Savoir revivre

What’s the point of sounding the alarm against the consumer society and the resulting pollution, if we continue to support the industries that poison us and deplete our planet’s natural resources? Let’s not use up what little oxygen we have left shouting our dismay. Instead, let’s relearn how to live without the products of these industries, and rediscover, in contact with nature, the foundations of a true scale of values. Of course, we’ll find it hard to do without manufactured goods altogether – we’ve accumulated too many nasty habits over the generations. But let’s imagine industrial production limited to the essentials. It’s not easy to pinpoint them, since we’ve lost our sense of what’s essential! But let’s put our knowledge on hold and meditate on its use. Let’s reconsider the primordial elements of our existence.