ThirstyFish

For a critically thinking person with a social conscience and integrity, life is not easy. The system is setup in a way where, no matter what we do, we can not totally avoid contributing to injustice, violence, exploitation and ecological decay. It's as if we have lost our right to be innocent.

Do you drive a car, do you use an iPhone, do you use mass-manufactured or plastic goods, do you pay taxes? Whether you acknowledge it or not, you are at the least implicitly contributing to injustice, exploitation, violence and ecological decay. It's unavoidable. Chances are, the clothes that you wear were manufactured using cheap labor in a third world country, the coffee you drink was cultivated by exploited farmers, and at least some of the taxes you paid funded wars pushed by the military-industrial complex. In representative democracies and in so-called free market economies you have little or no say and little or no agency in what you contribute to.

Those who attempt to maintain their innocence by resisting participation to injustices in their respective political and economical systems are often marginalized, scorned and even violently attacked. Many turn to alternative paradigms of thinking, other religions and spirituality. They seek to live innocent, simple lives and find innocent, honest ways of making a living. Without understanding or distinguishing, we just call them hippies.