Currently, there is a lot of fuzzing about going on. There is the attempt at fighting the World Economic Crisis like a bushfire. Much good money is sent after bad, although we do not really have that money.
A gigantic financial experiment is under way, such as the world economy has never seen before. Basically, the result can only be negative. Executing this experiment, we try to preserve antiquated concepts of life with all our might and to promote them with borrowed money.
Why not see a chance in the crisis? Why not focus our energy on reducing the amount of fossil energy we use up?
Wouldn’t it have been a better idea to give people a special premium for declaring their car a wreck and not buying a new one? A BahnCard100 is 3,650 Euros for a year. That is 1,150 Euros more than the wreckage premium. They could have given a BahnCard100 to everybody who said a final good-bye to their old cars.
But no, we ignore the problem that oil is something that is finite and pretend that burning fossil energy will not have consequences. And we waste water in endless quantities without realizing that there is a limit to this precious commodity.
We have convinced ourselves that there are no alternatives to our doubtless decadent way of living. And the word “renunciation” has become a taboo word. Why do we not have the courage to think in new directions and change our habits? Why not renounce convenience for alternative challenges and new experiences?
Our social prompters do not want us to do that, because thinking in alternatives would threaten the traditional turnout. They forget that – quite to the contrary – alternative thinking and change always pave the way for new value creation and business. This is something we all seem to have forgotten. So we are paralyzed by fear of losing property and cling to our possession.
However, voluntary renunciation also helps us to become freer persons. And freedom is the first requirement for personal happiness. But freedom does not mean to follow some pre-defined consumer compulsions. Instead, we should give a little more autonomy back to our “Super-Ego”. It must not heteronomously follow the concepts of life developed by third parties, but should be in accordance with our basic, human requirement.
Freedom means being prepared and able to live your own life with responsibility.
We have to find out what is good for us, instead of relinquishing our lives to the interests of others.
That is why we should not a-priori condemn any ideas about changing our life-style – even if this change might mean quite massive interference in our lives. We should not consider those ideas taboos and exclude them from all our mental concepts and discussions.
RMD
(translated by EG)
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