Louise O'Neill: We want to be conscientious consumers, but we still want our lives to be easy
In November, I took my partner to New Orleans to celebrate his 30th birthday – yes, you’re right, I am a great girlfriend! Thank you for saying so, writes
We planned the trip meticulously. He wanted to watch an NFL game, and because the holiday was to celebrate his birthday, I gritted my teeth and decided to forgo my own preference, the sculpture garden at the Museum of Art.
I followed him to the Superdome, smiling grimly while thousands of screaming fans annihilated my ear drums in an attempt to set a new record on the decibel metre. I repeat — I am a great girlfriend.
We saw live music every night, wandering from venue to venue on Frenchman Street, we ate beignets and poboys and gumbo. I sampled fried green tomatoes, something I’ve wanted to do since watching the Kathy Bates of the same name in the early nineties. We went on a Cemetery Tour and, on our final day, we decided that we would visit a nearby plantation, the Whitney Plantation.
The Whitney is unusual because it’s one of the only plantations that centres on the experience of the slaves who worked there, other tours obliquely referencing the ‘workers’ harvesting the sugar cane or picking the cotton.
Our guide, a black woman whose family was descended from slaves, was excellent, and despite one mortifying moment where she mentioned the myth of Irish slaves (I beg anyone reading to stop regurgitating this thoroughly debunked story. The Irish were indentured servants, not slaves. They were not treated like chattel or property; they were still regarded as human beings.
Read Liam Hogan’s excellent research for more information), the Whitney tour was fascinating, moving, devastating, and confronting.
On the car journey back to our hotel, we passed another plantation, a much larger, grander mansion, which our driver told us had been used as a location for a number of famous movies. I googled it, showing my boyfriend photos of its exquisite interiors, the period artwork, the antique furniture, the glorious gardens. “Restored to its former glory of the antebellum era,” he read aloud. “Experience the life of wealthy plantation owners in the 1800s!”
He handed me my phone. “Make pretend to be a slave owner?! Why would you want to do that?” he said, shaking his head in disgust.
“And people actually have their weddings there?” He’s right, of course. It’s distasteful, to say the least, that this estate is celebrated for its opulence, with no consideration given to the horrifying means by which that wealth was garnered. And yet as I looked at the images again, the part of me that values beauty so greatly, my inner aesthete, yearned to see that house, to walk those gardens. To see it all for myself.
It made me think about the ways in which I try to be a conscientious consumer, and how difficult that can somehow be. I bought a water container to reduce the amount of plastic I was using, but on a recent long-haul flight I purchased three bottles of Evian at the airport, guilty visions of mountains of unrecycled plastic swimming before my eyes.
Sickened after reading an essay by Jia Tolentino in which she described the notoriously hellish work environments at Amazon warehouses, I pledged to stop using the service.
But then I was invited on a podcast and needed to read a novel in preparation. Neither of my local bookshops nor my library could get a hold of a copy, and the only way of finding one was via Amazon.
A friend of mine travelled to Russia last year, and then to Israel the year after, two places I would love to visit but don’t feel comfortable doing so because of their respective histories of human rights violations. But what if I was asked to go either country on a book tour? What would I do then?
Similarly, I made a vow almost ten years ago that I wouldn’t look at the Daily Mail online anymore. I had become uneasy with the anti-immigrant rhetoric, I found their celebrity coverage almost unbearably misogynistic, and once I learned it was one of the most visited websites in the world, I refused to give them any more clicks.
Yet, I’ve given interviews to the Daily Mail for publicity purposes, I’ve been so grateful for the positive reviews my work has received in their excellent book pages.
I’m not at the stage of my career yet where I can refuse that valuable support. And while I’m increasingly aware of the insidious influence Mark Zuckerberg has over every facet of our daily lives, I need Facebook and Instagram (both of which he owns) for my career, as many other people do.
Whatsapp, another member of the Zuckerberg family, is the only way I communicate with friends and family and while I’m sure I could stop using it if necessary, it would make my life more difficult.
Is that the problem, I can’t help but wonder? We want to be conscientious consumers, objectors even, but we still want our lives to be easy.
We understand that major changes need to be made, the very survival of the planet could depend upon them, but we would rather the changes be made for us so we don’t have to do the work. All along, I’ve been asking myself if it’s possible for us to opt out of the machinations of the big corporations. But the truth is — do we even want to?
LOUISE SAYS:
The Stardust podcast. Produced by TheJournal.ie, this six-part series is a forensic examination of the 1981 Stardust fire. Including testimony from survivors, journalists and the families of the dead, it’s deeply moving.
Inside Out by Demi Moore. Moore has had a tumultuous life, but she writes with a great deal of self-reflection and honesty. Perfect stocking filler for anyone who was a fan of Moore’s in the 80s and 90s.
