I was curious today as the topic came up. I wonder: What do we protect? And why do we protect it? I feel like time is fleeting if we do not pause and wonder what we truly value.
I approach the drinking fountain and my friend convinces me that using the ketchup cup for soda makes it free. I think nothing of it because I know if you get a cup, you get soda. My mom then scolds me and explains that it is stealing. I quickly spit it out but it is too late. My mouth feels dirty and I am in tears. I tell this embarrassing story because I realize that I still make this mistake as an adult. I buy my clothes and think it is fine because I paid for it but what if the company stole the clothes or stolen the food or stole the computer. They may say they paid for it, but their workers live in absolute poverty and are not paid for the amount of work that they have done. Some are not paid at all. And now that I know that these things are not paid for, I still buy them. Where can I turn to? Where can I find goods that are not stolen? I live in a culture of stealing. When do we start giving? Or at least trading fairly?
Find out where your stuff is from:
http://slaveryfootprint.org/
http://www.dol.gov/ilab/reports/child-labor/list-of-goods/
Next Steps:
http://www.fairtradeusa.org/products-partners
https://madeinafreeworld.com/members
Questions?
I just saw a movie for extra credit event for my philosophy class called Snowpiercer (a film set in a future where a failed climate-change experiment kills all life on the planet except for a lucky few who boarded the Snowpiercer, a train that travels around the globe, where a class system emerges*, the poorest at the lowest end and the richest at the top ). The professors pulled out the line:
"You know what I hate about myself? I know what people taste like. I know babies taste the best."
And the philosophy professors flipped it around to say that we are the people at the front of the train who know that babies taste best. The whole time, we were rooting for the poor at the back of the train who were trying to take over the front but in truth, we are on the upper part of the train. We know the condition of the poor at the bottom and yet we do nothing to help them.
*WARNING SPOILER*
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The train takes children from the back and uses them for child labor at the front in order to make the train (the system) work (but that's not even the half of the story so please still watch it). In comparison to modern society, our goods are based on cheap labor - the cheapest and best labor being child labor. So in a way, we (myself included) are the ones who know what people taste like and we know that babies taste best.
*part of the film summary from IMDB
*thoughts taken from lecture by Christopher Burrell and James Wermers
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