Thanks for allround encouragement - I might add though that I'll never quit eating meat. I may be more selective as to where it comes from, how it's been processed etc., but a life without meat... (nausea coming on... "No, I can't imagine!") Reference to vegetarianism was merely to highlight underlying principle.

Now, obviously, this shows that I'm not going to enforce the ethical principle in an absolutist fashion. There are obviously concessions to be made, otherwise life would be unbearable, at least in the developed world. For me it's rather an attempt to live more consciously, be informed and acquire information pertaining to the direct and indirect effects of my actions. I think this is what it is essentially. And I guess most people on this planet could change their existence or actions in accordance with this in a number of ways, quite easily too and without too much effort. It's a matter of awareness and choice, which in turn is basically a matter of self-awareness.
My ideas about commercial praxis are that, obviously, strict enforcement won't leave you in a very favorable position, at least not as far as variety goes. But I might, for example, avoid going to McDonald's or drinking Coke, never purchase Philipp Morris branded cigs (there are many good local, small brands all over the world - you've just never heard of them and don't know they exist) and on and on etc. There are many obvious places to start. I'd rather buy products from small companies as opposed to large monopolistic corporations, however, I certainly will weigh up the differences between ethical conviction and say, quality of the product (yes, I will still get myself a new VAIO someday). Awareness is what it's about, in a sense (and this is what I used to think), everything is fucked anyway, so all you can do (or what you should do really on the personal level) is prevent your self from falling into the same trap of ignorance and detachment, as we already have done collectively. And just to clarify at this point for SJ, this doesn't rest on anti-globalization sentiments, to be honest I haven't really made up my mind about these issues (can't really see how anyone could deny it outright...). Globalization increasingly appears to me as something that's not very tangible anyway, as word or process, when being described by all those great institutions and clever journals. In its implementation it's a political agenda, just like any other and I find it hard to relate it to my personal feeling about its effects on me or any nation state, or the whole world for that matter. Hence I don't feel that an approach from this (rather obvious) angle would offer me any insight into my self. The beauty of all this I feel, is exactly that, the fact that my ideas about this are not politicized. I considered this outside the political framwork and I'm pretty convinced now, that the world beyond politics has more to offer in terms of insight and self-realization. Unfortunately, this isn't obvious at all in our world today and to think with an explicit attention to avoiding politics is probably not possible at all. We always do find though, in politics an easy answer to our questions and where it trickles from there, you all know.

Would like to add to Ryan's mentioning of never imposing your conviction on others (like your vegetarian example). This is something that I always thought would be a difficulty, since feeling strong about something, especially an ethical issue, will lead you to regard the 'carnivore' or litter dropper as unethical, and you become one of those righteous souls who feel they need to impose their perspective on all the 'heretics' whilst going through life, enforcing this actively. However it ocurred to me the other day, that a true ethic couldn't possibly extend beyond the subjectivity of the individual, and an attempt to universalise this amongst your fellow human beings will mostly cause friction in an unhelpful way (as we might have mentioned in different contexts before). Plus, I feel that the enlightened soul would not see such missionary and righteous behaviour as a logical consequence to devising its way of being in the world. To me this isn't a matter of right and wrong, it's a matter of personal choice. I would even toy with the idea that such an imposing enforcer couldn't possibly have an authentic relation to the idea he's trying convey. They seem to do this from the "universally right or wrong" angle, hence never so much thought about it for and in relation to themselves (apart from "I must not litter the street"), hence only do this due to external pressures. Nothing wrong about their ethics as such, but I think this is how, yet again, a universalisation of ideas can be deeply distorting for the collective unconscious and generally exude bad karma to all participants involved. So the next time I see Jesse throw an empty can of Super T into a body of water I wouldn't say a word (unless it was my private lake in my future mansion with 25 staff of course... ;-), Jesse just an example... empty littered cans I associate with Super T and, well, Super T and Jesse...?) ). He would decide to do so, and that's fine. I from now on would rather opt not to. C'est tout.