Sufficiency (attempt to explain)

29. September 2012 6 29 /09 /September /2012 13:55

Sufficiency

You are guilty.

Because you are part of this world.

Because you are part of the riche world.

How many times have we heard such things? We waste water, while poor children in Africa are dying of thirst. We consume the world to the dead.

That’s right.

But!

And what could be a solution for it?

Introduction:

We live in a highly capitalised reality. And we do a usage and wastage of resources as it has never been in the last 200’000 years. There have been other ancient civilisations disappearing, because of their unsustainable destruction of the environment. But this time we are a united humanity. We are globalised. We are all sitting in the same boat.

Historical isolation doesn’t exist anymore.

We are a networked world of brothers and sisters.

But if we go on with the world, as we do it now, we are going to enslave big parts of the world, just to satisfy the desire for resources of a few rich ones.

We have to blame us, to be the main factor, of causing worldwide suffering. It’s our cars that need too much resource. Because we want meat, the jungle gets cut down. One of the keys, to liberate us of this guilt, is self-reduction. But this is only the beginning of what I understand of Sufficiency.

When I first mentioned this word, people reacted with confusion or ignorance. Some couldn’t classify me, because I wear normal clothes and don’t act as a freak. Furthermore are people bored of such a “do- gooder”. All this educational know-it-all, who scrutinizes our every step, telling us what is right and what is wrong, is getting annoying. You shouldn’t eat meat, our plastic is killing fishes and the CO₂ destroys the nature.

But how do you want to decide for others? You can only do it for yourself!

For me, sufficiency is the personal decision to reduce necessities in life, but to realise and enjoy it more consciously.

It’s about everything! We are greedy or even addicted of meat, clothes, entertainment, Facebook, IPhones and attention.

And everything we like, we would like to keep.

We mistake ‘’to be’’ with ‘’to own’’

And we want to have more then we need.

What an epic mistake.

What insanity….

You can observe daily, how dangerous wealth is. The more you have, the more you can lose.

Angry about myself

The first weeks, after traveling almost two years, I was shocked about all this rubbish at home. Useless things, what I bought. A lot of clothes, I only wore twice. After this, it’s left in a corner, between the dusts. Don’t we have normally only about 5 favourite T-shirts we really wear? There might be a pair of shoes we wear every day, and a jacket we love. We only keep the other things because we bought too much or we aren’t able to separate of it. Because of memories, promises or the regret of having spent such a lot of money for it.

One of my brothers has 7 winter jackets.

I began to throw away. Bags after bags. If I don’t really need it, I don’t want it. And I won’t buy anything new. Until the shirts are really broken, but I only want to buy as much as I will give away. Tons of Souvenirs. All this things are making your life heavy and inflexible. We are enslaved by our past and the rubbish we kept of it.

I was tramping for many months only with absolutely necessary things in my backpack. This made decisions easier. But the most of the people are completely unable to get rid of their personal rubbish.

Me!

Mine!

My memories!

My rubbish!

Irritation. Numbed of old habits. We never ask: ‘Do I really need to buy this?’ or ‘Do I really need to keep this?’ But instead we keep everything we can and buy as much we can. Until everything is full, the basement is impassable and we are forced to take away the biggest things.

Bought corpses

It’s the same for food. Why do we buy in the supermarket a piece of a dead cow, packet into plastic? Do we have any connection to these animals? Have you ever killed to eat? We aren’t able to slaughter an animal, but we eat plentiful meat. Isn’t it a contradiction? Of course there are thousands of reasons not to eat meat. But I’m never going to be a vegetarian.

I love meat.

I go fishing!

I catch, kill and eat it on the same day. That’s what I think is direct. Just the natural way.

Sufficiency doesn’t mean to choose a part of our life and to demonise it and to fight against it. Vegans, who are teaching the world, are in my opinion to fanatic, even religious in their fight. Observe what crazy life we live in, reduce it but be better aware of it.

Feels good!

Last Sunday I had a wonderful steak. I got it of the farm of my cousin and I virtually knew the cow’s name.

If not, you go to hell!

There are many reasons to reduce, but realise our consumption better. But a special reason I observed during my trip, was religious.

Meanly all the religions or communities do know sufficiency.

Asceticism

Ramadan

Fasting

In Buddhism it’s even the first step to enlightenment.

But these big teachings of important direction pointers and founder of religions might be misunderstood and changed into symbolism and tradition. Instead of a personal decision, to live life more consciously, they threaten people with fear of hell or bribe them with the image of a perfect heaven. Often I observed this big self- display of selflessness. Humbleness degenerated to Self- glorification.

The original idea of these teaches might have been self-reduction. And as a modern word for it, I use sufficiency.

Adapted

This doesn’t mean to break up with your old life. We live were we have been born. As much as one poor Indian girl couldn’t decide where she was born, as much are we not guilty to start in this part of the world. Just live a normal life in Switzerland. Not everybody has to share these ideas. Just decide. Maybe you will only eat meat twice a week. Or you own only 2 pairs of trousers. It might be a good idea to sleep on the ground without a bed. Or you could drink just one beer less on Saturday night.

Whatever.

It shall be your personal decision.