Like all good egotists I often have a look around the web to see if anyone is talking about me. Every time I google search ‘Goonanism’, it asks me if I mean ‘Onanism’.

In the past I have simply ignored it, until I got a comment saying that they thought that my blog was actually called ‘Go Onanism’.

So I looked it up at Dictionary.com and found this:

o·nan·ism (n):

1. Masturbation.
2. Coitus interruptus.

Interesting.

Update: It keeps getting better. I just uncovered Wikipedia’s entry on masturbation and found this:

The word “onanism” refers to the story of Onan, who was obliged but refused to consummate a levirate marriage with his dead brother’s wife:

“And Onan knew that the seed should not be his; and it came to pass, when he went in unto his brother’s wife, that he spilled it on the ground, lest that he should give seed to his brother. And the thing which he did displeased the Lord: wherefore he slew him also.” (Genesis 38:7-9)

3RRR reported this morning that Takeru Kobayashi has maintained his world No1 Ranking in the International Federation of Competitive Eating after winning the July Fourth International Hot dog Eating Contest ahead of arch rival and world number two Sonya Thomas.

He clinched his 5th straight win downing 49 hotdogs in 12 mins, falling just short of his world record of 53.5 hot dogs (and buns) set last year. Sonja downed a meagre 37, setting the American record – how lame are those Americans!.

Over at post no bills there is a fantastic, first hand description of the G8 protests in Edinburgh.

If, as pundits like to inform us, we are indeed living in a Western world mired in apathy and fuelled by inescapable greed someone should be so kind as to inform the trainloads of people that travelled from London to Edinburgh on Friday. They – almost to a person – despise Bob Geldof but have come anyway. Theirs is not the celebrity-sanctioned protest, but a truly challenging indictment against the very structure of society. For this reason (and not because they wear black) these groups are the biggest threat to the status quo, will be dealt with accordingly, by the police, by politicians and by the mainstream media.

An interesting debate broke out in the comments of a previous post about individual responsibility.

It seems every time Monbiot puts out an article I act as an echo chamber for him. I’d hate to break with tradition here. So in his latest column he makes the following points:

In the absence of government action, environmentalism is, and always will be, for other people. At its best, it is a faltering and contradictory effort to do the right thing.

Nothing of any substance can happen through self-enforced abstinence.

“Consumer democracy”, “voluntary simplicity” and “mindful living” have proved to be a disastrous distraction from the political battle.

This is the essence of what I was arguing in the comments mentioned above, that the focus on the individual is, whilst admirable, counter productive – or perhaps just not productive rather than counter productive.

Probably my favourite ecological thinker/writer is Val Plumwood. Plumwood argues that we need an ‘environmental culture’ (which I won’t go into here) and that while this could be imposed, top-down, by governments it is much more preferably for it to instigated from the bottom up in a highly democratic way. Moreover, the second route is invariably the only lasting one.

If you agree with this, which I do, it is far more important to lobby your government to take issues on (ie create a groundswell) than it is to concern yourself with you individual actions.

Individual actions are great – I don’t want to knock them – but lobbying your government is much more important.