Hey y’all. Stasia here.
I responded to the Coltan issue with “The Dirt in the New Machine.” and ashamedly I bow my head. To be blunt, I do not feel obligated to feel guilty about my cell phone use because I’m not sure how to connect the dots from the people there to me and my sprint cell phone. I had so much internal struggle about this coltan issue because in my mind and in my heart, I know I should care more about the people suffering there and its relation to my cell phone, but something about this issue does not necessarily spark any particular **fdjklk** in me to either put my cell phone down or call up Sprint and ask them if they are using coltan from Congo in the cell phones.
If all the cell phone companies stopped using Coltan from that part of Africa, would that stop their suffering? Would their government be any less corrupt than it is now? Would people put down their cell phones if people said that they would continue to get coltan from Congo? We pretty much know the answers to each of these questions….
It does make me feel a twinge of “Eh, Stacey, what kind of person are you?” feeling, but what can I do? I know I should care, but truthfully, I don’t care so much. I know it sucks a lot the way some of those people are living there, but I don’t want to feel guilty about something I most definitely cannot control or have a dircet link to. My sprint phone doesn’t kill, it’s the middle man crapola that’s happening that kills.
And I will not feel guilty about that.
