Tanada wrote:onlooker wrote:" There are 7.7+ Billion people on this Earth" currently living. And roughly 1/5 are "greedy and careless bastards".
Let me stop you right there. It is more like 95/100 humans are greedy and careless but only 1/5 is wealthy enough that you personally notice their bad behavior.
The number of people out of any group who would live an ascetic lifestyle given any other choice is very very small. Until you understand that you will never understand why the 'poor' nations of the world are so eagerly building fossil fuel burning power stations just as rapidly as they an manage.
Heck I know YOU don't live an ascetic lifestyle yourself, obviously you have electricity and internet access or you would not be posting here yourself
As I was wandering the globe with a back pack and hanging with the locals in rural communities all around the planet I came to cherish the generosity of humble poor people who would open their homes and share a meal without asking for anything in return. This creed you find all over the developing world has an important caveat. Their generosity comes from being poor, their aspirations are no different then our own.
Take 1000 rural poor generous souls and give them wealth and within a single generation you will 95% chasing materialism with the same gusto as any suburbanite in the developed world. Only a small percentage will keep ascetic humble aspirations. The vast majority of humans regardless of race, creed, religion, culture, language etc. all aspire for high levels of material consumption.
My wifes rural village in the Philippines has become a ghost town, only the very old live their and the grandchildren that were passed off to the elders from children who all aspired to go live in Manila or work over seas. I knew my wifes rural community in 1986 before roads and electricity arrived, when water buffalo moved carts through the bucolic rice fields interspersed with thatch roof and bamboo homes. It was idyllic to say the least and I fell in love with my wifes culture as much as with her.
Electricity and roads followed, television and all the rest, but most glaring today is the fact that none of the young generation live their anymore,, they almost all went to Manila or overseas to work. One of my wifes nephews continues in the old way, making hand made crab traps using bamboo and grasses, planting eggplant, rice and peanuts, Chickens running around, a water buffalo, a pig.. Their home still on stilts with thatch.
The children who went to the ME and Europe to work send back money and now the village is full of cement block homes as the over seas remmitances are used to "modernize" the village where nobody lives anymore.
This is the sad reality. Let's face it, it is global in developing countries.
None of my construction workers here in Panama who cut timber with a chain saw and helped us build our cabins, none of them have children following this rural mountain culture of extracting resources from the forests and knowing all the species of wood and their uses. None of them have children who are following their traditions. They are now in their late 40's and early 50's, their backs thrown out from working maniual labor for decades. If I started today in 2019 the same project here that I started 10 years ago i would not be able to find a team to build our cabins in such a remote location. I did not know in 2008 that the team we put together was the last generation still in their prime able to do the physical labor that we did building out the infrastructure here.
In 10 years I watched a generation age and none following.
There is nothing inherently noble about poor people. The noble generosity they exhibit is 100% a product of their poverty. Give them wealth and the vast majority will chase wealth and superficial consumerism.