So corrupt, integrity looks extreme
People call my attempt to pollute and deplete less “extreme.” Let’s consider the view behind this defense that to me feels like an attack.
It comes from people living in a culture that induces us to act against our values. Most of us can’t eat breakfast without hurting others, for example by funding production that funds fossil fuel extraction for the plastic and transport if you eat packaged food.
I feel it too, though less for having acted
I felt the personal responsibility that first week over a decade ago when I avoided packaged food and saw the shelf where I normally started shopping at the local market. I couldn’t see actual food, only boxes, bags, jars, and cans.
For all my advanced degrees and worldly experience, I couldn’t eat—meaning I couldn’t live—without hurting others. I still do, but less, and my trend is to hurt people less. Now I see that depriving others of life, liberty, and property without due process of law violates the Constitution and Declaration, even if the nation doesn’t enforce it.
More importantly than my own action, like Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, and the nation’s Founders, I’m working to change our culture to stop that tyranny as our founding documents require. I hope you’ll join me.
Why people call me extreme
Attempting to live by our values used to be normal. No longer today. If you want to fly, you don’t ask who might be hurt. You only ask two questions: do you have time and can you afford it.
We are so corrupt that integrity looks extreme.
We are so lacking hands-on practical experience, we can’t tell that the values I’m promoting are our own, and our deepest ones, not special to me.
We are so full of disregard and contempt for the people harmed by our pollution and depletion, we can’t tell that we are hurting those we claim to help.
We have so diminished our credibility with the rest of the world, nobody believes we would stop ourselves from doing whatever it took to secure any resource we needed, no matter who suffered for it or by whatever right they owned it and we didn’t by our own principles.
We have so diminished our credibility with ourselves that we don’t realize we are lying to ourselves.
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