Cost of the Good Life Essay

Over solely wellbeing, an extravagant disembodied spiritstyle, and wealth each(prenominal) come to mind when I ponder the unspoilt life but what does the good life in truth cost? At set-back glance, this seems like a loaded question that requires multiple dissertations in consecrate to answer. I even contemplated whether or not the good life had a cost at all. Breaking the good life into separate topics relieves oftentimes of the stress when it comes to giving an answer. In terms of consumerism, the good life is negative to the environment, places too much emphasis on gold, and it dwindles the importance of non-market values.According to Annie Leonards The Story of Stuff, our current materials economy is a commodity chemical chain in which goods go from extraction, to production, to distribution, to consumption, and finally to disposal.The musical arrangement sounds stable but it is actually in crisis. Anyone with a simple understanding of mathematics can enounce you that y ou cannot run a product linear system on a impermanent planet in the real world. In order for us, the consumers, to get all of our fancy products and up-to-date technologies, a process that we turn a cheat eye to takes place. At the source of the process, there is raw(a) resource exploitation. We chop down the trees, blow up mountains to get the metals inside, use up all the water, and wipe pop all the animals. As consumers, we argon running out of resources because we have too much stuff In the past tierce decades alone, one third of the planets natural resource piazza has been consumed.We are undermining the planets very ability for people to live here. In the coupled States, less than four percent of our original forests are left and forty percent of the water focuss have endure unsanitary. When the resources start to deplete, we do the same function to third world or lesser developed nations. The erosion of the local anesthetic environments of these nations and econom ies ensures a constant flow of natives that rely on the little money they can earn while working in factories.We have become a nation of consumers largely due to planned and perceived obsolescence. be after obsolescence is the art of designing products that take ont delay a spacious time but last long enough for someone to grease ones palms the product again. Perceived obsolescence is changing the design of things to follow trends and keep up with the times. The number one example that people can relate to is the iPhone. If you dont have the newest and commodiousest iPhone, you are a social outcast. eyepatch this might be a tad over exaggerated, its not too far from the truth.In all actuality, polls show that our issue happiness is declining even though we have more stuff than ever so before. This is because we have less time for the things that truly make us clever like friends, family, and leisure time. At the cost of our planet and environment, are we authentically even living the good life?Fritjof Capra of Qualitative step-up said that human needs are finite, but human voraciousness is not. The major problems of our time cannot be understood in isolation they are all interconnected and interdependent. In our current economy, we have put property on a pedestal that is far too high for us to reach anymore. Most of the goods that are produced and sold are often superfluous and therefore are essentially waste. Even still, demographic pressure and beggary form a vicious circle that lead to a couple of(prenominal)er jobs and wider indigence gaps.These are the costs of the good life. Our current global economy is a system striving for unlimited quantitative growth and is manifestly unsustainable as previously stated. Looking again from an ecological standpoint, the bad growth resulting from this system leads to externalizing social and environmental costs, is based on fossil fuels, involves toxic substances, depletes our natural resources, and de grades the Earths ecosystems.Harvard professor Michael Sandel adds what I believe to be the close to interesting cost of the good life when it comes to affluenza. He argues that over the last three decades, we have drifted from having a market economy to becoming a market society. Although these two seem to be synonymous, they are actually kind of different. A market economy is a valuable and effective slam for organizing productive activity while a market society is a place where almost eitherthing is up for sale. By doing this, we have created a modality of life in which market values seep into almost every sphere of life and sometimes crowd out or feed important, non-market values.One of the examples that professor Sandel uses is congressional hearings in Washington D.C.. Lobbyists want to ensure these hearings and because the seats are limited, line-standing companies have arisen. Line-standing companies hire homeless people and accept them an hourly rate in order to wai t in line justbefore the hearing. According to the professor, this is wrong for two causes. In a democratic society, everyone should have equal access to representative government. The other reason its wrong is that it demeans representative government. When it comes to the point where almost everything in our earth life is sold off to the highest bidder, something is lost.Money matters more and more in our society. And against the background of rising inequality, money takes a toll on the third estate of our polite life. In other words, we lose a part of ourselves. Do we go so far that we are cheapening important social goods and civic goods that are worth caring about? Society allow for finally become a place of narcissistic opportunism where people will be buying their way into and out of positive and negative situations.What is the good life worth? Ive been struggling with this question a great deal lately. You may or may not be well-k straightwayn(prenominal) with the ter m first world problems. They are frustrations and complaints that are only experient by privileged individuals, typically used as a comedic thingmabob to make light of trivial inconveniences. Not having the latest gadget and the newest robes from a particular store are just a few examples. When I bought something, I failed to realize what I was actually paying. I now know that these consumer goods cost natural resources, valuable money, and so much more. The simplest way I can put it is that the cost of the good life priceless.