Throughout early American history its peoples fostered and carried with them, what is today commonly referred to as, the "American Spirit." They faced great hardships and trials just to survive daily life and make it from one year to the next. Imagine you are one of the early settlers of Jamestown or Plymouth, just stepping into this new and untamed wilderness. Almost a different world from the "civilized" lands you just left. There is no Home Depot to pickup the materials you need for building a new house. No Wal-Mart to select from a multitude of styles and sizes of clothing and linens. No supermarket around the corner to buy the produce, dairy, and meats to feed your family.
The early settlers led simple, sustainable, and most importantly thankful lives.
Lives of substance and meaning.
Every new sunrise was a gift, full of hopes, dreams, and visions of the future.
This was the indomitable American Spirit.
But the more you look around each day, the more obvious it becomes that somewhere along the way, we have lost that.
President Jimmy Carter saw this disturbing truth in 1979 and, in a truly rare moment for one who holds the highest office in the land, he voiced that truth.
In his Crisis of Confidence speech he stated that "too many of us tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption," and that is as true today, if not more so, than it was then. How many people do each of us know, that the driving force of their life is to obtain an increasingly larger house and then fill it with useless-expensive baubles? These people believe, as President Carter stated, that "human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns." They mistake the accumulation of material wealth for the signs of a life well spent. And in the end this does not satisfy mans deep rooted search for meaning.
President Carter told the American people an ugly truth about themselves, one they did not want to hear. And what was the response from the people for this brave act?
Come election time, he was replaced with President Ronald Reagan.
Right about now you might be thinking that the subject of all this is supposed to be about green living, so why is he on a rant about materialism? Have no fear, I have not led you astray.
Who will suffer the most from these meaningless, materialistic lives? Not the ones living them, instead it is our Mother Earth.
We build large opulent houses, that could easily house twelve, but only three of four live there. We even tear down perfectly useful houses to make room for these monstrosities, and all of those potentially re-usable materials end up in a landfill. To make matters worse we have one universal idea about what a house looks like, and how it should be constructed. For example a house made in the traditional wood stick framing method in the Arizona desert. The milled lumber had to be shipped in, the walls are not thick enough to properly insulate, and in such a dry wildfire prone climate, not at all fire resistant. Furniture is purchases almost exclusively for aesthetics, with little thought given towards durability. Just look in the furniture section and see how many items are made from laminated particle board.
What about the latest this, that, or fad new toy your child just had to have? Broken or unwanted within the year, and piling up in the local landfill.
This cycle must be broken.
We must all follow the advice of President Carter, as he exhorted all Americans to self-sufficiency, discipline, sacrifice, conservation, independence, and "the striving for meaning and purpose, beyond material wealth."
By recapturing this true American Spirit, we will find greater happiness, and notice this world which fosters us, improves a little more each day.
