Bountiful is funny word, since it sounds like beautiful, but almost an excess of beauty. Yet t’s not really about beauty, it’s really about excess, but only good excess.
All the time, everywhere I look, I see the bounty of the world. This pains me, because I want it all, I never want to let it go. I want to take in the bounty of the natural world and make it even stronger. Yet I also the see bounty of the human world, our cities, our dazzling technology. And I want to make this even stronger as well.
Yet there’s the problem, how do we take these conflicting types of bounty: natural bounty and human (which always seems to impede on the natural world).
For a long time I used to think that humans are ruining the planet and the only way we could mitigate this is by having less humans around, by getting everyone to agree to having less children. Now I take the longer view: nature itself often ruins the planet, via various types of natural climate change like Ice Ages and asteroid impacts. So if humans are causing the destruction of many species, making it so the world is hotter, well, this has happened before and the planet will recover and give forth new kinds of species (maybe species much smarter and wise than humans currently are).
But this view doesn’t help the fact that I want my children and grandchildren to enjoy the bounty of the earth, the way I did over my life. So then I look at what can be done with the limited way humans view their own influence.
Interestingly it looks like people are choosing to have less children of their own accord, so this is a good sign. Or maybe it’s not a good sign because it’s probably due to people feeling like they can’t afford children or don’t want to bring children into the world.
Yet even with population growth slowing I read about how many countries are trying to rev it up again, with the idea that economic growth requires many more children to support older generations.
This seems terribly, tragically misguided. Does economic growth really need more people to buy more stuff and make companies richer? What if everyone decided to do with less, would this be a terrible thing? Why can’t we look at the bounty/beauty of the natural world and revel in that rather than accumulating material bounty? How can we learn to want less? It seems like this has to be taught quite young so I’m trying instill my children with the idea that having less is a bounty of its own.
— siobhan
All the time, everywhere I look, I see the bounty of the world. This pains me, because I want it all, I never want to let it go. I want to take in the bounty of the natural world and make it even stronger. Yet I also the see bounty of the human world, our cities, our dazzling technology. And I want to make this even stronger as well.
Yet there’s the problem, how do we take these conflicting types of bounty: natural bounty and human (which always seems to impede on the natural world).
For a long time I used to think that humans are ruining the planet and the only way we could mitigate this is by having less humans around, by getting everyone to agree to having less children. Now I take the longer view: nature itself often ruins the planet, via various types of natural climate change like Ice Ages and asteroid impacts. So if humans are causing the destruction of many species, making it so the world is hotter, well, this has happened before and the planet will recover and give forth new kinds of species (maybe species much smarter and wise than humans currently are).
But this view doesn’t help the fact that I want my children and grandchildren to enjoy the bounty of the earth, the way I did over my life. So then I look at what can be done with the limited way humans view their own influence.
Interestingly it looks like people are choosing to have less children of their own accord, so this is a good sign. Or maybe it’s not a good sign because it’s probably due to people feeling like they can’t afford children or don’t want to bring children into the world.
Yet even with population growth slowing I read about how many countries are trying to rev it up again, with the idea that economic growth requires many more children to support older generations.
This seems terribly, tragically misguided. Does economic growth really need more people to buy more stuff and make companies richer? What if everyone decided to do with less, would this be a terrible thing? Why can’t we look at the bounty/beauty of the natural world and revel in that rather than accumulating material bounty? How can we learn to want less? It seems like this has to be taught quite young so I’m trying instill my children with the idea that having less is a bounty of its own.
— siobhan
I have so enjoyed and been challenged your insights and perspective, as well as your creative writings. Thank you for sharing them with me these last 40 days. Blessings
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