The dilemmas are coming out of my ears at the moment. So where to start? Perhaps I will warm up with a little of my story:
Although I have always been aware of what I have bought, and was brought up and grew up with a very environmentally conscious mindset, the last few years have seen my ethics become a whole lot stricter - in a non-anthropocentric sense. As members of our community that is all nature on this planet, I am convinced that each of us human beings has the duty to do our best to appreciate and
respect what nature has gifted us with. This gift is the basic building block of everything, which I believe, in moral terms, is life (and I don't mean only human life).
So the latest opportunity to become more ethical, to align my actions more closely with my principles, arose when we sold our car. What an act of liberation! But soon reality hits you: living in middle class suburbia, this so-called 'loss of mobility' immediately presents you with a challenge. Yes, gone are a gazillion car-related worries (in the UK these consist of: road tax, petrol costs, annual MOT testing, unnecessary repairs, cleaning the car - honestly, I have problems enough cleaning my flat! Who wants to have to clean a car in addition?! -, insurance etc etc.) BUT "hello" to a whole host of different challenges, mainly consisting of: how do I do my household shopping ... without breaking my back? It's even more difficult for me, with my ethical conscience looming over me as big as... well, a very big thing. How do I shop ethically without breaking the bank and without having to spend half my spare time on it (by going to one shop to buy my potatoes, and to another in a different part of town to buy my butter)?
Can we imbue our modern day practices of taking lives for our consumption with such compassion, such respect, such appreciation, such mindfulness as in this story?
