Tag Archives: privilege

What Contemplative Practices Have Taught Me About Problem Solving

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In a course about the food system, it makes sense that we have time dedicated to digestion, to contemplation. To the breaking down and consideration of our place within the complex global food system.

But truth be told, my experience with these contemplative practices have been mixed. They have provided me with a chance to dive into my own experiences relating to food and to the world beyond my immediate reach. But there have been times when I simply could not comfortably sit through a full practice. I had to ask myself why did I have this sense of restlessness? I found that my response to the practice is dependent on two things: content and headspace. 

Contemplative practices will often require that I reflect on my own privilege within the food system. I recall sitting through a practice reflecting on the production of chocolate, and throughout this practice I alternated between feeling restless and driven as I began to try to figure out ways that I, as both a consumer who benefits from the current production methods and as a citizen who finds the use of unpaid labor appalling, could make a difference that actually matters.

I had entered this practice with a relaxed and clear mind, unlike days where I had entered a practice feeling mentally exhausted. Having a clear headspace allowed me to delve into the mixed feelings and thoughts I had in a constructive manner. On days where I enter feeling strained, I struggle to escape my anxieties and to focus my mind on the material.

Image is my own and may not be used without my permission; illustration of introspection within a particular headspace

These practices have ultimately led me to the following conclusion about how we approach systems: finding solutions to a complex problem first requires an analysis of one’s relationship to it, yet such analysis cannot be effectively done by an exhausted mind.

 

Contemplating Complicity in Global Food Injustice

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Figure 1: Granlund, 2011

With ever constant demands for my time, energy, and thoughts, I usually don’t stop and think deeply about where and how the food I consume is produced. A reoccurring theme of my feelings after contemplative practices were complicated emotions around my own complicity in global food injustices.

Never was this clearer to me than during the contemplative practice on chocolate. Watching the cocoa farmers experience eating chocolate for the first time, I knew it was just one of the many global food injustices propagated by a global trade system which values consumers in developed countries, over producers in developing countries. From countries experiencing famine contractually forced to export their food (Carolan, 2018), to rice originally smuggled and planted by West African slaves, returned to these countries in the form of contingent and domestically damaging “food aid”(Lecture 4/30), the systemic inequalities that I implicitly benefit from are all around me.

Initially, these contemplative practices filled me with a feeling of guilt and ineptitude considering the miniscule impact my individual actions could make on these globally propagated problems. Yet, as they progressed, I eventually came to a feeling of resolve.

Figure 2: Campesina 2020

While I can’t help cacao farmers in West Africa and may not be able to change global trade agreements on my own, I can still do something. I can acknowledge the privilege that I have and help bring these issues to the attention of my fellow citizens, who collectively can more effectively demand for more equitable international food politics and purchasing agreements such as getting more involved in the Food Sovereignty and Beyond Fair Trade movements.

Overall, these practices have shown me that I can and need to slow down and appreciate all the people whose lives went into supporting my own and do my part to make their lives a little bit better.

Sources:

Campesina, La Via. “Till, Sow and Harvest Transformative Ideas for the Future! Now Is the Moment to Demand Food Sovereignty – #17April.” Focus on the Global South, 16 Apr. 2020, focusweb.org/till-sow-and-harvest-transformative-ideas-for-the-future-now-is-the-moment-to-demand-food-sovereignty-17april/.

Carolan, Michael. “Cheap Food and Conflict.” The Real Cost of Cheap Food, Routledge, 2018, p. 78.

Granlund, Dave. “Dave Granlund – Editorial Cartoons and Illustrations>.” Dave Granlund Editorial Cartoons and Illustrations RSS, www.davegranlund.com/cartoons/2011/07/27/obesity-and-famine/.