the weight of everyday objects

It’s easy to forget that things come from places. At a glance, they just look like, well, things. But in fact, they’re full of hidden stories. Here’s one example: If you have a car, or a bicycle, or anything with tires, it’s very likely that a quarter or more of the rubber in those tires used to be sap in a rubber tree somewhere in Southeast Asia. That sap was cooked, transported, combined, processed, made into a tire, wrapped, shipped, sold, shipped, unwrapped, put on a wheel, and inflated. I probably missed some steps, but you get the idea.

Sometimes the place that a thing comes from is what makes it interesting. I could buy sunglasses from anywhere — or I could buy these made from plastic recycled from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. I could buy jewelry made from slices of meteorites, a pen made from molten lava, or a watch that contains moon dust. 

Unfortunately, more often (or even simultaneously), the place a thing comes from makes it problematic, discomforting, and ethically ambiguous — to buy, use, eat, own, or otherwise. Our phones and electronics, our appliances and the power they use, our transportation and the fuel it relies on, our clothing and fashion accessories, our food … the containers our food comes in … 

If the things that fill up our rooms and lives aren’t directly tied to human rights abuses (forced labor, human trafficking, genocide), they’re probably connected to threats to human futures (waste and pollution, climate change, resource decline) or the destruction of life around us (more pollution, environmental degradation, habitat loss). Not to suggest that all these things aren’t interconnected. 

Of course, some things hit the trifecta. An item as “simple” as a T-shirt can be bad for individuals, bad for the environment, and bad for humanity all at once. The fast fashion industry is built on garment workers who often operate under intense pressure, low wages, and few if any labor protections. It’s one of the biggest users of water globally, and one of the worst polluters. The clothes themselves shed trillions of microplastics across their lifetimes and contribute to multiple complex waste management issues. 

An even bleaker picture can be painted of countless other objects, and maybe none moreso than that of the ubiquitous smartphone. From exploitative conflict mining, emission-intensive production, and massive toxic waste streams to surveillance capitalism and hyper-fragile global supply chains, the little rectangles in our pockets are emblematic of some of the world’s quietest but most pernicious evils. 

The bigger problem is this: As unethical as [certain aspects of] clothes and electronics can be, the same applies to almost everything around us to some degree. Where we go and how we get there, what we buy and how we shop for it, what we eat and how it’s made, all the way down to how we survive (jobs/money) and who benefits from our survival — our lives are deeply intertwined with, and often reliant on, systems and processes that we would never design ourselves.

Not just because we lack the expertise or capability, but because we wouldn’t be comfortable with the tradeoffs. Most of us would not be willing to marginally increase the comfort or convenience of our own family or even community if it required exploitative labor, environmental damage, or long-term harm to strangers, and yet that’s frequently what we do everytime we spend money on goods or services without considering where they come from. So if we wouldn’t design these systems and processes ourselves, why is it so “easy” to participate in them?

The tension that arises here feels a bit like hypocrisy, but hypocrisy is just an easy scapegoat for a complex set of circumstances. It doesn’t come down to us all lacking character or principle (though we may). There is also a set of extremely powerful forces that make particpation in them feel normal — even inevitable — despite it clashing with our values. Here are some of the big ones: 

Distance dulls moral clarity. Harm can be very real, but when it’s far away (both geographically and psychologically), it feels much more abstract. 

Externalities are obscured. We see the lower prices, the constant availability, the added convenience — because they are shoved down our throats. Companies work overtime to keep the real costs (labor conditions, emissions, waste, health effects) veiled and underestimated.

Accountability is diffuse. Millions of people are involved in these systems, from consumers to regulators. Single actions don’t feel decisive or even particularly helpful. It’s very tempting to settle on the belief that our actions don’t create change, even if that’s demonstrably untrue.

Mental bandwidth is limited. We’re often juggling work, relationships, and health. A never-ending audit of our ethical complicity in global systems is mentally exhausting. Pair that with the feeling that our actions are insignificant anyway, and apathy becomes the default.

Opting out comes with a price. This is probably the biggest roadblock, and where it starts to get really interesting. First of all, “opting out” — deciding not to participate in or contribute to one or more of these ethically fraught systems — feels less like an opportunity and more like a hardship. For the majority of us, it’s not as if we ever “opted in.” This is what we were born into. We didn’t create it and we didn’t ask for it, but we’re part of it anyway. 

If it sounds like I’m placing any blame on previous generations, I’m not. The fact is, no one was ever asked to choose whether they wanted a store on every corner or a cooperative hub for sharing and repairing. Nobody polled society and asked whether we wanted next-day shipping or slower, fully transparent sourcing. Supply chains, infrastructure, manufacture, energy production; all of these just evolve to meet the prevailing combination of consumer demand and economic possibility.

To stop being part of these things is an incredibly difficult ask. Participating is relatively low-friction. Not participating requires more time, more knowledge, and, ironically, more economic freedom. But it’s not just that. Our lifestyles, our relationships, and ultimately our identities are all tied up in this thing. 

What’s more, just like how the costs of participation often feel distant and abstract, the benefits of opting out can seem invisible at times. After all, our choices don’t meaningfully shift demand. They matter, but not in a way that’s always blatant and obvious. What they do, meanwhile, is tend to isolate the person who’s opting out, and reduce the scale at which they’re able to engage, connect, earn, advocate, etc. 

I’ve thought of it this way: While it would technically be possible for me to opt out of most or even all the systems that I have an ethical or moral problem with, I could not do that and maintain my relationships and responsibilities. Not because of any ideological rifts, either, but purely for logistical reasons. I simply don’t have the time, resources, or capacity to build a fully alternative way of living from scratch (especially while raising kids). Inevitably, opting out becomes a full-time survival project.

In disturbingly simple terms, then, modern life without moral compromise is virtually impossible. This prompts an intriguing question: Has life ever been possible without moral compromise? Maybe that’s too difficult a question to tackle at the moment, but what we can say with certainty is that life has always been punctuated with difficult moral decisions. 

With that being said, there are questions worth asking.

Instead of “How can I stop contributing to systems I disagree with,” for example, I could afford to ask, “How can I act more responsibly when participating in ethically compromised systems?”

And, as you can probably imagine, there are actually a lot of good answers to that question.

I can not consume blindly. Just because I can order food to my door or cool myself down with AC or upgrade my wardrobe doesn’t mean I need to. 

I can repair things when possible. Even if it’s less convenient, or involves me learning a skill. 

I can support companies and practices that are actively improving. An obviously imperfect solution, but still impactful.

I can have conversations. If it’s important enough to worry about, it’s important enough to talk about. Conversations lead to narratives that shift trends over time.

I can acknowledge my complicity openly without pretending it’s fine. Submitting to that cognitive dissonance might lead down some valuable intellectual pathways.

I can take every opportunity to treat the people around me ethically. My compassion and empathy might not have an impact on the victims of human rights abuses abroad, but they definitely can on the people in my own community. 

To come full circle, a useful reminder to do these things is the simple fact that things come from places. And those places matter just as much as the place the thing is in right now. These are just a few of the areas where we can exercise leverage without burning ourselves out. 

I started thinking and writing about this while struggling with my own inner conflict. Sometimes the world feels overwhelming, and the knowledge that I’m a part, however small, of its worst problems just makes it that much more paralyzing. How can we live a “normal life” while knowing we’re dealing out harm to others and our planet? 

There doesn’t seem to be a perfectly clean or simple answer. Anyone claiming there is is either simplifying or selling something. For now, the most helpful reframe seems to be this: Instead of: “My life depends on exploitation”

We can say:

“My life is embedded in imperfect systems, but I can choose how consciously I engage with them, and to reduce harm wherever I reasonably can.”

This obviously doesn’t erase any of the issues, but it makes them slightly more livable without requiring us to disappear into the woods.

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As a follow-up to this, I’m going to be writing about some of the practical ways people are tackling this tension, both individually and collectively. I’ll explore actual methods we can use related to product sourcing, eating, transportation, and productivity that aim to leverage awareness and reduce harm. If you want to know when it’s published, just subscribe using your email address. It’s completely free and you can unsubscribe at any time. 

If you do subscribe, you’ll also see my other posts, including updates about the book I’m currently writing. The book features a wider discussion of tensions between how we live today versus how we actually evolved to survive. The working title of the book is Wild Enough. 

As always, thanks for reading!