When last we met I was busy repiloting, running another non-Scientological do-gooding audit and flogging myself back to my self-righteous best. And now, just 16 weeks later, I’m back with another pile of old shite, making this a very definitely sustained comeback. To be fair to me (full disclosure: I am me) I’ve not been entirely inactive, putting together a fundraiser that got five grand for a children’s home in Nepal, but given I can’t get any credit for that on an anonymous blog I’m starting to wonder why I bothered. We need now to turn our audit into goals, our goals into anger, our anger into suffering, and our suffering into a series of humanity-saving global revolutions. We need a plan, heist movie style:
I’m telling you it can’t be done. First, you’ve got to inspire people to make individual changes and stick to them, the problem being they don’t want to do either of those things. To get them going you’ve got to get your voice heard, which hasn’t happened yet and isn’t going to. And if by some miracle you find your way past that you’ve got to have all those individual changes add up to something, which they won’t. And that’s not the worst part (Tell ‘em about the worst part). The worst part is you’ve got to clear world-killing goons feeding at the trough, all of them happy to be there, all of them wanting it to last. So… This hasn’t been helpful at all. Heist movies should be 12 minutes long and have people just giving up immediately.
Let’s focus on the key areas we need to sort here. The environment’s top of the list. There’s no point fussing over the state of individual humans if the ball we’re living on has shrivelled up and died. Then we need to fix global inequality, on account of how some of us are living large while others are literally starving to death. We need to fix gender inequality, and a whole bunch of other inequalities, isms and phobias while we’re at it. We need to stop the worst of capitalism screwing people over so we can buy nice things. We need to be better to animals and, more specifically, stop killing them all the time and eating them and everything. And we need to recognise our place in the thing, figuring the changes we can make in our own lives and the bigger changes we’ll demand from our lizard overlords. So here’s what we’ve got and how we’re going to get there:
Environmentalism
Global goals: A world that isn’t all wrecked and polluted and Mad Maxed to all fuck. A world that isn’t a post-apocalyptic hole, all sharks swimming round Times Square and people trading dirt like gold.
Personal goals: To make minimal environmental impact; to be to the environment what Ron Howard is to cinema.
Global actions: As a species we’ll end our dependence on polluting fuels and energy sources, quit using single-use plastics for unnecessary bollocks, and progress to only sustainable materials and renewable energy sources.
Personal actions: I’ll reduce my energy and materials use, and use renewable energies and sustainable materials. I’ll Butterfly myself til I can’t Butterfly no more, and join campaigns to effect global change.
Global inequality
Global goals: A world in which no one is starving or shitting themselves to death while others are quaffing unicorn blood and wiping their arses with gold leaf bog roll. Which is what’s happening currently.
Personal goals: To be less of a first world arsehole and help get my fellow humans out of poverty.
Global actions: As a species we’ll actually care about the rest of the species, ending water poverty, educational poverty and yer regular kind of no-money poverty because we can already do all of these things.
Personal actions: I’ll give a bunch of money to charities working on access to water, education, food and contraception, and on prevention of preventable diseases.
The whole pack of other inequalities
Global goals: A world with equal opportunity for everyone, in which racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, other isms and all the phobias have fucked right off.
Personal goals: To be anti-discriminatory, not just non-discriminatory; to seek out and counter inequalities.
Global actions: As a species we’ll finally cover the most basic of basics, getting the vote for women everywhere, getting marriage equality everywhere, making black lives matter everywhere; undoing every horrific thing we’ve thought of since we shed our gills.
Personal actions: I’ll challenge bigoted twats in person and online, be a feminist ally whenever misogyny rears its dickish head, and join campaigns to effect global change.
The shittiest end of the capitalism stick
Global goals: A world in which people don’t screw over other people for money.
Personal goals: To avoid being complicit in screwing people over for the things I buy and/or steal.
Global actions: As a species we’ll rejig our thinking about money being more important than people, so we look back on this era of sweatshops the way we now look back on slavery. To be clear: we’ll think it was bad.
Personal actions: I’ll research and avoid the worst corporate offenders, buy Fairtrade whenever possible and – in this case – join campaigns to effect global change.
Veggieness
Global goals: A world in which animals aren’t kept and killed for food and other stuff we can do without.
Personal goals: To do no harm to animals. Cos they is cool.
Global action: As a species we’ll trigger a global attitudinal change to animal welfare and the benefits of plant-based cack, and progress stem cell research so we can get eating cruelty-free meat as soon as possible because I hate my life.
Personal actions: I’ll keep up the vegetarianism but also reduce my reliance on milk, eggs, cheese and other dairyness as I tip-toe towards the living hell of veganism. And I’ll join campaigns to improve animal welfare and convert people to vegetarianism and veganism but not pescatarianism because what would be the point, but won’t be a dick about the whole thing.
This is it! This is the reboot! This is the comeback! This is Zero 2.0! Or should it be 0.1? Or ZeroPointOne? I’ll have a think, get back to you in mid-November and do nothing in the meantime.
Photo credit: Def Jam Records
