Saturday, March 22, 2008

My friend wheel needs truing - any suggestions?

So I've been a bit conflicted lately about comments made by some of my friends which reflect on my other friends, and not sure how to manage/resolve the conflict. I guess one way to illustrate the nature of the situation is to look at my friend wheel (courtesy Facebook).
See the big lump of connections on the bottom left? Those are between my Grebel (i.e. religious) friends, and the rest are my non-Grebel (predominantly non-religious) friends.
The conflict derives I think from two sources. One is a kind of disconnect between my religious and non-religious friends, who generally know about each other, but don't actually know each other. The other source of conflict is that I can hear truth in the statements made by each group about the other, and am struck by a sense of how great it would be if each group were open to understanding how they are viewed by the other. Yet, I'm frustrated by being at a loss to see a workable way for this to happen. My impression is that were each group open to hearing and understanding the views of those outside their circle, then they would both benefit. Not only that, but the tendency for this conflict to manifest negatively would be reduced. Knowing the strengths of the other, not necessarily even by actively getting to know each other but simply recognizing that there's opportunity to learn from the other, could be a way to build bridges in our community and in turn benefit each of us as individuals.

Sunday, March 16, 2008

To Know

I recently made the choice to become a vegetarian. After realizing that the folks in Toronto who I surveyed for my grad thesis, and whose decision to take serious ownership of their energy footprint I hugely respect, were spending $15,000-$30,000 to reduce their GHG emissions by the approximately the same amount as I'm responsible for by being a meat-eater, I decided it was something I had to do. I'm a bit apprehensive about the switch - I've relied on meat as my primary source of protein, and being a very active person (preparing for a mini-triathlon in June) it may be a challenge to figure out how remove meat from my diet without it having some effect on my physical abilities. The decision fits with a much larger issue though, which is understanding the up- and downstream consequences of my purchase decisions. My resource management prof showed this picture of a piece of tar sands extraction equipment in class on Friday, and commented that "If oil sand developers were really about job creation, why wouldn't they use a lower impact form of extraction that employs more people?" Being educated about the sort of a world we're creating through our economic decisions is an important part of being a responsible citizen, and for me personally, part of being a Christian with some degree of integrity.