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Should I Take a Stand? Where?

When I was in college I thought I was going to be about something.  I was going take a stand.  While taking one course I’d decide to boycott oil companies, then next semester diamonds were off-limits -- no girl I dated would ever get diamonds (yes, I stayed single for a long time.)  Today, however, I have not the energy to care.  Every so often, I’ll watch a move about starving babies and get a spark to change my ways.  Yet the spark never seems to ignite, it just burns out.  It’s different when you get older and passionate, liberal professors are no longer teaching you, no one is paying your bills, and your job is no longer to think but to do.  Or is that an excuse?  In reality you get older, you get tired, you get complacent.  Or is it that you also get wiser?  You learn that corruption reaches further than you ever imagined and is impossible to combat.  A saying that predates Winston Churchill goes something like, “if you are conservative when you are young you have no heart; if you are liberal when you are old you have no mind.”

            In the restaurant business, I meet vegans, of all ages, that have both hearts and minds.  They’ve seen the Alec Baldwin-narrated PETA PSAs with pigs and chickens having their throats slit, hens having their beaks seared off, and turkeys’ legs collapsing under their own drug-enhanced weight.  Vegans take stands against which they are morally opposed.  So what?  The animals are still suffering, still getting slaughtered.  The only change achieved is that their meals suck now.  There is so much injustice around the world, so many things to stand against -- too many to stand against them all.  I don’t know how anyone thinks that they live ethically.

            Every necessity we consume has been created or perpetuated immorally at some level.  Corruption is in every fiber of this society.  The over-worked hands of a thirteen-year-old-Honduran girl probably stitched the shirt you’re wearing right now.  Retail stores contract and subcontract work to third-world factories.  Contracts go to the lowest bidder, so factories pay their workers less and less and sacrifice benefits and safety standards to stay competitive.  The workers put in fifteen-hour days and are unable to attend school.  There are common reports of forced abortions, denied bathroom breaks, sexual abuse, and murder for attempting to organize.  Companies argue that lower wages are sufficient when accounting for the exchange rate.  Yet, in China, for example, the average wage of a factory worker is twenty-three cents an hour where as the living wage is estimated at eight-seven cents an hour.  In El Salvador, the ratio is 59 to 118, Haiti: 30 to 58, and Nicaragua: 23 to 80.  Hanes, Disney, Nike, Gap, and many others U.S. based corporations, do not technically employ the workers and therefore absolve themselves from responsibility.  Subcontracting also makes the origin of clothing hard to determine and, therefore, hard to boycott -- hard to stand against.

            Healthcare is another basic need that a socially conscious person will have trouble supporting.  Pharmaceutical companies pressure doctors into violating their oaths and diagnosing patients with diseases they don’t have and prescribing medications they don’t need.  The FDA approved Neurontin, in 1993 to treat epileptic seizures.  10 million prescriptions later, Pfizer faced a lawsuit based on the testimony of former sales rep Dr. David Franklin.  Pfizer deliberately marketed the drug for unapproved uses and had Franklin persuade physicians to prescribe it for disorders for which the drug had no proven benefits.  The result, Pfizer owed $430 million and Nuerontin is linked to over 200 suicides.  It’s easy to become Johnny Activist and boycott Pfizer, but all of the companies do this.  Why else would “restless leg syndrome” suddenly be a health concern?  What is the moral thing to do?  Eventually, you will have an illness that really does exist that you will need treatment for.  What do you do then; visit a witchdoctor and chew on roots?

            Then there’s Big Oil.  How the hell do you avoid supporting them?  They heat our houses; they power our vehicles.  Even if you refuse to drive, buses guzzle gas and bicycles are shipped in trucks -- as are all of the goods you consume.  200 billion U.S. dollars end up in the hands of foreign oil producers every year.  Some of that money will have had come from your pockets. 

            Should we support alternative energy sources in stead?  This may lower green house gasses and the global climate -- both of which are at a 650,000 year high -- but which alternative is the answer?  Ethanol?  Recent reports suggest that bio-fuels have worse ramifications than fossil fuels.  The ethanol craze is leading to food and water shortages as well as deforestation.  What’s worse; I don’t know what to believe.  Does the corn lobby fuel the pro-ethanol philosophy or are reports of shortages exaggerated by competing oil companies?  Living ethically can be very confusing.

            Let’s say an activist you magically avoid meats, medicine, oil, ethanol, diamonds, and clothing -- his hands still aren’t clean.  These businesses enrich our economy.  Even the drug trade stimulates the free market. Americans spends $150 billion each year on illegal drugs -- much of which funds cruel dictators and kidnapping enterprises.  If you “just say no” you’re still not disentangled from the problem.  Some of that money stays right here in the States.  American drug dealers buy land, cars, and basic goods and services.  I live in Baltimore City where they estimate that 60% of meals are paid for by heroin.  How do you separate yourself from dirty money; not shop because grocers are supported by drug money?  How do you separate yourself from oil tycoons?  The companies use websites, and hire accountants and lawyers.  The profiteers buy goods and service like everyone else.  Their role in the free market keeps your employer in business.

            Do your best to live as an honest American and pay your taxes; but even that is questionable.  We could be facing the military industrial complex that Eisenhower warned us about.  In 2007 there were 3,025 weapon contracts worth $224,617,853,685 -- each one of us supports bombs, murder, and war.  How military actions are justified is a topic for another column, but blood is on our hands either way.  Furthermore, the U.S. supports the World Bank.  This organization claims to reduce poverty but detractors say it really exists to support U.S. business interests.  Aid is given to developing countries -- some led by cruel dictators -- with the stipulation that the money is to be spent on U.S. goods and services.  The debt accrued can be crippling and the nations helped often remain impoverished.  Opponents often blame the World Bank for much of the world’s poverty.  Believe what you will about its intentions, but know that the President of the Bank is nominated by the U.S. President, and with over 15% of bank shares, the U.S.A. can veto any decision; decisions can only be passed with votes from countries whose shares total more than 85% of bank shares.

            What to believe, what not to believe, what will make a difference, what wont -- these thought will wreck your brain.  Socially conscious people don’t eat meat or wear furs, they shop at organic markets and co-ops and take public transportation, yet still manage to support immoral acts around the world.  So what was all of the effort for?  The sun’s gonna burn out one day and none of this will matter.  Such a philosophy at least has you honest with yourself -- not deluded into thinking you make a difference or that you’re actually a good person.  I was taught never to do anything half @ss.  So to be righteous one must move to the forest like Henry David Thoreau; removed from anything human or wicked.  Anything short of that is a hypocritical waste of time. 

            At least that’s what I wish I could believe.  The truth is I’m a softy whose heart bleeds now and again.  I can’t belittle the good will of other’s to excuse the lack of my own.  Nor can I knock someone for trying to make a difference, no matter how nominal it may be.  Edmund Burke said: “Nobody makes a bigger mistake than he who does nothing because he could only do a little.”  I don’t want to make that mistake, but it takes a whole lot to just to do that very little.  I might be happier just closing my eyes.

             I know that most people reading this feel the same way -- they know that they can do more but are not sure what.  Most of you are better educated than I; any suggestions?