Skip to main content

Coveting

Having coveted diamonds in the past and an iPhone now, reading this Guardian story on how chemicals involved in the manufacture of the Apple devices makes me wonder about the nature coveting in general. To gratify the impulse of some, many must suffer untold miseries - blood diamonds or n-hexane iPhones, it is not that different in the end.
Once you become aware of the what goes into creating the object of your desire, you have one of two ways to possess it - have it weigh on your conscience but feel incapable of resisting the urge to possess or agree to feel nonchalant about another's suffering and a little less human in the process.
I remember feeling this way about wearing glass bangles in my teens. As much as I loved them, I could not in good conscience buy or wear them. Yet, I did own several dozen, brightly colored glass bangles, succumbed to occasional temptation to buy something that caught my fancy. It was always a difficult experience always wearing them. I did not submit to the desire for diamonds.

Comments

ggop said…
First off yes I wonder why is hexane used so widely? Recently the chemical caught my eye because veggie burgers made of soy are washed in a hexane bath.

http://www.naturalnews.com/028683_soy_burgers_hexane.html

Having spoken to some of the people who travel back and forth to the factories - there is more to the story than meets the eye. In general, those factories will do their own thing. Enforcement is a challenge. Consumers will definitely be willing to pay few dollars more to ensure better conditions.

Greenpeace shamed Apple to making a greener laptop in the past. Probably its time to get them involved in this cause. And while they are at it, hope the burger manufacturers (Amy's Kitchen has taken initiative) dump hexane too.

Popular posts from this blog

Part Liberated Woman

An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t

Cheese Making

I never fail to remind J that there is a time and place for everything. It is possibly the line she will remember me by when I am dead and gone given how frequently she hears it. Instead of having her breakfast she will break into a song and dance number from High School Musical well past eight on Monday morning. She will insist that I watch and applaud the performance instead of screaming at her to finish her milk and cereal. Her sense of occasion is seriously lacking but then so is mine. Consider for example, a person walks into the grocery store with the express purpose of buying detergent because they are fresh out of it and laundry is only half way done. However instead of heading straight for detergent, they wander over to the natural foods aisle and go berserk upon finding goat milk on sale for a dollar a gallon. They at once proceed to stock pile so they can turn it to huge quantities home-made feta cheese. That person would be me. It would not concern me in the least that I ha

Under Advisement

Recently a desi dude who is more acquaintance less friend called to check in on me. Those who have read this blog before might know that such calls tend to make me anxious. Depending on how far back we go, there are sets of FAQs that I brace myself to answer. The trick is to be sufficiently evasive without being downright offensive - a fine balancing act given the provocative nature of questions involved. I look at these calls as opportunities for building patience and tolerance both of which I seriously lack. Basically, they are very desirous of finding out how I am doing in my personal and professional life to be sure that they have me correctly categorized and filed for future reference. The major buckets appear to be loser, struggling, average, arrived, superstar and uncategorizable. My goal needless to say, is to be in the last bucket - the unknown, unquantifiable and therefore uninteresting entity. Their aim is to pull me into something more tangible. So anyways, the dude in ques