Once upon a time

Once upon a time, humans were forced to live ecologically, because their everyday existence required they directly handle all modes of their daily life existence. They could witness and touch what they created and used from start to end. Once upon a time, they also created and used only organic products and materials.  They learned which plants and animals were poisonous and dangerous and which behaviors caused imbalance. Nowadays, largely unknowingly, humans invent, produce, use, and ingest inorganic materials that poison themselves and the Earth. 

Education and proper action can help alter this poisonous behavior, but it's a wonder if curing it entirely, mostly, or just enough to continue our existence is possible. Impossible or not, we must try. If we can strive for riches and other typical desires, that we truly want or want merely due to social conditioning, we can equally strive to make a beautiful and healthy harmony with the natural environment, and hopefully each other. In the end, it's in our self-interest after all. As the world becomes increasingly more populated and globally-connected at a rapid pace, so do the environmental impacts of human activity become evermore connected and exponentialized.

Theretofore, we have desired riches and gold,
yet the Earth is bountiful in all the riches we could need or hoard,
Wheretofore do we carry on perilously or ecologically victoriously?