Earth's recent climate spiral.

[Leonardo17]

QED, these are all "the west".  I've heard that people also make things for profit in other places..and that consumers are very keen on aqcuiring these things from them.

Yes, and how much a few can make a profit at the expense of many, and what type of expenses that can be, before either they are stopped, or they are guillotined, or are invited to voluntarily contribute 80% of their ownership share in their privately owned capital asset for a small consideration of not being sent to an re-education camp, are quite different from place to place.

See, being spiritual that’s where I think spiritualism kicks in. What you are describing here is a typical attribute of the human ego (as it is described in almost all schools of spirituality). The Ego always seeks some sort of satisfaction somewhere “outside”. It sees the spiritual practice of turning inward and trying to find satisfaction on the inner level as a complete invention. So the Ego is like the Mick Jagger song of “I can’t get no satisfaction”. It always wants more, and more, and more, and even when it has “more” it’s still unhappy so it wants to buy Twitter or colonize Mars or whatever other insanity. That’s the very nature of the human Ego.
 
The solution: There are now teachers who are initiating 8 year old kids to Yoga and meditation (It’s not such an out of reach practice after all). Things like Yoga, Tai-Chi, Aikido etc. are now available in almost all good college campuses in the world. These are just some examples but there are also things like mountaineering, trekking, martial arts, animal therapies, Kama Sutra etc. that people are increasingly turning to in a way that is different from the purely materialistic approaches of some earlier eras like the 80’s.
 
Today many rich people know that that new Yatch, the new smat watch, that holyday on Turks and Caios islands is only going to make them feel good for a limited period of time.
 
So I see this as a fundamental, much needed change too. I had this mystical friend once who told me that “the only thing you truly need is this much of food (showing me his hand) + some amount of water”. And in fact. He is right. That’s all we need to exist in this planet.