80/20 Rules, O.K?

Hello lovely folks and how is this new year treating you so far? 

Looking around blogland has been really delightful this week, with all the wonderful pictures and descriptions of peep's experiences and achievements for 2010.

Some of the Resolutions are great and I may well be copying:)  

But not just yet.

 I've long tended not to jump into resolution enactment mode until February the first.  Get the festive aftermath well cleared before starting afresh.  It works for me.

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To be truthful, my best and most long-lasting Big Changes have taken place in August and September.  The reason is two-fold.  I have a late summer birthday.  Always a good point for reflection and renewal.  And in U.K. education circles 'the new term' begins after a six-week break, typically last two weeks in July 'til first week in September. 

 As a parent this is significant - the fresh uniforms and equipment, blank timetables eager to be filled, and the choices of after-school activities, sports, crafts, drama, music, vegging-out if front of the T.V., computer gaming skills.

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So you get the picture.  And of course significant birthdays take on another level of intensity (unless you choose the Ostrich method hehe).  Got to do something meaningful.  Paraglide when you're eighty.  Bungee jump when you reach ninety!
Say a person is approaching their fiftieth birthday.  They have been through some dark and troublesome times.  The sense of a new start, rebirth, builds.  Imagine if you will that person has done, as many do, hankered after a different lifestyle, something major.  They have pushed this desire to one side repeatedly over the years, making 'too difficult' or 'no time' or 'not enough information' their reasoning.  

Then it happens.  The tipping point.  The time is now.  The change is made.  The announcement as well, possibly.

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In 2005 aged fifty my decision was to be vegan.  For me that meant that no animals were used, exploited, killed.  So, what I ate,drank, wore, consumed, bathed in, dressed in, gifted, and created became cruelty-free.

That was my decision.  

Made by me, personal to me, and not through pressure, persuasion or politic.

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The 80/20 rule you say, what about that?  Generally means we use/do/act/make ethical choices the majority of the time.  The remaining portion, is outside of our control, or rather, our available choices (an oftenmost example of the rule applied to the mundane is when describing us as only ever wearing twenty percent of our clothing - not all at the same time you understand - whilst the rest remains in the wardrobe, a wasted resource, and an expensive one at that!).

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But here's the thing.....  
 IT'S NOT ALL ABOUT THE FOOD.  
Because nothing is absolute.  And there are many shades of this thing called vegan.  Personally I respect them all.  We live in complex societies, consuming all manner of things, from all places on this earth.  

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I added provisos and amendments as I learned what my change meant for me.

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I included human exploitation as one of the important (for me) factors to be avoided in my consumption-choice-criteria.

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I wanted earth-friendly not earth-abusive practices used in providing my food and consumables.  I didn't want wastefulness.  I wanted fair-trade and fair-wage.  

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So for example I decided I would not buy cheap new clothing from high street stores with very low prices and high turnover.  You know the shops I mean.

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I'm still reviewing my criteria.  New information emerges.  We learn about the impact on communities of the western world's high consumption of new and the disuse, recycling or otherwise, of old.  We learn that the growing of cotton forces millions into unhealthful lives living under the poverty level.  That cotton is the world's most polluting crop.  That huge areas of land given over to one cash crop that is highly managed with vast quantities of pesticides is not compatible with life for animals.  Cotton is a vegan issue.  That children and women spend their days picking through mountains of waste to find plastics to sell for recycling, and earn enough to eat.  Plastic is a vegan issue.  That boys and men on the west coast of Africa, and on the Indian sub-continent, risk life and limb to break-up and reuse machinery and electronics, an activity deemed too risky or not economically viable for western workers.  Consumption is a vegan issue.  

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So here I sit, typing my blog on a computer wherein the precious metals used in the tiny chip linking me to the worldwide web are mined by children in horrific circumstances.  And the chip in my mobile phone is part of a chain linking families, using their bare hands to pick ore out of the ground, to the militia gangs of rapists, thugs and murderers terrorising communities in Congo.  I'm not being hypocritical.   I'm applying the 80/20 rule.  And I never forget that.

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So when I say I'm vegan, and I live by ethical principles,  what I mean is, I'm doing my best.  But it's never going to be enough.

I'm still learning.

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So, let's see.  

What are you, 80/20, or All-Or-Nothing?

Best Regards

pamela

xxx
Edited 11/01/2011 to include a link to the most amazingly informative and compassionate and lovely blogger on the planet (I am very fond, it's true) who will tell you HERE a little more about how children suffer