Unilever's Altruism?

This evening a YouTube ad caught my attention. Normally, I skip right over these things but this time something about it caught my eye; the caption. A mildly moving question seeming to pry into our globally minded hearts, cleverly designed to create a melancholic sentiment its content would later settle. But that wasn’t what caught my attention. The word “Unilever” did. I took a step back from my hurried “skip ad” button with incredulity. Surely not, I thought.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWTVCkvQzY8

I claim, in no way, to be any sort of ethical guru, but something called out to me and I watched through the ad. Since returning to India I have been dosed with what I can only deem a healthy dose of scepticism, courtesy mostly of one man preaching wariness of our unconscious reliance of major global brands. Unilever, according to Teletrader.com is worth just under 50 billion euros and is one of the world’s leading food companies and the second largest packaged consumer goods in the world. It is a monster company. I was shocked when I began looking on the backs of my deodorant, my soap, my foods and, not mine, but the countless other household goods around my home. They have often been criticized for contradictory messaging in advertising (Lynx and Dove) and its lack of land protection policies.

Otherwise, Oxfam have dubbed Unilever, along with Nestle, as amongst the most improved of their rated food brands. Further, Oxfam and Unicef have partnered with Unilever’s newest campaign. Sounds promising, right? Maybe global pressure has gotten to Unilever and it really does create the sense amongst companies that they must be seen to work for a better world. But, forgive me for being cynical, but I think a step back should be taken here. What exactly are Unilever stating in this “Project Sunlight” campaign? Very little, from what I could gather. They promised little, but made profound and sensational statements throughout their advert. Indeed, the video seemed to be little other than an advert. It felt entirely like a piece of marketing.

A good friend of mine may remember my rant when I sat down with a coffee in McDonalds on Grafton Street, Dublin, on a cool spring Wednesday evening. Sitting down at the table, a card displaying an appetising double cheeseburger (I have a shameful weakness for these bad boys) sat perched between me and my friend. Below the burger the picture had emblazoned a one euro coin, if I remember correctly. The idea of the picture was written on the card, for every double cheeseburger bought Maccers donated a portion of the money to a good cause. At this point I can’t even remember the stated cause. I thought, well and good but! I couldn’t stomach it. I couldn’t appreciate the supposed decency that was being portrayed that, in my opinion glorified the purchase of an unhealthy product of a not to kindly considered multi-national company. To me, it was a cold hearted ploy to comfort a society’s tendency to unhealthy and unconscious choice of food. By eating this burger, you are doing good and thus any guilt you might feel was assuaged. Maybe you’d even buy another; after all, you were helping the world.

This is what this new Unilever campaign seems to sing to me. On one hand, I want to believe the steps that Unilever insinuate to be taking are truly altruistic, but I don’t see any evidence towards this. A foray onto the Project Sunlight told me very little. In fact, amongst their snazzily laid out website Unilever paralleled their products with tug the heartstrings style captions concerning global sustainability and citizenship, and yet they still produce aerosols. Seems kinda backwards to me. This campaign really gets on my nerves. I am no major corporation bashing hater, and marketing and advertisement are well and good in my books in most instances. I do agree that they manipulate people and if people want to be taken in, so be it. It galls me but there is little I can do about it. However, there are a few things I can’t stomach, manipulative marketing towards children and towards health are high amongst them. Many internet trends in the last few decades have shown that people are more than willing to “do good” by acting online. I am undoubtedly one of them. I also make no claim that there is a subconscious sense of patting oneself on the pack through these actions that is not exactly entirely selfless. Be that as it may, it exists to a huge extent. Many websites make a fortune off these sensations, we need look no further than the Kony 2012 campaign to see how powerfully this sentiment can be used to dupe us; but the Kony campaign has been hidden away in our minds. Why did Kony flash so brazenly across out cyberspace, as powerful and then distantly gone as a supernova? We are all completely aware of our prideful desire to do good, to be good but to not necessarily overstrain ourselves. We are ashamed of it. So we hide behind the internet for fear the cause we might support may not be so virtuous. We tentatively click to petitions, unsure of whether we are being manipulated or not. How could we not when we hear of instances of profiteering supposed well doers. Only in recent weeks Kim Kardashian has been publicly slammed for withholding over 90% of her Pilipino typhoon fund. How inexorably sickening of a human being does that take?

Maybe I am overly cynical, or maybe not. I know one thing though; we definitely need to stop kidding ourselves. How can a society of animals who pride themselves and attribute their very existence in their ability to think, allow others to do it for them.  We shun effort and feel it’s ok to justify our day to day choices because some surface pretension gives us comfort. We are all guilty of unconscious behaviour. We find it difficult to consider others close in physical proximity to us, let alone further abroad. But we need, as a species to wake up and start thinking for ourselves. Learning from others is well and good but sometimes we have to start learning from our own abilities or else we will only do damage. We cannot continue to accept collective wisdom and public statements as fact. How can we justify buying Knowr, Lynx and Dove, with a simple shrug saying “ah well have you heard about that campaign, they seem to be doing some sort of good”. None of us are perfect, we make mistakes. I for one buy things I am aware as unethical. We all have weaknesses, but what makes me upset as an unwillingness to think about our choices. By letting others make them for us on such a lowly subconscious manipulative basis, we cannot make progress. Yes, it is good that Unilever are making stides to be a more ethical company, but it is important to question why. Are they responding to international consumer pressure or are they taking advantage of the growing trends of consumer desire, pre-emptively. Is it an honest move, or a gambit to which we will fall for and then hide from like Kony? And will it happen to us, again and again?

International Dilemmas and Consitencies.

Since my experiences in India I have repeatedly voiced, internally and externally, and developed opinions on things of greater concern than myself. I have finally, not before time, caught up on the Syria situation, learnt about the hegemonic injustices of Russia's homophobic laws and spouted on and on about China, Tibet and the human rights transgressions of the People's Republic of China. Undoubtedly I have worn the ear off some off you on more than one occasion. I have set up a facebook page to keep myself and interested friends in an information loop with each other, read countless articles about topics concerning global issues, but I still feel ignorant and helpless. I believe it was during GP week when one of our speakers announced, profoundly helpfully, that to make difference in the world one needs to combine their talents with their passions, and that leads me to writing here and anywhere else I can find an outlet for my spoutings, there will be other outlets soon and I will post about it here when they have heard from me.

In light of the current global climate I am finding it very difficult not to feel overwhelmed. On one hand I have my own personal interest topics keeping me ticking over with reading and thinking about how I can make a change. The situation in China only appears to be more revealing of the ongoing atrocities against it's people, who by more and more reports express greater and greater dissatisfaction and the communist government. At this time in my life I am still passionately interested in ancient Chinese culture, as I have been for many years. The selfish part of me wails and despairs at the shameless degradation of the Shaolin Temple to a simple tourist attraction, screams at the damage done to a unique Buddhist tradition and yearns to flee into the cloud wrapped heights of the WuDang Monastery. Such destruction to incredibly beautiful cultural icons does not end at the simple shaming of the sanctity of these relics of ancient Chinese life, it extends to brutal decimation of ways of life and families, of homes and well being, and of life itself.

During my team studying the Anthropology of Human Rights and Justice I probed my personal interest in Chinese culture into the murky domain of a topic I had only heard little of; Tibetan suppression. I bought a book titled The Snow Lion and the Dragon of Amazon and was horrified by what I discovered. Attached to this blog post will be a copy of an essay I wrote concerning a specific aspect of Sino-Tibetan suppression. Today, in India alone, over 100,000 Tibetan refugees have fled from their homeland to live in imitation of the Dalai Lama. Huge Tibetan homesteads have sprung up in northern India, and they have spread globally too. Today the modernisation of Ladakh, in India, however mimics the destructive forces at play in Tibet itself. The occupation of Tibet by China has been referred to as genocide, cultural genocide, and unjust. Tibetans seem universally support Autonomy and Independence for Tibet, and they are met with brutal suppression including imprisonment, torture and murder for their outspoken, or even peaceful demonstrations. Even private worship or association with an outspoken citizen is enough to condemn a civilian to imprisonment or death.

After a year long of reading and following Tibetan events, and my return from India, I came across a report that shocked me profoundly. The report depicted some of the most vile findings I have ever read about. There is no doubt in my mind that the destructive murderous treatment of Tibetans is of a significant scale. This report claimed that the figures of Tibetan's were dwarfed by those representing Falun Gong practitioners in China.

Furthermore, the report indicated that 66% of the victims of alleged torture and
ill-treatment in China were Falun Gong practitioners, with the remaining victims
comprising Uighurs (11%), sex workers (8%), Tibetans (6%), human rights defenders
(5%), political dissidents (2%), and others (persons infected with HIV/AIDS and
members of religious groups 2%).

The topic of the report concerned the unwilling removal and transplantation of the organs of Falun Gong practitioners. The horrendous nature of this act bid the question, why? I remain assured that Falun Gong is simply a spiritual practise similar to that of Qi Gong, an entirely peaceful spiritual act. This year, on July 11th, the Irish Times reported "Oireachtas joint committee hears that some 65,000 Falun Gong practitioners have been murdered to facilitate organ transplant."The concern that human rights atrocities, and of such heinous nature could happen on such a scale in one of the worlds most important countries still baffles me. This year China applies to sit on the UN Human Rights Council, in similar attempts to its typical international brow beating that allowed it to host the 2008 Olympic Games. The current council members will vote on their choice of appropriate member states in November this year and I will be writing and campaigning and sending letters opposing the election of China to this position. In light of the state of human rights transgressions, clearly overlooked by state authority, it would be a shame to allow China to assume a substantial role in alleviating and fighting circumstances and imposing rules it so belligerently offends.

That being said, this rant all comes together today, not due to the fact that I so vehemently oppose the Chinese Governments behaviour, but because a greater issue may be at hand in our coming weeks. Up until my education at the hands of one of my team mates in India I know very little about the Syrian crisis. Now I sit eyes and ears glued to any clip, news piece or article that comes my way dealing with the topic and, alas, I feel ignorant. The situation is surrounded by criticism and conspiracy theories and international threats that, if I am being honest, I haven't yet managed to form a genuine opinion on the situation. I know some simple facts. I know the murder of 1500 people through the use of chemical weapons is wrong and I believe something must be done and soon. I agree with Obama's statements that the world cannot simply sit idly while a nation full of people murder each other, but I also disagree that any military strike will create any beneficial growth in the region. I understand the frustration that bids him to smite away wrong doers who commit atrocities on each other, but I would love to hear a contingency for any aftermath that would follow military action.

Beyond the Syrian condition, I wish the United States and the UK would be more consistent in their consideration of international violations. For the past 70 years, at the least, the Chinese government has been murdering its citizens and we have heard no inkling of direct opposition to these crimes against ethnic minorities. Both Cameron and Obama have been brow beaten my the Chinese Communist Party, with threats of economical sanctions, to the point where evasive dodging of a public apology for meeting with the Dalai Lama, although both figures made it clear they met the Dalai Lama solely as a religious figure and held no regard for any political status he my hold. How states that persistently voice their opposition to global injustice can sit idly by while the conditions in China remain rife with horror. Unfortunately, I know the answer. China has simply become to powerful and too important to bend to the will of the West. I can't remember where I read it today but I came across a quote "China needs the world as much as the world needs China", and this is too true, but the economic suffering globally is too unpredictable and perhaps considered far too risky so for the time being the West is held at China's will, and without their agreement there won't be any ground broken over Syria any time soon, at least not diplomatically.

All in all, I am a very confused and annoyed man this afternoon.