Mindful Consumption

Last night I watched a news report about the dividing of Sudan into two nations, effectively ending a decades old civil war. It wasn't a hugely detailed report, but apparently one of the problems that still exists relates to the oil. The South has it, and the North has most of the pipeline and delivery mechanisms. There is debate about how to divide the profits among the two new countries, if they can find a way to cooperate.

This got me thinking again about how central oil is not only to our world economy but to our collective culture. The images on the screen are enough to make you wonder if living in an oil producing area is a blessing or a curse. Can there ever be peace where there is oil. (And yes, I realize that the United States and Canada are among this group.) Which lead to a deeper question, connected but not limited to oil. This is not the first time I've asked myself this question, and I'm certainly far from the first to ask it. But it deserves to be posed again and again.

Who suffers to make my lifestyle and standard of living possible?

The worldwide violence connected to oil resources is sometimes enough to make me want to sell our car and never drive again. But I know it's not that simple. And I'm not willing to give up using plastic, synthetic fabrics, or petroleum based products in general. I understand that I enjoy fresh produce that does not grow in my current climate zone, and that there is a cost for it to travel from a grower to my kitchen.

But to me, part of the desire to live more simply comes back to this question. I admit the much of my motivation is selfish. I believe that by consuming less I actually live more. But what if a side effect is that someone else, who I'll never meet, somewhere in the world also has a better life because of my choices. It might seem grandiose to think that my everyday decisions would or could ever have this kind of effect, but I believe there are ripple effects of things that we never see or know. The Butterfly Effect, if you will.

This has the potential to stir up all kinds of political issues, and I really would like to avoid that. So many people that I care about would place themselves all over the political spectrum, and as long as you have a reasoned understanding of them, I respect your views. I think this is an issue that can be discussed without dragging in tangent arguments and hurting each other.

For me, the first step in all of this is to try to be more mindful of my own consumption and I think the world would be a different place if more people, however imperfectly, made a similar effort. From mindless to mindful consumption.