Don’t Be A Hungry Ghost

The choice between tourist and traveler

“What if we only bought handmade things?” That was a question that my friend asked me back in 2002 and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since.

The colonial mindset quickly reduces everything to a set of commodities. Commodification replaces the handmade with the machine made — soul for cheapness.

When I experience Nature, sometimes in my backyard, sometimes in a park, sometimes in the middle of the city, I am experiencing the holy — something just beyond comprehension.

As humans we tend to worship that which is incomprehensible, that which provides us with life. There is nothing more sacred than the breath we take, the water we drink, the food we eat. Our home, our clothes, the fire which keeps us warm — these become objects of veneration and adoration.

That is our human nature. Commodification reduces these handmade holy things to mere objects that we can purchase. It reduces the process of making these things with to cogs in a machine.

The colonial mindset tells us that we can take and keep and own and possess that which we desire. This way of being is at odds with the sacred. The word sacred means something that we set aside, something that we think of as holy. Holy means healing, and the root of the word…