Reduce Your Footprint To Save Yourself, Not The Planet
By: Danny Schleien
Tags: Evolution, Self, Environment, Carbon Footprint, Psychology

Improve Your Future By Looking To The Past:

I could spout on and on about why reducing your carbon footprint will benefit you. But I’ll keep my reasoning simple:

Anytime you can apply an understanding of human evolution to your present-day life, you will be better off.

We evolved to live in harmony with nature. We evolved to mostly eat lower on the food chain — think fruits and vegetables, not factory-bred meat and sugar-laden processed foods. We evolved to be on our feet, not on a comfortable couch or an ergonomic desk chair. We evolved to spend time outside. We evolved to derive pleasure from the simple things in life — socializing with friends and loved ones, not scrolling on a screen to find edited pictures to like or things to buy that you don’t need and are probably ecologically harmful. We evolved to live life in the slow lane, not the fast lane. We evolved to live surrounded by plants and rocks, not concrete and asphalt.

Your ancestors lived very sustainable lifestyles. It was good for them, their neighbors, and the finite planet they lived on.

The more you can emulate your ancestors in this respect, the better off you’ll be. Maybe that goes against the gospel of progress and futurism, but I’m a bit skeptical that many of the technological advancements we’ve made lately as a civilization — cars, TVs, smartphones, etc — have truly heightened our sense of well-being.

Call me crazy, but sometimes I wish I could enter a time machine and go back 10,000 or 20,000 years. Sure, Stone Age people had hard, risky lives back in the day. They toiled to find clean food and water. They faced harsh conditions and were always vulnerable to violence and predation. Trouble awaited them with every step and every breath.

Nonetheless, I don’t think they were significantly worse off than we are today.

They didn’t pollute their air and poison their water with deadly chemicals. They didn’t stare at screens all day and play dangerous fake comparison games with each other. They didn’t ‘buy’ things they didn’t need. They didn’t eat processed crap. They didn’t lounge around and sit on their asses. They didn’t build concrete cages divorced from nature.

They lived life to the fullest.

And so can you.

You can choose to adopt many of their wise practices, but you can benefit from the cars, antibiotics, supermarkets, and smartphones we take for granted.

You can choose to embrace the aspects of modern life that are good for you and embrace the aspects of ancient life that are good for you.

You have the best deck of cards any generation has ever had. If you play your hand correctly, you can live a better life than anyone ever has.

And your lifestyle will become a smaller slice of the carbon footprint pie.

Spend some time thinking deeply about what aspects of modern life truly benefit you. Then, think about what the ancients did that you too can do to cultivate your well-being.

Take advantage of the pandemic to reconnect with nature and thereby reconnect with yourself. You may never have a better opportunity to bridge the gap between your authentic self and the inauthentic aspects of your self you present to the world.