There are a number of causes I try to advance through writing, volunteering, donating, and in my personal lifestyle.  People say it's not good business to proclaim your political and social views to your customers, but I think what society does in the name of "good business" should never stray from what is defined as "doing good."
     I don't preach to my clients while I work for them, but if you've wandered this far into the site and are interested, read on.  What I advocate on this page are not so much movements and organizations, but philosophies and ways of living.  I believe the earth is something we borrow from our children, and I wish to leave the earth and its people better than I found them.
 

Overconsumption
 
Here are the facts.  All living matter is primarily composed of the elements carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen, plus a very small ratio of other elements.  The oceans are awash (more than literally) with hydrogen and oxygen, and the atmosphere is full of nitrogen and oxygen.  The nitrogen, however, is not in a form we can readily use without special organisms and reactions on earth that "fix" nitrogen so it can be assimilated into organic matter.  The core of the earth is silicates and iron.  The potential mass and volume of living matter on the earth depends on the amount of carbon (and nitrogen) that can be effectively incorporated into living organisms.  In essence, there is only so much living matter that can be on earth unless we go out into space and get more carbon.  We also must maintain a mostly transparent, semi-reflective atmosphere.
     We are one of the larger animal species, and at the top of the food chain.  If an animal's customary food supply vanishes and it can't adapt, that animal dies out.  Animals must also have a good measure of protection from the elements and predators, or the species doesn't survive.  We humans have appropriated a large amount of the earth's available land for living, transport, extracting resources, refining, manufacturing, waste disposal, and growing our own food.  Depending on a person's lifestyle, a human being can require as little as 1/4 of an acre for sustenance, or as much as 20 acres.
     In the oceans we certainly have vast amounts of untapped organic matter (potential food).  However, we have been dumping our wastes and toxins into the oceans since the dawn of the industrial age, and much of that carbon needs to stay there to support oceanic life and global oxygen production.  We now have "continents" of trash floating just beneath the surface of our oceans in-between our current streams (one of which is the size of Australia).  The more our refined plastics, metals and toxins are intermixed with nature, the more organic matter we make unavailable or unsafe for use.  Meanwhile, the human population grows exponentially, and as global lifestyles approach those of Americans, the pace of land being cleared or spoiled for human enterprise accelerates.  We are reducing the share of land remaining for growing food (arable land) for ourselves, and sustaining other forms of life (some of which add essential nitrogen to the food chain, from which all life is sustained).
     The human population has been growing at a rate of 2.2% per year.  While that may seem insignificant, a compounded increase of 2.2% per year means a doubling in number every 32 years, and octupling every century.  In an American's lifespan, that's a five-fold increase.  Imagine maintaining our present rate of growth (which is slightly less than it was a generation ago) for one more human lifespan--the world population would be about 33 billion.  Almost all other animal life would be eliminated (including mammalian pets), not just from loss of habitat, but because the natural food chains that supported the heavier species would have vanished.  Of course with that many humans on earth, the standard of living would have to be a fraction what it is today, otherwise resource extraction and pollution would probably endanger the elementary life forms at the base of the food chain.
     Extinctions are happening at an alarming pace, and every life-sustaining system on earth is in decline.  The truth is that the human population is presently too great.  The earth (and with it, we humans) don't need our population growth rate to merely slow, or to stop, but to actually reverse.  Westerners may suppose that the problem of human overpopulation comes mainly from third world countries where the birth rate per family is double that of the United States.  However, the lifespan of an American is greater than third world countries, and the American lifestyle consumes as much as 30 times the resources a person in the developing world does.  The most important region where negative growth ought to occur is the class of humans that outconsume (and outpollute) the other classes.
     For the last four years I have been striving to consume less, reuse more, and try to make purchases of goods that will last, rather than things that quickly break or become obsolete.  Every product a consumer buys equals a degree of destruction of land to allocate, extract and refine its materials, energy to ship and form those materials into the product, and energy in distribution.  If the product has a short lifespan and is configured in such a way that it cannot be recycled, it goes to a landfill, or perhaps a river or ocean, where its inorganic and toxic elements blend with and affect the soil or water around it.  As "consumers" we have been thoroughly programmed from birth to purchase and discard unconsciously.
     By living with fewer (but better) things, in a smaller space, a person has fewer things to manage, a smaller home to heat, a lower cost of living (more savings, more time for family), and a person does less damage to his/her children's world.  Locally grown/made products reduce the impact on the environment.  Living close to work and schools can dramatically reduce the waste in one's life (of time, energy, money and fuels).  Recycling, of course, is not a "help" to the earth, but a reduction of harm.  With the world more full of humans than ever in history (arguably half of all the humans who have ever lived are alive now), isn't it better that we consume and conflict less?

Microcosm.  Imagine a large jar, and inside it is a tiny microscopic organism.  Imagine these microbes divide, as one celled organisms do, and every minute double in number.  Of course this analogy applies to the human race (the jar represents the earth, and every minute represents 32 of our years).

Once the jar is completely full of these organisms, we can ask ourselves some very interesting math questions, such as these:

Q.  When the jar was only 1/8th full, how many minutes away was it from being completely full?
A.  Three minutes.  When a species is at 1/8th of its habitat's carrying potential, it can only endure three more doublings before catastrophic consequences.

Q.  When the jar was 1/2 full, if 75% of the organisms realized they had a crisis rapidly approaching, and the stopped reproducing, how long would it take for the remaining organisms to overpopulate the container?
A.  Four minutes.  Even with a small minority of the population reproducing, a species can still overpopulate, even rapidly.

Q.  If the microbes continue doubling every minute, and realized when the jar was still mostly empty that a crisis was coming, and they sent out explorers outside the jar to search for other jars, and found seven more jars, how long will those jars last them once their original jar is full?
A.  Three minutes.

Drawing from the above parable, consider the human situation.  For most of history the world population has numbered in the millions, but since the industrial revolution, where plants, minerals and animals could be appropriated in larger numbers, human population has been doubling every 30-50 years.  How close to "full" is our "jar" now?  How many more times can we double?  How close to "full" do we dare get?  Are we preserving the life-sustaining cycles of our environment at our current population?  (No.)  If the prevailing habits, priorities, assumptions and myths do not rapidly change, what will be the impact of doubling the number of consumers and polluters in a generation?
     If you, like me, are persuaded that the human population ought not double once more, then we envision that we're at the "jar is half full" stage--just one doubling away from unprecedented famine, disease, conflict and suffering.  That is what our children and grandchildren will face.  We can't go on as we did before.  Things have to change, systemically, dramatically.  Every generation of human beings has been able to carry on traditions--marry, have kids, and raise them with certain expectations.  Our children cannot have our heritage, our traditions, our values.  They cannot, or must not, follow the patterns and live the lives we, our parents, and all previous generations took for granted.  Consumption trends, which have been increasing, have to reverse.
     Wise men were warning the mechanized world of these coming perils as long ago as the 18th Century, such as the economist Thomas Robert Malthus.  Aldous Huxley echoed the call with greater urgency fifty years ago.  Since that time we have only accelerated in the wrong direction, which is sad, because democracy, vitality, freedom and peace will be impossible in an overpopulated world.
     Of course there are some among us who prefer to believe that our treatment of the earth and consumption of goods is immaterial, because if we can stay the present course, and God will intervene, saving us, making it all clean and balanced again, giving it all back to the unaccountable.  I struggle to comprehend how a Creator would give beings reason, compassion, and a sense of responsibility, and then reward those who refuse to employ any of the three at the expense of their progeny, fellow creatures, and the earth itself.  Those who overconsume, disregard their fellows and destroy the habitat they were given do not seem like beings a Creator would wish to preserve or magnify in a just and balanced universe.
 

Inclusivity, Tolerance, and Human Rights
 
Whenever animals overpopulate their habitats, you see disturbing things: dramatic increases in aggression, anxiety, waste, disease, dysphoria, even cannibalism.  Whether one thinks the earth is only at a quarter of its capacity for human beings, or at quadruple, the question is: "As we approach (or exceed) our boundaries, is it better for us to be more agitated and radical, or more tolerant and inclusive?  Naturally, the faster pace units maintain in a pressurized environment, the greater the heat, noise, and potential for explosion.  It's time for humans to set aside differences, grudges, hostility, rumor, and fear--not just for ethical reasons--but for practical reasons.  We just simply can't keep pushing so incredibly hard in all directions.
     Our sprawling, automobile-dependent lives create pressure, tension, pollution, conflict and waste.  Better to live and consume as locally as possible.  Our religions need to mutually accept and respect one another and treat "outsiders" as brothers, otherwise the world will continue to recognize religious cultures as catalysts for xenophobia.  Our caffeine-infused, bottom-line-centric work culture is destructive, taking parents farther and farther from their children, pushing us to undercut competition and ourselves, pushing consumerism, pushing demand for resources over which wars and slave wages emerge.  Until population is in decline, we need to work less, produce less, consume less, and spend more of our time doing face-to-face activities with family, friends, and former foes.
     I watched a movie called "M," released in 1931 in Germany by Fritz Lang.  In this movie, a serial killer lurks in a dense German city, driven by a demonic compulsion to befriend and then murder little schoolgirls.  At the climax of the movie a band of hardened criminals corners and abducts the predator.  As they were ready to lynch the wretched man, several among the thugs objected to killing him.  A trial with a defense advocate is hastily assembled and the arguments for and against dispatching the serial killer are made.  In the end, the mob almost unanimously chooses to surrender their captive to the police in a moving display of conscience and justice.  The humanity of the lowest dregs of the German underworld in this film are hard to come by in today's society.
     Interestingly, after viewing this film, one can't help but declare, "this is 1931 Germany--the Nazi Party was growing in popularity and fast approaching its seizure of power, with Adolph Hitler its front man for a decade already."  It doesn't seem possible that the same public that allowed so much aggression against its neighbors, and the systematic mass-murder of Jews, Jehovah's Witnesses, gays and lesbians and their political enemies is the same German public that produced and is reflected in this movie.  In "M" the syndicate of thugs, by appearance and name, are a mixed lot of nationalities and cultures, they all pull together to rid their city of a menace, and arrive at their verdict united in their resolve to exercise true justice.  One has to ask, "how can the Germans of this film be the Germans that a decade later were engaged in such violence, bigotry and slaughter?"
     The answer is unsettling.  It only takes a highly motivated minority for a society as a whole to commit attrocities.  The bulk of Germans during the rise and fall of the Nazi phenomenon were God-fearing, hard working, well-meaning folk.  However, when their government was appropriated by a radical faction, the people gave their leaders the benefit of the doubt.  They hoped things wouldn't get but so out-of-hand.  They paid their taxes.  They trusted in the goodness they knew was among them.  But too many of them, however, chose to believe the insidious rhetoric, to pass it along, or just to play along.  When people can pass the buck for responsibility (just following orders, just obeying the law) evil can be done in the name of duty.  After decades of being exposed to antisemitic propaganda, the majority of the German public may not have directly participated in the genocides purpetrated in Europe, but by being "good Germans," passing along the rumors about the Jews in their midst, patriotically supporting their troops, giving goods and labor to aid their country's war effort, they were all indirectly empowering not only wars of aggression that killed millions of soldiers, but the imprisonment, torture and murder of millions of noncombatants.
     Yale University professor Stanley Milgram conducted an experiment on the subject of obedience to authority, in which volunteers were instructed by a scientist to administer electrical shocks to an unseen fellow volunteer.  As the required electricutions escalated in voltage, the shock givers would question the scientist about the ethics of the test, especially as they heard the recipient screaming, pleading and swearing.  The scientists would reassure the shock giver that there would be no lasting damage and that it is a necessary part of the study.  Not only was the shock giver convinced he/she was inflicting major pain on the other volunteer, but had met the other volunteer face-to-face at the start of the study.  Thankfully, the unseen volunteer was not actually being electrocuted in the next room, but the horror was that two thirds of the volunteers would continue administering heavier shocks--right up to lethal intensities.  This study has been repeated in many different times by various researchers, and the outcome is the same--most people will knowingly inflict harm on their fellow man if a presumed "authority" declares it necessary and appears to assume responsibility for their actions.  If the majority of civilized human beings can be induced to inflict horrific torture and death upon innocent people in the name of obeying "authority," can the minority of independent thinkers actually save our species from itself?

Today we Americans are more tolerant of odd fashions, vegans, homosexuals, and racially mixed marriages than we were twenty years ago.  However, there is a propaganda machine at work, circulating suspicion, mocking, fear, hatred, exaggerations and outright lies about an ethnic group.  I have been studying the e-mails, recurring jokes, even the repeated allegations of bloggers and preachers alike, and am convinced much of this propaganda is not just the product of common human xenophobia, but of political powerbrokers.  The ethnic group is Islam, with little differentiation for the racial subgroups--the black, Arabic and Persian Muslims.  In public chat and comment sections of major web sites and news portals, ignorant, hateful comments are posted by users, hurting, insulting and angering Muslims both here at home and abroad, and embarrassing me and anyone else who actually know Muslims.
     The inflamatory remarks equate Islam as a whole with the terrorists of 9/11, with the armed resistance groups in Iraq, and with the radical militant groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan.  The fact is that most of the conflicting factions in Iraq were not fighting over religion, but political power; and the majority of terrorist acts elsewhere in the middle east targeted Muslims.  For about seven years the newswires have been announcing death tolls from terrorist attacks in Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Pakistan.  Muslim civilians are murdered by radicals.  And yet this seems to be missed.  The Islamaphobic rumor mill seems to fail to understand that the radical groups have killed maybe 100 times as many Muslims since 9/11 than Westerners.  While Muslims around the world surely take a different view of America's values, foreign policy and materialism than we might wish, the fact is that there are Muslims around the world who want to live here for the sake of raising a family, starting a business, and enjoying our freedoms and liberties.
     I can say without doubt that the Islamaphobes among us, spreading fear and mistrust, do not know many Muslims, if any.  I know six Muslim families, three very well.  I am not a Muslim, nor do I find the Muslim faith appealing.  I do really enjoy elements of their architecture, customs, food, music and fashion.  I respect and love my Muslim friends, and they are good friends, good people, good workers, and good Americans.  They pay American taxes, they send money "home" to their families, they run businesses, they cheer for the Boston Red Sox and the Dallas Cowboys, and they are saddened by the radicals in the world who are primarily targeting and murdering--not Americans, not Europeans--but their own kind.  The victim of a terrorist attack is more likely to be a friend or relative of a Muslim American than one of us non-Muslims.  My Muslim friends despise the radicals in the countries of their heritage, and such radical elements seem to only increase in the face of foreign occupation.  Of the Muslim families I know, none are radical, only one is moderate, and the rest are liberal.  Yes, liberal Muslims, just like there are liberal Christians, Hindus, and Jews.
     I have strong thoughts about our occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, and about the events of 9/11.  But first and foremost I'm compelled to speak and warn of what I see happening at home.  We are unwittingly paralleling the Nazi-era Germans--not shadowing, but paralleling.  Just as the altruistic Germans of 1931 existed among the bad apples of Germany, they were complicit in that they allowed the ever-increasing rhetoric against Jews.  What the hell are we doing, passing along insidious, "on good authority" tales about Muslims?  It has already gone farther than many of us would want to believe.  Letters from "experts" circulate, explaining that there's "no such thing" as a moderate Muslim, are precursors to the kind of rationale the Nazis used to assert that by definition there were no harmless Jews.  What if the proponents and architects of these notions gain political control of the country?
     For decades Americans have reflected on the Germans of World War II and thought, "I wouldn't have supported the Nazi agenda had I lived in Germany back then."  We fail to recognize that just as we are "good people," so were the Germans.  The hallmarks of prewar Nazi ideology are being advanced among good Americans here and now--notions of isolation, protectionism, prejudice, suspicion, dehumanization and preemtive action.  I want no part of it, and if I don't want to be complicit in attrocities, I'm going to have to be more vigilant and vocal than the "good" Germans of the 1930s.
     Marketing strategists (of which I am one) and military intelligence agencies have studied how to motivate masses to action.  Our intelligence services have been active in stirring the American public into supporting numerous wars on behalf of small political factions.  This is not my opinion, but a documented, recurring, troubling phenomenon.  I personally don't care whether the antiMuslim messages are evil or innocent in their origins, if they come from manipulative political factions or ignorant grassroots folk.  They can only lead us to further militarization, more unnecessary wars, more wasted lives and resources.  I will not be a fascist.