Doh.

So this typically isn’t my style, but whatever. Was reading this yesterday:

Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming upon you. Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days. Look! The wages you failed to pay the workmen who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter.[a] You have condemned and murdered innocent men, who were not opposing you.

James 5 : 1 – 6

Now, I’m the kind of guy who realizes a few things:

1. Crap, I’m rich. I’m not pullin’ down 6 digits or anything, but pullin’ down 5 digits provides a standard of living many, many, many times greater than 75% of the population of the world, which qualifies me as “rich.”

2. James starts by saying this, “…you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming upon you.“… this means I’m gonna need a pretty sweet loophole to not be applied-to in this clause.

3. Where’s my loophole? Flippin’ sweet, there it is! “The wages you failed to pay the workmen who mowed your fields are crying out against you.” and “You have condemned and murdered innocent men, who were not opposing you.”, woohoo! I don’t have any workmen, and I have not condemned or murdered innocent men.

But then I realized something. It doesn’t have to be my workers. Every time I swipe my good ole’ little credit card and buy something from a company that does this type of behavior, if I have means to know about it (which, given the Internet, seems likely), I’m just as guilty as they are.

Don’t get me wrong. This isn’t a namby-pamby rallying cry that all businesses that make money are horrible, and we should go do protests at anyone who’s stock price went up by 0.1% today. Believe me, for a long time, I simply believed this sort of problem (which are listed below), weren’t my problem, and that the black eye companies would get as exploitative stuff like this got exposed would be enough of a threat to prevent it from happening, or at least from happening to extreme degrees.

It’s just not that simple. The American culture is completely insulated from the rest of the world, and its quite easy to not know (or care) if oppression resulted in the production of the item I bought last week. In fact, if it was, how would anyone find out? The oppressed have no voice, THATS WHY THEY ARE OPPRESSED. “Voting with your wallet” is such a cliche’, but what other options do we have?

Here’s an example (which alot of you probably won’t like, and will likely be up in arms about), Ten Reasons Why You Should Never Accept a Diamond Ring from Anyone, Under Any Circumstances, Even If They Really Want to Give You One – before you click this link, keep in mind that a third of these reasons (reasons 1-3), right off the bat, are just diamond companies being shrewd, and developing a desire for their product. The other two-thirds – if even half-truths – are heartbreaking – especially if the diamond I purchased for my [at the time] girlfriend just over two years ago contributed to such things.

Now I don’t want to get bogged down in this link, it makes its point well enough, but it’s point isn’t MY point. My point is this – just because we don’t crack a whip on a room/mine full of underpaid, exploited workers in a distant country, doesn’t mean we are immediately absolved of responsibility. What we can do? Much. How that plays itself out in our own lives may vary – for example, consider these guys – The Fairtrade Foundation – they work to ensure farmers receive a fair value for their goods, which on this site include: fruit, coffee, cotton, rice, wine, beer, tea, sugar, and several other products. They then have those products sold in certain locations, which you can lookup on their site (note this is the British site, I’m sure there is a U.S. equivalent).

As for diamonds… lets have a few moments of honesty. Even if you read the link about not buying diamonds, it alone is probably not even gonna come close to preventing you from buying/receiving a diamond ring if you had already decided you wanted to. You can come up with 100 justifications about how your one diamond doesn’t matter, you couldn’t see the jeweler you bought your diamond from allowing such horrible things to happen, you think the people who wrote that link have an agenda that isn’t stated… whatever your reason, if you aren’t married yet, chances are, you’re gonna end up buying or giving diamond in the future. So where can you responsibly buy a diamond?

Keep in mind, looking up this information, per jeweler, took about 3 minutes. On the Jared – The Galleria of Jewelry site I found a link to the The Council For Responsible Jewellery Practices, as well as this statement:

For any product fabricated from rough diamonds mined from January 1, 2003 onward, the seller warrants that the diamonds have been purchased from legitimate sources not involved in funding conflict and are in compliance with United Nations Resolutions. The seller hereby guarantees that the diamonds are conflict free, based on personal knowledge and/or written guarantees provided by the supplier of these diamonds.

That is just a statement, but its better than not saying anything. It also addresses several of the numbered items (items 8-10) in the list of why to not accept a diamond.

Sadly, a thoroughly perusal of The Shane Company’s policies online (note: this is where I bought the wife’s diamond) only turned up this statement:

We support all sanctions on countries that sell diamonds to fund civil wars. We will NOT do business with any person or company who does not share this commitment.

Again, I suppose its better than nothing. It’s not real reassuring to me, because typing something and doing something are worlds apart.

This stuff is getting to me. It makes me want to weep to know that something that caused my wife such joy (her ring) could have even potentially caused scores of people much pain and misery. How can that be? How can we be so insulated from the world in the U.S.? How could I have gotten so wrapped up in settings, and how to propose, and the color, the size, the cut, the clarity, and it never even occured to me to ask about how the diamond was obtained and processed?

I’ve spoken on this long enough for one day. It does however lead me into another topic – besides making responsible purchases, there is something I can do, and that’s go. I may not be able to stop the practices of companies who exploit and oppress their workers (that is, sin), but I can make a difference in the lives of the individuals being sinned against, by serving to their basic human needs. Water, food, medical care – you name it. More on this in a few days, or tomorrow, I don’t know.

Not really feeling like a funny link, so heres something that falls into the informative/kinda morbid/strangely funny/etc category, if that can be a category – oops.