Election day every day. Each consumer choice is, in a sense, like a choice on a ballot with money to back it up. Assuming the average person spends a conservative estimate of $300 each month on groceries, in a year that is $3600 of buying power. Ten of us for 3 years and we are talking well over $100,000. Thirty of us for ten years and we are talking well over a 1,000,000 dollars of buying power. 300 of us, perhaps the number of facebook friends on someone's page, over 10 years... ten million dollars.
So just a small number of us who are mindful of our purchases could have this impact. Some, granted, is lost in the transactions, and certainly does not go directly to cause, but very much in general, what are we voting on?
In general, where the money will go? I am not in favor of a world where corporations have such a large political pull as to buy or sway elections, but for now that seems to be a possibility.
If the money does go to a parent corporation, what are they supporting? What are they lobbying for? Who do they empower politically? Do they own a news broadcasting station? Are they going to bat for sustainability?
If it is Coke-a-cola, that company is going to invest in an anti-labeling campaign for gmo foods. They want gmos to slip under the curtain, presumably because it is better for business. The product contains the ingredients in question.
So, genetically modified foods... yes or no? Sustainable farming practices.... yes or no? Excess plastic packaging... yes or no? Chemicals sprayed on the ground... yes or no? Nutrient dense whole foods... yes or no? Nutrient depleted foods related to depression and disease... yes or no? Foods that contain synthetic dyes... yes or no? A vote for a dye production facility... yes or no? Local economy... yes or no? Animal testing... yes or no? Flavors, perfumes, sweetening agents? yes or no? Air pollutants... yes or no?... or at least... how much? Sustainable energy... yes or no? Human rights... yes or no?
Want money out of politics? Maybe that won't be a reality right away, and maybe the yes and no isn't 100%, but how about aligning money with principles to whatever extent possible.
Although there is the paradoxical supporting of an entity that ironically uses financial pull to get money out of politics. "The super PAC to end all super PACS": MAYDAY. Until then, perhaps we let the money find its way in correlation with the vision to the extent that we are able. Every little bit helps. It may start with the grocery cart, among other things.
We are capable of so much more. We've got to follow the strings though, and that is a lot of responsibility. Sometimes the web shifts and is tangled up. Sometimes it adjusts to our actions to find another way in. We will be marketed to as as we shift. How we are marketed to will shift. Economic challenges for families are also to be acknowledged... none of this is to say it is easy.
Nonetheless... if we want to sustain, its time to harness whatever power we have... to see past the music & the nostalgia, past the one 'green' product or charitable endeavor the business sends out to bring back our economic support... our vote.
We are the statistics. We are being counted and often being manipulated. That doesn't mean we should forget that businesses are full of sentient beings such as ourselves, but simply that we ask the question of whether we are feeding own (or our children's own or society's own) demons.
People get all excited around election time, and yet there is an election every single day day. That same feeling of power could be in the air. There are quality places to place value in... sustainable practices, high quality foods, businesses with integrity.
Maybe for now it is somewhat true that the corporation empowers the politician and the media, but who feeds the corporations anyhow? Who buys the products? Who holds the power? Its like the breath. It goes on by itself unless we become aware.
Though our personal literal, automated breath is generally in our best interest, leaving this broader system to automation is often to surrender quality and sustainability.
We tend to treat our planetary condition, the same way as we feed a disease... by addressing only symptoms... and then we put our leftover energy into fighting it. So we may burn at both ends.
Its easy to give up, fall asleep and live in a plasticky sub par environment with our ambivalence
People are always talking up freedom, but what is the point of democracy if one flies the banner of his/her news station, no questions asked... to vote home team and to buy based on program.
Democracy (if I was to make the largely incorrect assumption that we actually have a democracy) doesn't work if people are sleeping. It is perhaps just as flawed as any other system.
The company becomes the king rather than a person. We're got minds capable of so much more. And for people who aren't willing to change or think or wake up, there is the potential for the rest of us to bring it to critical mass & make it easier for them follow suit when it becomes convention... the rabbit they reach into the hat for.
Aren't we better than plastic bottles, individualized coke bottles, styrofoam carryout containers, misuse of science in the form of chemical ingredients, animal testing? Under the influence of passion, I might say... please prove to me we are truly intelligent. Lets raise the bar and get this shit together.
If 100 of us go out and invest in sustainability, compassion and the illumination of complexity...If one third of the people on the average facebook page are conscious spenders... that could be over one million dollars a year consciously invested.
Want to take down the system? For starters we stop handing it building blocks. We make it run out of legos & get about the business of building something else.
Like Solar Roadways... or something equally innovative with the same principles at heart.
We may also vote with our thoughts, but that is a whole other story. Although... to be a conscious spender is to hold a vision, and the holding of a vision is perhaps the putting of one's self onto or toward a particular road and to pull society toward that road as well.
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