Category: Occupy

This Valentine’s Day, let’s show some love to everyone in its supply chains
Buying gifts to give to loved ones presents unique dilemmas to those who are concerned about who made them, under what conditions. Can you express your love for another person by buying them conflict jewelry, or child labour chocolate? And what are the alternatives?
Teaching and learning resources
If you’re looking for resources to help creatively discuss the controversial issues in Valentine’s Day supply chains, here’s a selection.
Continue readingFebruary 14th: the revolution is love
This is a film trailer we come back to again and again at followthethings.com. It’s particularly appropriate to watch on February 14th, although every day is – of course – International Flower Workers Day.
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Love is the felt experience of connection to another person.
Today, we live in a money economy, where we don’t really depend on the gifts of anybody but we buy everything. Therefore we don’t need anybody. Because whoever grew my food or made my clothes or built my house, well, if they died or if I alienated them or they don’t like me, that’s OK. I can just pay somebody else do do it. It’s really hard to create community if the underlying knowledge is ‘we don’t need each other’.
So people get together and act nice, or maybe they consume together. But joint consumption doesn’t create intimacy. Only joint creativity and gifts create intimacy.
On a day devoted to people expressing their love for other people through exchanging things, this film’s take on these relations is the hand in our glove.