Our culture has long since banished such mundane necessities as cooking and eating to the realm of the profane; we are wholly without a nutritional mystique. But the 'wholefood freaks' among us have learned to respect the homely wisdom of the Upanishads: "First know food. From food all things are born, by food they live, toward food they move, into food they return". For them, the interplay of yin and yang in the daily diet has become a mandala of the kitchen sink, a sutra of the supper table.
Julius Evola
The other day, my brother posted a photo of a pizza (a rather expensive pizza) he had bought from M&S. He claimed, when eventually he had unpacked it from the reams of clingfilm of cardboard, that it was mostly crust. Instead of re-boxing it, and causing a whole lot of wasted energy, he decided to pop it in the oven and eat of it what he could. He would then take the photo in to the manager and establish his case. Which he did, and he was 'rewarded' with either another like-priced pizza for free or another product at a similar price. Not only was this an ingenious way of dealing with what is sometimes an infuriating problem, but it was the absolutely right way of doing it.
My brother later joked that one should do this at all times EVEN if the product meets your expectations! He wasn't entirely joking of course, and I applauded him on this insight. You see, what we are dealing with here, whether it's M&S or Waitrose or Sainsbury's are companies that profit out of exploitation: exploitation of foreigners, and exploitation of locals. That they masquerade this exploitation as 'the creation of jobs' and 'the delivery of choice' is nothing short of concealed BS. One of my co-workers the other day commented on how marvellous M&S ready-made sandwiches were. I could not let it slip. 'Are you joking...?' I asked him 'No,' he said. 'They're absolutely wonderful'. I then informed him of why they tasted wonderful and suggested that if he wanted to have a coronary heart bypass by the age of 65 (I think he was halfway there already, the bypass that is, not the age) he should continue munching on the saturated fats that these ready-made sandwiches are loaded with. Anyone with a brain in their head (and who uses it to inquire!) would know this. But sadly, my poor co-worker having outsourced his brain a long time ago to the status quo and primitive accumulation, didn't. So I told him. And he was a little shocked.
The point I'm trying to make is that these outfits are not delivering choice out of love for you, they're not creating jobs in Egypt and China our of love for these people either; what they are doing is exploiting people, exploiting resources, and capitalising upon people's lack of inquiry, and busy workaday schedules. I have often thought (should not everyone be there own food nutritionist?) that most of what passes as ready-made meals and sandwiches should be illegal for the high amounts of saturated fats, and salt, and other nonsense, within them. In my book, it is a crime to exploit others simply so you can profit out of them. And these companies are profiteers (and hence criminals) par excellence.... And yet, most people, if not all bar a few, think them the exact opposite.
So when it comes to ethical shopping, this sort of cunning (as taking a photograph of a sub-standard product) is actually playing them at their own game without, it has to be stressed, lowering yourself to their level. There are of course those companies who are fly to this way of 'shopping': Asda for example have already removed the offer of a two pound gift token if they overcharge you (which appears to be Sainsbury's remit); now you have to actively ask for the gift token, instead of it being offered to you automatically. So, another turn of the screw....Morrison's 'refund and replace' policy has been reigned back to now just simply 'refund or replace.' If it weren't bad enough using all the tricks in the neuro-marketing playbook to get us to consume more of what we just do not need, these companies are now short-changing even our genuine requests for compensation.
Here, in Kazakhstan, at the local grocery store and supermarket, I am quietly impressed at the lack of seductive packaging and the like (no bogofs here), used to exploit consumers and by extension exploit the earth that feeds us. Where do you think all that packaging comes from? From factories which are built on land, which produce not just products but pollution and waste, tons of it.... When it doesn't come from factories, it comes from nature itself; trees are grown for the sole purpose of being felled and made into tables and chairs; whole landscapes are given over to a sort of industrialization of murder, a double whammy in de-wilding the land and all within it, and of course growing these live sentient beings in order to kill them. In the final analysis, it all comes under the guise of progress, and it would appear that progress unlike its products (which are not 'goods' but actually, let's be honest, 'bads') is the only process that has avoided the internal mechanism of built-in obsolescence. Our whole culture is obsolete, has been for centuries. What we have now is not culture in the true sense of cultivating the human being: culture as maturity, responsibility, reciprocity. What we have instead is immaturity, active irresponsibility, and a society based on self-absorption, narcissism, and acquiescence. People wander through the consumer landscape as if like zombies. I often think George A. Romero hit the nail on the head way back when, when he filmed Dawn of the Dead in a shopping mall. It was always remain one of the great ironic films of all time, and yet people are still oblivious to their walking dead ways. Especially now at Christmas time, you can see the hypocrites lining up, unable to wait to consume, and consume and consume... It is a hellish cycle as Raoul Vaneigm once wrote, living to shop, shopping to live. In the end, writes the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, all that will be left is shopping. And we will have consumed ourselves in the process, egged on by the likes of M&S, Waitrose et al. So, the next time you feel your produce doesn't quite live up to all that packaging, take a photo of it, show the manager, and see what she has to say. Or better still, don't pay for it in the first place. Just take it. It's your duty as a responsible citizen. The revolution first begins with inquiry, then with getting off your knees and standing up....
Mon the shoplifters!
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