Is it just me or is it getting harder to make New Year's resolutions? Gone are the days when simple self-improvement sufficed. Now, in a media-rich and information savvy culture our resolutions take on a new timber. We look outwards (and perhaps upwards) and realized that personal development, although noble, can lack a global perspective. How can losing weight help decrease the gap between the haves and have-nots? How can making our own lunches help with species extinction or global warming? So, perhaps we need to look past the guilted-into-action strategies and focus on something else? But what?
M. Ryan Hess, author of the Ten Minute Activist: Easy Ways to Take Back the Planet, advises us to address this dilemma by thinking small. Using this strategy Hess, along with a five-member Mission Collective, has published a rather small (pocket-sized) book that outlines 150 ideas to "take life down a notch -- and take ten for the planet."
While books like these can often read as meditations (or sermons -- depending on your perspective) they can offer the impetous for people ready and willing to make changes but unaware of how to go about the shift. A few of the suggestions are so commonplace -- such as properly inflating your tires, or planting a tree -- that they almost appear ridiculously simple; however, by reframing them as part of a conscious resolution, a deliberate action to become a socially conscious activist, Hess and his crew helps to get every day, ordinary people to re-examine how small acts can add up to large results.
Whether it's this book or another, the hope us that each person's reinvigorated activism will become a habit -- something good for you and the planet that you can do everyday.
So before you make the list; before you resolve to better your health, your appearance or your bank account; scan the options and examine the impact. It is possible to help yourself, your planet and your global community one small action at a time.
Books to look out for:
1) Michael Norton's: 365 Ways to Change the World: How to Make a Difference -- One Day at a Time (also go online to www.365act.com)
2) M. Ryan Hess: The Ten Minute Activist: Easy Ways to Take Back the Planet
3) Christof Mauch: Shades of Green: Environment Activism Around the Globe
4) Michael R. Stevenson: Everyday Activism; A Handbook for Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual People and their Allies": A handbook for Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual People and their Allies
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4 comments:
It's a difficult question. Is one working toward solutions for the betterment of mankind, or simply inflating their own ego. There are black and white issues such as not driving a stretch HUMMVEE, and more colourful ones such as, is organic actually more environmentally friendly?
In the end you have to strike a balance between personal happiness and moral responsibility.
Very well put. In fact your point is well played out in the local vs. organic food debates that are occuring right now. Many organic products are now unsustainable environmentally -- which, for local food enthusiasts, goes against the principles of organic.
These values really are about examination of personal beliefs and striking a balance that one is comfortable with. Problem is, most people DON'T even examine this. Most are content with consuming without consequence -- a situation that just does not exist.
Romana, can i add a few more recommended books to your list?
The Enemy at Home by Dinesh D'Souza; The Professors, by David Horowitz; Love, Poverty, and War by my pal and once yours, Chris Hitchens.
Happy Reading! :)
The Canadian edition of Michael's book is available from Anansi:
http://www.anansi.ca/titles.cfm?pub_id=1122
It's such a great book!
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