A simpler way, what's stopping us?
Earthninja
WandererWest Australia Veteran
Namaste all 
I heard something unsettling recently, I think it was Alan Watts.
He said there is enough resources in the world so that nobody should be without housing, food and water. We have ample for everybody.
And yet here we are, always wanting more, more, more.
I like to imagine a world where all our countries borders drop, that humans become part of this world. Rather than trying to dominate it.
No more wars, battles over resources and xenophobia.
Simple houses, simple clothes, simple transport.
I watched a TV series the other day, about a world where humans destroyed earth and had to go back in time to start again. The pollution was killing people and trees existed only in museums. 
What do you guys think? Is their a possible solution?
Do you think there's a problem with where we are headed?
I'm personally becoming more of a hippy as I get older haha. 
Comments
@Earthninja
Look around you.
What does the human condition really mean to you?
What proportion of the folks around you seem to be subject to it?
Does this likely match the average humans lack of willingness to transcend this innate conditioning?
Is it just the solutions that are absent or is it an underpinning of our own adversarial nature that really is the problem?
Would simplicity really offer some change to the inertia of our karma?.
What **is **suffering's real cause?
I'm just thinking it appears we are very out of harmony.
Maybe it is up to each individual.
I just worry about my non existent grandchildren haha.
We are the Buddha Borg. Resistance is futile. We haz plan ... wait 'up to each individual?' Unplug from the cloud collective mind?
We won't get assimilated, annihilated or exterminated? Change of plan?
Bring back dinosaurs ... mmm ...
Well, enough anyway. It's about the difference between needs and wants, people seem to want more and more.
"Be the change you want to see?"
I watched Discovery Channel yesterday, on this program there where not the humans that destroyed earth, but the Sun... because when the sun gets old, it will grow larger and things will get really hot, earth will be just a tiny comet compared to our sun... and finaly our Sun will eat up our world.
It was kind of refreshing...its 6 Billions years to this will happen so I have packed my bag.
I think Keanu Reeves had the right idea.
Suppose you are frugal and careful with your money. Your neighbor is not and wastes all of his. Soon you will have more money than your neighbor. When things get tight, will you share your money?
I think it's not our fundamental nature to share.
In Hinduism, the word "namaste" is a greeting of respect that means, roughly, "I bow to the divine in you." As such, it is a winsome and loving wish.
But I could not read that word today without recalling a puppet send-up of the word, passed along in email. Its humorous, malaprop matrix may point to some of the confusions that invariably seem to follow on the assertion of divinity.
I think this is especially true in this day and age. The computer that used to take up an entire room a mere 40 years ago now fits in a watch and can do way more.
There seems to be two major obstacles. The disease of us and "them" and that we think our resources are limited.
I think we need more advanced transport. Transport that doesn't pollute and a kind that will get us sailing past the speed of light. If we spent our time and resources working together instead of competing over the resources of this one tiny planet I would wager we would already see how we actually have an abundance.
I think we are turning it around and can actually see a kind of global awakening on the rise.
More and more the masses are turning big brother around on itself.
If everyone in the world were all REAL buddhist, probably this could be possible. Because the buddhism is a philosophy of becoming happy through benefiting others (이타자리(利他自利)).
Depends on the crowd. I don't know too many people getting ebonics confused with a Hindu word.
Ebonics? -- http://www.linguisticsociety.org/content/what-ebonics-african-american-english
Could you give another example of your point?
It was just a silly @vastmind ... something to suggest another perspective. If anyone thinks the world is going to hell in a handbasket, well, maybe they're right. But does being right mean there can't be a smile?
Nawh.....I dig smiles. They be lightin' up the world. Fo sho.
Imma let you have that one.
We have been heading this way since beginning-less time @Earthninja ......venturing into the great unknown....When have we ever been heading in a different direction ?
Think about it
We humans are both the problem and the solution....
One random act of kindness can change the World......
Not much is it? May be too much to hope for in the current cycle....
Too many are sleeping, some know it too and will remain that way unless reached. There are those who prefer to remain asleep though....
Love everyone you can, it is contagious
I think about these things a lot and sometimes get pretty down about the state of humanity and the world.
But I arrive at the same conclusion every time I think through it. And that is, most of it I have no control over. The only thing I can do is live my morals and values, and raise my children to be going out into a world where most people don't have enough, and to live always aware of that. I help others when I can,but my focus is usually on my small corner of the world because that is where I can make the most difference. Sometimes, you have to let go of all the rest. Because all it does it induce fear and anxiety over things we cannot control.
The ideal way of life you are talking about requires a major shift in humanity. And it cannot happen because someone else wants it. It can only happen before people arrive at that place within themselves on their own terms. We obviously are not there yet.
^^^^^
Amen.
The nature of sentient beings is the survival of self and what belongs to self. If sharing is seen to be detrimental to the survival and happiness of self and what belongs to self (family, community, faith, nation etc.) it isn't going to be 'natural' to share.
So what is stopping us is this delusion of separation and it isn't going to be resolved. Perhaps if we know that a giant meteor is on a collision course with earth and everything is going to be destroyed that this sense of separation will finally be broken.
It is through not realising that our fundamental nature(aging, sickness, death and separation) are the same that is stopping us from sharing.
I have confidence in people, especially the young adapting to the situation. Is there an increased awareness of the solutions? I would say increasingly people are more aware, informed, educated and free of simplistic thinking and useless activity.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Improving_State_of_the_World
Our potential to use the skills available in dharma to enhance straight forward and useful being is why we are here. Well that is why I am here.
http://tiggered.hubpages.com/hub/50-things-you-can-do-to-improve-the-world
So the question is not what should governments, corporations, elites do. We influence and are involved in all these and many other institutions and evolving solutions.
Be kind. Iz plan.
I think technology will turn it around.
Given how far we've come in such a short time (relatively) I see greed being made obsolete.
Nonsense! Especially the young have lost their contact to the reality. Increasingly people are less aware.
I blame the bleedin' internet...
I think you're bleedin' right..... that, and the ubiquitous smartphone....
Nuffink like a smartphone to lower a persons IQ...
@ourself -- I sincerely hope you are joking... either that or I hope you will provide me with the appropriately-tinted eye glasses.
When we no longer see logic in fighting over what used to be "limited" resources, the materially greedy will look foolish.
There would still be greed I'd imagine but likely the kind that fuels careers over bank statements.
Technology is giving way to things many of us thought we would only see in Star Trek. 3D printing is getting more advanced by the day as is communications and locomotion research.
I think if things continue as they are we will become a united planet eventually and be out there spreading to other planets.
Things only look worse because we are more informed than we used to be. We cannot do anything to help a situation we have no information on.
So many more of us know we are all in this thing together than when I was a kid.
We manipulate our environment to suit our needs and curiosity while learning as we go. Obviously we are going to have mistakes and growing pains.
Eventually one generation will get it together and be able to recognize strangers as kin.
It's a work in progress but it's hardly even begun.
I'd go as far as to say one of the worst impediments is the mind set of "It will never happen in my lifetime so I won't be a positive force."
This goes for things like justifying pollution or greed because the world or system won't end before "I" do as much as being complacent because change won't be noticeable until after "I" am gone.
I see a lot of inspiration in the young. If you don't see it you are looking for the wrong things. I see it all the time, there are vast differences in how they accept and treat people than they did when I was a kid, and I'm not that old (39). Are they sucked into their tech stuff? yeah, they are. But I think they have a larger capacity to be open and aware, and I think a lot of them are. And I also think the internet probably has a lot to do with that. There are negative things, yes, but the internet opens the entire world to you, and I know so many kids (teenagers) who have friends all over the world. That kind of connection on a global scale helps their awareness and their compassion on levels most of the rest of us couldn't comprehend when we were those ages. Where I am now, my kids are already getting there at the ages they are. They will be leaps and bounds ahead of where I am by the time they are 40.
Technology and organic life are two separate things - they are. They have been side by side for a short time now, but there's a barrier between them. Technology can already imitate life quite well, but it will always be an imitation.
The thing is, when kids are experiencing things of the world online, a lot of them are going out to then experience it in person because of that exposure. They are more interested in learning how to solve problems by working with global communities instead of like when I grew up where the solution to the starving kids in Africa was for me to eat everything on my plate. They know they can be part of the solution, and so they put themselves in places where they can be. My son has rebuilt homes after storms, built an orphanage in Puerto Rico, is part of a group that is building a new water system in Guatamela, he volunteers with Habitat for Humanity. And he's only 18. And more and more, he is becoming the rule rather than the exception to it. Kids are doing all kinds of community involvement where I am and they continue to do so as they become adults. Their global understanding is a level that I was never close to at their age. They work much better with people who are different than them to achieve goals together, and they see the world much more as a global community. I have hope for them. They work quietly behind the scenes while their parents are busy arguing on the internet about gun control.
@karasti -- I can see some of what you see in my kids as well. And certainly I hope it all blossoms into something less cranky than yours truly can be. But I also wonder at their capacity/willingness/desire to dig deep. Sometimes they remind me of the Hindu metaphor of the man who digs a hundred shallow holes in search of water instead of digging one deep one.
Reaching a conclusion is obviously premature, but I do have a secret prayer that each of them, irrespective of interest, will prove capable of finding his/her ass with both hands.
I watched 'The Box' the other evening.
Interesting....
My husband, who had watched the film from the beginning (I wasn't actually paying much attention) outlined the plot, and at one point, paused the film and asked me, whether (after Steward's explanation of what the box did) I would push the button.
My immediate answer, without any hesitation, was 'no'.
"Hang on...." he continued, "The deal is that you get a million dollars. You don't know who will die, or where. Bear in mind, countless hundreds of people die every day. Would you push the button?"
"No" I confirmed, "I wouldn't. I would never willingly or deliberately be responsible for someone else's death, for money."
There's a new phenomenon in Finland. A growing number of children of three-years-old or more can't speak. The obvious reason is the social media. You can figure out why.
That is not a 'new' phenomenon.
When I was a school Governor at my children's primary school, I was charged with writing a Report on the progress of the school, taking each scholastic year into account.
The school also ran a pre-school Playgroup, for young children wishing to join the chool, when their school-age time came. This started them off educstionally, and prepared them for attendance, in surroundings that were familiar and friendly.
The Playgroup leader (a lovely lady named Sharon) was in charge of taking the children in and formulating their days to make them interesting and varied. She gave a full report on progress, and how the playgroup was performing.
I finally asked her if there was anything she would like to say to the parents.
her response was sobering:
"Yes. Please, parents: talk to your children; read to them, spend time with them, interact with them and have conversations with them. Too many children are attending, without the standard vocabulary or conversational skills, normal for children of this age group (3+). Many children have no idea how to communicate, converse or pass on their wants, needs, likes dislikes - because nobody ever talks to them, and they never get included in conversations."
This was in 1997.
Three-year-olds are neither mature nor knowlegeable enough to be able to make their own decisions about what is best for them, or what choices they can make with regard to their interactions with others.
Polja: If the children are unable to speak - it is the parents who are to blame.
Not 'social media'.
If parents didn't stick children in front of televisions, computers, ipads, smartphones or playstations, but instead engaged them in joint discursive activities, we would all have more children like my grandson who, at the age of four knows what an ellipsis is.
Who knows that if he is holding £1.00, and something costs 65p he will get 35p change.
This isn't unusual for a child of his age.
Correction: This isn't unusual for a child of his age who has been fully integrated into family life, talked with, engaged in discussion and read to.
This is the stage all children of his age should be at.
For a child of his age, this is actually standard and normal.
In this day and age, sadly, because of the way children are now brought up, he is a phenomenon.
No, I'm not the one who wants to blame the others. More interested in explanations and theories. People are people. Technology may be an easier and more fascinating world than living among other people, and not solely for the parents. You know, the others can be so frustrating and demanding, including your children and parents.
One cannot blame "technology" or "social media" for something such as this. Because the internet doesn't reach out and grab a child's brain, forcing a tablet or phone or game controller into their hands. The parents supply it, the parents fail to give children acceptable limits, the parents are not engaging their children the way that they should be. So yes, they are to blame. I don't mean that in a "It's all your fault!!" fashion, but rather in a sense of I blame them because they have the power to choose otherwise and they are not. And usually what happens when a kid isn't where they are supposed to be in school, then the school gets blamed despite the parents not doing the work on their end. Then the school gets yelled at when they want to put the kid in speech therapy, the school gets yelled at for not teaching the child what they should already know.
I don't like to use the word blame, but rather responsibility. Parents are not taking proper responsibility for the growth of their children. That is their JOB as parents. If they are not doing their job well enough, their children go to school unprepared. If we assign that responsibility to no one, then on one can fix it.
@fedrika, you are spot on! We must engage our children from day 1. We must show our children we care. We must read to them, speak with them, engage, engage, engage.
Education is a partnership between the parents, the school, the community, and the children. The children are our ambassadors to he future.
Also, Alan Watts was not the only one to put forth that we have enough food, etc., to eliminate hunger and poverty worldwide. But he sure had gift of presentation. and he was right.
Where did that soapbox come from?
Spiny, more ice cream stat!
I feel a little guilty about the ice-cream and would like to see it distributed more fairly.
You don't see any connection between "social media addiction" and "social media"? It's not only the parents, but all the other zombies around a child who needs normal social interactions to learn to speak.
So forget the word "blame". The social media cause easily an addiction that may disturb normal humal interactions. I don't blame drugs or technology. People are people behaving like people.
The introduction to a child of technology relies on it being done to the child by adults.
That's usually parents.
Children are not exposed to the influence of "other zombies" to any great influential degree.
Their main source of care, attention, influence and education in the first 3 years of their lives, is their parents.
If parents are so irresponsible that they come to rely on technology to 'babysit' their child while they are busy doing other things, then they are the only ones to that point, who need to address the fact that they are producing children who cannot communicate.
Just like any other addiction or problem, the substance/item does not cause the problem. People's misuse (and genetics and other things) lead to addiction of things that are used perfectly normally by other people. So people get addicted to social media? Of course. But that is not social media's fault. People have choices. Social media is simply a tool offered for use. How it is used depends on the people who choose to use it. Including those who both are too busy using it to tend to their children, and those who offer it much too early for children. If parents are letting kids have "social media" accounts at those ages, then I hope someone talks to them about why that's a bad idea. There is a reason accounts aren't allowed until kids are 13. Unless of course we are for some reason lumping all computer-related technology under a "social media" umbrella. Social media=facebook, twitter, snapchat, reddit, etc. For the most part those aren't things that 3 year olds use.
In any case, I'm going to bow out of this one because I'm not even sure what we are talking about anymore. Last I recall your argument was that kids are not talking as soon as they should because they are addicted to social media, or something, and that is why humanity cannot learn a better way to do things. ? Afraid the entire main topic of the post has been lost.
Get off your computers and phones!! Set an example for your children!
Stop talking about talking and go out into the sunshine!
Stop whinging about social media on social media.
My kids not allowed a phone until he is at least 30.
My kid was raised on computers. Now he's a software developer making the big bucks.
OK - more ice cream for everybody! Stat!
No, not my arguments. Many psychologists say that children don't learn to speak if the others around them don't behave the way that stimulates them to learn and speak.
They have done everything to get people addicted to IT, and now technology has gone out of control. The near future won't get any better, on the contrary. I really don't believe humanity will learn a better way to do things. Some individuals or group of people may do it - to leave the rat race - but not the entire humanity. A simulated humanity, the probable next step of our evolution, is another story.
Btw, I think that technology can be "bad". For instance, an atom bomb kills, not only those people who develop and construct them.
Well, I think karasti makes a fair point:
Let's steer this back to the original concept/Intention of the OP.
"Finding a simpler way. What's stopping us?"
I haven't forgotten the original idea. I feel pessimistic when I look around and see people staring their tech toys. (Do they really care about nature, for instance?) And now they say many young children don't learn to speak. The reality is stopping us if we are speaking about the whole humanity. I do appreciate such personal solutions like conservation and veganism. Individuals may behave an extremely intelligent way, but not the masses. Now I leave my computer to see my mother
I think it makes sense to start by simplying our own lives. "Every little helps" to quote a well-known supermarket chain.
Beyond that we could get involved in politics or pressure groups or whatever...
(I'm back...)
It makes sense to think less may be more. Better live that way although the global problems would stay.
I'm getting really boring now: maybe it's not only learning to speak. There may be a new generation rising that has less such skills like empathy and compassion.
Those are interesting thoughts, @Polja. I don't understand where you heard that nowadays young children 'don't learn to speak.'? Do you mean that you believe that technology is the cause of young children who don't learn to speak?