VIRTUE ETHICS
A Tapestry of Faith Program for Youth
WORKSHOP 6: RESPONSIBILITY
BY JESSICA YORK JUDITH A. FREDIANI, DEVELOPMENTAL EDITOR
© Copyright 2012 Unitarian Universalist Association.
Published to the Web on 9/29/2014 8:35:58 PM PST.
This program and additional resources are available on the UUA.org web site at
www.uua.org/religiouseducation/curricula/tapestryfaith.
WORKSHOP OVERVIEW
INTRODUCTION
You cannot hope to build a better world without improving the individuals. To that end, each of us must work for our own improvement and, at the same time, share a general responsibility for all humanity, our particular duty being to aid those to whom we think we can be most useful. — Marie Curie, scientist
This workshop focuses on responsibility. Youth identify responsibilities they already fulfill and gain confidence about handling future responsibilities. The story and activities ask participants to articulate how they are responsible not only for themselves and their families, but also for other people and all life that shares our planet.
GOALS
This workshop will:
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Participants will:
WORKSHOP-AT-A-GLANCE
Activity | Minutes |
Opening | 10 |
Activity 1: Two Sides to Every Virtue | 10 |
Activity 2: Who Is Responsible? | 15 |
Activity 3: Dilemma | 10 |
Activity 4: Story — Paper, Plastic, or Cloth? | 10 |
Activity 5: Creating a Web | 15 |
Activity 6: Practice | 15 |
Faith in Action: Cloth Bags | |
Closing | 5 |
Alternate Activity 1: Real Life Challenges | |
Alternate Activity 2: A Sound of Thunder | 30 |
Alternate Activity 3: A Web of Responsibility | 15 |
SPIRITUAL PREPARATION
Being responsible can be a burden if we feel we have to solve all the world's problems by ourselves. Some people become overwhelmed by their own sense of responsibility, and give into feelings of impotence and become apathetic. Others take responsibility for justice causes to such a degree that they neglect responsibilities to family, friends, or themselves. Moderation is the key. How do you find balance in your practice of the virtue of responsibility?
If responsibility is coinage, how do you spend yours? Are there justice causes you feel dedicated toward, and others you feel you cannot spend time on? Have you struggled with competing responsibilities? If you have insights into what works for you, consider sharing them with the group, in an appropriate manner.
WORKSHOP PLAN
OPENING (10 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Invite a volunteer to light the chalice while you lead the group to recite the chalice lighting words:
The thought manifests as the word
The word manifests as the deed;
The deed develops into habit;
And habit hardens into character;
So watch the thought and its ways with care,
And let it spring from love
Born out of concern for all beings...
As the shadow follows the body,
As we think, so we become.
— from the Dhammapada, Sayings of the Buddha
Invite the youth to check in by sharing any moral challenges they have experienced since the last meeting. If appropriate, use Alternate Activity 1 to further explore the group's challenges. If youth appear interested in discussing a particular challenge but you feel there is not enough time in this meeting, ask the person who shared it to write a short description of the challenge on the Bicycle Rack.
Tell participants that today you will talk about responsibility.
ACTIVITY 1: TWO SIDES TO EVERY VIRTUE (10 MINUTES)
Description of Activity
Participants identify positive and negative aspects of the virtue of responsibility.
Invite youth to sit for a moment and think about responsibility as a virtue. These prompts might be useful:
Invite youth to share their reflections, with statements that start off with “On the positive side…” or “On the negative side…”. For example, “On the positive side, when I have responsibilities in a group, I feel I truly belong.” or “On the negative side, if I take on too many responsibilities, I get burned out and then I’m no good to myself or anybody else.” If youth have statements that do not fit either clause, discuss them as a group.
Make sure the discussion covers these points:
ACTIVITY 2: WHO IS RESPONSIBLE? (15 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Participants acknowledge the responsibilities they already carry and observe the responsibilities of their peers.
Indicate the two newsprint sheets you have posted. Tell the youth you will read items and ask youth to move to the “Me” sheet if they have responsibility for the activity all the time, stand in the middle if they have responsibility sometimes, and move to the “Someone Else” sheet if they never have responsibility for it.
Read the first item. Once the youth choose sides, allow some discussion. Continue until you have read all the items on the list.
Process with these questions:
Share, in these words or your own:
Could we all agree that we each are responsible, to a great extent, for our own behavior? Maybe so, yet many people have a difficult time accepting responsibility when their behavior has negative consequences. Some people have a harder time than others. Then, if you accept responsibility for yourself, your friends, and your family, you will spend more of your “responsibility coinage.” Then, if you widen your circle to include groups you belong to, like your neighborhood and city, community organizations, your congregation, that is another layer of responsibility, known as social responsibility.
As you mature, it becomes appropriate for you to accept more responsibility. No one would ask a six-year-old to make decisions about how to decrease their carbon footprint. However, a child can accept responsibility for not littering. As good citizens, we are asked to assume some responsibility in many areas, including the well-being of the planet. At each of these stages, you need to decided how much coinage to spend and where to spend it.
Ask:
Who has an example of a decisions about how to spend “responsibility coinage? When could choices related to responsibility be difficult or stressful for you?
ACTIVITY 3: DILEMMA (10 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Youth discuss scenarios involving ethical dilemmas.
Seek a volunteer to read one of the two scenarios. Open the floor to reactions and answers. Ask participants if this reminds them of other dilemmas encountered or that they have heard of, real or fictional. How could responsibility play a part in this dilemma? What are some of the reason people act in ways that seem irresponsible?
ACTIVITY 4: STORY — PAPER, PLASTIC, OR CLOTH? (10 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Participants consider how to act responsibly as stewards of the planet, by hear and discussing a story.
Read or tell the story.
Lead a discussion, with these questions:
Ask the youth for their observations about paper, plastic, and cloth shopping bags. Allow some comments, then say:
Not too many years ago, there was a movement to return to the use of paper bags instead of plastic. Then, the movement toward cloth bags moved into the mainstream of American life.
In terms of what we eat, people started demanding organic food in order to ingest fewer chemicals. But some organic food has to be shipped long distances, creating a heavy carbon footprint. Now many people advocate for eating locally. Yet, sometimes local fruits, vegetables, and dairy products in the grocery store cost much more than non-local items. This means people with lower incomes may have to choose: Should I be responsible to the earth, or to my household budget?
Every day we are learning more about how production and consumption of our food and other goods affect the earth. Is it hard to sometimes know which action is most responsible towards the earth? How do we find a balance—use moderation—when we have to make decisions about being ecologically responsible?
ACTIVITY 5: CREATING A WEB (15 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Participants learn an earth-centered religious perspective on our responsibility to each other and to the earth and experience interconnectedness by playing a game.
Say, in these words or your own:
Our seventh UU Principle says we agree to affirm and promote respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part. This Principle recognizes the strong identification many Unitarian Universalists feel with earth-centered or pagan beliefs. These religions—many with roots in the ancient religions of indigenous people—emphasize our connection to the earth. The earth is a living creation and our home; therefore, we are responsible to help sustain and protect it.
Since we are all citizens of the living planet, we are all connected: to each other, to our animal and plant siblings, too. Our way of being should respect these connections. We are responsible to each other and all living things.
Invite participants to pick quotes from the basket and then gather in a circle. Holding the ball of yarn, read your quotation aloud, then wrap the yarn around your wrist 3 or 4 times. Invite someone across the circle to read their quotation. When they have finished, toss them the ball of yarn. Have them wrap the yarn around their wrist, then choose someone else to read a quotation. Continue until everyone has had a turn. Have the last reader toss the yarn back to you.
Say, in these words or your own:
We are connected. The web of existence means my actions affect you and your actions me and our actions affect the planet.
We are responsible. I am responsible to you and you are responsible to me and we are responsible to the living planet, the only home we have.
Ask participants to think of ways they act responsibly: for themselves, one another, other life forms, or the planet as a whole. An example might include, "I compost to return nutrients to the earth." Go first, to model: State your example, then carefully untangle yourself from the web without letting go of the yarn. Have volunteers take turns; encourage the group to keep the web intact. After everyone has extracted themselves, carry the web together to the place you chose to display it.
ACTIVITY 6: PRACTICE (15 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Participants understand how the use of responsibility affects their lives.
Invite youth to take five minutes to journal, using the questions on newsprint as prompts, or to draw or meditate on the questions.
Additional prompts you may add, while the group journals:
Invite participants to share journal writing to their level of comfort. You may wish to remind youth that you are a mandated reporter and, if anyone discloses behavior that could be dangerous to themselves or others, you will need to report it. Listen to what is said.
When all who wish to have shared, remind the group that though the world has many problems, they are not responsible for fixing them all. People who feel they need to fix everything often become burned out. People who are apathetic and feel responsible for nothing are frustrating. Remember that moderation is also a virtue. Use these words, or your own:
Malcolm X said, "If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem." He did not say, "If you are not the solution, you are the problem." The human race has to work together to solve the problems the species created. Sometimes you might be a part of the solution in a small way, like using cloth bags. At other times, you might play a bigger part. You might lobby your legislator to support the Clean Air Act. You might work for the Environmental Protection Agency.
Share these words from Unitarian minister Edward Everett Hale:
I am only one
but still I am one.
I cannot do everything,
But still I can do something.
And because I cannot do everything
I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.
Be sure to save five minutes for the youth to decorate their cork beads. Distribute participants' clipboards, new beads (one per youth), and decorating materials. Invite youth to decorate a bead while reflecting on their personal experiences with responsibility. Remind them that the beads will act as a reminder to use their highest values.
As participants finish, have them add this bead to the anklet they started in Workshop 1.
If any participant missed Workshop 1, provide them with a clipboard, hemp, a bead for their name bead, and instruction to begin their anklet.
Collect journals, clipboards, and anklet-making materials, and store for the next workshop.
CLOSING (5 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Have a volunteer read the quotation while another extinguishes the chalice:
It's a very Aboriginal thing to do, to give younger people greater responsibilities within the community as they become able to take those responsibilities on. It is a culturally appropriate transfer of roles that involves respect in both directions... from the younger to the older and the older to the younger. — Jackie Huggins, author, historian and human rights activist
Distribute Taking It Home.
FAITH IN ACTION: CLOTH BAGS
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Youth decorate cloth shopping bags.
Gather as a group and decorate cloth bags with your congregation's logo, a chalice design, or other artwork. Sell the bags for cost or add an additional amount to raise funds to donate to an environmental organization.
LEADER REFLECTION AND PLANNING
Reflect on the workshop with your co-leader. Which activities did the group enjoy most? Were varied learning styles addressed? Are group dynamics taking shape in a healthy way or are there issues you should address? Did participants keep to the covenant? Do co-leaders feel the work is shared equally? Did you have fun?
Read the next workshop for any advance preparation needed and decide who will be responsible for what.
TAKING IT HOME
You cannot hope to build a better world without improving the individuals. To that end, each of us must work for our own improvement and, at the same time, share a general responsibility for all humanity, our particular duty being to aid those to whom we think we can be most useful. — Marie Curie, scientist
IN TODAY'S WORKSHOP... we talked about the virtue of responsibility and the ever-widening circle of whom and what we are responsible to and for. We talked about personal responsibility, responsibility at home and school, and responsibility for the care of the planet. We explored the complexities of making good choices, including how to balance feelings of responsibility.
Today's Quote
Marie Curie says we have a particular duty to people "to whom we think we can be most useful." Could this guideline help you decide where to spend your socially responsible coinage? Think about the ways you give to society now. Are you using your gifts and talents in the most helpful way?
Personal Responsibility
Ecology
Did You Know... ?
Dorothy Day (1897-1980) was a crusader for justice. This radical Catholic reformer started the Catholic Worker Movement (at www.catholicworker.org/dorothyday/) and has been nominated for sainthood. One of her most famous sayings is included in Singing the Living Tradition, our Unitarian Universalist hymnbook:
People say, what is the sense of our small effort.
They cannot see that we must lay one brick at a time, take one step at a time.
A pebble cast into a pond causes ripples that spread in all directions. Each one of our thoughts, words and deeds is like that.
No one has a right to sit down and feel hopeless.
There's too much work to do.
ALTERNATE ACTIVITY 1: REAL LIFE CHALLENGES
Materials for Activity
Description of Activity
Youth discuss ethical challenges they have faced.
If someone shared an experience in check-in or during any workshop activities that the group would like to explore further, do so now. This could be particularly useful if an experience resonated with many participants. If several challenges are already listed on the Bicycle Rack, invite the youth to choose one to discuss. It need not be related to this workshop's topic.
You might use these questions to structure a discussion:
Affirm that is always easier to see good solutions in hindsight and that living a life according to virtues we want to nurture or values we hold dear is not always easy. We do not need to always "get it right," but we do need to keep trying.
ALTERNATE ACTIVITY 2: A SOUND OF THUNDER (30 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Participants reflect on interconnectedness by hearing a story.
Tell the group they will hear a story whose author, Ray Bradbury, is a well-known science fiction writer and a Unitarian Universalist.
Play the audio. Discuss the story afterward. Ask:
ALTERNATE ACTIVITY 3: A WEB OF RESPONSIBILITY (30 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Participants learn an earth-centered religious perspective on our responsibility to each other and to the earth and experience interconnectedness by playing a game.
Say, in these words or your own:
Our seventh UU Principle says we agree to affirm and promote respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part. This Principle recognizes the strong identification many Unitarian Universalists feel with earth-centered or pagan beliefs. These religions—many with roots in the ancient religions of indigenous people—emphasize our connection to the earth. The earth is a living creation and our home; therefore, we are responsible to help sustain and protect it.
Since we are all citizens of the living planet, we are all connected: to each other, to our animal and plant siblings, too. Our way of being should respect these connections. We are responsible to each other and all living things.
Invite participants to pick quotes from the basket and then gather in a circle. Holding the ball of yarn, read your quotation aloud, then wrap the yarn around your wrist 3 or 4 times. Invite someone across the circle to read their quotation. When they have finished, toss them the ball of yarn. Have them wrap the yarn around their wrist, then choose someone else to read a quotation. Continue until everyone has had a turn. Have the last reader toss the yarn back to you.
Say, in these words or your own:
We are connected. The web of existence means my actions affect you and your actions me and our actions affect the planet.
We are responsible. I am responsible to you and you are responsible to me and we are responsible to the living planet, the only home we have.
Instruct the youth to extract themselves from the yarn, one at a time, trying to keep the web intact, and then together lay the web on the paper you have placed on the floor.
Pass markers around the circle. Ask participants to think of ways they act responsibly: for themselves, each other, other life forms, or the planet as a whole. An example might include, "I compost, to return nutrients to the earth." Have a co-leader and/or volunteer begin taping the yarn to the paper, keeping the web's shape, or tracing the web pattern with marker—whichever you have decided to do.
Tell the youth you would like them to write their responsible act inside the group's web, to create a mural together. Tell them where they mural will be displayed.
Go first to model stating your example, then writing the example in one cell of the web.
Engage volunteers to carry the web to its display location. Post it as a visible reminder of the virtue of responsibility, in action.
VIRTUE ETHICS: WORKSHOP 6:
STORY: PAPER, PLASTIC, OR CLOTH?
The ban started in 2006, on Tanzania's Zanzibar archipelago. The Zanzibar islands on the Indian Ocean are famous for their pristine beaches and their history of trade in spices and slaves. Today, Zanzibar depends on tourism for most of its income. One month after this island paradise was named as potentially becoming one of the most environmentally endangered islands on the planet, the ban took effect.
What was banned?
Plastic bags.
Thin, plastic bags, used by most vendors, were endangering the islands' fragile ecology. A study found that the bags clogged water channels, killed marine life and livestock, polluted the soil, and creating breeding places for malaria-carrying mosquitoes. A partial ban was passed in 2006. In 2011, the Tanzanian government was considering a complete ban on the manufacture and use of all plastic bags everywhere in the country, which is also home to the Serengeti National Park, a world famous site for safaris.
A total ban will mean anyone manufacturing, dispersing, or importing plastic bags in Tanzania could face six months in prison, a fine, or both. Retailers and manufacturers have fought the ban, claiming it is impossible to enforce and will hurt the economy. Others say it will help the economy, because plastic bags manufacturing is mostly automated, and the ban will create jobs for people to produce reusable cloth bags. Cloth bags will need farmers to supply hemp and sisal. Hemp and sisal are biodegradable, unlike the plastic bags, which can take up to 1,000 years to break down, and leave tiny pieces of plastic in the soil.
Paper, plastic, or cloth?
Tanzania is not the only nation to ban plastic bags. Other countries and some U.S. cities have banned them.
Environmentalists started voicing concerns about plastic bags decades ago. Aside from the bags' danger to animals, waterways, and soil, plastic is a non-renewable resource, created from oil. But do they need to be banned? Plastic bag recycling is available in some places, and people are reusing plastic bags more than ever before. This keeps them out of landfills longer. Plastic bags are also inexpensive. Some people prefer plastic bags.
Paper, plastic, or cloth?
Some people switched to paper bags. Paper bags are biodegrade. Paper comes from trees, and trees can be planted and grown, so paper could be considered a renewable resource. Paper bags do not pose a threat to wildlife. On the other hand, there are concerns. Some paper companies cut down old-growth timber, so even with replanting, forests are being harvested at a greater rate than they can be replenished. Paper bags cost more than plastic bags, so some retailers that use them increase the prices of their products to cover the cost of the bags. Still, some people prefer paper bags.
Paper, plastic, or cloth?
Some people are using cloth bags. This is how our ancestors shopped: They took their cloth bags to market with them. Cloth bags can be reused for years, and many are biodegradable. Nowadays, you can buy them at the check-out stands of most major retailers. Although you pay for a cloth bag out of pocket, versus getting a plastic or paper bag for free, in the end many say a cloth bag pays for itself many times over because it does not cause environmental damage that someone must pay to fix—if it can be fixed at all. On the other hand, some people say it is hard to remember to bring them when shopping and that they can carry germs, if not properly laundered.
Paper, plastic, or cloth? What do you say at the check-out, when offered this option?
Other factors affect how "green" your bag is: How much energy and other resources are needed to produce it? How far from you is the bag manufactured? Shipping the bag a long distance uses fossil fuels, which emit carbon dioxide that harms the environment.
Which solution seems the most responsible choice to you: plastic bags, paper bags, or cloth? Maybe you use a combination. Whatever you decide, make a conscious, informed choice. That is the responsible thing to do.
VIRTUE ETHICS: WORKSHOP 6:
LEADER RESOURCE 1: WHO DOES IT?
At Home...
Laundry
Brushes your teeth
Cooks meals
Decorating your bedroom
Choosing what to watch on television
Driving
Feeds pets
Pays the utility bills
Decorating the house
Babysitting
Deciding how to spend money
Mows the lawn
Dishes
Gathers recyclables
Paying rent or a mortgage
At School or Work...
Choosing lunch
Homework
Getting good grades
Choosing friends
Choosing mates
Helping sibling with homework
Working outside the home
Community and Beyond...
Volunteer at the congregation
Volunteer at another organization
Voting in elections
VIRTUE ETHICS: WORKSHOP 6:
LEADER RESOURCE 2: RESPONSIBILITY DILEMMAS
Dilemma 1
Are scientists and inventors responsible for the uses of their creations? Hilda is a scientist in a lab that sometimes accepts contracts from outside companies. While working to discover a cure for a disease, Hilda accidentally discovers a biological agent that could be very destructive in the wrong hands. Because Hilda is working under contract to Mass Destruct, Inc., the patent for the new agent belongs to them. Mass Destruct, Inc. could produce the agent and sell it to any nation or person they wish. They decide to sell the agent to the highest bidder, a country called Peaceful Land. Peaceful Land is attacked, without provocation, by Angry Land. In defense, Peaceful Land uses the agent against Angry Land, and kills thousands. Who is responsible for the deaths? Peaceful Land, for using the agent? Angry Land, for starting the war? Mass Destruct, Inc. for selling the agent? Hilda, for creating the agent?
Dilemma 2
A website was recently created that featured ugly remarks about some of the students and teachers at Learning High. Gary overheard some guys talking in the hallway and consequently knows who created the anonymous website. Everyone at school is talking about who might have posted the remarks. The principal purchases software that tells him everyone who visited the website. If the creators do not come forward, she will question every student who visited the website, in the presence of their family. What should Gary do? Does he have a responsibility to tell what he knows? If he takes responsibility, he could help the principal address the problem more efficiently, saving the principal some work and saving other students from embarrassment. Or should he let the principal take care of it her way?
VIRTUE ETHICS: WORKSHOP 6:
LEADER RESOURCE 3: WE ARE CONNECTED
"We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children." — Native American Proverb
"Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach." — Clarissa Pinkola Estes, author and psychoanalyst
"What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?" — Henry David Thoreau
"The care of the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after all our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it and to foster its renewal is our only hope." — Wendell Berry, poet
"Peace comes within the souls of men when they realize their oneness with the Universe." — Black Elk
"No one has a right to sit down and feel hopeless.
There's too much work to do." — Dorothy Day
"We never know the worth of water till the well is dry." — Thomas Fuller
"The maltreatment of the natural world and its impoverishment leads to the impoverishment of the human soul. It is related to the outburst of violence in human society. To save the natural world today means to save what is human in humanity." — Raisa Gorbachev, wife of ex-Soviet leader Mikhail and activist
"Let us a little permit Nature to take her own way; she better understands her own affairs than we." — Michel de Montaigne, French author
"Andthere is no creature on (or within) the earth or a bird that flies with its wings except that they arenations (communities) like you." — Quran 6:38
"Only after the last tree has been cut down; Only after the last fish has been caught; Only after the last river has been poisoned; Only then will you realize that money cannot be eaten." — Cree Indian Prophecy
"We are nature. We are nature seeing nature. We are nature with a concept of nature. Nature weeping. Nature speaking of nature to nature." — Susan Griffin, eco-feminist author
"All of nature is a canvas painted by the hand of God." — Anonymous
"Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him: "I now establish my covenant with you and your descendants after you and with every living creature that was with you — the birds, the livestock, and all the wild animals, all those that came out of the ark with you - every living Creature on the earth." — Genesis 9:8-9.
Love your Mother.
"Woe to the shepherds of Israel who only take care of themselves! Should not the shepherds take care of the flock? You eat the curds, clothe yourselves with the wool and slaughter the choice animals, but you did not take care of the flock! You have not strengthened the weak or healed the sick or bound up the injured. You have not brought back the strays or searched for the lost. You have ruled them harshly and brutally." — Ezekiel 34:2-4.
"The earth is a living thing. Mountains speak, trees sing, lakes can think, pebbles have a soul, rocks have power." — Henry Crow Dog, American Indian activist
"I had assumed that the Earth, the spirit of the Earth, noticed exceptions — those who wantonly damage it and those who do not. But the Earth is wise. It has given itself into the keeping of all, and all are therefore accountable." — Alice Walker, author
FIND OUT MORE
Personal Responsibility
A short article from the Evansville Courier and Press (at www.courierpress.com/news/2010/jan/26/motivating-chore-challenged-child-may-require/) gives practical advice for motivating young people to be more responsible at home.
Social Responsibility
Community Service and Social Responsibility in Youth, by James Youniss and Miranda Yates (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), uses a case study of urban youth to demonstrate how community service can help youth develop a sense of social responsibility and see themselves as agents of change.
Stewards of the Earth
The Plastic Bag Report (at plasticbagbanreport.com/countries/) keeps track of places that pass legislation reducing the use of plastic bags. Is your state on the list?
Mankutano: The Centre for Tanzantan Art and Craft (at www.makutanotz.com/Eco-bags%20page.html) is cooperative of women supporting their families by selling artisan crafts, including eco-friendly bags.
The Eco-Ethical (at www.eco-ethical.co.uk/index.html) website compiles comments on popular ecological issues individuals face.
An article in the British periodical The Independent (at www.independent.co.uk/opinion/leading-articles/leading-article-the-ethical-dilemma-posed-by-organic-food-397783.html) examines the complexities of organic food as the "right" ethical choice.