ACCOZZAGLIA

[This is the first part in a short essay series. I don’t have a name to tidy up what this series will do, but in the end, it’s all about the Toronto Sun and Sun Media, and how they are simply standing in the way of nice things. So you’ll just have to wait ’til I come up with a better way to describe this series.]

Each of us consumes. Whether or not we wake up to thinking about this, we still consume.

(Oh yeah, this isn’t the place to call consumption into question. It’s so integrated into what we do that to challenge it would make me sound like a first-year undergrad who just “discovered” Marx and Engels. ¡Viva la revelación!)

Given that we consume, how often are we knowingly making informed buying decisions — namely as it relates to our social health as participatory citizens?

I’ll explain.

It’s not unusual that we’re not prioritizing social health in our buying decisions the way we do with social or environmental responsibility.

While there’s no hard or set rule on what “social health” means, I’m generally talking about the general climate of safety, acceptance, and reverence for heterogeneity which make up the bedrock of civility we try to maintain in our everyday social exchanges. We want a better place, so we strive to treat others around us better. It’s sort of an extension on the golden rule. This is an agency over which we have some direct leverage.

Think of all the numbing times you’ve heard social responsibility’s “fair trade” and environmental responsibility’s “carbon neutral” marketing language when shopping. Knowingly or not, these marketing tags are effective, even if their intended impact in practical terms are fairly minimal (“Oh look, that coffee bean harvester is now making two more cents a day. I feel awesome. Go ahead and make my cappuccino a double-shot of the fair trade stuff!”).

Social health is something else entirely. Producing an awareness on how the money you’ve spent is being re-directed and used — especially so locally — is one step toward social health literacy. More importantly, it’s one step toward taking preventive measures to maintain that that social health doesn’t worsen.

This literacy can, for instance, be used as a step toward spending money with companies which don’t market themselves in settings — which, in turn, impede on the fabric and health of our society. (And by “society”, I gladly thumb my nose at Margaret Thatcher and every like-minded wooden-head who still buys that there is no society, just nuclear family units. Get real.)

Do we contemplate whether the product we’ve bought was advertised and promoted in a way which produces a social climate of hostility and demonization toward our fellow citizens? That is, are we buying things which facilitate in the marginalization of the people we see and engage in our everyday lives? Are we factoring how that’s working to denigrate their validity not only as fellow citizens, but also as human subjects?

Several companies genuinely try to be upstanding with their promotions and sales practices, touting atop its features or pricing the social and environmental benefits their products and services deliver.

But where they advertise these must matter as much as how they promote themselves. That’s why I’m bothering to write this mini-series.

So what am I on about? Oh, right: this is about — wait for it — the Toronto Sun. Hang tight. I’ll get to them in the coming instalments.

Next up, I’m going to talk about organs.

About Astrid Idlewild: Astrid (@accozzaglia) is an urban design graduate from the School of Urban Planning at McGill University (2012). She completed her HBA in Canadian and urban studies at the University of Toronto in 2009. She is a film photographer, #RIDEOCCUPYSURVIVE button fundraiser for Jenna Morrison, former bike courier, the brains behind the DenizenTO TTC subway shirts, and curator for The Kodachrome Toronto Registry. Astrid is consumed by many things, of which contracting the consumption is not one of these.