon. But I take your point, many are moving beyond old belief in the magic man which has filled some need in us generally for millenia. Personally I'm way more head than gut, not spiritual and church dogma leaves me cold. I do miss the feeling of fellowship in a congregation from my childhood.
I was a kid in the '60s, my recollection is life was grittier, rough edged, parochial, less interesting. Frankly tedious. But then we were just a step up from poor. The world of want was pretty well confined to the Monkey Ward catalog.
I can see myself in the county library thumbing through the card catalog trying to find some bit of information that it feels like should have been readily available. It certainly was available somewhere. I can see a stack of books on the library table and I remember being unsatisfied. I can't remember the question, just that the answer eluded me.
Today, lots of kids, and adults, sit passively and stare at screens, Buddha would be proud of their mindlessness! In my day I'd be outside from the bus drop till dark doing this, that and the other. Trapdoor spiders, horse sweat, deconstructed radios and lawn mowers, a tunnel in the silage pit, cousin in the hay loft! LOL
The main difference between then and now is not that humans have gone off the rails and become demented gluttonous automatons. Rather, our appetite has been enabled by easy credit starting in those very same 1960s (thanks in large part to computerized credit reporting) and of course the explosion of things. People haven't changed, that's just fond reminisce, they've been enabled to consume by painless, impersonal, socially acceptable credit, fiat currency and a world of stuff to want.

Truly I'm not looking for a solution, systemic or otherwise. To the contrary I believe acquisition is an inherent part of our survival evolution. As I said on page one, IMO the only solution to growth is birth control—you can add to that education.
Whether it came in time is the question.
The legitimate object of government, is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but can not do, at all, or can not, so well do, for themselves -- in their separate, and individual capacities.
-- Abraham Lincoln, Fragment on Government (July 1, 1854)