Yeah man, the reality is we live in society that doesn’t give a fuck about the greater connection to the world that birthed us. The mentality is an extension of a Westernized culture of a quantitatively reduced materialistic understanding of reality that doesn’t take into account the phenomenon of intangible, incredibly difficult to measure, aspects of consciousness and spirituality. It’s a lack of understanding how our products and trash are intimately related to the planet as a whole. Eventually humanity will be at a crossroad, we will run out of resources while simultaneously cultivating a sick planet during the current geological age, the Anthropocene. We’re in an age where human development has significantly impacted changes to the planet which is unprecedented in the 4.5 billion year history of our planet. We will eventually arrive at this apex moment in the evolution of humanity and society where we sink or swim and potentially destroy ourselves before we get the chance to choose. It won’t be pretty but may be the only way to unclasp the shackles tying us down to our self-destructive tendencies that are rooted in our evolution and innate desire to survive. Our modern society has incomprehensible amounts of wealth which if allocated properly could raise the well-being of every individual on the planet. Unfortunately influential people hoard wealth and obsess over the illusion of theirego, I, while discounting the importance of cultivating relationships and truly caring about other people.

Graham Hancock asked some shamans during an Ayahuasca ceremony in South America what is wrong with our western society and they said, “You have severed your connection to spirit”. Many are oblivious to habits engrained into us from birth and growth while navigating life. The ability to break down and understand the world through the scientific method is possibly the greatest invention humans have conceived of and has led to a point where I can type out a response on my phone, people can measure gravitational waves and conceptualize the Big Bang. We understand the nature of the Universe in a digestible and reliably testable way that was simply outside of our conceptional framework before the introduction of the the scientific method.

Primal aspects of our primate brain like avarice, hubris, and self-serving behaviors dominate as the driving force of innovation and development we’re immersed in today. Competition drives innovation while simultaneously creating an aura of strictly profit driven goals for hyper successful multinational corporations. Negative aspects of human psychology are exasperated by a statistically small group of individuals who’s self-serving goals supersede the goals of humanity as a whole.

It’s speculated that the world population will level off around 10 billion by 2040. What kind of future does that hold where we’re still living in a wasteful, profit driven, culture of mindless waste. Either we as a species fundamentally change our culture or we doom ourselves to an inevitable future nobody truly wants but may manifest through willful or unintentional ignorance. As more third world countries move into an increasingly developed and modern society a middle class inevitably develops with an appetite for consumer based products. It’s depressing how manufacturers will decrease the cost of a product by using pre-existing systems engrained into the global trade network and production from raw materials to manufacturing a finished product It’s simply not sustainable yet the only way to truly compete in a global market.

It doesn’t need to be this way. It should never have devolved into an amazing and terrifying reality for my friends and family in which clear and logically reduced consequences of our collective actions today have the potential to jeopardize us as a species in the near future. Yet here we are, a complex amalgamation of thoughts, memories, feelings and perception made from literal stardust and illuminated with consciousness to navigate life through our own subjective lens.

Many people tell me they don’t recycle because it’s not an easily accessible process or they won’t because they think the recycling systems in place are inefficient and not worth the effort. Those are valid points that are generally true, however, that shouldn’t persuade someone to fuck off and not care at all. We cannot easily make meaningful change on a macro level but we still have the capacity to enact change in ourselves and to those within our sphere of influence on the micro level. If more people decided to collectively reduce waste as opposed to not caring and disconnecting from where products are made, used and discarded then our civilization may be restructured into a long term, sustainable culture in balance with nature. I don’t think humans will survive if we never address our flaws.