Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
purchase a small apartment complex that we loaned to the YWCA to use to
house local homeless mothers. Now, rather than collect taxable interest, we
climb into our warm and secure bed each night knowing that 25 struggling
moms and their kids do as well. When you can learn to vicariously enjoy the
consumption of someone who's dealing with more basic needs than you are,
you are richer for it. With this outlook, helping to provide housing to people
in need is simply smarter, more practical, and more gratifying than owning
a big yacht. (h is can be done on a smaller scale with much less equity, too.
For more details, see www.ricksteves.com/politicalact.)
Find creative ways to humanize our planet while comfortably nestled into
your workaday home life. Sweat with the tropics, see developing-world debt
as the slavery of the 21st century, and feel the pain of “enemy losses” along
with the pain of American losses. Do things—even if only symbolic—in
solidarity with people on the front lines of struggles you care about.
Put your money where your ideals are. Know your options for local con-
sumption and personal responsibility. Don't be bullied by non-sustainable
cultural norms. You can pay more for your bread to buy it from the person
who baked it. You can buy seasonal produce in a way that supports family
farms. You can, as a matter of principle, shun things you don't want to sup-
port (bottled water, disposable goods, sweatshop imports, and so on). You
can use public transit or drive a greener car. Consume as if your patronage
helps shape our future. It does.
Participate in the Travel as a Political Act Readers' Forum at my website
(www.ricksteves.com/politicalact). It's designed so that we travelers can share
ideas and encourage and inspire each other. Please join the discussion there,
share thoughts generated by this topic, and contribute ways you've enjoyed
incorporating your worldview into your local activism.
Keep on Whirling
With the fall of the USSR, I remember thinking, “Wow, the USA will
reign supreme on this planet through the rest of my lifetime.” It seemed that
American values of democracy and the free market would be unstoppable.
And American economic might, coupled with our hardball approach to
maintaining our relative al uence, would be insurmountable. We would just
keep getting richer and more powerful.
Of course, the outlook today is more sober. We've been humbled by the
consequences of our isolation, the limits of our military power, the collapse
Search WWH ::




Custom Search