The personal is NOT political – (I)- Shopping is rebellious!
Sorry for all the feminists who have found one of their precious quotes disrupted. It is basically going to be about “green” shopping, pornography, marriage, and freedom of choice. Mixed in by a generous dose of ranting.
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“The personal is political” is one of those hip quotes everyone even slightly left uses. Basically, it is used to mean: “You shouldn’t do anything before thinking of the deep political implications connected to it”. Never having read the feminist book the quotation springs from, I have no idea if this was the original meaning; I was told it meant that women’s problems come from the political world.
This is, sadly, not how it is used today – as it is a means to criticise personal choices and events in one’s life.
I) Shopping is rebellious!
Want to buy a piece of soap? You have to choose a brand that is known for not hurting anybody’s rights, be environmentally friendly, and possibly including Marx’s “Das Kapital” with every damn package.
It seems perfectly reasonable – if everybody bought Commie Soap, all the evil capitalists soap brands would be destroyed by their lack of funds. You can buy your way to the revolution!
Problem number one: there is no Commie Soap. There are probably brands that focus on the hippie target in your city as well, but they are usually owned by the very same guys that make Evil Soap. I’ve been told that it sometimes is made in the very same factories, but I doubt it.
Problem number two: Even if you did find a brand of every kind of product that has absolutely no ties with unethical behaviour, it surely won’t come at the same price – can the people afford the revolution? Are we sure that we want ethics, morality and political ideas bound to a cost?
It is my opinion that it’s not what’s on your shopping cart to define you as a person. It’s alright if some choices of yours influence what you want to buy – a vegan not buying leather, etc.
But focussing so much on something trivial like this seems suicidal – what would you have thought if people in the USSR boycotted the government-produced stuff? They would have remained with bare hands. This is just like trying to boycott profit-driven industries here, today. This is just as ridiculous as you and your “green” soap.
When connected with the daily expenses thought, this “pc shopping” just means that multinationals have found a way to sell clean consciences to the leftist middle class. I personally admit they’re crafty, the fuckers.
Buy what you need, you probably have little choice already. Is it so complicated?
Maybe it is. I think that people, exspecially in the left wing, tend to feel blamed for everything negative in the world.
It’s not your fault if the world is in crap, people. Your car consumes a bit too much? Will it ever consume as much as the places the cars were made in, in the first place? You feel responsible for the workers in the third world? Isn’t it obvious that the industry and the system are the ones responsible, and you just happened to be born in a more privileged part of the world? You think that women deserve more than this society wants to give them? Well, no reason to feel guilty to have a penis, now is it?
