HAVING VS. BEING

This website provides information permitting you to more consciously choose in what sort of culture you live, in particular, a “having” culture or a “being” culture.

Here is the difference:

• A “having” culture thrives on producing and having more things, clothing, property, security, comforts, money, power, fame, status, certifications, vaccinations, vacations, ideas, options, etc.
• A “being” culture thrives on experiencing and being more present, alive, attentive, skilled, creative, relational, centered, responsible, passionate, perceptive, communicative, kind, loving, etc.
• In a “having” culture, time is money.
• In a “being” culture, time is time. Money is a tool.
• In a “having” culture, growth is measured in quantity, as in “return on investment.”
• In a “being” culture, growth is measured in quality, as in “personal development.”

You choose which culture you sponsor with each action and inaction. There is no avoiding this responsibility. You may choose unconsciously, but even unconscious choices serve a purpose – an unconscious purpose.

This website provides information that permits you to make your choice with more awareness.

Gaining awareness tends to trigger feelings. It can be a frightening shock to realize that such fundamental knowledge has been withheld from you. Sadness and remorse may arise about behaving unconsciously for so long. You might experience rage that your trusted information sources such as parents, teachers and the media never revealed the consequences of the actions they taught you to make, and never promoted that you search for alternatives. Or fear that additional uncomfortable surprises may lurk just behind the next distinction. Joy of finally getting a grip of something more authentic. If you have no competence feeling adult responsible feelings then gaining awareness will be avoided.

The decision as to which culture we live in is often made unconsciously – the same way we tend to unconsciously adopt the religion of our parents. From within the “having” culture the experience is glorious. We live in splendor of which kings and queens of old only dreamed. Unlimited hot and cold running water, flushing toilets with toilet paper, cheap rich food and fine clothing, books, newspapers, magazines, shopping malls, conveniences from dishwashers to hair dryers, DVDs and CDs, shining electric lights everywhere, automatic heating and cooling, fast personal vehicles and air flights to anywhere in the world. Intelligence, radiance, beauty and entertainment abound in our “having” culture. We modern westerners worked together so hard to achieve these astonishing results that continuing to enjoy them seems our rightful privilege. But there is a catch, a fundamental discrepancy in our thinking. The “having” culture is founded on two flawed assumptions:

• the assumption of unlimited resources, and
• the assumption of unlimited environmental capacity to absorb poisons.

Neither of these assumptions is true.

It has become quite clear now that our “having” culture will soon crash into a predictable dead-end (see EVIDENCE). The question is not about if it will crash, but when and how. Choosing to ride the tail end of the 50-year-oil-burning-binge wave until you suffocate or starve is neither good nor bad, neither positive nor negative. But since dire consequences are so well predicted and so simple to avoid, choosing to continue in the “having” culture is a form of suicide.

It is not a moral or ethical judgment preferring a culture based on “being” over a culture based on “having.” The difference arises from physical limitations. We live in a closed system. If you piss in your bed the bed is pissed in. There are hard limits as to how much each of us 6.4 billion people can consume on our little planet. There are, however, no limits to what 6.4 billion people can become.