We think we are entitled to as much of anything as we want. In the animal kingdom this type of behavior is counter-balanced. We are too powerful for our own good, so our only option (until it’s too late) – if we want to avoid major suffering and devastation – is to be our own counter-weight. Nature is fighting back right now, and the next few decades are critical.
Standard of living – it would help things if we could make luxury unnecessary: if people feel good about themselves they don’t need possessions to feel good, and naturally a sustainable standard of living is achieved.
Viewing people outside their country as humans too wouldn’t hurt either.
On that note, aren’t people like Sarah Palin hypocritical? They supposedly believe in the sacred value of human life, forcing raped women who get pregnant to have a child because the zygote or whatever it’s called is life….yet have no problem with their American army killing innocent civilians.
American life is sacred, all others are secondary.
We are each responsible for our own impact on the planet. As populations grow finite resources get consumed and become scarce. If consumption is not controlled, the planet begins to die and then we do.
We have institutions that govern our society that tell us we don’t have to be responsible – courts of law, schools(?), even governments that allow private interests to go too far (prime housing debacle). Only when the shit hits the fan do we realize that our actions and choices actually matter.
Vision for future: people living sustainably, doing what they can to alleviate their burden on the earth. Ties in to what Obama was saying at Harvard about active citizenship, where citizens live and work not only for themselves but each other.
We need government to create a fair playing field for markets. Legislation that allows anyone and everyone a chance, not giving special considerations to those already with power and money. Like Robert Kennedy Jr. says, if the true costs of products were borne out in the market, we would be well on our way to lightening our footprints on earth. Animals tread lightly on this planet. Humans do not. We are only beginning to realize this and that it has really serious repercussions. We call human life the most valuable of blessings, yet we cannot see that we are indirectly killing ourselves. They don’t have a loud enough voice, those who talk about the future of the planet. Maybe once nature has had its say we will start to listen to ourselves (if we are still around).
The main obstacle is likely people bent on maintaining or raising their profits, no matter the cost to their countrymen/women, families, children, or the planet. By naming them we evoke emotion but the truth is that every stakeholder is the same.
Saving the planet = ourselves = our future generations, and this is true no matter the order you put the stakeholders in.
So what will it take? It’s going to take real education. People must learn about the real impact of their actions.
They must think about the future in terms of how their actions will affect future generations. But they must also think about their actions now, because the present time is where real change occurs.
Drop the mentality that it takes time to effect change. It does on a broad scale, but only because it takes people time to accept that it doesn’t take time! A paradox?
Regardless, individual change simply takes willingness and observation of self. If a person has a goal in mind and is working towards it, and wants to know how they are doing, all they need to do is observe. Observe themselves and their interactions with the people and things surrounding them.
Feeling like a part of a collective effort is satisfying for most humans. It gives their lives meaning and motivates them to act according to their own beliefs.
Right now, this is having an undesirable effect. People are not believing in the power of choice, and because no one does, everyone feels ok about it. The problem is that today, people do not think there is an alternative to feeling helpless.
Humans cannot think very far outside their own world for very long, but that is ok. They don’t need to, all they have to do is make choices according to their own beliefs and values, and know that it matters. The water and wine story applies here.
To do this, people must be educated about how the commercial options available to them today – products, services – are made and delivered to them. Make the "abstract" real. In other words, teach them how their day to day lives, the everyday choices, affect the world on a broad scale. Ultimately, what effect that is having on the planet or their fellow humans. The survival of the species is what is at stake when we are talking about the planet health.
The questions the people on earth should ask themselves when making any choice: am I doing harm, am I causing damage by making this choice? Do I have to make this choice? If the answer is yes and no respectively, don’t do it. The hard part is teaching people that yes is the answer to the first question, when asked about many products and services available in today’s markets.
A type of journalism could be to travel the world, telling the stories of the people who work at Coke factories, etc. It might make the consumers who need those ‘slave labourers’ think twice about buying. It’s too bad that many are addicted to many products, an attachment that will be hard to break. It starts when you are a child, and we all know habits are hard to break. This is why early education and proper conditioning is necessary. There's also addiction as a symptom of mental illness, caused -partially, let's say- by improper nutrition.
Now that's fucked up. We start eating crappy foods because it's cheap and tasty, which makes us mentally ill because our bodies aren't supposed to be fed so much sugar and synthetic shit etc., and that mental illness that the food caused, takes us right back to the very same food.
People must not grow up into money earning and spending adults who think that where they choose to spend their money does not matter. When you look at money, where it goes is one of the only things that matter because it is has the power to create or ease suffering.
Standard of living – it would help things if we could make luxury unnecessary: if people feel good about themselves they don’t need possessions to feel good, and naturally a sustainable standard of living is achieved.
Viewing people outside their country as humans too wouldn’t hurt either.
On that note, aren’t people like Sarah Palin hypocritical? They supposedly believe in the sacred value of human life, forcing raped women who get pregnant to have a child because the zygote or whatever it’s called is life….yet have no problem with their American army killing innocent civilians.
American life is sacred, all others are secondary.
We are each responsible for our own impact on the planet. As populations grow finite resources get consumed and become scarce. If consumption is not controlled, the planet begins to die and then we do.
We have institutions that govern our society that tell us we don’t have to be responsible – courts of law, schools(?), even governments that allow private interests to go too far (prime housing debacle). Only when the shit hits the fan do we realize that our actions and choices actually matter.
Vision for future: people living sustainably, doing what they can to alleviate their burden on the earth. Ties in to what Obama was saying at Harvard about active citizenship, where citizens live and work not only for themselves but each other.
We need government to create a fair playing field for markets. Legislation that allows anyone and everyone a chance, not giving special considerations to those already with power and money. Like Robert Kennedy Jr. says, if the true costs of products were borne out in the market, we would be well on our way to lightening our footprints on earth. Animals tread lightly on this planet. Humans do not. We are only beginning to realize this and that it has really serious repercussions. We call human life the most valuable of blessings, yet we cannot see that we are indirectly killing ourselves. They don’t have a loud enough voice, those who talk about the future of the planet. Maybe once nature has had its say we will start to listen to ourselves (if we are still around).
The main obstacle is likely people bent on maintaining or raising their profits, no matter the cost to their countrymen/women, families, children, or the planet. By naming them we evoke emotion but the truth is that every stakeholder is the same.
Saving the planet = ourselves = our future generations, and this is true no matter the order you put the stakeholders in.
So what will it take? It’s going to take real education. People must learn about the real impact of their actions.
They must think about the future in terms of how their actions will affect future generations. But they must also think about their actions now, because the present time is where real change occurs.
Drop the mentality that it takes time to effect change. It does on a broad scale, but only because it takes people time to accept that it doesn’t take time! A paradox?
Regardless, individual change simply takes willingness and observation of self. If a person has a goal in mind and is working towards it, and wants to know how they are doing, all they need to do is observe. Observe themselves and their interactions with the people and things surrounding them.
Feeling like a part of a collective effort is satisfying for most humans. It gives their lives meaning and motivates them to act according to their own beliefs.
Right now, this is having an undesirable effect. People are not believing in the power of choice, and because no one does, everyone feels ok about it. The problem is that today, people do not think there is an alternative to feeling helpless.
Humans cannot think very far outside their own world for very long, but that is ok. They don’t need to, all they have to do is make choices according to their own beliefs and values, and know that it matters. The water and wine story applies here.
To do this, people must be educated about how the commercial options available to them today – products, services – are made and delivered to them. Make the "abstract" real. In other words, teach them how their day to day lives, the everyday choices, affect the world on a broad scale. Ultimately, what effect that is having on the planet or their fellow humans. The survival of the species is what is at stake when we are talking about the planet health.
The questions the people on earth should ask themselves when making any choice: am I doing harm, am I causing damage by making this choice? Do I have to make this choice? If the answer is yes and no respectively, don’t do it. The hard part is teaching people that yes is the answer to the first question, when asked about many products and services available in today’s markets.
A type of journalism could be to travel the world, telling the stories of the people who work at Coke factories, etc. It might make the consumers who need those ‘slave labourers’ think twice about buying. It’s too bad that many are addicted to many products, an attachment that will be hard to break. It starts when you are a child, and we all know habits are hard to break. This is why early education and proper conditioning is necessary. There's also addiction as a symptom of mental illness, caused -partially, let's say- by improper nutrition.
Now that's fucked up. We start eating crappy foods because it's cheap and tasty, which makes us mentally ill because our bodies aren't supposed to be fed so much sugar and synthetic shit etc., and that mental illness that the food caused, takes us right back to the very same food.
People must not grow up into money earning and spending adults who think that where they choose to spend their money does not matter. When you look at money, where it goes is one of the only things that matter because it is has the power to create or ease suffering.
2 comments:
I think another problem we have today with effecting change is that the overwhelming majority of the population live their lives forced to consider their daily needs. People who work 12 hr shift doing manual labour don't have the time, energy or motivation and justifiably so, to really question the morality of a lot of their actions. In addition, those of us who have the luxury of the time, energy and motivation to really think about the consequences of our actions are so overloaded with messages about how shitty and crappy the effects of our daily life are that we are becoming desensitized to it. All we hear about is how we are wrecking the environment and robbing developing countries but we find it so easy to create a shred of uncertainty that we can then cling to while we do nothing. It's like the global warming debate, as long as people could preserve a little uncertainty, no one had to really feel bad about what was happening. We know things are bad but aren't they getting better slowly and maybe it's not our fault. I think the way that we have hollowed out the spiritual core of our society and pretended like it was nothing but some kind of crutch or poor explanation for the way things are that now can simply be replaced by science, has really had a huge negative impact on our behavior. Meaning is no longer readily accessible for people in their lives so they rely on distractions and material pleasure and consumption to fill their time. I think that maybe people know the way we live is unsustainable and bad for the world but also, they know that they need to live this way and that without all of this luxury and distraction, our lives would be totally meaningless. I don't know, I think if like 90% of the world's population was wiped out and the rest could kind of start again then we could really build something better.
In reference to:
"the overwhelming majority of the population live their lives forced to consider their daily needs. People who work 12 hr shift doing manual labour don't have the time, energy or motivation and justifiably so, to really question the morality of a lot of their actions"
I disagree I think people are always going to have to eat, for example, and even if you don't have much time or money you can still eat things that are good for you. It's just being conscious of what you are doing on a bigger scale. Although maybe if we just focus on being good to ourselves it will help the rest of the world too. And I agree that the system we have created forces people to be unhealthy in many different ways, making it hard to break habits.
As far as being desensitized goes, it comes down to how well you understand it I think. Like you said, if you are uncertain about the effects of your choices you aren't going to change them, but once you realize the connection I think it's a no-brainer.
The other part of it is making people realize that their choices matter. I think that could be incredibly powerful.
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