Post the first

Hi. Thanks for stopping by. This is an attempt to impose some order in the mess of ideas, aspirations and intentions running through my mind these days.

I find myself flitting from cause to battle to social issue day by day and even hour by hour. There are so many wrongs in the world, I am sometimes overwhelmed by the apparent impossibility of making any difference at all to the world around me.

Here's a brief sample: free trade agreements which favour rich countries; major pollutants' refusal to recognise the impact of global warming; entrenched racist and colonialist policies which continue to treat indigenous communities as second-class citizens; increasing inequality in income and self-determination between rich and poor; unjust wars waged by bullying governments on fallacious principles; the disproportionate impact of HIV/AIDs on the world's poorest countries; advertisers' psychological manipulation of the young; internet carriers' attempts to undermine network neutrality; the inability of CEOs to make decisions that they know are the right ethical choice; the appropriation of community spaces and local economies by the bulldozer of big business...

And so on.

The challenge is to find a way to make a difference in any one of these areas. To avoid getting drawn into the over-consume, over-spend, over-work cycle. To do something productive with my days on the planet.

It's not like there's a lack of material out there, nor a lack of people trying to do the right thing. It's almost that there's too much. Trying to gain a sense of direction by finding some leading lights in the jungle of information and issues will be my starting point.