Or maybe not. Many people who care about environmentalism, get caught up a great deal in thinking about how they consume, and changing their consumer habits.
That's good, but it's not enough.
It's good, not just because you're doing your infinitisimal part to slow down entropy, but for some other reasons, too.
- It can get you to thinking about being creative.
- It can get you into a frame of mind where you work out how to spend less money.
- It gives you more free time.
- All of the above lend themselves to working more with other people in your community.
These are all sort of revolutionary activities.
What can be good about working on how you consume, is that it can lead to above ways of operating and thinking.
What doesn't work as well, is just changing how you spend money, and trying to remember to recycle your trash.
Sure, every little bit helps.
But it's taking too long.
So, instead of thinking about consuming differently, you might think about consuming less.
You might think about redefining the word "need."
You might think about how the less involved you are in our current corporate economic system, the easier it makes it to think about inventing an alternative one.
It takes a long time to change. Big fast changes are often dangerous, and may easily lead to outcomes that aren't really improvements.
Real change happens slowly, but real change doesn't just do it on a schedule, either. It's an ongoing commitment.
And if we're really going to change, we have to get honest and serious about everything that's wrong with our economic system, how it has perverted our political system, and how it is poisoning all of our lives on a daily basis.
I don't know how to throw off the beast. I don't know whether anybody does, though there are people who write well about possibilities.
But this isn't working. It is no one person's fault. The fault lies in all of us, for refusing to come to grips with the extent to which this isn't working.
For saying that it's a good economic system, it just needs tweaking.
That seems, to me, like saying your abusive boyfriend is really a good guy, and that if you were just more understanding, he'd get healed.
Bullshit, in both cases.
Neither will change until there is no other choice.
The ultimate question with our lives, is how do we make there not be any other choice?
(Edit) What I'm trying to say here, is that the more you're in the middle of something, the more difficult it is to think about what's wrong with it, and how one can work to fix that.