Caste Systems Aside
what's the true cost of sweetness?
I reckon the most insidious caste system is the one that's being denied, like in the (so-called) United States, where I was born, studied, lived, and worked until I was 26. We like to think we're egalitarian because that's the political propaganda we've been raised to believe is true about us. Yet we idolize those who have enormous amounts of wealth and we shame or, worse, ignore those who scrape by. Until recently I didn't tell strangers where I went to university because I didn't want to field their judgements, whichever way they went. They could think I’m snooty and will judge them because I went to an ivy league school, or they could judge me because they think it was monetary wealth that got me in. Both ways there’s distortion.
I have been judged for having money even when I don't. Likely because I love well-made things and I have a nose for ferreting them out at thrift stores, and those who know me give me things they think I will appreciate. I also speak well, partly because of my deafness/APD and partly because I'm a thespian and trained in elocution. I chaff against mindless judgments and categorization. All ways have. In school I would change my look daily in order to avoid being thought of, and boxed into, one type.
I do my best to engage with all humans on even ground. I had a student once who was out on parole for manslaughter, another who was a Santarian priest, and many who were mindlessly lecherous. I didn't let their pasts or their current delusions and ways of operating interfere with sharing the practices with them that would enable their evolution.
When I lived in India there was an accident a couple streets away from where we lived which was in a suburb of Mumbai called Powai. Hiranandani Gardens is featured in many Bollywood films for its grand architecture and fountains. It was in a state of rapid growth when I was living there from 1999-2001. Builders often didn’t have a place to stay so they slept near the work site, or actually on it! Thousands of people had been displaced by such projects as the Narmada River Dam that drowned their homes, farmlands, and livelihoods. With nowhere else to go, many of these displaced people joined the enormous slums of the Mumbai suburb Dharavi.
One night a fancy car, full of young wealthy men, ran over one of the workers who had been sleeping in the road near our house. It was an accident but it was rife with caste injustice. It came to my attention that when similar accidents happened with cows, camels, or elephants, they all had agreed-upon values that had to be paid to the "owner" (my brackets to indicate our wider human caste system of enslaving animals). Apparently this man's life was worth less than a camel's. Because of his caste.
Not only is the darkness of the caste system in India highlighted in this story, but something else I'd like to pursue in more detail — how we value the beings in our world. Recently my mom learned that one teaspoon of honey is the entire life's work of 12 bees! For me to have one bite of sweetness, I have consumed the labor of 12 beings who lived for 40 days. And bees work hard.
Which got me to thinking about our wonky accounting. We've only begun to recognize and value "women's work", unpaid work traditionally done by women. “Who Cooked Adam Smith's Dinner” is a book I have yet to read in full, but just the premise startled me into realizing the gross injustices many cultures are firmly seated upon. What we call a free economy is only so because it's on the back of unpaid labor. Were we to factor in an actual salary to all those who work out of love for their children, their parents, and those shunted to the sidelines because they move differently, it would be impossible to have such discrepancies in salary. And the cost of living would be so much higher.
We know now that so much of what exists today has come on the backs of slavery, genocide, misogyny, and a slew of other embarrassing epithets. I say embarrassing but really the facts are horrific. Are we really willing to cheapen our values so we can have more stuff that we don’t truly value?
Just as a reality check, what if we extended what we seem to love best to do, which is monetize everything, and did an actual accounting of costs? What if we paid bees for their work? Even if only in the books. What is one bee's life worth? Would we ask the bees how they value their lives? If we kill off the bees with our pesticides, then we'll truly know the cost of their loss to the world, at least to us. So perhaps we move backwards from that apocalyptic future. What would it cost us to create a virtual bee (assuming that even worked)? Amortize that cost over time, and apply the true costs to every field, every crop, every aspect of current agricultural systems that require bees. If you think a carton of almond milk is expensive now…
Our perception of achievement and "winning" is an illusion. No one wins if we all die of starvation because we've killed off the pollinators that make our food possible.
I'd love to see us scale our gratitude and put our money where our mouths are by accounting for the actual costs of a teaspoon of sweetness.
As vulgar and as crass as “to put our money where our mouths are” sounds to me, it also makes sense that I’d need to learn to speak another’s language in order to be understood. Looking after the bees because you care about all living beings may not be the language you understand. Let me try to translate into the language I readily admit to not understanding — human-created economics.
In my own instinctive accounting of things, we can no longer afford to disregard “paying” the previously unpaid workers in our world — the bees for one. Cows, chickens, pigs, ducks, sheep, goats. Countless critters. We could even go so far as to pay the Earth we have tilled and timbered to lifeless dust, the water we have poisoned and polluted with everything we throw in it and still expect it to purify out.
The financial systems we have set up — meaning they are not some universal law but rather human constructs and relatively recent ones at that — have not taken into account unpaid labor in the past or in the present. Today we, gratefully, balk at slave labor. Because we have come to value all human life. Or at least men’s lives. Women’s lives are still lagging — as evidenced by the unequal wages in most countries. And seen in the undeniable fact that those who stay at home to raise our future, our children, are still generally not paid. Or even factored into the economies of scale. So of course from this point in our evolution we are still riDICKulously slow in valuing the economic contributions of women, not to mention other living beings.
From the future, where we have evolved into a more gracious and grateful species, our manners are reflected in our economics. We’ve factored into our spreadsheets the massive labors (and lives sacrificed) not only of the humans previously hidden from view, but of all the elements and critters in plain sight and general “use”, which is how you term it now — resources, rather than life forces.
I know, it’s embarassing to realize how crude we were, how barbaric. How shortsighted sure, but beyond that simply how rude. Not thanking the bees. One teaspoon of honey costs the work and lives of 12 bees, and to think we used to think nothing of this. We took for granted the gifts of Gaia, assuming all Life was here to please our ungrateful, petulant selves. When in fact, in economic fact, we were stealing and then hiding our theft under the illusion of status and the delusion of grandeur. Silly humans.
Since you love your made up money so faithfully, let me put it to you in those terms, in that language, so you might hear me better. Once you start to recognize the inherent value in what you’ve assumed is free, you can’t deny these numbers. The “cost” of one teaspoon of honey, if we pay the 12 bees for their life’s work, and consider the value of the flowers, the earth, the rain, the sunshine, not to mention the beekeepers, packaging, shipping, and distribution on the human side, is $127.
You know by now that Water Is Life so this is also factored into the equation. As is the inherent value in clean Air and the gain we gather from the good humus (though diminishing good humour) of Gaia. Of course I am not an accountant, but if you are, please correct my random guess on how our costs would be reflected by a true change of values.
I am currently crowd-sourcing funds to become a Honeybee of Human Management in Environmental Relations (AKA Master of Environmental Management at University of Queensland). If your circumstances allow for spare change to be thrown my way, fantastic. If not, I still invite and encourage you to join me on this journey of discovery and recovery by following along here. Free and paid subscribers receive the same materials, though paid is greatly-appreciated support.
Much love and gratitude for you and all you are and do, Mox
