brave new world

"We are not going back to the old days. We are in a brand new world and we need to deal with it."

-my friend & neighbor Eric Baxter

Butters

A child crying at the death of a pet is pure emotion. Our pet rabbit died. I was sad, yes, but it really wasn't so much of a big deal for me, Butters was old. I've been jaded and numbed to the ideas of death. But today I felt a strong emotion. I almost cried. It wasn't for Butter's though, it was for this little boy and his tears. And this gives new meaning for me to the phrase, "if not for ourselves, then for the children." This same boy recently decided to be vegetarian. When he realized that he was eating dead animals he sat on the couch and cried for 20 minutes.

We have a responsibility to preserve and protect whatever we can. I think that the awareness of the knowledge of pain that death of an animal inflicts on humans and the initial guilt when it is done at our hands (directly or indirectly) means something. I can't count how many time I've heard someone say that "it makes me feel guilty that these animals were treated poorly" before they chomped into a cheese burger. It's easier when they don't have names or faces. My parents made me eat one of my pet chickens growing up. I cried so hard, I took one bite and felt ill. "Where did you think chicken came from?"

We have to numb ourselves to the idea that "it's just the way it is" and "death is fact of life" in order to swallow any of this.
It's not just the Food industry either, its all across the board.
The gas companies want to Frack in the area I grew up. This could potentially poison our watershed. But the fact of the matter is, I still use gas and oil. I'm guilty of the cause. It was easier for me to ignore the problem when the gas companies were exploiting some 3rd world country for it. Not that I didn't think it was bad. But now that the land they want to kill has a name and a face, the guilt becomes more real.

But I don't know how to stop all of this nonsense.

The government and the businesses say that the people steer the ship
that we vote with our dollars as well as with a ballot.
I think this is a lie. We live in a plutocracy where big business steers the
ship and we choose from the false display of options that they give us
and call it democracy.

Children are so refreshing.

the Triple Bottom Line

The new fad in business! If you pretend that recycling makes you an environmental steward and that your workers are real people, then you can make more money as a corporate business owner! Invest in your community and they will invest in you!

I was reading over some of the plans towards making Grand Rapids more sustainable. One thing that kept coming up was the Triple Bottom Line. A new buzz phrase in the business community that says that success should also be measured by social/ethical and environmental performance, its basis is the 3 P's: People, Planet, and Profit
"Companies as significant as AT&T, Dow Chemicals, Shell, and British Telecom, have used 3BL terminology in their press releases, annual reports and other documents."*
Some Critics say "the rhetoric is badly misleading, and may in fact provide a smokescreen behind which firms can avoid truly effective social and environmental reporting and performance."*

The fact of the matter is that my visions for social and environmental responsibility are starkly different from that which a CEO of AT&T or Dow Chemicals will propose.

Sounds like just another way to cover up the irreversible social and environmental impacts of large businesses and industries.

My roommate reminds me how our culture tends to name things after what we destroy.   Much like these corporations using Social and environmental sustainability as a facade to that which they exploit.

So I guess my bottom lines is that if Shell or Down Chemicals are token examples of Social and Environmental responsibility in the Triple Bottom Line movement then I call Bullshit.

*http://www.businessethics.ca/3bl/triple_bottom_line_abstract.html

human [vs] nature

(Photo from a Vietnam anti-war protest)

When it comes down to it, what will you be holding on to?