Food for thought
July 29th, 2005 @ 18:15 by NormMonkey
From the deep-thoughts department (NB: written on July 29th but posted on August 2nd because yours truly has no internet at home):
My boss bought himself a flat screen for his desk today. A nice TFT 17″ screen.
(Yes, I’m going somewhere with this)
He says to me that he’s probably gotten his money’s worth out of it after using it for only half a day. OK, so that’s probably not quite true, but the point is there: he’s gotten himself something that’s really beneficial for him; no more squinting at the small TFT screen of his laptop.
[Tangent: I have to admit that while my laptop is quite a giant beast that generates enough heat to keep my office warm, the nice big screen is certainly an advantage. I don’t need no steenking flatscreen.]
Anyways he says this to me and I thought out loud, “Of all the stuff that I’ve bought recently, how much have I gotten my money’s worth on?” He says, “Probably not very much.” I think he’s probably right.
Fast forward: I’m driving home.
[Tangent II: My drive home today RULED!! It’s Friday (and that by itself is worth a metric boatload of attitude++ points) and since I decided to bring my music home for the weekend1, I’m playing it in the car. I keep it on random all the time, and on the drive home the thing is picking song after perfect song. The sun was shining, the clouds in the sky are light, fluffy, beautiful and I’m heading home2 for a long weekend. I’m having a hard time describing how idyllic it was for me and how high on life I was feeling.]
Anyways. I’m driving home and I thought some more about what we said earlier. It’s true - I haven’t gotten my money’s worth out of a lot of the stuff I buy. I’m thinking this is probably true of a lot of people in North America. Then I think how untrue it is for a huge number of people in many countries of the world. I’m thinking of people whose greatest dream is not to be able to buy stuff that they don’t really need but to buy food for their family to live. That made me feel a little guilty inside. Who am I to feed money to behemoth big-box-shopping-center corporations on things I don’t need while millions of people who could live for months on the cost of some gadget are doing without, and dying because of it?
I’m gonna try something. If you’ve just read this and you think this applies to you, even a little, I suggest you try it, too. For every gadget, toy or thingy you buy that you don’t feel you got your money’s worth out of, you donate the cost of that thingy to your favourite worthy charity. Everybody wins. You win because you train yourself to second-guess your purchases and evaluate their value to you. You win because you get the incredible feeling of good mojo (you know the feeling, that good-deed feeling) from your donation to cancel the feeling of bad mojo from your wasted money. I don’t have to tell you how the people at the end of your donation win.
MORE RAMBLINGS
I should’ve stopped this blog entry here. I keep going because I know I’m gonna feel better if I get this out of my system. Let this be fair warning that the following content probably sucks *even worse* than what you just read.
Going back to where I was feeling guilty: I thought about how hard it would be to justify myself. Imagine you’re somebody from Afghanistan - I’m talking about one of the great many poor people from a war-ravaged country living in a bombed-out building, trying to live in a world where there’s not nearly enough food for everybody. You hate the Taliban for what they’ve done to you and your country. You know that a lot of your food and resources come from humanitarian aid.
But you also know that wars in your country are being fought by people who come from a land where the average citizen is such a glutton that they routinely buy more food than they can eat in a sitting and throw the rest out; where they buy things they don’t need; where a major national problem is obesity(!). Take this information and give it to somebody who can make a decent propaganda speech. Now it isn’t so hard to understand how the average Afghani citizen (not that “citizen” is the right word) can be tricked into hating North America.
I’m willing to bet that if you took an Afghani citizen who was tricked into hating America and brought them to live in North America for a few months (be nice; pick the warmer months) they’d change their mind. They would probably feel some strong jealous-like emotions but at the same time maybe the hate would be replaced by the realization that we are not so different, and that the possibility exists for their own society to (eventually, with a little luck and a LOT of effort by many different people coming together) realize some of the benefits of ours - hopefully while still retaining the beauty that is their culture instead of turning into another McWorld, Corp.
1 At least this way I’ll have something to keep me from going insane while I move boxes, unpack boxes, eat boxes, live boxes, breathe boxes - that is, if I find the time between boxes to wire up my stereo systems.
2 For some reason I never thought of the old apartment as “home” even though I lived there for four years. I guess that being a renter gave me a more transient, less permanent attitude towards where I lived. Going home has a deeper meaning for me now, especially since the place is new to me.
PINGBACK […] [1] I decided awhile ago that if I buy a gadget and I don’t get good use out of it, I have to donate the cost of the gadget to charity. […]