Musing on consuming

I also learned that there is another child in the story of the doll’s house now crushed into landfill. This is the child who made it. I will call her “Chun”. Chun is highly employable. Her hands are small and can work in tight spaces and her young eyes are keen. There are child labour laws on the books, but the economy on the ground is what the people accept they need to survive. The factory Chun works in and which is adversely affecting her emotional and physical health, is in Western China. It is a component of the new free-enterprise China were one assumes that management’s focus is on the bottom line.

It is claimed that our consumption of the produce of exploited labour is saving millions of lives, because far more millions were dying before we were able to buy $12 shirts and $70 electric drills. That may or may not be true, but, if we believe this to justify our purchase of absurdly cheap manufactured items, then how much better are we than the Australian who excuses himself for having sex with a 14 year-old girl in Bangkok because she needs the money to live?

So many of us take the attitude that they are over there and we are over here - and if they tolerate bad government and produce too many children, then that is their problem. But human nature is the same everywhere. You would think exactly the same over there if you were born and raised over there, and they would think exactly the same over here if they were born and raised over here. There is only one human DNA containing the blueprint for the one human brain. After birth, the neural networks in a developing child’s brain are structured by the society that brain is immersed in.

The inconvenient truth we prefer to ignore is that we are lucky to be where we are and they are unlucky to be where they are - and neither they nor we deserve our fates.

The delusion of happiness

Valerie Yule makes the point that people seek happiness through newness rather than getting the most out of what they already have. Which option provides the most happiness? In my experience getting the most out of what we have beats getting something new.

At the age of 22, I bought a used car which required continual fiddling with to keep going. Due to the far fewer models of cars at the time, the local wrecker would mostly have the part I was looking for. I now have a late model car with systems managed by an inboard computer, and which goes without a hiccup. But, how I miss the satisfaction of hearing a dead motor start up due to my amateur mechanical skills. On bushwalks of a fortnight’s duration I had to live with whatever I had in my pack. Except for not having real milk at breakfast, I did not miss a thing.

Regardless of what the technology can provide at the time, every generation has the same capacity for joy and sadness. We need food, shelter, safety, companionship and something interesting to do. Once our fundamental needs are met, it is nice to get something extra - but, it is a delusion that we need that extra.

It appears to me that the factories of Asia are being gradually being geared to the West’s increasing addiction for instant gratification. It appears to me that free market forces apply a constant pressure to cut costs, and the first place management looks to cut costs is at the bottom - the money paid to the workers in the field, mine and factory.

The federal treasurer urged us to “spend, spend and spend” to keep a recession at bay. To blazes with that! I intend not to throw out any of my $12 shirts when they need some attention. Mindful of the painful hands, stooped backs and straining eyes in the shirt factory, I am willing to patch and scrub to save them.