Our Ancestors Did Not Have What We Have (But It Wasn’t All Bad)
Life for our ancestors was often a struggle for survival. To that end they developed sacred rites and practices in order to keep them on the path that had allowed their parents to survive. There was little room for straying from the path.
Technology changed that, so that we were able to dismiss many of the moral precepts practiced by those who came before. Perhaps more than anything was the idea that allowing things to go to waste is a sin and a potentially fatal act. As Le Lee Hayslip pointed out, she was raised to not allow a grain of rice to be wasted. My parents were no strangers to the necessity of darning socks, repairing something rather than throwing it out, or handing clothes down to younger siblings. And the only alternative to eating what was put on their plates was hunger.
We live in a world now where to not waste puts us at a disadvantage. We have so much food it is preferable to only eat the leanest in order to not become obese. We throw away the yolk, cut away the fat, simply because we have too much. It is cheaper to buy a new appliance than to have the older one repaired. It saves us time to buy new what we once reused or repaired.
Except that things have not changed, not really. We are living in a bubble where it appears that we can endlessly consume and discard. It is an illusion. It is a temporary dream from which we will soon be rudely awakened. We must once again live in a sacred manner if we wish to continue our civilization. In fact, if our civilization falls, we will still have to learn sacred ways of doing things.
People become discouraged by the difficulty of doing what is right and the way society seems to make it unnecessarily hard to do things in accord with nature and sustainability. That is true, it is hard to cut against society’s grain, to be diligent in the path of righteousness and sustainability. The system that is in place will punish us in ways small and large. It is hard to shop without getting a plastic bag, it is hard to reduce energy consumption in a world where everything demands it. It is hard to get in shape without driving one’s SUV to the gym to work out on an electric stationary bike or treadmill in a climate controlled room.
But the inconveniences we might encounter when going against current common practices would be laughable to our ancestors. Our opulence and decadence would revolt them. We need to emulate once again those who came before us, all of those who came before us, excepting, perhaps the decadent royal elite.
Our ancestors became experts at thrift through being taught and by trial and error. More than that, they learned to become expert because they needed to: survival was on the line for them. You would not be here now if they had not learned the art of making do. If you cannot dedicate your life and energy with a similar passion, your descendants will not be here, either.
This is not drudgery. My father and mother lived through The Great Depression and often said they felt they had grown up in the best possible era. They did not have material possessions but neither did anybody else. They did not miss what they never had. They found their joy in family, community, nature, and the simple things in life. How we ever strayed from finding joy in such things and instead pursued toys and status symbols is beyond me.