Over the last six months there has been an ongoing war of words in the UK between politicians and Google. Google have spent the last decade seeing off all competition and making our lives better. However it would seem that they have not paid any tax. Their “UK sales team” don’t sell anything in the UK, which makes perfect sense so it must be OK.
A friend asked “how do I stop using Google products?” on Facebook. So much of our lives is now powered by Google. If you peel off the label of many websites underneath it says “Google inside”. This is of course great. Google make everything work together as a giant benevolent force in the universe.
Well…. Except for the desire to make money. Apart from that they are a giant benevolent force in the universe making everyone’s lives better. How do you stop using google products?
The system goes on-line August 4th, 1997. Human decisions are removed from strategic defense. Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug.
PS If you didn’t spot it, this isn’t really a post about Google. It is about our reliance on technology and giant corporations. I’m currently Robb not 3 of 8.
Earlier this year our Parochial Church Council decided to back the IF Campaign. Members of the congregation brought it to the wider church because they believed it is something we should be doing to make our voices heard. This is something people at Holy Nativity care about passionately .
As a community we read the bible each week and find that the author of our faith is challenging us. From the sermon on the mount where Jesus calls us to a kingdom where the lowest are raised up and the poor shall be filled (Luke 6:20-21) to the things that we do “for the least of these” in Matthew 25:34-36, Jesus calls us to bring Justice. Justice for the poor. Justice for the hungry. Justice for the oppressed. At the Churches Together Lent Course this week we had a scientist talking about “God’s divine love revealed through science”. As John spoke these words struck me: “We live in a world that produces enough resources for everyone. Sadly there are people who don’t like sharing”.
We’ve seen rhetoric for years about how the world is full of inequality. We’ve seen other similar campaigns to bring an end to world hunger. We remember Jubilee 2000. We remember Live 8. We remember Dawn French’s impassioned plea as Revd Geraldine Boadicea Granger.
In the UK we live lives where people feel disconnected. We live in lives where people feel powerless. We live lives where we assume that there is someone else going to make the decisions for us and we don’t have a say in that process. A faceless “suit” who is going to make these inequalities happen anyway. The way we begin living in a society that operates like this is by losing our voice. By refusing to speak out. By allowing the distractions that those in power want to throw at us to become the most important priority in our lives.
Tonight we raise money once again for Comic Relief. So much of what we do is a response to the symptoms of poverty not to the root causes of poverty. We raise money to fix problems that are often caused by the systems we perpetuate. We don’t even realise they are there because they are under the surface. If we’re honest, it is only in the last six months that anyone has thought twice about buying a Starbucks coffee because we didn’t know that there was a problem with corporate tax avoidance. A member of the Halifax Food Drop in spoke to our Deanery Synod last week. She said “this was never supposed to be a long-term solution”. The few raising money to feed the hungry on a global scale was never supposed to be a long-term solution.
This is not how it should be. In God’s kingdom, this is not how it should be. You have a voice. We all have a voice. It is only by giving up our voice that we allow the few “suits” to make decisions for the many. Join the campaign. Publish it wide. Write to your MP. Tell your friends. Tweet about it. Put it on Facebook. I don’t want to find myself posting a video of Geraldine Granger again in 8 years time.
