Sustainable Lifestyles

Probably the greatest reason for obtaining and maintaining one's best health, is that we cannot have a meaningful and sustainable society in which ten healthy people, are employed to keep the unhealthiest among them alive -- for the only reason that it is now possible to do so, and in doing so, provide employment in that manner for themselves. Then, all lives are sacrificed to no other purpose but to see how long life can be sustained at its lowest and minimal levels -- instead of at its highest, which would be evidence of a society functioning at a high level of actualization, instead of throwing the good after the bad -- and there being no limit and end, to how much good could be wasted and sacrificed to the bad, irresponsible, and uncaring.

That is the kind of wasteful society many so-called well-intentioned people think is a compassionate and caring society -- rather than as it truly is, a society that no longer cares, or can tell these differences anymore, of the good from the bad. At the base level, that would be self-reliance and self-sufficiency for all who are able, and beyond that, the identification, nurturing and encouragement of those whose very being creates abundance and joy for more than themselves. Prosperous and enduring cultures and societies have that higher purpose -- of transcending themselves in becoming more than they ever thought possible, because they discover and fulfill that great potential, in unleashing it.

Otherwise, life never overcomes the subsistence level of zero sum activity, in which one person's gain is at another person's loss -- and no excess and abundance is ever possible, and in fact, in many such societies, if such prosperity is created, the only course then, is to consume or destroy it as threatening to the status quo of subsistence living. A lot of the tribal cultures are that way -- which is why they can never grow into great civilizations, but can only become extinct as the only fate allowed such societies -- until they can go beyond.

That's not automatic, but has to be a vision beyond what they've always done before. Obviously, it is not just enough to repeat history, and do what has been done before. One among them, must see beyond that -- to life that has never been before, mainly because it was not thought possible -- if they thought at all.

In fact, the great thinkers arrived at those possibilities, because their minds were not simply repeating the familiar, but quiet, vacant and unpreoccupied, could gather the energy to make the quantum leap onto a new path of possibility and being. Societies that can't or can no longer make such leaps, are doomed, because nothing new can come into being -- and so it is important that in the education and training of individuals, those possibilities exist for everyone as a base level expectation, and a few will exhibit even greater capacity beyond that, which is the momentum for progress and evolution towards the infinite life beyond.

That's why religion is important in enculturating that value and possibility -- of an infinitely greater life beyond what we previously have experienced -- and not merely sustaining life, at its most remedial level possible -- as an end in itself. Such a society, has lost all its reason for being -- not merely to exist, but to excel at actualizing life as it has never been before and thought possible.

That is the true purpose of man.