The ‘White Savior Industrial Complex’ has been on my mind a lot lately. If you haven’t read it yet, I would certainly recommend Teju Cole’s piece in the Atlantic. In it, he criticizes the "let's go solve Africa's problems" approach taken up by many citizens of the US, and he puts the issue of race right out there by putting 'white' up front in the name. I agree with almost everything Cole has to say, but as a white American for whom world poverty is frequently at the front of my mind and a motivation for my actions, I also feel somewhat indicted by his position. Personally, this has been weighing on me. There are two parts to this indictment, however, and reading and re-reading Cole's piece has helped me to parse out the ways that I am guilty of participation in the 'White Savior Industrial Complex' and the ways that I am not.
The idea of the 'White Savior Industrial Complex' is, well, complex. It has many parts. For one, it refers to the profitability of the problems of the world for privileged people who are not negatively affected by them. This is one of the main critiques brought against Jason Russell (the Kony 2012 video creator): his work does not maximize effective action against his proposed target, his work maximizes profitability for his 'brand'. Similar critiques are also often rightly made against organizations that we might otherwise think of as doing more good: rather than directing funds to the causes in question, revenues are spent on swag with organizational decals, publicity and more fundraising. Individual donors are guilty of this as well: we are each inclined to give in ways that satisfy our own needs, rather than aiming to do the most good in the world. This is the basis for the models of organizations like Children International and Save the Children, this is the reason that so many choices of donor gifts abound on public radio pledge drives. They appeal to our desire to do good, but also to our need to get something out of it (be it a feeling of self-satisfaction or a totebag). (I'm not suggesting that these organizations don't do important work, but they certainly are confronted with the daily trade-off between palatability and effectiveness.) In addition, every nonprofit that aims to solve a societal problem ultimately faces a conflict of interest between its stated goals and its existence as an organization (if it solves the problem, it removes the reason for its existence). Of course the matter of degree here is of the utmost importance: some organizations spend 98% of their revenue on program expenses and legitimately aim to cause change in the world, while others spend upwards of 50% on fundraising, as though making more money itself were the goal.
That's all I'll say about the 'industrial complex' part of things for now. It's the 'savior' part of things that has been getting the most attention lately. The white savior sees her or himself as taking up the mantle of responsibility and driving out Africa's problems. This is problematic for multiple reasons. First, because these 'saviors' don't respect the autonomy of the people who they are supposed to be saving. They view the impoverished as 'other', as unable to help themselves, as needing a guiding hand from our educated and enlightened selves. This is racialized as well. The world has a long history of 'white saviors' going and 'helping' the 'needy'. Frequently this is nothing more than code for imperialism, as the US and others decide that other parts of the world need to be more like us and that we need to show them how, by force if necessary. If someone asks for your help, then help them; if they look like they need your help but don't ask, consider offering it; if they tell you they don't want your help, listen. Forcing programs onto another nation's people is not aid.
The main reason that the idea of the white savior is problematic is closely tied to my previous points, but stands out from them in a significant way. You may or may not have noticed that the language I've been using up to this point is geared toward the idea that there are people out there who need our help, and it would be good of us to offer it. I've reproduced this sort of language because it describes how many of us think of our relation to world poverty: that we could do more to help and that would be good. This obviously ties into the whole 'savior complex' idea: we think of ourselves as being in a position of providing a great boon to the needy. It's a point of Cole's, and a point that I've made in this blog many times, that this is a wildly inaccurate description of our relationships to the worst off. They are not impoverished because we have yet to offer our help, they are impoverished because we continually act so as to reinforce their poverty. As Cole says, we should 'first do no harm.' Rather than harboring delusions of grandeur featuring ourselves as potential saviors, we need to start thinking of ourselves as the villains. The most heroic we can get at this point would be to stop standing on the backs of the worst off. The US has a long and nefarious history of interfering in harmful ways with the lives of those in other countries. Once we stop doing harm, we can start to talk about the possibility of helping.
This ties back into the 'industrial complex' side of things as well: as long as we and others are keeping others in poverty, it will remain a profitable business (both economically and emotionally) to try to 'help them'. If our foreign policy and consumption habits bind them to their lives on the edge, then no matter how much money we funnel into 'aid' programs, the problems they face will persist. Again, this is not because they lack some fundamental ability to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, it's because we never reach out to help without following up by pushing them back to the ground.
Returning to my own indictment in all of this. I am not indicted by the 'white savior industrial complex' insofar as I do not think of myself as a potential savior, I do not think that I am capable of 'helping these people to overcome their own limitations,' because I recognize that I am the reason for these limitations, that I am guilty for their position, that I benefit from their suffering, and that no matter how hard I try not to participate in systems that impoverish others and reinforce poverty, I still rely on those harmful structures. I owe it to the severely impoverished to work toward ending poverty because I am guilty of creating that poverty.
That being said, and as I indicated at the beginning of this post, I am still indicted. I do rely on these systems and as such I am a cog in the machine of the charity industrial complex. I am a person born into privilege. Not the 1%, not the upper class, but still a white male citizen of the US. That privilege is real, and there are strong forces of oppression and discrimination faced by those on the other side of it. There is little doubt that I would not be where I am today without the benefits that have been bestowed upon me by that systemic privilege. The least I can do is try to use the rewards of that privilege to undermine the harms that it is causing those who lack it.
Monday, March 26, 2012
Saturday, January 14, 2012
Working World
The last time I blogged was before I left for Spokane. I spent the four months between then and now learning that it’s hard to expend time and effort on being good when I’m feeling overwhelmed and stressed out by work. Things like making my own granola instead of buying it just don’t happen anymore. For the most part I’ve kept up my conscious consumption habits pretty well, although there are a few significant exceptions. Since the second-hand clothing shopping is pretty sparse here (unless I just haven’t found it yet), I made sure to hit up Boystown for consignment when I was in Chicago over the holidays. One small way to keep up my good habits, although hardly a convenient solution. Through the end of October I was doing most of my grocery shopping at the farmer’s market, and since then I’ve been getting my food from a natural food ‘co-op’, which gets a fair amount of local produce and has a good selection of other natural/organic food and other products. For transportation, I’ve been able to get by just fine without a car (as I’d hoped). I live close to the central public transit plaza, so it’s easy enough for me to catch a bus to wherever I need to go (although for the most part I walk everywhere). Sometimes I wish it were a quicker trip to campus, so maybe I’ll buy a bike when the weather gets nicer.
Thus ends the list of good habits I’ve kept up. Now for the areas that I could be better in.
1. Air travel. Despite the fact that I use nothing but my feet for almost all of my local transportation, since moving away from those I’m closest to I’ve been doing a lot of flying. Since August, I’ve flown back to Chicago 3 times. Granted, these weren’t just casual trips for no reason (a wedding, Thanksgiving, and Christmas), but nonetheless, I’ve done more flying in the past 4 months than I did in probably 3 years before that. I’m participating in a system that’s harming the environment in a way that I think is wrong, and yet I wouldn’t (and won’t) change the frequency of my trips. Is it really worth so much to me to be able to spend time with my friends and family in Chicago that I am willing to impose the cost of flying on others in order to gain the benefits for myself? I guess I need to digress here for a bit and actually evaluate this decision of mine instead of just beating myself up about it: On the one hand I think it’s wrong that I externalize costs onto others, but on the other hand I think that the benefit I get from it is significant enough that it’s worth it. My first instinct is to think that I’m just being selfish by putting my own interests ahead of others, but if I consider my position more objectively, I would have to say that I think that it would be ok for someone else to do the same thing if they were in a similar situation. More generally, on reflection, I think that human relationships are extremely valuable, and contributing to global warming by flying a few times a year can be offset by other efforts. I don’t think anyone should be isolated from the people they’re closest to, even if it means that they have to contribute to a moderate level of unjust environmental degradation. That being said, there’s a third way: to go ahead and fly as I’m inclined, but instead of externalizing the costs to others, to make an effort to offset those costs by giving to environmental organizations. I don’t think that I shouldn’t be allowed to fly, but I do think that flying should cost more (the cost should reflect the total cost to all involved, not just the cost to put a plane in the air and foist pollution on the unwilling masses). This is a solution I can live with. (Note: This is not to say that I think that only those should fly who can afford to buy a ticket and also concern themselves with trying to maintain environmental integrity, just that those who can afford to not externalize the costs of cheap airfare ought to. I haven’t done a lot of research into what those costs actually are, but they don’t seem to be as high as I would have guessed. $30 a ticket or so, to the right organization, might do it. I just gave to the ‘Maya Nut Institute’.)
2. General increase in spending. Moving on from air travel, I also think that my general spending habits could be better. This is the first job I’ve had where I actually get a regular paycheck, and actually earning money is really something. I’ve worked part time jobs before, and I’ve had temporary full time jobs over the summer, but until now I’ve never had a full time job for a sustained amount of time. It’s a weird feeling. Despite myself, I have to say that I’m feeling pretty attached to making money. Being able to go out for coffee, or dinner, or a drink, whenever I want, is pretty luxurious. I was going to say that I’d been taking advantage of it, but when it comes down to it my extra spending has mostly been limited to coffee shops (air travel aside). When I first got here I was eating meals out a lot (partly because my kitchen things hadn’t arrived yet, and partly because I didn’t have any other human contact), but lately I rarely eat lunch or dinner out. When I’m not on campus on a given day, I’m likely to go to a coffee shop for a latte and something tasty, which is definitely a liberty that I’m choosing to take. I think it helps me to keep my peace of mind (getting out of the apartment, helping me to have time where I can focus on whatever I’m working on and am less inclined to distraction), but ultimately I know that I’m spending money that I don’t need to be spending, and that it’s money that could be helping others who are in desperate need. Really there’s no justification for the amount of pastries I’ve been shoving down my gullet: once in a while is ok, but I don’t need to buy one every time I go into a coffee shop. I also don’t need to pay extra for steamed milk when I can just get regular coffee and put a little cream in it. I’ll save a few bucks a week, and redirect it to a monthly contribution to some organization like Feeding America. It’s amazing what sort of ‘being good’ issues get resolved when I just sit down and think them through.
3. Time. The day after I turned in final grades last semester, I woke up and asked, ‘What am I doing with my life?’ This is not to say that I don’t think that teaching is a valuable use of my skills and efforts. Rather, I realized at the end of the semester that I hadn’t been making my own decisions on how to use my time. I’d just struggled, for four months, to keep my head above water teaching all of my classes. When I finally got to a day where I didn’t have papers to grade or lessons to write, I didn’t know what to do with myself. I took some time off for my trip to Chicago, but since then I’ve mostly been frittering my days away. Not that I’ve been totally unproductive, but I’ve definitely not been getting everything done that I was hoping to do. Instead, I’ve been watching a lot of shows on my computer, reading a lot of news online, playing a lot of ‘words with friends’. This next semester, I think that I should have more spare time than I did last semester (I won’t be teaching anything for the first time, I’m organized from the start instead of trying to figure things out as I go), and I want to make the most of that time. There are some things I need to do with that time professionally (working on researching and getting articles out—something that I didn’t find any time for last semester), and some things that I want to do (working on writing non-academic pieces for general consumption—op-eds and the like). There are also little things that I want to do with my time: making a commitment to cooking myself a healthy meal instead of whatever is fastest, making sure that my apartment is kept clean, taking the time to run when the weather is nice enough for it, making the decision to read a book instead of watching another show on hulu. Maybe I won’t be able to motivate myself to do any of this, but when it comes down to it, this is all stuff that I want to do, that will help me to become who I want to be, and that will make me feel better if I do it.
Ok, what am I really saying with all of this? It comes down to this: since starting work full time, I’ve found myself swamped by new responsibilities, and as a result I haven’t had the self-control or self-motivation to push myself in the directions I want to go in, or to take the time to reflect on what I’m doing with my life and my time. I need to keep that reflection as a part of my life, and I need to keep reminding myself that the easiest option isn’t always the road that I want to take. We’ll see if I can keep myself focused once the semester starts.
Thus ends the list of good habits I’ve kept up. Now for the areas that I could be better in.
1. Air travel. Despite the fact that I use nothing but my feet for almost all of my local transportation, since moving away from those I’m closest to I’ve been doing a lot of flying. Since August, I’ve flown back to Chicago 3 times. Granted, these weren’t just casual trips for no reason (a wedding, Thanksgiving, and Christmas), but nonetheless, I’ve done more flying in the past 4 months than I did in probably 3 years before that. I’m participating in a system that’s harming the environment in a way that I think is wrong, and yet I wouldn’t (and won’t) change the frequency of my trips. Is it really worth so much to me to be able to spend time with my friends and family in Chicago that I am willing to impose the cost of flying on others in order to gain the benefits for myself? I guess I need to digress here for a bit and actually evaluate this decision of mine instead of just beating myself up about it: On the one hand I think it’s wrong that I externalize costs onto others, but on the other hand I think that the benefit I get from it is significant enough that it’s worth it. My first instinct is to think that I’m just being selfish by putting my own interests ahead of others, but if I consider my position more objectively, I would have to say that I think that it would be ok for someone else to do the same thing if they were in a similar situation. More generally, on reflection, I think that human relationships are extremely valuable, and contributing to global warming by flying a few times a year can be offset by other efforts. I don’t think anyone should be isolated from the people they’re closest to, even if it means that they have to contribute to a moderate level of unjust environmental degradation. That being said, there’s a third way: to go ahead and fly as I’m inclined, but instead of externalizing the costs to others, to make an effort to offset those costs by giving to environmental organizations. I don’t think that I shouldn’t be allowed to fly, but I do think that flying should cost more (the cost should reflect the total cost to all involved, not just the cost to put a plane in the air and foist pollution on the unwilling masses). This is a solution I can live with. (Note: This is not to say that I think that only those should fly who can afford to buy a ticket and also concern themselves with trying to maintain environmental integrity, just that those who can afford to not externalize the costs of cheap airfare ought to. I haven’t done a lot of research into what those costs actually are, but they don’t seem to be as high as I would have guessed. $30 a ticket or so, to the right organization, might do it. I just gave to the ‘Maya Nut Institute’.)
2. General increase in spending. Moving on from air travel, I also think that my general spending habits could be better. This is the first job I’ve had where I actually get a regular paycheck, and actually earning money is really something. I’ve worked part time jobs before, and I’ve had temporary full time jobs over the summer, but until now I’ve never had a full time job for a sustained amount of time. It’s a weird feeling. Despite myself, I have to say that I’m feeling pretty attached to making money. Being able to go out for coffee, or dinner, or a drink, whenever I want, is pretty luxurious. I was going to say that I’d been taking advantage of it, but when it comes down to it my extra spending has mostly been limited to coffee shops (air travel aside). When I first got here I was eating meals out a lot (partly because my kitchen things hadn’t arrived yet, and partly because I didn’t have any other human contact), but lately I rarely eat lunch or dinner out. When I’m not on campus on a given day, I’m likely to go to a coffee shop for a latte and something tasty, which is definitely a liberty that I’m choosing to take. I think it helps me to keep my peace of mind (getting out of the apartment, helping me to have time where I can focus on whatever I’m working on and am less inclined to distraction), but ultimately I know that I’m spending money that I don’t need to be spending, and that it’s money that could be helping others who are in desperate need. Really there’s no justification for the amount of pastries I’ve been shoving down my gullet: once in a while is ok, but I don’t need to buy one every time I go into a coffee shop. I also don’t need to pay extra for steamed milk when I can just get regular coffee and put a little cream in it. I’ll save a few bucks a week, and redirect it to a monthly contribution to some organization like Feeding America. It’s amazing what sort of ‘being good’ issues get resolved when I just sit down and think them through.
3. Time. The day after I turned in final grades last semester, I woke up and asked, ‘What am I doing with my life?’ This is not to say that I don’t think that teaching is a valuable use of my skills and efforts. Rather, I realized at the end of the semester that I hadn’t been making my own decisions on how to use my time. I’d just struggled, for four months, to keep my head above water teaching all of my classes. When I finally got to a day where I didn’t have papers to grade or lessons to write, I didn’t know what to do with myself. I took some time off for my trip to Chicago, but since then I’ve mostly been frittering my days away. Not that I’ve been totally unproductive, but I’ve definitely not been getting everything done that I was hoping to do. Instead, I’ve been watching a lot of shows on my computer, reading a lot of news online, playing a lot of ‘words with friends’. This next semester, I think that I should have more spare time than I did last semester (I won’t be teaching anything for the first time, I’m organized from the start instead of trying to figure things out as I go), and I want to make the most of that time. There are some things I need to do with that time professionally (working on researching and getting articles out—something that I didn’t find any time for last semester), and some things that I want to do (working on writing non-academic pieces for general consumption—op-eds and the like). There are also little things that I want to do with my time: making a commitment to cooking myself a healthy meal instead of whatever is fastest, making sure that my apartment is kept clean, taking the time to run when the weather is nice enough for it, making the decision to read a book instead of watching another show on hulu. Maybe I won’t be able to motivate myself to do any of this, but when it comes down to it, this is all stuff that I want to do, that will help me to become who I want to be, and that will make me feel better if I do it.
Ok, what am I really saying with all of this? It comes down to this: since starting work full time, I’ve found myself swamped by new responsibilities, and as a result I haven’t had the self-control or self-motivation to push myself in the directions I want to go in, or to take the time to reflect on what I’m doing with my life and my time. I need to keep that reflection as a part of my life, and I need to keep reminding myself that the easiest option isn’t always the road that I want to take. We’ll see if I can keep myself focused once the semester starts.
Monday, July 25, 2011
New Adventures
There are many things that I’ve been meaning to blog about, but in my list of things to do, blogging hasn’t been very near the top lately. I’ve been working on writing articles to send out to philosophy journals, so I’m using my most productive writing time for that rather than for blogging. I’m making a major transition right now, however, so it seems like I ought to mention it here, and reflect a little bit on why I think it’s good for me.
When I think about it, I’d have to say I think that experiencing a variety of things in life is important to me. Personally, however, my instinct when I’m confronted with the option of trying something outside of my comfort zone is to come up with reasons why I’d better not. I’ve worked, and continue to work, on saying yes to these opportunities instead of no. Rather than not going to a barbeque because I won’t know many people there, or not talking to someone who asks me for change because it might be awkward, or not going to a movie because it will cost twice as much as it did when I was a kid, I swallow my reservations and go with the flow. No, these aren’t major things, but they’re small steps toward being the person I want to be and think I should be. Usually, in retrospect, saying ‘yes’ instead of ‘no’ leaves me happier.
What I’m really thinking about today, however, is a bigger change. If I go to a concert and am uncomfortable fighting through the crowd the whole time, I won’t be any worse for it the next day--other than possibly wishing I’d done something else with my time. These day to day affirmations are low risk. If you asked me about the importance of new experiences, however, I’d certainly include bigger changes. Always living within your comfort zone, you’ll never find what else might be rewarding.
Despite the fact that I value diversity of experience, I’ve lived my whole life in Illinois. I’ve travelled some, but when it comes down to it I’ve never been out of state for more than three weeks in a row. I’ve lived in different parts of the state: growing up in the suburbs, going to school in a small city in central Illinois, and finally ending up here in Chicago. These have been very different experiences in some senses, but very similar in others.
Since being here in Chicago, I’ve come to think of myself as essentially an urban person. I enjoy the diversity and density of the city population. The greater the diversity, the less pressure I feel to be someone I’m not, because there is no ‘normal’. The density of population means that I’ve geographically close to everything I need and I spend most of my time in just a few neighborhoods. I find it liberating to be able to get most everywhere on foot, and I enjoy my encounters with others on public transit. Being close to my roots, I’m close to many of the people who are most important to me as well. Some of my friends and family are in other parts of the country, but the majority of them are in the area, and those whom I’m closest to are right here in Chicago.
I’ve been saying for a number of years that I want to live outside of Illinois at some point in my life. When it comes down to it, however, it has never seemed like a good moment. The prospect of packing everything up and travelling somewhere new, where I don’t know anyone, is more than a little daunting. I guess it’s really the other side of that coin that gets me: the prospect of travelling somewhere away from all those who are closest to me. I’m not worried about losing touch with them, but I know how hard it will be to not see them regularly.
There’s no time like the present, and despite my trepidation about leaving Chicago, I’m excited to be embarking on a new chapter in my life. Being away from everyone I know and love will be difficult, but exploring a new city, albeit one somewhat smaller one than I’m used to, will be exciting. It’s a time for me to act on decisions about who I want to be: decisions that are difficult to make when I’m in my comfort zone. I’ll start making conversations with strangers, I’ll try out new places instead of frequenting the places where I’m already a regular, I’ll figure out my way around town.
It helps, of course, that my spare time will be consumed by my new job, which I am eagerly anticipating. I’ll be teaching full time and spending my days engaging with young minds about things that interest me. This is my chance to see whether this is my calling, that is, whether I can affect good in the world by inspiring students—as they form their lives and decide what to do with their futures—to reflect on what roles they want to play as citizens of the world.
It remains to be seen how this adventure will go for me, but the closer I get to it, the more energized I am to set out on it. It makes me realize that, compared to most people I know, I have very little tying me down to Chicago. The decision to head off to Washington was made easier because I’m only making a commitment for a year, but if I’m honest with myself, I realize that I just might enjoy being someplace new and unfamiliar, and I might not be ready to come back to Chicago after just a year. I might realize that I can stay in touch with everyone perfectly well from a distance, that teaching is what I want to do, even if it means being far from everything that’s familiar to me, even if it means settling somewhere that I would never choose if it weren’t for having a job there.
When I think about it, I’d have to say I think that experiencing a variety of things in life is important to me. Personally, however, my instinct when I’m confronted with the option of trying something outside of my comfort zone is to come up with reasons why I’d better not. I’ve worked, and continue to work, on saying yes to these opportunities instead of no. Rather than not going to a barbeque because I won’t know many people there, or not talking to someone who asks me for change because it might be awkward, or not going to a movie because it will cost twice as much as it did when I was a kid, I swallow my reservations and go with the flow. No, these aren’t major things, but they’re small steps toward being the person I want to be and think I should be. Usually, in retrospect, saying ‘yes’ instead of ‘no’ leaves me happier.
What I’m really thinking about today, however, is a bigger change. If I go to a concert and am uncomfortable fighting through the crowd the whole time, I won’t be any worse for it the next day--other than possibly wishing I’d done something else with my time. These day to day affirmations are low risk. If you asked me about the importance of new experiences, however, I’d certainly include bigger changes. Always living within your comfort zone, you’ll never find what else might be rewarding.
Despite the fact that I value diversity of experience, I’ve lived my whole life in Illinois. I’ve travelled some, but when it comes down to it I’ve never been out of state for more than three weeks in a row. I’ve lived in different parts of the state: growing up in the suburbs, going to school in a small city in central Illinois, and finally ending up here in Chicago. These have been very different experiences in some senses, but very similar in others.
Since being here in Chicago, I’ve come to think of myself as essentially an urban person. I enjoy the diversity and density of the city population. The greater the diversity, the less pressure I feel to be someone I’m not, because there is no ‘normal’. The density of population means that I’ve geographically close to everything I need and I spend most of my time in just a few neighborhoods. I find it liberating to be able to get most everywhere on foot, and I enjoy my encounters with others on public transit. Being close to my roots, I’m close to many of the people who are most important to me as well. Some of my friends and family are in other parts of the country, but the majority of them are in the area, and those whom I’m closest to are right here in Chicago.
I’ve been saying for a number of years that I want to live outside of Illinois at some point in my life. When it comes down to it, however, it has never seemed like a good moment. The prospect of packing everything up and travelling somewhere new, where I don’t know anyone, is more than a little daunting. I guess it’s really the other side of that coin that gets me: the prospect of travelling somewhere away from all those who are closest to me. I’m not worried about losing touch with them, but I know how hard it will be to not see them regularly.
There’s no time like the present, and despite my trepidation about leaving Chicago, I’m excited to be embarking on a new chapter in my life. Being away from everyone I know and love will be difficult, but exploring a new city, albeit one somewhat smaller one than I’m used to, will be exciting. It’s a time for me to act on decisions about who I want to be: decisions that are difficult to make when I’m in my comfort zone. I’ll start making conversations with strangers, I’ll try out new places instead of frequenting the places where I’m already a regular, I’ll figure out my way around town.
It helps, of course, that my spare time will be consumed by my new job, which I am eagerly anticipating. I’ll be teaching full time and spending my days engaging with young minds about things that interest me. This is my chance to see whether this is my calling, that is, whether I can affect good in the world by inspiring students—as they form their lives and decide what to do with their futures—to reflect on what roles they want to play as citizens of the world.
It remains to be seen how this adventure will go for me, but the closer I get to it, the more energized I am to set out on it. It makes me realize that, compared to most people I know, I have very little tying me down to Chicago. The decision to head off to Washington was made easier because I’m only making a commitment for a year, but if I’m honest with myself, I realize that I just might enjoy being someplace new and unfamiliar, and I might not be ready to come back to Chicago after just a year. I might realize that I can stay in touch with everyone perfectly well from a distance, that teaching is what I want to do, even if it means being far from everything that’s familiar to me, even if it means settling somewhere that I would never choose if it weren’t for having a job there.
Monday, June 6, 2011
Farmers Markets
Sometimes I forget that 'trying to be good' isn't all work and no play. This is an incredibly important thing to remember, and keeping it in mind certainly has to be part of any attempt at 'being good.' Today marks the beginning of my local farmers markets, a time that I truly cherish. Last year I went to two markets regularly, one on Wednesday afternoons and another on Saturday mornings. These were just about perfectly spaced out through the week, so I could shop for a few days worth of produce at each. That way I wouldn't worry about things going bad, and I'd be compelled to eat whatever I bought (instead of putting off eating it for a week). Unfortunately, those markets don't start until a little later in the season. When finding their starting dates, however, I discovered three other markets nearby! Now I have Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday markets in addition to the Wednesday and Saturday ones that start later in the summer.
In terms of trying to make my actions align with my values, getting almost everything I eat from farmers markets over the summer is a pretty solid way to go. I get to support small, local, and largely organic farms, get food that isn't shipped across the country (or the world), develop relationships with my farmers (and otherwise be a participant in my community), and eat healthier all in one go! Also, everything is absolutely delicious.
Another way that this is good is that it helps me to try new things. Instead of wandering through the grocery store (or browsing the internet) looking for something new and interesting, I can just ask the people who grow the food for suggestions. Normally I'm pretty shy, but that's something that I try to work on anyways, and the farmers market is a rewarding place to try out starting a conversation with a stranger.
This post is pretty rambling and not very substantive, but I just ate a huge kale and asparagus salad, and I'm feeling pretty good.
In terms of trying to make my actions align with my values, getting almost everything I eat from farmers markets over the summer is a pretty solid way to go. I get to support small, local, and largely organic farms, get food that isn't shipped across the country (or the world), develop relationships with my farmers (and otherwise be a participant in my community), and eat healthier all in one go! Also, everything is absolutely delicious.
Another way that this is good is that it helps me to try new things. Instead of wandering through the grocery store (or browsing the internet) looking for something new and interesting, I can just ask the people who grow the food for suggestions. Normally I'm pretty shy, but that's something that I try to work on anyways, and the farmers market is a rewarding place to try out starting a conversation with a stranger.
This post is pretty rambling and not very substantive, but I just ate a huge kale and asparagus salad, and I'm feeling pretty good.
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Do It Yourself: Too High A Cost
In my ongoing quest to try to live more ethically, there are a lot of things that I end up spending time on that most people avoid by paying a few extra dollars, creating a little more waste, or taking part in other harmful (albeit psychologically removed) systems that connect us to the rest of the world. One area where I consistently have trouble finding a good alternative to the status quo is clothing. In most cases the clothes we see in stores are made in far-off countries and we have little to no way of knowing the wages and working conditions of the people making them, save the occasional exposé. A few companies make an attempt to document their factory conditions so they can declare their wares socially conscious, while others try to avoid the issue by doing all of their production in America where we have stricter rules and regulations.
These few companies tend to have other problems: their products tend to be extremely expensive (a byproduct of paying for fair wages and safe factories), and there are frequently few or no choices of style. If I need a new pair of pants, for example, I can pay $130 for a pair of organic-cotton fair-wage nearly-unbearably-styleless blue jeans, or pay $30 for a pair of thin hemp tie-dyed hippy pants. Finding something that I would actually like to wear without paying an arm and a leg is strikingly difficult.
The other option, which I usually take, is to find things second-hand. Thrift and consignment are a way to become a little more removed from the harms of production such as sweatshops. Sure, thrift and consignment are only options because the structures around the rest of the clothing industry exist, but at least I’m not directly supporting any particular company’s decisions to always go with the cheapest factories available. It’s not a perfect solution, but it seems to be a step in the right direction.
Of course (and now I’m finally getting to the do-it-yourself topic that got me started on this post), shopping second hand means I’m limited to what other people get rid of. It’s tough to find things that I like and that fit me, so again it can feel pretty constraining. My solution lately has been to take a DIY approach to more of my clothing. So far my attempts have been fairly limited (making shorts out of old pants I never wear, sewing a new watchband when my old one wears out, making a new bag out of an old cargo pants pocket) but I’ve been thinking about branching out a little as well. Instead of searching and searching through thrift shops for a few items that I like, maybe I can buy a few things with potential, and make some alterations from there. Simple sewing is definitely something I enjoy, so as a solution to a problem in addition to a hobby, I certainly plan to keep up.
The broader question that it makes me wonder about is whether spending hours hemming a new pair of shorts—and thus avoiding taking part in a system that harms the people impoverished nations—is the most ethical option available. If I’m faced with the task of finding something to wear and my options are to pay hundreds of dollars, spend hours, or just go to my nearest Target, what’s the right thing to do? If I spend the money, I’ll be using resources that could go to organizations that are saving lives, but I’ll be avoiding contributing to sweatshop labor. If I buy second-hand and sew, I’ll still have the money, but I’ll be using up chunks of my own time, which it seems could likely be spent having a better impact on the world. If I just buy any clothes that I like and that are cheap regardless of any socially-irresponsible conditions they may come from, I can at least still have money and time to contribute to fighting other issues in the world.
It’s an interesting problem in part because it has an answer—but it’s an answer that’s beyond my ability to calculate or know. Some combination of spending money, time, and participating in existing social structures will yield the most good and cause the least harm. If I could know exactly how much good I could bring about by volunteering that time or donating that money, or how much harm my support for sweatshop labor would cause, I could at least have a significant guide in terms of what the ideal combination of those pieces would be. Certainly, other factors would come into play: for someone excellent at sewing but lacking other significant skills, taking the DIY route is probably ideal. For someone with a keen business sense and knowledge of how to invest in ways that will best fight poverty and curable disease, maximizing savings may be the best option. For most of us though, I wonder about the relative value of avoiding harmful systems to spending money and time on sustainable and socially responsible products.
(There’s also the option of just wearing whatever ugly, cheap, second-hand clothes I can find. This seems to be the most ethical option hands-down by avoiding the pitfalls of all the others. But personally I’m not there yet. I think it’s an important possibility: that the right thing to do is to totally ignore our appearances and wear whatever fits from the Salvation Army. However, given that most of us have to interact with others who are constantly judging us based on our appearance, I think we have to explore other less-than-perfect-but-still-better-than-the-status-quo options as well.)
One final thought—there still remains a broader solution, brought to us by economics: it’s inefficient for me as an individual to make my own clothes, but as more and more people want easy, affordable, and socially responsible solutions to their consumer needs, market forces will (at least in theory) begin to bring those sorts of options into existence. Right now it seems that the market for sweatshop-free fair-trade clothes is too limited to sustain the kinds of options that I’d like to see when I go to a store, but more people put their money where their values are we might see a shift in a better direction.
PS. This has been a long post. If anyone is still actually reading this, thanks for sticking with me.
These few companies tend to have other problems: their products tend to be extremely expensive (a byproduct of paying for fair wages and safe factories), and there are frequently few or no choices of style. If I need a new pair of pants, for example, I can pay $130 for a pair of organic-cotton fair-wage nearly-unbearably-styleless blue jeans, or pay $30 for a pair of thin hemp tie-dyed hippy pants. Finding something that I would actually like to wear without paying an arm and a leg is strikingly difficult.
The other option, which I usually take, is to find things second-hand. Thrift and consignment are a way to become a little more removed from the harms of production such as sweatshops. Sure, thrift and consignment are only options because the structures around the rest of the clothing industry exist, but at least I’m not directly supporting any particular company’s decisions to always go with the cheapest factories available. It’s not a perfect solution, but it seems to be a step in the right direction.
Of course (and now I’m finally getting to the do-it-yourself topic that got me started on this post), shopping second hand means I’m limited to what other people get rid of. It’s tough to find things that I like and that fit me, so again it can feel pretty constraining. My solution lately has been to take a DIY approach to more of my clothing. So far my attempts have been fairly limited (making shorts out of old pants I never wear, sewing a new watchband when my old one wears out, making a new bag out of an old cargo pants pocket) but I’ve been thinking about branching out a little as well. Instead of searching and searching through thrift shops for a few items that I like, maybe I can buy a few things with potential, and make some alterations from there. Simple sewing is definitely something I enjoy, so as a solution to a problem in addition to a hobby, I certainly plan to keep up.
The broader question that it makes me wonder about is whether spending hours hemming a new pair of shorts—and thus avoiding taking part in a system that harms the people impoverished nations—is the most ethical option available. If I’m faced with the task of finding something to wear and my options are to pay hundreds of dollars, spend hours, or just go to my nearest Target, what’s the right thing to do? If I spend the money, I’ll be using resources that could go to organizations that are saving lives, but I’ll be avoiding contributing to sweatshop labor. If I buy second-hand and sew, I’ll still have the money, but I’ll be using up chunks of my own time, which it seems could likely be spent having a better impact on the world. If I just buy any clothes that I like and that are cheap regardless of any socially-irresponsible conditions they may come from, I can at least still have money and time to contribute to fighting other issues in the world.
It’s an interesting problem in part because it has an answer—but it’s an answer that’s beyond my ability to calculate or know. Some combination of spending money, time, and participating in existing social structures will yield the most good and cause the least harm. If I could know exactly how much good I could bring about by volunteering that time or donating that money, or how much harm my support for sweatshop labor would cause, I could at least have a significant guide in terms of what the ideal combination of those pieces would be. Certainly, other factors would come into play: for someone excellent at sewing but lacking other significant skills, taking the DIY route is probably ideal. For someone with a keen business sense and knowledge of how to invest in ways that will best fight poverty and curable disease, maximizing savings may be the best option. For most of us though, I wonder about the relative value of avoiding harmful systems to spending money and time on sustainable and socially responsible products.
(There’s also the option of just wearing whatever ugly, cheap, second-hand clothes I can find. This seems to be the most ethical option hands-down by avoiding the pitfalls of all the others. But personally I’m not there yet. I think it’s an important possibility: that the right thing to do is to totally ignore our appearances and wear whatever fits from the Salvation Army. However, given that most of us have to interact with others who are constantly judging us based on our appearance, I think we have to explore other less-than-perfect-but-still-better-than-the-status-quo options as well.)
One final thought—there still remains a broader solution, brought to us by economics: it’s inefficient for me as an individual to make my own clothes, but as more and more people want easy, affordable, and socially responsible solutions to their consumer needs, market forces will (at least in theory) begin to bring those sorts of options into existence. Right now it seems that the market for sweatshop-free fair-trade clothes is too limited to sustain the kinds of options that I’d like to see when I go to a store, but more people put their money where their values are we might see a shift in a better direction.
PS. This has been a long post. If anyone is still actually reading this, thanks for sticking with me.
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Calling
I’ve been in school for almost as long as I can remember. The answer to the question, “What do you do?” has always been “I’m a student.” For me, this graduation will be different from all the others: I will graduate without plans to go to school next year. As a grad student I’ve been so used to saying “I hope to graduate in ____” that I have a hard time even understanding what it means to actually be done. A little formatting and a few forms, and all the requirements will be fulfilled. And then what? What’s next?
Back in Spring of 2010—the last time I was teaching—I was certain that education was my calling. I knew that I wanted to work toward making the world a better place, and I was certain that teaching courses like Ethics and Social and Political Philosophy was the way to go about doing that. I helped students to reflect on what it means to be in the world with others, and at a time in their lives when they were likely to be questioning some of the things that they had always assumed to be true. If I could awaken just a few students each semester to the reflective life, open a few students’ eyes to the ways their actions impact those around them, I’d be making a difference. More recently I’ve started to question my belief that this is necessarily the best use of my talents. In some ways I’ve always wondered if teaching were really my best option for working toward a better world, but being a teacher and experiencing how much I really enjoyed interacting with students and exchanging ideas, I pushed other options out of my head: if I could do good in the world while doing what I enjoyed, why look for other possibilities? Having been away from teaching for a year now, and having had my first unproductive swing at the academic job market, I’m considering other options. Also, writing a dissertation on the nature of our responsibility to the severely impoverished will make one wonder if one could be doing more to fulfill those obligations.
Certainly, teaching is still something I’d love to do, but I quite suspect that there is other meaningful work out there that would use my abilities and allow me to work toward a more just world. Lots of organizations have goals of alleviating poverty, meeting people’s basic needs, giving people opportunities to improve their lives, or something similar. I’ve learned to research, write, proofread, and edit; I’ve learned to be self-motivated and to set boundaries and good habits to manage my own time; I’ve honed my problem-solving and critical reasoning skills. Surely I can use this know-how to work for the greater good. More specifically, however, I have no idea what sort of job all of that might translate into.
So far I feel like this post isn’t saying a whole lot. I guess I’m just finding myself in a very unfamiliar place. On the one hand I have a passion for social justice and feel called to work toward making the world around me a better place, and on the other hand I have no concrete ideas about how exactly to do this. It’s job search time, and hopefully I’ll find something inspiring.
Back in Spring of 2010—the last time I was teaching—I was certain that education was my calling. I knew that I wanted to work toward making the world a better place, and I was certain that teaching courses like Ethics and Social and Political Philosophy was the way to go about doing that. I helped students to reflect on what it means to be in the world with others, and at a time in their lives when they were likely to be questioning some of the things that they had always assumed to be true. If I could awaken just a few students each semester to the reflective life, open a few students’ eyes to the ways their actions impact those around them, I’d be making a difference. More recently I’ve started to question my belief that this is necessarily the best use of my talents. In some ways I’ve always wondered if teaching were really my best option for working toward a better world, but being a teacher and experiencing how much I really enjoyed interacting with students and exchanging ideas, I pushed other options out of my head: if I could do good in the world while doing what I enjoyed, why look for other possibilities? Having been away from teaching for a year now, and having had my first unproductive swing at the academic job market, I’m considering other options. Also, writing a dissertation on the nature of our responsibility to the severely impoverished will make one wonder if one could be doing more to fulfill those obligations.
Certainly, teaching is still something I’d love to do, but I quite suspect that there is other meaningful work out there that would use my abilities and allow me to work toward a more just world. Lots of organizations have goals of alleviating poverty, meeting people’s basic needs, giving people opportunities to improve their lives, or something similar. I’ve learned to research, write, proofread, and edit; I’ve learned to be self-motivated and to set boundaries and good habits to manage my own time; I’ve honed my problem-solving and critical reasoning skills. Surely I can use this know-how to work for the greater good. More specifically, however, I have no idea what sort of job all of that might translate into.
So far I feel like this post isn’t saying a whole lot. I guess I’m just finding myself in a very unfamiliar place. On the one hand I have a passion for social justice and feel called to work toward making the world around me a better place, and on the other hand I have no concrete ideas about how exactly to do this. It’s job search time, and hopefully I’ll find something inspiring.
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Ulysses Contract
I honestly can’t remember the last time I gave something up for lent. I clearly remember other people around me agonizing about what they ought to do or give up, but I don’t remember this being a particular feature of my own Lenten experience. Probably thanks to the most recent Radiolab, this year I decided to try it out. At the New Year I blogged about how I thought New Year’s resolutions were unnecessary from an abstract perspective, but useful as one of many times throughout the year when we’re supposed to reflect on how we can improve ourselves. I said my main resolution was to reflect more, which I stuck with pretty well for a few days, stuck with more or less for a few weeks, and then pretty much forgot. Fortunately for me, we’re already at another season to reflect on self-betterment.
The episode of Radiolab I mentioned earlier was really pretty interesting. The show is made up of three stories, and it’s the first one that stands out to me: a woman who smokes two packs a day for decades, after many unsuccessful attempts to quit and feeling harassed by her friend, suddenly declares, “If I smoke one more cigarette, I’m giving $5,000 to the KKK.” She made the vow, and she took it seriously enough that she never smoked again: she’d wake up in the night, reach for a smoke, and say, “hold it, no way.” The hosts of Radiolab broke down the psychology of it by saying that normally our short-term impulses outweigh our long-term desires simply because they’re more immediate—but by creating a situation where we face immediate emotional pulls as strong as the impulses, we can override this natural state of things. They compared it to Ulysses binding himself to the mast of his ship on the way past the sirens in the Odessy, telling his crew not to untie him no matter what happened. This method can be used in a physical way, like tying yourself to a ship, but it can also be less concrete, as in making a vow to give to a cause that you find reprehensible, and it can also be as simple as making a decision (instead of recounting the whole Radiolab episode, I recommend you go listen to it: in one of the stories, a man changes the path of his whole life based on a ‘coin flip’).
For Lent, I decided that I wanted to cut down on my use of Facebook and news sites. I didn't give them up entirely because they both serve an important role for me (keeping in touch with friends and what’s going on in the world). That being said, Facebook, The New York Times, and Huffington Post are my also main sources of procrastination, and are so much of a habit that I’ll sometimes be about to do something productive and find myself on Facebook before I even process that I’m doing it. I’ve found that limiting myself to once a day for these sites has been extremely useful for my productivity. Sure, sometimes I just find another way to procrastinate, but I’m now more selective about when I use Facebook and which news stories I read. As evidence: I’m blogging for the first time in two months.
Returning to the idea of the Ulysses contract, I wanted to say a few words about trying to live an ethical life in a world of easy consumption. I occasionally find myself wondering if my efforts not to negatively impact others around me in fairly removed ways (e.g., not eating meat, not buying clothes from sweatshops, recycling) is just an indication that there’s something wrong with me: Do I have some source of deep-seated psychological guilt? Do I have some form of OCD that amounts to an inability to stop thinking about how I’m affecting other people? But I think what’s really going on can be explained by the same phenomenon that explains how the woman I mentioned above quit smoking: the way I think about living in a world with other people makes the ways that most people contribute to harming others immediate to me. Yes, a hamburger looks tasty and would be satisfying in an immediate sense, but eating it would also be distressing in an immediate sense: I’d know that by consuming it I would be supporting a meat industry that hurts people (I’m pretty sure I’ve talked about how exactly eating meat hurts people in a previous post, so I won’t go over that again here). Buying a shirt produced in a sweatshop might be gratifying in some way, but it would also be paying to support institutions that keep people from having fulfilling lives. For me, in the short term, the negative impulses for these sorts of actions outweigh the positive.
The real question that remains is why I feel this so acutely for some issues: is it just habit? Is it because I spend time reading about the effects of our society’s way of life? Surely there are other ways that I negatively impact people that I don’t feel as bad about, or causes that other people feel in a strong and immediate sense that I don’t respond to at all. Are all of these reactions ways that we bind ourselves, or do they have some other source?
The episode of Radiolab I mentioned earlier was really pretty interesting. The show is made up of three stories, and it’s the first one that stands out to me: a woman who smokes two packs a day for decades, after many unsuccessful attempts to quit and feeling harassed by her friend, suddenly declares, “If I smoke one more cigarette, I’m giving $5,000 to the KKK.” She made the vow, and she took it seriously enough that she never smoked again: she’d wake up in the night, reach for a smoke, and say, “hold it, no way.” The hosts of Radiolab broke down the psychology of it by saying that normally our short-term impulses outweigh our long-term desires simply because they’re more immediate—but by creating a situation where we face immediate emotional pulls as strong as the impulses, we can override this natural state of things. They compared it to Ulysses binding himself to the mast of his ship on the way past the sirens in the Odessy, telling his crew not to untie him no matter what happened. This method can be used in a physical way, like tying yourself to a ship, but it can also be less concrete, as in making a vow to give to a cause that you find reprehensible, and it can also be as simple as making a decision (instead of recounting the whole Radiolab episode, I recommend you go listen to it: in one of the stories, a man changes the path of his whole life based on a ‘coin flip’).
For Lent, I decided that I wanted to cut down on my use of Facebook and news sites. I didn't give them up entirely because they both serve an important role for me (keeping in touch with friends and what’s going on in the world). That being said, Facebook, The New York Times, and Huffington Post are my also main sources of procrastination, and are so much of a habit that I’ll sometimes be about to do something productive and find myself on Facebook before I even process that I’m doing it. I’ve found that limiting myself to once a day for these sites has been extremely useful for my productivity. Sure, sometimes I just find another way to procrastinate, but I’m now more selective about when I use Facebook and which news stories I read. As evidence: I’m blogging for the first time in two months.
Returning to the idea of the Ulysses contract, I wanted to say a few words about trying to live an ethical life in a world of easy consumption. I occasionally find myself wondering if my efforts not to negatively impact others around me in fairly removed ways (e.g., not eating meat, not buying clothes from sweatshops, recycling) is just an indication that there’s something wrong with me: Do I have some source of deep-seated psychological guilt? Do I have some form of OCD that amounts to an inability to stop thinking about how I’m affecting other people? But I think what’s really going on can be explained by the same phenomenon that explains how the woman I mentioned above quit smoking: the way I think about living in a world with other people makes the ways that most people contribute to harming others immediate to me. Yes, a hamburger looks tasty and would be satisfying in an immediate sense, but eating it would also be distressing in an immediate sense: I’d know that by consuming it I would be supporting a meat industry that hurts people (I’m pretty sure I’ve talked about how exactly eating meat hurts people in a previous post, so I won’t go over that again here). Buying a shirt produced in a sweatshop might be gratifying in some way, but it would also be paying to support institutions that keep people from having fulfilling lives. For me, in the short term, the negative impulses for these sorts of actions outweigh the positive.
The real question that remains is why I feel this so acutely for some issues: is it just habit? Is it because I spend time reading about the effects of our society’s way of life? Surely there are other ways that I negatively impact people that I don’t feel as bad about, or causes that other people feel in a strong and immediate sense that I don’t respond to at all. Are all of these reactions ways that we bind ourselves, or do they have some other source?
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