Hope Beneath Our Feet_ Restoring Our Place in the Natural World - Martin Keogh [37]
The same inner experience holds true as we turn to much bigger challenges. To connect our passions with the world’s needs in ways we sense really do “add up,” we must probe deeply enough to see the underlying patterns trapping us in this horrific mess. I believe we can then stop repeating the “same-olds” and expecting something better to happen. Grasping causal patterns, we can feel excited—not loath—to change.
How can I interrupt a negative cycle that creates suffering or reinforce a positive one that contributes to new, life-serving rules and norms? That’s the question. And to answer, it’s helpful, to me, to distinguish between “issues” and “entry points.”
“Issues” overwhelm. They hit us as distinct problems, piles and piles of them. We hear of child slavery, violence against women, hunger, of HIV/AIDS, deepening inequality, pollution and global heating, depression, failing schools … I feel buried, smothered under a mountain of problems. I want to cry uncle.
“Entry points” are very different. Entry points we can detect because we’re weaving a theory of causation. So we can pinpoint places to start to shift the killer cycle itself. On the surface they might appear as distinct problems, but they are ways “in”: they are sharp points that break into and deflect the downward spiral of powerlessness; they are deliberate actions that strengthen the flow of positive causation, putting in motion an upward spiral of empowerment.
To make these distinctions clearer, let me give you one example: “power shopping.” Which head of lettuce you pick up today or where you buy your next T-shirt may not seem like a world-changing decision. But it is.
Spirals of powerlessness are generated not only by laws on the books but by norms that our daily acts create. If we buy pesticide-sprayed food, we’re saying to the food industry, yes, yes, give me more of that. If we buy organic instead, we are stimulating its production. (Why do you think McDonald’s serves organic milk in Sweden but not here?) True, these marketplace “votes” are grossly lopsided—for the more money one has, the more votes one gets—but our purchases make ripples nonetheless.
I say this not to make us feel guilty but to help us realize our power.
Sixty-three million Americans now say they base their purchasing decisions on how they affect the world, and four out of five say they’re likely to switch brands to help support a cause when price and quality are equal. Even ten years ago this was hardly the case.
Worldwide, sales in the Fair Trade movement jumped by over 50 percent in just one year, 2004. It now functions in fifty countries because millions of consumers are seeking out its label, guaranteeing that producers receive a decent return. Just to take one example of its impact: in 2006, Rwandan coffee cooperatives (whose members include widows and orphans of the 1994 genocide) received a Fair Trade price for their coffee that was three times higher than that offered by local merchants.
This sea change in awakening to the power of our purchasing choices comes to us also thanks to some energetic, determined people. One is Lina Musayev. Now twenty-five, Lina was a student at George Washington University when her life changed forever during a 2002 Oxfam America leadership training intensive.
“Farmers from Guatemala came to talk to us,” Lina told me. “We got the real story of Fair Trade from the roots. I didn’t know anything about the coffee crisis. I didn’t know it affected twenty-five million people. So when I heard about Fair Trade, I thought, ‘This is incredible. It’s working. It’s making a difference.’
“The next day, literally, my friend Stephanie [Faith Green], who’d come