Know of anymore places to buy Fair Trade? E-mail Mike!
"Sentiment
without action is the ruin of the soul" Abbey
Theoretical Underpinnings
It seems that everybody wants to feel like they are doing something good or something to help out the world. So why are there so many problems?
We do not realize that what we are doing is actually hurting (commodity fetishism and "out of sight, out of mind" rule supreme - look right for more on Commodity Fetishism) - the answer is then education
After realizing that current actions are detrimental, we do not have any recourse or alternative
According to this, we must educate and offer alternatives. Show the light and the way. One without the other does little good. On top of this, apathy must be combatted. If we see the way and the light, we would hopefully follow the way to the light, but this does not always work.
Duane Elgin in Voluntary Simplicity details the possible responses when the light is seen (problems and a better future):
Denial: some insist this is not a time of fundamental civilizational transition, and that current distress is merely a short-term aberration, and that things will soon return to "normal".
Helplessness: Others feel helpless to make a difference and simultaneously assume that someone else must be in control, so they do not get involved. In feeling powerless to do anything constructive, people adopt a posture of fatalistic resignation toward what appears to be an unstoppable process of disintegration.
Blame: Others assume that some ethnic group, nation, religion, or political group is to blame for these problems, so they invest their creative energy in looking for various scapegoats.
Escape: Other acknowledge the seriousness of the situation and look for ways in which they and their friends can escape from a disintegrating situation: some seek to live in self-sufficiency in isolated rural areas, while the wealthy search for secure enclaves in which to "ride out the storm".
We get collapse by perpetuating the staus quo and running the biosphere into ruin.
We get stagnation when citizens are passive and rely upon remote bureaucracies and technological solutions to handle a deteriorating local-to-global situation.
We get revitalization only when we directly engage our predicament as individuals, families, communities, and nations.
Niel Postman and Charles Weingartner offer a reason why apathy prevails in a book entitled The Soft Revolution:
Establishmentarianism is the Manichean belief that all the particular and general woes of the world were created and are perpetuated by the Establishment. Disestablishmentarianism is the Manichean belief that all the particulars and general woes of the world would disappear if we could just destroy The Establishment. Antidisestablishmentarianism is the Augustinian perpspective of the soft revolutionary. It includes the beliefs that...
The establishment is only a metaphor for organized power
It is individual people who wield that power
Individual people are changeable and accesible to reason, especially when reason and change can be shown to be in their self-interest
Among people of influence there are many untapped sensitivities and repositories of good will
Everybody is somebody else's establisment (in some context or other)
Which means that more often than we think, when we denounce establishments, we are denouncing ourselves.
Apathy and complaining are not answers. We must be subversive and utilize Judo (using your enemies strength against themselves) to solve problems i.e. use the strengths of the establishment, be it capitalism, the government, Wal-Mart, against themselves to create a sustainable world.
All this falls back to the individual and the idea that we must change ourselves before even attempting to change the world (changing ourselves is actually changing the world, we just do not think of it that way usually).
Duane Elgin outlines certain self-tests to help us change:
Does what I own or buy promote activity, self-reliance, and involvement, or does it induce passivity and dependence?
Are my consumption patterns basically satisfying, or do I buy much that serves no real need?
How tied are my present job and lifestyle to installment payments, maintenance and repair costs, and the expectations of others?
Do I consider the impact of my consumption patterns on other people and on the earth?
The Take Action page is designed to be a possible answer. It includes both the way and the light and tries to elucidate action rather than apathy. However, it is just one way for one specific location. It is not exhaustive. However, the model it creates can be repeated for any location. The time is now, let's save the world!
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." Margaret Mead
There are many scholarships available for students who
are interested in the environment
If you want to start to take action for the environment, the first thing you can do is come to our meetings and get involved!
-If you would like to join our listserv to recieve info about the group and our meetings, just e-mail Mike
-Click here for a full listing of dates & meeting places.
-SEA led the pilot recycling program at the Wakarusa Music Festival 2005! Click here to find out more.
Commodity Fetishism
Every product we buy has three types of value: instrumental, economic, and human/environmental. In the capitalist system that we have created, we only see two of the three types of value. When buying any product we see the economic value (how much it costs) and the instrumental value (what it can be used for and how it can be used). This grossly ignores the third, and perhaps most important, type of value: human/environmental.
This type of value takes into account the amount and form of labor that goes into making the product and the environmental practices and costs, among other things. This is painfully evident in nearly our every purchase as we have no idea where the product came from and who made it (what they were paid etc.).
The term Commodity Fetishism can be employed to describe this system of alienation where the human value is ignored and unseen. It allows us to create fetishes of the commodities we use.
Fair Trade is designed to reincorporate the human/environmental value back into the products we buy. Important to this is creating direct relationships between the people making the product and the people purchasing it. Before capitalism, this is how things worked. There were guilds of various people making various commodities and a personal relationship would be formed whenever a commodity was needed. Now, we do not have any personal connection to the things we buy, which is one reason why we are in such a consumerist society… the commodities have no human/environmental value.
