Balancing Simple Living with Modern Life

It's sometimes hard to deny the advantages brought by modern life to the benefits of mankind, medicine has gotten better, people are living longer, transport is a lot more comfortable, telecommunications, internet all these things have made our lives more convenient. But have they made us happier? Can we really say that we're living a more fulfilling life than the ancient Romans, Greeks, Egyptians did? What about simpler ancient cultural organisations, the Aborigines, are we happier than the them? Is my TV making me happier than an Aborigine going on an exciting hunting trip? Is my car giving me a more fulfilling life than an Roman on a horse road trip to Constantinople? 

The answer to that is two sided, our society has come a long way, we've abolished slavery, genders are more equal in rights, science is answering more of our fundamental questions about the universe and life. These are definitely changes we should embrace.  

But what about the changes that make our life more complicated than it should, it's easy to excess and get dragged away by these changes. Finding the right balance can be one of the most challenging tasks that faces humanity today. 

I think one of the biggest roadblocks to simplicity is the sheer volume of input we get from our external environment. Think about it: regardless of where you go, you are bombarded until you're on sensory overload. We live in a society that places value on "multitasking". What ever happened to doing one thing at 

a time and focusing all of our attention on it?

People are becoming robots, cases of denationalization are increasing, the feeling of being controlled by a CPU is killing our soul.

I believe that life becomes richer and more meaningful if we slow down and practice mindfulness in the moment. That's easy to say, but hard to do. Even so, I think we have many opportunities during the day to take a few moments and focus on one thing, thought or action rather than allowing ourselves to be constantly distracted.

There are however things that could help us reconnect with our natural simple living life, things we can blend into our everyday modern life that can bring the suppressed Homo Sapien inside of us out, and break us free of our plastic bubble we've created for ourselves. 

We've advanced from our home base, and we're in an unnatural place that's not harmonious with our environment or homosapien physiology.