Look out! He's got a knife!

Pearce wrote:

"think of all the times when you've bitched to a friend/relative about an unfair situation at work, school, where ever. The friend might say "You should complain about it!" and you might say "Yeah I should," but deep down you know you won't because you've ALREADY complained about it (to the friend) and subsequently you feel better about it - not completely better, but better enough that it doesn't hurt. Or at least, it doesn't hurt so much that you're brave enough to complain."

You're last sentence hits the nail on the head.

These issues are not 'life or death' matters to us anymore, to us rich westerners.

Life or death poverty tends not to occur on our doorsteps.

We can't quite convince ourselves that global warming needs to be fixed today, because we can't see it's effects clearly yet.

Our modern democractic processess and reality tv programming have both combined to give us the sense that we can change stuff, without have to actually do anything ourselves.

Someone remind me who it was, but a wise person once said "The most important thing right now is to give a shit."

True words, my friends.

Pearce, I've been trying to post a link here as a comment to that post. Guess what? Now *I'm* banninated from posting comments. On my own blog!

I should probably email David. Or maybe be apathetic? Hmmm.

Sweet, sweet justice... nah just kidding. That IS weird.

"The most important thing right now is to give a shit" Ok, but when you do give a shit, what can you do, other than talk or go to protests or give money which people then tell you just goes to aid workers rather than to charity. I'm serious here. What can we do?

I already belong to amnesty international, buy free trade hot chocolate, don't drink coffee, refuse the plastic bags in the supermarket, desperately try not to overconsume (with mixed success - I've completely stopped buying DVDs and only buy books secondhand now), don't litter, give more than just gold coins to collectors on the street, tried volunteering (until I discovered that 90% of charity organisations seem to want you to work during the day (I'm at work) or own a car (which I don't because I don't want to contribute to the greenhouse effect)) and this isn't enough for me. It doesn't feel nearly like enough. But I can't work out what else I could do that would help.

Can someone please answer?(Please Please) Would love to know other peoples thoughts on this. I don't want big dramatic gestures as answers either. If 1000000 people all do something small, that very likely outweighs one person doing something big. (The one person raising awareness needs the 1000000 people to follow up on their raised awareness or their awareness raising will have no point - as with the point about the protesters buying sneakers)

Some serious suggestions please!

Tree:

Here is a vote for volunteering.

I understand what you're saying about volunteering, a lot of it is done in work time. I did a lot of volunteering in between jobs and it is often a 9-5 gig. Volunteering does rawk and there are exceptions to day time hours, a few examples are: Karori Wildlife Sanctuary, Order of Saint John (my cousin volunteers for ambulance duty on the weekend), DOC conservation projects? These sort of things are what keep New Zealand, and other countries, running.

I would suggest choosing one thing you really want to do and doing it really well. A lot of people spread themselves too thinly.

AM

Thanks Andy,
re: volunteering - believe it is good - just haven't managed to find that perfect place to volunteer that suits me and isn't in work hours - will maybe follow up on some of those suggestions though. Any ideas how? (And they don't require you to own a car do they?)

Does anyone else out there have suggestions? I challenge the rest of the 'intelligent people out there who give a shit' to come up with some practical ideas that enable us to do something about the issues we're raising on this blog, Morgue's blog and others - I see about 30 people have read this site today - if we all came up with one idea each then maybe each chose one to run with we'd all be doing something small and ongoing that would help.

I just don't want to see us all talking about stuff and ending up like this quote from a column by George Monbiot:

In an interview with the Guardian recently, Chris Martin, the lead singer of Coldplay and all-round good guy, spoke of his concerns about climate
change. On his new album there's "an intense, angry track encouraging people to make the right decisions about how they live their lives and how
they treat the planet." A few paragraphs on, he revealed that he was about to "fly by private jet to Palm Springs. The band can now afford to fly
wherever possible". Neither Martin nor the interviewer appeared to recognise the contradiction.

Thanks.

Well, once more, I reckon Michael Ventura has this well said.
http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2005-03-18/cols_ventura.html

My question is, how much are you willing to give up/put in to make the world a better place? Because that will determine, more than anything, what you are actually going to do, regardless of the options.

The point isn't 'how much will you do' it's will you do something to make your lifestyle consistent with your principles? Obviously you can't expect a whole lot of Westerners to not make a hypocritical impact because they're stuck in a Western lifestyle (is it feasible to try eating only locally grown non-packaged food on the average income, if you can't get to the whole foods store, and it would be a lot easier for people to do the right thing if the Government came to the party, and gave us incentives to do the right thing, but while lobbying the Government to do something we shouldn't just not alter our own behaviour in the meantime if we know better), but that doesn't mean they shouldn't do anything, and try and minimise their impact. I think my first post probably gives an idea of how much I might do, with the list, followed by saying I don't think this is nearly enough.

And people may be prepared to do more that you think, but if they don't know what to do that will have an impact, how can they do it? So suggestions please.....

Right, now I'm off to read your suggested link.

Thanks Billy - excellent article - thought these parts of it were worth repeating here:

How much time are your convictions worth? Two hours a day? One? Two a week, a month? A vote every four years? ... Donating money to causes is fine and necessary, but it doesn't get you off the hook; active human energy is what generates change. How much time is it worth to you, to live in a free and just country? I figure: two hours a day. Minimum. (If you're poor and have children – one hour. If you're working three jobs – a half-hour. What can you do in a half-hour? Make a few phone calls.)

You're too busy for that? And you're asking me about hope?

......

You get together with people you trust and you figure it out yourselves. Bite off a chunk of the trouble for yourself. There is no hope without you. There is no solution without you. Unless you get into motion, there will be no movement.

.......

So let's figure it out.

For me, it's about making sure every aspect of my life reflects my beliefs. This is incredibly difficult, but piece by piece I'm getting there.

A big step was getting a job that not only isn't morally objectionable (like the advertising or banking industries I worked for in the past) but is actually doing some good. I acheived that this year - I'm now working for the IHC, an organization who do nothing but good things for people. It's not a "Here we are to save the day!" kind of place, but it's good and necessary and deals directly with assisting people in unfortunate circumstances beyond their control.

This way I can at least know that for about fifty hours a week, I'm doing something worthwhile.

I'm consuming less junk (though my cd & dvd habits still loom large), and recycling more - even doing basic things like writing or printing both sides of the paper whenever possible.

Yeah I donate money to ye olde worthwhile causes and all that bleeding-heart stuff, 'cause while it's true that volunteers are needed it's also true that in a capitalistic environment MONEY is needed. All the volunteers in the world aren't going to be able to get medical supplies to the poor (for instance) if they're dead broke.

I also don't own a car - in fact I've never learned to drive. Sometimes when people ask why not I say something like "There are already too many cars, blah blah congestion blah bypasses blah greenhouse gasses blah blah blah" to which the response is usualy along the lines of "Oh grow up and join the real world."

All in all I think I spend more time doing worthwhile and helpful things than doing neutral things, and more time doing neutral things than doing unhelpful things, so I feel like I'm moving in the right direction. But I need to KEEP MOVING in the right direction.

This hasn't really been the kind of advice you're asking for, Tree, but it's the best I can do right now.