The Tyranny of Plastic

‘Protecting the Environment’, like ‘Climate-change’, is one of those heart-sink phrases that paralyse us with the sheer enormity of the task to be tackled. It seems there is little that we, as individuals, can do in the face of seismic change: the global decimation, pollution and destruction of natural resources everywhere.

We laughed when the bee said to the farmer, ‘I’m too 
small  to help you grow crops’, but we can all do our bit.

But to bracket all climate change-contributory factors as projects too big for any of us to tackle is not merely defeatist but untrue.  Each and every one of us can change our way of life, our consumer choices to a greater or less extent.  No-one is asked to wear sackcloth and eat grass! But if we all change our choices by whatever degree feels possible, not only would it have an accumulative effect but it would change the mind-set of populations across the globe.

This has been true throughout history when enough people lived their beliefs.  It used to be unthinkable that women would be given the vote or that apartheid would be abolished, to name just two examples.  The pioneers were derided, tortured and outlawed, but gradually the mind-set changed. The same is slowly happening now with climate change and the degradation of the planet.  So every tiny thing we can do to halt this, we should do, as its example and ethos will not be wasted.

Buy and use less plastic

 

One of the simplest changes we can make is to buy and use less plastic!  We’ve spent the last 200 years digging oil out of the ground and now it is lying all around us, in one form or another.  Like the genie, it cannot be put back into the lamp.  We have grown so used to every little thing being made of plastic, that we no longer see it is for what it is – rubbish (with a very short lifespan) that is going to clog landfill sites, poison the rivers, pollute the oceans and never decompose.

There is nothing so insidious as the item that makes life easier.  Takeaway food and drink and convenience snacks (all in throwaway plastic containers), cling wrap, disposable diapers – all make life so much easier for people who don’t think beyond the immediate gratification.  But let’s not forget that almost everything that is made of plastic is designed to make money for business, it is not there to help the poor or improve quality of life for us or the planet.  Even oranges have been sold ready-peeled in a sealed pack which – unlike orange peel – will never ever decompose.  Because we all want life to be easy, especially if we have enough money to pay for it, we do not stop to think of the harm we are doing by encouraging this cycle of supply and demand.  

 Only 5% of plastic is effectively recycled

Only 5% of plastic is effectively recycled. The rest lies around on our roads and motorways, on the coast where the tide has ejected it and everywhere, including the ocean, where it can harm or kill wildlife.  One recent statistic says that the amount of plastic in the oceans will be greater than the amount of fish, by weight, around 2050.

There are alternatives available

 

This mess has been caused by each and every one of us.  We may be recycling where we can, but the only long-term solution is to buy less plastic.  There are alternatives available – hemp products, seaweed and mushroom packaging are beginning to be available, for instance.  But we will drown in a sea of plastic – on land or water – if we do not stop buying it now.  A recent article in The Guardian states that plastic production is set to quadruple by 2050, with 8 million tonnes of plastic leaking into the ocean every year.

So make one resolution this month

 

So make one resolution this month. It may be to stop buying takeaway coffee (unless you take your own container); or stop buying drinks with plastic straws; or stop buying snacks or soft drinks and then binning the wrapper or bottle.  Whatever it is, take this one step.  It will lead to other steps; your mind-set will change and your example will spread.

Many years ago, author Vladimir Bukovsky, a Russian dissenter, said “… power rests on nothing other than a people’s consent to submit to tyranny, and each person who refuses to submit to tyranny, reduces it – even if only by one 250-millionth.”

We are now tyrannised by plastic and by the big business that sees only the profit involved. But we are also being tyrannised by our own inertia and selfish desire for an easy life.  So do your bit to reduce that tyranny – even if it is only by one seven-billionth!

PS – I’ve just bought a bamboo toothbrush…

--++--

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jan/19/more-plastic-than-fish-in-the-sea-by-2050-warns-ellen-macarthur

http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2016/04/04/pesky-plastic-the-true-harm-of-microplastics-in-the-oceans/

Money is your god, isn't it?

When is money just money and when is it a god?


On social media recently a man's post went viral because he had expended a few bucks, a few litres of petrol and a little time in buying two live turtles from a food market where they were on sale for soup-making, and had driven them to the sea, releasing them back to the wild.  So everyone's a winner, right?  The fisherman who caught the turtles was paid by the market stall, who then got paid by the buyer, who felt fulfilled because he had saved the turtles from certain death.  The turtles won out too.

The reality of the turtle story is that not everyone is a winner.  Only two turtles were saved out of the thousands caught each year, to say nothing of all the illegal by-catch in fishing worldwide, the illegal trawling, dragnets and other harm to marine life.  And why does this animal life - on the land, in the sea or in the air - have to suffer?  To feed mankind is only a small part of the answer.  But the real answer is to make money for big businesses and corporations.  This is where money is god!  Where nothing on this planet, no life form from humans down to the tiniest plankton or seed, is safe from the money-grabbing tentacles of those who do not see beyond the need to become rich.

Love of money leads to climate change

 
Why is a love of money connected to climate change?  Because of greed.  Yes, the world population needs houses and jobs and food and heating.  But the desecration going on throughout the world, especially in the areas of sacred wilderness, has nothing to do with feeding the starving millions, the dispossessed, the poverty-stricken, but has everything to do with feeding the greed and consumerism of rich countries and their rich inhabitants, nearly all of them in the western world.

For those of us who aren’t short of a pound or two it is easy to throw last year’s carpet or sofa on the scrapheap, to throw out three-quarters of the Christmas turkey because we’re bored with it, to leave the lights and heating on day and night.  “We can afford it, so why not?” The why not is because someone somewhere across the earth is paying for such profligacy.  Do you ever ask yourself why are things so cheap? Why a new tee shirt is only £1 or why a chicken for roasting is only £2, or kilo of shrimps is only £2.50?  It is not – emphatically not – because the retailer has foregone his profit. It is because someone at the very bottom of the supply chain has had to pay the price.  It may be the chickens reared in soul-searingly atrocious conditions; it may be the child slaves forced to peel shrimp, or the wage-slaves forced to make clothes under barbaric conditions.  Whoever it is has suffered because of the  avarice amongst suppliers whose only god is money.  We strengthen that every time we opt for the cheapest we can buy.

Of course there are millions of people who can’t afford anything better than the very cheapest, whether it’s food or clothes, and this plea is not aimed at them.  It is aimed at those who can afford to pay the premium that ensures people, animals and the environment do not suffer because money is their god. It is the comfortably off who have caused climate change, not the poor.

The interconnection of all life

Dr Jane Goodall – as have many scientists and philosophers before her – has emphasised the interconnectedness of all life, and that is what we fail to appreciate when we are wasteful and extravagant.  The unused food you discard, the new dress you chucked without ever wearing, the mobile phone you just put in the trash, does not cost you – your wallet soon tops up again – but it costs the environment, the natural world, whether it’s the seals killed to protect the salmon farms, the oceanic inhabitants polluted by chemicals or plastic debris, or the forests razed to grow palm oil.  And it is so easy to agree with the cry of, “But the economy must grow! We must provide more jobs.”  Mammon speaking here!

No-one wants to sacrifice one iota of their comfortable lifestyles, their ability to have (a euphemism for ‘waste) everything they set their minds on.  Climate change is the result.  Climate change is here to stay.  We’re not here to stay unless we stop worshipping money and all it brings us; and start considering a more frugal, conservative lifestyle that extends some hope of life and quality of existence to the rest of the planet’s occupants.


Everything you demand helps to degrade the planetary existence

Do you want an airport close by or one with an extra runway to make travelling simpler? That is your god.  Do you want more roads across the countryside to make your journey easier. That is your god.  Do you want everything plastic-based, including toilet wipes, to be  one-use only so that, on discard, it can sit in landfill or in the oceans for hundreds of years? That is your god.  Your god is money.  Think about it.


Remember the film, The Devil wears Prada?  That wasn’t the story of a she-devil boss in her couture clothes.  It was the story of how greed (for promotion, for money, for the good life) leading to unethical behaviour, is the devil’s ploy.  It is not money that is the root of all evil, it is ‘the love of money that is the root of all evil’.  Thousands of people have woken up to this, and governments are just beginning to wake up to the need for a change in mind-set.  Now we need to convince the rest of the world.

 

Let out your inner Buddha!

I read this quotation recently and it made me stop and think:

"You don't have to become something, you are already a Buddha.  The yoga practices chip away unnecessary things hiding the Buddha within." ~ Swami Satchidananda

So much of our lives we are aiming for something, directing our actions at some target.  And when we stop aiming for material things such as security, a good job, a loving family, a nice home etc, often we start to dissect ourselves and look at ways to promote our mental or spiritual growth.  Perhaps the last thing we think to examine or improve is our emotional life, the way we react to life's problems, vexations and stressors.

When we do pause to explore how we can improve our thoughts and feelings, our aims tend to be inward:  'I should be less angry, more patient, more tolerant, more forgiving.  I shouldn't have said what I said...'  We start to focus on those elements of our personality that we think most need changing or discarding.  Unfortunately, since energy follows thought, (or for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction), the more we focus on our weaknesses and flaws, the more active they become until perhaps they take over our emotional life.  The harder we try to control our feelings, the more it seems that aggravating situations arise to disturb us and corrupt our good intentions.

This is the time to remember what the Swami said above.  We are already perfect in our deepest core, at our highest level.  In our innermost being we are already resonating in tune with the Divine.  Now we have to find ways to let that manifest.

We have to chip away at those accretions we have built up over a life time. Just as limpets cling to a rock or the hull of a boat, changing its shape, its dynamic, the way it reacts to the tides and currents, so do we have to dismantle all that's in us that hides the light.

We do this, as Dr Edward Bach - among others - has said, not by focusing on the fault or accretion but by developing the opposite emotion.  Much of the Dalai Lama's teaching is about the development and evolving of our sense of compassion: something else that we've always had deep within us but which has been smothered by the accretions of the years.

By 'accretions', I mean all those emotional millstones, neuroses, defences and reactions we've built into our psyche since childhood.  Not neccessarily the big abuses, but little things that we allow to build up - fear of being hurt, feeling rejected, unsuccessful, feeling a need to dominate, etc.  How often have we thought of someone, 'S/he'd be such a nice person if only s/he didn't have this hang-up; or this antagonism; or this aggression.'  We can see that accretion distorting and  mal-colouring their whole lives, although the person can't see it for themselves.  Is the same therefore true of ourselves as well?

We can't alter other people; we can only alter ourselves.  We each have to find our own way to do it, the way that makes sense to us.  The purpose - and beauty - of quotes is that one of them, somewhere and at some time,will strike such a chord in our heart that our soul leaps up to greet it.  And the resulting resonance raises our vibration enough for us to recognize that yes! now! at long last, we must work to reveal our inner Buddha.

"Think of yourself as a precious, breathtaking pearl - and 

this is your irritation phase."  ~ Astro Twins

And see the Twitter account @S_Satchidananda

Help is a simple thing

This poem was inspired by the work done by overseas charities for the disabled; and written in admiration of those who can prove, that with a tiny amount of help, they are not of small account.

 

SIMPLE THINGS

Such a simple scene:

an African village, chickens pecking in the dust.

An old man, shuffling along with a stick.

A small child, clutching his mother’s skirt,

his grandmother, slumped beside a fire.

All with one thing in common –

apart from being poor and black and of small account –

they are all blind without glasses.

Such a simple thing, a smile –  

big white teeth, big brown eyes.

It’s a wondrous sight, once a year,

when dozens and dozens queue in the sun

then grin in surprise at a sharp new world:

for the very first time, they have glasses.

Now the old man throws away his stick and his years –        

gets a job.

The old lady laughs in delight, cooks and cleans

so her daughter can work.

And the little boy can walk to school and read books.

Such a simple thing, glasses.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Remembering war mules as well as war horses

THEY ALSO SERVE WHO ONLY STAND AND WAIT                    A short story

 

“Here he comes again! He doesn’t look well, does he?” muttered Jo-Jo to his fellow mule as they stood in the bright sunshine of an April day.

It wasn’t that warm, but the mules were too busy enjoying the spring air and the daffodils nodding in the frisky breeze to worry about the temperature.  Criss agreed that their visitor looked pretty woebegone as he approached them. 

“I suppose it’s because he’s confined to a wheelchair,” mused Criss.  His real name was Criss-Cross, as sometimes he was Criss and sometimes he was Cross, but Jo-Jo had got on well with him ever since they had been put together in the park.  The wheelchair passed them slowly without pausing.  This in itself was unusual as most people stopped and read the inscription on the wall close by.

            Next there came a little boy, also in a wheelchair, gabbling cheerfully to his mother.  Though he had no movement in his arms or legs, his head and neck were fine and were like the daffodils, bobbing all the time, constantly attracted to whatever was going on around him.  After stroking each of the animals on her son’s behalf, the mother pushed the chair away and strolled off towards the trees.

            “Well, look who it is!” exclaimed Criss-Cross one morning several weeks later.

Jo-Jo looked and saw the wheelchair man approaching. They had seen him a lot during the winter, always looking defeated and care-worn, but now he looked altogether brighter.

“I recognise that look,” said Jo-Jo.  “I saw it hundreds of  times in Italy when new mules would join the army train and spend weeks depressed and morbid with the stress involved.  Then one day they’d make the transition and could cope with the work; they made friends, adapted to the poor food and never looked back.”

“Yes, we saw it in Burma too,” agreed Criss-Cross.  “Poor things – having their vocal cords cut, so that they wouldn’t betray the army’s  presence to the enemy, was a terrible shock to the system.  And what with the endless humidity and the raging thirst – ”

“We agreed we’d never discuss it,” interrupted Jo-Jo firmly.  “Look, he’s actually coming over to say hallo.”

The young man with his clipper-short hair-cut and powerful arms, wheeled his chair as close as he could and read the inscription dedicating the monument to all those animals who had served in wartime.  He looked at the two mules, standing there so patiently, their  feet planted firmly to support their heavy loads, their heads drooping with weariness and distress; and two huge tears rolled down his unshaven cheek.

“ ‘They had no choice’,” he read out from the stone.  “They had no choice, but I did. And I can at least still choose.”

“Was that a good sign or not?” muttered Jo-Jo to his bronze companion after a few moments of respectful silence.

“I’m not sure,” pondered Criss, “but it’s usually a turning point.   I remember once –“

“No, you don’t,” interjected Jo-Jo more forcefully this time, and the two mules stood thoughtfully in the sunshine, concerned for their visitor.

So they were thrilled when the next time they saw him that he was accompanied by a dog.  The man had certainly turned a corner – he was smiling at the dog trotting by his side, and speaking to one or two people who congratulated him on getting himself a helper.

“Actually, it’s the companionship that makes such a difference,” he said.



'Animals in war' Memorial, London

He wheeled up to the memorial and read the inscription again, and Jo-Jo and Criss held their breath in case he was upset once more.  But not on this occasion.  He gazed intently at the two mules and this time he was looking outward instead of inward.  Jo-Jo and Criss didn’t know the name for the emotion on the man’s face, but it was compassion.

            “Is that your dog, Mister?” came a chirpy little voice and the man swung round to find a small boy in a wheelchair gazing wistfully at the silky haired spaniel, who ran to the end of his lead in order to make a fuss of the child.

“Yes – I’ve only had him a couple of weeks.  He helps me to do all sorts of things. Do you like dogs?”

“Yes, but I can’t have one.”  And then with remarkable resilience for a child deprived of so many childhood pleasures, the boy beamed and said, “But I’m going to ride a donkey!”

“Are you?” Half disbelieving him, the man looked at the mother for confirmation.

“That’s right,” she smiled warmly.  “Donkey rides are wonderful therapy for disabled children.”

“Is this here in London?”

“No, in Birmingham, where we live.  We’re going home tomorrow when we’ve seen the specialist again.”

And still talking together, the three humans moved away from the monument and left the two mules to gaze fondly after them.

“I like new beginnings,”  Criss sighed with satisfaction.

Jo-Jo agreed happily: “Yes, for him, too, the war is now over.”

-- 000 --

 

Inspired by the 'Animals In War' memorial, Hyde Park, London.

Donkey riding therapy is available through the Donkey Sanctuary Trust see http://www.thedonkeysanctuary.org.uk/donkey-assisted-therapy/

At peace with life

There was once a little swan and every time he flew down towards the water, he would see a perfect swan rise up to meet him; but once he had landed the other had vanished. 

 




Sometimes when he was quietly floating down the river on a calm day he would see the other swan beside him; but whenever he tried to paddle faster to get a good look, he would disappear.  Mostly the little swan could see his elusive friend out of the corner of his eye but if the river wasn’t calm, there was no sign of him.

One day when the sun was very low in the sky, and he was feeling rather lonely, out of the golden light appeared the biggest, whitest swan he had ever seen.  It glided alongside him without a sound and looked at him with large kindly eyes.
 

 

 

 

The little swan looked up timidly and knew he had to ask what was on his mind.  “Why is it that I can only glimpse my friend at certain times, but never if I am paddling fast to catch him?  He is so beautiful, I would like to see him more clearly.”

The big white swan turned his regal head and the setting sun turned all his feathers to gold.

“Your friend is your reflection in the water, the tranquil half of you.  You see him when you are at peace and all around you is calm; when the waters of life are not stirred up by the mud of confusion.  You lose him when you disturb the surface of the water, or around you there is commotion.  A swan’s first duty in life is to present a picture of pure unruffled tranquillity, of harmony with our surroundings, in order to be an example of how life should be.  Even when the water is rippled, or you are swimming hard against the current, imagine how you feel on the days when you can see your reflection.  And you will find yourself at peace.”

And with that, the great golden swan rose from the water and flew silently away.

 

Are we driving the seas to destroy us?

In the last century sea levels have increased at an average of 19cm globally, and in the last two decades, at more than twice the rate than any other time in history.  The UN has just put this short video on Twitter, airing the consequences:  http://buff.ly/Wke1KM 

It does not attempt to explain why these changes are occurring, though clearly, melting of the polar ice caps must play a large part.  But that in itself is an effect rather than a cause.  Sadly, mankind must take the blame when it comes to the massive changes going on in the natural world.

But leaving aside the effects of global warming, there is all the other harm we are causing to the oceans - using it as a burial ground for all our unwanted rubbish, for instance.  It is not difficult stories on the internet about the 'icebergs' of plastic items floating in the Pacific and causing untold harm to marine life.  As another recent UN film points out *, we need to recycle our waste if the harm we instigate is not going to come back and bite us.

 

NATURE’S LAW

As I walk along the beach the tide teases me – in, out.

In. Or out?
It sucks and blows, advances and retreats.
How tantalizing – does it know what it’s doing?
Yet every year it sucks a little more sand into its maw.
Every year it inches higher up the shore:
every year we lose a little more land.

 

The sea is winning, slowly,

taking away man’s foothold on life,
leaving us wailing.
Not to say whaling:
Who fishes the seas to extinction?
Not whales!
Who scours the seabed to death?
It’s not the cod or the haddock!
Who poisons the sea with toxins galore?
Not the inkjetting squid.
And it’s not the dolphin calls that break the sound barrier
and drive the whales to terminal madness.
So who can blame the sea for eating up the land,
When we’ve done so much to drive it to destruction?



* UN film http://bit.ly/1rnV2xm