Maximize Qualities And Be Satisfied With Quantities
Optimism Allows For The Achievement Of The Impossible
There are reasons for optimism. Our history shows that we as a species can do the work suggested by Einstein: “widening our circle of compassion.” The shift to live according to a new ecological paradigm is not significantly more daunting than our other previous massive shifts.
We as a species, for example, made the leap from hunters and gathers to living in agricultural communities. Then, called again to face big cultural changes, we again made another big leap, this time from living in agricultural communities with simple technology to living mostly in cities and suburbs with complex, modern technology. James George points out that we are “endowed with some degree of freewill, and therefore with contradictory capacities for both self-destructive behavior and for extraordinary breakthroughs of creative energy and intelligence” (George, 1995, p.105). I, for one, think that we will, after trying everything else, eventually make the right choices.
Maximize qualities and be satisfied with quantities.
If we can make the shift from being hunters and gatherers to being agriculturalists and if we can make the shift from living in agricultural communities with simple technologies to living in urban and suburban communities with complex technologies, which required huge shifts in perspectives and behaviors, it stands to reason that we can also shift from a state of lower well-being that comes from always demanding but never quite gathering up more and more stuff to a higher state of well-being that goes with being satisfied with having enough stuff.
