What Does a True Progress Really Mean or Less Is More and the Greener Is Better.
I remember ten years ago, I took my youngest son born in Australia to visit my homeland in the Eastern Europe.
He was a teenager then and keen to befriend some young people there.
They were keen to copy the western consuming lifestyle freshly freed from the communist regime. Dressed in the latest plastic fashion with plastic accessories they had been offering my son their mint infused cigarettes and canned mixed alcohol drinks. My son waved his hand wearing his favorite worn out cotton shorts and a bamboo t-shirt and said: “Hey guys it is not cool to breathe that poison and have a foul breath and brown teeth, not sexy either for girls.”
The Eastern Europe was just absorbing the western consuming ideals that the west was actually leaving behind. At least young people who always seem to follow the new progressive way are learning fast. Unfortunately for our earth and us, the old corrupted the consuming lifestyle ‘money can buy anything’ leaders do not want to give up their power. So our world is still led by old who push their old way on us all and our planet and we all suffer because of it.
I have visited my daughter living in one of the most progressive Australian cities recently.
She refused a well paid and luxurious corporate law position to follow her heart and works for a low key environmental and humanitarian agency.
She shares her renting little environmentally friendly cottage with other passionate young people from every culture and circumstances possible. In the recent upheaval when the ruling government wanted to scare people into believing that refugees are responsible for everything what is wrong with Australia, she offered a bed to a new refugee boy from the Middle East. She found him a job. He has got involved with the humanitarian agency too and teaches fellow Australians not to be afraid of new people and different cultures. “All refugees and migrants I have met here are grateful to be here and work hard to become Australians and live in peace and prosperity they lacked at home,” he told me.
I have been sitting with these beautiful young people who share everything including their gadgets and mobiles and bicycles and use public transport or Uber to get around. “Why do I need to own a car?” They told me, “I have my legs or hop on a bike if I need to, it keeps me fit and I don’t need to pay an over expensive gym fee.”
“Why do I need to own the latest gadget?” They asked me, “Waste of money and just more plastic for landfill, what I need I have at work or we share what we have here.”
They refuse to buy any fast food or drinks wrapped in plastic, instead they carry their own recycled long term use plastic for the take away drinks or food or order coffee from a china cup in the local organic coffee shop to support local business. They buy their groceries on the fresh food local market where the local farmers selling their produce straight into your recycled paper boxes. They cook at home their vegetarian meals taking turns eating them together on their recycled wooden deck with a little organic garden they take turns to look after. They are all in their early or later thirties and none of them is married yet. They do not seem to rush into anything their parents felt it was the priority in life: a new car, a new house, a new wife and a new family or new better paid job and bigger and more expensive or more envied by neighbors, the better.
“When our time comes we marry,” told me one young gay couple, “but for sure it will not be your expensive plastic friendly and money hungry show off wedding,” maybe we just go down by the river hold hands and make our grass rings around our fingers and then we go to sign the papers so everyone is happy it is official. Then we invite our family to our organic feast in our rented house we share with others.”
The young people I met are happy, they spend weekends in the nature around, climbing rocks and hiking around always in the nature sharing what they have and eating healthy, alcohol is not forbidden but it is not priority. They do not need to drunk themselves senseless to forget, there is nothing they need to forget to. Their work is passionate and purposeful, money is enough to go around and their overseas holiday? They usually go somewhere to work as volunteers to help those less fortunate, because they are the lucky ones right?
I tip my hat off to these young people and I believe our future will be good because once all those old self important overweight and rich mostly males die who rule our world today and rule it so badly, once they are gone IT WILL BE THEIR TURN AND THEY SEEM TO HAVE IT RIGHT DON’T YOU THINK SO?
By the way if you look very carefully you see her in the middle of that huge Australian rock formation, slowly climbing up, not visible but there, waiting for her turn to change the world just millions of other young people all around the world...their time will come hopefully before they themselves grow grey and weary...
