Thursday, June 07, 2007

If you've ever spent five minutes in a Starbucks you've probably seen the piles of absurdly overpriced Ethos bottled water. Buying this stuff, you're informed, will significantly help impoverished children. I've always been rather skeptical, personally. According to this spoof site, I'm not the only one.

Of course, one can always justify the obvious profit motive by claiming, truthfully, that five cents from of every bottle sold is better than nothing at all. But for $1.80 a bottle, I think it's fair to expect a bigger percentage.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Mac,

You have written about Starbucks, bottled water and Consumerism. Almost 50% of people in the world are now living in cities. Most of these people are engaged in making, buying and selling of [unnecessary] consumer goods.

In this context I want to post a part from my article which examines the impact of Speed, Overstimulation, Consumerism and Industrialization on our Minds and environment. Please read.

Industrial Society Destroys Mind and Environment.

The fast-paced, consumerist lifestyle of Industrial Society is causing exponential rise in psychological problems besides destroying the environment. All issues are interlinked. Our Minds cannot be peaceful when attention-spans are down to nanoseconds, microseconds and milliseconds. Our Minds cannot be peaceful if we destroy Nature.

The link between Mind and Social / Environmental-Issues.

Subject : In a fast society slow emotions become extinct.
Subject : A thinking mind cannot feel.
Subject : Scientific/ Industrial/ Financial thinking destroys the planet.
Subject : Environment can never be saved as long as cities exist.

Emotion is what we experience during gaps in our thinking.

If there are no gaps there is no emotion.

Today people are thinking all the time and are mistaking thought (words/ language) for emotion.

When society switches-over from physical work (agriculture) to mental work (scientific/ industrial/ financial/ fast visuals/ fast words ) the speed of thinking keeps on accelerating and the gaps between thinking go on decreasing.

There comes a time when there are almost no gaps.

People become incapable of experiencing/ tolerating gaps.

Emotion ends.

Man becomes machine.


A society that speeds up mentally experiences every mental slowing-down as Depression / Anxiety.

A ( travelling )society that speeds up physically experiences every physical slowing-down as Depression / Anxiety.

A society that entertains itself daily experiences every non-entertaining moment as Depression / Anxiety.


Fast visuals/ words make slow emotions extinct.

Scientific/ Industrial/ Financial thinking destroys emotional circuits.

A fast (large) society cannot feel pain / remorse / empathy.

A fast (large) society will always be cruel to Animals/ Trees/ Air/ Water/ Land and to Itself.

To read the complete article please follow any of these links :
PlanetSave
FreeInfoSociety
ePhilosopher
Corrupt

sushil_yadav

Anonymous said...

I've never spent fives seconds, let alone five minutes, in a Starbucks.

And you know, they are on almost every street corner in the upper west coast.

Mac said...

Bsti--

You're not missing anything. If you like coffee, stick to the indie places.