Seeing and not seeing

We're all blind, at least a bit. Our lives are so complicated, full of so many tiny intricate pieces interacting in different ways, and we'd go crazy if we were forced to look it in the eye, to comprehend the full magnitude of the systems that sustain us.

I can rail against sweatshops, coal plants, industrial agriculture, Wal-Mart, oil production in the Niger Delta or any number of other things destroying the planet. It's easy for someone to counter whatever I might say by pointing out the awful truths that govern our world. Sweatshops are horrible, but many pay better wages than other available jobs, and children working in them would likely starve or end up as prostitutes if they closed. Coal plants provide jobs in poor communities. Industrial agriculture is the only way to feed seven billion. Wal-Mart allows working class families to save money on consumer goods and provides millions of jobs. Oil production is necessary to continue our lifestyle.

These truths are where so much conventional wisdom about saving the planet fall flat. Lobbying the Gap to source their clothes from more responsible factories won't end a system where children have to choose between working twelve hour days or selling themselves to sex tourists (if that can even be called a choice). Eating local won't stop industrial monocrop agriculture from spreading to Africa, India and Latin America. Installing solar panels on your house won't make a coal plant close its doors, or give the people who work in one a job. Boycotting Wal-Mart or refusing to let one into your town won't stop the real minimum wage from sliding down, and it won't improve the life of a single child in Asia.

In the systems we've created--economic, social and political--we've made these things a necessity. Some people point to this to argue that environmentalists and labor activists are wrong. We need sweatshops, coal plants, pesticides, dams, aluminum smelters, deep-sea oil rigs and big box stores for our society to keep functioning and growing. The leftists argue back with half-truths, saying that we can push for reform. We focus on small targets and we don't see the big picture. We demonize Wal-Mart while ignoring Target, K-Mart and Fred Meyer. We argue for solar, but not against coal. We believe people want to change. We believe we can tweak the system and it will become transparent, fair and sustainable.

That's not how it works. These institutions are fundamental to the way we operate as a society. Change won't come gradually, and it won't come easily. Making conscious choices as a consumer is a worthwhile activity for personal awareness, but it won't change the system.

Every day, I wake up in the morning and choose not to see. I don't think about the people in the Niger Delta, where the equivalent of a BP Deepwater Horizon spill occurs every year, even though that oil feeds the trucks that bring me food. I don't think about the toxic chemicals used to process and dye the cotton my clothes are made out of. I don't think about the fact that while I have four years of college paid for, other students at Whitman will graduate with thousands in debt, other students from my high school class are in prison or single parents, and other young adults around the world work ten or twelve hour days in factories to make the furniture in my room. I don't think about the habitat that has been lost to development, agriculture, and the ever-expanding demands of the human race.

I don't say these things because I feel guilty. I didn't create these systems, and god knows I don't know how to change them. I say this because I'm angry. I'm angry that this is how our world is structured. I'm angry that women in Thailand get cancer from making laptops like the one I'm typing this on. I'm angry that my being a vegetarian for twelve years did nothing to end factory farming. I'm angry that I can be the most conscientious consumer in the world and it won't to a damn thing to improve the lives of the people, animals and ecosystems that buckle under the collective weight of first world demand.

We can't see this. We can't feel it or think about it, because if each of us understood the full magnitude of the systems supporting us, we would go crazy. And if each one of us felt what was wrong on a personal level--if our child got cancer from a chemical factory's abandoned waste, if our beloved forest was clearcut to make room to grow soy--we would fight back. But we can't see the whole picture, and we can't articulate the deep, unsettling feeling we have that something is terribly, terribly wrong.

I don't have an answer. I don't have ten simple things you can do to make a difference. I'm tired of pushing towards the center, talking about compromise, gradual progress and effortless changes. I want to fight, but I don't know how or where. I want to see, but I don't really want to know or understand, because I'm scared that there won't be anything I can do to fix it.