Ramble on Morality and the Global Economy

In advance, I'm really sorry that this is super not-uplifting. I think it's legit though.

For today's Quaker class, we read this Pendle Hill pamphlet by David Morse called "John Woolman on Today's Global Economy." Basically, John Woolman was this Quaker dude in the 1700s who wasn't a fan of slavery, and he boycotted slave-made products and traveled around telling other people why slavery was bad. That was super radical for his time. In the pamphlet, Morse uses Woolman's life as a point of comparison to today's world and all the injustices that go on - how would Woolman have responded? (WWWD?)

The clothes you're wearing, unless you got them all from American Apparel or another sweat-free source, were probably made by slave labor or children or under other horrible working conditions in some other country. Seriously. Check the tag. Does it say "Made in the USA"? Didn't think so. My sweatshirt says "Made in Lesotho." I've never even heard of Lesotho and I as a consumer am probably exploiting people there. (It's this one, for the record, one of the ones that's landlocked in the middle of South Africa.) My t-shirt was made in Pakistan, my jeans in China, and my leggings in Latvia. Children weave carpets in Nepal who sleep next to their looms, get no education or medical care, don't eat enough, end up with horrible ailments, and will probably be sexually abused in their lifetime. Where do those carpets end up? In the homes of people who live in the wealtheir parts of the world. (For the sake of academic integrity, I tried to paraphrase but really I just plagiarized a lot of that wording. Page 9, if you're wondering.) Oh, and bananas? Banana pickers in Ecuador are exposed to pesticides, and their union leaders are beaten or they "disappear." So what IS safe for the moral consumer to buy?

Well that's the kicker - we're left in the dark. It's nearly impossible for our "actions [to be] consonant with [our] beliefs" (10). Clearly Morse's words describe this way better: "Today we are invited to sit blindfolded within the box, to feel overwhelmed by the complexity of the world, to experience a paradoxical choicelessness before the glut of information and goods that bombards us daily. How can we restore our own field of moral choice" (19) when everyone is out to make a profit rather instead of paying attention to human rights and fair treatment and sustainability and honesty? The media doesn't report on it, the government doesn't regulate it, and the companies don't tell us what really goes on behind it.

So then he goes on about how we often praise the work of John Woolman or Gandhi or MLK, but we view ourselves as insufficient for that "depth of moral conviction" and "content [ourselves] with lesser goals and lesser degrees of passion." Maybe I could be the next Woolman. In fact I could be if I wanted to be. But realistically I probably won't be, since I'm not about to devote my life to attaining that level of goals and passion. I still plan on functioning within the confines of my society, quite frankly, even if it means not reaching my full moral potential. The question is, what CAN I do? What can I do today or tomorrow, small or big? Morse suggests things like working for non-profits and networking and talking to people, and he says something about "finding God in the supermarket," but I don't get that because he had already said we're denied information about the products we buy. Of course, that left me incredibly frustrated, because I got all worked up and then didn't get any real solutions or answers to my questions.

Here's another good one (last one, I swear): "When we are systematically denied a basis for making moral choices, we are forced to make amoral choices; this knowledge of our own complicity in turn reinforces our apathy, and thus we deny ourselves the possibility of a moral choice" (24). I fear that I fall into this category. I'll probably forget about this pamphlet within a month, even though I hope I don't. I'm so overwhelmed by my desire to end sweatshop labor and profit-focused greed and implement organic-ness and sustainability everywhere.

So then, our homework assignment was to come up with and do, in the next 48 hours, something to improve our moral choices. Something small, since we only have 48 hours. No leading a campus-wide fruit boycott or something drastic. So I cleaned out the brita pitcher in which the water has literally been gathering dust in my fridge (it tasted funny so I left it there to rot), so now I can stop gathering plastic water bottles. I also looked up American Apparel and sweatshop-free products on Google. I was surprised by how much is out there, but EVERYTHING IS SO FREAKING EXPENSIVE! Which it would be, since the whole point of exploiting people is to create cheap enough products to compete in the global marketplace. Which leads me to the conclusion that living a moral lifestyle within the context of the global economy is impossible unless you're privileged enough to be able to regularly afford $250 jackets and $40 leggings and $50 t-shirts. Which leaves me even MORE bitter and helpless-feeling. Why is it so hard?!

the margin of page 21

On a slightly more hopeful note though, John Woolman never saw slavery get abolished. He definitely didn't do all that work for nothing - he just unfortunately never got to see his efforts come to fruition. And for Thursday we have to skim through everything and find our favorite quotes from everything we read in the class, and one of the ones I found from another Pendle Hill pamphlet by Daniel O. Snyder was: "Together we learn to discern the contours of hope, for although we yearn to see and to celebrate the visible results of our work, we dare not anchor hope in the visible results of our work, for we are working toward a future that may be many generation in the making, a future that we may not see in our lifetime, indeed a future that may never exist. We learned that the work itself is our sign of hope ("Quaker Witness as Sacrament" 30). So I guess that's kind of pessimistic and optimistic at the same time - despite the fact that I'm still not entirely sure what I can do, in terms of being overwhelmed by trying to end all evils in the world ASAP, it's just not going to happen in my lifetime and I need to accept that. That doesn't mean I can't or shouldn't work towards improvement so that it might happen in generations to come.

Ramble Inspired by Quaker Meeting

Just a heads up: this one is mostly for me to sort out my thoughts. I just feel like posting it online in case someone else is interested or feels like commenting on anything I'm saying, which is always welcome. It's going to be a long and convoluted ramble about Judaism, Quakerism, and agnosticism, and it's going to be mostly about myself.

So this morning I went to Quaker Meeting with Josh and Olivia. Olivia goes every week, and Josh and I were going because we have an assignment for Quaker Social Witness class to attend a Quaker event and then reflect on it. I really like that class - it's giving me a whole new insight into a really cool religion, and beyond that the set of beliefs and ideals that have led my school to run the way it does.

The thing is, I feel like I'm kind of on this spiritual journey. Gag me, that sounds so cliché. But I feel like a lot of people hit this around college; you've been brought up one way, and all of a sudden the whole world is open to you and you're not sure what you believe in anymore. Not that I've always believed in the Judeo-Christian God, or in Adonai, or whatever you want to call him/her/it. I have a really hard time with the concept of faith in something that you can't prove is there, but something that a book said did thus-and-such thousands of years ago. I'm not okay with ruling out the presence of (a) higher power(s), because hell, life exists and that's crazy. But I don't think that whatever power or powers that exist are within the realm of human understanding. And anthropologically, it makes sense that people create religion for themselves, and Christianity happens to be the one that's dominant in this country, and Judaism happens to be the one I was brought up in, and Quakerism happens to be the one I have started experiencing more of this year.

That said, I do want some sort of spirituality in my life. It doesn't have to be related to God with a capital G, nor does it have to be related to Light or Truth with a capital L and T. I am ridiculously small, and I am part of things greater than myself. And anyway, religion isn't just about God; it's about values and morals and how a person should live his or her life.

So during this class, I've been entertaining the thought of Quakerism in my mind. The main testimonies of Quakerism are the SPICES - Simplicity, Peace, Integrity, Community, Equality, and Stewardship. In other words: not living too lavishly, living peacefully and not supporting war/violence/conflict, being honest in words and actions, valuing the communities of which we are apart and collective opinion, understanding that all humans are equal and that there is the Light of God in everyone, and concern for the environment. These are all things that I agree with, and things that I want to work on in my life. Plus, a lot of Quakers have come to Quakerism from other faiths, although most of them are from other divisions of Protestantism. I mean, Quakerism is a sect of Christianity. Quakers are Christian. That's kind of a problem for me I think. And at first I just thought it was about guilt, the amazing Jewish value. But I think it's more than guilt and a sense of obligation. I still want to raise my kids Jewish, and stay a part of the community, because the community is ridiculously important to me and has played a pretty big role in my life. However, there's also this voice in my head saying that sending said kids to a Quaker school would be a really awesome environment for them (hypothetically), and that those are values that I'd want them to be strongly exposed to, and that I like the ideas of silence and an individual relationship with whatever it is you want to believe in.

Also, going to Meeting today made me see a lot of the differences between Quaker worship and Reform Jewish worship. First of all, I really like the silence. I like that everyone can have their own personal relationship with whatever it is they believe in - God, Truth, Light, the Inner Guide, themselves, the community, whathaveyou. Also, I like the idea of being moved by said force(s) to speak out of the silence and share a message with the community. Plus, I like how decisions are made in the Quaker community - consensus, because everyone is equal and every voice counts. But it's missing so much of what I was brought up in. Music, for one. Emotion. The silence is very calming, but the prayers I'm familiar with are joyous, sad, exciting, solemnly reflective. They have a lot in them that one doesn't get from silence, even if I don't find that everything in every Jewish prayers resonates with me. In fact, there is a lot in them that doesn't resonate with me at all, particularly about God, because I don't think that's the God I believe in, so why should I pray like that? But at the same time, I have no real desire to leave Judaism. I'm okay with being connected mostly to the community and the traditions of it. (And hello, the FOOD.)

So I guess that leaves me with answers, but at the same time not really at all. But I shouldn't have answers at this point in my life. I think I want to keep going to Meeting. In the future, like way in the future, I wouldn't mind going to Meeting, but I don't know if I want to be a member (there's a difference between member and attender) because I'm not Christian. And I don't think I want to give up Judaism for Quakerism, or give up Judaism in general. I think that if I'm doing Quakerism, I'm doing both. I don't know if that makes sense or can be done, but when I think about it, it's perfectly okay to like both or to be somewhere in between. And who's to say that I can't send my kids to a Quaker school (if I have that kind of money...) and take them to Meeting but also to Temple too so that they're part of that community? Although I guess that gets kind of confusing after awhile, since what do you do about First Day School vs. Hebrew School? But thinking about this now is honestly kind of silly, and probably unrealistic, since whoever I end up with will obviously weigh in a lot, like 50%. But Meeting got me thinking, and I hadn't really told anyone that all this was on my mind. So here you go: my ramble for today.