There is a Whole Foods across the street from the Interdependence Project in New York's East Village, the Buddhist-inspired nonprofit organization which I direct. Some nights, after teaching or participating in a class on meditation and Buddhist psychology, or after yoga practice, I head to the Whole Foods on my way home, to buy convenient, healthy food for one of those 10 pm dinners New Yorkers know all too well. Since our organization works directly with issues of responsible consumption and environmental activism, it's always nice to be able to find local and organic produce, even if it traumatizes my slender wallet to shop regularly at "Whole Paycheck." Five-dollar pre-washed spinach from the North Fork of Long Island! It's late, I'm exhausted; what could be better?
Of course on the surface, a Buddhist shopping at Whole Foods makes a lot of sense (almost to a degree of neo-hippy caricature). I practice, study, and teach a tradition of mental health and wellbeing, a path for people to systematically learn to take care of our own minds and extend that care-taking to others around us. A healthy diet and an interest in eating both local and organic foods are -- for me -- the physical extensions of that mental mindfulness practice.
However, the Buddhist teachings on the truth of interdependence don't allow us to stop at the level of individual health and wellbeing. The more we pay attention to reality, the more we see the total impossibility of taking care of our own bodies and minds without taking care of others. The more we see interdependence -- that our lives do not happen in a vacuum, separate from the lives of others -- the more we realize that our own health is inextricably bound up with the health of others. If you are healthier, then I am healthier, and vice versa. This is true physically, this is true psychologically, and this is true communally.
A few years ago I wrote a book about updating the Buddhist philosophy of interdependence for the 21st century, called One City: A Declaration of Interdependence. In researching where the term interdependence has surfaced outside of Buddhist thought, I came across Whole Foods' mission statement on their website, which, serendipitously, is also called a "Declaration of Interdependence." Read it -- it's uplifting and full of good intentions on taking care of oneself and taking care of each other. An excellent corporate mission statement for sure. At that time, I was heartened by the thought that -- during the dark and separatist cynicism of the Bush era -- interdependence was still making deep inroads into corporate America.
Then this week I read Whole Foods' CEO John Mackey's Wall Street Journal op-ed piece, which struck me as a highly fearful and regressive take on the healthcare debate, which is undoubtedly one of the most interdependently pressing issues of our time. Mr. Mackey's Wall Street Journal piece might alternatively be titled "A Declaration of I, Me, and Mine."
The worldview on display in that piece of writing is one of selfish individualism, mistrust for the very notion representative government itself, and continued support for a system of profit on anabolic steroids. The piece is also amazingly dismissive of the most interdependently-minded president we've had in a long time, taking the term "Obamacare" straight from Rush Limbaugh's playbook. The cognitive dissonance between the worldview that seems to inform Mr. Mackey's views on healthcare, and the "Declaration of Interdependence" on his company's website are too much for me to continue to support, at least for now.
As a Buddhist practitioner, I work hard to identify and slowly transform my own internal hypocrisies. Most of them take the following form: I declare good intentions to benefit myself and others. Yet, I fall prey to deepseated destructive habits and fearful self-obsessions instead. As a practice, whenever I recognize a destructive habit or a cognitive dissonance, I set an intention to work mindfully and diligently to open myself to a larger, more compassionate, and less fixated worldview. This work is slow and difficult, and I look like a hypocrite myself a large percentage of the time. But unless I choose to recognize my own hypocrisies, the work of positive transformation never begins at all. An extension of this practice is to not support the obvious hypocrisies of a friend (and my wallet, at least, has definitely befriended Mr. Mackey for years), especially when the friend is in a position of enormous power and influence.
So until Mr. Mackey learns that truly declaring interdependence means we take care of each other no matter what -- a declaration best furthered in the healthcare debate by supporting a single-payer plan, or, at the very least, a strong public option -- I am not going to support his cognitive dissonance on interdependence with any more of my hard-earned local-organic-neo-hippie-spinach money.
We are all interdependent. And therefore we must take care of each other and support policies that promote real interdependence. Especially those of us who go so far as to proclaim interdependence as a corporate mission statement.
In the meantime, anybody want to recommend a good CSA in Brooklyn?
Ethan Nichtern is the founder of New York City's The Interdependence Project.
Follow Ethan Nichtern on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ethannichtern
Neil McCarthy: The Dog Days of August
In this potential summer of his discontent, Obama is running into the same buzz saw that killed health care reform in the last Democratic Administration.
Health-care reform is very important.
Equalize the tax laws so that employer-provided health insurance and individually owned health insurance have the same tax benefits.
Repeal all state laws which prevent insurance companies from competing across state lines. Health insurance should be portable.
Repeal government mandates regarding what insurance companies must cover. What is insured and what is not insured should be determined by individual customer preferences and not through special-interest lobbying.
Enact tort reform to end the ruinous lawsuits that force doctors to pay insurance costs of hundreds of thousands of dollars per year
Make costs transparent so that consumers understand what health-care treatments cost.
Enact Medicare reform.
Revise tax forms to make it easier for individuals to make a voluntary, tax-deductible donation to help the millions of people who have no insurance
What do you find objectionable to the above?
So some of his points are good market solutions, if we all have basic coverage first.
If you'd like to sign Jane Hamsher's petition to encourage Congress to keep the public option in any legislation, please visit:
http://action.firedoglake.com/page/s/keepthepledge
Thanks again for reading, and thanks for all the email responses. I look forward to doing more with the HuffPo community.
But keep destroying jobs that families depend on to feed their families. Thats very good news to millions of children who like to eat.
His position in the Wall Street Journal piece wasn't that we stop taking care of each other -- but that we start doing a better job.
As far as I can tell, the main difference in Mackey's and Obama's approaches to health care reform is one of choice vs. coercion. Mackey offers voluntary solutions. Obama offers government solutions.
I understand and respect differences of opinion - like that which Mackey expressed in his op-ed outlining alternative ways to reform health care provision and payment in the US. I have a harder time understanding the vitriolic attacks against him as a person rather than civil arguments against what he outlined.
Whole Foods has a very innovative and successful approach to providing a great product and great work environment that consistently puts it on Top 20 lists for "Best Companies to Work for".
They offer great pay, excellent health benefits, including subsidizing gym memberships and benefits for same-sex partnerships. They are almost half minority, almost half women.
Just listing the above stats is making want to shop and work there.
Like it or not, Whole Foods has spearheaded a movement towards better diet and overall health. Many of you may do it better, but you must admire WF for getting the word out. WF is also commercially viable, exhibiting some of the finer benefits (and caveats) of free-market economy. That $5 spinach? Someone has a job tied to that spinach; boycott, and you've just gotten someone fired. How compassionate is that?
There is a schedule of real reform out there, but it has to start with lawyers, not the doctors. We can all agree on that, can't we?
Eat Well, Live Well.
Better than putting two cars in every driveway.
I wanted to also share with your readers the link to the Boycott Whole Foods Facebook Page now with 12,600 members and growing:
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/group.php?gid=119099537379&ref=mf
As I said on Waylan's blog, Mackey has the right to put his foot in his mouth but we have the right not to shop in his stores. Mackey is a wealthy man with access to platforms like the WSJ to voice his opinion. The average citizen doesn't have this access and corporate media won't even cover single payer or present a proper debate on healthcare. So, people (just like they did during the civil rights movement when boycotting the buses) can only be heard by taking actions like boycotts. Democracy in action.
The real "cost" of healthcare is driven up by bad government regulations (companies can't compete nationally, employer tax breaks) and hospitals. Those costs could be made drastically lower with a few simple law tweaks.
Then see what happens. Why throw the system out before trying an actual reform. They haven't tried any biting reform to the current non-government system since the 60's.
Anyway, thought I'd share this with you all.