Approprio, really thought provoking comments. I can't believe how hard it is if you're looking for quality that also fits!

Yesterday I visited two of the oldest colonial farms in Sydney. They are spartan, there simply wasn't a lot of stuff available to the colonists, and yet the rooms they created are very serene and beautiful. Almost every item would have been biodegradable, to some degree.

I'm certainly not underestimating the difficulties of life before mechanisation, but it did make me wonder about the sea of 'stuff' that we now find ourselves in, in developed nations (and increasingly less developed nations, as we ship our garbage to them!), thanks to mechanisation. Life seems to be in danger of becoming about managing 'stuff' (buying it, finding places to store it, using it, getting rid of it)...

I love tools. I love making things, and we are wonderful tool users, if not often wise.
We can make things, all things, very quickly. So we do. I feel we are like children in this, delighted, delightful, and entirely self centered.
Since it is so hard to change that consciousness, we are clearly made that way. That was my question when studied Evolutionary Psychology. Why do we do the things we do?
Yes, we could be another way, but humility is one of those things that comes with ruthless honesty and a lot of letting go. And growing up, which process never seems to end
We as a species may get the time, we may not. Nature is just fine with suffering huge losses and rebuilding. We are the ones who want it to stay the same. It never has.
So in this life, in which I, like the smallest thing, die only once, I try to grow up, and cause less harm.
One of the harms which I am most tired of, is the violence we do each other in expecting people/animals to live up to the thoughts in our head.
I continue to delight in material culture and seek it out.