I've been scarce here lately. Just too much going on in my life. We're cleaning carpets, painting walls, dusting the "tall people places" (the tops of things I never see from down here), stocking good chocolate and buying coordinated "things" from Target (like tablecloths and other needless, first world, energy consuming decor) for our big Thanksgiving get-together which happens next week.
My mother, her husband, my brother, Jon's sister and my mom's husband's brother and sister-in-law (yes, we are an American family) are all coming to our house for the big Turkey meal. Jon will cook the bird in his Weber cooker while it snows, I imagine. :)
Grad school continues to mess with my mind...
The right wing radio types have been warning me about higher education for fifteen years. They warned that Marx was a hero and that the left would emerge as elitist, against business and out to control the lives of ordinary well-meaning SUV drivers.
They were completely right, btw.
In fact, my professors proudly identify with labels like "liberal" and "progressive" (what's up with that?) and wince when anyone mentions Rush Limbaugh or the so-called "war on terror." I think they experience physical pain.
But if you soak long enough in a perspective and give it time, it's amazing how undermining that long look can be to what you thought you knew.
Did you know, for instance, that if every Chinese drank just one more beer next year, all of Scandanavia's grain production would have to go to supplying that demand?
Okay, so what? We live in America. The Scandanvians can slave for the Chinese.
Here's another one...
Did you know that per capita, Americans consume 180 eggs per year? Did you know that each Chinese consumes ten? (10!?) The goal of their government is that each Chinese would consume 100 eggs per year. Yet if they were to consume only 50 per year, there wouldn't be enough hens in the world to lay eggs 24/7 year round to supply that need. We would literally be unable to produce enough eggs.
What the cluck?
They finally got through to me last night (in a way that the limits to growth folks never have succeeded before)—making tangible what the problems are in concrete, visual terms.
China and India want to consume energy at the rate that we do. Period.
The way we've set up the game, at this point, is that we want to consume at the rate we currently do without having to give any of it up and we believe we can continue to do so while other countries come up to our level without hitting shortages.
I am now considering the possibility that we are wrong. (So what else is new under the sun in my life?)
Actually, I think I'll skip eggs this morning. Might just drink some tea.
Look at me! "She's all grown up and savin' China." (Quick, trivia question: What Disney movie is that from?)
6 comments:
Sigh. . .not "sigh" at you, just "sigh." The state of the world, the environment, social justice. . .it has been the constant drumbeat of my life since before I can remember. And it is so important to see how things are and try to make a difference. And yet, the "try" seems to loom so much bigger than the "make" in that sentence.
I am 49, so this is my 50th year. As I look around at 2005 I see so much that looks like my early childhood: racisim, but now so convoluted that who KNOWS what to do;it was so simple for my father to go to the March on Washington, all I can find to do is raise color-blind children. The environment: somehow it was easy to finger DDT in Silent Spring, now I just dither constantly between wasting water and overfilling landfills. I was born about the time the French were going down in Vietnam and in the subsequent half-century I don't think the issues and choices in foreign policy have gotten easier--I LIVED, (in the way only children and teenagers can live) the Vietnam War and still, in Iraq, I am reduced to saying nothing more profound than, "be careful; choices have consquences." And what I tell my children is what my father told me,"One side being wrong does not make the other right." and, "We are given no easy choices in this life."
For a long time my active spiritual practice was Buddhism, of the more Western sort; a way to live an individual life in a confusing world. In large part my view is still shaped by that. In the end,however, the call to conscious of Christianity still speaks to me as nothing as else does, BUT, what does it call me to do? I see those of the "left" agonizing over social justice the way envangelicals agonize over evangelizing and saving lost souls. We all want to do SOMETHING about "it all" but in the end the only answer I can find is to lead a life of responsibility and compassion and somehow that doesn't seem big enough.
Mulan....
LOL. It's Friday and I am fried! Have a wonderful Thanksgiving if I don't *see* you. :)
Enjoy friend.
uh...if I could learn to type...the name is Bari! LMBO
Baru wins the prize! :) Uh, I mean Bari. :)
Julie
Oldmom, you are right about the social justice stuff. I can imagine you are world weary of all of it.
I loved what my professor said the other night though. He said people always ask him what they can do, really do to make a difference.
His reply is this: "Just do something. It doesn't matter what. Pick something and do that. We re all making baby steps. There is no one big thing that will change the world. There are only baby steps taken collectively as we each become informed and care."
I liked that. That I can do. I can do little somethings. One of my little somethings is this blog. It's a place to change my thinking and offer ideas to consider to others.
But I also can make little decisions, like not shopping at Walmart. I'm under no illusions that my shopping habits impact Walmart, but it is something I can do.
Buddhism has many resources to offer us when we look at ways to live huamnely in the world. I can see why you were attracted to it.
You said:
the only answer I can find is to lead a life of responsibility and compassion and somehow that doesn't seem big enough.
That seems big enough to me. It's all any of us can do. The more who do so, the better. :)
Julie
Baby steps are a good image--makes me feel better about my attempts anyway!
After I left my original message I realized how "world weary" it had come off sounding. Sorry about that. . .it was not meant to be at all condescending or negative, just mulling over my own reactions.
Thank you for taking it the way I meant it.
OldMom
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