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Chemical imperialism

Second of two parts

In the most recent phase of product evolution, each consumer brand has diversified so much internally. Thanks to high-tech biochemical techniques being applied widely to industrial production, including those that involve genetically-engineered (GE) materials, factories can now quickly create and recreate this within-species diversity.

There are literally thousands of coffee, tea, fruit juice, and confectionary flavors to choose from. Even instant powdered milk – a nearly-generic product in the 1950s and 1960s – has diversified into all kinds of formula milk for babies, for toddlers, for active youth and young adults, for mothers, for geriatrics, for terminal patients.

From the naturally diverse array of preserved basic foods, companies have further diversified into the entire spectrum of human intake – from sauces and garnishings to a veritable zoo of doughnut glazes, many of them synthetic or laced with additives. My favorite biscuit brand is now offered in five (or is that 10) different artificial flavors, my favorite instant noodles in half-dozen flavors I don’t even care to try out.

There is a bewildering array of bath soaps, shampoos, conditioners, gels, colognes, lotions, powders, aftershaves, toothpastes, deodorants, mouthwashes, genital washes, and whatnot – for babies, for teeners, for soft skin/hair, for oily skin/hair, for Asian skin/hair, for falling hair, for scaly or frizzy hair/scalp, for men, for pets.

Ordinary writing pens? You have dozens of choices, not just in different nib sizes and colors, but in different varieties of ink. There are scented inks that smell like strawberry, cherry, lemon etc. There are metallic, neon-light, and other flashy ink colors. There are inks that one can wear like a tattoo. As for the dizzying diversity of notebook styles on store shelves, my teenage son probably spends more time choosing his glitzy notebooks than writing on them.

The list grows daily.

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Do you detect a tone of negativism in my voice? You bet I do. I’m an avowed cynic about consumer overdiversity.

Don’t get me wrong. As the cliché goes, variety is the spice of life. If biodiversity is a key mechanism of the basic ecological condition, artifact diversity is a key mechanism of the basic human condition.

Even a so-called primitive society might have an inventory of hundreds of distinctively named food items, beverages, drugs, tools and implements, containers, trinkets, dyes, and other day-to-day stuff. Each advance in technology increases the potential for people to produce a still wider variety of useful things, which they soon proceed to do.

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But the problem with current production and consumer trends is three-fold: First, it is driven by endless greed for profit. Second, it is based, not on satisfying basic human needs and long-term collective values, but on impulse-buying, on stirring up a frenzy of fads, on whims that will never be truly satisfied. And third, it is dependent on alienated technology.

To illustrate the first two problems, just look at how urban school kids with money to spend behave once they enter the arcane halls of that famous “super-bookstore” that actually sells more office supplies than books.

They will proceed to buy an item – say, a particular designer ballpen or notebook or pencase. Do they buy because they really need it, and their schoolwork suffers because they don’t have it? Probably not.

More often, they buy something because it has become part of a modern ritual – because all their classmates are using this kind of pen (remember the Sanrio fad?), and besides, Christmas is just around the corner (notice “Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town” playing on the store’s PA system?), and besides, the pen looks so “cool” (never mind that their desk drawers at home are full of last year’s so “cool” and now so shoddy bric-a-brac), and besides, the store’s “10% off on all items” bargain sale is just so hard to refuse (Jeez, the store holds a sale every month).

And so, the store’s cash registers continue to ring.

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More than this, however, is the issue of alienated technology. Take the routine chore of washing one’s hair or deodorizing one’s armpits, for example.

During the time of our grandparents and earlier, they leached burnt arutang (rice stalks) or the beaten bark of gugo vine, which they used to wash their hair. Many people still use coconut oil to condition hair and scalp, and plain alcohol or tawas (alum crystal) to neutralize body odors.

At least, we knew what naturally available or easily concocted materials we applied on hair and skin. We probably didn’t know the exact chemical composition of the leached arutang or gugo, coconut oil, alcohol, and alum. But at least we knew they were commonly used by many past generations, and we could safely continue using them.

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Now comes the commercial shampoo, deodorant and so forth. (One deodorant ad, in particular, openly makes fun of the use of tawas and alcohol.) Now, do any of us really know what alien biochemical compounds have been cooked up in the factories to comprise these modern toiletries? Can we get any technical documentation somewhere, maybe from the FDA?

The label might show, as in the case of some shampoos, a nice picture of fresh-looking flowers and herbs. They certainly smell fragrant. But there is no list and analysis of active ingredients and additives. Do they test the icky stuff on themselves before they dump it on market shelves?

Do we exactly know how the ingredients work to remove the dirt and odor, repair damaged hair and broken scalp, and send sexually-charged sparks a-flyin’ between boy and girl, as dramatically shown on those computer-enhanced TV commercials? We can never be sure. That’s because we would have to tread on the dangerous ground of industrial secrets, patented formulas, and trade restrictions.

Or if we do test and find out they are safe, economical and beneficial, can people concoct home-made versions? Not very easily. Even if we obtained the commercial shampoo and deodorant recipes with the help of friendly labs and engineers, the chemicals and processes involved might be too esoteric for us to try to make the products ourselves from local materials and simpler equipment.

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That, in brief, is the basis for alienated technology. Ordinary people don’t understand it, can’t reproduce it, can’t control it. And the reason for that alienation is that the technology is generated and controlled from foreign shores, and thus prevented from falling into the hands of ordinary people. This is especially true in the high-tech fields of biochemistry, biotechnology, and microchip technology.

We can only complain that, unlike traditional and indigenous treatments, these alien creams, soaps, detergents and deodorants with which we wash our hair and bodies, our clothes and household stuff, are so irritating to the eyes, often to the skin. We can only observe that some highly-chemicalized foods, drinks and drugs trigger barely-known allergies and cancers.

Often we don’t know exactly what chemicals cause these reactions. In the case of agro-chemicals and certain foods and drugs, we are more definite. (Only recently did I discover that, in my case, a certain popular coffee creamer product promptly triggered mouth sores that took long to heal. You won’t find any warning about this in the product label.)

Yet we continue buying and using these products. We allow them into our bodies directly and indirectly. We allow them to seep into the water system, daily, nationwide. Imagine what they can do cumulatively to our health and progeny, our soils and rivers, our plants and animals.

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We vehemently protest about the toxics poured into our waters by corporate mines and pollutant factories that force themselves onto our shores and into our communities. This is very correct.

But at the same time, we must also guard against the equally insidious invasion of household toxics – masquerading as foods, drinks, medical drugs, and cleaning substances – that we ourselves buy, at the corner store, and so trustingly allow into our homes and into our very bodies. Every day, year in, year out.

The intake of this consumer chemical cocktail is becoming a national addiction, and generates multi-million peso annual profits for a few multinational companies.

That is the reason behind the unusual title of this somewhat rambling column piece. #

(Email your feedback to jun@nordis.net)

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