Meditation for March 26th
Blood Diamonds
A lot of attention has been given to blood diamonds, or conflict diamonds. These are diamonds that are from war-torn countries and help pay for the violent warfare. Visions of child soldiers lugging AK-47s through the savannah come to mind.
People look at skipping the diamond engagement ring in fear of funding genocide. They want to be conscientious global consumers and not put their money into dirty stones.
Blood diamonds account for 4% of the global diamond market. This means people are freaking out about almost nothing.
Some of these people will go out and drink alcohol, bum an American Spirit yellow, and if the party is lit, snort a bump of cocaine.
100% of the world’s cocaine market is blood cocaine. In a war-torn country, a farmer tends his crop under the watchful eye of a man with a gun, either representing the fascist paramilitary or the socialist guerrilla brigade. That crop gets processed by women and children who have to remain naked so they don’t steal any powder. Then the goods are transported by land or by sea to Mexico, where an oppressive cartel takes advantage of the immigrants heading to America for a new start. Still, they have to run across the desert with a balloon of Coke shoved in uncomfortable holes. Gangs then buy the pure stuff and kill each other over the right to sell the cocaine to white privilege kids who are just having a great night out.
Everything you buy has a price. Nothing is as pure as the white driven snow because the narco cartel is literally invading the SW United States to make sure the driven white snow ends up in your hipster ass nose. The shoes you wear, the pants you sag, the coffee you drink, the music you listen to, and how you listen to it is fucking someone out of a decent life.
Other things that have a higher percentage of being of conflict origins: oil, the battery in your iPhone, the battery in your electric car, natural gas, helium, rare earths and minerals, computer chips, bananas, and a plethora of other things that come from the four horsemen of death, famine, war, and conquest. Your life is as convenient as it is because of other people getting totally fucked and murdered.
Have fun with your stuff because it had to cost someone a good part of their quality of life for you to have it.
Prayer
Gordon Gekko,
As you watch your portfolio,
Help me forget what had to happen for me to have this awesome pair of running shoes.
I’m training for a marathon because I deserve it!
But someone told me that someone had to make these shoes.
Someone made my marathon training shoes in poor conditions.
In a country next to the one that has no rain, mine the minerals that make Prius and iPhone batteries.
Across the sea from the country that makes the yoga pants that I literally wear every day because they are so comfortable!
I don’t really want to know how bad it is.
I heard that it’s better now, not like when shoe companies and name-brand clothing companies first got caught using low-wage third-world labor.
I really want to train for my marathon so I can get my 26.2 sticker on the back of my RAV4.
Please let me forget that my privileged lifestyle isn’t really helping anyone.
Craft
This is a general craft. Make and grow everything. Don’t ever buy anything just because a company says it’s ethical; that company wants to survive and thrive financially. That means it has to put its goal ahead of people and dolphins. Dolphins are smart and cute, but these clicking, smelly assholes can cut a man’s profit. Flipper is a soulless commie.
Goal
You can buy anything you want, but you have to understand that everything has a consequence. How you consume affects people you will never meet. Buying stuff at a mall in Houston, Texas, is making a kid never see his mom in Indonesia. The kid either begins helping the heroin trade that ultimately kills some kid hanging out in the same mall in Houston, or starts making yoga pants so some young woman can train for a marathon.
100% of marathons are conflict marathons.