And here we go again…

It dazzles me how sometimes publicity sells us anything. This week, I saw a new bank’s publicity, of course, where one of its executives was playing ping-pong against an oriental worker, inside an industrial fabric with all the other oriental workers cheering up around them… the executive – the occidental guy – wins the match and the judge decides that all the next set of LCD TV Screens fabricated there where going to be sent to the country where the bank of the other guy was. In the next scene, a member of the bank buys a LCD TV Screen with a discount bonus from his bank and says HOW DO THESE GUYS MAKE IT…? And he smiles… happy with his purchase, feeling well.

I am not saying that we do not buy a cool TV, or whatever we need, but we do have to know where the stuff we buy comes from, in order to ALWAYS buy the products that last the most, that have spare parts, those which are multifunctional, which can be recycled, etc. The discounts, and the cheap prices we pay are at the expense of dehumanizing and systematized jobs of the countries with high industrial productivity and high rates of demographic growth, where cheap workforce is available, and the emotional distress of these people little matters in the other side of the globe.

And I am not saying you shouldn´t buy sneakers, but if you do, then use them until the wear off from the inside out. If you think I am being a little bit extreme or pessimist, give yourself a couple of minutes to watch “Manufactured Landscapes” which reveals the changes in landscapes due to industrial labor and manufacture. It is a documentary about the photographer Edward Burtynsky, who spent 10 years taking pictures of several natural resources extraction sites and their manufacture fabrics. It is a seldom spoken documentary, but its images are profound, and disturbing in a very subtle way.

These images bring consciousness on how we extract our resources in an excessive manner. And more disturbing still, it leaves me thinking of how many people of our same age are working under those conditions. It makes me want to do something, to – at least – keep on writing…

Burtynsky - Oil Workers

Although I always point out the turning point industrial revolution meant two hundred years behind to our society and our actual system, Ricardo Natalicio, Ecoportal.net’s Director, wrote and excellent article on the relationship between the extraction of resources and Europe’s arrival to America more than five hundred years ago… Indeed, it is time for us to Be again.

Power Hug!

Brian Longstaff

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