Augustine Amaquandoh
Professor Tamra
Expository Writing
11/14/2020
“Redirected towards a Sustainable Environment”
Our minds are vulnerable to captivity, and as psychological slaves, we strive to free ourselves from bondage. How we perceive things in a situation affects how we conduct ourselves when handling cases that require critical thinking. The book ‘Wisdom’ by Thurman tries to explain how, through understanding ourselves, we create avenues for understanding others. Through cooperation, humanity can achieve what is and was previously perceived as impossible. Klein expresses her thoughts on climate change, which is her revolutionary focal point in her work. She presupposes that climate change is a factor in human influence and a direct effect of what and how humans conduct themselves. In her book ‘Hot Money: How free Market Fundamentalism Helped Overheat the Planet,’ Klein discusses how countries prefer financial benefits to conservation of the environment. She illustrates that corporations are more inclined to expand their market bases and profits at the environment’s expense. Zuboff talks of how capitalists infringe on worker’s rights. She emphasizes dependency as the leading cause of the wrongful treatment of workers by corporations. The three acts are unified by the need o alleviate suffering. Thurman states that there is only one way of satisfaction, and it is through freedom. Like Zuboff, he advocates for forced change of states if all is to be changed from humans’ captive way to the desired mode of life. Thurman brings home the totality in comprehending the term ‘freedom.’ He relates it to selflessness, which he describes as an act of being more inclined to helping people with the idea of finding solace or satisfaction. Thurman seeks guidance in Buddhism to expand his notion, which he uses as his base for arguments. We deduce that from understanding the three pieces of work, we will be able to know to the fullest relationships and links joining unison of factors revolving around human capabilities, their understanding of freedom and the expanse of selflessness and freedom on achieving economic relevance and limiting environmental degradation while at the same time focusing our energy in determining exploitation of workers. Our minds are vulnerable to captivity, and as psychological slaves, we strive to free ourselves from bondage. How we perceive things in a situation affects how we conduct ourselves when handling cases that require critical thinking. The relationship between our environment and the factors prevalent in either maintaining the conditions preferable to human’s economic freedom and realization of how we are the only barrier to attaining freedom is engulfed in the works of Thurman, Klein, and Zuboff.
The world needs to act in a way that portrays selflessness as opposed to being selfish. Companies that are involved in manufacturing often consider profit before the conservation of the environment and worker welfare. These can, however, be changed if individuals heading such corporations recognize that infliction of harm to the environment and exploiting of workers only widens the gap between the economy and the environment becoming sustainable. Zuboff, in explaining surveillance capitalism, describes how the so-called capitalists try to drain off the information from us, and as if they are not contented with information, they extend to use the same information extorted from us to put us in positions that we have nothing else to do but to cooperate as they milk us out explained by the quote “this double-and-half trajectory has taken us from automating information flow about you to automating you” (Zuboff 339). The will to change a system or individual willing to be changed and observing the same individual but willing to change him or her while the individual does not consent to the change is a matter we find disturbing. Today, capitalists have tamed methods and directed people into doing or even purchasing what they want to be done and purchased, respectively. The inclusion of ads in almost every aspect of our lives, be it in news or programs watched and listened to, is a method the corporations use to reach their intended masses. Klein also explains how workers are subjected to crude working conditions with less pay than their desperate states. Corporations target the densely populated and industrious area for their production because labor is cheap in such areas. She elaborates, “the same logic that is willing to work laborers to the bone for pennies a day will burn mountains of dirty coal while spending next to nothing on pollution control because it is the cheapest way to produce” (Klein 219). Klein presupposes that when corporations infringing on workers’ right to better pay are tasked with explaining their actions, no answer will be obtained, and such an issue can lead to massive shaking of the workers’ employment fate. Massively, companies invest more in production than mitigating and cleaning the effluent they release to the environment. Most find it difficult to pay workers reasonable amounts and take care of the environment. In contrast, they are the same corporations that inflict harm to the environment without thinking of the effects that the damage may have on the entire population and, over time, even affect the same companies that caused the problem in the first place. The moment we realize the expanse of damage we do when we pollute the environment and the possibility of even extensive damage when laborers are not paid as they deserve, then we can initiate programs and methods of changing the ‘system,’ “the purpose if realizing your own selflessness is not to feel like you are nobody” (Thurman 437).
The fight against pollution and overrated and spiteful capitalism need the joining of hands and heads. Seeking solutions to the various prevailing problems is different from actualizing the solutions in which many fail anyway. To understand the expanse and intensity of the problem, we need to change how we think and act. The only way to bring home a solid and reliable solution is to understand and acknowledge that we have a problem, and the problem is us. After that, we can narrow down to specifics where we apply the various solutions we generate. People have realized the seriousness behind climate change and have begun changing the environment through multiple schemes “plenty of people are attempting to change their daily lives in ways that do reduce their consumption” (Klein 225). Working towards a specific target can only work if the solutions proposed are actualized, and the intended outcomes reached. Zuboff describes words without actions as premonitions and reflections to dreams that may never come true. Having goals and then letting them fade is just a waste of time and energy. Zuboff literates the importance of associating others in the plight towards attaining a sustainable environment and work-related atmosphere. These can only be achieved through a joint effort among people who have seen the future detrimental effects of climate change and have felt the wrath of global warming. The best solution is joining hands in the pursuit of a common solution to a common problem “when we join our wills and our promises, we create the possibility of collective action towards a shared future, linked in determination to make our vision real in the world” (Zuboff 333). The quote “it’s as if your hand represents the universe and your fingers represents all beings. Each of your fingers can wiggle on its own, each can operate independently, just as each being has its own destiny. And yet your fingers are part of your hand. If your hand did not exist, your fingers would not exist” (Thurman 438), illustrates how unison between people can yield results that one cannot begin comprehending. The disconnected world can come together and eliminate a threat, be it capitalists infringing on workers or environmental degradation. A joint venture is always a successful venture, and through working as a team, we are sure of attaining and achieving the targeted goals.
Work Cited
Klein, Naomi. “Hot Money: How Free Market Fundamentalism Helped Overheat the
Planet.” This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate, by Naomi Klein, Alfred A. Knopf Canada, 2014, pp. 206–228.
Robert, Thurman. “Selflessness.” Wisdom. Sherry Turkle Publishers. 2017. pp. 455
451
Zuboff, Shoshana. “The Right to the Future Tense.” The Age of Surveillance
Capitalism: the Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power, edited by Shoshana Zuboff, Public Affairs, 2019, pp. 340–343.