A winding and varied career path eventually paid me well to work in corporate 'Internet marketing and communication'.

I was not responsible, thank the gods, for coming up with hard-core "messaging" - capitalism's lingua franca that persuades shoppers, voters, fashionistas, lovers, etc., to shut down their critical thinking faculties and open up their wallets to keep up with The Joneses.

I was glad to be a paid member of a media team for I found marketing and communication presented me key insights into our dominant culture, how it functions, who keeps it going, how, and why. The point at which it rankled, indeed the point at which I departed the team,  was when I was tasked with white- and green-washing corporate ideology.

Whether team members notice it or not, sooner or later, this point always comes in this line of work. For the essential driver of this work is having fun finding catchy new ways of persuading people to spend money and ensure corporate/corporate-like capital accumulates - not only regardless of consequences but, most importantly, not asking about potentially devastating consequences.

Only recently has a small segment of the shopping public begun to acknowledge the consequences of shop- 'til-you-drop: garbage dumps that have grown so unwieldy that America gifts developing countries with its waste; the swirling, unbounded Great Pacific Garbage Patch; and landfills that evolve into residential neighborhoods in the US and around the world.

Anyway, let me cut short a long polemic on capitalism and say: Yes, mea culpa: I am one of a shrinking group who believes, as the Beatles put it, "money can't buy me love"...nor can money persuade me to spread the ubiquitous, usually corporate but not only corporate lies that go into toxifying land, water, air, or people. Read what I mean here.

I fail to see how the complex system that is core to capitalism's wealth extraction and accumulation can continue to savage the planet with impunity. Nor do I see happy-ever-after looming on the horizon.

Happily, though, I see a group of people who, not only do not share my doom-and-gloom perspective but find ways nicely to use capitalism's messaging tools and coax into bloom alternatives from capitalism's stagnant waters....

JUST THE FACTS

Fact 1: I'm using an old toothbrush whose bristles are distorted and scratch my gums so they hurt, and sometimes bleed. (Yes, I do have an electric toothbrush. It is battery operated and opens up a line for future inquiry: how to dispose, benignly, of AA batteries.)

Fact 2: I need a new toothbrush.

Fact 3: I loathe shopping (the avid and avaricious buying "look," choosing one thing from an  overwhelming glut, trying it on, bringing it home, grrrrr....)

   Buy online, you say? Here's an example of that enterprise:

NiceTouch Disposable Toothbrushes. Smooth head has 38 tufts of soft, end-rounded nylon bristles. Brushes come without mint paste. 144 cello-wrapped brushes per box.