When there’s a plea for help in the name of Kant’s “Formula of Universal Law”, will you answer it in the name of Kant’s “Formula of Universal Law”?
I should hope that you would.
Colin Beavan entered his No Impact Man project as a Fifth Avenue living (only one bedroom though), published author, his wife a senior writer for Business Week who he confessed was a “Prada-Wearing, Four Seasons-Loving” individual along for the ride.
NIM was already in a dire situation entering the project in which he vowed to live No Impact and make no purchases for the year. As the NY Times reported,
…he needed a new book project and the No Impact year was the only one of four possibilities his agent thought would sell.
The inability to make purchases during the year necessitated the temporary donation of a solar panel, plus, as Colin admitted, he couldn’t afford the $3000.
Nor, he admitted, could he afford a personal assistant, for which reason he made a plea for an individual with their own computer who could donate ten hours of their week to help him with research, phone and correspondence.
In Colin’s May 2nd post, “Money is Green”, there seemed a ray of financial hope. He wrote of how breakfast alone used to daily cost them $20 ordering out for bagels and coffee, and that now money was idling “provocatively in our bank accounts. We’re living on one salary and stashing the other.”
My bucket of dust and shame, which I must forever bear, is I wrote No Impact Man suggesting he should at least compensate, out of that bagel money, the personal assistant for the Impact they would be making for No Impact’s benefit, and I didn’t hear back from him. That bucket of dust and shame once represented my not being worthy of response, but I now understand, after today’s post, that it must instead represent my lack of understanding of NIM’s special needs and evidently precarious situation.
It pains me to bring you this news but things have apparently taken a dire down turn for Colin. In today’s blog–the one in which he quotes Kant’s “best test of morality to be the Formula of Universal Law” which he gives as meaning all should live only in a way that allows for all to live in the same way–Colin has found it necessary to make a plea for support.
Writing from his lower Fifth Avenue apartment, in a building “with doormen and elevator operators and a marble-floored lobby”, but his wife’s family calling the 750 square foot apartment “the hovel” so it can’t be all that (though the NY Times gave it as “elegant, prewar”), Colin today informs that first and foremost he needs your links, your comments, your links, your spreading the word about his blog, emailing your friends about it, and your links. And he needs you to help give him a boost and favorite him at Technorati.
But that’s not his only plea! NIM also notes he’s found it necessary to place in the sidebar a link whereby you can make a financial contribution to him. Living No Impact, reducing consumption, he is unable to ever place ads on his blog, he says, but if you have it in you and would like to help out financially, there is now a link in the sidebar where you can make a donation via Paypal or your credit card.
Yes, I know that you thought paying for his No Impact book would be support enough, but looks like he needs some cash now to help him out with being No Impact Man.
I feel for the man and his family. Really, I do. So would Kant. As No Impact Man today notes…
He (Kant) would have smiled upon the No Impact project…
And that’s some endorsement!
Here’s my link to No Impact Man’s blog. I hope it helps him out of the tight spot he’s in. Go, please, learn how to be No Impact and support No Impact Man in his endeavor to instruct on how we may each live within our means and the means of our planet.
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