I had a pretty good day today. I went out to dinner at an Indian restaurant with my g/f - we had, among other things, makhali chicken and lamb curry. So right there, a lamb and a chicken had to die so we could eat. Earlier in the day we had eaten Swedish meatballs made from chicken, so more unnecessary taking of life there. I mean, we could be vegetarian or even vegan if we chose, so long as we were careful to include all essential nutrients in our diet. And then there is the question of the resources used to produce the meat - resources that could be used to feed the starving millions. On top of all that there is the environmental damage caused by felling forests for grazing land and so on, not to mention the animal cruelty inherent in intensive farming. We even consumed some non-fair trade coffee and chocolate, so there were some developing world farmers being ripped off there too.
The tee-shirt, jeans and trainers i wore today were fairly cheap - that's because they were made by very poorly paid developing world workers - often children - working long hours in poor conditions for low pay and with no job security.
While all these people and animals were killed, starved, laboured and so on today, i sat here at my PC playing chess on the internet. It was a pretty good day.
I'd like to say that thinking of all the suffering that made it possible made me regret it all, but that would be dishonest. I mean, i could choose to give up meat, buy fair trade only, only buy clothes made by properly paid workers and so on, but it seems easier to just kind of push the awareness of these things into the background and get on with enjoying life.
Anyone else have thoughts like these sometimes?
Daily. I work. It is a machine. Everything is about Value. Cost. Revenue.
I could write more, but I don't want to try and go to sleep on more of this thought. Needless to say the feeling I have each day is that I am part of a machine that is part of a bigger machine that is getting it oh so wrong. The momentum is so great however that it is diffcult to see how this can be turned around.
Originally posted by dfm65How many parts of the PC we are playing on were made in a country where children feed their families scraps they forage from rubbish dumps or where peasant farmers are brushed aside from their land to build another textile factory for the clothes you wear.
I had a pretty good day today. I went out to dinner at an Indian restaurant with my g/f - we had, among other things, makhali chicken and lamb curry. So right there, a lamb and a chicken had to die so we could eat. Earlier in the day we had eaten Swedish meatballs made from chicken, so more unnecessary taking of life there. I mean, we could be vegetarian or ev ...[text shortened]... o the background and get on with enjoying life.
Anyone else have thoughts like these sometimes?
The fat cats that run these countries eat in palaces and control mighty military power. It's all paid for by us because our fat cats chose to lay us off and shift manufacturing off shore.
Take heart the Makhali Chicken was probably rat.
These thoughts - dfm! - just mean you are alive. They are clues. We all have different riddles we have to solve. Listen to your dreams and wonderings. Imagine solutions. Try to make them happen. You may not always succeed but you will have tried. That's why we're here. To try.
Alternately: watch TV, drink beer, smoke dope, get fat, breed. That's called perpetuation. Part of the problem. Not the solution.
Ghandi said: "Be the change that you want to see in the world."
What happened to "Buy British" (or wherever you happen to be?).
Was that worse than exploitation trade?
I mean, the reason local manufacturing died is that it was cheaper to use cheap foreign labour.
If we paid the foreign labour a fair price, then would the transport costs mean that it was cheaper to make the stuff at home and the poor countries would get no business and be back where they were before?
This is not about chickens, by the way.