I have been meditating on the ethics of consuming. We as living beings have to consume to live. It is in our nature to use tools, to feed, to create art, to procreate, to preserve and pass on knowledge to the next generation. We are part of the cycle of life. We consume. It is natural.
That said, as a species, our consuming is creating massive environmental disaster. Currently, the rate of species extinction is 100 – 1000 times higher than what we see in the fossil records. There is no place on Earth where the affect of humans isn’t felt. The human population just keeps growing. In my short life of almost 46 years, the population has doubled! Three and a half billion is now seven billion! And everyone keeps consuming. As I said, it is in our nature to live – and living requires consuming.
So where do we draw the line ethically speaking when it comes to consuming? Obviously we can’t continue as we have. Within a few decades we will reach the limits of Mother Earth, and then will come the inevitable collapse (and it will be ugly). So how to live now? What is okay and what is not okay? What is the ethical question we need to ask when we consume? My mentor posed this question: “Would it be okay if everyone was did what I am about to do?”
Think on this in all aspects of your life. What if everyone bought what I am about to buy? What if everyone took out of the environment what I am about to take? One quickly realized that almost everything we consume is unethical.
So how do we live? That I can’t answer for you. Sometimes I wonder if we should live at all. Obviously Nature cannot support the current population; much more the geometric growth we are achieving. But to me, while I have something to offer, while I can make a difference, living is the ethical choice. When I don’t have these things anymore, it is time to stop living and give my body back to the Earth.
We as a species need to fight our own nature when it comes to consuming and procreation. We can do this. We do this all the time. The sex drive is huge. Do we sleep with anyone who says yes? No we don’t. We negotiate relationship. Most everyone is monogamous. We control the instinct. So I know we can control the urge to consume. We need to separate need from desire. And the most important place we need to do this is in the desire to have children. There is no need to breed. Giving the current state or our beloved Earth, we have to stop procreating. We can do this consciously or we can let Nature do this cataclysmically. Either way, we will have to lower the population. All ethics aside, we have no choice.
These are heavy truths that most people just do not want to think about. We do everything in this country to avoid talking about it. We still have fertility clinics for people whom Nature has said, “don’t breed.” And we interfere. We add more people when all over the globe there are millions and millions of children who need a home. We have a cult of life in this country. People spend endless resources to prolong life. This time is paid for by the environment. We fear death so much, we sell off our children’s future to avoid it. It is time for this culture to stop making death the enemy. Death is a friend that allows the cycle of life to continue. I forget who said this but it is so wise, “Life shouldn’t be measured by the length but rather by the breadth”.
Why I am writing this depressing stuff? What does this have to do with Druidry? For me is has everything to do with my spiritual life. Learning to live in sacred relationship to the Earth is what this is all about. And the Earth is telling me something. I think we as pagans can lead the culture in establishing a new paradigm where we walk within the bounds of Nature; considering our actions; considering the future generations; working to restore the ecosystems; ending consumerism; and honoring all aspects of Nature as sacred (especially the importance of death which is currently the enemy of the cult of life). We can do this. We as people whose entire religion is based in Nature, should lead the way forward. If we don’t, who will?
Blessings of peace and simplicity,
Snowhawke /|\
The Animist Druid 
Good post, and I agree with most of the thoughts that come across from it. I think looking at this as a spiritual / religious issue is smart: the sacredness of our home, created by whatever gods we happen to pray to (ultimately, Nature), is something that should be common to all religions, and could turn out eventually to be an interfaith rallying point.
“Ethical consuming” is also a smart idea – it doesn’t try to eliminate something that is deep-rooted in cultures around the world, it simply tries to guide it. The problem is in determining who gets to set forth the ethics; and that’s where I think children come in. We should be educating them about consumerism and the damage its current, rampant form is doing to our home; while making it possible for them to enact the changes to the establishment they will need to make by keeping our generations as open to those changes as we can be as we step into the role of being the establishment.
Sorry for rambling on so much – your post was really thought-provoking!
I’m continually amazed by those in the druid camp who don’t *ever* write about this. It should be a central tenet of the faith and practice of any druid, and as someone who also has been listening to the earth, it definitely seems that it has decided the time for human life has come to an end. For me, it comes down to (1) Don’t buy it, (2) use the crap out of it, and (3) recycle everything. I also completely agree about procreation. To apply the aforementioned, (1) don’t have kids, (2) adopt some kids, and (3) get them to follow (1) and (2). It’s often ugly and stinky and antithetical to civilization, and yet it is the right thing to do.
I have always held that If I have children, I will have only have one. If every couple on the planet had just one child for three generations our population would shrink quite a large amount. We owe it to the earth.
Well said! Thank you for brining up the problems of overpopulation. This is a huge part of why my wife and I are childfree, and also why I have issues with Druid orgs like ADF having ‘fertility’ as an official virtue. It seems in paganism that having children is still seen as this great sacred thing, when in reality, it contributes to the collapse of our planet. If you want kids, adopt!