A State of Mind

Everywhere I go I see the type of culture and life to which I am accustomed to. I am a taker and something mother culture has always told me that that is the correct way. What I hear is that the takers are better off than the leavers but what this chapter brought me to wonder is if it really is better. In my world of the takers people have a very set routine in which we work earn money spend it and do it all over again. We takers live in a world where we have satisfied our needs and are going for the wants. The problem with this is that we will always want more if we get more. Wants are not like needs which you can satisfy but they are never enough. This chapter talks about the agricultural revolution and what a turning point it was in our history. We also learn several of the leaver’s points of view.
The takers are trading what they want for happiness and this is what made me think about being a taker. Am I trading stress, anger and many other symptoms for my wants. We takers have already satisfied our needs and the search for the wants is what is deteriorating us. We takers have a fear for the leaver’s life style. Since we decided that we did not want that life style a long time ago we are now afraid to go back. Our needs have been so well sufficed that obesity and other food bourn diseases are a great problem today. Ishmael and the narrator have their differences in this chapter and something that Ishmael said on page 212 caught my attention, he said “I know you don’t, and that’s what irks me. You’ve become a passive listener here, turning your brain off when you sit down and turning it when you get up to leave.” This caught my attention since it made me wonder if I sometimes do that. My final conclusion was to where we were headed. Where are we were going to end up? We have reached the top and are now starting to go down. Our resources are ending and we believe that our needs are increasing. What can we do to stop this state of mind?