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An ethical tree
The Guardian has a feature on Christmas
presents called What
did Santa bring?, interviewing eight mothers and their children about the big
day in. Here is mother Matilda Lee:
Being ethical informs
my whole worldview. I’m an editor at the Ecologist, I’ve written a
book on ethical fashion, we have homemade decorations, buy an ethical tree,
eat locally sourced, organic food. When the children were little, it was easy
to buy them green gifts, but now Dimitri’s six, it’s more difficult. He watches
TV, he sees adverts, all his friends talk about what they’re getting for
Christmas. He wants stuff.
This year, as well as a
stocking full of arts and crafts and a satsuma, and an adopted snow leopard
from WWF, I’m afraid he got a Nintendo DS. I am troubled by how it was made, by
whom, and what’s going to happen to it when, inevitably, he finds it
uninteresting. Also, I worry about the impact it’ll have on him. We get him
outside as much as possible, and the last thing he needs is something to keep
him inside focused on a screen.
We’re in the years when
our kids are into the idea of presents under the tree. When Dimitri’s older,
I’d like to buy him a day out for Christmas. There’s a place near us that does
cooking classes – he’d love that. If we lived in a like-minded community where
everyone bought ethically, it would be perfect, but, for now, I don’t think it
would be healthy for him to be very different from his peers.
Monitor: Rod
Liddle
5 comments:
Is it ethical to entrust a snow leopard to a six year-old?
Does she write her Guardian columns inside, on a computer, or does she write them outside, on the backs of fallen leaves and ask the pigeons of London to deliver them to the editor's desk?
I think the public deserve to be told.
Quite. The Amazon blurb for her book ends, "This book will allow you to look great but also feel good about your impact on other people and the planet as a whole."
The main thing, of course, is to feel good.
Foreskin alert! Check out Austin Barry in the comments: http://www.spectator.co.uk/rodliddle/7557023/a-very-ethical-christmas.thtml
Some timely advice for Dimitri:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1q9vyrB2k6s
"Though in time you might find this one a little bit more annoying."
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