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??????

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!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Would You Intervene?

Picture the scene………………….

Your on your way home from the usual busy, and depressing day at work. As per your routine you wait for and then take the number 5 bus home. Sitting there daydreaming listening to your choice of MP3 player you think you can hear raised voices from behind you. As you turn around you witness the beginnings of a violent fracas; a young woman is being attacked by four other young people.

What will you do?

It is a moment everyone surely dreads; seeing the unbelievable happening right there, right then in public, and for you to bear witness to.

It is a moral dilemma; ignore it and ‘walk’ away or confront the situation, intervene and say ‘NO’!

After all it isn’t YOU they are harming, YOUR not under threat. It isn’t YOUR business, YOU have enough on your own plate. It could well be that young woman DESERVES those punches she is receiving.

What makes a person intervene or walk away?

Why is it when people are being attacked it is better to shout ‘fire’ to alert and raise the alarm to solicit help, then the actual words ‘help me please’!

‘Help’, does it always fall on deaf ears? Yet, not just the word help, but seeing that someone requires help; YOUR HELP.

Can we all so easily turn our backs on those who are being attacked, mugged, harassed  verbally abused, pushed and shoved or whatever??

Where did our solitary as human beings go? What happened to rob us of our outrage, of our sympathy, of our heart and souls?

When a herd of Buffalo are attacked by wolves, they will actually band together, regroup and turn on the aggressor, the threat that is hurting one of their own.

Yet us humans don’t often share their mentality.

We say that the ‘bad’ people of the world act like animals, no they don’t; because animals look after their own. Animals protect the vulnerable in their groups and fight back; not walk away.

Could it be then that humans alone are the exclusive owners of the ‘selfish gene’? We call this self preservation, it might be, but if you aren’t in mind to protect your own species, how then can it ever survive?

Yet, all is not lost.

 

There are some amongst us who will take the part of the guardian Angel’s in our time of need. Sometimes these Angel’s come in unexpected guises; elderly people walking past, teenagers sitting on a train, and even a young women walking her dog.

So, what makes some people not accept or tolerate others being harmed in their presence?

What is it that makes some people fight back and defend others they don’t even know; regardless of the danger it could pose to themselves?

What separates them from the rest of the herd????????

OPINIONS PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!! 

What do you think about intervening in a crime???

WOULD YOU INTERVENE??? HAVE YOU INTERVENED???

OR, maybe you wish you had??

PERHAPS, you or someone YOU know has been subject to a crime where no-one helped??????

What DO YOU THINK MAKES US react as we do to these extraordinary events????????

Is Democracy DEAD???

 

I have been looking at UK based political opinion websites recently, where, not surprisingly David Cameron has been dished his fair share of hate.

Yet, I am left wondering; if no-one trusts Cameron, then who do they trust?? Not one person ever answers this question………….

I mean aren’t ALL political parties and politicians the same; full of empty promises??

Yet, to balance the argument out here a bit; the UK was in a pretty poor state when this coalition Government inherited it. No-one, not even David Cameron can be expected to work miracles over night, any change WILL take time.

I am not a ‘fan’ per se of any politician though, but I can see that at this moment whatever is done or not done will cause uproar.

So perhaps then their failings, like all the others before them is not their party rhetoric or their policies, but that they aren’t consulting with their electorate AT ALL.

Isn’t that what politics is though, consultation and representing the electorate?

Politicians by nature seem to impose what they think are great solutions, leaving us all out in the wilderness, alienated from the political sphere.

We are left wondering what is this all about?

Don’t WE the people count?

Where is TRUE democracy, if it ever existed, gone?

Maybe in the next general election they should include a box on the ballot form stating;
‘I ABSTAIN FROM VOTING’ – I wonder how many people in the UK would tick this box?

ANSWERS TO THESE QUESTIONS ARE MOST WELCOME PEOPLE! Please let me know YOUR thoughts……..

What do YOU think about the place politics holds in today’s society.

Has politics lost it’s direction?

Are we all being ignored by the bureaucratic processes??

IS DEMOCRACY DEAD???????????????

You TELL me!

 

*Above pic from : http://bharathin.blogspot.com.es