Why the thought came to humanity, that we shouldnt make any efforts to get what we need?
This constant development of technology, might come from that thought and the belief that people´s lives need to be as simple and effortless as possible... And boredom started to exist among humans...
Preparing and eating a meal can be today, as simple as a press on a button and 5 minutes waiting... "ding! food is ready!" ... From a local supermarket to the fridge or freezer, then the microwave and "voilá!" (just to sound like french cuisine), food is ready to eat, no time wasted...
The whole process of planting it or collecting it, sellecting it, imagining it, using our hands to prepare it until you have a new creation, is gone ...
Those simple pleasures of life are gone... Some things might not be pleasurable all the time...some days we just dont feel like cooking, but still, aren't these things also beneficial to us ?... healthy even ?... taking time for things, even those we need to do every day... enjoying them and not seeing them as "tasks" or obligations... they can even be seen as spititual disciplines if we want...a lot of times it is about the way we see things, isn't it?
( a little side note here, as it came to my mind... my job description when I fill official forms has been most of my life "house-wife" , and I love it...)
There might have been lots of complains from people who didn't like cooking but were forced to...I get that... technology is the most natural thing among humans since ever... we just like improving and finding better solutions, don't we ? ( I know that quite well as it seems to be my default mode...annoying sometimes)... even back in the early days of human kind, the making of a good sharp tool with flint in order to cut meat was a revolution... as the mastery of making fire was... but the issue is not technology itself, but how, and when, and why we use it? some people might need it to help fulfill their life mission, but others don't, and it's this discernment that we are missing... we just go with the mimetic desire and want what our neighbour has...
But we didn't stop there, did we? and we seem to want everything within a click of a finger...
The passing from "hunting/gathering" to "farming" was probably the most critical shift in human kind... we stopped depending on Divine and Earth's provision and started to think we could do it ourselves, better and faster... the idea was probably developed to save time, as it was the industrial revolution after that... but look where it has taken us... the remaining hunting/gathering cultures today spend no more than 4 hours a day working to provide for their needs and enjoy the rest of the time with their family and friends, who all help each other... children and older people are valued for simply being themselves and are treated as essencial part of society...they are generally happy, content, relaxed and feel they have all they need to live well... the concept of "taking holidays", or "retiring" doesn't exist based on the simple fact that they are, as I said, generally restful and content with their daily lives, with their friends and family around, and they recognize abundance around them... and I'm referring to today's reality, when the planet is not as abundant and fertile (mainly because of farmimg and unnecessary needs we created) as it was before the great shift...
Interesting isn't it? As it is the concept of "poverty" when we think about certain cultures... this is obviously a north-western perspective on other cultures, because they don't have the amount of stuff we think it's vital for a human to live ... unfortunately there is indeed real poverty today, but could that be the fruit of other's greed, of exploitation of the earth and other fellow human beings, of unbalanced and unjust distribution of wealth and resources? anyway, this would start a whole other post here...
Entertainment today is one of the biggest industries... even the words "entertainment" and "industry" don't seem to fit, but hey... so we should have much more time than a "hunter/gatherer" society, no? and do we? why there is more stress and depression in the human world as never before?
Should we slow down a bit ?... do things slowly ? should we appreciate things that take their time but give us so much pleasure and many other rewards?...
A bit of effort and even discomfort might remind us that we are not so different from all the other natural things around us... We belong to the natural...
Anyway, just a random morning thought... I decided to make "chappatis" for breakfast :-)
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