What the Ten Commandments (Sort of) Got Right:
Thoughts on Ethical Consumerism
By Nicholas Sokol
If you are reading this essay, there is a good chance that you are wealthy by global standards. At the very least, you live in a wealthy society that affords you the luxury to select between more or less ethical choices when it comes to buying things. The problem is that making these choices is often difficult and requires a lot of time and effort, and not all of us can be moral philosophers. In fact, even moral philosophers can’t be moral philosophers twenty-four hours a day. Faced with this daunting fact, even the most well-intentioned of us might be tempted to let the whole project fall to the wayside and simply do whatever is most expedient in the moment. Over the centuries countless attempts have been made to address this dilemma. The most famous of these in western culture is probably the ten commandments, which among other things, counsels us to love our neighbors, and not to kill anyone. It’s a good start, but it doesn’t do much to help us decide which brand of shirt to buy, or where we should go out for dinner. Perhaps we were never meant to reach this level of beneficence, but given our unique place in history, I believe it is our duty to try.
If you having been paying any attention to the movement towards ethical consumerism in recent years, you have probably felt yourself pulled in a millions directions at once. With the level of information that is now available to the average consumer, we are discovering more and more the hidden suffering that can be left in the wake of an ordinary activity like buying a shirt. Whether it’s boycotting this or that restaurant chain, or avoiding clothes made in certain countries, or limiting certain kinds of animal products, there are certainly a lot of opportunities for following the “do less harm” principle in our day-to-day shopping. Of course these are only a few of the opportunities that exist, and each of these has its own set of complex considerations. For example, you may find that agricultural, or textile workers in a developing nation may be treated poorly (by our standards) by the company that supplies you with underwear. But with a little more research you may realize that the people being employed by the company in question may have had no other options for work, and that the quality and stability of their lives has been improved by having even a substandard job. Or for another example, you may avoid purchasing vegetables that are imported from other countries due to the environmental cost of transport. But the environmental cost may be a wash if you are instead replacing these purchases with items from local temperature-controlled growhouses. The point is that it is difficult to make these kinds of ethical evaluations unless you truly have all the pertinent information. And even then, the information can change so quickly as to make your previous research irrelevant.
I’ll just add a quick note here that when I frame the issue of choosing one purchase over another, it is implied that making some purchase must be necessary. But there may be some minimalists in the audience shaking their heads and rightly noting that sometimes the best thing to do is to avoid making a purchase all together. If you want to do good with your money, why not avoid buying anything besides the very bare essentials, and donate the rest to charity? The counterargument to this is that the spending of some money contributes to the economy and the general affluence of our society which has given us the luxury to make choices in the first place. Certainly sacrificing some excess comforts for the sake of raising the standard of living for someone less fortunate is a wonderful thing to do. But let’s not forget that it is our privilege at this time and place in the history of human civilization to even have the luxury of considering such choices. I don’t believe we should be tempted, as some are, to throw away everything that is so wonderful about living in a wealthy society in the name of dragging the whole world’s standard of living down to some ideal of equality.
Now assuming that we are going to make the choice to purchase some item, whether needed or not, how do we go about deciding what to do? One way to go about it is to evaluate each purchase on a case by case basis. Keep resources handy for looking up dubious items, and make these kinds of decisions on the fly. The downside to this method is that it takes a lot of energy and concentration. I think for most of us, this kind of effort is not sustainable in the long term. When we don’t have the information in hand, or when we are tired or rushed, we will be unlikely to keep up the effort needed to keep evaluating our purchases.
A better way to go about this project is to take a little time to examine the various ways in which harm is caused by our consumerism, and pick one or two of the worst offenders. Then we can establish a simple rule, to be followed all of the time, which will have the effect of reducing the net harm caused by our consumerism. For example, I have given up almost all animal products because I think they represent some of the worst violations of the dignity of life, as well as being terrible for the environment. I no longer have to scratch my head over which brand of chicken was best raised, I just don’t buy any of them ever. You don’t have to go full vegan to follow this principle. You could simply pick a single animal product (or other ethically dubious item) that you feel that you could do without, and then simply decide never to buy it again. This idea works under the assumption that it is better to make a single decision that will reduce the harm of our purchases for the rest of our lives, than to sporadically put out a lot of effort towards making kinder purchases overall.
Another good example is a friend of mine who decided that he wanted to move towards a zero waste lifestyle which would be better for the environment. His work required him to travel and eat out a lot, so he decided to carry reusable silverware with him everywhere he went, and to always ask for no plastic straws. Instead of having to constantly make the decision to try and generate less trash every day, he made a simple decision that he could easily implement on constant basis without having to think about it. The beauty of both these examples is that not only are they simple and easy to implement, they are not subject to the rapid change in information. Unless it is discovered that cows enjoy being slaughtered, or that plastic is good for ocean life, using reusable silverware and avoiding animal products are always going to be a nice thing to do.
If you’re like me you probably say that you want to be a conscientious consumer, but the truth is that you only sometimes want to be a conscientious consumer. The rest of the time we just want to live our lives. That’s why devising and adopting generally applicable rules for shopping can be such an effective way to reduce the harm of our purchases for the long term. By this I don’t mean to imply that we shouldn’t succumb to the whims of our better angels and do more good when we feel like it. But having a couple of guidelines to mindlessly follow the rest of the time can establish a base of moral behavior that has the potential to do a lot of good, in a way, behind our backs. While I no longer consider myself religious, I won’t hesitate to give credit to many religions for having figured all of this out long ago. Of course some of the rules of religion cover complex ethical material that can’t possibly be governed effectively by a single rule (like “thou shalt not kill”), but the takeaway for me is that if the rule is generalizable enough, people can follow it day to day without having to think, and hopefully behave better for it.
In closing I’d like to challenge everyone to spend some time examining their purchasing habits and determine which of them may be causing potential harm. Or perhaps you have already thought about this before and you are now feeling pangs of guilt for the steps you have already not taken. In either case, let’s find one change we can easily make forever, and take one more step towards the goal of doing the least harm.
