Out of Sight Out of Mind

The manufacturing towns in Shenzhen, China are over very own "hearts of darknes." They may even be worse. Just one company employs over 100,000 people and there are many more factories with many more people whose stories have not been heard and may never be heard. Just like in "Heart of Darkness" the Congo is being ravaged and its people are being exploited for its resources. Instead of ivory, Coltan is being gathered. Coltan is being excavated from the mines of Congo from workers as young as eight years old. These children have no safety standards to protect them and the wages they earn do not justify the horrifying conditions they work in. This information is readily available to those who seek it. Last year an app was released on Apple's app store called "Phone Story," (http://phonestory.org/#coltan), it walked the user of the app through the way an IPhone is made. The very product the app was on. Apple pulled the app from their store promptly and with the app went the concerns of manny Apple customers. It seems as if unless a consumer is being bombarded with evidence that their products are being made by people who are suffering, the consumer will forget the human labor that was went into their IPhone and will revert back to their way of ignoring the cost that is built in with their product.

Comments

[Patricia V.]

I agree with you Justine. It seems that we have become comfortable with ignorance. It's our natural state. One has to appreciate the work that is being done by journalists like Daisey to raise awareness of these issues.

[Jack H]

I agree but can you really be comfortable with something you don't know and have no idea its going on? As we all know ignorance is bliss.

[Emma B.]

I agree completely. I feel that it is our natural tendency to choose ignorance over truth if the truth is inconvenient to us, such as in the case of Apple products. This is not to say that everyone is like this, because there are people like Daisey who take matters into their own hands when they realize the truth, and I definitely admire such people. Yet, unfortunately, it truly does seem that unless you constantly show people what horrible conditions created their products, people will push any knowledge they have of the matter aside and continue to buy the product in question.

[wholesale sunglasses]

I really wish I hadn’t seen this as I really want one now!