Instant Gratification

At what point does comfort become complacent, or need become greed? “Don’t we have a right to be comfortable and enjoy life?” a new acquaintance recently asked of me. I believe that we do, but we also have a responsibility to temper our desires and to consider how our actions affect all other life on this planet. We are quite equipped and capable of eliminating all life from the planet, but should we? Why not? The way I see it, it would not be a benefit to destroy the foundation of our existence. It seems counterproductive to disrupt, let alone eliminate, the source of our needs for survival. Yet we live in a manner that does adversely affect those things that we, and our progeny, all need to survive. In a very basic way, our treatment of the Earth and its resources is going to affect our physical well-being for generations to come. If you plant a garden that feeds your family, you must take up space to do so. This means that you will be compromising the welfare of anyone else that had need for that space. But if you decide eventually that you would like to install a hot-tub, which means sacrificing a portion of the garden, you will be compromising the welfare of your children in order to enjoy a “comfort.” This is how humans treat the environment right now. Why are we obsessed with creating structures and roads and altering the landscape in relatively permanent ways? What exactly gives us the right to make these alterations and assume this god-like position on this planet? How can anyone argue that the Creator has given us this authority while we categorically destroy and pollute what the Creator has created for our own comforts? We are a species that prides itself on having “higher functioning” faculties of logic and philosophy, yet we deny accountability to follow natural law, and we live in a depraved manner of materialism, money, and aesthetics, while we deplete the environment for luxuries and ignore true temperance and justice in order to cater to our infantile gratifications. Evolution is supposed to be change that facilitates a viable integration of a species and its environment in order to create a viable existence in the natural cycles. Evolution is about developing strategies genetically in order to conform to one’s environment because nature constantly seeks an equilibrium of fluctuations between chaos and order. Humans, however, do not adapt to their environment. Humans alter the environment to meet immediate preferences. In other words, we have eliminated our proper role in the natural world, and because we alter the world to meet our desires, we allow ourselves to perpetuate genetic anomalies, and we also subvert any need to make genetic changes that keep us aligned with nature. In other words again, we have created an ability to de-evolve. We deaden our senses with artificial environments and stimuli; we constantly muffle and suffocate our spiritual ties to the Creator by shielding ourselves from creation; and we compromise our spirits with distractions and unnatural practices, which we mitigate with depravity, such as drinking, drugs, and myriad variegated vices. All in the name of what? To what end? How can we call spitting in the face of God progress? It doesn’t matter what religion one follows when it comes to the reality of truth. No matter what one believes about the Creator--whether or not one even believes there is a higher power or if it can be broken down to some sort of physics—and no matter what doctrine or dogma one follows or by what name one addresses the Creator, there is a fundamental truth that all must accept and follow: Nature is real, and it is our source of life. Nature is the only reality, and by compromising it for our desires for more and more comfort, we are showing a severe lack of temperance, responsibility, and respect for the Creator who is embodied within the natural world. Even those who only believe in science must have the capability to see that the logistic equation applied to our species, coupled with the planet’s carrying capacity, not to mention affects of fragmentations, pollutions, and stresses, are leading us to a very dire place. Scientists must at least be rational enough to see outside of the box and understand that all of this technology is detrimental to nature, and it is detrimental to us on several levels, and ignoring our mortality means creating a major imbalance in biodiversity and biomass, which means we will reach a devastating breaking point. Even those who don’t believe in a Creator must appreciate the virtue of temperance and that in order to find true justice and ethics there must be an indisputable, universal truth from which they can be derived, right?
Comfort is subjective. It changes in direct proportion to the advances in technology, to depletion, and to extortion of natural resources. As well, our perception of comfort enhances complacency and self-importance that truly undermines our responsibility to follow natural laws established by the Creator. Enjoying life and being comfortable is fine, until it begins to affect others in a detrimental way. We do not have the authority to determine whether any life is valuable or not. Therefore, we do not have the right to adversely affect other life for our selfish desires for comforts and luxuries. It just doesn’t make sense. We are not as important as we think we are…but we could be if we once again became Caretakers instead of Takers. Finding the line of discretion is simple: if what we do adversely affects nature’s predetermined cycles, then it should be abandoned. If what we do contributes to the welfare of nature, it should be applied. All artificial technologies are detrimental, in spite of the compulsory propaganda that accompanies them. Think about what it takes just to make something artificial. The process at the most basic level is detrimental to the environment, no matter how “green” or “clean” anyone claims to be. Then take it to the spiritual level. Does this artificial thing or does this action compromise temperance of your spirit? In order to know that, you must first have that indisputable truth as a frame of reference for spirit: nature. In other words, you must know your true place and purpose by natural laws. That means living in the natural world with no artificial or corrupt influences. How can you define your true self by artificial parameters?