Freeganism

 

Freegans are people who employ alternative strategies to live their lives. The theory behind it is limiting their participation in the conventional economy, and indulging in minimal consumption of resources. Freegans see themselves as embracing community, generosity, social concern, freedom, cooperation, and sharing. They are opposed to materialism, moral apathy, competition, conformity, and greed.

For many years Freegans looked to avoid products from unethical corporations who they seemed to be responsible for human rights violations, environmental destruction, and animal abuse. Yet Freegans soon discovered that whatever they bought they ended up supporting something they classed as deplorable; realising that the problem wasn’t just a few bad corporations, but the entire system itself.

Freeganism is a total boycott of an economic system.

They believe that profit driven motives have eclipsed ethical considerations. The complex systems of production guarantee that all the products we generally purchase, and don’t think much about, have detrimental impacts. Thus, instead of avoiding the purchase of products from one bad company, Freegans believed they were only lending their unconscious support to another.

Freegans now buy as little as possible!!!  

The word Freegan has it’s origins in ‘free’ and ‘vegan’. For those of you who don’t know; vegans are people who avoid products from animal sources or products tested on animals.

Freegans however take this a step further. They have come to recognise that avoiding abuses in our mass-production economy is impossible. Profit driven industries abuse humans, animals, and the earth; this is the by-product of production.

Freeganism aims to avoid supporting; sweatshop labour, rainforest destruction, global warming, displacement of indigenous communities, air and water pollution and eradication of wildlife on farmland as ‘pests’. They are against; overthrowing popularly elected governments to maintain puppet dictators, compliance to big business interests, open-pit strip mining, oil drilling in environmentally sensitive areas, union busting, child slavery, and pay-offs to repressive regimes. These too are stated by Freegans as impacting on the consumer products we consume every day.

****The above adapted from information at:  http://freegan.info/

**** Above image from same website

OPINIONS PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Do YOU know a Freegan or ARE YOU A FREEGAN????

What do YOU think about Freeganism??????

Could YOU convert to Freeganism????

Could YOU boycott ALL the products we take for granted everyday???

Could YOU live for free????

Do YOU think Freeganism advocates a new type of UTOPIAN SOCIETY??????

OR are Freegans merely free-loading??????

Urban Cool – The Graffiti Artists

“A rusting former passenger ship is being brought ‘back to life’ with a spray of paint. The hull of the Duke of Lancaster steamer has been used as a blank canvas for colourful graffiti by some of Europe’s most talented street artists.The ship has sat in a dry dock at the Dee estuary in Flintshire, North Wales, UK since 1979”.

Read more:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2274294/Duke-Lancaster-steamer-used-blank-canvas-graffiti-artists-transform-rusting-wreck-colourful-masterpiece.html#axzz2K86PMtUQ

 

One Smack Won’t Hurt

Image from The Guardian newspaper

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/9846270/So-smacking-kids-is-wrong-and-doping-them-is-right.html

This post is a quick response to the above article featured in The Telegraph newspaper.

 

It led me to wondering what people’s actual opinions are about smacking children when they are naughty.

Isn’t there a difference in beating a child senseless and a light tap on the hand or bottom???

Does smacking a child always mean they will be physiologically disturbed when they grow up???

Or do they become violent adults????

Is it possible to fully reason with a 5 year old?? Explaining to them that their behaviour is wrong, and asking them why they engaged in such behaviour????

Is it the states responsibility to intervene, and create laws forbidding parents to discipline their children as they see fit????

Has this all gone too far – admit you smack your child and face the wrath of Hell????

After all – extreme cases of abuse and diabolical stories of children suffering go unnoticed by the powers that be. They don’t intervene , they don’t arrest anyone, they don’t remove the child, they don’t work to change the child’s environment. So, why are they so concerned with one tiny tap on the hand???

Are the powers that be only interested in the ‘easy’ targets???? Accusing parents who genuinely care for and love their children of abuse, when really it isn’t?????????

Another thought; has a decline in smacking correlated with the decline in society????????????????

OPINIONS PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!