what's your bottom line?

I read an article earlier today about the financial impact on productivity of cigarette smoking: "Early deaths caused by smoking cost the nation about $92 billion in lost productivity between 1997 and 2001, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Thursday" (source: CNN.com). I probably shouldn't have been surprised that this loss of life had been reduced to a dollar figure, nor that human beings were being measured in terms of productivity, but this did get me to thinking again about the strength of the tobacco lobby.

Nothing new, of course -- just more questions about the bottom line.

What defines this country's "bottom line"? A quick read through the day's news, or casual observation of every day consumerism, paints a picture of more immediate materialism as being the central value around which we order our lives. While the core values driving the foundation of the United States were such high ideals as inalienable human rights and the freedom of self-determination -- "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" -- quality of life and of living have long since taken a back seat to bank accounts.

No one wants to outright ban tobacco production, because of the loss of jobs (votes), and the loss of campaign contributions from the wealthy tobacco companies (money). There are token gestures every now and then, like increasing the tax on cigarettes, raising the legal age for purchasing cigarettes, and banning smoking on airplanes, that are supposed to indicate our government's "commitment to health and well-being," but in reality health and well-being are routinely postponed in favor of more immediate economic concerns.

The two sides of this argument are fairly simple: Is it better to have healthy people (including current politicians and tobacco execs) out of work, or to have a workforce dying of lung cancer? Making the shift toward greater health would be painful at first and would have detrimental economic impact in the short-term, but you'd think that someone would have their eye on the long-term benefits -- not the least of which would be reduced health care costs. But even that $92 billion figure from the CDC report hardly makes anyone blink, it seems.

If I had any question about the current administration's priorities, they were quickly dispelled when I read a second article this evening: "U.S. President George W. Bush said in a Danish TV interview aired Thursday that adhering to the Kyoto treaty on climate change would have 'wrecked' the U.S. economy" (source: CNN.com). So forget that trashing the environment means future generations (only a decade or so down the road) may not have much of a world left to live in; what's really important is saving jobs through the remainder of the current president's final term in office. Beyond that, it's someone else's problem.

It's quite easy for frustration with these directives to slide into a more general and inert pessimism; after all, how much can one person do to make a difference in this world? Yes, I'm going to dive into cliché here, most notably: Think globally, act locally.

This is an invitation to take a personal inventory. What is your bottom line? What are your personal core values -- and how do these compare to those of your community, your employer, your religion, and your elected leaders? What would happen if you lived in full accordance with those core values, even for a single day? What would that day look like, if your every thought, word, and action honestly reflected your own bottom line?

I imagine that day would be full of magic.

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has. (Margaret Mead)