Diary: On caring how it got there (1).

Being an American used to imply that desired ends don't always justify undesirable means. Maybe it never actually did in reality, or doesn’t any longer, and rather than espouse collective ideals, we’re all entirely left alone, destined to grapple with life all by ourselves just so long as we get what we want, when we want it.

I’m not comfortable with that, and never really have been.

To me, the end doesn’t justify the means. Recognition of such is the basis for almost every meaningful progressive reform in the history of the United States of America, and specifically, as it pertains to the American workplace. You can have the highest quality product to take to market, and make bucketloads of money in the process, but it matters to society as a whole what you had to do to achieve it.

Were workers abused or exploited? Was the environment despoiled? Was the idea stolen from the rightful owner?

This is why, at various times, Americans have thought long and hard about what it means (or doesn’t) to do business with oppressive regimes. A good example in the wake of Nelson Mandela’s recent passing is South Africa during the period of racial Apartheid. More recently, legitimate questions have been asked about Third World sweat shops where workers are paid a pittance to produce $200 pairs of sneakers.

How these questions are answered will vary, and the answers are important, but our possessing a depth of conscience sufficient to grasp that such questions must be asked is even more important. This is especially true when South African diamond miners or Chinese sweat shop employees are unable to ask, or to protest their working conditions.

The preceding are examples of considerations that run beyond the quality, either good or bad, of finished products. In addition, I’d suggest the very real existence of other planes in life apart from the primacy of simple consumer demand.

I think about these matters each time I encounter a discussion about craft beer, at the point when someone says: “It's all about quality beer, and who cares how it got here as long as it enters my stomach whenever I wish?”

Well, among other reasons, it’s because caring about how it got here is part and parcel of why we had an American brewing revolution to begin with. Mass-market mockrobrews, contract brewing and zombie craft beers may or may not be the death of better beer, but what surely will harm it is when the code of the narcissist prevails. In the coming years, defining craft beer and expanding consciousness as to its ultimate meaning are going to require asking those irksome questions. If we don’t ask them, there’s a good chance we’ll forget our foundational story … and that can only assist the Trojan Geese.

Part two here