I’ve been telling this one story a lot in my talks – here’s an easy way to share it with those who you think might benefit or get a kick out of it. And if you haven’t [heard it], well, it’s become core to my approach to life, politics, activism, economics, and taking this world back from the systems devised to disconnect us from one another, and reality itself.
Let’s do it as a thought experiment – change the names so we can protect the innocent.
When my kid graduated middle school, we got this big portrait of her for me to hang in the living room. But we have these old plaster walls, so I needed to drill a hole to hang it. Problem is, I don’t have a drill. So, what to do? Like any middle-class American, the first impulse is to go to Home Depot and get the cheapest available drill for $39.97 plus tax. Some rechargeable piece of crap that I’ll use this once, then put it in the garage and never use again. Or maybe I’ll eventually take it out in two years, find it won’t take a charge, and then just throw it out.
So to make one hole in the wall, I send kids into mines at gunpoint to get the rare earth metals to fabricate the thing; I spend God knows how much fuel to ship the finished product from China to the US, creating a huge carbon footprint in the process; then I throw it out so it can be shipped to Brazil, dumped on a mountain of industrial waste, and scavenged by one of a legion of impoverished children looking for toxic garbage to sell, who takes it apart to find the single renewable element and receive a couple of pennies from a reseller who delivers it to a Chinese smartphone plant so some Silicon Valley company can claim it does green manufacturing. Great. I’m part of the problem.
Or, I could summon the courage to walk down the street to my neighbor Bob’s house, knock on the door, and say “Bob, can I borrow your drill?” Bob has a drill. He’s got maybe three of them. He’s that guy. His garage door is open all weekend, and he’s got table saws and saw horses with doors that he’s routing and bannisters he’s lathing. This is what he does.
But no. Most of us, like me, are afraid to knock on Bob’s door. Not that he’s going to hit us or anything, but if I