Given how essential water is to humans, it wouldn’t be going very far to say that water is life. SoBe seems to think otherwise.
SoBe lifewater is:
…a naturally sweetened vitamin enhanced water beverage that gives you vitamins and antioxidants (antioxidant vitamins C and E and a good source of B complex vitamins).
So, what does that make that shitty old stuff that comes out of the tap? Deathwater? I like it. Fuck deathwater! I need antioxidants!
On a side note, what the fuck is up with the lizard with the bling-ed out grill. Somewhere, a rapper is crying.
#1 by Vyviane at April 5th, 2010
I have such mixed feelings on stuff like this. I own stock in a company, DCBR,and it should start doing well because it has similar marketing with a twist. The twist being that there is vitamin water in the bottle and actual vitamins in the cap above. Drink this and you will get sexy, strong and brilliant blah blah blah
I own stock in several companies that are fairly useless and promise all sorts of things to consumers. Things I would never buy myself but I think others will so I pick up the stock. I’ve done very well in the stock market the past three years. However I think the companies I am buying stock in are full of it and harmful even.
I do own some google and would like to pick up some red hat or other linux based companies in the future and I think those are good companies.
You do stocks, mutual funds right? How do you feel about buying into the machine? On one hand I would like to support more honest useful companies however they aren’t the ones that I can make a couple thousand dollars off each year with a couple clicks on Ameritrade.
#2 by Joshua Bardwell at April 6th, 2010
I feel conflicted about that kind of thing too. I have an IRA, but I don’t invest in individual stocks. Instead, I use no-load whole-market index funds, for a simple investment strategy. In a way, this removes the moral component of choosing which stocks to invest in and which ones not to, but not the moral component of whether to invest at all.
I think what this comes down to is the degree to which I am going to participate in a society that has many elements with which I disagree. If I was to opt out of every single aspect of society with which I disagree, I would have very little means by which to live. And I’d very much like to continue to live, in a happy and fulfilled manner if at all possible. I’m not interested in turning myself into a hermit or an ascetic. I don’t think there is value in that decision, for me. What I’m getting at is there are ways that I continue to participate in systems that I personally disagree with, because the personal cost to me of opting out of those systems is too high compared to the collective value that would be derived from me opting out.
This answer kind of feels like a cop-out, but you don’t know how many times I have chased myself around my own head until I came to the conclusion that the best way to minimize my contribution to the harmful aspects of our society would be to just up and die. After this happened enough times, I decided to just chill the fuck out and focus on the things that were in front of me, that I cared about the most. I’m producing more of my own food. I’m re-using things instead of buying new ones. I’m composting my trash instead of sending it off to a dump. I’m cutting -ism words out of my vocabulary. I will never be zero-impact, zero-evil until I’m dead, and I don’t care enough about that principle to kill myself, so I may as well stop torturing myself over the impact and the evil that I participate in by being a member of a modern civilization.
So I invest in the stock market. I figure that every dollar I send to an IRA is a dollar that I have denied to Uncle Sam, and that feels good.
#3 by Vyviane at April 11th, 2010
That all sounds like a good well thought out answer to me and not a cop out. I have come to similar conclusions myself. I also add on that I might as well jump in the stock market and remove some of the money as I feel my family does a fairly good job of spending our money wisely and with thought behind it. I figure not only are we keeping money out of the government’s hands with Tarans college savings and with our own retirement accounts but the stuff outside of that is outside of your normal stock trader’s hands and is going from us to charities, to pay for our child’s education and to buy nicer things at the thrift store but we are still buying things at the thrift store and we hardly ever make a purchase without thinking it through and what is the impact of this purchase or is their a better option out there etc. We also have a well funded savings accounts partly from funds from my stock trading and are getting to a point where it would take a significant disaster or two before we ended up needing any kind of social welfare and that makes me pretty happy.
I also hear you on the only way out is to up and die. For me it really hit home when I had Taran. That boy is single handily undone every fantastic hippy earth saving effort I have ever gone through. We drive more with him, use more chemicals and I could weep at how much toilet paper and wipes that boy uses. Compared to your generic momma walking around Kirkwood we are doing great however it’s still amazing compared to how I used to live. I still have my moments of intense guilt when I give Taran two or three (needed) baths in one day or at the end of a stomach virus when I just look at the train wreck of laundry that is left and end up throwing some stuff out instead of dealing with it.
Oh well.. Thanks for responding.
Do you have a post or a link about removing ism words from your vocabulary? Is it from the Non-Violent Communication courses? If so I will go look it up there. I have a taped course and a couple of books that I have been slowly working through on non-violent communication.
#4 by Joshua Bardwell at April 12th, 2010
Vyviane,
My post on “ism awareness” is here:
http://jackbootedliberal.com/2010/02/ism-awareness/