I hear a lot of complaining, and I don't see a lot of action. I guess I should say, I don't see a lot of real action. People are willing to do the easy things. We're less willing to take the difficult steps. We're even less likely to do the things that inconvenience us. I'm not a saint, I'm not perfect. So I'm not excluding myself from this, but I have taken some of these steps. The first ones are hard. They get easier the more often you do them. It really comes down to making informed decisions. I find it funny that corporations, those with less to lose seem more willing to take a stand for what they believe in than we, as people, are these days. Especially when they, so often, believe in almost nothing.
We'll get back to what we don't understand. Most of us don't have the courage of our convictions. Like I said, we'll get to that though. Recently, some pretty big companies, at least in the online world, have proven that they do. It's funny that they're showing us how to live. Let's look at some of the examples. I preface this by saying, I disagree with pretty much all of these decisions, but they are examples we need to see.
Facebook decided to play thought police. Realizing they had a "moral obligation" to the two party system, and theoretically their users, they started limiting the reach of what they considered fake news. This hampered a large number of alternative media outlets that relied on the social media giant to get the word out for them. Never mind that many of the people they were keeping from seeing these posts and announcements were those following these outlets, Facebook stuck to their guns. I mean, we can't have another Bernie Sanders fiasco, right? People were blaming Facebook for his popularity and the fact that people are so sure the primary was stolen from him. Have to make sure that can't happen again. So, never mind that this limit is likely to cost them money, they made that decision anyway. They took the hit and stuck to their principles, as warped as some of us might consider them.
Twitter, oh bastion of free speech. Have decided, in a strangely pseudo-Orwellian moment that they can no longer protect all speech. Pretty strange for a platform that started out as just that, but, okay. In doing so they enforced their new rules in a way that makes no differentiation between satire and the forms of speech they have decided to ban. So, they started banning their supporters. Sure, they have gone back and corrected some of the bans, but have they apologized? Have they stopped the assault? Have they fixed the problem? Give you a guess, bet you know the answer. Additionally, their actions have given rise to one of the darkest places on the internet, where those banned and their supporters now gather. It's pretty similar to Twitter, except through a very dark mirror. So now we have a very liberal, I won't call Twitter progressive (because it's not,) and a very conservative place. They fester and boil. They hate each other, and there is no communication, so there can be no peace, and no coming together for them. Twitter is also losing money, and losing users through these actions. Still, they stand by these new morals of theirs. Unapologetically they stand their ground.
Now, look over at Youtube, and how it is demonetizing certain videos. Do you agree with that? Do you not? Does it matter? For the case of this argument, it doesn't. What does matter, is they are, theoretically, losing themselves money by doing this. When ads don't play, they don't get money either, but they do it anyway.
Amazon does almost nothing to help out the independent author, despite the fact that they make more money off of our book sales than we do. Hell, they got rid of free give aways on Goodreads, you now have to pay for the privilege. So, now only the big boys can really afford it. Mind you, it really helps to get the word out, and most of my fellow indies can't afford this crap. But they did it, despite, again, the fact that getting more sales helps them. Why? Because it is not a part of their model.
Search engines suppress certain results.
And on, and on, and on...
Yet, you can't avoid going to Walmart, or Chick-Fil-A, or pick up something other than a Nestle bar? Come on? I'm not buying it. That's what they get that we don't. Sometimes you have to suffer a little bit, for your convictions, and in doing so, you can change the world.
A few years back, I went to a local butcher. Most of the time I do. Honestly, it costs about the same as going to a store, if you know what you're doing, and when you're getting quality meat, you can make it go further, in my experience. However, I had a friend with me who made a comment about how she wanted to shop more at places like that, but she didn't think the grocery store would be hurt by her dollars leaving. I had to explain to her that I didn't do it to hurt the grocery store.
I do it to keep the lights on at the butcher for another day.
The grocery store isn't going to miss my money, but the local place sure cares about it. And if we all did that the big places might just realize they aren't that big after all. We can also look at the fact that the local place buys mostly local, so the meat is fresher, it doesn't travel as far, reducing the fuel, and thus the carbon. Oh, hey that's a good thing. Most of the stuff is bought from family farms, not factory farms, another blow for the environment, right there. These are all good things. These are things we all need to start thinking about, because the corporations are.
I almost said our enemy is, but they aren't our enemy, are they? Maybe they are. It feels like it sometimes.
I'm not saying don't shop at Walmart if you want to. Maybe you do, but you should look into the political causes they support. For me, not giving them my money isn't about how they treat their workers, because every store like them treats their workers like shit. It's about inferior products, produced in slave conditions, exploiting underdeveloped nations, and the politics they fund. I can't support it.
I'm not saying don't get your chicken sandwich. But I can't support those politics. Maybe you can, in good conscience, I can't. Politics of death doesn't work for me.
Nestle, don't even get me started on them. They own the company that produces a water that I love, and bought my favorite hot chocolate company. Now I can't have either, because I love children, and yes, water is a human right. I can't eat my favorite fake pizza because their owner hates his employees and doesn't realize he's nothing without them. It goes on, and on, and on again.
Look, I get it. My life is drastically altered by the decision I made to live by my morals. Finding local places is hard. Finding places that don't commit human rights violations is even harder. Finding a place that honors life and holds dear to beliefs that are similar to yours might be hardest still. But we have to start doing it.
Because they are, and if entities whose only purpose is to make money can give some up, we can figure out a way to live our lives a little cleaner. I'm not saying to make the same decisions I have. Some of you don't care about the same things I do, but most of you do. Clean, sustainable planet. Your fellow human beings and their rights. It's not that hard. You might go the opposite way from me. So long as the decisions you make are informed ones, I'll be happy.
A little inconvenience is a small price to pay for a more complete life.
#freedom #justice #socialcommentary #thoughts #freespeech #commentary
Sunday, January 14, 2018
Tuesday, January 2, 2018
Obey My Nephew
How can you resist that face?
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