Ethical living

So, apropos of nothing, I have been having a think about the way I live my life and all that jazz. Last year, my tutor was Bernadette, who herself is very marvellous and is married to the very marvellous Toby Ord, of Giving What We Can fame (if you can call it fame - 166 members is not that much, but they were featured in the BBC, The Guardian, and even the Daily Mail...covering all strata of readers). Out of my 5 housemates, two signed up, one had already been donating 10% of her income on the quiet for years without telling anyone, and it left me feeling that if Tim and I did nothing, we would be ethical traitors of the worst kind - we were soon to have plenty of money to spare and saying no to helping out the people in the world who needed that money most while we wallowed in lashings of cash due to little more than good luck in being born when and where we were wasn't really acceptable.

Well, to my eternal shame, I have not yet signed up to Giving What We Can, and I'll tell you why in a minute. It's not because of anything wrong with the concept, and I still have hopes when I get my finances sorted out a bit more, I will sign up (though no one is more aware than me of the dangers of procrastinating - as soon as we get used to a nice bit of cash, it becomes ever harder to part with it, even as we become ever richer.) Meanwhile I would encourage those of you who don't know about it yet to have a ponder and at least visit the website if you have a spare 5 minutes. 

The reason why I haven't yet signed up is, apropos of nothing, I've been thinking about my generally appallingly unethical lifestyle and how generally wrong it is in every respect, and now I have really no excuse for it apart from sheer laziness and a determination to live as easy and pleasant a life as possible. This is all stuff I've known for ages really - things like I should really think about the horrendous conditions farm animals live in so I can have cheap milk for my tea, like maybe I should think about how devastating cheap cotton is to the environment and to farmers and maybe I shouldn't shop in Primark, like maybe just because I buy free range eggs, if I then buy cheap biscuits made with eggs, they are almost certainly battery farmed, yet why don't I feel guilty about that....etc etc etc. 

I think this is all stuff we all know for ages, but because of lots of things - time, stress, not knowing where to start or what sources to trust - we rarely come round to making those decisions that mean we can live more happily with our consciences, rather than having a sneaking feeling of guilt each time we put some cheap jeans into a basket, or some cheap ready meal - a sneaking feeling that something, somewhere, is probably wrong - but everyone is buying these things, and they're on sale, and surely some kind of standards apply somewhere, so it's probably ok, isn't it?

Perhaps the first thing that triggered off all my reading was this book. Now you will either love Jonathan Safran Foer or you'll hate him. Personally I find him over the top but all right, and very astute - have a go at the extract on the website, it will give you a good idea if the book will make you want to scratch out your eyes or amused and interested. I read it with a lot of horror and guilt and a kind of incomprehension at how I'd managed for so many years to ignore all the doubts I had about where my food came from. After all, I'd been vegetarian before, and I knew about factory farming and how bad it is for the environment and how awful the conditions are for the workers....I just couldn't remember what made me stop caring enough to start eating meat again. How did that happen? 

Once I'd started, obviously I couldn't stop. I worked via Compassion in World Farming and The Soil Association and then I got caught up in People Tree, and then I got distracted by swishing....anyway, long story short, I realised I needed to sort out my life and stop living in blissful self-imposed ignorance. 

Ignorance was blissful though. So blissful. Damn it. 

I should add that Tim was a bit surprised by all of this. Poor Tim. Poor, poor Tim. But I'm sure all this enforced ethical change will be excellent for him. He will grow character, and moral fibre, or something. *

If anyone else is interested, though frankly I'm pretty sure you have all been leading far more ethical lives than me (I mean it - I have been hopelessly lax), then the links above are a good way to start. We have already been getting an organic veg box from Riverford, and all our milk and eggs from there, and I think that while I am going to make a concerted effort to go vegetarian (taking poor Tim with me), if we do ever eat meat (once a month, perhaps - I don't really think it's fair for me to impose total vegetarianism on Tim, but as we live and eat together that's how it will work out for him, so the meat thing is still up for debate), we will try and get it from there, where everything appears to be much more above board and traceable. 

I meant to do a blog post about Riverford sometime ago, actually, but never got round to it. I've got a step by step photo orgy of me stuffing a cabbage (sounds filthy......was very satisfying) because it was so fun I couldn't stop taking photos... Anyway. So the 25 before 25 thing about being vegetarian for a week is at last a reality - there have been quite a few weeks where we haven't eaten meat at all, and it looks like staying that way for the foreseeable future. As for going vegan...I'm going to leave it a couple of weeks before suggesting that to Tim. Perhaps after Christmas...

So anyway, that is the probably quite lame reason I haven't yet signed on to Giving What We Can. I've been pondering lots of other things - the way I shop, the way I eat, the way I give to charity - and I think I need to wait and see how much these ethical changes are hitting the purse before I start making commitments. Of course, this is a faffy excuse - even with buying Fair Trade and Organic and so on, I will still be far far far richer than 99.9% people in the world, so it is no excuse at all - but I am still getting used to not being a student and there's only so much change my poor tired brain can handle at a time.

One last thing - I really enjoyed this book also, which has a disconcertingly girly picture on the front and makes the reader think it is all about some 20 year running around Paris and drinking martinis but actually it is a very good book on how difficult living ethically is and how easy it is not to think about life in general. It was very encouraging for me, as I feel mainly despair on how to live an ethical life in the decadent west and all that, and I am sure that in 5 years time I will be using washable nappies and growing my own veg and keeping chickens and all this kind of thing, and you will all be welcome to poke me and demand why on earth I haven't yet joined Giving What We Can (I'm joking, I'm joking....I hope. But seriously, remind me if I'm still not there after Christmas.)

Love!

Connie

*I should point out that Tim has no lack of moral fibre. He has signed up to his own version of Giving What We Can, based on the principle we should look after those closest to us if they are in need first, and he is giving 10% of his earnings to his little brother, without which his little brother would be unable to pursue a course of studies to fulfil his potential to become the gifted musician we all know he can become. The cynical amongst you may say this is just helping out family and that doesn't count and Tim's brother is amongst the very richest in the world anyway, and he has plenty to eat and somewhere to live. This is all quite true, but it is true he would not be able to go on that course without that money, and I think we do have a duty to look after those dependent on us before looking further abroad. I have no one dependent on me, and so I will be signing up for the schistosomiasis aid and whatnot, but I feel it makes me no more worthy. But that is just my opinion.