Towards a Just Metropolis

Just a note: I wrote the previous post before I read Soul of a Citizen, and it's surprisingly relevant.  I think that Soul of a Citizen addresses many of the things going on in my life right now.  I read it in parts over the weekend and each time I put it down for awhile, something would happen in my life that connected me to the next section of reading, which was a cool experience.

I want to start out this post by explaining my political views, though they may at first seem irrelevant.  I consider myself to be a liberal.  What that means to me is that everyone should have the ability to decide things for themselves.  I consider this ability of individuals to make their own choices an inalienable right, and I consider it to be morally corrupt for anyone to take another person's choice away from them.  This means that, from my perspective, individuals do not have the right to make a decision that impacts the health of someone else.  For example, when individuals in the Salt Lake Valley choose to drive large trucks with poor gas mileage that pollute the atmosphere much more than is necessary on an inversion day, that decision does not only effect them.  By making that decision they are also impacting the health of everyone in the valley, particularly those people with asthma and other health issues.  In this case, their individual decision has impacted the rights of other people to be healthy.  I believe that the rights of the individual to make their own decision end when that decision begins impacting someone else.  To avoid giving people the power of harming other people, I think individual decisions that impact the public should be regulated by the government or perhaps some other ruling body.  Now I must diverge here for a bit to explain that of course I believe there are exceptions to this right, such as children, who's decisions are made for them by their parents until their brains are well developed enough that they can think for themselves.  

Given my belief in this right, I find it difficult to entirely accept Soul of a Citizen as a true work.  What I mean by this is that the author certainly had good intentions, however I try to avoid putting myself in a position where I can or must make decisions for other people.  For example, my friends have recently developed a fascination for taking road signs that have been left on the side of the road.  Now, I'm pretty sure it's illegal to take government property, even if it seems abandoned, so it makes me uncomfortable when they do try to take the signs.  However, I don't want to make their decisions for them, so oftentimes I just tell them that if they want to take it, I won't help them, but I won't stop them.  I am afraid to get involved to a point where I have to make decisions for other people.  

After reading Soul of a Citizen I realized that I want to do more than allow things that I don't like to happen.  I am still confused as to whether it is right or wrong to involve myself, however I also want to make a difference in the world, and I don't want to be a bystander.  I know I would feel more fulfilled as a person if I didn't feel helpless about my sociopolitical involvement.  I hope that through this PRAXIS Lab we can all gain an as-complete-as-we-can-make-it understanding of the problems this valley is facing so that we can use the power we have as responsibly as possible,  I believe our PRAXIS lab truly does have power, because we have a significant amount of money, and because we have a  group of people dedicated to studying and improving the Salt Lake Valley.  

Also, I calculated my ecological footprint on the following website:
 http://myfootprint.org/en/visitor_information/
 (Links to an external site.)

My ecological footprint=3.15 earths, which is terrible...