Purveyors of the Obvious

Faster, Greener, Better – Lonelier?

// June 15th, 2009 // Uncategorized

I saw His Holiness the Dalai Lama address an audience about our interconnectedness in 2000.  He used manufactured clothing as his example at this public address.  He illustrated that it is strange to feel isolated given how many hands and countries are involved in our lives with something as simple as a sweater.  It  passes through many hands to get to an individual.  When it is worn it is hard to be lonely given how many people put an effort into keeping us warm.  Almost any mass produced consumer good goes through many hands from development, resource procurement, assembly, shipping, marketing, and retail.

But what about our commitment to those people we are so connected with?   What about the environment that supplies resources for our material goods?  It is easy to remove them from the process since we are paying money for our goods.  I sometimes forget about people and places when I look at an item.  My first instinct is to equate the effort it takes to earn the money to pay for anything.  For each of us the ethics of how we spend our money is a personal one.  I have been of the opinion for many years that you vote for the things you agree with in this society with your dollar.

The consumer dollar is the biggest voice any of us have.  I try to do the right thing and question most of my shopping decisions with the sentiment that “there is no beauty in the finest cloth if it makes hunger and unhappiness.”  That partial quote is taken from the movie Gandhi and refers to the political movement of wearing native Indian clothing as opposed to financially supporting colonial British oppressors.

Textiles used to be the mark of an advancing society.  In the developing world the ability to mass produce clothing demonstrated technology to make goods on a massive scale.  This lasted from the Renaissance age of the 15th century until the very recent e-commerce days.  The ability to produce technology is the new benchmark and it is a global community that manages to put sought after goods in our hands these days.

Treehugger.com published a slide show recently depicting the acquisition of resources for electronics.

Many consumers may not even realize or care about the plight of people who harvest the basic minerals that end up in our cell phones or laptops.  Many consumers may not even bat an eye at the natural resources that are required to extract, ship, and process these raw materials into finished goods.  My concern with my community is that we are disconnected from the process of the conveniences in our lives.  I think this is dangerous because we lose the connections to the global community and become insulated in a world run by our desires and our pocketbooks.  It is not that we are jerks when we lose sight of how connected we are to the world, we just lose sight because of how easy it is to obtain things.

This post has been inspired by the E3 and WWDC events that took place in the last couple of weeks.  The newest electronic products have been unveiled and consumers are rushing out for them.  It is easy to assuage our desire to collect more things in our lives when these shows come about.  It is especially easy when these faster/better products touted are marketed to be friendlier to the planet.  That only justifies the need to spend money.

What the marketing machines are not advertising are the human and environmental efforts to produce version 17.0 of any given product.  They are counting on our disconnectedness to our humanity to sell massive amounts of products.

While faster, greener, better products sound great, they may not be for all of us at this time.  I am asking you to examine the products you already own before you seek an upgrade.  Are they still functional for your needs?  Examine your connections in your personal life to others as well to see if you can use that humanity to extend a connection to a worker you have never met or a connection with a piece of land you may never see.

If you do need anything new then I ask two more things: 1) take good care of what you buy so it can last a while 2) buy not only the best product that will last the longest for your needs but the one that is also congruent to your value system.  Vote with your dollar.  You can use your dollar to express your respect for yourself, your community, the earth, and the workers you may never meet who have had a hand with your latest purchase.