by Megan Risley

Created on: March 23, 2009

There are too many changes each person could make that would make the world a better place to list here, especially in our country. I'm surprised that human beings actually function this way, that they are able to do such things to each other, our animal friends, and our only home. I just watched The Story of Stuff and it seems, though, that we were set up this way. This whole destroying the planet thing was not an accident (and doesn't have to be happening...).

Apparently, the highest thing we can achieve is consumerism. Stuff should be our ultimate goal. Not relationship, community, spiritual growth, compassion, good stewardship, but STUFF! If we don't have the right width of shoe heel or slenderness of computer monitor, the fastest car or the best looking house, we are not American, and we don't contribute to society. We are SUPPOSED to be throwing things out (aka trashing the planet) in order to keep up with everyone around us. All the TV adds, billboards, sides of buses, even t-shirts say so. It's like this culture was built on low self esteem and feeds on quick-fixes to the horrible feelings about ourselves it consciously and purposefully stirs up to feed itself. If that isn't evil, I don't know what a better picture of evil would be.
It seems clear to me that we have had faulty values handed down to us, and we have just lapped it up. The first thing that needs to change is how we think...we need to think FOR OURSELVES. This is not to say that morality is relative, or that we can decide "right" and "wrong" - but it does mean that we should not let someone else decide for us! After all, the way we have been told to be successful, valid individuals has been prescribed for us and has gone unquestioned. We now think that being "productive" means making enough money to consume at pace with whoever the latest commercial says is better than us, that we have somehow committed moral failure if we've not yet visited the latest mall and that we're not worth nearly as much as the person who can buy anything he wants whenever he wants. In fact, we're even trying to "clean up" poverty by pushing homeless people (and where you are "allowed" to give them food or goods) outside city limits. (Since when is camping an "unlawful" activitycamping an "unlawful activity?!
We've all heard by now that "who you are is not what you do." As long as that took to catch on (some people still don't believe it!), here's another thought: who you are is NOT what you buy, either. As in, homeless people have personalities and dreams (and even kids, too! But, who WE (since we are all connected if by no other force than the fact that we have to share the same small planet) are may become what we throw "away." There is "no true "away"":http://zerowaste.ca.gov/Disposal/default.htm to throw things, and if we don't change our hearts and minds now (not tomorrow, now), this planet might be the next thing we have to throw away.

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