Greetings from the Land of Enchantment

A guest blogger on the state of the world

One of my dearest and smartest friends responded to my slow crawl through African history this summer (mixed in with a LOT of bad tv) with the following. It was so brilliant I had to share it:

So hard to find the balance isn't it? I want to read about dark history, and I do read about it, but then it is so depressing and disheartening. When terrible things are happening in the world, as they are right now, as they always seem to be, I find I want to read about such things less and would rather watch stupid TV. Then I feel guilty about watching stupid TV when bad things are happening and people stay ignorant about them. Then I think that what makes bad things bad is, in part, the fact that they steal regular, safe normal days from people in which they might do things like watch TV and not have to think about heavy things. Then I think about how much energy it takes to power the world's TVs and the impact this must have on global warming and the overall destruction ofthe environment. Then I go back to reading. Then I think about all the trees that were cut down to make a book. Then I try to read on-line. Then I think about the energy it takes to fuel my computer and the fact that the last computer I got rid of went into the land fill because we didn't have programs to recycle them yet. And so on. It's enough to make a girl fall into a state of frozen indecision and despair. --Tamara, Seattle, WA

posted by Sat Purkh Kaur Khalsa @ 1:19 PM