Ethics Essay
With Thanksgiving right around the corner, I got to thinking about the scrumptious feast
that I along with millions of other Americans will surely partake in devouring in in four day’s
time. Then I got to thinking about portions. On Thursday, my plate will be fully loaded from rim
to rim, five inches high, with turkey, stuffing, green beans, bread rolls, cranberry sauce, pumpkin
pie, and a limitless list of other delicacies. What's more, i will more than likely return to the
kitchen and repile my plate once, twice, three times more. These traits, greed and gluttony, are
traits that I share with the majority of people in modern day society here in the United States. We
are shamefully greedy, and it's not just on one day of the year with food, it's a personality trait
and lifestyle for many Americans that has been acquired slowly but surely throughout the
decades. Before the United States became a place of unimaginable power, wealth, excellence,
and possibilities, it was a country that was made up of millions of hard working and determined
families that sacrificed their blood sweat and tears in order to earn a simple lifestyle with a roof
over their heads, clothes on their back, food in their stomachs, and freedom in their future. Of
course there are still people out there that have upheld these values, for modern day America is a
product of their relentless efforts; however, as a nation, we are beginning to feel extremely
entitled to our possessions. Furthermore, nothing is ever good enough to satisfy our craving for
more. As Americans, we refuse to accept simplicity and mediocrity, nothing is ever good
enough. It can never just be one portion on thanksgiving, one present under the Christmas tree,
one sports car in the garage, one person’s unconditional love and affection. However, the
materialistic greed is not the tremendous issue at hand, we are only human and even one hundred
years from now people will acknowledge and understand that. The frightening reality is
that in one hundred years from now, people will be forced to live in a world that contains very
little usable fresh water. In one hundred years from now, people will ask, “How could they have
tolerated wasting so much of our precious water?” It goes hand in hand with our inability to be
satisfied. Anymore, we can't just take a two minute shower to get clean. No, we take a thirty
minute shower in steaming hot water in which we manage to bathe, brush our teeth, shave our
entire body hairless, and listen to the majority of Justin Bieber’s new album. We can't fathom the
idea of brushing our teeth without the sink running the entire time in case we decide to spit out
some toothpaste. We can't just fill up our glass with a moderate amount of water that will quench
our thirst, instead we fill it to the brim, take five sips out of the glass, and dump the rest down the
drain. Westerners can't settle with a rocky-desert yard terrain, they have to tear up the entire
yard, install a plush patch of thirsty green grass, and water it twice a week for thirty minutes at a
time. The examples of irresponsibly handling water are never-ending, and people all around the
nation live their daily lives taking fresh water for granted, obliviously thinking that we have an
unlimited supply of it hidden somewhere. Americans fail to recognize that people all around the
world are drinking water out of contaminated ponds, and they fail to recognize that they are
contributing to the day that their future grandchildren cherish water the same way that we cherish
the dollar bill. Unfortunately, most people who abuse the use of fresh water have somehow
justified their irresponsible actions by claiming that they work extremely hard and have earned it,
or that everybody else does it, not just them, etc. Nowadays, people have a hard time hearing and
accepting the fact that they can't everything that they want, exactly how they want it. For the
sake of our future generations, for the sake of our future nation as a whole, an effective national
water conservation campaign must take place before it's too late. The government must get
involved, legitimate laws must be put into place, it must be taken just as seriously as slavery was
100 years before we walked this earth. For if not, future Americans will continue to cry out,
“How could they have tolerated that?”.