In my own half-assed way, I attempted to follow the dictates of my conscience following the Exxon Valdez incident of 1989. I had an Exxon card at the time. I chopped it up and got a Mobil card instead. Some years later, Mobil suddenly became ExxonMobil. Exxon was like a bad poltergeist that I couldn't get rid of. I'm all for doing what I can in the interests of what's fair and decent. Like Irishgit, I've never patronized a Wal-Mart store and I never will. Unfortunately, as Irishgit also mentions, it's hard to know what corporations are merging, what corporation is buying out what company or companies, what corporation is using child and semi-slave labor in third-world countries to manufacture the products they sell in the U.S. (probably most if not all of them), what brand names like Houlihan's, Pepsi, Kraft, KFC, etc. are under what corporate umbrella-- in other words, there's often an undeniable futility in trying to do the correct and moral thing while trying to function and raise a family in an increasingly global economy. I don't like saying that, but considering the state of our economy, our political system, the growing apathy and callousness that transcends all international boundaries, our relentless inhumanity towards each other and our seeming inability to learn from history's lessons, our disavowal of true spirituality and our embrace of the crassest sort of materialism and excess, it's hard to be anything less than pessimistic.
