Sharing The Planet

IS OUR MODERN american lifestyle more, or less stressful than, say, the native american lifestyle three or four hundred years ago, before the white man arriveth? Where's jared diamond when you need him...

chances are most of us believe the answer is "yes", and chances are so do most of the experts. where have we gone wrong? Surely, all this "progress" over the past few hundred years, all this material wealth, technology, capitalism, industrialization, and standard of living; would make anyone happier, less anxiety ridden, less stressed emotionally than ancient primitive stone age people like the native americans before the europeans got ahold of them. Surely..but yet...

could it be the the price we pay for cell phone, radiation, cars, pollution, busy hectic schedules is - more stress? could it be that  living in a tent, sleeping on the ground, cooking over campfires, travelling by foot - makes  one healthier and happier, at least, in terms of lower stress? And also, those native americans got a lotta exercise...

Its great to live in the early twenty first century, with our internet and miracle medicine and all that; but really, in order for it to all be worthwhile, it needs to make us happy, we need to be happy, and not....stressed out..

Having been born in nineteen fifty five, and being lucky enough to still be alive, and to be lucky enough to ve an american, yes, my life has been wonderful, here in our modern world, but still, i often yearn for increasing simplicity.

So i disconnected my cable TV. At least its a start. I love my computer too much to give that up; (my native american lifestyle will have to indlude the internet in the tent). Maybe we should all live in high rise apartment complexes, and leave ninety nine percent of the land in wilderness, like the american national park system, a global wilderness park system.

By doing that, we could give all humans an opportunity to direclty experience and participate in "primitive" lifestyles, for the sake of variety, education, and appreciation. we humans could and should build up, not out, and share this planet with other life forms.