Just Ask Questions!

A young, unknown Abraham Lincoln was bumping in a carriage along a muddy rutted road. Lincoln was the guest of future U.S. Senator Edward Baker. In a discussion of altruism, Lincoln stated he thought all men are selfishly motivated. Some time later, Lincoln heard the distressed cry of a mother pig (either the sow or her piglets were stuck, accounts vary.) Lincoln stopped the carriage and trudged through the muck to free and unify the mother and piglets. When a muddy Lincoln returned, an amused Baker remarked, ‘Now, Abe, where does selfishness come in this little episode?’ Lincoln replied, ‘Why, bless your soul, Ed, that was the very essence of selfishness. I would have had no peace of mind all day had I gone on and left that suffering old sow worrying over those pigs. I did it for peace of mind, don’t you see?’ “No person shall… be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself,” — Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

I connected the dots on something today! I should have done it earlier. You’ll have to excuse me, I’m a little slow.

I ask questions. I want to know big things and seemingly small details about the packaging materials I use. Before bringing to you a product I will know if my product contains compounds that are harmful to you, your natural world and profitable reuse.

As a general rule ninety percent of what happens to a product after use is in the hands of the manufacturer. By the time a product is in the customers’ hands the course is set. The customer cannot alter material realities. No amount of customer washing and sorting will make plastic recyclable in meaningful amounts. No washing or wishing will remove PFAS. PFAS is forever. And toxic. And accumulates in our bodies…

To set good outcomes in motion you must first know. That means you must be A) omniscient, or B) ask questions. Being omniscient would be easier. Company reps usually don’t like to field questions. I get snippy replies. Mostly, I just get silence. My questions hit topics for which companies are commercially and, perhaps in time, legally liable. No wonder there is a culture of carefully guarded and willful silence.

I would forsake my peace of mind if I did not ask the difficult questions and hold the line for better outcomes. I wrote this to a supplier the other day— “To advocate people compost this I must know. People grow their food in compost. I need this to be okay with me. It doesn't matter if the customer knows. I know. And it roils my mind.” I would have had no peace of mind if I slink to allow harm to pass to you. I do it for peace of mind, don’t you see?

What are the reasons for this culture of silence? In my experience you stand to lose things–friends, partners, advocates, professional stature. You could lose employment. Faced with painful sanctions, people hide from the truth. Worse, corporate organizations compartmentalize truth. Scientists know. But they are thwarted and neatly cordoned off from salespeople. Salespeople eagerly and unknowingly sell PFAS for wildly irresponsible single-use applications. We bathe our receipts in bisphenol S, a hormone disrupter linked to reproductive issues, cancer, and chronic illness. Why? We need healthy development. We don't need indestructible receipts. This is, in a word, stupid. It’d be malevolent if the malevolence weren’t tempered by awing stupidity.

There is no Fifth Amendment in packaging. If you refuse to answer I presume the premise of my question is substantially true. It’s a prudent assumption.

The funny thing that enables shitty packaging is that the harms are inscrutable. Medical science cannot trace the origins of cellular damage whether it results in metabolic disease or cancer. Our diagnostic ability is not that precise. So keep to the packaging credo of silence. If these compounds are a problem the customer will never know our contribution to the problem.

If I am the one to judge (a fretful proposition!), people lack the courage and character to face their role in a moral wrong. They lack the values to judge something wrong. Or, if they judge something wrong, they lack the courage to align their values and actions. We borrow the ostrich’s head-in-the-sand strategy. In defense of people who just play it cool, the sanctions are real. They are hard on a soul to endure. I endured only because I have the grace of a bee and the financial independence she affords. I have the soul sustenance of a loving family.

There is another possibility for the dominance of the culture of silence–the ascendence of amoralism. To some people money is the goal. How money is earned is not important. The flaunting, the bling, the exclusion of the other is important. These are people to whom good sums are more than goodness. They are a substantial number and their influence is disproportionate. Their ethic, or no ethic at all, seems ascendant in our land.

As for me, I don't have the right to choose known harms for you. Assuming that power for myself tramples on you. It runs afoul of the Golden Rule. I have no right to pollute your world and you. PFAS and plastic are that.

In Power of the Powerless, Czech playwright, dissent and elder statesman Vaclav Havel tells a story of how authoritarianism turns all but the intrepid few into agents of its perpetuation. “[They adapt] to the conditions in which they live, but in doing so, they help to create those conditions. They do what is done, what is to be done, what must be done, but at the same time—by that very token—they confirm that it must be done… They conform to a particular requirement and in so doing they themselves perpetuate that requirement… Quite simply, each helps the other to be obedient… They are both victims of the system and its instruments.”

I think Havel’s insight applies broader, to culture. In affirming culture, we perpetuate culture.

I dissent for better, healthier innovation. Capitalists always prattle on about how good they are at innovating. Do what you say you are good at doing! Don’t get beat by someone who has answered for the whole of his life’s decades to “the dumb kid/beekeeper.” That would be embarrassing.

Let’s end with an aside.

People sometimes mock me for trying to anchor my actions in high principles. Some people are zealous guardians of the commonplace. But why not try to anchor our conduct in high principles? What are the downsides? I’ll volunteer that I can be a highfalutin asshole, but that is my failing, not a failure of principle. We delivered something good and scalable without any of the privileges common to big business. Imagine how much a nobody gets chewed up, spit out, and booed off stage for asking meaningful but uncomfortable questions. I could not get back up without the mental organization and peace of mind of high principles, Havels and Lincolns included.