The Cost of Living

The real cost of living is far higher than accounted for by the cost of food, shelter and share of utilities.

True cost of living should included the discounted value of air and water. It should also account for the amount of forest that is cut down to create housing of any kind. If we use any financial model to accurately reflect the true cost of living for one human being during a lifetime of 99 years on the planet, given the current consumption patterns, we would find that every person in North America is taking the share of at least a billion people. That’s conservative.

One low to average income person is gobbling up the resources that are meant for a billion people? and chances are that this person isn’t even feeling fulfilled. Chances are that this person still feels ‘poor’ and probably compares himself or herself to people who did better in life.

The above is a small example of the insanity of the current model of life.

For centuries humanity has focused on a morality that elevates ‘family values’, ‘family creation’ above any other lifestyle. Morality and virtue and all things nice such as safety and security are about a household where a man is the head and ‘provides’ for his family.

Human population is doubling and trebling because people think its moral to have a family.
What has morality got to do with Costco? Nothing much, as it turns out.

What is moral, vs what is not moral should be a personal choice. Having a family or not having a family should be a choice. There is no superiority in having a big family or clan.

There are people who sit and cry about how much they’ve had to do for their spouses and their families, how much sacrifice they’ve had to make and how depleted they feel as a result of family obligations. Then there are those who feel they have no choice but to depend on people whom they feel hate them and betray them.

Beneath the surface of ‘family’ is a volcano of un met emotional needs that are hidden, in order to protect the family name and values.

Everybody’s so happy, except that they are miserable. In a nutshell, we live in world where;

There’s an environmental crisis because of uncontrolled capitalist greed and corporate manipulation. This is serious stuff.

People are mindlessly following a system that is making them poorer, they are completely deluded that it will make them richer in real terms. In fact the harder they work, they will have less. because the entire paradigm is about scarcity. The scarcity principle dictates that the more you have, the less you actually have.

People still join this system because of family values which dictate that people should live a certain lifestyle.

But people who are in the rat race because of family values and obligations aren’t even happy.

Things make people feel a bit better about themselves and they feel as if they have more status, but happiness isn’t about filling a bottomless pit of low self-esteem.

So, here we are, we live in a world where one person consumes a million people’s resources and chances are that person isn’t happy. It isn’t enough. He or she needs and wants MORE!

Scarcity as a guiding principle of life–with greed as its motivation is a nightmare with no wake up button.