Konnected to Our Home

"Nie mój cyrk, nie moje małpy."
(Not my circus, not my monkey).

-- Polish Proverb

Do people care about what's not on their doorstep? If someone doesn't have direct experience with an issue, how can it still be important to him or her?

Today, I'd like to explore this topic: Priorities.

Throughout our lives, we are given only so much time to do all the things we need or want to do, and only so much time to think about all the things we need and want to think about.

With that limited amount of time, we make choices based on what we think is most important. And a lot of the time, what we think is most important is what's right in front of our face, affecting us directly.

However, that perspective can often leave us making selfish choices. And sometimes you need to be selfish (we all need to take care of ourselves). Yet, since most of us live in some kind of civilization or social group - we need to keep in mind that there should be a balance between thinking about the self and thinking about others, right?

We never start our lives without some kind of dependence on others. Every baby must rely on its parent for milk. This interaction often creates a bond, making family important out of necessity.

But then we grow older, we wean off of our mother's milk, and gain some more freedom of choice. However, with those choices come limitations and more dependency.

Everything you nourish your body with comes from the earth. You become dependent on the availability of fresh water and the abundance of food that you can forage, grow, or buy.

And here's where my philosophy comes in: We are connected to our home.

And because of that connection, I think caring for our home should be a priority. Without Earth, without the environment that's been so carefully created (either by physics or a higher power or something we haven't considered yet), we couldn’t possibly be here.

By acknowledging that we are connected to our home, we expand our priorities. We must now care about the land, the animals that inhabit that land, the entire system and how we affect it.

And since we are conscious animals, capable of making educated choices - do you think we have a responsibility to our home to protect it? Do you think that because we also have the potential to destroy our entire planet, we should be mindful always about our impact?

Consciousness and the ability to change our environment according to our needs and wants is a gift, however it's a gift to be exercised with caution.

In some respects, we are the guardians of our home. It's why we establish global politics in the first place, really - it's not only to protect our nationalist agendas, but also to keep our home safe. Nuclear weapons shifted our priorities. It provided a real threat to our home as a whole, and because of that - we need protectors. We need people who care enough about our home to stand up to those who would destroy it.

But why would someone destroy their home? Let's talk about that in the next post.

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For now, leave a comment below if you have any thoughts on the priorities I've discussed here so far (the self, our families, our home planet).

You can also follow me on Twitter at @RMKBrainFeed.

Thanks for Konnecting with me! :-)