Thursday, June 07, 2007

'Spoil yourself
not the planet'

Saw this ad in the window of the Body Shop this morning, when I was walking around town seeing what was going on:

It made me wonder whether we can actually spoil ourselves without spoiling the planet, seeing as human beings appear to be a fairly significant part of the planet. It's funny how we tend to see ourselves as being seperate to the rest of creation.

3 comments:

Tab said...

Mmm, not all cultures seem to think that way.. that we're separate. I think the Juedeo-Christian attitude comes from a mistaken view, that when God said that man-kind should be caretakers of creation, that they were somehow above it.

I heart Huckabees has an interesting scene that shows a characture of this type of thinking. The "christian" character is arguing that we should be allowed to use up the world's resources..."God gave us oil! He gave it to us! How can God's gift be bad?"

kelgell said...

Depends I suppose on what you consider "spoiling yourself" to be. Surely most ways probably effect the planet but there could be ways to do it without so much damage.

Christop said...

I Heart Huckabees is good. Tab: It seems like there's an overempahsis on Genesis' first account of creation (Genesis 1), which does seem to be saying that people can exploit the rest of creation, and less emphasis on the second story (Genesis 2), which sounds more like our role is to look after the rest of creation.

Kelly: I'm not saying we shouldn't try to do less damage in how we consume, just trying to point out that this campaign still reinforoces the false dichotomy of human beings/rest of the planet.