X is for Xerxes
February 1st, 2008 | by Paul |It’s a great Woody Allen joke:
“Have you ever taken a serious political stance on anything?”
“Yes. For 24 hours once I refused to eat grapes.”
Granted, that quote from the 1973 film Sleeper would have been a little more morally upstanding had it not come on the heels of Cesar Chavez’s Great Grape Boycott, but it would have been less funny. But it raises an interesting question: How much of a serious stance is anyone willing to take?
I was thinking about this as I sat in my very nice apartment, reading my roommate’s autographed copy of Edward Gorey’s book “The Gashlycrumb Tinies.” You’ve probably seen it - it’s the goth-friendly alphabet book by the guy who did the intro to the PBS Mystery! series. You know, the book about the death of children. “W is for Winnie embedded in ice; X is for Xerxes devoured by mice.” It’s in a lot of calendars.
Not that calendars or the death of children brought this topic to mind. It was the fact that the book was a rather opulent, consumer purchase on my roommate’s part and, to my fractured mind, it seemed somehow more morally upright than an iPhone or a flat-screen TV.
But the point is, I like my stuff. I like my extensive LP collection. I like my statue of a squirrel. I like my reel-to-reel and my glass armadillo. Granted, I can justify all of it in a hipster way. My LPs were used, my squirrel and reel-to-reel were given to me when elderly relatives moved to smaller spaces and the armadillo was from when I was 8 and went to Mexico. Lessened impact means less moral culpability, right? Right?
We live in a world where everyone justifies everything. It’s also a world where Wikipedia has given us a very tidy definition of ethical consumerism. Granted, I consider Wikipedia on the same level as that guy Joe at the bar I used to haunt - always interesting, rarely useful - but it is nice to know other people consider the same moral tidings I do.
So can consumerism be ethical or is any perception you or I might have of a “good buy” be just up to our perception? I like art, but is spending $100 million on a diamond-encrusted skull art or savvy commerce?
In short, can we give it up or will we find ways to justify what we want to do anyway? We might not fix the world’s problems, as this Achewood cartoon illustrates. But it’s worth a shot, right?