Wonderment

I was wondering what was enough.

You know? People always say, "That's enough." Maybe they'd think, "This is enough because I'm full. I can't handle one more piece of shrimp. Plus I hate shrimp, I'm just eating it to appease this girl to make her believe that I'm sophisticated and I eat a variety of shit." For most people, it's easy to know when there's enough food. Or if there's enough water. There's a minimum amount needed to survive.

There are examples of when there's too much: People that are morbidly obese. America is a nation of over eating. You can eat yourself to death here (which certainly shows in our most common causes of death).

On the flip side, there's a ton of examples of when there's not enough: People that are emaciated. Thinking about the latter statement reminds me of those really sad World Help Organization clips of the children from Africa just sadly staring into the lenses that cost more than it would take to feed them and their families for several months at least.

...

So still, my question is: At what point is there enough?

And you're probably wondering what I mean by that at this point. But still I need to give a little more explanation. We live in a relatively delicate ecosystem on a macro scale. One action can largely affect something else on the other side of the world. I won't go into specifics. The energy that keeps things moving and changing is largely sunlight. It constantly injects energy into our ecosystem. Sunlight keeps us warm. Sunlight makes sure our crops grow and then get changed into the filth we call food.

Think about that ecosystem again though. How and why do we divide resources up? There's a finite amount of "stuff" on the earth that we assign value to. It (the "stuff) hasn't all been discovered or researched enough to know its true worth. However, the "stuff" that we have is doled out every day. So if we have a finite amount of "stuff" that keeps growing every day, who's to say where it gets spread and who gets first dibs?

So we arrive at the question that I've asked a couple times now. "How much 'stuff' do we need?" And going further, "How ('stuff') much goes to which people and why?" It should be a simple thought but it's really not. People are not equal as seen by the food consumption comparison. The camera man of the famished African children certainly had a decent breakfast in order to focus the camera and hold it. Our American target audience has to shed at least one tear before picking up the phone to dial the toll-free number (and how can they do that if the child isn't in focus?). The different levels of the economy we live in certainly aren't equal. So, the decisions made to dole out our "stuff" aren't equal.

I'm being purposefully vague with what this "stuff" is. At this point in my short assortment of thoughts, one may have assigned a word or a term to "stuff." I won't mention any specifics to further my thought experiment.

And I want to end this brief document by stating what I know about why I have typed. I know people have come to the same questions. I know that people don't have an answer to the burning questions that I've proposed. And, I know that people have given up on the answer to their questions just as easily as I have. But, I know that these words will be preserved digitally for an eternity (or at least I hope they will).

Even though I know the things that I have previously mentioned, I don't really know a lot. With that said I just want whatever readers that happen upon this document to wonder.

What is "enough?" And how did you come to that conclusion yourself?

Man the weather is beautiful. Enjoy it while we can I suppose.