Lifestyle Conservation™

Over the course of the past few years I’ve developed a philosophy for my particular spiritual hue. Lifestyle Conservation is a term, which I believe sums up the inherent and unrefined perceptions that I’ve developed on life. At first any rational audience will find no tangible meaning to this phrase, and understandably so. There is no real premise or implication to this notion on the surface that can be empathetically grasped by anyone who merely encounters it in my writing or speech. But, I think that the initial impulse to reject this simple phrase for bearing no meaning is simply due to an inexperience with the ideals to which it ascribes and is solely based on the attempt to interpret from a prior understanding of the two words, lifestyle and conservation. Yet, when people ask me “what does that mean,” I often extrapolate on this term Lifestyle Conservation by first describing the notions that this phrase represents. For some, a sense of its implication becomes evident from the emotion to which it ascribes a meaning. Some are less quick than others to obtain the necessary rationale and its possible that for those of a different culture or a different generation my ideas simply don’t translate affectively, and that’s ok. But if I am able to extrapolate somewhat clearly, I hope that for many, the feelings that you have about how we seek balance in our lives will start to make sense of the ideas that I believe are a healthy path to the future. As we grapple with the nature of technologies and social progress, the overwhelming feeling that I sense all around us is that sooner or later, something that supports our world today has got to give. The only question is are we prepared to deal with that?

It all starts with a simple can of beer. I was drawn to ideas of recycling from a young age, partly from my communities overwhelming influence on social responsibilities and partly because I always ascribed to the biological principles that all things in life aught to be conservative and efficient. When I got to college I was shocked that other golden ghettos were not quite as golden as the one I grew up in and that social infrastructures like recycling were not commonplace. Some kids didn’t even understand the concept that aluminum cans can be boiled down to make new aluminum cans infinitely and conservatively. Yet, their lifestyles revolved around daily consumption of sodas and juices and beers and whatever else you can buy in can, day in day out, producing ton after ton of un-recycled and irresponsible waste. I was frustrated, not with the lack of concern for the environment, since after all, aluminum comes from the ground, aluminum goes into the ground, no big deal. But I was irritated by a blatant disregard for rational thought that accomplishes the understanding that production has value and costs associated with it.

I finally came to realize that as Americans, we are so saturated with the influence of material production that we’ve become indifferent to some of our basic acknowledgements of process, production, and energies required to sustain our lifestyle. What was toughest of all to comes to terms with, was that we’re happy this way, me included! It’s convenient to have individually wrapped slices of cheese and wrapped candies inside bags inside boxes wrapped in plastic. These things make sense to us because they work and they make our life easy and predictable and comfortable. We love our things in small packages and our food on the go with our cups in our cars. And why shouldn’t we. The simplicities we can afford allow us to make great progress in our world. We produce music, art, medications, and six legged chickens with a little help from Dunkin’ or a boost from Jamba. But the questions I really started to ask once I realized all these things about us were; Are we ok? Can this really last forever? Will we know when or how to change before it’s too late? Can we conserve this lifestyle?

On the surface, I’m tempted to simply say no, we can’t. But there’s just that nagging little Bloom inside of me that is just like all the rest of you. Too stubborn to give in, too comfortable to let it go. Holding on to that flag of awesomeness and waving until my knuckles bleed. Because its impossible going down that other road with the extremists and the activists and the environmentalists and all the other people who stomp their feet and waive their fists. They won’t get this world to change, not with the attitude that we’re all wrong and we need to alter our society dramatically. No, we don’t need to change how we live and the lifestyles that we’ve worked to achieve. What we need to change is how go about living this way. That is the true essence of Lifestyle Conservation.

Innovation and improvements need to be made to our infrastructure of living and incentives need to be created that influence these changes. Not incentives based solely on profit and dominance, but based on compassion and social equality. Capitalism is a great thing when utilized for a greater good. Products can be produced that serve a purpose in the world that brings efficiency and happiness to customers and producers. Life can be great and pure. But we have to work towards it. We have to expand our understanding of what it is to be alive before we can presume to hold dominance over the natural world. If we don’t, we’re destined to become another lost cosmic spec sooner than we need to be.

These ideas, in essence, embody the metaphysical ideal of Lifestyle Conservation. But there is the happier side too. The inspiration is endless but the goal is set. I intend to build this philosophy into the endeavors of my career. After all it’s an official trademark of my life. All the things that I work for and believe in fall under the cloak of Lifestyle Conservation, which I intend to use to market my ideas. My entrepreneurial mind-set is driven by this desire to create real life solutions to the problems that affect the way we live today and the problems we’ll have tomorrow. We don’t need to change the lifestyles that we have and it’s not likely that we can. But we can change the ways in which have them. Lifestyle innovation. Lifestyle gentrification. Lifestyle Conservation.