Examined Life and Money

Sorry for the late post, everyone, but I just found the blog. It seemed odd why there were not posts on TraditionCritique: my mistake!! In response to the film Examined Life, the question that particularly compelled me to explore is how do we spend our money? I feel we can address this issue from two perspectives: as an ethical, global citizen and as a member of the university community.

As a global citizen, or even more specifically, a citizen of a capitalist economy, we have one real element of agency to make change: how we choose to spend money. Social democracy dangles the carrot of change through formal elections, but since less than half of the population votes in North America, this clearly isn’t an apt assessment of the collective voice. Further, many stipulations complicate the voting process, which ultimately undermine the democratic function and forces a citizen to look elsewhere for real effective change. Where we choose to spend our money, on the other hand, provides an impactful and immediate consequence that will challenge larger power structures at the core. Peter Singer underscores this point when he provides an ethical paradox about whether to save the downing child in putrid, shallow water, thereby ruining a pair of shoes, or donating the money from the potentially ruined shoes to a humanitarian organization, such as Oxfam or Unicef, and save a few children in a starving country instead of the one in the shallow water. This ethical dilemma accentuates the power of our consumer choices in a larger, global context, in that buying something can have more global impact than be initially perceived. One can also look at the corporate food industry, where a handful of multi-national-corporate farms own the means to most of the food production in North America and also much of the world. If people continually support these large conglomerates, by shopping at Safeway or Walmart, for example, then we will continually perpetuate an unhealthy and unsustainable cycle of food supply that will affect everyone. This means that every time we purchase food, we are voting. Every time we buy a pair of shoes, we are voting. Every time we spend money in a free-market economy, we are voting. If more people discern where their money is spent, the more power these votes will have in the social collective and then naturally extend to government, industry, education, and social policy. Singer highlights this ethical question by demonstrating that each individual on such a profound level contains significant ability to induce social change.

This takes me to the second point: how does this ethical question relate to the university? Does the money we spend on tuition support unhealthy and non-generative practices? Are we supporting a corporate monopoly by furthering our education and, consequently, working within that industry? Even though we disagree with how the university functions and potentially chooses to spend money, are we nevertheless complicit in these outcomes? These are some of the questions that have come up for me when reflecting upon the film. As we have discussed in class, and in other readings, such as the “Emancipated Spectator” and Love the Questions, there are clearly policies directing the state of the university that are problematic and ultimately inadequate in order to achieve democratic equality. Perhaps the university cannot function in this mode any longer, but the question still remains as to whether or not we will support such an institution with our tuition, intellectual property, and communal support. Is it ethical, then, to spend money on an institution where we don’t support the overall mission and financial practices?

Turning briefly to Michael Hardt, does this relationship with the university address the need for a revolution where existing forms of authority are removed? If so, how would this occur? I would tend to agree with Hardt, insomuch as the new revolution is purely economic as opposed to violent or publically demonstrative. Quite possibly, the new revolution consists in the ability of the collective to function in unity toward greater financial responsibility, although the power of this revolution begins and ends with how the consumer chooses to disperse income. “What happens when you interrogate yourself?”, asks Cornel West of the Socratic imperative. Multiple revolutions begin within each and everyone where there exists creative methods to establish change. Where we spend our money is only one possible revolution, but it’s a big one.