Zezt:"I love it where you say how if we are honest we dont really know what's what!"
which part do you mean? maybe you could go back and quote me so i can help to explain myself. i noticed that i did a bad job of quoting shamanomenon in my last post but i fixed it, you didn't mean something from his post did you? either way, a direct quote would help me clarify...
"What do you do--how do you cope--what does it do to your head and soul to look into all this? What is OUR strategy?"
well, as far as "what can we do?" i think it's important now, at the present moment, as far as practical AND small scale goes(which definitely DOES make a difference), to first of all take that matter of
convenience into consideration, you know? like is it REALLY that far out of the way to go to the other store, the one we may agree with a little more, or at least see as the underdog. also, maybe one can plan ways to make the drive more efficient to them, by consolidating multiple trips into one, or bringing a friend who may need stuff from the same store, but who all to often succumbs to the convenience of corporate giants being everywhere... maybe make a thing out of it, so they drive sometimes and you drive sometimes or w/e. get creative
.
secondly, and probably most importantly, one must be an aware consumer. know what you are buying before you buy it. if there's a home remedy that does the same job, then take it! don't spend money where it isn't needed. south park said it well with their "margaritaville" episode, dunno if you watch that.
but essentially, one of the boys parents got some shitty half assed machine that makes margaritas and it broke, so they tried to return it and end up going to the store, they can't return it, then they end up on wall street to find out where the money goes, and they jump through all these hoops going to different places, and everyone claiming that they dont have the money, because it keeps goin and going on down the line, until they'd jumped through so many hoops that their heads were spinning on where the money ACTUALLY GOES. from wiki:
"Margaritaville" reflected Parker and Stone's belief that most Americans view the economy in the same way as religion, in that it is seldom understood but seen as an important, elusive entity. The Margaritaville blender featured in the episode serves as a metaphor for American consumerism, as well as the housing bubble." did you know that corporations are legally allowed to sponsor campaigns??
see competition is key in any system. if you start giving money to the big guys, then you're helping eliminate competition. but if you start giving money to the competition, then you are doing as much as can be done, which is the biggest favor, for everyone. because it's no longer YOU thats feeding them. you become part of the SOLUTION instead of part of the PROBLEM. its so simple yet really the only way to be effective.
how do i cope? i rest at night knowing that i do what i can to inform everyone i meet of this mindset in one way or another. you don't have to be overt and over the top and give large examples like these all of the time in order to clue people in. these are a way to communicate without any common ground, so it's necessary that they are long messages so that they cover all the bases and no one gets left out. plus, you were already interested before you started reading all that. but in your "normal" "average" encounter (i don't believe in one) it's gonna be harder to slip a large bit of info like that into a "regular" conversation. but on a small scale, if you throw out a random fact that someone might not know, where it's appropriate, then those people are gonna go "wait, what'd you say?" and then you've got them hooked. just dont bore the person try to keep the main point close by and try to cover some bases along the way, but make sure to get to the point before you're interrupted and it's a job well done. if you're interrupted, you've probably lost it (the mic, or their attention). but if they get curious and another question is asked, then you just successfully educated however many people in proximity were listening, which has potential to be a big thing. see, it's not always about the RIGHT point of view, so much as it is about having BOTH points of view(or as many as possible), from which the "real" one becomes ever so clearer. and technology is making this so much easier.
idk, i will say that my mind very naturally has the tendency to break things down into this complex system of things, but ultimately all that is necessary for you to help others (and yourself) gain this kind of awareness is to find multiple sources for everything (internet is easy, i like to avoid tv at all costs) and just try to stay current on what's happening in the world. that's all we can try to do is educate us and the people around us, even if we dont particularly care about them. because ultimately, as we have seen, even (and especially) the people we don't particularly care for, will have some effect, be it large or small, on you and the people who you DO care about' lives. so start small, that way it's hardly an inconvenience, there's a time and a place for grandiose schemes for protesting and unibombing and what have you, but the system is perfectly changeable from the inside of it, as well as outside of it, because, in reality there is no difference between the two.
