Buckets

I overheard a young person refer to her bucket list recently. The item from her list of things to do before she kicks the bucket (dies) was rather vapid. It was a luxury tourist experience.

 

I was impressed by the lack of grounding in this apparently educated and affluent person. I realized that she has been conditioned to be selfish and materialistic by her environment. So much so that she could not begin to see this in herself. Her companions nodded and giggled their approval of her bucket item.

 

Look around. Read the news. Learn about the status of the planet. A charter vacation to the tropics on a polluting ship is a short-lived phenomenon. Perhaps this is the unconscious drive behind this type of vacuous materialism. Watching a plate of goodies being gobbled up can make you consider grabbing one before they are all gone, I suppose. Especially if you are habituated to constantly satisfying your own appetite.

 

Kicking the bucket is inevitable, whether you have a list or not. Most human beings are familiar with lugging a bucket in some form or another to simply survive. Rather than helping them lug their buckets, most people in the wealthy world exploit those who lug buckets by demanding cheap manufactured goods and natural resources for food, fuel and water.

 

Rather than making lists of thrill rides to be experienced in a life, the true humanist is mindful of the general well being of all human beings and the planet. The humanist, in my opinion, concentrates on bringing value to the planet. This is not accomplished by spending great amounts of time and money on vacations and purchases of luxury goods. Consumption, despite capitalist propaganda to the contrary, does not magically improve the planet and the lives of all people. Consumer cultures depend on underpaid workers in non-consumer cultures.

 

It seems unlikely to me that some utopia of robot-powered luxury for tens of billions of human beings lies over the polluted horizon. This is the escapist refuge of the privileged geek...a virtual reality in a computer game or CGI film. The rebels in Syria may have smart phones, but they are still being obliterated by others with bigger machines powered by bigger technologies. The basic issue of lack of humanity, lack of human development, exists and grows exponentially with population.