« Memo to Congress: Show Us the M-O-N-E-Y! (Part 2 of 3)Arab Street Celebrates Mubarak's Ouster »

Always do the right thing (because 99 is not 100)

February 15th, 2011

Mickey Z.

Da Mayor: Always do the right thing.

Mookie: That's it?

Da Mayor: That's it.

Mookie: I got it. I'm gone.

If every American were to make every single lifestyle change suggested in the film, An Inconvenient Truth, it would only result in a 21% decrease in carbon emissions. In fact, while the average human produces 2500 pounds of waste per year, the average per capita waste output is 26 tons…because 97% of waste is produced by agriculture and industry.

Individual lifestyle changes won't do anything to "save the planet," so why bother?

To help answer that question, I defer to Valter, one of the catadores (pickers of recyclable waste in Brazil) featured in the excellent documentary, Waste Land http://www.wastelandmovie.com/. "One single can is of great importance," Valter explained, when asked about the value of recycling, "because 99 is not 100."

My translation: Never lose sight of the big picture but always do the right thing.

Who wouldn't want to witness a major reversal of some of our current catastrophic global eco-trends? But, as the legendary journalist I.F. Stone http://www.ifstone.org/ once said: "If you expect an answer to your question during your lifetime, you're not asking a big enough question." Making daily—even hourly—choices of resistance isn't necessarily about being present when the current corporate-dominated paradigm shifts (or is shifted). It's about doing the right thing...here and now. It's about defying the dominant culture in any way we can.

For example, when you buy a used shirt at a local thrift shop instead of opting for a brand new article of clothing sold by a store that supports sweatshop labor, you don't expect that specific purchase to end workplace inequality and put a halt to conspicuous consumption. You buy the used shirt simply because it's the right thing to do.

This mentality counters those who say stuff like: "Why should I use public transportation instead of drive? All those other motorists are still using their cars anyway." Sure...they are. But you're not. 99 is not 100 and you, dear comrade, are doing the right thing.

Whether you aim to recycle your old cell phone or to knock over a cell phone tower—again—it comes down to remaining aware of the institutional framework while still doing the right thing many times a day...all with the same ultimate goal: dismantling http://planetgreen.discovery.com/work-connect/green-glossary-dismantle.html a societal system http://planetgreen.discovery.com/work-connect/green-glossary-eco-blame.html that's relentlessly assaulting our planet and everything that lives on it.

-###-

"I never met another man I'd rather be. And even if that's a delusion, it's a lucky one."
—Charles Bukowski

Blog: http://www.mickeyz.net
Facebook: http://tinyurl.com/y2rm5d9

Until the laws are changed or the power runs out, Mickey Z. can be found on an obscure website called Facebook http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000612588462 .

No feedback yet

Voices

Voices

  • Ned Lud Parade, Protest & Projectile We are urgently called—by custom, media, or the relentless churn of the day—to witness. Witness the parade. Witness the war. Witness the ticker inching past news of missiles, of cities ravaged, of another speech…
  • Ned Lud Israel has an unusual pastime. He likes to provoke fights in bars—specifically with bouncers. Not with patrons in general, not with pool sharks or irate drunks, but full-time bouncers, men carved out of concrete and protein powder, schooled in…
  • Paul Craig Roberts "The most significant fact of our time is that the entire Western World is a dead man walking..." Democrats for many long years have imposed race and gender privileges, which violate the 14th Amendment’s requirement of equal…
  • Fred Gransville The climb of fascism in the United States was not born from a single event, nor was it the result of some sudden, dramatic cultural shift. Rather, it emerged through a slow, relentless erosion of democratic institutions, camouflaged…
  • By David Swanson I recommend reading Charlottesville: An American Story by Deborah Baker. Itʼs an account, of course, not of all aspects of the city of Charlottesville, but principally of the Nazi-KKK-White Supremacist riot of 2017 that has taken on the…
  • By Ned Lud They don’t need jackboots when they have behavioral analytics. The war on speech has gone stealth. Once, repression was crude—clubs, tear gas, blacklists. Now, a fusion of military-grade surveillance and corporate-state platforms executes the…
  • by Tracy Turner In the besieged killing field territories of Gaza, survival has become a nightmare. The siege blockade, far from being mere policy, has morphed into an insidious engine of deliberate starvation-its mechanism fine-tuned to crush the will…
  • Paul Craig Roberts Belaya air base Russia The attack on Russian strategic forces by Ukraine, with or without President Trump’s knowledge and with or without help from Washington and the British, could have been the most dangerous event in East-West…
  • By Chris Spencer The architecture of censorship in the 21st century is not built of iron bars or smoldering books. It is invisible by design—engineered into the digital substrate of everyday life, encoded in autocomplete predictions, invisible filters,…
  • META/Facebook Shadow Protocols: Web Weaponized Against Palestinian Genocide Discourse Ned Lud Spoiler alert: Not Muslim. Not affiliated with Hamas. And definitely not an Islamophobe. Like Zuckerberg.  This information is backed by reports from…
June 2025
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
 << <   > >>
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
8 9 10 11 12 13 14
15 16 17 18 19 20 21
22 23 24 25 26 27 28
29 30          

  XML Feeds

CMS + email marketing
FAIR USE NOTICE: This site contains copyrighted articles and information about environmental, political, human rights, economic, democratic, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. This news and information is displayed without profit for educational purposes, in accordance with, Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107 of the US Copyright Law. Thepeoplesvoice.org is a non-advocacy internet web site, edited by non-affiliated U.S. citizens. editor
ozlu Sozler GereksizGercek Hava Durumu Firma Rehberi Hava Durumu Firma Rehberi E-okul Veli Firma Rehberi