I produced one piece of trash here at home. It is a wrapper from some cheese that was almost gone... (Should've finished it yesterday!) But my dilemma for the day was throwing away paper towels after drying my hands at the school where I subbed. The sanitation thing, when working with kids who sneeze in your face (I actually felt spit hit my mouth twice today. Ugh.), is not optional. But I need to figure out how to carry something (a hand towel? Douglas Adams would be proud!) with me... Might have to have an entire backpack with reusable containers (for carry-out!), towels, eating utensils, my Nalgene, etc.
Here's a fledgling list of areas that we (yes, the thousands of us who read this blog) can address in this waste not conversation:
Food Production (production of meat, in particular)
Culture
Government
Automobiles / Gas Mileage
Religion
Family
Consumption
Shew!
:) Amy
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2 comments:
Amy,
Thanks for Waste Not, and for presenting it so tangibly. I often wonder what it means to not waste my time or my life – to be wholly present, to see the heart of things, to say what I really think, to do what I really care about. It’s possible to be caught up in illusory passions. Here are some thoughts about the trance that holds us down to mere selves, and the mystery, beauty, meaning and power of real life.
Geoff
“This intense apathy in all of us is the first great mystery of life; it stands in the way of every perception, every virtue. There is no making ourselves feel enough astonishment at it….I tell you truly that, as I strive more with this strange lethargy and trance in myself, and awake to the meaning and power of life, it seems daily more amazing to me that men should dare to play with the most precious truths.” 334
John Ruskin
“You grasp the essence of the here by conceiving the beyond – for this world is the reality of the spirit in a state of trance. The manifestation of the mystery is partly suspended, with ourselves living in lethargy. Normal consciousness is a state of stupor, in which sensibility to the wholly real and responsiveness to the stimuli of the spirit are reduced.
Abraham Heschel
“They maintain that the world is getting more and more united, more and more bound together in brotherly community, as it overcomes distance and sets thoughts flying through the air. Alas, put no faith in such a bond of union.... The idea of the service of humanity, of brotherly love and the solidarity of mankind, is more and more dying out in the world, and indeed this idea is sometimes treated with derision. For how can a man shake off his habits—what can become of him if he is in such bondage to the habit of satisfying the innumerable desires he has created for himself? He is isolated, and what concern has he for the rest of humanity? They have succeeded in accumulating a greater mass of objects, but the joy in the world has grown less.”
Feodor Dostoyevsky
I just put a bamboo towel in the mail to you. It's very small, and dries almost immediately.
pax,
mom
And thanks, Geoff, for the food for thought. Apathy. Does that equal static social patterns of value? Acceptance of the "norm" is one of the human tendancies that make life possible, but is this really a time in which we are worse than usual? Or are we newly a people who are capable of so much more than we actually acomplish? I think you are right to point out the unseen mire that holds our clay feet.
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