We make choic­es based on effi­cien­cies for time man­age­ment. But if time’s trap­ping us into an arti­fi­cial val­ue-sys­tem bank­ing on the premise that “time is mon­ey”, we real­ly ought to hop off the clock and move on to a more nat­ur­al rhythm.

“We are not atom­ized pro­duc­ers and con­sumers: We are part of the Earth fam­i­ly, we are part of a human fam­i­ly, we are part of a food com­mu­ni­ty. Food con­nects us. Every­thing is food…”
— Van­dana Shiva

There are many ways to become more informed about what we use. The sim­plest change we can make is to buy and use less stuff. But, to go a step fur­ther, if we become more enmeshed in the process of cre­at­ing what we use, we will con­tribute more to a pos­i­tive con­ser­va­tion of our planet’s resources. Even just by cut­ting down on fast fash­ion and fast food we will auto­mat­i­cal­ly share a greater stake in the out­come of how our plan­et feels.

Con­tin­u­ing to rely on refined oil for our cars and oth­er gas-pow­ered machines is a pret­ty direct road to plan­e­tary dete­ri­o­ra­tion. But the major­i­ty of food we’re eat­ing, the clothes we’re wear­ing, and the trans­porta­tion we’re tak­ing all share a neg­a­tive envi­ron­men­tal con­nec­tion as well: most like­ly, none of these prod­ucts are things we our­selves cre­at­ed. If we did, we would prob­a­bly place a much greater val­ue on them. Instead, the major­i­ty of us rely on cheap, for­eign pro­duc­ers for a vari­ety of tools, clothes, food, and sup­plies of all mat­ter. And this reliance upon com­pa­nies to con­trol pro­duc­tion and set the price for these items makes us more will­ing to seek sav­ings. We also become blind­ly incen­tivized to nev­er ques­tion how those prices were set so low in the first place.

In his essay for Aeon in Novem­ber 2018 about the prob­lem of not being involved in the cre­ation of that which we con­sume, and espe­cial­ly our increas­ing reliance upon the effi­cien­cy of algo­rithms for our deci­sion-mak­ing, cura­tor and writer Glenn Adam­son points out, “Such auto­mat­ed deci­sion-mak­ing is extreme­ly effi­cient, but it has con­tributed to a cri­sis of account­abil­i­ty. If no one under­stands what is real­ly hap­pen­ing, how can any­one be held respon­si­ble?”³⁹ If we adopt a more farsee­ing mind­set, that we all share a stake in the out­come of every activ­i­ty and unit of pro­duc­tion, then per­haps we can begin to make wis­er choic­es about what we decide to bring into our lives. In this way, we can cre­ate a clos­er rela­tion­ship to that which we con­sume. And, once we’ve adopt­ed this mind­set, then the vision and real­i­ty of what we col­lec­tive­ly make and con­sume will improve dra­mat­i­cal­ly. We must strive to buy into the val­ue of shar­ing in the cre­ation of the objects, mate­ri­als, and tools we engage with everyday.

As Jun­gian ana­lyst Dr. James Hol­lis observes in his book, Liv­ing an Exam­ined Life: Wis­dom for the Sec­ond Half of the Jour­ney,⁴⁰ “It does mat­ter whether we serve some­thing redemp­tive or some­thing demon­ic. And it mat­ters even more that we dis­cern the ori­gins of what­ev­er we do and whether doing so serves some­thing heal­ing in us or some­thing that binds us in new ways to the dis­abling past.” In this spir­it, we can become more clear about what serves us as an inex­tri­ca­bly con­nect­ed peo­ple and plan­et. Once we gain that clar­i­ty, we can begin to make more con­sci­en­tious deci­sions about how we live and how we con­strue val­ue in our lives.