Abstract

EarthEarth, our common home is in a precarious state as we have transgressed important geo-bio-physical limits of the planetaryPlanetary boundaries. Among the root causes of the destruction of our planetaryPlanetary home is the endless orgy of profligate consumptionConsumption and wasteWaste. We have appeared to lose any sense of limit whatsoever. We live in a societySociety that exalts luxuryLuxury and reckless consumptionConsumption of resources, resulting not only in the degradation of life-sustaining ecosystems but also in widening levels of socio-economic inequalitiesInequalitysocio-economic.We need to embrace the virtuesVirtue of simplicitySimplicity and moderationModeration, if we are to conserve EarthEarth as a home where all forms of life, including the humans can flourish. Fortunately, we do have important resources within our own religious and ethical traditions in this regard. Faith traditions insist on the importance of frugalityFrugality and measure in the use of material resources and call upon their adherents to cultivate the virtuesVirtue of voluntary restraint and self-disciplineSelf-discipline. As one of the Gospel beatitudesBeatitude reminds us: “Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth” (Mt 5:5).In this paper, we shall proceed according to the “See-Judge-Act” methodology. We will begin with the precarious state of EarthEarth, identify its root causes in unbridled consumerismConsumerism sustained by the viceVice of gluttonyGluttony, and propose a radical ecological conversion towards sobrietySobriety by walking gently on the very land that sustains us.