the norms

Complacency comes when we stop challenging the norms.

It’s easy to forget that waste is a part of daily life. The average American spends more money annually on trash bags than most people in the world spend each year on all goods.

The stuff I need to get rid of the stuff I don’t need is a deeper investment than most people will ever be able to make.

It’s easy to forget when we do buy a trash can, we carry it home in a plastic bag, unwrap it, put a plastic bag into the trash can and throw away the bag we brought it home with.

So the stuff that harms the environment the greatest is the most easily discarded.

It’s easy to forget serving sizes of food have increased over the past 20 years in America. So a cup of coffee could now have 7x more calories or that McDonald’s biggest hamburger patty is 500% larger than the original.

So we’re one of the most out of shape countries in the world.

It’s easy to grow accustomed to violence in our media. So much so, a country that isn’t concerned about showing nudity on public TV became concerned enough about an American movie releasing this week to limit its showing to porn theaters.

Which impacts how we view and react to all kinds of violence – both imagined and real.

And living in a place like this changes my views of the world. About what is normal. About how things should be.

Change isn’t normal. But our world needs change.

So change starts with awareness.