The other day I completed one of our readings for class while waiting for a new tire to be installed on my car at Sam’s Club. Looking around, I could think of no stranger place to be contemplating the ecological thought. There I was, in a building large enough to be a city park, surrounded by everything humans need to entirely sever their ties to the natural environment. Most humans (even Alexander Supertramp) can’t survive in “the wild,” and probably couldn’t last more than a week, but lock them in a Sam’s Club all alone and they could come out after a year or more with little more than a vitamin D deficiency and an addiction to video games.
In John Boorman’s film Where the Heart Is, Novalee Nation lives out her pregnancy and even gives birth in a Wal-Mart. Had that story played out in a national park, it probably would have ended with her becoming bear bait rather than the famous mother of the “Wal-Mart baby” living the American dream in the Midwest.
As I sat waiting under the fluorescent lights a woman passed me with a cart stacked high with 12 six-packs of pink and blue cotton candy. The “natural” assumption is that she is either planning a child’s party or a mass cult suicide. Before leaving the store she stopped by the line for flu shots, this I find ironic since whatever turns sugar into a pink cottony substance with a century long shelf life has got to be way worse for you than the flu.
By far the most popular item passing by my perch was giant cases of bottled water. No matter the brand, they all advertise the “natural” nature of their product. “Pure Life” “Spring Fresh” “Mountain Clear,” many even feature serene outdoor landscape scenes on the outside of the shrink wrap and plastic bottles protecting the precious water from any actual contact with the outside world.
I can’t help but wonder how we got to the point where we feel safer and more in our element in a giant metal box filled with shrink wrapped products swimming in preservatives and artificial ingredients than outdoors surrounded by fresh air and wild vegetation. Judging by the mass of humanity stocking up at the Sam’s Club, I think it’s too late to go back, but I think it is time that we find a happy medium between the “nature” we see on labels and the “nature” we see out our windows.
I think it's hilarious that all of our water bottle products have pictures of nature landscapes. As mentioned before on the blog, Food Inc. points out that tap water is essentially more natural and logical than bottled water. Why are we so used to grabbing a bottle of water instead of using the water that comes out of a fountain? It just doesn't make sense.
ReplyDeleteThis is how we treat everything. Anytime we buy something from Walmart of Sam's club its just buying artificial products. Yes of course all of us broke college kids love the prices, but at the cost of our environment. We buy over-processed foods, plastic bottles, and slave-labored clothes. All of these are harmful to us and the environment. Yet Walmart is our cultural icon and we accept it for what it is.
Margaret,
ReplyDeleteI could not agree more with you, but I also must admit that I am a slave to Sam's Club. Every few weeks (when I'm at home) I make the twenty minute trek to Sam's Club with my mom to stock up on processed snacks and large quantities of meat for our family of seven. But we of course don't stop there--they have shampoo, razor blades, video games, movies, iPods, SLURPEES!, and so much more to make our lives seem so much easier. But is it? How has buying processed snacks in bulk become a positive thing? All it does is ensure that people overeat and buy more snacks in bulk. I agree completely that we need to find some sort of medium between a Sam's Club and the wilderness, or "nature." Perhaps an REI (just kidding).
Jordan, what you ask about Sam's Club making your life easier makes me think about the nature of consumerism. We have become slaves to the consumption that can do everything but pee for us. We have become neurotic slaves to the goods that will free us from having to strain ourselves. It's a sad realization about the philosophy of our generation.
ReplyDeleteWe have been discussing utilitarianism in my ethics class this week, and the discussion of Wal-Mart came up. Utilitarianism essentially calculates a moral action based on the net-happiness that results form all involved in repercussions of the decision. Wal-Mart is a perfect embodiment of the warped morality that can result from utilitarianism. It employs cheap labor, sells goods that have been made in sweat shops, degrades the environment, and the list goes on. We don't understand the immorality that comes from purchasing a cheap shirt from Wal-Mart or a similar store. The shame is outsourced overseas and behind closed doors. If the economic system were more transparent, do you think people would still shop at Wal-Mart? Would the guilt set in?
It seems to me that the economic system is becoming more transparent. Most of us have seen Food Inc., we all know what it means when a label on our cheap shirt says Made in Sri Lanka, and on some level we know that the natural ecosystem pictured on our bottled water has probably been polluted with plastic bottles. Yet still these things dominate our economy and our closets. For many of us price is a major barrier for others its ignorance. But with all the information out there about the truth behind these products, ignorance is becoming a very thin veil to hide behind. I fear that transparency is not so much the problem as denial and apathy.
ReplyDeleteWhat are y'all talking about????
ReplyDeleteSam's Club? Come on get with it Prof.
ReplyDelete