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ailbheMore answers from the questions meme - feel free to ask more if you like.
When/How did you decide to try living ethically?
What, other than financial constraints, would make you give up your principled way of living (if anything)?
I'd always wondered, do you actually realise just how wonderful you are as a person?
These questions were more complicated, in particular that last one, which I have decided was actually not sarcasm but a well-intentioned anonymous inquiry.
When/How did you decide to try living ethically?
When I was about 14 I went to a 3-week residential summer school and... changed.
Basically, I decided I didn't LIKE who I was and I was going to change that. So I did. It was a slow process and often pretty damn painful. But I'm really glad I did it (and met some wonderful people, too). I stopped eating meat (started again when I was 18), started deliberately boycotting Nestlé rather than going along with my mother's boycott, and became aware of gay rights activism in a small way, leading to a speech made at a school "choose your own topic for a 5-minute speech" day (I had to coin the word homognéasacht because my dictionary was inadequate).
The seeds were sown much earlier; my mother explained to me that faredodging is theft when I was too young to need to pay fares on buses (I remember the bus, too - blue fake-leather type seats), my aunt brought us back children's books on race and racism when she was head of a school in San Bruno, in the early eighties when we asked my mother whether it was true, as our neighbours said, that you could only have babies if you were married, she said "Some people think that's the best time to have babies, but it's not the only time." While we were running the tearooms when I was 11 or 12 (I forget which year) a group of touristing students found themselves without accommodation and we put them up in the warm, dry barn loft and fed them porridge for breakfast; they were polite about the porridge, poor bewildered Italians!
I didn't make this stuff up; the whole thing came from my mother. My older sister, 9 years older than I, helped too - she took what my mother taught us and went one step further, and I took what she taught me and went a little further again. Now our mother learns about it from us.
What, other than financial constraints, would make you give up your principled way of living (if anything)?
I'm not sure what this means. My principles will inform what I do unless they change; I can't imagine them changing. But I would get in an airplane if I needed to to achieve something sufficiently important, I would buy a Nestlé product if I felt I had to (we often end up with McDonalds, if the children are hungry and there isn't an acceptable alternative with clear allergy labelling, for example). Rob bought a packet of Polo mints while I was vomiting in labour five and a half years ago, because the hospital vending machines had nothing else minty. If I can't afford to feed the family "clean" food (produced by happy people farming happy animals for a living wage without awful chemicals, etc) I will feed them exploitative food, though not particularly cheerfully. If one of us was no longer able to walk, I would learn to drive a car, and probably buy one.
But I'm not sure whether that's what you meant.
I'd always wondered, do you actually realise just how wonderful you are as a person?
This is very uncomfortable to answer. I try to be as good as I know how to be without costing myself my sanity, and in general I like myself very well and think that I deserve to be happy and to have what I need. I hope that answers it.
When/How did you decide to try living ethically?
What, other than financial constraints, would make you give up your principled way of living (if anything)?
I'd always wondered, do you actually realise just how wonderful you are as a person?
These questions were more complicated, in particular that last one, which I have decided was actually not sarcasm but a well-intentioned anonymous inquiry.
When/How did you decide to try living ethically?
When I was about 14 I went to a 3-week residential summer school and... changed.
Basically, I decided I didn't LIKE who I was and I was going to change that. So I did. It was a slow process and often pretty damn painful. But I'm really glad I did it (and met some wonderful people, too). I stopped eating meat (started again when I was 18), started deliberately boycotting Nestlé rather than going along with my mother's boycott, and became aware of gay rights activism in a small way, leading to a speech made at a school "choose your own topic for a 5-minute speech" day (I had to coin the word homognéasacht because my dictionary was inadequate).
The seeds were sown much earlier; my mother explained to me that faredodging is theft when I was too young to need to pay fares on buses (I remember the bus, too - blue fake-leather type seats), my aunt brought us back children's books on race and racism when she was head of a school in San Bruno, in the early eighties when we asked my mother whether it was true, as our neighbours said, that you could only have babies if you were married, she said "Some people think that's the best time to have babies, but it's not the only time." While we were running the tearooms when I was 11 or 12 (I forget which year) a group of touristing students found themselves without accommodation and we put them up in the warm, dry barn loft and fed them porridge for breakfast; they were polite about the porridge, poor bewildered Italians!
I didn't make this stuff up; the whole thing came from my mother. My older sister, 9 years older than I, helped too - she took what my mother taught us and went one step further, and I took what she taught me and went a little further again. Now our mother learns about it from us.
What, other than financial constraints, would make you give up your principled way of living (if anything)?
I'm not sure what this means. My principles will inform what I do unless they change; I can't imagine them changing. But I would get in an airplane if I needed to to achieve something sufficiently important, I would buy a Nestlé product if I felt I had to (we often end up with McDonalds, if the children are hungry and there isn't an acceptable alternative with clear allergy labelling, for example). Rob bought a packet of Polo mints while I was vomiting in labour five and a half years ago, because the hospital vending machines had nothing else minty. If I can't afford to feed the family "clean" food (produced by happy people farming happy animals for a living wage without awful chemicals, etc) I will feed them exploitative food, though not particularly cheerfully. If one of us was no longer able to walk, I would learn to drive a car, and probably buy one.
But I'm not sure whether that's what you meant.
I'd always wondered, do you actually realise just how wonderful you are as a person?
This is very uncomfortable to answer. I try to be as good as I know how to be without costing myself my sanity, and in general I like myself very well and think that I deserve to be happy and to have what I need. I hope that answers it.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-10-26 05:09 pm (UTC)