World-Saving

It could be so easy-- world-saving, that is. After all, there have been so many attempts, failed and successful, to change society already. For example, during the 1960's, there was an entire generation of people fighting different movements, all with similar goals. Civil rights, women's rights, anti-war, and even anti-government protests were happening everywhere. A brand new culture emerged from this movement and has been put on the back burner for decades. However, the ideals of those indiviuals so dedicated to helping others survived and they will not be quiet any longer. A coalition of people is beginning to emerge once again that wants to save the world. Groups are being created, documentaries taped, books written, lives dedicated to this movement. So what is the common goal? It seems that the common goal is peace with mother nature. We want to be in harmony with our planet and all of those who dwell thereon.
It seems like a simple enough goal to achieve. However, there are many artificial exterior barriers to true and permanent sustainability. I say that these are artificial because I believe that many people are miserable and have absolutely no idea. The true goal of all creatures in existence is nourishment and survival. I think that humans have a deeper sense of what this means-- we want to be happy. In order to feel happy in a world that brainwashes us to participate in unsupervised consumerism, we shop. We accumulate stuff, then we die. And maybe after we die, IF we're lucky, our children will take our stuff and do something cool with it. This does not make any of us truly happy because it is an artificial sort of happiness, and therefore, an artificial barrier. I also say that the barriers to sustainability are exterior because I do not believe that they are true barriers to any of us unless we continue to believe that they are. For example, a low GDP is only bad if you say it's bad. Maybe massive production, trade, and accumulation is not a good thing. And maybe, once we all come to this realization, we will not fall victims to this sort of nonsense. An example of an interior barrier (as I would define it) would be spirituality (not religion because that is usually an organized institution, not an individual's perspective). This would be a true barrier because you cannot change the mind of someone who has different ideals. For example, if one person were to believe that destroying the planet will cause aliens to come take us to their planet which is paradise, there is no changing their behavior toward Earth. Luckily, most people do understand and acknowledge that harming this planet is not so good for any of us who are living here and plan to live here for a while longer.
World-saving could be very easy if we would stop fooling ourselves. What is the point of living an unsustainable life? In another class we learned "that which is not sustainable will end". It's such a simple truth. We all know that oil is a non-renewable resource yet we built our society to depend on it. Each generation is more knowledgable than those preceeding it and we do have the capability to make intelligent decisions. It is a logical step to be sustainable and if we don't, we do not deserve to call ourselves the dominant species on Earth. We are our only enemies. It's as simple as that.