I bought a bottle of this water, "Fiji Water" that is apparently supposed to be better than other water because of where it comes from. They advertise on the fact that the water 'has never been touched by man' until you open it yourself and take a drink. that makes me think: what value have we put on the human touch? Maybe we are even subconsciously aware of our effect on our world and that it is mostly a negative effect, therefore bottled water such as "Fiji Water" that has never been contaminated by man sells more than other water that could be filtered or manipulated by man by chemicals to get its purity. It goes to show that we still innately appreciate the value of an ecological system void of our involvement in it, void of our abuses on it because of our spiritual disconnectedness to it. Where the water comes from--is like an Eden, that we all can participate in by drinking the water. People buy it because it is somehow more special, more holy than water than has been touched by man. Maybe that is our spiritual connection to the ecosystem now--the holy and sacred is a place that hasn't been affected by man yet, we may not feel that connection with our immediate world because of the kind of culture we have created, because of the way we see the world now that has been shaped by man. So we get it shipped from a land far away, while we can still ignore the problems of our immediate world by indulging in something that we don't have to sacrifice for.
Also on the bottle: "Fiji's water aquifer is in a virgin ecosystem at the edge of a primitive rain forest, thousands of miles from the nearest industrialized continent..."
The terminology there is interesting, the emphasis in the advertisement is on the purity of the water because man is nowhere near it. The poison of humanity is not around so it gives people enough initiative to want to buy and drink it. (But i was also thinking here, how could this be possible? In order to even bottle this water at all there needed by be some kind of industry. though man doesn't directly touch the water..so they say..it still has to have the capability of mass production, and that means industry.)
We could all participate in the 'spiritual union with the untouched Eden that Fiji water comes from, but taste wise, can you really tell much of a difference between Fiji water and any other water? That's what makes it spiritual(though we'd like to blame it on consumer fads and popular culture, but all of that is fueled by our value of this world untouched by man), the fact that we would spend more money to buy a bottle of water "untouched by man until you drink it" versus Dasani or any other water that could cheaper, tastes the same, but doesn't come from the same place.
Also i thought this quote by Daniel Quinn was interesting:
"...Some heavy lines have grown up in recent decades around the concept of "natural." Natural foods are good foods, foods that come to us, as it were, directly from nature, without the addition of artificial colors or preservatives. This notion has been extended in all sorts of directions. Clothes made from "natural" fibers contribute to a more "natural" lifestyle. Shampoos made from "natural" ingredients are presumably better for your hair than shampoos made from ingredients synthesized in a laboratory. Thinking along these lines has produced, by a kind of sympathetic magic, the notion that everything man made is unnatural, and therefore unhealthy and quite possibly evil. If something comes to us from bees or sheep or flowers, it's natural and okay, but if it comes to us from humans it's unnatural and noxious. Humanity has gradually come to be perceived as ITSELF unnatural--as somehow no longer belonging to nature. When a beaver fells a tree, this is a "natural" event. When a man fells a tree, this is an unnatural event--perverted, unholy." (www.ishmael.org, from one of his speeches)
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