The OFFICIAL Unofficial Achewood Message Board
Trivial Pursuits => History => Topic started by: linnea on September 26, 2007, 06:49:49 am
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I attended a lecture tonight that really moved me by Not For Sale (http://www.notforsalecampaign.org/).
Their presentation made me feel like I'd just been punched in the stomach. I'd never learned much about this until now, but I feel really strongly about it and this issue is important to me. I wanted to let you party people know about it. There is also a movie called "Trade" that's being released on Sept. 28th, and Lionsgate films is donating a huge amount (I think he said 5% of gross ticket sales) for all profits made during the first week of the film's release to help combat human trafficking.
The lecture I attended was given by a professor who works for NFS, he had his students start a mapping project to track human trafficking in their home city of San Francisco, and it snowballed from there. The slave trade is the #3 top criminal activity on the planet, rivaling drug trafficking and the illegal arms trade.
It is a $32 billion dollar industry, and 27 million people worldwide are being exploited.
200,000 people live enslaved at this moment in the US.
700,000 children are forced into domestic labor in Indonesia, 559,000 in Brazil, 264,000 in Pakistan, 250,000 in Haiti, and 200,000 in Kenya.
People tend to think of prostitution as being the mainstay of human trafficking, but people are trafficked for other means as well, such as sweatshop labour and other forced labour. Women and children are the majority of trafficked individuals, but men are trafficked too.
If you sign up for OurStage (http://www.ourstage.com/go/endslavery), they will donate $2 for each signup to Not For Sale (http://www.notforsalecampaign.org/). It's free and it only takes a moment, so if you sign up I'd appreciate it.
"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men (and women) do nothing." -Edmund Burke
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Damn, that's some harsh shit. I just signed up, not exactly doing much but it's something.
Apparently there's a major problem with this sort of thing here in Qatar (and the middle east in general).. people from the third world being exploited to fuck. There's a shitload of labourers brought here from villages in the arse-end of nowhere after signing a contract they can't even understand, then getting their passports confiscated and made to work outdoors in the scorching heat all day. Same goes with house-maids, except sexual abuse is said to be pretty rampant. They're treated like third-class citizens a lot of the time too, especially by the locals. They move out here to get money to send home to their families, then end up not getting paid or whatever. You don't hear about it much though, the government likely just covers it up. They aint adverse to the odd bit of censorship.
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Yeah, slavery is alive and well in fourth world countries. I took a special interest in puppetry while in Indonesia, and one common character is "the coquettish maid." I brought home an intricately crafted maid puppet... she has a special cushion on her bum so that you can make it wiggle and dance to entice people... it's odd to say the least. The serving class was one of the more unsettling and uncomfortable parts of my visit.
I was watching a doc. called "Selling Sex in Heaven" about sex tourism, prostitution, sexual slavery in the Philippines last night. The women in the brothels live in 4X8 rooms, two to a room sharing a single cot and have sex with 15 men per night on average. They are locked into the brothel at all times. One of the film makers noted that the dream of meeting an American who will fall in love, marry you and take you to the US is what draws many into the life. He was saying the likelyhood of this happening is about equivalent to the number of impoverished kids from the ghetto who make it into the NBA - i.e. just enough to keep hope alive.
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Slavery is rampant in "first world countries" too, like the San Francisco example that I mentioned. A couple in Denver was recently busted for enslaving a woman as a maid . They took her passport, beat her several times a day, and sexually assaulted her thousands of times. People who are enslaved are everywhere, probably even in your hometown, but they're invisible. In the documentary I watched, a Russian trafficker boasted that she made $2k a week for each girl that she captured and sold to a brothel - $24,000 for a girl who had been enslaved three months.
There is a woman (Kru Nam) in Chiang Rai, Thailand, who was an artist. For a project she brought canvases to the street children of Chiang Rai and had them paint stories about their lives. She was totally unprepared for the horrors they painted. She started running into bars and nightclubs, grabbing 2 or 3 kids, and just running the hell out of there with the rescued children. She had to hide the kids she rescued, and bviously the pimps and traffickers realized what she was doing and put up a bounty for her so she had to leave Chiang Rai. http://notforsale.rightreality.com/video/kru_nam.html
Another woman worked in Lima, Peru. She worked with kids in detention facilities. After talking to these kids, she realized that most of them were from far away - children who had been trafficked to Lima to work in the sex industry. They would try to escape their pimps and live anywhere they could, such as sleeping in parks. Street kids are seen as untouchable scum, the lowest of the low. When the police picked them up, they would RETURN THE CHILDREN TO THEIR PIMPS FOR A BOUNTY. If they couldn't locate the child's pimp, they would take the kid to the detention center.
The kids at the detention center implored her to help the other street kids, since the ones who were in juvenile hall were somewhat protected. She started going out to parks and other places to give the kids food and try to help them. She told one of them that they could sleep at her office, which would be a safe place, and asked the child to bring others. When she stopped by her office later that night to check in on them, she could not force the door open. When they realized it was her and not the police, they edged open the door, and nearly six hundred children were sleeping there. At that point, she became committed to helping them and a dedicated abolitionist.
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dude, Travis Bickle would fuck up some bitches.
but, yes, that is so fucked up. People are depressing.
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Yeah, some people are awful. Maybe if we whine about it enough their hearts will magically be full of love and puppy dogs!
I'm against forced slavery (I'm all for people being allowed to sell themselves if they want, though) but these onanistic organizations just annoy me.
My life is poorer for the twenty seconds I spent on that web site.
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So I looked up onanistic, but I still don't see the connection.
These websites practice the old pull-out method?
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I agree with Jough in a way--ie, these organizations usually don't do any good. But I think they should still be around.
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I can't believe you two. That's some powerful stuff and some insane injustice going on. I'm glad I saw it.
It made me think for a minute, about man's inhumanity to man. About the nature of human progress. About the universal nature of cruelty.
About the possibility that I should free my slaves.
I really will consider it. After my pyramid is finished.
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I mean, I am with them to a point, but there are things that need to be changed to cause the change they want, I guess (Workers of the World unite). Mainly just the stuff like sign up and we will donate x amount to y. I am skeptical of all that shit. (oh yeah, because it is free. Never mind. But really, campaigning to white liberals with no slaves about slaves they don't have doesn't really do shit. Unless you kill the slave masters. I am all for that.) Why not just give your money to y? When sitting on your couch signing up for websites gives you a sense of accomplishment "they" win.
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I mean, I am with them to a point, but there are things that need to be changed to cause the change they want, I guess (Workers of the World unite). Mainly just the stuff like sign up and we will donate x amount to y. I am skeptical of all that shit. (oh yeah, because it is free. Never mind. But really, campaigning to white liberals with no slaves about slaves they don't have doesn't really do shit. Unless you kill the slave masters. I am all for that.) Why not just give your money to y? When sitting on your couch signing up for websites gives you a sense of accomplishment "they" win.
I guess I wasn't too clear in my post. I don't know about you, but I do a lot of volunteer work. That's how I heard about this organization, through one of the groups I volunteer with. The first step to changing anything is to get involved. I am learning more about this group and would like to donate my time to help this particular cause. That is a far cry from "sitting on my couch signing up for websites."
That being said, I probably will not be on the front lines, mapping trafficking locations and shooting documentary videos, but there are other people who will. That's where philanthropy and volunteer work comes in. You help the crazed activists fight the good fight, rather than sitting at home and bitching about other people who try to make a difference.
Also, I think the earlier post was the transcribed FLUT sound of Jough's brain realizing that all the cash he's shelled out to punch hookers has gone to help fund slavery.
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No no, i understand. I am just skeptical of everything, I guess. See I believe that capitalism, and the problems it causes, lead to most of the horrible shit in the world. That is my thing.
I volunteered from about the age of ten until I went to college at the OKC Salvation Army. I will probably do more things like this after college, but, I think my main point is, IDK, it is like giving a homeless person a dollar. That makes you feel good and like you are helping people, and the homeless dude gets his wine. But there are a lot of homeless dudes and a bunch a sick fucks enslaving children. You can't give them all dollars.
This is hard for me to get across. Alright, if you feed the people at the salvation army, or volunteer for the Not For Sale movement or whatever, there are still people that are hungry and enslaved. Radical things usually need to occur for change to happen. But you feel better about your position in the world and about yourself. You genuinely want to help, and that is understood, but this type of thing usually need a rapture to be resolved. Usually gaining huge amounts of power and then fighting for rights, but then, assuming once you are rich you are not a conservative worried about yourself and whats yours (a fairly huge assumption) you die and someone else controls your assets and eventually it gets to bad hands.
Again, with this being said, I will probably volunteer my time again after college (I volunteered for the Dean campaign, but I don't think that is the same thing), but, just, I mean it helps, but to a certain extent it helps the person who is doing the work more than the hungry. It is still a good thing, but, idk, hopefully you understand what I am saying.
One of the members of Blur was talking, in the documentary called "Live Forever", about the upcoming campaigns. He was saying he agrees somewhat with the liberal party, but not really. He wondered whether it would be better to give conservatives all the power until things are in such a bad position that some type of revolutionary change occurs, or let the liberals keep the country floating along, but not really improving things. I think I am a fan of the first option.
Also, LFM had a great post, where it is I don't remember, which basically just said that, you know, people are trying to keep afloat and there are millions of ways to help and which is right, etc. That is kind of the issue I am getting at. I am not trying to belittle you in any way. Just saying what, as someone who considers himself to be a liberal has thought about in relation to all the complexities of our society.
Also, as a (not very studious) history major, nearly all social change has involved a catastrophe (great depression--new deal), massive, massive amounts of people (civil rights), some type of violent/racial/scare tactic type intimidation (a lot- prohibition is one of them- had the opposite effect in civil rights) or war. Now, I don't really study any pre-Great War western stuff so...
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Well, I do believe in the inalienable rights of people to do whatever the fuck they want as long as they don't fuck up other people's shit (I'm paraphrasing Thomas Jefferson and Alaister Crowley) and that includes people's right to sell themselves (in whole or in part) if they want. My personal "no thank you" policy on prostitution has more to do with disease phobia than on dismissal on moral grounds.
As for people who abuse other people, like the couple who imprisoned their maid, or Rick James, what is this activist group going to do to help them? Write a carefully composed letter? It's already illegal to enslave someone so writing to Congress is out. The problem with groups like this is that the only means they have to avoid ineffectuality is vigilante justice, but you'd have to find the slave owners first.
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People who are enslaved are everywhere, probably even in your hometown, but they're invisible.
QFT. About three years ago, the police shut down a brothel half a mile from my old house. The rumor was that it was filled with Mexican slave girls, none of whom spoke English, who were locked in their rooms 24/7. They had been brought in illegally by a legally-documented Mexican man. The newspaper said in its only article on the subject that the place was empty when the police arrived, and they found "75 to 100" condom wrappers in the trash. The story also said there was a pimp and two prostitutes involved, but I seem to recall there being a later story on the TV news stating that the two women were actually pimps as well, and the prostitutes were underage. (That might have been another brothel that was shut down across town that same month, however.)
There was a spot on The Daily Show (http://www.comedycentral.com/motherload/player.jhtml?ml_video=103223&ml_collection=&ml_gateway=&ml_gateway_id=&ml_comedian=&ml_runtime=&ml_context=show&ml_origin_url=/shows/the_daily_show/videos/most_recent/index.jhtml%3Frsspartner%3Drssyahoo&ml_playlist=&lnk=&is_large=true) recently, as well, focusing on slave trafficking in the US. The journalist seems like kind of a dip to me, but it's still amazing that this kind of stuff goes on under our noses all the time and nobody pays any attention.
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One of the members of Blur was talking, in the documentary called "Live Forever", about the upcoming campaigns. He was saying he agrees somewhat with the liberal party, but not really. He wondered whether it would be better to give conservatives all the power until things are in such a bad position that some type of revolutionary change occurs, or let the liberals keep the country floating along, but not really improving things. I think I am a fan of the first option.
the other day in Poli Sci we were talking about how plato basically says that right after Democracy governments devolve into a crazy left-wing thing where the people think they're in power-- redistribution of wealth, etc. he calls this a "tyranny," but that word doesn't really mean what it used to mean.
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This is hard for me to get across. Alright, if you feed the people at the salvation army, or volunteer for the Not For Sale movement or whatever, there are still people that are hungry and enslaved.
So you're saying that it's pointless to try to help alleviate suffering unless you can make certain that none of the planet's 6.6 billion people are hungry or enslaved? I don't know about you, but I'd feel damn guilty living such a privileged American life if I was sitting around rationalizing why I was a lazy fug who didn't lift a finger to help those less fortunate.
I think that folks are too complacent in the US to stage any kind of large scale revolution. We have more people voting in the American Idol than in the presidential elections, for fuck's sake. The only time shit has ever gotten done is when a small group of committed citizens have gotten off their asses and started working for change. You're never going to see the American populace as a whole giving half a shit for those less fortunate.
Jough: the Not For Sale group did recon work to figure out hotspots in the SF area for human trafficking, then they mapped it, then they sent in hidden cameras and filmed all the transactions to gather evidence. Then they went to shelters, advocacy groups, and churches to garner infrastructure to help support the victims once they were freed from the traffickers. If they had just gone straight to the police, the 15 year old Vietnamese girls who were enslaved in the "acupuncture centers" would have been arrested for prostitution and for being illegal aliens. The police would have explained that they simply had no money and no way to care for these people, which is why the NFS people realized that they had to cover all the bases to make sure these people didn't get re-victimized. They took this mountain of evidence to the DA's office, who was stunned that a bunch of activists had done all this work. Then the DA got the police involved and they started carrying out stings and rescuing people.
That's hardly vigilante justice, and I'm sorry that your life is poorer for having spent 20 seconds on their website. Also sorry if this post rates a "tl, dr" from you.
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I had to look up "tl, dr" but I guess it proves that I
skimmed read your entire post.
So you probably think I'm a bad person for not really caring that much about the Vietnamese girls. I mean, I like Vietnamese girls in general. My future sister-in-law is Vietnamese. But for these particular girls - it's a shame, and if they put it to a vote I'd vote for devoting more resources to ending domestic kidnapping and slavery than we spend on say, killing brown people abroad, but otherwise these things are pretty far off my radar, or rather, much lower down than other things that top my list of things on which to focus my energy, like curing cancer or teaching Shakespeare in the public schools.
Someone called me a fascist the other day because when asked "If you could cure AIDS and Ulysses (James Joyce's book) would no longer exist, would you do it?" and I said no, because Ulysses is more important than the lives of a few tens of thousands. I put it in the context of The Greater Good, but Activist Girl couldn't conceive of art being more important than a single life (let alone the lives of thousands) but I say that art benefits millions, and therefore, well, you get the idea.
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yeah. Um, I've had that argument before. I was basically told that I was a Nazi.
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I had to look up "tl, dr" but I guess it proves that I skimmed read your entire post.
So you probably think I'm a bad person for not really caring that much about the Vietnamese girls. I mean, I like Vietnamese girls in general. My future sister-in-law is Vietnamese. But for these particular girls - it's a shame, and if they put it to a vote I'd vote for devoting more resources to ending domestic kidnapping and slavery than we spend on say, killing brown people abroad, but otherwise these things are pretty far off my radar, or rather, much lower down than other things that top my list of things on which to focus my energy, like curing cancer or teaching Shakespeare in the public schools.
Someone called me a fascist the other day because when asked "If you could cure AIDS and Ulysses (James Joyce's book) would no longer exist, would you do it?" and I said no, because Ulysses is more important than the lives of a few tens of thousands. I put it in the context of The Greater Good, but Activist Girl couldn't conceive of art being more important than a single life (let alone the lives of thousands) but I say that art benefits millions, and therefore, well, you get the idea.
Your logic does not carry. Where did you get the idea that prosecuting criminals who run organized crime takes money away from curing cancer or Shakespeare? And yeah, I already got the picture that most Americans are too comfortable with pounding down fast food and watching TV to spend much time worrying about bad shit that happens to brown people.
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I have only so much money, and so many hours in the say, my dear, and there's still some Shakespeare I haven't read yet.
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Jough, would you consider yourself a Social Darwinist? My sister fits the description to the letter, and this all sounds familiar.
I totally agree with the sentiment that a lot of people will make a $2 donation to some organization and feel like they've really Done Something to help the cause. It's like the people who buy all those (Red) things. "Do I spend money on something for me, or to help fight AIDS? Now, I don't have to make that choice!"
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yeah. Um, I've had that argument before. I was basically told that I was a Nazi.
Look, you're not a nazi just because you felt that the world needed lampshades made out of... oh...
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the argument was about Joseph Pulitzer, who got a really large amount of Modern art for the St Louis Art Museum from Central Europe at bargain-basement prices in the late 30's. Arguably he didn't know it had been stolen from Jews?
The debate was whether you Pay the Nazis to save important art.
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the argument was about Joseph Pulitzer, who got a really large amount of Modern art for the St Louis Art Museum from Central Europe at bargain-basement prices in the late 30's. Arguably he didn't know it had been stolen from Jews?
The debate was whether you Pay the Nazis to save important art.
Obviously, the answer is yes, you do, but then you do something with the art that will make the Nazi's really unhappy.
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Obviously, the answer is yes, you do, but then you do something with the art that will make the Nazi's really unhappy.
Make bombs out of it and drop it on their cities?
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Do what you can when you can, that's your responsibility. My responsibility. Anyone's.
We have to make sure we can get through to tomorrow first, of course, or else we're none of us worth a damn but...
We have to be at peace with the fact that we can only bleed so much for any woman, for any man, for any group of women or men and... yes... there's only so much we have to bleed even for ourselves.
We do what we can, fix that which we are equipped to fix, equipped to see, equipped to comprehend...
And hope that the human race is large enough and talented enough where between the six billion of us, we are possibly equipped each of us to fix at least one other person's endless troubles.
Something like soulmates in the face of this confusion.
That from our abilities, we have the capacity to fulfill at least one other person's needs and for our needs, someone else with a capacity.
That if we all just found the right thing to bleed for, all else would cancel out entirely.
We do what we can and beyond that, we can only hope.
It's okay. No god to ever throw bolts down from the sky could ever expect more of you than what you're capable of.
No person either.
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This has evolved into a really interesting thread.
I believe that there is a whole lot more moral outrage out there than action, so the actions that people took in SF to go after these traffickers and do the right thing for the victims is a great thing, for many reasons. The most important reason is that it takes communities self-policing to rid themselves of unwanted or undesirable activities. It takes a rational government monitoring to make sure the crazies don't get together and run amok over legal, ethical, moral activities.
The issue often becomes the intersection of the unwanted/undesirable and the legal/moral/ethical. Great social change is often the result of catastrophe as was pointed out - the Depression led to the New Deal, AIDS changed a lot of peoples minds about sexual values and mores - but in in the absence of a visible, palpable and potentially (or really) personally costly outcome, it takes a few dedicated people a long time to input the amount of energy it takes to make a difference.
I believe that as Americans, we are bombarded with news and images from everywhere every day. So much of it becomes background noise to many people - not because they are uncaring or callous, but to some degree I think we just block out the endless noisy fugue going on around us. And I think many don't have both the deep seated and healthy values required to latch on to and hold onto an issue to the point of taking personal action - or lack the time, energy, resources, or how-to knowledge to make it go. And, we are an excuse-making society, and unfortunately many make excuses both for themselves and for others, not to mention forgetting that todays exploited migrants and immigrants are a lot like the people that came to the US to become our Grandparents or Great-Grandparents.
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Absolutely, Aloha.
We don't have the resources of Angelina Jolie to go and taking on these issues with a camera team and amazing breasts. The majority of us, we want things fixed, we want the world to be an amazing place, but if we take our eyes off of the ball and focus all our energy on these huge problems... well, The Bank still wants their mortgage check, and the Boss would prefer you to be working on his problems between 9am and 5pm.
So far the best fix I've been able to come to, personally, is to try to live my life in a way that leaves less of a mark on things, and to donate to causes that I hope are worthy of it. I used to donate my time to a community radio station as well, since I felt that media democracy and giving voices to people who need them was at the very root of the problems. We spent most of our time fighting the FCC trying to remain on the air. I pretty much gave that up when I moved.
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There's an extent to which this becomes part of the Big Brother versus the Big Cloud of Bees theory.
When we are up against One Thing, one well-defined thing, one enemy, one goal, one idea... people are really good at fixing things.
But when we're being stung in ten thousand ways from ten thousand tiny directions, we kind of have no idea what to do.
We freeze up, we flail unthinkingly and get stung all the more.
All these Terrible Things happening and even if there were a rational way to overcome any one of them, how do we choose?
How do we have any right to choose?
We all become Jesus suffocated by the lepers, no matter how much we want to help, no matter how much we're able.
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Obviously, the answer is yes, you do, but then you do something with the art that will make the Nazi's really unhappy.
part of the issue is that it was Modern Art, and as such, the Germans thought it was degenerate bullshit.
also: I read an interesting article lately about the Swarm of Bees thing. it posited that the reason people like Bill Gates are so good at philanthropy in a smart way is that... they are a little bit socially dumb. They think about things in terms of numbers, not in terms of Human Impact. And, sometimes, thinking about things that way can be really good.
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part of the issue is that it was Modern Art, and as such, the Germans thought it was degenerate bullshit.
also: I read an interesting article lately about the Swarm of Bees thing. it posited that the reason people like Bill Gates are so good at philanthropy in a smart way is that... they are a little bit socially dumb. They think about things in terms of numbers, not in terms of Human Impact. And, sometimes, thinking about things that way can be really good.
Interesting point. I really do wonder where the best place to put my effort and money is. I mean, globally, shit is fucked up, but I could put all my time into an issue like this or a myriad of others and never really see any gains or I could advocate for my neighbourhood and the issues of my own microcosm and actually see change. I tend to feel overwhelmed by shit in general, so if someone just said, "Look, here are the numbers, here is where your volunteer work will be most valuable." I'd really like to know that shit. As it stands now, everyone says they need me, so I freeze up and do dick all.
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I really do wonder where the best place to put my effort and money is. I mean, globally, shit is fucked up, but I could put all my time into an issue like this or a myriad of others and never really see any gains or I could advocate for my neighbourhood and the issues of my own microcosm and actually see change.
We've talked about this. (http://touamb.com/index.php/topic,3963.msg103009.html#msg103009) Admittedly the topic was different, but curiously, the same truth applies, I think.
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In terms of feeling like I'm making a change in the world, I want to hope in some sort of chaos-theory butterfly effect. Like, right now I'm volunteering in a domestic-violence charity, and I'm just doing basic clerical stuff... but it's a small office, so every clerical task I deal with is one the actual social workers don't have to waste time on, and my hope is that it means that they get more good done in the community. That kinda thing. I can just hope my efforts have some positive effect down the line, even if I can never see it.
This is also a mentality developed by basic researchers. Sure, you're not curing cancer right there -- but one day, your papers might lead to someone's cancer-curing. Hopefully.
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The tidiest way to avoid the bonus stress of these questions is to worry principally about climate change. Then you can neatly reason that all other changes you might make would be speedily annulled by the associated humanitarian crisis and maybe get some sleep now and again.
I always find that my main block to action is the feeling that I have no idea what is effective, rather than not knowing where my time would be best spent. I think there is a strong distinction between feeling the need to do something and feeling the need to change something, and while the latter has a pleasant rhetorical ring to it it doesn't generally get anything moving. I suppose that mental state guards pretty effectively against the kind of tokenism that plagues so many issues (especially environmental ones), but that in itself is a bit of a pisspoor benefit.
My girlfriend is an activist of ridiculous energy and drive so I spend a lot of time introvertedly trying to puzzle out why I am so comparatively rubbish. I often think I probably have far more impact on the Serious Issues of the Day by supporting her than I am capable of making through my own bumbling efforts.
I typed out a whole directly relevant paragraph here about how sticking to your passions was probably for the best because that's where you're more effective, but I suspect it was concocted solely to make me feel better so I deleted it.
(This post reminds me of the carrot cake I attempted earlier this week before I had weighing scales, which looked so good as raw mix but turned out to be terminally over-egged.)
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Interesting point. I really do wonder where the best place to put my effort and money is. I mean, globally, shit is fucked up, but I could put all my time into an issue like this or a myriad of others and never really see any gains or I could advocate for my neighbourhood and the issues of my own microcosm and actually see change. I tend to feel overwhelmed by shit in general, so if someone just said, "Look, here are the numbers, here is where your volunteer work will be most valuable." I'd really like to know that shit. As it stands now, everyone says they need me, so I freeze up and do dick all.
I think this is why God gave us each a different passion. One friend is concerned with the environment; another pal volunteers at a women's shelter. I used to edit a newsletter for a group that focuses on keeping homeless children with their parents and enrolled in school, but now my focus has turned to autism awareness and treatment. My mom gives to World Vision -- she adopts one third-world child for each of her grandchildren and contributes on their behalf every month. We are all doing different kinds of things, and as a result, the world is getting a little better in a lot of ways.
And that's what makes the world go 'round.
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We are all doing different kinds of things, and as a result, the world is getting a little better in a lot of ways.
I hate to burst your bubble Pollyanna, but the world is going to hell in a hand basket. I'm getting out of here as soon as I can.
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Yeah Paul, I totally agree. I want to do whatever I can to lessen the misery of myself and others though. Maybe I should just walk around with quilts, and put them over people's shoulders and go "shhhh. It's okay. It's okay. Shhh." That could be a thing I could do anywhere, and something I would be pretty good at.
But basically I am lazy and selgiraffe and find just being alive day to day so taxing that I don't have anything left for altruism these days. Sorry folks. I care. I have empathy. I just don't have it in me to do anything about that though.
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Maybe I should just walk around with quilts, and put them over people's shoulders and go "shhhh. It's okay. It's okay. Shhh."
Oh man, the world really needs this. Could you get a grant or something?
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I want to do whatever I can to lessen the misery of myself and others though. Maybe I should just walk around with quilts, and put them over people's shoulders and go "shhhh. It's okay. It's okay. Shhh." That could be a thing I could do anywhere, and something I would be pretty good at.
yeah. um. I have a persistent fantasy that I'm going to buy like 2 dozen umbrellas and just carry them around, and when it rains I'd give them to people who were wet. I would drive around looking for people who needed umbrellas.
I don't know why that is the thing that stands out to me as "daniel, you can do this!"
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One thing keeps popping up repeatedly at me in this thread. Seems most everybody ('cept Somebody nicePantalones) addresses the question from the angle of what can you do individually.
Of course, since this is a large and convoluted set of problems and the "bee theory" sets in most of the discussion winnows off into an exploration of guilt and lack of empowerment.
One question: How the fuckety fuck is it in any way possible for one person to effectively address even a local ill affecting more than 100 other people?
Gandhi said: "Live simply that others may simply live."
I try to evaluate my life regularly and eliminate things that are causing me unnecessary stress. I've been going through my closet every six months and donating unworn clothing (even if it fits, even if I paid a too much for it, even if I only wore it once) to a shelter for homeless families. My new philosophy on clothing is: have less, launder more. We just downsized our home and are getting rid of as much furniture and stuff as possible -- much of it going to the aforementioned shelter, which always needs furniture for their temporary housing program -- since keeping stuff "just in case" we find a way to use it in the future is depriving others who need it right now. I try to buy products that exploit people to the lowest possible degree (I just got a shipment of yarn hand-spun and -dyed exclusively by women in rural communities in Uruguay, distributed by a nonprofit which provides them with enough income to support their families) and to keep the impact of my family's existence on the environment to a minimum (cloth diapers, energy-consciousness, recycling all my glass, plastics, and cardboard). We have more than a few luxuries, of course -- the Wii, cell phones, I drive a minivan for pete's sake -- but we live happily without some things many people take for granted, like cable TV. I practice random acts of kindness -- feeding other people's parking meters, picking up litter, etc. Before we had Pearce, Pedro and I routinely gave rides to hitchhikers (never when alone, though -- just to be safe). We took a guy all the way from Cleveland to Galax, North Carolina during a road trip to visit my family one Christmas. Without our help, it might have taken him weeks to hitch back home, and it was damn cold. It didn't do much for the global economy, but I know that Buck will never forget the nice couple that gave him a ride and three squares one lonely December.
I could do more. I could buy more locally-produced fresh food at the farmer's market (and I used to, pre-kids). I could trade in my van for a hybrid vehicle (but I won't because I use every inch of that cargo space on grocery day). I could walk more and drive less. I could buy organic products more often. I could remember to bring my own bags to the grocery store more than once every six weeks. (Another thing I was better at pre-kids.) I could donate a lot more money to charity, especially if my consumerist past hadn't gotten me into so damn much debt.
But I try, and I do what I can when I can to live as simply as possible. It makes my life better, and it just might make other people's lives less difficult in some small way. You never know what kind of an impact your individual actions will have. I believe in the ripple effect. If everyone puts in a little effort in whatever ways they can, things might not improve, but at least they won't get much worse.
Or, you could look at it this way: If we solve all the world's problems, more will rise in their place. End world hunger, and we have suffocating overpopulation. Educate everyone and see global underemployment. Cure cancer and watch people die of AIDS, or Parkinson's, or renal failure, or heart disease. Or worse, make a cure so expensive that only the wealthy (hint: that's all of us) can afford to live. Best to make our short stint on Earth as painless as possible for the people closest to you, and leave everyone else alone to suffer in peace.
I prefer the Gandhi approach, though.
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Now someone chime in on part two because I'm beginning to think fraternal or social organizations that promote works is for old farts.
Maybe but... I don't see anything in jl's otherwise excellent approach to life that involves chili cook-offs. So I think you win.
BTW: Don't forget that organic produce isn't necessarily better for the planet if it's been shipped from another continent. Buying more locally grown is probably more important.
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Also, I forgot to say that Pedro went through Indian Guides with his Dad, and those are some of his fondest memories from childhood. He still has his vest & headdress, and the size 5 t-shirt with his Indian name (red chief) on it.
He can't wait to take Little P and Robbie when they get old enough. People with kids, take them to Indian Guides/Princesses. Pedro describes it as "like boy scouts, but less about homework and more about hanging out with your Dad."
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I guess I can't speak for Indian Guides, but I was heavily involved in boy scouts as a teenager. Whatever your position on their politics, they do a good job at getting kids into the outdoors, which is a thing that our society badly needs. If you have kids, spend some time in the outdoors with them, it's definitely worth it.
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The outdoors thing is thoroughly seconded here. I wasn't a very good or very happy Girl Scout during the school year, but getting out to Girl Scout Camp was always a treat, even though it was just a week-long program at a fairly civilized camp-out area about a half-hour from home. Later, I joined Camp Fire, which had a two-week camp down in Kenai, and that was absolute Heaven. I'm not at all outdoorsy now, but those are some of my most treasured childhood memories.
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The kids bring us back to the previous discussion nicely.
I'm interested in the agony of the working middle class people, especially those of us with lots of things going on, to 'make a difference', I always remind people of a couple of things: if you work and pay taxes, and/or donate through your payroll to united way or other large charitable organizations, you are supporting the people who do the work of making the world better. We'd all like to do something concrete or tangible, but it's important to remember that in the big picture, those of us toiling to keep the economy rolling help make a lot of other things possible. Taxes go to funding a great many non-profit organizations, many of whom wouldn't exist without Federal dollars or support. Federal Agencies fund many programs through categorical funding to states and cities too; lots of the AIDS programs and Homeless programs I've worked with got money through the State and Federal programs I represented.
Also, the number one most important thing I think I do is building good, well grounded kids who understand that we can all do things, even small things, for the environment and for the people around us, and that no act is too small. If everyone did one kind thing for a stranger each day, no matter how small, how different do you think the world would be? (And I'm a conservative...)
Anyhow, never think that you don't do enough if you are doing what you can. And never think you are doing enough if you can and want to do more. The world needs everyone doing what they can before everyone gets cynical like Paul over there.