It is in response to an article in Salon about a woman who tried to be a radical homemaker, but didn't like it.
The Scienceblog article competently hammers home a point about consumption: unless you do it/grow it/make it yourself - everything (everything!) is outsourced and has consequences. The author has a very defined morality that I know I don't live up to (yet). She takes on poverty, racism and environmental destruction in a very comprehensive look at consumerism.
I love it.
It's long, and she almost lost me in the beginning, but I really think it's worth the read.
I was just cringing last night speaking with a farmer that is selling us a whole lamb. I tallied up the cost per pound of live weight, plus the processing fee and had a few thoughts of "is this really worth it?" This article helps me realize that yes, it really, really is.
Maybe Holler (the Salon author) is one of the rare people who is sufficiently affluent to buy every single thing she owns ethically. Maybe she gets her bread from the local craftsman-baker and the pickles from the farmer's market where there's someone who lovingly grows and makes them - those people exist. Maybe she gets everything that way - fair trade and ethically produced and local. The problem is that the pickle maker and the craftsman demand a fair prices for their labor, and that's hard. It is hard when you also have to buy a more expensive hybrid, pay the Nanny social security, make sure the lawn guy gets a living wage from the service... Living fairly is pricey if you are going to pay someone else to cover all your domestic labor.
The thing is, most people don't have that kind of money, but there's nothing magical about our lives that made the hard domestic work go away - we still eat, we still use the toilet, we still have to get things cleaned, managed, taken care of. So we pay people to do this work - but almost none of them make a truly living wage. Maybe we make our choices in one place, buying the good bread, but then we cut corners in another, not paying a full wage to the Nanny or buying the cheap mayo. We spend a lot of time pretending that the whole industrial system isn't fully of poorly paid people less privileged than people like Holler, and that we're not participating fully in it.
...
Now radical homemaking is not the only possible solution to the problems of the world, but it is one part of one - a way of taking responsibility for your own consumption and your own messes. If you are not affluent enough to pay people fairly for their work, if you are not going to be able to buy the pricey hybrid, maybe you can still do something besides waiting for your lottery number to come up so you will then be able to save the world. You could make your own pickles. You could drive less. You could scrub the coop toilets. It might not always make you feel good. You might not always like it, or feel that it was work worthy of your august self. And yet, it might still be the right thing to do.
Good Stuff. I'm not usually a fan of the all-or-nothing-strategy (which is how I define radical), but I think I may want to read that book.
ReplyDeleteI think that is a valid definition of radical. To me, it refers to being really outside of the mainstream, which then makes me sad that making your own food, engaging in your community and living within your means are considered radical.
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