why fair trade?

Have you read about the awful recent garment factory collapse stories in Bangladesh?  Do you know what fair trade coffee or what a fair trade banana is? Well, here it is.  According to Elizabeth Henderson, an organic farmer for 30 years who helped organize the Domestic Fair Trade Association, "a fair price is the right price with a triple bottom line people-profit-earth."

Fair Trade began with such crops as bananas, coffee and cocoa from South America because the local farmers were being exploited in the interest of a low sale price and the biggest possible profit for Dole or Chiquita or Chock-Full-O'Nuts or whoever else.  The idea of Fair Trade is a facet of the "new economics," the newly arising cultural paradigm of watching out for all of us, not just some of us  - the health of the farm worker, a fair wage for the farm worker, a sustainable agriculture that does not harm the earth, a healthy product for the consumer, and a fair profit for the banana exporter/importer or cocoa powder maker.  See WFTO and Fair Trade USA for more information.

Fair Trade is a win-win situation, all parties involved profit from it; non fair trade is win-lose, because only one side wins.  Of course this means that the end product costs a bit more.  But what's wrong with that if in the end we all profit from it?

The DFTA (Domestic Fair Trade Association) now promotes the same principles of health, justice and sustainability on a domestic level.  And, to complete my loop to the recent garment factory disasters, through all our awakening to these issues the beautiful win-win principles of Fair Trade will surely make a leap to the garment factories abroad so those workers can work in safe buildings and work for fair wages.

shark fin soup and hope

If the Chinese are back peddling on shark fin soup, so ubiquitous at all festive banquets of the past, there is hope for changes in our attitude about a lot of other things as well.  I am thinking of idling stances on such pressing issues as climate change, pollution, animal welfare, GMOs, child prostitution, and many other ugly realities.  It seems to me that ultimately our collective indecisiveness on these issues boils down to the hesitance of wrestling ourselves away from the profit-first model.  If we only realized that the wellbeing-first model benefits us all around. Bonnie Tsui wrote this week-end in the NY Times about the changing attitude of the Chinese on serving shark fin soup at important banquets, previously a sign of "honoring (and impressing) your guest."  I was served shark fin soup at several banquets in my company's honor in the late 1980s when we lived in Hong Kong, and was oblivious of the gruesome practice (which I can't bear to describe here, but you can look it up).    Because it has been such an inherent component of Chinese food culture I was really quite amazed to read that "last summer, the Chinese government announced that it would stop serving the dish at official state banquets."

Here's to change for the better, change towards wellbeing, change towards respect of nature and all living beings. 

no man is an island

I just finished reading Emily Matchar's book Homeward Boundon the New Domesticity movement.  The book is about women (and some men) embracing home & hearth in a new cultural twist, about being tired of corporate pressure and the lack of the government's and the corporate world's response to women's (and men's) family needs here in this country, while European countries are introducing more and more of it (more guaranteed daycare spots, more maternity and paternity leave, more vacation time).  This movement also comprises the so called "preppers," who believe in taking things into their own hands in light of a perceived potential armageddon that the government is not prepared to manage, and become as self-sufficient as possible.  Some of that self-sufficiency drive is shining through in homesteaders who only trust the safety of their own vegetables, the quality of their own childcare and school instruction, etc.  (note that this lone-man-on-the-frontier and homesteading syndrome seems specific to this country because of its pioneering history).

In nature everything is intricately interconnected in the famous web Chief Seattle (supposedly) spoke about ("whatever you do the web you do to yourself").  When you remove elements of a system (eco or social), like removing a card from the middle of a house of cards, the system starts to crumble.

Since we are part of nature we also exist within an intricate web of relationships and associations.  By the way, the more meaningful our relationships, the richer our lives.  People with a large social network and strong relationships live longer.  When we opt out of the web some part of the web crumbles and weakens, and what we are able to accomplish diminishes.  Matchar makes this crucial point.  When people become so self-centered, as in if-public-education-crumbles-I'll-just-pay-for-private-school, or if-the-general-food-supply-is-unsafe-I'll-just-grow-my-own, or if-corporations-don't-give-a-damn-about family-life-I'll -just-quit, then we have a problem.   Then the country no longer pushes towards a common agenda that benefits all.  You may call me a socialist, but what is bad about jointly rooting for the highest good of all (as opposed to my own highest good)?  What is bad about making education accessible for all and increasing the level of intelligence and critical thinking of the entire population?  What is bad about pressuring the government to put proper food safety measures (including those against GMOs) in place?  It benefits all of us in the end.  We need to remain within the web and help to improve the entire web instead of jumping ship and going it alone.

"Ask not what this country can do for you, but what you can do for your country," as one famous president said not so long ago.   Please also take a look at a previous post on the people factor.

back to basics

Storm King

A few years ago our electric lawn mower broke and we replaced it with a little mechanical push mower, of the kind I remember my dad using in the 1960s.  It takes a bit of arm muscle and some double mowing when the grass is longer (and I am getting blisters on my hands), but the mowing is really quiet and non-polluting, and you are bound to spend an hour or so out in the beautiful sunshine - exercise and fresh air all in one.  Granted, the push mower doesn't work for a large field sized lawn.  But then, I saw years ago at the Storm King Art Center outdoor sculpture park that lawns can be partially mowed to great effect (and less energy) - just mow a circulation path and where a sculpture or a sitting are is located, and leave the rest to the wild grasses (the insects will be happy, too). More basics - I recently read that some new age farmers are going back to plowing their fields with the help of horses.  Horses don't break down, they don't pollute, their manure is free and environmentally friendly fertilizer.

Not that everything was better then, but not all innovations are good simply because they are new.  New York City is finally jumping on the cycling bandwagon with its newly inaugurated Citibike rental program.  Biking was never out-of-fashion in Europe, but it's finally in fashion again on this side of the Atlantic.  Also see my previous related post "sitting and more sitting."  Just saying - some of this older and slower technology is not so bad, and provides a bit of exercise in fresh air all-the-while accomplishing something - transportation, plowing, mowing - beats the gym for sure.

the fat myth

Food research of the past years has revealed that food is healthiest when we eat it the way nature made it.  When food becomes a "product," meaning when it comes from a factory and they've done stuff to it, it's no longer so healthy and in many instances even harmful. There are a lot of food myths out there that we/our culture created from the ill gotten belief that man-made stuff would surpass what nature makes because it is based on science.  But the food industry pushes under the rug that it's really after the profit, not your health, and that's what they apply their science to.

So here goes the fat myth:

FAT IS BAD FOR YOU  - "lite products" are better for you.

Hence low fat and no fat everything, cheese, milk, yogurt.  The absurd and unhealthy culminations of this misguided belief system of course are butter substitute and margarine, not much nature left in those.  Hence also the French Paradox - why the northern French don't get fat on all their cream and butter and delicious camembert, and the southern French thrive on the olive oil rich Mediterranean diet.  Sally Fallon, one of my nouveau food idols, has all the scientific back-up information for the skeptics in her oft cited food myth debunker and cookbook Nourishing Traditions.

I switched our whole family back to full fat everything a few years ago (I am only a few steps ahead) and we have neither gained weight nor become sick; as a matter-of-fact, we are all very healthy, love to eat, and never spare a thought on the fat question. 

pill or self-heal, or the power of beliefs

We used to believe, truly believe, that the earth is flat and that we would fall over the edge if we went too close.  We also believed, truly believed, that we were at the center of the universe.   Heck, we even burnt someone at the stake for saying otherwise.  We believe other things now, but they are as firmly embedded in our minds as those from earlier times we now call silly.  One of them concerns self-healing. We currently don't really believe that we can self-heal, or let's say that we only believe it under certain circumstances (which makes no sense; it either works, or it doesn't).  Usually we quickly run for outside help, doctors, pills, tests, and so forth.  But think about this:  When you have a cold and eat chicken soup or drink tea to feel better, you don't believe that the chicken soup or tea actually heals the cold.  You understand that you/your body heals the cold and the tea or soup simply helps. When you break a leg and get a cast you don't actually believe that the cast is what heals the bone, you do understand that you/your body heals the bone and the cast simply keeps the limb from moving to aid the body in the healing process.  Under those circumstances we all actually agree that we self-heal and that tea, chicken soup and cast are aids or props.   But the belief system is shaky because we still need an outside "expert" with "expert" methods to help us heal more "serious" ailments.  When we take pills or resort to various treatments, we believe all of a sudden that they actually caused the healing. (Yet, when the treatment doesn't work so well, as is often the case, then we are at a loss - but we wouldn't doubt or adjust our belief system).

You may have heard of voodoo deaths, whereby someone actually ends up dying from a combination of their own fear and the combined energy of the village community that does the condemning.  You may have read about the study on placebo knee surgery for arthritic patients, that ended up treating pain as well as actual surgery (!).  The fact is - our beliefs are enormously powerful!  And when we don't heal, it is usually because negative beliefs or residual trauma are in the way and counteract the process (there are a few exceptions, such as afflictions we are born with).  When they get cleared, the body can heal itself.  Check out the recent book Use Your Body to Heal Your Mind by psychologist Henry Grayson to explore this subject further.

what's holistic anyway?

Some people who I have spoken to about Holistic Living think it just means eating your veggies and going to the gym, sort of just leading a pretty healthy life.  But it's more than that. The word "holistic" is a cross between "whole" and "holy." Why "whole?"  Or we could ask: what is not whole and needs to be put together again? Life consists of both the invisible and the visible, the spiritual and the material, soul/mind and body, thought and matter.  These last few centuries we have been living as if the spiritual or invisible part of life (our emotions, beliefs, feelings, spirituality) did not exist.  And we felt proud of it, proud of being "rational" and "analytical," proud of focusing on the "real" stuff we can see, touch, feel, smell and hear, not that wishy washy airy-fairy emotional stuff no one can see and that's not really "real."

Turns out, though, that that stuff we tended to push under the rug is pretty important.  Without it we mistreat and rape nature (because we think it's separate from us), we make war (because we think "they" are different from us), we don't vote (because we think it makes no difference), we treat animals worse than things (because we think they are not sentient beings), we buy as cheap as possible (because we don't think of the people behind the product, i.e. Bangladesh) - or maybe we don't even think at all.

Holistic means putting the two sides together again, the way they belong, the way they are, the way we forgot they always were.

the meat quandary - last installment

That meat eating has become a potential ethical dilemma indicates a change in our awareness.  As we can see from the Inuit (who eat mostly fish protein) or the Masaai (who subsist mostly on the meat, milk and blood of the cattle they raise) on the one hand, and the Hindus, most of who have been vegetarian for a few millenia, there is a cultural context to any diet that arose in no small part from the geographical surroundings and inherent food potentials. As we have been struggling with the health implications of the big-ag industrial diet that makes for-profit "products," not food, (remember, they don't make this stuff for your benefit, but for theirs: $), and which are made out of geographical context altogether, we have wrestled with the "diet of the day" out of confusion.  The Atkins Diet, the South Beach Diet, the Paleo Diet, the Mediterranean Diet, and what not, have all been hailed as an epiphany at one point or another.

In my view diet has to be considered not only within an ethnico-cultural-geographical context, but also in the context of consciousness evolution.  What I mean by that is that a diet reflects our current understanding of things, our beliefs, our culture, our state-of-affairs.

I believe that it is perfectly ok to eat honey and eggs and some meat and some fish If we live in a context of respect and mutual benefit for all. Check out Sally Fallon's "Nourishing Traditions" for a well researched reversal on some of our common food myths.   Most important is to eat real food - the rest is up to your personal convictions, state of mind and stomach (listen to your body; when you exit a fast food place or a steakhouse and feel heavy and stuffed and as if you couldn't eat anything for the next 24 hours, maybe that food wasn't so beneficial for you).  Food should energize you, physically and spiritually.

Your views and diet evolve as you become better informed, mine continually do.  And if you believe from the bottom of your heart that a candy bar is really really good for your body  (not just to fulfill an emotional need), then it will be.

Please see installments 1. and 2. for the complete picture on the meat quandary.

anti war or pro peace?

Perhaps surprisingly it’s not the same!  It is not the same to be anti big-ag/anti pesticides or pro organic.  It’s not the same to be anti abortion or pro life.  Why not?  Because energetically being anti anything perpetuates that which we protest, since that is what we keep thinking about (the energy doesn’t get the “not” part).  If you keep protesting against war, war is the energy that gets perpetuated, whereas if you lobby for peace, peace is the energy that is being strengthened. Being pro something turns our mind to that which we favor, that which we wish to manifest. That’s why it is so important to formulate what you do want in life, not what you don’t want, although defining what you don’t want first helps you to define better what it is you actually do want.

So next time you are angry with something out there – perhaps the politicians, the terrible meat industry, your coworker, your child for something s/he did – turn your thinking around and emphasize what you’d like to see instead – vote for something, buy meat that has been raised the way you prefer, talk to your coworker about the feelings his/her behavior elicits in you and what can be done about it, encourage and reward your child for the behavior you’d like to reinforce.

voting with your $

When you pay for something you not only send dollars but also energy its way, you vote for it, you strengthen it and its cause.  Say you shop at Walmart, or Whole Foods, or Amazon, or your local farmer (I know these are opposites in a way, that’s on purpose), you literally fill their pot with money. While it may not be immediately evident, remember that there is strength in numbers.  When a few thousand people take their food dollars away from Tyson and send them their local farmer’s way, it does make a difference.  When thousands of people become tired of built-in obsolence and take their household dollars away from shoddily made appliances and buy something well engineered that lasts, it does make a difference.  Why do you think big-ag and big-food businesses are so afraid of GMO labeling?  Because we make a statement with our money.

Today, a friend mentioned that it wasn’t necessary to buy organic avocados because they are not on the Dirty Dozen list of produce most contaminated by pesticides.  I explained that not only was the price difference only slight, but more importantly that I voted for a healthier environment and farm workers' health by buying the organic kind.

So next time you open your purse or your checkbook, remember it's a two-way street. It's not just about saving a few bucks, it's also about the cause you support.