I was young once. But I can never remember not being cynical. LIke Fox Mulder, I often said, "I want to believe," but never could.
Reading a news item here this morning, SleepyLady's post about carbon offsets, made me think more about this once again. Young people want to believe that they can change the world; we old folks have stopped trying. All I can change is me - if I don't like seeing the earth polluted then I can do my personal best to not pollute. Chances are I will be in the minority, but I'll have a cleaner conscience. What I can't do is trust someone else to do it for me.
We have an interesting issue in the state in which I live. Communities are responsible for providing a certain amount of affordable housing. The most popular way to do that is to pay a neighboring community to take on that responsibility on your behalf. Thus, affluent towns, wishing to avoid having to see poor people, pay less afluent towns to build affordable housing. Poverty-offsets in a way.
This is a pervasive phenomenon. Churchgoers donate money to missionaries to spread the word rather than doing it themselves. We donate money to charities to care for the poor and hungry, but don't invite hungry people to dinner. We fly to business meetings and buy carbon offsets for our fuel use, but won't use a phone or videoconference instead. Our time, our prestige, are more important.
I'm not innocent in this regard. I'm lazy, even slothful. I feel guilty about it and do nothing.
Maybe if the sun was shining on this cloudy Monday morning I'd be cheerier. Now get off my lawn.
Reading a news item here this morning, SleepyLady's post about carbon offsets, made me think more about this once again. Young people want to believe that they can change the world; we old folks have stopped trying. All I can change is me - if I don't like seeing the earth polluted then I can do my personal best to not pollute. Chances are I will be in the minority, but I'll have a cleaner conscience. What I can't do is trust someone else to do it for me.
We have an interesting issue in the state in which I live. Communities are responsible for providing a certain amount of affordable housing. The most popular way to do that is to pay a neighboring community to take on that responsibility on your behalf. Thus, affluent towns, wishing to avoid having to see poor people, pay less afluent towns to build affordable housing. Poverty-offsets in a way.
This is a pervasive phenomenon. Churchgoers donate money to missionaries to spread the word rather than doing it themselves. We donate money to charities to care for the poor and hungry, but don't invite hungry people to dinner. We fly to business meetings and buy carbon offsets for our fuel use, but won't use a phone or videoconference instead. Our time, our prestige, are more important.
I'm not innocent in this regard. I'm lazy, even slothful. I feel guilty about it and do nothing.
Maybe if the sun was shining on this cloudy Monday morning I'd be cheerier. Now get off my lawn.