Saturday, January 01, 2011

Does Your Lifestyle Match Your Principles?

It's the beginning of the new year and time to take stock of one's life. Many people make resolutions to lose weight, save more money, or exercise more often. I'm asking us all to take this a bit further.

Take an inventory of your beliefs and your principles. Then ask yourself if your lifestyle is in alignment with your principles. For example, if you are a proponent of sustainablity, environmental protection, biodiversity, animal rights, social justice, peaceful resolutions to conflicts, building community, and/or the preservation of constituional rights--a seemingly diverse agenda--do you:

* Buy as little as possible?
* Buy the non-perishables that you absolutely need from thrift stores, yard sales, and consignment stores or get these items as hand-me-downs from friends and family or from stashes left curb-side or in alleys, free for the taking?
* Do you make gifts, buy them used, or perform a service for the receiver rather than give a thing? For example, a massage, a home-cooked meal, four hours of housecleaning, or a half a day of yard work.
* Do you make every effort to buy from local, small businesses rather than from corporations?
* Do you limit your air travel?
* Do you walk, bicycle, or take public transportation whenever possible?

The above is not an exhaustive list, but it gives you something to think about. You may not see the connection between the principles I listed and the guidelines, so I'll explain.

Multi-national corporations are cancers on this planet. They rape virgin lands, exploit cheap labor, kill off habitat and plenty of flora and fauna in the process, are structured in such a way as to suppress free thinking, critical analysis, divergent viewpoints, and constitutional rights that encourage challenges to authority. Moreover, huge corporations have their tentacles in all sorts of sinister ventures, including weapons systems.

So if you are interested in preserving the planet, making a more peaceful and free world, and seeing to it that all people are treated with respect and are paid their due, you are working against your principles if you buy from corporations and if you buy new.

Since I left my husband in 1990, I have been adhering to such a program as much as possible. Granted, I buy perishables (food and toiletries), often from large firms like Ralph's and Vons. But I do also seek out small businesses, like the liquor store on the corner when I just need a block of cheese or a quart of milk. Everything in my apartment--furniture, clothes, jewelry, dishes, wall hangings--was purchased used or gotten for free, everything except my laptop, printer, camera, underwear, and tights.

I liken buying from large corporations to buying illegal drugs that were produced in Mexico. With 30,000 murders in the past decade attributable to the drug trade with the U.S., how can anyone in good conscience consume illicit drugs knowing that so much blood is on their hands? Likewise with corporations. They are responsible for so much evil in this world, from out and out murder of union leaders to the collapse of the global economy to the corruption of the political system through armies of lobbyists. How could anyone in good conscience put more money in corporate pockets to further this global web of evil?

As you enter this new year, why not make it truly new? Not the same old, same old, but a transformational year, a year of change that begins inside you and reaches out to affect the entire planet.
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About Me

Southern California, United States
Perhaps my friend Mark summed me up best when he called me "a mystical grammarian." I am quite a mix--otherworldly, ethereal and in touch with "the beyond," yet prone to being very precise and logical, when need be. Romantic in the big-canvas meaning of the word, I see the world as an adventure, as a love poem, as a realm of beauty and wonder.

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