The dissociation between our actions and their consequences are at an all time high.
People drink milk from a cow that lives a horrible life of exploitation. The dairy industry tries to put a picture in everyone’s mind of a happy cow living free in a pasture with their baby, but it’s so far from the truth. Cows rarely get to stay with their babies, they live a good portion of their life caged, they are forcefully impregnated, over milked, and die young because of all the stress. When people go to the store and buy a gallon of milk for cereal, butter for their Christmas cookies, or treat themselves to some soft serve, they don’t think about what the cow went through to make it. It’s blind consumption, and people need to see the weight their decision has on another living, breathing being. The weight that the dairy industry tries so hard to hide, knowing if the truth was in the open, sales would plummet. A
People also throw away single use plastic, coffee cups, and straws without a second thought. They put their garbage into a bin and pay no further attention. Littering is bad because we can all witness it ruining a nice beach, but landfills are strategically placed so they don’t cause an eyesore. If you lived beside one and watched it grow, watched the machines on the hill turn to the size of ants in comparison, then you might feel bad about contributing to the pile of waste in unnecessary ways. But chances are, you live far away from the, you might even have the luxury of never coming across one.
How easy does this make it to just throw trash in a bin, and once a week a garbage truck comes by to pick it up and remove all evidence of the waste from your mind. You don’t have to see it add up. It is an efficient system, because people can be so oblivious to how much waste they create, until they hear the statistics on waste produced and look at it in retrospect. “The average person produces 4.3 pounds of waste a day, and 1569 pounds a year? Damn! How can that be possible?! It must be exaggerated, there’s no way I produce THAT much.”
We need to take a moment to think about if our actions are worth it, if they’re necessary, and if we can find an alternative that is more ethical and green. Awareness is important when it comes to consuming, and we should strive to be conscious buyers. We need transparency in the market, only then will it truly be free. We need to know where stuff comes from and where it goes. We need to know if suffering went into a product being made. We need to know the consequences their actions have.
We need to know the direct and indirect outcomes of our decisions, and more importantly, we need to act accordingly.
Ignorance is a privilege we cannot afford.
