If you’re ever back in Vientiane look up Jo who runs COPE Laos. She has a great map showing the dots of bomb drops, most intense in south. Often on return they’d drop because they couldn’t drop in Vietnam due to rules of engagement yet couldn’t land loaded. Mostly on the Ho Chi Min Trail. And of course all across Xieng Kouan up north.

Terrific essay.

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To the commenters pointing out that one person (even someone relatively wealthy) withdrawing their funds will have no effect on a corporation, I say there’s nothing wrong with leading by example; and should thousands of people come to the same conclusion and take the same action, then there certainly is an effect.

(You might want to check out resources like http://www.PledgeBank.com/ if you feel like making it happen.)

The answer that I found to the same dilemma — how to avoid investing in Evil — is called Ethical Investing. There are plenty of unit trusts/OEICS* that screen companies along criteria that you can choose. And if you’re talking about the sums of money that you imply you have to spare, then just ring up any fund management firm and ask to speak to their ethical investment team.

Worked for me.

[*These may be British terms, but there are no doubt equivalents in the US, even if the names are different.]

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Jon – I don’t think it’s reasonable to totally divorce oneself from modern society and the products that are dependent on extractive industries. But it’s even more unreasonable to continue acting without knowledge or love in a manner that is rapidly destroying the earth’s capacity to provide for humanity. There has to be a rational middle ground, and beginning to connect the dots between action and consequence is a start.

Lauraine – thanks so very much for that Dost. quote. It rang true.

Looking for the light,

Tim

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“And that we are all responsible to all for all, apart from our own sins, you were quite right in thinking that, and it is wonderful how you could comprehend it in all its significance at once. And in very truth, so soon as men understand that, the Kingdom of Heaven will be for them not a dream, but a living reality.”

“And when,” I cried out to him bitterly, “when will that come to pass? and will it ever come to pass? Is not it simply a dream of ours?”

“What then, you don’t believe it,” he said. “You preach it and don’t believe it yourself.

Believe me, this dream, as you call it, will come to pass without doubt; it will come, but not now, for every process has its law. It’s a spiritual, psychological process. To transform the world, to recreate it afresh, men must turn into another path psychologically. Until you have become really, in actual fact, a brother to every one, brotherhood will not come to pass. No sort of scientific teaching, no kind of common interest, will ever teach men to share property and privileges with equal consideration for all. Every one will think his share too small and they will always be envying, complaining and attacking one another. You ask when it will come to pass; it will come to pass, but first we have to go through the period of isolation.”

..”the isolation that prevails everywhere, above all in our age – it has not fully developed, it has not reached its limit yet. For every one strives to keep his individuality as apart as possible, wishes to secure the greatest possible fullness of life for himself; but meantime all his efforts result not in attaining fullness of life but self-destruction, for instead of self-realisation he ends by arriving at complete solitude. All mankind in our age have split up into units, they all keep apart, each in his own groove; each one holds aloof, hides himself and hides what he has, from the rest, and he ends by being repelled by others and repelling them. He heaps up riches by himself and thinks, ‘how strong I am now and how secure,’ and in his madness he does not understand that the more he heaps up, the more he sinks into self-destructive impotence. For he is accustomed to rely upon himself alone and to cut himself off from the whole; he has trained himself not to believe in the help of others, in men and in humanity, and only trembles for fear he should lose his money and the privileges that he has won for himself. Everywhere in these days men have, in their mockery, ceased to understand that the true security is to be found in social solidarity rather than in isolated individual effort. But this terrible individualism must inevitably have an end, and all will suddenly understand how unnaturally they are separated from one another. It will be the spirit of the time, and people will marvel that they have sat so long in darkness without seeing the light.”

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Actually no you haven’t. Yes, BHP have picked up large swathes of ground in Mondulkiri for exploration for bauxite. Bauxite is the primary ore for aluminium which is what modern airliners are made of. The same aircraft that you seem quite happy to use to travel around the world living your dream. Use any cars, boats, buses or bikes in your journeys – metals powered by hydrocarbons. Drink anything from a glass or a bottle? Silicon doesn’t grow on trees you know.

In fact your whole comfortable existence is built on the products of the mining industry. Electricity to run the computer you used to post this – coal or nuclear – both mining products. Nice green Hydro? Metal parts for turbines, metal transmission lines to carry the electricity to you. The computer itself – metal and plastic. We could play this sort of game for ever. The products of mining are either directly or indirectly utilised for everything and I mean absolutely everything in our lives. Clothes, food, housing, transport? Look closely and you’ll see the products of mining used in there somewhere along the line. Our entire western lifestyle is based on the use of metals and hydrocarbons.

To really end the hypocrisy. Strip naked, leave your house, go live under a tree and find your food with nothing but your bare hands.

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