In modern society people try to meet their future essential and secondary needs by the personal accumulation of large sums of money.  Once this is accomplished, many good-hearted people start helping less fortunate people. Once they become financially well established most good people take up some type of social welfare work, by either personally getting involved or by contributing to various causes they feel are worthy.

On a global scale this process cannot possibly work.  To accumulate this amount of wealth usually requires the greater part of one’s adult life, and a relatively small percentage of people worldwide can achieve it. From a global perspective achieving it therefore requires the exploitation of the masses of people for the better part of one’s life. To then turn around and try to repay those persons thus exploited may be considered generous and charitable by many, but this model is hardly sustainable. Such a disharmonious societal and economic model naturally includes disharmony with the earth and it’s non-human residents, and therefore a similar tendency toward exploitation of natural resources with no thought to the consequences during the years of accumulation.

A sustainable social structure is one in which all the essential and secondary needs are being continuously met by the cooperative efforts of all.  Rather than exploit others for decades, and give back later on only if we become artificially wealthy, we should all be continuously contributing. Our very work should be a valuable contribution to society. This requires that 1) we are producing something actually useful for others within our own community and 2) we are not doing it for the money but because we like doing it.

The order of importance in selecting an occupational role in modern society is generally 1) how much money can I make, 2) what do I like doing, and sometimes 3) what good is it to society. We can never be satisfied by such a process, but because the rest of society is following it we have little choice but to do the same.

We should go about it this way: 1) what do experienced and qualified people of high character who personally know me think would be most satisfying to me, 2) which of those various options does my community need most, and 3) with such guidance select something from within those options that the community needs that I would also like to provide.  This process is not only personally satisfying, but it works because I know my own needs will also be met from within the community because everyone else is following this exact same process. 

The method for contributing is therefore not by exploitation with a possibility of later contribution, but by cooperation and meaningful contribution, according to the society’s actual needs and the individual’s needs, nature and abilities.  A key difference is that everyone is providing something of real value, not something desired by an individual or group interested in personal gain or selfish gratification.

In a truly sustainable culture, wealth takes on an entirely new meaning. This indeed is a different paradigm. Money is no longer an absolute requirement, dictating all transactions and subjecting everyone to control by governments or persons in powerful positions. Instead, everyone is serving one another with their own unique gifts, abilities, and capacity. Such a community meets the essential and secondary needs of all the residents by getting the residents to provide something actually beneficial to the society in the first place, rather than encouraging useless commodities designed to make the owner or seller artificially rich at the expense of others and the exploitation of the environment.

With this understanding we can begin to see how modern society forces us to give post-dated checks when it comes to serving others, because modern society forces us to have a “me first” approach to survive within it.

Such a paradigm does not come about by personal accumulation of paper money, but by personal satisfaction in life.  This is due only in part to feeling secure that one’s future needs will be met. There are many component parts that make up such satisfaction and security. One factor is that if one requires less, then less arrangements (and simpler arrangements) will be needed for future needs to be met. Therefore a simpler lifestyle automatically brings greater internal peace. The same is also true if one desires less, which is different than requiring less. It is also a matter of personal lifestyle, as well as having a career or occupation that is truly suited to our own personal nature. And it is very much a matter of personal relationships within a community.

Personal satisfaction comes from serving others, and this is the heart of a real community.

Everyone in modern society is constantly bombarded with the idea of more, better, faster, bigger, newer; and our desires therefore grow more and more. We are essentially in a constant state of never being satisfied. This is accompanied by the continuous production of various goods every second of every day, which process in turn takes nature’s original gifts and returns them to the earth as toxic waste a relatively short time later. We are conditioned to believe that more, bigger, better, and faster will bring us happiness, but we need to stop and consider what actually makes us happy. We have become victims of the corporate world where the bottom line is invariably the bottom line.

Society greatly needs a paradigm shift toward a simpler and more natural way of life.

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