Just got back from War, Inc.

I was very much looking forward to the movie, and went to see it tonight in a tiny theater near the University of Washington. It was the late show, and the theater wasn't exactly packed. I felt a little sad about that. I know that it is still in the test market phase, and how it does now will impact what kind of broader distribution it gets.

It was more or less what I expected in most ways, although there were of course surprises. It was funny, but it also had a rawness, and it hit a little too close to home to be a very comfortable movie to watch. I kind of expected that--I knew the film was made to provoke thought about how the United States is operating right now in the world. But I felt a little more uncomfortable than I expected.

At any rate, it's not a masterpiece. But it's a funny film that I hope will help people to see something that may not be comfortable, but is important.

And it was pretty fun to see goody-two-shoes Hilary Duff (and I am fond of her for that, being a former goody-two-shoes myself) play the tramp-like, oversexed pop star too.

Showtimes here.

And the future means...more bondage to Big Oil?

This morning I read about Honda's new hydrogen-fueled car. It's very shiny, and if you live in parts of California, you might be able to lease one for $600 a month. Yikes! I wasn't all that thrilled to read that a tank of hydrogen would only get you about 270 miles. Now my little Civic will go about 400 miles on a tank of gasoline, and the Prius can go more than 500. So right off the bat it's not sounding like such a great deal.

I tried to find out then how much a tank of hydrogen will cost, anyhow. I couldn't find anyone who would say exactly (perhaps I just didn't look long and hard enough?), but I did find a Shell FAQ web page that said this:

How much does hydrogen cost compared to petrol at the present moment?
This is comparing apples and pears. There is no existing commercial market for hydrogen yet. However we have publicly stated that we expect a tank of hydrogen ultimately will get you as far as the same tank filled with petrol for about the same costs.

Hmm...more expensive car that has to have all sorts of high-tech features to keep it from blowing up in an accident (only another way to say lots of stuff that's going to need maintenance, in my mind)...and it's going to cost about the same as gas...and require more fill-ups than an economy car...doesn't sound like such a great deal to me yet.

I have to admit that I am cynical about the whole Hydrogen Economy thing. From what I've seen. Hydrogen is as yet expensive to produce, and although we might one day be able to plug a hydrogen generator into our rooftop solar panels, it would seem to make more sense to just plug an electric car's battery into the solar panel directly.

I think I have a tendency to believe what they said in the film Who Killed the Electric Car--that the Hydrogen Fuel Cell thing isn't the best idea, or the best technology. It's just a way to keep us coming back to them--to keep us paying them for fuel. Over and over and over again. Automobile manufacturers also have something at stake--electric cars typically require very little maintenance, and as also pointed out in that movie, car dealerships make more money from service than from car sales.

I heard the other day that 60% of Americans believe that if we could just drill more (like in ANWR), the price of gas would drop. But if the problem were just that the cost of production for oil is going up, then the oil companies wouldn't be making these huge profits. Of course if the price of oil goes up, the cost of gas will go up. But it doesn't logically follow that profits will automatically increase astronomically as a result. They don't call it Big Oil without cause--the few oil companies there are left after all the mergers and acquisitions are clearly colluding to keep the price of oil up. Given what has happened to the cost of oil since the invasion of Iraq, I am inclined to believe Greg Palast when he said that the war in Iraq wasn't about cheap access to oil--it was about controlling the supply of oil so that the price would go up. There is a reason that we have anti-trust laws on the books. Monopolies are bad for everybody except the people who run them.

As for the car thing...well, I'm still waiting for that plug-in hybrid.

Links:
A different way of looking at this development (and how I found out about it!)
Honda website--New Hydrogen-Fueled Car
Shell's FAQ site
Greg Palast about the Cost of Oil
Plug-In America

The Global Oneness Project

My husband came across this video this morning and I thought it was beautiful and thought-provoking--the project is to document with video new awakenings and new beginnings in this world in a time of transformation. During this video below, the question is asked, "What if a large percentage of us decided to do something different?" What if? What if a new world--a better world--really is possible? What if it could be right within our grasp? Who would fight to hold on to the status quo? And who would welcome its passing for a different way of being--a way that says I am You. You are me. Whatever happens to you, happens to me. What I do to you, I do to myself. As Dr. King once said so eloquently, "We are caught in an inescapable web of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly." What if we knew that, not just intellectually, but from the core of our being?



What if?

Link:
Global Oneness Project

Jerry Mander talking about Indigenous Peoples' Resistance to Economic Globalization

When I first heard Jerry Mander's name, I thought maybe it was a joke. A progressive activist named Jerry Mander? Gerrymander? Sounds like a joke. However, according to Wikipedia (despite the jokes, a pretty accurate source of information about many things), it's not a pseudonym but his real name.

At any rate, I stumbled across this transcript of a speech by Jerry Mander the other day in a publication I'd never heard of called Lapis Magazine. It's about how indigenous people are threatened by our manic corporate system, and how they are fighting back. The article also includes links to the International Forum on Globalization website which looks like it's chock full of interesting stuff. Annie Leonard, who created The Story of Stuff, is apparently a board member.

Links:
Jerry Mander speech on Lapis Magazine website
International Forum on Globalization

Imagine...the rule of law

Dennis Kucinich, a man of high ideals who loves this country with all her blemishes and fights to make her better, spent some five hours reading 35 articles of impeachment against George W. Bush into the congressional record this week. Lies. Torture. The incarceration of children. Illegal wiretapping. If anyone has been a poster child for scofflaw presidents, surely it is George W. Bush. I say that in the nicest possible way, of course. In his shoes, I might have done the same thing. I can't really say. I don't know. I don't think I will wish to be in his shoes when he has his life review though.

At any rate, if we had the rule of law undoubtedly we would see some kind of action on this list. If the Democrats had any guts, we would see action on this list. I think it is likely it will just languish in committee, but one can hope otherwise. After all, the best way to ensure you don't repeat the past is to first try to understand it honestly.

You can find links to a pdf of the whole thing and a bunch of other goodies here:

AfterDowningStreet.org page with links

Floods and a different way of being

The floods in Iowa have been on my mind this week, as a vendor we work with in Cedar Rapids had to abandon their offices and shift work elsewhere. Last I heard earlier today, the river was still on the rise, expected to crest over 12 feet above the previous historical record. Hearing the news, I couldn't help but think of Al Gore, and his warnings. Here in Washington, I heard a rumor that we might be having the coldest June on record (and I believe it, it's felt like October). It makes you wonder, is "normal" weather a thing of the past? And it concerns me, with food prices already high, what the rest of the year is going to look like, if too many crops are destroyed, and what this might mean.

It also brought to mind this article I read in Yes! Magazine some time ago, from a 2001 edition of the magazine, about a new social movement in India. The article talked about how in addition to healing wounds brought about by poverty and the caste system, the Swadhyaya movement was also teaching people how to catch rain in special catchment ponds and use that to recharge aquifers. I think it's time to start thinking hard about how to deal with both "abnormal" rainfall patterns and drought. Now I'm no expert, but the article made me think there may be more we can do to green this garden of Earth than we might think. They don't talk about flood control in the article, but I think there might possibly be some connection there too. The article was also interesting on some other levels, but it was the water, all that water, that brought it to my mind today.

Link:
India's Silent But Singing Revolution

War, Inc. hits Seattle...and some other cities tomorrow!

As I said in my post a few weeks back, I have been a big John Cusack fan for years. And I was so excited to hear about his new movie, War, Inc., a satire about the privatization of war.

So I am thrilled that it is coming to Seattle this weekend. I'm not sure how I'm going to make it there to see it--have sort of a jam-packed traveling family kind of weekend ahead--but will make my best effort and hope others will too! How it does in this slightly broader distribution of course will impact what kind of wider distribution the film gets. So if you live in Seattle, Boston, Chicago, Berkeley, San Francisco or Austin, hope you'll do your patriotic duty and get out to see the film this weekend.

Interview on Canadian talk show, The Hour:

Links:
Showtimes (courtesy of Fandango)
War, Inc. official website
John Cusack's MySpace page (lots of fun stuff)
My previous post

Obama's choice of top economic advisor

I was very disappointed to hear David Sirota today on the Rachel Maddow show talking about Obama's pick for his top economic advisor--Jason Furman, a man who is closely linked to Robert Rubin, who helped pave the way for NAFTA and other parts of the neoliberal free trade agenda under Bill Clinton in the 1990's, and who is now chairman of Citigroup. Furman helped defend Wal-Mart after the release a few years back of the documentary Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price and has been a globalization cheerleader.

It seems like this choice is sending exactly the wrong message. At a time when more than 70% of Republicans are saying they want a change in our trade policies--well, I think America has caught on to the fact that what helps Wall Street doesn't necessarily help Main Street--and in fact that the opposite is often true. A company lays off its workers and up goes its stock. A CEO drives a company into the ground and walks away with millions while the workers see their pensions reduced to nothing. Technology companies offshore the jobs that were supposed to replace all the manufacturing jobs we have lost to "free" trade deals.

One of the criticisms that I heard early on about Obama was that he was too closely linked to Wall Street. This appointment certainly doesn't reassure me.

This is the message I sent to the Obama campaign today:

I am deeply deeply disappointed in the choice of Jason Furman for top economic advisor to your campaign. When even 70%+ of Republicans are saying in polls that they want our trade policies changed, having a champion of Wal-Mart and someone so close to the taint of Rob Rubin as your top advisor sends the wrong message. I understand letting them be at the table--you want balance, and perspective. But such a choice begs the question--Whose side are you going to be on anyhow? I'd heard about the close ties to Wall Street. It was one of the reasons I was not an early Obama supporter. We know free trade doesn't work. We are not stupid. We need change in this country, not the same old neoliberalism that is destroying America. I hope you listen to what the people are saying. We know Wall Street is not on our side. What about you?

I hope that many others will make their voices heard as well.

Links:
Barack Obama contact page
LA Times article about the Furman appointment

Strange as This Weather Has Been

I just finished reading this engrossing novel by Ann Pancake, about a West Virginia family's experience as the world around them gets blown and washed away by mountaintop removal mining. I thought the book did a wonderful job of humanizing what people in this region are facing as Big Coal seeks to reap big profits and externalize the costs of their actions in incredible, devastating ways.

The first time I heard much about this was in a speech given by Robert Kennedy, Jr. when he came to address the Sacred Activism Conference held in Lynnwood, Washington a little over two years ago. He talked about how this practice was causing incredible devastation that was little known or understood by people outside the area, because the corporate media has by and large failed to inform the public about it.

I read more recently about how activists who went to Appalachia to help residents protest this practice, by which the whole tops of mountains are blasted off and the toxic runoff clogs streams and destroys whole ecosystems. The article talked about a man who had held out from selling his land, and how his animals had been killed and he himself was getting death threats. These activists had gone there to help, and they talked about how the police just stood by while the protesters were being threatened with bodily harm. Scary stuff.

Anyhow, the book was well worth reading; the real story is devastating.

There are a number of organizations working hard on this issue--here are links to a few of them:

Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition
Stop Mountaintop Removal
Mountain Justice Summer

Ann Pancake also has a blog with more information about the book and the issue:

Ann Pancake's Blog

Food for Thought

For some number of years, Thich Naht Hanh has been a kind of hero of mine. His book, The Raft is Not the Shore--composed of transcripts of a series of conversations in the 1974 in Paris between Thich Naht Hanh and Father Daniel Berrigan--is one of the best things I have read about how to be a spiritual person who takes action in the world.

I had looked into going to a retreat with Thich Naht Hanh last year and I was curious if they would be holding any more retreats with him this year, and so I ended up at the Deer Park Monastery's website and I found this letter, which I read tonight. It was from last fall, so it's not exactly new but ...it was new to me. At any rate, the letter talks about what was going on in Burma with the uprising of the monks there, and about global warming.

In the letter, he tells a story attributed to the Buddha, about a couple who sets off across the desert with their young son, and they get lost. Realizing that they will all die if they have no food, they kill their son and eat him bit by bit. He compares our failure to eat mindfully to the situation of this couple, eating their son.

It's a gruesome analogy, but worth some thought. In the letter, he makes the case that eating "vegetarian" (but really meaning "vegan") is one of the best things that we can do to help save the Earth, and he makes a compelling case. It's kind of staggering to realize how many crops are grown just to feed animals. That it takes 25,000 gallons of water to produce one pound of meat.

I am not a vegetarian. I try to be careful about the kind of meat I eat, but I can't say I always am. I love eggs. The thought of giving up eggs makes me feel...well, suffice it to say I would probably miss eggs and milk more than meat. I don't think I'm ready to give them up--but I'm willing to consider cutting back. In the letter, he talked about abstaining from meat (and eggs, and dairy) for 4 days, or 10 days, or a 15 days a month. I'm not quite ready to make that commitment yet, but it's got me to thinking.

Link:
Thich Naht Hanh October 2007 letter
The Raft is Not the Shore (on Amazon.com)

One World Everybody Eats

I heard recently about a restaurant in Salt Lake City where they serve fresh, organic food--to all comers. There are no prices, and no set menu--the chefs serve up what they feel like serving, based on what is available, and you pay what you think the meal is worth. And if you can't afford to pay with money, you can pay with volunteer hours. If you can't afford to pay at all, you can eat a complimentary meal of dal (an Indian lentil dish) and rice.

Volunteering in the restaurant, you can get training and experience you can take with you in seeking employment.

Not content to do good just in her part of the world, Denise Cerreta, owner of the Salt Lake City restaurant, is helping the model spread elsewhere with her One World Everybody Eats Foundation.

Whenever I think about the bad stuff in the world, I have to think about people who are doing amazing stuff like this. This is a radical idea in our world, where access to food--much less nutritious, good food--is not considered a right, but a privilege.

The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which the US is a party (yes, it's true, we really signed on to this, and it supposedly has the force of international law), says this:

Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

And yet...hunger persists, even in the United States. And even where people are fed, often the food is low-quality, and many of the health problems experienced disproportionately by the poor in this country, like obesity, and Type II diabetes, can be explained by a nutrient-poor diet--not enough fresh food, too much processed white flour. Pasta. Ramen. Food bank food tends to be of low-quality--and many food banks now are struggling to keep food on their shelves because of the economic downturn and the rising cost of food.

I have never worked in the food industry. I don't like to cook much and try to avoid it whenever possible. I struggle to feed my child food that he will eat that is healthy, and don't always succeed (sometimes it's just easier to feed him something--anything--that he will eat). But I feel a kind of envy for people who have enough guts to do stuff like this that has the potential to have a huge impact on a community--and beyond.

Links:
One World Everybody Eats website
NPR - Hunger in America
Universal Declaration of Human Rights

The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald

I suppose that today I should be talking about Hillary's speech or at least something that has to do with peace and justice or something. But today what is on my mind is the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

I'm taking guitar lessons and was looking around on the internet to see if I could find some song to work on next, and somehow I ended up at this website that had a bunch of folk songs, including Gordon Lightfoot's famous song by this title.

Now, I've known this song. I actually got to see Gordon Lightfoot perform it last year in concert. I don't actually own it though; my only album of his is Gord's Gold (volume one--I guess it is on volume two). I went to YouTube to see if I could find the song, and found a number of postings.

I sort of had the idea that it was based on a real story, but didn't ever think too much about it. For some reason I thought it happened a long, long time ago. So I was sort of shocked to see that it happened in 1975, when I would have been eight years old. Probably not old enough to have thought much about it, but old enough to have heard.

Somehow, I don't know why, it makes the whole thing feel very different to me, and it's on my mind today. They were carrying a full load of taconite, a source of iron ore, destined for a mill outside of Detroit when the storm came and the Edmund Fitzgerald capsized.

It makes me think of all the people who have died and continue to die trying to make a living; certainly nothing new but also a problem that modernization has failed to solve. Regulation has helped lower the death rate for workers, but still an average of about 15 workers die on the job every day in America, and cutbacks in regulatory agencies have meant heightened hazards at work. Now, shipping has always had its hazards and I don't mean to imply necessarily that any government regulation could have saved the Fitzgerald; it just makes me think. I have always been pretty safe at work, I think (except maybe for the summer they were tarring the roof. That was terrible!) But I know that's not true for many, many people.

I thought this was a beautiful tribute to the men who died on the Edmund Fitzgerald that cold November day in 1975:



Links:
Article about the SS Edmund Fitzgerald on Wikipedia
Article on OMB Watch website about cutbacks in the OSHA budget

The Goodness of Humanity

I was listening to this CD today of a gathering I attended on New Year's, with a--well, let's just say non-traditional kind of teacher. One of the things that stood out to me today on the recording was when he said that when we cut ourselves off from another, when we fail to see the human hands that support us in the things that we touch, in the food that we eat, in the things that we buy, that it is our own humanity that is damaged. That when we let ourselves not care about them and the quality of their lives, we hurt ourselves.

I read an article some time ago, about a program where kids were given recycled computers in exchange for tutoring other kids. The author wrote a book (which I have not read), but it has a catchy title. "No More Throwaway People."

Part of a Van Jones speech used that same expression in the Awakening the Dreamer symposium I went to last week. The following is similar (if not the same) as what he said in the video clip I saw:

This country is 5 percent of the world's population. We produce 25 percent of the greenhouse gas pollution and we have 25 percent of the world's prisoners. Most of those prisoners are low-income people of color locked up for committing nonviolent crimes including drug offenses.

What ties those two stats together is an underlying ethic of disposability. We still have a society where we think we have throwaway stuff and throwaway people. We don't believe that's true.

We can only throw people away if we don't acknowledge them as people. People can only hurt others insofar as they can see those people are separate from themselves.

One of the other things on the CD was about how we tend to think of ourselves as individuals first, and people second, but that this way of thinking is wrongheaded. This came up in Stumbling on Happiness, too, the recent bestseller by the Daniel Gilbert, a psychology professor at Harvard. He said that we are really very alike as people; that we don't always recognize that, but we are. The things that comprise our individuality tend to get magnified and blown out of proportion.

Do you remember growing up and learning about all the terrible things that people had done to one another? And continue to do? How hard it was to believe? How it felt so wrong, so terrible? (I hope it wasn't just me that felt that way!) The Holocaust. World Wars. Murder. Rape. Nuclear weapons. What if it was so hard to believe because those things are not a true part of human nature? I know it's hard to believe, based on the record. But what if that were true? What if it's true that the only reason we have all those things is because we have allowed ourselves to believe that other people are not people as we are? And that if we change how we see--if enough of us change how we see (he said the magic number was 13%, believing a different way)--that we can change how things are?

What if?

Links:
Yes! Magazine article: Unleashing our Hidden Wealth
Complete Van Jones transcript
Stumbling on Happiness website
Carol and Carruch

Dreaming of a world where every child is welcomed

As the cost of food rises, more and more people are facing the stark reality of being unable to pay for food, or being unable to pay for enough food. In this world we have made, it is money that decides more and more who eats and who does not. This is a heavy and complex topic, that I am going to postpone droning on about for another day.

However, I read this quotation last year in the Summer Edition of Yes! Magazine and it keeps percolating up in my mind:

Perhaps one day the world, our world, won't be upside down, and then any newborn human being will be welcome. Saying, "Welcome. Come. Come in. Enter. The entire earth will be your kingdom. Your legs will be your passport, valid forever."

-Eduardo Galeano

Yes, we have to think about population issues. The burden that we place upon this Earth. But I can't help but long for a world in which we've achieved enough balance, and achieved enough wisdom, that this will be the welcoming call to all human children.

An Interesting Theory About Why Hillary's Stuck it Out

My mom sent me a link to Kent Nerburn's blog today. He'd posted something someone he knew had passed along in response to a blog entry he'd written about why he thought Hillary should bow out of the race. The guy said something like this--that Hillary was selflessly staying in the race because she knew what no one can say--that America isn't ready for a black man in the White House, and that his candidacy is doomed. Lovely Hillary, this isn't about her, oh, no. It's because she knows she is the Democratic Party's only hope of defeating John McCain come November.

Maybe this is true. I've had my doubts about this myself; I suspected Big Media only allowed his candidacy to progress because they either thought that a) there was no way he could win, or b) they could buy/control/sink him if he did. I mean, look at what they did to Dennis Kucinich. Made sure no one could hear him so that they could perpetuate the myth that he's a crazy guy. Or to John Edwards, mocking his $400 haircuts and saying that because he's a rich guy he must just be pretending he cares about poor people!

But I hope that what I sense is true...that Obama is bigger than the man himself. Not that he's not a great guy and all that. But I think the movement behind Obama has much more to do with a desire for real change in Washington--a hunger for a politics that calls us to live up to the best in ourselves, for the good of us all. He's tapped into an energy that is much bigger than he is.

One man will not be the solution to all that ails us. But as we've seen in the last 7+ years, it does matter who is President. I for one am hoping for brighter days ahead.

Link:
Kent Nerburn's blog

That Could Have Gone Better...

I don't blame Hillary for not wanting to give up. OK, well, maybe I do, a little. The handwriting has been on the wall for a while now, as most of us could see. I was afraid that she might try to take this all the way to the convention. I felt hopeful this morning when I heard that Bill was saying he wouldn't be campaigning much longer and that a memo had gone out to campaign staff letting them know the campaign was being shut down. I had some hopes that Hillary would be gracious. Try to do something to make up for the fact that she had said stuff like that John McCain was more capable of leading the country than Barack Obama. And to think he might have to take her on as a running mate? Yikes!

I tried to find a copy of her speech tonight, to no avail. All I could find was commentary. But it seemed that the messages were clear--"I won more votes than he did. I won the critical swing states. Read between the lines, people--I am the winningest candidate! Me! Me!" Sigh.

I suppose I shouldn't have expected anything better, given the way she's run this campaign. I found it disheartening to peruse her website, to see the comments that her supporters were posting. Things along the line of, "But she won the popular vote! How can they steal this from us?" And "Barack cheated by taking those delegates in Michigan!" And..."She hasn't given up, we're going all the way to Denver, baby!" Double sigh.

Perhaps this process will be educational for some people, that some of them will finally learn how presidential candidates are selected. I imagine many will be angry, or at least disgruntled. In my opinion, the party holds way too much sway. I'd like to see a nationwide primary. Heck, I'd like to do away with the primary system entirely and just do instant runoff voting. But the fact of the matter is that under the current system, the parties get to decide the rules, and the states get to decide if they will caucus or have primaries (or both, as we did here in Washington State). That's the way it is. And even if you don't like it, in my opinion, you should respect the rules enough to at least abide by your own pledges. But perhaps that is too much to ask. Or at least too much to ask of some people.

At any rate--Hillary? You gave it a go. Some even think you did a good job of it. Obama wasn't my first pick either, but I think it's clear that we Americans (and yes, think people in caucus-going states should count too!) have spoken. I hope that you'll redeem yourself soon. Perhaps you are hoping for a McCain victory so you can give it another go in 2012. I hope that isn't so. But so far--I'm still waiting for the evidence that you will do the work you need to do, to throw your support behind the Democratic candidate you have pledged to support at the end of the day...or will that be just another empty pledge?

The Coolness of Local Cooling

Local Cooling is a tiny little utility that is free to download and use; it has customizable settings for saving energy on your computer. I heard about Local Cooling some time ago, but didn't install it because...OK, well, because of my impatience. I have an old computer that I use with my son and we pretty much run it most of the time, for two reasons--one, because of not wanting to shut down the browser windows we have open, and two, because the computer is a slug and takes forever to start up. But I got a new used computer recently which is much faster, so I decided to give it a go. On the new computer. Because you have to start somewhere, right?

Local Cooling will shut down your monitor, spin down your disks, and even turn your computer off after a predetermined time of inactivity. You can choose predetermined settings based on how much energy you want to save, and you can also tweak the settings to make them work better for you.

The thing I like best about it is that I tend to keep a lot of browser windows open and since it forces my computer to shut down with inactivity, Firefox remembers where I was and asks me if I want to restore the browser windows. Very handy.

It also tells you how much electricity you've saved, and the rough equivalents in number of trees and gallons of oil. To see those numbers ticking up is pretty motivating. Now I just need to figure out how to use it with the slug in a way that won't make us crazy!

Link:
Local Cooling website

The Story of Stuff

One of the items featured in yesterday's symposium was The Story of Stuff, a 20-minute video by Annie Leonard, which discusses, with the aid of stick-figure animation, the life cycle of stuff in our current paradigm. Most of it I kind of knew, but it was something to see the whole thing presented so starkly and succinctly. My mother's significant other for years railed on about the insanity of our system which champions "throughput"--I knew what he meant, in a vague sort of way, but I think that this video shows it brilliantly. This system, which is basically a ravening maw, razing the earth and leaving destruction in its wake, represents at the very least shortsightedness, if not madness, on a finite planet.

Today I went to both Toys'R'Us and Target, and used my plastic to buy stuff at each. My son had a birthday party to go to; I had a few things to pick up. After the symposium, I couldn't help but be a little sickened by all the stuff I saw today. All the gleaming stuff in pretty packages. The stuff I saw people buying. Nothing to let us know the true cost of any of those things. It bothered me, but it didn't stop me from buying; I didn't stop my son. We try to be "careful" with what we buy...but we had a birthday party to go to, and there are some expectations to meet.

I guess what that means is that there is still a lot of work to be done. That I still have a lot of work to do.

The first part of the movie:

A video response by Mendocino High School Students:


Link:
The Story of Stuff official website -- watch the video, get the DVD, find out how to host a viewing party, and more...