...It's what you're buying into. That is a quote from renown philosopher Slavoj Zizek referencing the campaign ran by Starbucks in a video that my roommate put on my Facebook page. My roommate found this talk entitled First As Tragedy, Then As Farce on theRSA.org web site. In this animated portion of his talk, Zizek investigates the surprising ethical implications of charitable giving.
In this talk he examines our current economic capitalism, which he calls cultural capitalism. He talks about the necessity to bring consumption and anti-consumption together by having the desire to support good causes already included in consumption. Zizek then describes the existence of such practices by saying that if you go to any Starbucks Coffee, "when you buy Starbucks whether you realize it or not you are buying into something bigger than a cup of coffee. You are buying into coffee ethics. Through the Shared Planet Program, we at Starbucks buy more fair trade coffee than any other company in the world ensuring that the farmers who grow the beans receive a fair price for their hard work."
More than just talk about companies like Starbucks and TOM's Shoes, Zizek describes himself as misanthropic and says how charity is not the cure of the disease of poverty. He says that this remedy is part of the disease. These are admirable but misdirected intentions only prolong the suffering. "The real is aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible," is a very bold statement just like "charity degrades and demoralizes." Though Zizek is clear to mention that giving is not inherently bad, it is much better than doing nothing. All in all it is a very thought provoking speech and I would encourage you to watch it.
In addition to the animated version, here is the speech in its entirety:
No comments:
Post a Comment