3.5 Billion
Ok people, prepare yourselves for a heavy post…
If you want to watch something scary this Halloween skip the latest steaming pile of distraction Netflix is pushing down our throats, like love and anarchy or a rerun of the Kardashians, taking us even further away from what is good and true. Watch “made in a day” if you want to watch and ponder something truly scary, 3.5 billion I will come back to that number later.
Consider this…. we are witnessing the collapse of our natural earth because we are stuck in an inescapable loop of higher productivity for higher profits. While trying to survive in a world of higher costs, which is built on an economic system that DESIRES this to happen.
We are all trapped in a world were money = freedom. Because let’s face it essentially it does, you want to be truly free? Freedom to pay our rent, feed our families, to buy our kids something nice they have been begging for because they have also seen it a million times in their feed that we helped create the content for at work to pay the rent. (There is that loop again). We are being distracted constantly into not caring, not resisting.
produce.work.feelgood.produce.work.feelgood.justify.ignore.repeat
Look at how valued the homeless are, look at how “valuable” the last remaining tribal people are seen as by capitalist societies, their land has been been burnt to make way for cattle ranches, their value and the life sustaining forests they live in are not producing enough so they get destroyed and turned into something that does. This is the simple equation of capitalism, produce and profit otherwise be do something until you do. They have our land, they have long robbed us of our ability to provide us and our community with food and shelter, that is just a distant memory while we sit on our couches and wonder what to buy next that will fill the hole that has been created from this theft. I do it, we all do, buy some crap we don’t need pushed on us for the 5th time in our instagram feed because we our apps heard us say whatever product advertising keyword that was. While the homeless are forgotten because they fell off the capitalist merry go round.
3.5 billion I told you I would come back to that number, I’m just like you we all are, stuck in this world of capitalism. watching a show “made in a day” because my mind won’t let my body sleep. That number is the number of sneakers we produce every year. Sneakers. That’s one consumer product. How did we get here.
Capitalism, inflation, GDP as a measure of a countries wealth and economic health. The generation of desire. How do we ever get out of this. How is our beautiful planet doing to sustain the resources needed to make all this crap, and how will she deal with the toxic trash they produce. Reject, refuse and carefully choose what you spend your money on because there are 7.8 billion people that have to wake up every morning and try make a living selling the things that we are buying, if it’s making one of those pairs of sneakers or spraying crops with pesticides, we all have to do something to make money. Before we had a climate change problem we had an economic system problem and that is the basis of most our problems. Because for now and until the world collapses in on itself while we buy consumer products and things that give us pleasure in a sad selfish world that is the only economic system we have.
BUT wait I’m not going to end this on such a dark note, because there is light, there is SO much light in this world.
Everytime we get into nature we are reminded of it, everytime we dive into the sea and feel it, everytime we witness people showing true compassion and love to eachother we know it exists and the ever growing presence of darkness in this world just allows us to create light more easily. To shine our lights on whatever that may be, to choose to focus our collective energy on healing whatever needs healing. We are the 7.8 billion.
Start something that challenges the way things are produced, choose a product that does not hurt the environment so badly, donate money to homeless shelters. Push for tribal rights. Donate to an organisation cleaning all the crap we are creating. Go do a beach cleanup. Block the advertising algorithms unplug and spend time with the ones you love, time will eventually take them from us, treasure them. Treasure the good things in life, the true things, the honest things, the things we as humans have always known had value before the selfishness of the world convinced us otherwise. Because there will be 3.5billion sneakers made this year but there are 7.8 billion of us with the power to choose what we invest in. Kurt Cobain famously said ‘I’d rather be hated for who I am, than loved for who I am not.’ So go be who you are, if you know who that is and fk the rest because believe me there is a lot of the rest, but try do it with kindness and truly good intentions in your heart, because everything we do affects people and everything we think affects everything we do, no matter how much we think that not to be true. Now go back to watching love and anarchy and order something that fills that hole inside you. 
Some more numbers: coca cola alone produces100 billion plastic bottles every year (yes the sponsors of the climate crisis talks this year cop 27) 25.3 billion plastic straws are used in the EU alone each year. How is our planet supposed to survive these numbers. How have we allowed it to get to this.