Eating out in London is a somewhat rare occurrence for me. Most of the menus I order from are written in languages I don't understand and I invariably end up pointing at something and hoping for the best. The fact that I am, mostly, a vegetarian makes this a somewhat risky procedure and I have on more than one occasion been presented with dishes piled high with seared flesh and smothered in what looks like, on close inspection, boiled entrails.Thus the modifier “mostly” prefixing my vegetarianism; as there have been a few occasions where my options were reduced to 1) eat some kind of meat or 2) go hungry and I'm afraid my moral fibers are not wound tight enough for the latter.
Fortunately for me, experiences like the above are rare. I usually dine out with a local who can either translate or explain to the waiter, indignantly, that I am one of those animal rights freaks who is a bit unstable and unhealthy so could the chef please boil an old dishcloth for me. There are a few countries, France, Spain and Italy, where I can usually fumble my way to the one non-meat item on the menu. This, for some reason I have yet to fathom, is almost always a plate of grilled mixed vegetables served limp and tepid.
I was in Copenhagen a month or so back and ordered a “veggie burger” from room service. The girl on the phone who took my order said, “It's not what you think” but didn't elaborate. After I took the metal cover off the plate I found out she was right: between two buns was a pile of, wait for it...grilled mixed vegetables.
Back to that dinner in London. I was out with a rather well put together friend of mine who, for the past five years, I have had a particularly large crush on. She knows this; the feeling, if her actions once she has had one or two rounds of drinks are any indication, seems to be mutual. It's all in good fun, reasonably harmless in a tipsy office Christmas party sort of way and it gives us both the opportunity to play delicious games of flirtation, mingled with meaningful glances over the tops of wine glasses and coffee cups.
On this particular evening we were discussing the seriousness with which a number of our colleagues took their jobs and our industry (advertising, marketing, PR). This stuck us as both quite odd and quite amusing because my friend and I are under the right-thinking, clear-headed, opinion that the social contribution of our entire enterprise ranks somewhere above termites but below woodlice. Note to self: must find out if woodlice pupate into termites.
We see it every day. Otherwise seemingly sane people taking immense pride in developing, producing and giving birth to wall-size adverts for deodorant, ready meals and hair-care products.
“These people need to lighten up.” Said my friend, “It’s not like we’re saving lives.”
Abso-fucking-lutely. We’re not building homes for poor people, we’re not helping disaster victims, we’re not handing out food to the starving- we are selling crap that people don’t need at prices they can’t afford. Not only are we not saving lives, we’re making the world a slightly worse place just by going into work in the morning.
A few weeks ago I found myself at our Hamburg office waiting to be collected from reception. Outside in the car park was nice shiny new Triumph Bonneville and when my colleague arrived he informed me that their office had just won the Triumph account. The sweet irony of a stalwart English brand like Triumph handing their advertising business over to a German agency; not to mention the fact that Triumphs are insufferably cool, made me all warm and fuzzy inside.
“Oh yes,” said my colleague proudly, “we have won several new accounts this year!”
“That's great, what else did you win?”
“Camel cigarettes!” he exclaimed.
Lovely.
It’s difficult for me to recall if I have at any point worked for an ethical industry.
Photojournalism: nope
Gas station attendant for Unocal: nope
Janitor at a Masonic lodge: nope (no minorities allowed)
Used camera buyer: nope
IT Manager for ad agency specializing in pharmaceutical ads: nope
IT Manager for giant advertising and PR company: nope (Bush hired us to “sell the US brand” to Arab countries)
The closet I have come to having an ethically positive job was when I was the equipment tech and assistant manager in the Photo Department of an art college in San Francisco. At least there I did no active harm and actually felt like I was making a positive contribution to the art world.
Today I find myself on a Eurostar to Paris, surrounded by men and women in suits; everyone is busily tapping away on their laptops- working on little charts and graphs or reports which, in the grand scheme of things, contribute nothing at all to the betterment of the planet.
Even those who are trying to lend a hand often get things totally wrong. A perfect example is the $100 laptop project. Let me give you people a clue: if kids are starving, have no access to clean water or sanitation and have lost one or both parents to AIDS, the very last thing they need is a fucking laptop computer. Do you idiots know how much HIV medication $100 will buy you in Africa? How many antibiotics? How much a $100 donation to Doctors Without Boarders can mean to the life someone who will die without proper medical care?
“Good morning, I see that you are dying of dysentery, well today is your lucky day!”
“You brought medicine?”
“Better than that, I have your new laptop!”
It is a mindbogglingly moronic assumption to think that simply making technology available will somehow lift people out of poverty. The affluence of the West is not a result of everyone having a computer at home- having a computer at home is a result of the affluence.
Put the infrastructure in place before you provide the toys. Build homes, schools, water and sewage treatment plants, teach people to read, help them make their crops grow, eliminate governmental corruption, guarantee universal suffrage, provide medical care, give them the hope that they and their children will live past 30. Come back when all that’s done and then I’ll be happy to start handing out the laptops.
My evil ex-girlfriend suffers from this ass-backwards approach to relief work. She and her friend are trying to raise money for a floating library for the kids in Laos. She wants to make books available to even the remotest villages along the Laotian river system. Can’t argue with that can you? Oh, yes, I’m afraid I can.
Just like the $100 laptop people, she is solving the wrong problem. Making books available to people who a) can’t read and b) are dead, isn’t really helping. Build the schools, build the health clinics and then build the libraries.
Still, I guess doing something is better than what I am doing: nothing. It’s all well and good to armchair quarterback from the first-class carriage but I’m not exactly out there hammering nails with Jimmy Carter. In fact, in any society which is off the grid, I have no useful skills what-so-ever. Hell, I'd be hard pressed to make a sundial out of a pencil and a doughnut let alone know how to irrigate crops, milk a cow or design a primitive battery out of lemons and coper wire. Well, OK, I could do that last thing but what would I plug it into, a pig?
If “actively saving lives” is the gold standard then I’ve built up some nasty karma; next life I’ll be lucky to come back as pond scum. The difficult bit, especially at this stage of the game, is untangling myself from the lifestyle to which I have become accustomed.
Since I seem incapable of deciding what the next chapter in my life should be about, I'm opening it up to suggestions. Keep in mind that I'd like to leverage my mediocre photography skills with my lazy writing style, I know a bit about IT and I travel well. I'm not sure how any of that can morph into something worthwhile but I do know that I am searching for a vocation that is an avocation. Unfortunately my addled, sleep deprived brain is simply unable to come up with any ideas beyond “Dude, you should really, like, find something else to do. Now grab the remote, Scrubs is on” Stupid brain.
