We often look back 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, or 100 years and ask, How did humans ever do that? What were they thinking? What was wrong with those people? We call them barbaric or monstrous, whether it was lobotomies on mental patients, denying women their rights, or denying minorities basic human dignity.

I always ask: why do we have to wait to look back on other societies? Why can’t we look at our own society and ask, What will the next generation think of us?

I believe there are three main areas where future generations will cringe at what we’ve done: our treatment of prisoners, our treatment of animals, and our treatment of Mother Nature. We have commodified living beings, and the destruction of our planet has been the result.

They will look back and say that didn’t need to use animal skins in cars or clothing. That we had materials for jackets and alternatives for bath products, yet we chose animal-based products anyway. They will think we were insane and monstrous for the scale of suffering we inflicted on animals, a holocaust multiplied millions of times, not to mention the destruction of the planet that followed.

They will also look back at how we treated desperate people who turned to desperate measures to survive in a cruel capitalist system, and how we threw them into unsanitary prisons where they were physically assaulted, and mentally abused. They will see that we claimed we “didn’t know better,” even though governments executed mentally challenged prisoners and sent drug addicts to jail for life instead of giving them the treatment they needed. 

When we tell future generations that we destroyed the planet because it was more profitable to do so, they will not look kindly upon us.

So I say: why wait? Let’s live today with the wisdom of the future. Just because we’ve lived this way our whole lives, and society has normalized it, doesn’t mean we can’t look at ourselves objectively and recognize that something is deeply wrong. We only have to look into our hearts and find the compassionate response, even though empathy has been systematically eroded by corporations.

Being a minimalist is actually quite easy. Being a maximalist is the hard part. That requires constant effort, time, and energy, hours spent shopping or browsing the internet to fill apartments and days with more things. Minimalism, by comparison, is simple.

All it really takes is one practice: whenever you feel the impulse to buy something, ask yourself, Do I really need this? That question alone will take you 90 percent of the way.

The solution is bringing consciousness to every decision we make. Ask yourself, Do I really need this? Let go of things you don’t need and don’t use. Becoming aware of the impact of our choices is about raising consciousness.

Along the path of minimalism, you might begin to buy local and eat local. These higher levels of consciousness naturally lead to higher levels of spirituality. 

There are many levels of consciousness and enlightenment. At lower levels, people see only objects. As consciousness expands, we begin to see connections, relationships, invisible links that show how everything is interconnected.

As awareness deepens, we become conscious of our actions, the actions of others, and the impact those actions have on people and the planet. This is the kind of awakening that can sweep the world. When consciousness rises, we stop allowing needless suffering, for ourselves and for others.