what evil do you support?
by Eli
the other night in portland nate, emily, kris, and i were sitting around the house and somehow got on the topic of buying/selling/supporting things that you disagree with in some way. the example we were playing around with involved a record store in which you are the owner. you have complete control of what goes in and out. would you sell blatantly racist music?
what if a local black musician walked in one day asking if he could give you copies of his new record to sell, entitled “kill all the white man”. would you sell it? what if a local white musician walked in one day asking if he could give you copies of his new record to sell, entitled “kill all the black man”. would you sell it?
we were going back and forth about this for a while. other types of things came up as well: factory farmed meat, sweatshop clothing, blood diamonds, etc etc. and then something dawned on me that i’ve been playing around with in my mind for quite a while: it is impossible to be completely free of the poisons and destruction and brutality and still be a part of civilization.
poisons and destruction and brutality are inherent in the system.
you can buy all the grain fed, sweatshop free, green, fair trade, vegan, free range products you want (and better that than the alternatives), but they’re still probably wrapped in plastic and trucked 1000 miles.
i try my best to be a positive force in the world: i’m vegan, i don’t own a car, i live meagerly. but i’m still part of the system and i still buy food from grocery stores and i still flush the toilet and i still buy iPods and i still drive a car when i’ve got one. as long as i’m still here (in the civilized world) there’s no way to be completely free from it.
free of it? not yet. but conscious of the significance of your actions when you engage in it is the most important action you can take. if you choose to engage in evil, then i think that you have to consider the true moral weight of an action and be willing to bear it. some actions bring more weight than others due to their magnitude and their relationship (nearness or distance) to personal necessity. i see a car as being a necessity at times – i have to drive to do certain things. but i do not have to eat meat. i think that this deliniation makes a huge difference.
i don’t really think it makes a difference in the end.
i definitely understand and relate to the idea of some unecessary things being a “necessity at times” (i can think of dozens in my own life), but they are only necessities because we keep making them possible (granted, we build our lives around them and it’s pretty hard escaping our lives). if tomorrow it was decided that personal jets were illegal, within a few years that wouldn’t even be an option anymore and people would have to get by without.
in other areas of the world it is just not possible for every person of driveable age to own a car. that would be an ABSURD idea to them. why does everyone need their own car? what kind of world do you live in? they would say.
our problem is that we’ve built our entire livable space around the idea that cars will be here forever because of what we thought was possible. the poorer countries of the world were forced to keep their world smaller because of what was possible for them.
and it’s the big things (like driving a car) and little things (like using a toaster) that will soon enough no longer be possible. and just because i think i need to fly back to indiana to see my family (which i do), i still can’t truely justify it my mind. it’s not like it’s boiling in me for months or anything, but i know it’s wrong. it’s like when i go to PCC or BloomingFoods and walk out with healthy, organic, “environmentally-minded” food that is wrapped in trash. it’s disgusts me.
sorry, that was quite the rant and it might not even have anything to do with what you were saying. no offense, dude.