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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

If the question at left were posed to me, I would respond: love one another.

Below is the seal of the school I attended as a boy. The motto in ancient Greek, close to the bottom, is pronounced “fuh-LAY-ta a-LAY-loose,” and translates into English as exactly that–love one another.

This concept sits at the basis of Quakerism, the religion upon which the Willliam Penn Charter School (“PC”) in Philadelphia was founded in 1689.  We are all equal.  We all share “personhood.”

To most PC graduates, it’s weird when we hear, for instance, that the Serbs and the Croats or that the Sunnis and the Shiites “don’t get along.”  Can’t we just knock off this mean and childish behavior? Our common humanity sits right in front of our noses.

The cave drawings at Lascaux that were made 40,000 years ago reveal to us something very important.  We today are no different from the people living at that time in any way that is fundamental or basic.  We all love our children, we all do our work, and we gaze at the sky, contemplating the wonders of the universe.

Harming each other is repellant to our minds.

 

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

What do you notice about the shopping bag in the photo?

It has no handles.

That’s right, Albertson’s, with annual revenues of more than $83 billion, has decided to inconvenience its customers, forcing them to wrap both of their arms around their grocery bags to get them into and out of their shopping carts, into and out of their cars, and finally into their homes.

The savings?  From what I can learn from AI, the answer is somewhere around $0.12 each. If you’re interested, you can Google: “cost per 1000000 paper grocery bags.”

I understand that grocery stores operate on low margins, but if it were my decision to make, I wouldn’t be deliberately pissing off my customers, many of them elderly, who are spending $100 for a bag of my groceries in order to save 12 cents.

Yet the Albertson’s example isn’t unique; in fact, it’s everywhere you go.  Look at your cell phone bill and your streaming services.  Corporate greed is grinding you into the pavement while it relishes in your misery.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

What Krishnamurti says at left reminds us of the direction that essentially everything takes in human civilization.  What once was pure eventually becomes adulterated and ultimately monetized.

The most egregious example of this is how the wealthiest human beings on Earth have decided to ruin the planet with carbon emissions–simply so they can make even more money.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

It’s great to see the ongoing protests against the criminality of the Trump administration.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

At left we see the words of the Premier of British Columbia, expressing his sorrow for the incredible pace at which the United States has destroyed its relationships with its allies.

Of course, this is no big deal to Trump supporters, many of whom couldn’t find British Columbia on a map.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

It’s easy to blame Trump for his lies and criminality.

It’s harder to accept the fact that many of the people of the United States are willing to believe essentially anything, regardless of how preposterous, that comes out of the president’s mouth.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

The Republicans seem to have coalesced around the anti-communism/socialism narrative, setting aside all other messaging re: the economy, affordable groceries and gasoline, jobs, allowing Iran to build a nuclear weapon, etc.

We’ll have to wait and see how this plays out.

In a nation that has, to a large degree, lost its ability to think, it’s possible that voters, especially the most unintelligent among them, can be convinced that the Democrats are leading the United States in the direction of China, North Korea, or the former Soviet Union.

The same morons will also eagerly accept the line that Democrats rig elections, so maybe Republicans will throw that in as well.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

I encourage readers to check out this tongue-in-cheek ad for plant-based meat.

There is a maxim in marketing warning against “promoting the enemy line,” this is so clever, I can see where it could be quite effective.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

As we all know, the GOP will stop at nothing to win the midterms, thus making it impossible to remove the sociopathic criminal from the White House.

But did any of us see this coming?

Macabre.

 

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

I just met a woman who’s been a flight attendant for Delta Airlines since the early 1990s, who laments that her company has been ruined by corporate greed, which has trashed so many other things in our lives.

As it turns out, the CEO makes more than $20 million per year, largely based on bonuses associated with cutting costs.  “Now we have tray tables that don’t work and seatbacks that don’t recline, and nobody even thinks about fixing them.”

She went on, “This shift has been particularly obvious in the case of Delta, which, when I started with them, was known for its southern charm and the feeling of welcoming its passengers.  Now, that gone.  It’s like it never existed.”

 

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