Trying to follow

Tonight we went to see a dance group from South Africa at a venue just down the street from our house. It was beautiful and fun, and our daughter danced and clapped and babbled right along to the music.

It was a great concert, energetic and loud, but it was in an auditorium and the majority of people simply sat and observed. I was no exception, besides moving around a little in my seat for my daughters entertainment, I basically sat through the concert. I needed inspiration, and I found it in a elderly woman a few rows in front of us.

Every so often the woman would get out of her seat and walk to the back of the small auditorium. About the third time it struck me to look back, and I saw her dancing along to the music. She wasn’t trying to make a spectacle or perform for any reason, she simply felt like dancing.

There is something powerful about being able to inspire people to dance, and there is power in being able to throw off our social hindrances and truly let ourselves enjoy and move to music. I hope my daughter saw that woman dancing and that it will reminder her she doesn’t have to stop enjoying the rhythm and feeling the freedom of the movement.

If I can’t dance, it’s not my revolution!
-Emma Goldman

So, we all know “Being Green” is the in thing these days. Seems like every business under the sun is doing some marketing to let consumers know that they’re ‘green.’ And we individually are jumping on board as well, in ways we can prove our greeness. Honda had a hybrid car out for a while that didn’t sell well at all, the reason, it didn’t look distinct (like a Prius). You see, people who drive hybrid’s want you to know they are driving a hybrid. A lot of what we do, quite honestly, is to bolster our own image. Going Green is often more about me, then the earth.

And because it’s more about me and my image, consumerism continues to thrive. Everyone who wants to be ‘green’ goes out and by reusable grocery bags. We find out plastic is bad so everyone buys stainless steal water bottles. We buy organic, new t-shirts with catchy slogans on them. And sometimes we make drastic changes and change the location we buy coffee at to the local organic shop rather then the big box. But, in all of this, we are continuing to buy, buy and buy some more. We are buying new things that still need to be manufactured, shipped, packaged and sold, when we might not have needed to buy anything at all. We have not changed our consumption habits, simply tailored them to a specific style, a ‘green’ style (which doesn’t seem any better at times then someone whose style is that they enjoy the color pink).

I’m not trying to be overly critical (Though maybe I am), I just think we need a challenge to the ‘green’ trends we are seeing everywhere. And here is my challenge. If your desire to Go Green is really about the earth and not about you, then band your altruism and energy conservation together and help your neighbor at the same time as you help the planet. Instead of spending thousands on a hybrid, which is better for the environment, but not necessarily ton’s better (for the cost) then your current car (unless it’s an SUV, then maybe), try this experiment.

From what I’ve heard, CFL bulbs are pretty much the most cost-efficient, energy-saving switch a person can make. They not only save you money in the short run (electric bills) and the long-run (bulb replacement), but I think per dollar spent they have one of the biggest energy savings/conservations (sorry I don’t have a stat to link to), and everyone needs light bulbs. So, buy a bunch of CFL bulbs in bulk (ebay is good for this). Put them all in a little red wagon and go walking down your street. Knock on your neighbors door and offer to trade them three cfl’s for three of their incandescent bulbs (You can use them for the few places you can’t switch to cfl, or let them keep them, or try these). If that seems like too much work, you can send me some money via paypal and I’ll do it in my own neighborhood. It’s a much better use of your ‘green’ dollars then some of the more consumeristic trendy ‘green’ decisions.

(photo credit)

Barbie’s Greenwashing (ht. PEM)

The UnConvention is coming to the Twin Cities

The Search for Cool. Does this bother anyone else? (ht. PEM)
Maxed Out trailer. I think it’s worth a watch. (ht. JR)

A quote from The Hidden Power of Electronic Culture:

In a predominantly oral culture, one in which communication is based on face-to-face oral speech, there is no means for storing information or knowledge outside of the mind. As a result, once knowledge is obtained, the culture depends upon the community to both retain and repeat that knowledge. With the introduction of writing, people are affordedthe  luxury to learn and think in isolation without the threat of losing those thoughts. As writing becomes the dominant communication system, people no longer need the community to retain teachings, traditions, or identity. As a result, they spend greater amounts of time reflecting in private. This increased isolation creates a newempahsis on individualism. Prior to the written word, a person’s identity was completely bound to the tribe; the notion of the individual didn’t exist. Because writing introduced the notion of the autonomous self, printing obliterated tribal bonds and profoundly amplified individualism. -p.53

First of all I think that brief paragraph is brilliant insight into our culture as a whole. I don’t know all the implications it has for us but it does, at the least, make us aware of some of the steps that have created the individualism that exist within our society.

Now that we know where we are, and we are aware of how print has brought us there, I’m curious about how we can return to building tribal and communal bonds. Do they exist in any capacity in our current society? Is technology further separating us?

This might be cheating but I’ll do it anyways. I read God For President (not to be confused with Jesus For President), by Lisa Venable. I was actually assigned it for the Twin Cities Daily Planet, which I’ve been writing for recently, and Lisa is a local author. So, I read it and reviewed it here: Pious parable parses presidential politics (long title, I didn’t think up). I’ll even give you the intro here:

Recent political events have shown us that Americans are open to more than just the status quo. Minnesota elected the first Muslim to Congress, the Democratic primaries saw a woman and an African-American competing to be the presidential nominee, and environmental concerns have shown up on the political and corporate radar. With all this progress, the storyline in Minneapolis author Lisa Venable’s new book might not be all that far-fetched. The title? God For President: A Parable About the Power of Love.

In Venable’s novel, God becomes incarnate as Mary Love, a mysterious woman who shows up out of nowhere and makes a run for the Oval Office. The story follows Sarah Rose, a young but disillusioned activist who’s all but given up on the political system until Love shows up and reignites Rose’s passion.

Now, your already halfway through the review, so you might as well go and finish reading at the Daily Planet.

That’s pretty much my book review, but I’ll give you a couple further thoughts on the book. It is not at all an exclusively Christian book, or any other religious subscription (besides thiest). However, as someone who believes in the God of the Bible and Jesus as God in the flesh, I thought this book was a pretty radical modern day parable of what a more modern contextualized Jesus might look like to some degree. What’s unfortunate is that stories like these have to be fictional parables rather then common real-life examples.