Posted by Diarm (194.125.220.110) on January 30, 2003 at 12:12:25:
In Reply to: Re: To any vegans posted by Emily (68.13.144.194) on January 30, 2003 at 11:13:26:
> I am not perfect, and not I, or anyone else on this world, can be completely harmless. But I can do what I can and give a little bit of effort instead of just saying, "Well, I can't do it all so I might as well do nothing".
There's way too much emphasis in general on the petty transactions of ordinary joes and janes here. We just don't have the buying power to seriously affect what takes place. To get that buying power, we'd have to act as a unit. If acting as a unit is a no-no, then yes, it IS better to do nothing, because the victory of the bad guys is then inevitable. Fighting against them in small ineffective ways is therefore wasteful. Better to divert that energy into raising kids, and maybe teaching them not to be so terrified of cooperation for a desired goal.
It seems to me that you're avoiding the real issue here: sweatshops and slaughterhouses exist in part because of the financial structure of the world. This structure feeds off the money people like you and Flower put into the banks.
I pointed it out and all you had was a flip comment about the "love" for slavery. This is because of poor word choice on my part; suppose I had said "finance" instead of "support".(yeah, I know you're not financing diddley right now)
I think there IS an issue here. For a lot of activists, the cause is just personal therapy, not a sincere effort to change or improve matters.
How else can you explain people who put huge effort into "right-on" shopping, but do all their banking with conglomerates that finance child slavery in Haiti?
If they only would stand together and join forces to stop it, it'd end forever. But child slavery continues because western liberals think real cooperation is icky. The only way they are willing to campaign against a problem is as lone, segregated individuals. So the problem stays.