For Your Consideration

I've been quietly pondering some major challenges we face in this new century, challenges that feel too overwhelming for me - one person - to make an impact on. Sure, I recycle - one less plastic bottle in our overflowing landfills that otherwise wouldn’t decompose for a few hundred years - but it just doesn't seem like enough when I consider the fact that we live in a squirming, nauseated bio-system that needs detox. We just keep "using.”

Another challenge of our time - globalization (the world's increasing interdependence and cross-cultural-pollination) - brings ethical concerns to mind, particularly when it comes to corporations and their business practices. Sure, I choose not to shop at Walmart because of their gross neglect of the earth as well as their blatant discrimination against women through pay and promotion discrepancies. I go along like this for a number of years thinking that I can’t do anything to change things when suddenly I read an article that says Walmart is working frantically to gain my business back (and other liberal-hippies like myself) by implementing better environmental standards. Great start! Now if they would pay women like they’ve got penises and sell products worth buying I’d be happy to shop there… until I can afford to buy from local shops, of course.

But the thing about globalization is that it is inevitable. And this is not necessarily a bad thing. I do my share of collecting practices and artifacts from other cultures, etc... The real problem with the world getting smaller is that we are evermore reliant on one another for survival and there is vast inequality between the people that Have and people that Don’t. Their success is our success. Finally! A good reason to care about other people’s success, right? But this inequality will only increase with advances in technology (the internet, ect) because knowledge equals power in a new era. Simply said, the vast majority of people on earth do not have access to technologies that we take for granted, let alone a basic education or something even more essential - clean water. This discrepancy is simply too great and it brings to mind questions of responsibility for those of us in-the-know.

Bill Clinton made a speech at a Yale graduation recently that I believe is one of the single greatest public addresses of our time. After listening to this video I felt real hope that these (and other) challenges can actually be addressed successfully. I’m going to ask you to listen to it right now. Go ahead. Pretend like you have 30 minutes to spare. Click the link below and skip to minute 4 while he congratulates Yale graduates for being little-wonders in big hats. I realize some of you may have reason to dismiss the message because of the messenger but I believe it is good practice to expose yourself to disagreement. How else will you know that you disagree?

The Link