Indulge

Materialism is rampant. Our thirst for the material satisfactions of life is insatiable. To get the things we want we take trees out of forests, put people in slums and factories and enslave animals. The rich have made fortunes out of it and become powerful through their wealth. Wherever there’s been benefit to them they’ve taken without restraint.
Over all other species, we humans are dominant enough to do as we please. Apart from a few viruses nothing can stop us …. anything standing in our way is got rid of. If any human population falls out of line we bomb it, if a useful animal like a kangaroo can’t be farmed we hunt it, if a rabbit is a pest and it can’t be controlled we spread a disease to do the job for us. We do what we do without a second thought. And we pass the violence on, from generation to generation. We demand material satisfaction wherever we can find it.
Initially this appeals to young people who don’t know any different. Their mantra: “Live NOW!”. They want to have a carefree approach to things, and they seem to get away with it because their ‘significant adults’ are generally enchanted by their exuberance. Older people find young people’s vitality and spontaneity exciting and hardly dare to notice any lack of responsibility or lack of independent thinking. Conversely, young people don’t usually find their elders exciting at all, and turn to their peers for support, which exposes them to peer pressure, group thinking and a lot of unthought-out behaviour. Thus we are as we are and will continue to be …. unless we suggest an alternative that makes enough sense to reverse the indulgent trends of today.