Butterflies
Bank Ethically
It’s the opposite of banking unethically.
An increasing number of astrophysicists now agree that money makes the world go around, while the majority of cardiovascular surgeons have long argued that money can’t buy them love. And while great philosophers in search of the meaning of life feel it’s all about the Benjamins, what’s obvious about money to even us simple types is that it can do good or evil depending on the motives of those spending it. Money can save lives or it can kill people.
Unless your wages are stashed under a mattress (and, specifically, the Mattress of Justice) they’re in a bank being invested in whatever makes the bank the most money. That could be flowers and lollypops. Or it could be the arms trade, industries knackering the environment or loans to foreign governments crushing their people. We’re back to one of those simple choices: invest in horrible things or in things that will help the planet and its people.
Most banks are shit, but there are a few with ethical policies making their intentions clear. In the UK, the Co-operative Bank won’t invest in or offer services to any business, organisation or government that “fails to uphold basic human rights within its sphere of influence”, “manufactures or transfers indiscriminate weapons”, “has links to an oppressive regime” or “advocates discrimination and incitement to hatred.” Going one better, Triodos Bank only gives its cash “to organisations which create real social, environmental and cultural value – charities, social businesses, community projects and environmental initiatives.” Their Impact Investment Fund refuses to invest in “any companies that are harmful to people or the planet.”
Compare that to old school arseholes like JP Morgan, Wells Fargo, Barclays and HSBC which are still throwing trillions at fossil fuels, getting rich while dooming us all to climate breakdown. It’s pointless us Butterflying our arses off, righting wrongs wherever we see them, if our money is supporting the bad guys. It’s pointless us giving up meat and dairy and ditching our cars if our savings are funding genocidal polluters.
Let’s switch. If our banks don’t check out we should move to ethical current accounts, savings accounts and investments and tell our former banks why we’re leaving. If ethical banks look after our pennies, our pounds will look after the environment and won’t screw over the world’s poor or fill the world with weapons. Which would be nice.
Bank ethically
Make the bad guys go bust
You'll fix the world a little bit
Photo credit: Irvin Tang at DeviantArt
Zeroism
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The thing with this do-gooding lark is it’s a difficult habit to break. Once you’ve committed to a life of meddling, Butterflying and getting stuck in there’s no backing down, no slacking off, no chance of respite or downtime. So although I’ve been on holiday for a couple of weeks and not actively Zeroing, my do-gooding hasn’t let up a bit.
I am not a free man; I am a number
You will recall one of my new year’s resolutions was to run a 10K for charity, an effort of such clichéd lameness I may as well have joined Weight Watchers while downing a pack of Jammie Dodgers. Since then I have been absolutely bombarded by one request for an update, and only a fool would deny the wishes of his entire audience.
The running man
And so to new year resolutions, a pointless exercise given my current greatness but one I dabble in for the sake of my inferiors and their fully justified inferiority complexes. The challenge here is to find some tiny improvement I can make somewhere. After all, even history’s great humans have had to tweak the odd thing here and there. Rumour has it every January Ghandi would make a fresh effort to cut down on crack.
Social networking not working
One of the difficulties about this changing the world lark is it’s not really on me to change. I’ve already ascended to moral perfectuality, leaving you and others in an ethical gutter like the thoughtless wasters you are. It’s all about getting you to catch up now, inspiring you to positive change by slagging you off and calling you gutter-dwelling thoughtless wasters.
And so the call goes out: Meddle
Life is all about the meddling. It’s all about the getting stuck in and the not just standing by murmuring to yourself about how things shouldn’t be like this and how if only someone would do something maybe things would be etc. If Zeroism is about anything – and it isn’t – it’s about how we have to be the stucker inners.
The foul stench of failure: closely resembles worm poop
And so to the latest adventures with the wormery. You’ll recall how in the absence of a garden I couldn’t get a composter and how I’d gone for an indoor wormery that would turn worms into my slaves, forcing them to eat my scraps and poop out a rich, nourishing compost. It’s not been the most successful of my many successful successes.
Left cheek unused in uncharacteristically weak effort
It can be hard at times, fitting Zeroism into a busy life. Turns out this whole masters thing is less about watching Supermarket Sweep and more about reading every word ever written about social work. Meanwhile the world’s missed out on a blog entry and my usual epic do-gooding, delaying the revolution for 7 days and putting us back to October 2014. But while changing the world from the confines of the library is not without its challenges, it can be done. I’ve spent the week signing online petitions.
Wonder boy
The whole point of this Zero lark is that with a little bit of thought we can do good in whatever we happen to be doing, be it eating a banana (Fairtrade/organic), eating veal (not doing) or embezzling funds from a Lebanese orphanage (carbon offsetting your extradition flight). And so it is for yer man today as he starts back at university.
(Blank) sweat and tears
We find ourselves in the middle of National Blood Donor Week and it’s given me an idea:
Instead of always referring to seven consecutive days commencing with Monday and ending with Sunday as ‘seven consecutive days commencing with Monday and ending with Sunday’ I’m going to start calling that period of time ‘a week’. That’s what I’ve been doing this week and so far it’s been going down pretty well.
