I don't mean to keep waiting a month in between posts. The time just seems to slip by.
I have been thinking about my last post and felt the need to expand upon the thoughts expressed therein. I'm not sure if I expressed myself fully. I began to read through my last post to see what I should edit or add. And you know, I feel like I did say just about everything without going into lots of details. The thing is, just because something is sold on a store shelf, or has pretty words on the label or cool pictures, doesn't make it a good product. Just because something isn't on your evening news doesn't mean it's not news and should be ignored. The media IS controlled by corporations; TV and radio stations are owned by bigger companies and individuals, and those owners govern at least to some extent, what gets aired on those stations. Remember when we only just started hearing about BPA? People worked very hard and diligently to keep pushing companies and institutions to do more research and to get the word out about its potential harmfulness, long before we even heard about it on the news.
Crazy or not, we as a society need to be more accountable for ourselves and the world we live in. I'd like to reiterate that I'm not a crunchy, granola-eating, Birkenstock-wearing tree-hugger. I don't practice all of these things perfectly that I'm talking about. It takes time to open your eyes to everything around you and really see what you have, what you can change, from the big things to the smallest things. Habits are very difficult to change, but they're not impossible.
Let me hear from you, people. Am I crazy? Do you get what I'm saying?
And the verdict is.. Not crazy. Habits ARE hard to change. Part of holding ourselves accountable is looking at our own personal practices and changing what we can, while accepting that sometimes change starts small. When you look around you, that can often be a hard thing to accept.
ReplyDeleteI had a conversation with my dad recently about climate change and he said that the big problem with the world today is that a bunch of people his age are running it. He said that people our age need to step up and say to his generation "Hey, you're ruining our futures. Stop that."
ReplyDeleteHe pointed to the Arab Spring as proof that social media can be harnessed successfully by the young to bring about revolution in ways their elders thought impossible. Since speaking to him I've been thinking about how I could use writing to effect change - not via social media but via using the fiction as my medium. No solutions yet, but I'm working on it.
I'm glad to see somebody else I know writing about this! xkcd is funny but I don't want to see our generation drown in apathy while the tundra melts and our coral die.