The capacity to redesign our lives

Why do good inten­tions go bad? In a word: expe­di­ency. The dic­tio­nary defines expe­di­ent as “con­ve­nient and prac­ti­cal, although pos­si­bly improper or immoral.”

A per­son had the goal of mak­ing a bet­ter soci­ety and entered pol­i­tics to reform the sys­tem. Somewhere along the line, the pur­pose shifted due to the prac­ti­cal­i­ties of get­ting re-elected; and in order to obtain the req­ui­site num­ber of votes, polling firms were hired and speeches were writ­ten to tell peo­ple what they wanted to hear, with lit­tle thought or inten­tion as to how promises would be kept.

Another wanted to alle­vi­ate human suf­fer­ing and got a sales job at a phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pany. Reality set in when quo­tas were given to main­tain the quar­terly prof­its demanded by the board and share­hold­ers. In order to make those tar­gets (and keep one’s job), prod­ucts were rep­re­sented as safer and more effec­tive than they were, and new mar­kets were opened based on poten­tial rev­enues rather than need or whether these med­i­cines would help or harm.

I’m sure you can think up numer­ous exam­ples of how oth­er­wise wor­thy endeav­ors, such as farm­ing, man­u­fac­tur­ing, waste removal or even pro­vid­ing free lunches to school chil­dren, can—and have—become per­verted and harm­ful due to solu­tions most often tied to eco­nomic expediency.

I sub­mit that our indi­vid­ual and col­lec­tive efforts should be con­tribut­ing in some way toward a planet on which we all—repeat all—can lead healthy and happy exis­tences. If we con­tinue to exploit our seas, air, soil and nat­ural resources for expe­di­ent profit, we will destroy our frag­ile liv­ing planet as well as our­selves in the process.

The hope­ful news in all this is that expe­di­ency is a choice. There are a great many peo­ple whose per­sonal integrity has com­pelled them to speak out and help us to re-examine our lives and our cul­ture before we reach the point of no return. They deserve to be lis­tened to and taken seri­ously. Our sav­ing grace as a species is that we have the capac­ity to redesign our lives and our sys­tems to sus­tain­ably serve our­selves, each other and our mutu­ally inhab­ited home planet.

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