5 ms·

My guess is that we need a sweeping, emotion-fill, romantic story toward something else, not just away from the current diamond-status quo. There certainly is a

My guess is that we need a sweeping, emotion-fill, romantic story toward something else, not just away from the current diamond-status quo. There certainly is a quiet satisfaction, and clear conscience, in avoidance of evil. But no joy in the act of NOT. A normal person who repeatedly throws aside a full heart in favor of facts will not wake up singing for many years. There needs to be a new song to replace the old, something as emotionally filling as DeBeers shadow demons dancing to a swelling string section.

username90 5y ago
That will be hard, women are much more conservative and care more about traditions than men.
- bongoman37 5y ago
  Interesting that you are downvoted when what you are saying is quite true.
  - xmprt 5y ago
    It's downvoted because it's not true. There are tons of traditions that men follow too. Gender norms just lead to men and women following different traditions.
rmah 5y ago
This is quite insightful. I never thought of it this way but I think you are correct. If I could rephrase it a bit more clinically, the signaling of fitness (wealth, social status, etc) is important to the human mating rituals. And diamonds are integral to that in a some cultures. That underlying need is probably innate will not change. Therefore, as you said, you can't just say "NO", it needs to be replaced with something else.
aksss 5y ago
Dude.. people don’t think about who’s making their Nikes or Apple products or tshirts. They buy these incidental products with zero concern for the people producing them. How noble are we, talking about refusing to buy blood diamonds when the very MEMS mic in a household device probably vibrated to the scream of people watching a friend jumping out a factory window. Getting people to care about who’s winning and losing in a production lifecycle seems like something that doesn’t get fixed initially with the diamond-buying crowd when the shoe-buying consumers don’t even care. I think what I’m struggling to get at is that the diamond-buying population at least have these earnest “noble ideals” of love, unity, etc represented by this product for which at some low level the sacrifice and blood may _add_ value (god knows what unconscious calculus is at work in the mind of a grown princess). Compare this to a pair of crap tennis shoes that you’re going to throw away, where they are completely utilitarian, replaceable, and you have zero emotional investment in what they represent. The suffering represented by the product offers nothing other than the blatant profit of the consumer. And we can’t wrest the shoes from the consumer’s hands no matter what is said about the abysmal conditions that produced them. All of these conditions in the production of these products are known. Nobody can claim ignorance in the first world. If the population at large hasn’t had a moment of moral clarity by now, I’m not sure I’d hold my breath any longer. Either systemically the culture needs to be more open to moral awakenings (a hard sell in a world defined by deconstructionism) or a new and acceptable critique of globalism at a policy level needs radical change. Just my .02 but I’ve been hearing the same convo about diamonds since I was a kid and it’s as sad as hearing the rationalizing of any addict.
- Dylan16807 5y ago
  > How noble are we, talking about refusing to buy blood diamonds when the very MEMS mic in a household device probably vibrated to the scream of people watching a friend jumping out a factory window. The suicide rate in those factories is greater than zero but is not high at all. You picked the wrong analogy.
  - aksss 5y ago
    It (as an example) is sufficient to remind you that the production environments for many goods _more accessible than diamonds_ are highly, highly exploitive. We don’t need to argue about specific frequency of people jumping out of windows (btw, enough for one building to install nets), to understand the broader point. We could talk about child labor. We could talk about labor camps. Again, nobody in the first world can claim to be surprised by these things. For people to walk around on sneakers cushioned by children’s tears and fret about the provenance of their diamonds seems a bit of a joke.
    - Dylan16807 5y ago
      I understand the broader point, but you don't want to use incorrect information as part of making it. "forced labor, child labor, unreasonable overtime, people dying in mines, and a factory with a well-below-average suicide rate that got a lot of media attention for a cluster over a decade ago" One of these things is not like the others, and detracts from the actual point. It's a distraction from the real problems.
waterhouse 5y ago
How about this: Industrially created diamonds represent science and human achievement. After many years of engineering, we can take carbon, crush it at super-high pressures and temperatures, and make a diamond out of it—one that is more crystal-clear and perfect than what you get when this process accidentally happens in places in the earth's mantle. Humans have wanted to do this for millennia, and now we can! You can iterate on the above. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_diamond https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_diamond would be a starting point for getting more specifics. Hmm, it says: "A third method, known as detonation synthesis, entered the diamond market in the late 1990s. In this process, the detonation of carbon-containing explosives creates nanometer-sized diamond grains." Fuck yeah, my diamond was made with high explosives! Might prefer one of those because of the awesome factor.

username90 5y ago

That will be hard, women are much more conservative and care more about traditions than men.

bongoman37 5y ago
Interesting that you are downvoted when what you are saying is quite true.
- xmprt 5y ago
  It's downvoted because it's not true. There are tons of traditions that men follow too. Gender norms just lead to men and women following different traditions.

rmah 5y ago

This is quite insightful. I never thought of it this way but I think you are correct. If I could rephrase it a bit more clinically, the signaling of fitness (wealth, social status, etc) is important to the human mating rituals. And diamonds are integral to that in a some cultures. That underlying need is probably innate will not change. Therefore, as you said, you can't just say "NO", it needs to be replaced with something else.

aksss 5y ago

Dude.. people don’t think about who’s making their Nikes or Apple products or tshirts. They buy these incidental products with zero concern for the people producing them. How noble are we, talking about refusing to buy blood diamonds when the very MEMS mic in a household device probably vibrated to the scream of people watching a friend jumping out a factory window. Getting people to care about who’s winning and losing in a production lifecycle seems like something that doesn’t get fixed initially with the diamond-buying crowd when the shoe-buying consumers don’t even care. I think what I’m struggling to get at is that the diamond-buying population at least have these earnest “noble ideals” of love, unity, etc represented by this product for which at some low level the sacrifice and blood may _add_ value (god knows what unconscious calculus is at work in the mind of a grown princess). Compare this to a pair of crap tennis shoes that you’re going to throw away, where they are completely utilitarian, replaceable, and you have zero emotional investment in what they represent. The suffering represented by the product offers nothing other than the blatant profit of the consumer. And we can’t wrest the shoes from the consumer’s hands no matter what is said about the abysmal conditions that produced them. All of these conditions in the production of these products are known. Nobody can claim ignorance in the first world. If the population at large hasn’t had a moment of moral clarity by now, I’m not sure I’d hold my breath any longer. Either systemically the culture needs to be more open to moral awakenings (a hard sell in a world defined by deconstructionism) or a new and acceptable critique of globalism at a policy level needs radical change. Just my .02 but I’ve been hearing the same convo about diamonds since I was a kid and it’s as sad as hearing the rationalizing of any addict.

Dylan16807 5y ago
> How noble are we, talking about refusing to buy blood diamonds when the very MEMS mic in a household device probably vibrated to the scream of people watching a friend jumping out a factory window. The suicide rate in those factories is greater than zero but is not high at all. You picked the wrong analogy.
- aksss 5y ago
  It (as an example) is sufficient to remind you that the production environments for many goods _more accessible than diamonds_ are highly, highly exploitive. We don’t need to argue about specific frequency of people jumping out of windows (btw, enough for one building to install nets), to understand the broader point. We could talk about child labor. We could talk about labor camps. Again, nobody in the first world can claim to be surprised by these things. For people to walk around on sneakers cushioned by children’s tears and fret about the provenance of their diamonds seems a bit of a joke.
  - Dylan16807 5y ago
    I understand the broader point, but you don't want to use incorrect information as part of making it. "forced labor, child labor, unreasonable overtime, people dying in mines, and a factory with a well-below-average suicide rate that got a lot of media attention for a cluster over a decade ago" One of these things is not like the others, and detracts from the actual point. It's a distraction from the real problems.

waterhouse 5y ago

How about this: Industrially created diamonds represent science and human achievement. After many years of engineering, we can take carbon, crush it at super-high pressures and temperatures, and make a diamond out of it—one that is more crystal-clear and perfect than what you get when this process accidentally happens in places in the earth's mantle. Humans have wanted to do this for millennia, and now we can! You can iterate on the above. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_diamond https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_diamond would be a starting point for getting more specifics. Hmm, it says: "A third method, known as detonation synthesis, entered the diamond market in the late 1990s. In this process, the detonation of carbon-containing explosives creates nanometer-sized diamond grains." Fuck yeah, my diamond was made with high explosives! Might prefer one of those because of the awesome factor.