Friends of the Earth
Action Briefing Feb 2000/Mar 2000
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Birmingham Friends of the Earth Action Briefing Feb 2000/Mar 2000 |
Vernon's World
Mines mind mine. The mines in the mind are mine. Fascinating the formulation of words and sentences. Very complicated. For a starter you have to learn language but you must process it into a form that others will understand. This is both a conscious and sub-conscious act. Life is similar, your brain takes in more than your conscious/conscience can understand (a form of protection I suppose). Your genes and your up/down bringing create a personality. That personality will highlight some stimulants/depressants and cocoon you from others. A personality contains your conscious/conscience beliefs. Without beliefs everything is fluid and undetermined, and maybe your mind would be open to anything. How vulnerable you must be without a personality ........... I walked towards a suit and it sent shivers down my back as though I was walking over a grave. I have visions of a blinkered horse being hard ridden, up hill, to the winning post. The vision clears and I pass a man in an Armani clinching another deal on his mobile. In front of me is a child. He has to be right, there is a tick on all his clothes. I see computer graphics, Nintendo, Nike. He's full of these drugs, pop and...... "Oi kid at your age I didn't think of that not even once a minute!" I turn away before I regurgitate his Big Mac, straight into the path of a woman. Wow! all senses and emotions as well as the other stuff. This is too complicated, I cross the road. One step: i sense a navvy with a hangover building the road: thump, thump, thump, I know the feeling. Two step: shoddy material and a few back handers. Three step: death on the road, a worker crushed under a digger. Why didn't Health and Safety realise it should never of happened? Four I scream as I step on tears and blood from a child. The driver was listening to music, trying to relax, he had a lot on his mind, he never saw the kid. He shouldn't have been moving so fast. He would regret this for the rest of his life. The tears were from a mother crying for a life that had little time for regrets and a soul that would never rest...... My head and heart are bursting. I need to escape from people. I end up in a field. I begin to gasp for air, there is a stench of chemicals and pollutants, I cannot breathe. From the ground a voice vibrates through me , pleading with me and from me. "Why are you all suffocating me. I gave you trees, flowers, plants, medicines, food, and all you can do is abuse me, spray me, regiment me for your own ends. You will kill us all". My body is spinning, I begin to fall, I try and hold on, I want to hold on. I need a new personality before I disappear into my mines I.
I hope you found that cute, clever and impressive(ly meaningful?). Well this bit ain't. I feel i am preaching to the converted. Most of you are aware of the environment around you and what it costs in terms of exploitation of, sacrifice of and occasionally the working with nature and humanity. Sadly, we made other countries bare some of the cost of our environment with their blood, sweat, tears and nature. Maybe that's why economics, especially the free market variety, was invented (a bit like the air-spray in the toilet). Economics made costings easier. You could budget for a company's health and safety measures, a hospital bed, an emergency service or a Spielberg movie, though the latter is allowed to go over budget because it's guaranteed to make a profit. Mrs T. loved the sweetener taste of money. To attract more in she de-regulated the financial system as far as she could dare. We became "Laundarama U.K." We did not just clean our dirty money but anyone else's (we do the same with nuclear waste but neither comes up clean). Maybe that is why it is so difficult to tell a counterfeit from the real thing and why though there are hundreds of millions of counterfeit dollars sloshing around the world the dollar is still god and it is every buck for himself. Phew! Back to the point of the epilogue. If you see a 'surfer on society' please give him/her my article and while they are reading it hide the keys to the Porsche, switch off the battery charger for the mobile or re-arrange the personal organiser.
Views expressed in Vernon's World are Vernon's (or not, as the case may be)
and as such are not necessarily those of Friends of the Earth (Birmingham).