Friday 14 March 2008

I Offer You Water




Ethos Water and H20 Africa join forces to help alleviate the world water
crisis; expanded distribution of Ethos™ water through Pepsi-Cola Bottling System
boosts awareness and funding for the cause.Ethos Water, the brand dedicated to
helping children get clean water, is driving support for its mission by
collaborating with H20 Africa, a foundation focused on clean water initiatives.
Later this month, H20 Africa's co-founder, Matt Damon, will appear in a national
Ethos Water print advertising campaign encouraging consumers to get involved in
raising awareness and funding for the world water crisis.The campaign coincides
with the expanded distribution of Ethos(TM) water into more than 40,000
convenience, grocery, mass and drug stores across the United States through the
Pepsi-Cola bottling system. Since Starbucks acquired Ethos Water in 2005, the
product has become available in more than 7,000 company-operated stores in the
U.S. and Canada. Ethos(TM) water is packaged, distributed and marketed by
Pepsi-Cola through the North American Coffee Partnership (NACP), a joint venture
between Starbucks and Pepsi-Cola North America.




Gods' wounds.


In the post-modern world it has been fashionable to declare that all morality is subjective - that there is no basis for an objective, universal morality anywhere or any when.

I'm about to go all Derrick Jensen on you now, for I firmly disagree.
There is a basis for objective morality and it is simply this - clean water.

OK, when I say objective I'm not including the realms of any possible alien life form which may not require H2O at all - I'm talking about a morality for all life on Earth, and, since morals appear to be the provenance of the human animal, particularly homo sapiens resident on the third rock from the sun.

Err..our sun, y'know, the G5 type star about a third of the way in from the edge of the galaxy...err, y'know, our galaxy, in the supercluster...oh gods forget it.




I have been known, in a slightly younger incarnation, to argue vehemently against the existence of any objective system of morality. One man's God is another man's Demon, and all that crap.
It holds in most cases.

However, Jensen's Endgame puts forward a compelling - to me anyway - argument in favour of clean, drinkable water being in fact the basis for an objective morality.

(I do love this guy. He ,like myself, was trained as a species of physicist and perhaps that adds to my feeling that his arguments make deep sense.)

I leave the actual mechanics of the argument up to the reader, although I think they are perhaps over the line into the not-needing-any-words category.

While we're thinking this over, perhaps we should keep in mind the many ways that good old humanity has conspired to undermine this most basic necessity of life.

Water all over the planet is seconded by the powers that be (the ruling elite) and pressed into the service of industry, industrial farming, and the euphemistic development efforts.

All the while being told that this is for the benefit of all, our source of life is routinely polluted, irradiated, soiled, dumped into and evaporated in the name of the appropriation of land and its concomitant wealth which the bastards (err..sorry government and captains of industry)must have - apparently in order to give some justification to their otherwise hollow, shallow and inconsequential lives.



Now read that opening piece again, and tell me you didn't have to fight the urge to vomit.

Aaargh. I'm sick of the lot of them.

Might I suggest that, if your religion does not include this basic tenet of morality, you look at reforming it?

Or better yet - change your religion completely.

I offer you water, my brothers and my sisters. And -through this veil of tears though which I observe the dying planet, I wish for you to always drink deep.

Pic courtesy of another one of the bastards who want to sell us purification systems.

4 comments:

  1. May you never thirst.

    I hate that old sexist, but he was ahead of the curve in many ways. Last century was the atomic century. This will be the century of water.

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  2. I was inculcated with Heinlein early in life, so I find it hard to hate him - but I see clearly his neocon/conservative core now.

    And yes, he was indeed way ahead of his time -almost makes you think of Pratchett's idea particles sleeting through space and showering down around one (un)lucky person.

    Love,
    Terri

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  3. As I started reading that I was thinking, "Nice sales pitch."

    So they want to give the world clean water do they? Yeah, at a profit.

    As if the poor and starving can afford to buy bottled water.

    No problem here, I can always get my hands on decent water for free. I know that it's a worry for many though, water will be what the next wars are over.

    Don't you just love capitalism?

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  4. It's especially obscene in Africa, Billy-where the mines have polluted many of our sources of water for a bunch of rocks and metal ore.
    'Ethos' indeed.
    Love,
    Terri in Joburg

    ReplyDelete