One of my goals in life is to try and be more aware and more conscious. It's a fucking pain in the ass though. Cause when you try to be more aware and conscious you have to look at all the stupid shit you do. There's way more responsibility and it's a mofo.

One of the things that I try to do is to leave a smaller footprint on the world. This is the daoist influence in my life. I believe the American lifestyle while ridiculously luxurious is an unhealthy lifestyle that is bad for the environment. In the Bhagavad-Gita Ch 19 text 38-39, Krishna says

That which in the beginning may be just like poison but at the end is just like nectar and
which awakens one to self-realization is said to be happiness in the mode of goodness.
That happiness which is derived from contact of the senses with their objects and which
appears like nectar at first but poison at the end is said to be in the nature of passion.

Much of American society and the world is locked into the world of passion. We constantly need to stimulate the senses. More food. More TV. More drugs. More, more more. This ravenous behavior creates a mentality where the right to consume is more important than what is the right thing to do. By lessening the things in my life I have tasted nectar. Thoreau said to simplify simplify simplify. Bruce Lee said the height of cultivation is simplicity. The KISS principle.

I've been slowly giving up meat because of religious reasons, but the environmental one is now an important one too. A 1,000lbs cow takes 10,000lbs of food to make. I can live without eating meat and it will leave a smaller footprint on the earth. I'll be using less resources. After the wedding, I'll only be eating seafood. At some point I'm going to give up the seafood. This is going to be rough. It's totally bad but I've been going on a tour de pork lately. You could say I'm pigging out on the pig. Rimshot. I'm giving it up... but I'm also going out like a star. Not exactly very holy and conscious... but hey I'm working on it. Anyways, I can't really say that I have these high minded beliefs unless I actually do something in line with it. There needs to be praxis or I'm just talking shit.

I also try to be more careful about what I buy and where I buy it. I don't like huge concentrations of economic power in mega corporations. They most likely didn't get to be ultra powerful by being nice to workers and other people. Someone got shat on. I'm reading this book "Disposable People" by Kevin Bales and it's all about modern day slavery in the global economy. It's a fascinating book and I highly recommend it to everyone, but I want to live a life that is against slavery. I mean I realize that slavery plays some role directly or indirectly in many people's lives (myself included), but I want to have as little to do with supporting slavery as possible. I want to be anti-slavery. Part of the reason slavery exists is because there is money to be made from it. If someone has a desire, then there will be someone that will try to fill it and slaves are the way to get the most profit out of something.

So this means not supporting Starbucks (only cafe where I live that has air-conditioning which is great on a hot day), the Gap, Banana Republic (and I really the style of their clothing), Old Navy, Nike (I grew up with the swoosh), Walmart (so damn cheap and I'm so not rich), Wells Fargo (I'm moving my accounts to Washington Mutual because of Wells' bad environmental lending policies and WAMU has free checking, but Wells was the bank account I signed up for as a teen because I liked the stagecoach), Microsoft (This one is hard cause MS is everywhere but I'm trying to go open source), Corporate chocolate manufacturers (So sweet, so good, so chocolatey), and other shit. As an American, my personal consumption choices have global consequences. The American consumer market is like no other. The disposable income of Americans make us an incredibly attractive market to sell to. Shit, Women swallow condoms full of coke to get white lines to Americans.