Shaman Juice

When I was first getting interested in ethical consumption, and talking with friends about how best to encourage others to buy the things we think are better for us and our planet, I suggested that it is more effective to “be the change you want to see” in as cool and impressive a way as possible, than it is to preach about it in a boring way (even if your preaching is perfectly accurate and correct). One friend thought for a second, and asked if this meant that when out in the supermarket, you should take your bag of FairTrade/Organic/ethical coffee beans, do a backflip and slam-dunk it into your trolley/basket? 

Essentially, I had to agree that this was the essence of what I was suggesting. One of the most influential schools of thought which has informed my understanding of people is that related to the role of ‘affects’ on the way we think. A key lesson for me came from the work of Brian Massumi, and the idea that the ‘rational’ thoughts that we have are always the output of a continuing back-and-forth between the impact of our environments and external stimuli (the ways we are affected by the outside world) with the memories and knowledge which constitute our character. In terms of its relevance here, it is a lesson which marketing and advertising bods of the big-bads are on the cutting edge of - it ain’t what you sell, it’s the way that you sell it which is crucial: convince people, even in the crudest possible terms, that what you have is desirable then they will find themselves buying it even if they have no need for it (even better, they will invent reasons for needing it after they’ve bought it). We are, in spite of our complexities, very simple beings in many ways: use colours that are widely well-received, words which are of the moment or make people smile, and the positive association created, no matter how subconsciously, has achieved its goal.

A question that stands out, however, given that people are not completely unthinking and ignorant of rational arguments, is to what extent it’s possible to change the stimuli which give people a positive association and lead to certain actions. Should you use the lowest-common-denominator approach of selling to the most obvious and basic instincts you perceive, even if you completely disagree with the tendencies they sell to? Advantage: reaching the widest possible audience with the message you want to promote. Disadvantage: reinforcing stereotypes and messages you are not so keen on.

This advert, as discussed by UK ethical fashion entrepreneur Esther Freeman, is a good example of the kind of dilemma I’m talking about. (Question: brilliantly effective marketing campaign or hopelessly undermining itself and women’s struggles everywhere?)

This question reappears contantly for me, not least in Kris and Gabe’s disagreements on this blog. In this form, it appears as a reformulation of a classic division amongst progressives and those pushing for change: should you compromise on some issues (e.g. focusing on price to better sell ethical products) to the detriment of other issues (e.g. drawing attention away from price towards people and real costs)?

This understanding makes it a question of political philosophy: do the ends justify the means? From an ethical point of view, is consequentialism (what you do) or deontology (the way that you do it) more important?

The backflip slamdunk change model incorporates both sides of the debate under the helpful umbrella of affects: the way you do things is fundamentally important to the emotional response that it creates, but what’s more important is to recognise that ‘rational’ reasoning emerges out of this response, and that ‘rational’ elements of messages may also carry emotional impact. For Massumi, and other slightly less comprehensible theorists like Deleuze and Guattari, our understanding of the universe is based on the resonance that images, messages and the external world has with our bodies - bodies made from the affects of the sum total of our experiences.

This ‘sum total’ viewpoint suggests to me that not only do you have to do things in a way which is in line with the ethics of what you’re promoting, but that if you can give the right message in the right way to the right people its effect will be profound - the key here is to search for the highest common denominators. And a backflip slamdunk would seem to me the highest possible.

middlesavagery:

Alfred Gell (Original Nuttah) on the Scientific American.

The Qualitative in the Quantitative

A lot of horrified breathtaking accompanied the checking of my finances - I’m hoping this process will help to limit that in future. This is, apart from being my first serious attempt to monitor the ethics of my consumption, my first serious attempt to monitor my finances generally. As the people at MyBnk will tell you, this in itself can be seen as an ethical action (as someone who is very much in debt, it makes sense that learning about being more responsible with money is the Right Thing to Do). But just to be clear, it doesn’t get any points, as this blog is only about the action of spending, rather than any other ethical actions I might get up to (not to say that it wouldn’t be an interesting project, just that it’s a much bigger one than I have the tool for right now).

Looking back over my spending (at least that recorded by my banks - cash is out of the equation for the time being), there were some immediately obvious big spends that are going to dramatically affect my score. 

Firstly, there’s rent. I’m not absolutely against paying rent or landlords in general, but I do resent paying money for poor service - this seems to me to be rewarding bad behaviour, especially as I also secretly (well not so much any more) harbour the opinion that simply earning money from investments isn’t really an ethical way of earning your keep. I mean, maybe it is IF you are providing an ethically sound way for people to live, but our house is poorly insulated, poorly serviced, and we are reliant on some hopeless estate agents who we have to pester CONSTANTLY in order to achieve any improvements. That is neither good ethics, but sadly it seems to be good business for them. Therefore, my rent gets a score of -1. As the single biggest expense on my monthly outgoings it’s going to require some concerted effort on absolutely everything else to balance it out: the long and short of it is that I’ll have a regular score of -180 to beat.

In terms of other regular payments I make, there’s my mobile phone bill to Orange, then there’s the house broadband/phone line bill to BT. Both of these companies score less than 10 (out of a possible 20) on my go-to guide, Ethical Consumer. But with mobile networks there is no clear Best Buy, i.e. no alternative that is clearly more ethical. So let’s call it neutral for Orange, and -1 for BT. 

Then there’s transport. Transport For London I’m calling neutral. My bike will be +1 as and when I spend some money on it, but for now London Transport is neither as good as a bike, nor as bad as a car. I take a mix of buses and Tubes, but given that London’s energy procurement isn’t especially green the one is probably just as bad as the other. In other transport news, I took a coach in January for the 94.8 miles to my home town and a train back, and got a coach there and back this past weekend. Although the coach and train provide different figures for carbon emmissions, I’m going to call all ‘public’ transport like this a +1.  I could in theory have driven, and National Express coaches scraped into a semi-respectable score on Ethical Consumer, but also, as becomes clear from the food section, it’s a much larger and more complicated project to score individual items than to group them under categories.

As far as food goes, in theory we get all of our food for the house communally, and we’ve been trying to implement a no-Tesco policy with the food we buy, and to get a veggie box from some local organic farm. In the meantime, we get all of our veg from the local market (+1 for supporting local business?, or -1 for not knowing where it comes from and probably not buying organic?), and we get all our milk and eggs delivered (again, the eggs are free range but neither is organic, although we recycle all the bottles, so that’s worth a point, right?). But enough general background - what did I actually spent of my own cash this month?

Ahem. £37.83 at Tesco. IT’S JUST SO CONVENIENT! Damn them! As a slight consolation, no supermarkets got more than 7 out of 20. Nevertheless, Tesco are at the bottom of a bad bunch. But should I split the score between Tesco and the specific products I bought? I ask, because I know that I usually get organic milk from Tesco (which we don’t get delivered), and other Fairtrade or organic products. One of the principles behind this experiment is that spending money can count as an ethical thing to do because you are supporting the better practices- but what should you do when you support both the bad AND the good? Or the good VIA the bad? Maybe a helpful way of thinking is to go slightly beyond the money-as-votes-for-ethical-practices philosophy and incorporate what is going to be most helpful in me continuing to increase my ethical impact. As far as that goes, given that another part of the impetus for this blog was to motivate myself to do better, I think I’m going to be cruel to be kind. Tesco, if you read this - you start getting points when you top Ethical Consumption’s league table (it’s actually quite straightforward - improve wood sourcing and animal testing policies, stop using non sustainable palm oil and selling factory farmed meat, stop violating Bangladeshi garment workers, commit to sourcing gold and diamonds responsibly, erm… ok the list goes on but that surely just means it’s easier to make big improvements, non?). I could maybe give myself points for organic/free range meat and eggs, were it not for the endless list of other unethical practices that Tesco is unwilling or unable to address - by using their service it’s almost a tacit approval of their uncaring attitude…

On the plus sides, there was the meal for two at a local organic restaurant which was a lovely birthday treat to help balance the bad. And here I have to make some decisions which highlight the difficulty of quantifying ethics - does my local pub (which strives to be organic, and is always free range with its meat) get +1 or +2 (it’s better than Tesco, and better than neutral in that it’s visibly trying to do business in a more ethical way, but is it an example of Best practice?)? They weren’t offsetting any of their carbon emissions or anything, but is that a reasonable, sustainable expectation? 

Someone else who isn’t, as far as I’m aware, attempting to carbon offset,  but who I nevertheless feel justified in giving a whopping +2, is my favourite London food store, Unpackaged. I had some vouchers from my sister for my birthday (thanks, sis!), but spent another £25 on top of that as there’s just so much tasty stuff.

Finally, the irregulars. This month, I bought a screen so that I can watch video without putting it right in front of my face, and play XBOX (there are a number of reasons I don’t want to get into scoring the ethics of my actions). I bought it from a second-hand store which, while I don’t necessarily buy their recycling-focused greenwash, did at least seem better than buying something new. And although it’s a Samsung (getting a shameful 5.5 from Ethical Consumer for their TVs and their computer screens), I was lured into buying it because it’s an LED model (I seemed to remember Ethical Consumer calling it “the technology of the future in terms of energy consumption”), and so saves on energy as well as cutting out mercury. So, although I felt pretty pleased at my energy-saving impetus at first, the corporate social and environmental irresponsibility demonstrated by Samsung means that I think I’ll have to leave it at neutral. Nuts. Oh, and then there was the HDMI cable made by … well I don’t have the packet any more, but I bought it at Pound Plaza and it seems like a safe bet that (as a search for ’ “pound plaza” CSR ’ returned no hits on Google) I don’t think I’ll be earning any points on that. And given this blog’s commitment to moving away from business as usual, and Pound Plaza’s commitment to stackin’ ‘em high and selling ‘em cheap, it makes sense to lose as many points as I dare. Double nuts.

As a consolation prize, my subscription to Ethical Consumer went through this month. Given their centrality as a resource to this experiment, I feel justified in giving them and me a healthy +2.

Number Crunching

Utilities: MoPhone @ £26 x 0 = 0

    Broadband/Landline @ N x -1 = -TBC

    Rent @ £250 x -1 = -250

    Gas and Electricity @ N x -2 = -TBC

Transport: Coach @ £14.50 x +1 = +14.50,

train @ £23.80 x +1 = +23.80

Coach @ £11 x +1 =  +11

Groceries / Food: £37.83 x -2 = -75.66

£25.00 x +2 = +50

£30.20 x +1 = +30.20

Luxuries: 0 x £170 =    0

            -1 x £5.99 =  -5.99

            +2 x £29.95 = +59.90

Overall score = -136.26

Conclusion

This score must be seen as highly partial - not only have I left cash payments out because I have got into the habit of throwing receipts away and they’re not so easily reviewed from a computer, but there are some items on my bills that (worryingly) I don’t recognise. Nevertheless, it’s a challengingly poor baseline to work with. Under the current system, knowing that I have to ‘offset’ the implicitly unethical payments to rubbish landlords (and fossil fuel burners when I work out what my bills are for gas and electricity) means that I can’t get complacent when I buy locally sourced or organic groceries - especially as these are easily counterbalanced by a convenient stop at Tesco’s or the local corner shop. On a more optimistic note, knowing that switching my consumption from a less ethical provider to a more ethical one can dramatically change the tide of things is encouraging, should be a motivator to change habits.

While using money as a key multiplier in this way has its drawbacks (does it make any sense to think of paying a landlord as 10 times more unethical than buying an electrical cable? Of course not - in that frame, quantifying ethics starts to lose any meaning), it does at least give a sense of the scale of my consumption in various areas, and draw attention to those areas where I can have a greater or lesser impact. This is, in itself, an aid to ethical consumption.

A CHALLENGE

This is the first of 14 posts (one a month, this intro and a conclusion/summary) on the ethics of my consumption, as I try and quantify it and measure my progress for a year. I live and work in London and have a professional and personal interest on measuring the ethics of consumption habits, and how it’s possible to improve our the impact of our consumption, or to incorporate ethics more directly into the mechanics of how we live in complex, industrialised, globally interconnected societies so that our consumption is as ethical as the rest of our activities. 

I thought a bit of background on where I’m coming from might be useful:

Firstly, I’ve been thinking about a game where people would get points for doing nice things and lose points for doing bad things, kind of like a real-life Karma. As I’ve been working on issues of ethical consumption recently, I thought that points for purchases made a good starting point, and the kind of work I’ve been doing means that I’ve mainly been thinking about how this could work as an actual game that someone could play online or on their phone. I thought that exploring how you might turn real life into points for myself might be a good starting point.

Secondly, I recently came across Quantified Self, a kind of collaborative individual statistics gathering/sharing website. Generally people use the site for monitoring themselves either for pure personal interest (like “OMG I drank 3 thousand espressos in July/August, but only 2000 in September/OCtober!”), for some form of academic interest, or for some kind of self-improvement experiment. Sometimes a combination of the three. Anyway, whether or not Quantified Selfers are interested in ethical consumption, it provoked my interest.

When these two streams of thought converged, I thought that keeping a blog seemed like a good way of engaging others with the process whilst generating publicity around what I feel to be an important issue. For myself, I hope to live out some of the realities of this issue by challenging myself to consume as ethically as I can, to achieve the most impact simply by spending my pounds and pennies in some places as opposed to others.

POINTS MEAN PRIZES

All that remains, then, is to detail how this points system is going to work. Should I use the numbers generated by others researching the ethics of products? Or should I make up my own system? Quantified self had some useful tips for beginner self-quantifiers: use SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-bound) goals (I remember these from rugby league training, hopefully I’ll be better at consumption than I was at being a Winger), and keep it simple. 

Let’s start with the easy side: what am I measuring?

 - Things that I buy with my own money. Every month I’m going to lose points for paying money to a landlord and estate agents, but council tax I’m calling neutral. You’re probably already getting a feel for how my politics informs my ethics. I’ll also be losing points for paying for gas and electricity from Npower. If we can ever convince the landlord to switch provider, maybe that’ll put me on neutral. The main focus of my experiment will be on food and luxuries.

Harder to answer is: how am I measuring them?

 - Creatively. I have never done this before, and I’m not expecting to create a perfect system for scoring ethics, sceptical as I am about enumerating ethics in the first place. I am really experimenting in what works, what doesn’t, and what the challenges are in measuring, recording and communicating my consumption and what I perceive to be the ethical dimensions of it.

 - Not as ethically as you’d like. Anthropology shows that ethics are culturally-relative at the very least (and individually variant within the groupings of people that we’ll call ‘cultures’ or ‘societies’ for sake of convenience). Therefore, what I find to be an ethical decision is unlikely to match entirely with how you would do things. I am fundamentally interested in this difference, as well as in the similarities, and what these may reveal about contemporary ethics.

 - With these caveats in mind, I’m going to follow QS’s advice and keep it as simple as possible. As a starting point, I’m going to try and score things like this: stuff I buy will be either Best, better, ok, bad, or worst, scoring either +2, +1, 0, -1, or -2 respectively. This score gets multiplied by £X to give a slightly better weighting to the results.

 - I also need to keep in mind that consumption in itself isn’t necessarily ethical. Buying luxury goods that are carted over the world at great environmental and financial cost, even if made in fair conditions, is, for me, less ethical than buying a local equivalent good, or simply not buying anything at all. How can I design the system to take this into account? One way is to differentiate between “stuff I would buy anyway” (essentials), and “stuff that I don’t Really Need” (luxuries). This  distinction is fuzzy at best, and I suspect will be one that I keep coming up against as I try and define what it means to be an ethical consumer.

Quantified Ethical Consumption Month 1 - January 13th-February 13th, is coming up in a week’s time, with my new Samsung monitor, a variety of different food stores, and a number of different coffees in the mix. The challenge begins.