A topic that come up in my line of work is what can one do with one's time when one is not a ronin, i.e., when one indeed has master other than the bottom line and the dollar bill. And in the past few weeks two topics seem to come up as responses repeatedly: "third world" poverty alleviation and environmental advocacy; both admirable things to pursue but to my ear, at a fundamental level, contradictory to the lives that such concerned voices live.

Let's take the case of X. X wants to reduce the environmental impact of the offices we work in, by transitioning them into "green" buildings. Yet, just a few minutes later in the conversation, when X admits to being a shopping fiend, the bell of contradiction begins to toll. How can one be a true environmentalist (using an inaccurate label for its simplicity), without an deep love for a local geography, and the simple and local life of commerce and consumption that would imply? Here I am thinking of the philosophy of that mad farmer, Wendell Berry.

Is it sufficient to advocate for green buildings while one is at the same time plugged into all the other arteries of global commerce, which continuously transfer stuff - stuff which gets made by millions of unseen others over there in the distance, and then gets sold by millions of faceless others over here - into one's, in this case X's, living room decorated with affordable Swedish furniture?