Ethical fashion

A friend asked me for my thoughts on "ethical fashion" for a magazine article she is writing... These were my thoughts:

First of all you should check out these fun and educational animated cartoons:

http://www.storyofstuff.org/movies-all/story-of-stuff/
http://www.storyofstuff.org/movies-all/story-of-cosmetics/
etc

There are three main issues: environmental waste; mistreatment of workers, especially in the Third World; and the hypnotism of the media that keeps people yearning for new stuff - what my favorite political philosopher Antonio Negri calls "the production of subjectivity."

An incredible documentary, if you want to learn about what has happened all over the world, is "Life and Debt," about how International Monetary Fund (IMF) practices led to a decimation of local industries in Jamaica, essentially turning the country into a slave plantation or serfdom after they had won a level of self-sufficiency and independence over time. International policies created "free enterprise zones" where corporations set up factories for clothes and other goods, and even shipped in Asian workers although the Jamaicans were practically starving. They also destroyed the local dairy industry by forcing them to import American dairy and powdered milk that is heavily subsidized to be cheaper than the competition. This is all common practice and "Life and Debt" makes it crystal clear.

So to address these:

1. Environmental waste: A lot of practices in the fashion industry are environmentally destructive, for instance the bleaches and dyes used for jeans. The mining of precious minerals creates a lot of misery in countries around the world, and destroys local environments. The manufacturing of artificial fibers such as polyester and other plastics releases toxins, consumes energy, and ultimately ends up caught in the ecosystem, causing cancers and affecting the balance of our hormones and our endocrine system. Packaging in general is a big problem. There are vast islands in the ocean that consist of mounds of our plastic waste. As this stuff degrades, it gets into the fish, who we then eat. Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, and Theo Colburn, Our Stolen Future, have written extensively on all of this.

The solution is to develop alternatives in terms of manufacturing processes and raw materials that are non-destructive to the environment. An amazing book on this possibility is Cradle to Cradle by William McDonogue. Working with a chemist, they discuss how alternatives to destructive chemicals could be found for every industry. Natural dyes, etc. The ideal is "closed loop manufacturing": manufacturing items that the company takes care of "from cradle to cradle," throughout its lifestyle. For instance imagine that Apple/Chanel was responsible for disposing or recycling all of the components it makes, rather than allowing people to just dump them anywhere.

Obviously resources should be renewable, and obviously less energy is used if the products are locally sourced and made.

You might call up Patagonia and talk to them. I heard a talk by their CEO a few years ago and it was impressive. One thing they have done is instituted a program where with some garments, you can return them once they get worn and they will recycle the fabric. They at least make an effort to move toward closed loop and reduce their carbon footprint - though the CEO admitted their footprint was still huge.

2. Worker mistreatment: I don't know how you feel about it, but I feel very uneasy to consider that 10 - 16 year olds in Third World countries are making a lot of our fashionable goods - our sneakers and clothes and bags and whatnot. Often they work 12 hour days, receive no educational opportunities, and they do this for many years. At the same time, those kinds of manufacturing jobs have been moved out of First World countries for the most part, because it is far cheaper for companies to set up shop in the Third World, leaving lower income people with little to do, leading to poverty, disenfranchisement, and unhappiness in our societies.

As an aside, I totally disagree with economists like Jeffrey Sachs (Bono's friend) that this is a great opportunity for them to get out of poverty. In fact, I don't think poverty really existed in the same way in tribal cultures, or over most of the world 500 years ago, and I think the past of humanity has been totally rewritten and revised by modern economists to support an ideology of a one-way linear progress. When I visit tribal people who are relatively uncorrupted by our modern mentality, I find they are entirely content (happier than we are) and self-sufficient to live with essentially nothing that they don't truly need, except maybe a few ceremonial objects. I think a lot of modern economics is very ideologically driven and based on a series of artfully constructed lies that props up a globally ruinous system.

The answer to this is not simple. I think we need to have a systemic paradigm shift where we reconsider the point or basis of our economic activity and our work in general, and redirect the productive energy of society as a whole. The fact is - as many thinkers such as Buckminster Fuller realized (his book Utopia or Oblivion is great and short) - starting in the 1940s after World War Two, the development of technical efficiency and automation should have led to people working less - to the institution of a leisure-based society where people could continue to learn and explore throughout their lives, where, over time, the entire human population was guaranteed a basic subsidization so survival would no longer be a desperate struggle for billions of people (a kind of "Marshall Plan" for humanity as a whole). Instead, we increased economic inequity and used fear as a weapon - fear of the Communists or the Terrorists or the immigrants - to keep people subservient to a destructive status quo.

The reformist idea is that we simply put laws around corporations so they guarantee worker protections, health care, etc. - This is all the stuff unions were trying to do across the entire Twentieth Century, but as governments were captured by financial and corporate interests, the union movement has been limited or often destroyed. Workers face the problem that if they mobilize, companies that employ them will move their operations overseas.

One possibility is for a consumer awareness movement to develop: where people awaken to the destructive environmental and social effects of various corporation products, and only buy from those companies that improve their practices and use transparency so their claims can be vindicated or rejected. This would be similar to the movement to move money out of destructive banks, but applied to fashion, tech products, etc. Unfortunately, the precious minerals used in Blackberries, laptops, etc are mined in Africa where their extraction has led to the death of 3 million people in genocidal wars. These minerals are called "conflict minerals." If tech companies designed their stuff so it was modular and recyclable, it would be much better on every level. It might not look as slick however.

3. The media and the "production of subjectivity"

The media is a vast system of indoctrination that makes people feel disempowered, cynical, nihilistic - and in fact it makes them feel cool and special for not taking responsibility, for having a "fuck everything" mentality, for looking after themselves and not caring about other people or the fate of the planet as a whole. I wrote about this in one of my Dazed columns on the media construct of the hipster:

http://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/11176/1/daniel-pinchb...

Unless we change people's consciousness and their level of awareness about what is happening on the earth, there is really no hope of any positive transformation.

The whole mechanism works by making people believe they are highly individualistic and have chosen to be cynical and irresponsible out of a superiority over others. We sympathize, for instance, with hip hop music that degrades women or pop music that is infantile because it allows us to continue to maintain our sense that disempowerment is somehow "cool," and also the false belief that a purely cultural rebellion is enough. Individuality is identified with rebellion - rebellion from the earth, really, in favor of supporting a corporate suicide machine.

Every time we buy a product that is part of the corporate machinery and has a negative social and ecological impact, we know deep down that we are colluding with this willful destruction, but we have internalized the destruction. The media and the education system are designed to keep people from learning how to think or reason independently, so they maintain docile subservience to a set of meaningless beliefs. It is even "uncool" to think or to reason. It is now kind of cool for people to say "I have ADD" and for that reason they can't take the time to think about the consequences of their actions or the obvious future of our civilization if it continues on this path.

Once people are disempowered, their sense of self-worth comes from products they identify with or want to own or consume to fill their inner void. They can then be sold anything that will make them feel some sense of self worth or beauty, however temporarily. Capitalism depends on constant over-consumption and incessant competition, even though this omnivorous over-consumption has nothing to do with the material basis of the planet, which is a finite and increasingly fragile whole system. Unfortunately for the fashion industry as it now is, what we would ultimately want would be for people to consume far less, but much better. Or make stuff for themselves, or buy from friends who make it. Or at least buy locally.

Obviously one of the biggest problems we face now is accelerating climate change (no winter in NY this winter). This is going to require, if we don't want to be under water within a few decades or less, a massive reduction in carbon emissions. This means that until we develop free energy or cars that run on sea water (both possible), we need to reduce our transport. A lot of the fashion industry involves transport of goods and finished products all over the world. I know nobody wants to hear or believe this, but we are basically going to have to slow down in the amount we make, ship, and consume. We will either do this voluntarily (have you heard of the "voluntary simplicity" movement) or it will traumatically forced upon us at some point. It is obvious that governments are not able to regulate this, so it needs a people's movement to spread that does share this realization: one reason I support Occupy.

From my perspective, another crucial part of the shift in consciousness is also toward realizing that there are psychic and spiritual dimensions to our lives: that this life is not necessarily all there is, but we may have souls that exist before and after this life. I believe there is tremendous evidence that supports this alternative worldview - we discussed some of it in terms of personal experience when we first met. Therefore, we have a much greater stake in making our world into a better place: not just for our children (though that is reason enough), but because the future destiny of our incarnating soul is, quite possibly, connected with this earth.

I believe that the media can be repurposed to construct a different kind of "subjectivity," that the same tools that are now used to limit consciousness and restrict awareness could be repurposed to awaken people to their interconnectedness and their responsibility to be stewards of all life (as native people see themselves). I think in fact this could happen quite quickly, as the current situation is highly unnatural and people are more innately altruistic and compassionate than our system lets us realize. I like aspects of the Transition Town movement from the UK, which puts out the idea of re-education and re-skilling people for a world that is no longer providing us with endless resources, free of charge, or endless cheap energy. To make this shift we have to become more oriented toward building local community, making stuff locally, more "DIY," etc. We also have to bite the bullet and make our actions align with our highest intentions, and no longer accept degraded substitutes because they are easy or cheap.

So... those are some of my thoughts... let me know what you think, and what other questions occur to you.