- This was written almost a decade ago I could add many more thoughts today, look for more upcoming views, a lot changes after a decade of life or greater insights.
As I was driving over to a friend’s yesterday evening and enjoying the natural environment I was suddenly filled with a positive aspect of the inflation (depressed economy) from a much broader standpoint than that of the “I”, who is really upset about the cost of things.
Are you asking yourself what could be positive about all the inflated prices that we are experiencing today? Before reading on can you think of any? Go ahead and eliminate any answer that are now positive from your personal point of view- those answers that make it positive for those benefiting from the inflated prices are not the kind of answers I am asking you to find. I’m asking you to find positive answers from a personal point of view. Can you think of any?
Well, yesterday evening as I was driving and enjoying nature, it was a fairly long drive as we both live in the middle of nowhere and some distance from one another I started thinking of all the things I was seeing that I hadn’t really noticed before. Then I thought about why I hadn’t noticed it before. Well you can’t help but notice nature and the surrounding environment when you live out like this but there are still things that are easy to miss when you are in to big of a hurry. Really, you can’t see as much when you drive fast. Gas prices has prompted me to slow down more, since I’ve slowed down more I have more time to look at what is really around me! Further benefits of this is that it’s kinder to the environment on a few levels: first I am using less natural resources because I am driving slower and using less gas, which is also easier on my car (less likely to need repairs that also use our natural resources). Another benefit is that at a slower pace I am much less likely to hit the wildlife that may be running across the road as I drive by so it is much kinder to the animal life around me. I’m betting my vehicle puts out less emissions at this slower pace which is also kinder to the plant life along the roads. If I drive slower on the dirt roads as well I am less likely to cause damage with my vehicle and to other vehicles that drive down the road, as well as less damage to the roads that would cause them to need repairs which again uses our natural resources. A side benefit is I feel less rushed as I have made the conscious choice to slow down and have given up the need of getting to where I am going now. This also allows me to be more present to the moment I am experiencing in stead of racing from experience to experience I stay in the presence of experience. A side benefit- there really is no need for road rage when moving at this slower pace (even though road rage is rarer in the rural areas it still creeps in now and then but it is something that I really like about living in a more rural environment.)
With the rising prices of stuff- we become less obsessed with having stuff. Consumerism drops! We quit wasting our natural resources just so we can have more stuff that most often ends up in land fills further causing damage to the earth. We become more conscious of the things we are buying instead of buying to fill some whole within ourselves and doing so only on a very temporal basis. This also makes it more likely that big businesses will not move in and drive out the small local business owners that ideally would be the heart of our society. (This in itself could be a long topic and not one I plan to approach in this article.) In many ways ridding ourselves of our overly consumeristic nature has benefits for our natural environment ranging from not trucking “things” from one part of the globe to another (a waste of our natural resources- gas, the vehicles to move them and so on), not making the things in the first place (another waste of natural resources- through making these things and the buildings and materials needed to make them, as well as the space they eventually take up in our landfills), we don’t need as large of homes to house these things (smaller imprint on the environment as we don’t take up as much space with buildings).
Another benefit of a falling economy is that it tends to drive people together and ends up with them working and living more as a community. It allows for a true deepening of our relationship with one another and the environment around us as the less things we have to be obsessed with the more likely we are to connect with our environment- a reconnection is pushed to us as a natural by-product of having less things. The more people work together the more harmony we will find in our communities. It takes some of the violence, and lack of presence out of our lives. It removes some of the competition out of our lives- we can no longer afford to suffer from the “keeping up with the Jones” phenomenon.
If we were to move back to true communal living even fewer things would be needed as sharing kitchens, pans, washers, and other things we use in our human lives creates a need for less as everyone doesn’t have to have their own making a smaller impact on the planet earth. We also need to work less and can reconnect more with our families and communities instead of pulling away from those connections in an effort to make ends meet.
I suppose I could go on and on with this topic but I just wanted to provide some food for thought. Can you think of other benefits of a falling economy? I think it is a necessary step to the human awakening process we are experiencing and aiding us as we move into the fifth world filled with love and peace and connection with one another and nature.