Friday, November 17, 2006


Just because it's legal, doesn't mean it's right

9 comments:

awareness said...

Materialistic decadence obstructs true social progress and equality. That was my first thought when I read your post this morning. All day your statement stayed with me like a mantra as I discovered mountains of legal actions that are so morally wrong.......and yet.....

It may be legal to turn our backs on millions of hungry children around the world and some who live not far from our own backyards, on the homeless that live on our own streets........it may be legal to bomb the hell out of a city, to ignore AIDS orphans, to withold medical services from people who have no money to pay the bill........it may be legal to keep our heads in the sand ignoring the basic needs of our global brothers and sisters......... it may be legal for a spoiled untalented actress to receive millions of dollars for pouting in a film........

It'll never be right. It'll never feel right.

Your photo is both beautiful and chilling.

Arlen said...

At work, I tell my peers that the results they get must pass a three-tiered test: first it must be legal, then ethical and finally moral. I'm astonished how people in the business world often forget about the last two tiers. That brings a definite hollow feeling to anything that is not ethical or moral.

The Harbour of Ourselves said...

Dana and Arlen, I agree whole heartedly with observations - it was one of those sound-bites during a conversation that embodies so much.

It has made me think, glad it did both of you, hope it did many more

awareness said...

This afternoon as I was in the process of trying to pull together a presentation on public housing, and trying to get my head around the role of government with respect to providing it but also in creating the need for it, my thoughts went to the work of Muhammad Yunus. I found these two quotes that I wanted to share.....

"My experience working in the Grameen Bank has given me faith: an unshakeable faith in the creativity of human beings. It leads me to believe that humans are not born to suffer the misery of hunger and poverty. They suffer now as they did in the past because we turn our heads away from this issue."

"The poor themselves can create a poverty-free world....all we have to do is to free them from the chains that we have put around them."

I am inspired by this man.

Ellen said...

My very feeling about too many guns on the streets... and celebrities adopting children in other countries without going throught the steps as other people would... and silly corrupt dictators who practice genocide on their own people... and the list goes on......

Amazing how one small sentence says so much, isn't it?

The Harbour of Ourselves said...

Dana, when i was in Ghana wth Christian Aid a few years ago a women who had been helped through the partnership of the development agency said this to us as we left:
'Please do not leave us. We do not want to remain cripples. We wish to get up and walk'

The WTO, World Bank, IMF allow multi-nationals to make cripples out of most people on this planet - excuse my french but it fucking sucks - to hold a child that can hardly walk because it can't afford to eat is something that never leaves you...

Ellen
Couldn't agree more - though I am thankful we at least over here don't have a gun problem on the scale you do
sometimes less is more...

Nikita said...

it does make you think

Julie said...

Hi Paul....how ya doin? I have a new url www.juliemwillcox.blogspot.com Please drop by soon....and tell me what you think!

Julie x

Trailady said...

True words, indeed! :o)