Call Me That Again And I'll Drown You in Organic Mineral Water Bottled At The Source

Shopping has been an unofficial religion since about the 80's, when we began to build massive temples to the gods of commerce, with large anchor shrines on the ends to the greater deities (with escalators!). I suppose it was only a matter of time, then, before Consumerism became an Official Religion, tying itself more obviously to psuedo-spirituality through the buzzword of the moment: Metrospiritual.

Leave it to the marketing vultures to cheapen the desire to put your money where your mouth is with a catchy fad term like "Metrospiritual". I'd feel caught, like a deer in the consumerist headlights, if I weren't already moving on.

The fact is, going to Whole Foods and shopping at Gaiam.com and all that is so early 2000's. Sure, they had their place back in the day in terms of creating awareness and giving us some choices in their well-lit aisles, and introducing concepts like "fair trade" and "sustainably harvested". But come on guys, you're behind the times - buying local is the new organic.

And besides, if there were a serious sea-change afoot, a pair of organic socks wouldn't set me back $20. Behind the white-light fad, Metrospirituality is about as progressive as a hybrid SUV.

To be fair, I should admit that I don't completely eschew the things Metrospirituality claims to represent. But these days I only go to Whole Foods & Trader Joe's for their amazing selection of cheeses and nuts and stuff I can't find anywhere else. The rest of the time I try to buy at local natural markets & farmer's markets. God knows, if there were a Co-Op in my area, I'd belong to it. For the rest, it's Freecycle, thrift stores and individual artists (and, well, um, *cough* Amazon...but come on, no one's that pure).

Guilty pleasures aside, I like that my clothes don't come coated in formaldehyde or the blood of 10 year olds making 35 cents a day somewhere in east Asia. I like that they're recycled, and that they're cheap. God knows I don't have $200 to spend on an organic sweater.

I like my CSA - their produce is unparalleled (especially the orgasmic heirloom tomatoes) and I feel good about supporting local organic farmers I actually know, not more overdevelopment in South Jersey, or fuel to fly my broccoli from California, or 500 corporate salaries and marketing at Whole Foods or any other corporation.

I like when my money goes to support small businesses in the local economy.

I like that when I buy art from my friend to give you for the Solstice-based holiday of your choice, you get something unique and treasured, and she gets to pay her rent.

Etcetera.

Yeah, ok, I'm self-congratulatingly tooting my own horn for staying ahead of the trend, but only to make a point to the marketing gurus behind the term "Metrospiritual": the choices I make are deeply personal and none of your profit-driven marketing business. My ethics are not for sale. My economy is based on real people living a decent life, not astronomical CEO salaries at the expense of the unskilled laborer. You have my word that I will make every effort to wriggle out from under your hypey buzzwords intended to make yuppies feel good about new-age shrouded gluttonous consumerism on the backs of poisoned sweatshop children, no matter how far you chase me. And maybe, if you chase me far enough, some ethics just might rub off on you. Here's hoping.

Because We're All A Little Voyeuristic...

A truly awesome art project in which people anonymously mail in their secrets on homemade postcards. I can tell that this will be a regular stop on my work-avoidance route.

Mart of Darkness

Yeah, okay, so it's starting to look like a vendetta. But, you know, whatever. Just go find someplace to watch this movie about why to shop anywhere but Wal Mart.

If nothing else, you can congratulate yourself for being all subversive by going to some stranger's house to sit and watch a movie.

Living With Shades of Gray

An old high school friend came home from Iraq last month. I talked to him last night for the first time in a year, anxious to hear how he made it through and if he was the person who left a year ago.

Of course he isn’t. Neither am I.

He spent a lot of time rebuilding schools and restoring or creating electrical grids, and generally cleaning up the community where he was stationed. He told me about carrying in his arms a child who’d been shot critically, while they found her medical care. More like FEMA than war, except, you know, all those bombs and guns and stuff.

He told me about how most of the insurgents aren’t from Iraq, and how they are Really Bad Guys. He said if it weren’t for his family that he’d go back.

Just like that, all those clean black and white lines I’ve been drawing lately around the notion of nonviolence and War Is Bad got all smudged and gray. It’s funny how often that happens to those finite judgments like “bad”. Good things can come out of bad things. Bad things can come out of good things. Who’s to say which is which, then? I guess life is just too complicated for black and white.

So how do I incorporate the reality of this smart friend of mine who felt like he was making a real difference in a place that needed him and was largely grateful for his presence into my growing belief that there has to be another way than violence?

Is it that the Powers That Be manipulate their soldiers with alternate reasons they can rally behind so that they are fighting for ideals and not for corporate bosses? Is it like my friend says, that the media’s reporting is so skewed and inaccurate that we are misled? Is it only in safety that we can judge with such high ideals?

Or is it that I have to separate the humanitarian work that’s achieved there, which is constructive, from the fighting, which is destructive? In the end, some variation on cords of black and white that appear incurably tangled.

War is a solution, but that doesn’t mean it’s the best one. It’s easy to say that War Is Bad, but there sure is a dearth of alternatives.

The SO says that in order to dissolve violence with nonviolence, a lot of the non-violent would probably have to die, and have to be content with that, before there were any sea change. Are there enough Ghandis out there to make that happen?

I am torn between feeling that working for non-violence is infinitely worthwhile, and wondering if we’re not just floating in a vast abyss, spinning on a watery rock that will be swallowed by its own energy source in a few million years, thus rendering the entire effort pointless in the infinite perspective.

But if it is pointless in the end, then there is no harm in acting like it matters. And the fact is, it matters to me that a bunch of strangers in far away places are hobbling through their short lives with souls more wounded than necessary for motives that never cease to be questionable if you think about it for very long.

Maybe I'm crazy for wanting peace. I can sure think of less futile things to do than ponder a way out of this maze. But whether I like it or not, I can't let it go. So please excuse me while I go pound my head against this wall over here...