Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Selling Self-Defining

We're all human (I think), with limited resources and energy and time. Taking more thought in the choices we make, looking further ahead than next month's bills and further afield than our own families, or our own city, or our own country in considering the consequences of our decisions soon gets complicated. If we tried to apply all this to each and every decision we made, we would tire out in about 10 minutes and discard the whole idea. Even the prospect of choosing which decisions we will consider more deeply seems the kind of task that tires us out in the mere consideration of it.
There are tools to help us. Investment plans that pre-choose ethical companies for us. Organic food offerings and local farmers' markets. Fair trade stores and fair trade goods. Travel companies that attempt to help us leave light footprints. Things like that.
What set me onto this line of thought was an encounter with someone organizing a gift fair with all these considerations in mind but very little consideration for practicalities. Fair trade companies would be featured, but so would local makers, who, by necessity, must charge more for their work and find great difficulty in competing with buy and sell, which, face it, even fair trade is. The fair trade focus and the objective of trying to get people to think about their choices, but a film crew coming from LA, when there is a good population of local aspiring film makers. And a show that ran till midnight, after which, the booth holders would have the tasks of packing up and getting home. Obviously, the organizer had never experienced such a thing from the booth-holder's view. Grand ideas of four separate areas, but only 12 booths signed up.
It's no wonder that a large proportion of the public just throw up their hands and cut back their considerations to family size when faced with all this at once. I'm trying to think of an strategy that makes sense for the individual to implement life changes one-by-one, the ones that are most practical and make the most difference first.
Let the brainstorm begin.

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