41 Thursday, June 12, 2014 The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890. 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109 tothedaily@umich.edu Thursday, June 12, 2014 The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com 9 Consumerism psychology Rich characters, strong performances fill 'The Fault in our Stars' IAN DILLINGHAM AARICA MARSH STEPHANIE SHENOUDA EDITOR IN CHIEF EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR MANAGING EDITOR Unsigned editorials reflect theeofficial position of the Daily'sueditorialboard. All othersigned articles and illustrations represent solely the views of theirsauthors. Better for bUS1neSS Michigan residents should vote in favor of Proposal 1 in August n Aug. 5 Michigan residents will have the opportunity to vote on a state ballot initiative that's set to help small businesses. If passed, Proposal 1 will begin the elimination of Michigan's personal property tax on business and commercial equipment. Most midwestern states overturned personal property taxes due to various detrimental effects on state businesses. In 2012, Michigan followed the path of its surrounding states when the legislation voted to phase out most aspects of the personal property tax by 2023. Michigan voters should follow the legislation's direction on this topic and vote yes on Prop. 1 in the coming fall elections. bile wiping my hands in an Angell Hall restroom, a sticker on the paper towel dispenser caught my eye. In friendly green print, it said: "These come from trees." And I replied, without sarcasm, "Holy shit, we must've ; forgotten." ZAK I don't mean WITUS "forgotten" in the sense of declarative knowledge - like, if I asked someone else in the bathroom where paper towel comes from, I'm sure they could tell me. I mean forgotten in the sense of active or working knowledge; in the moment of consumption, most people - myself included - aren't thinking about what they're actually consuming: what it's made of, who's making it, where it comes from, where it goes, etc. This issue pertains to almost every commodity that one doesn't personally produce - everything from paper products to hamburgers to gasoline. So, my basic question is, "Why do we habitually forget the elementary truths about what it is we're consuming?" And my basic answer is, "We forget because we want to forget." The next question is: Why do we want to forget? I think the answer has to do with the famous saying, "Laws are like sausages - it's better not to see them being made." We want to eat sausage, but if we knew how sausage was made (or actively thought about the gruesome details while eating it), we would probably be too disgusted to keep eating. So, therefore we ought not know how sausage is made. This kind of moral reasoning is ubiquitous in today's consumerist world, and presumes that we want to eat and enjoy more than we wanttoknoworthink,becauseknowing and thinkingsometimes lead to disgust. I reject the view that we should sacrifice knowledge for the sake of enjoyment. Matter-of-factly speaking, we violate this moral routinely, but that doesn't mean it's right. Our disgust with how sausage is made seems to reflect an intuitive moral that we'd rather not confront consciously. Deep down, many of us feel that it's wrong to slaughter animals for food, like how many of us feel it's wrong to mow down forests for paper towel. Herein lies a common dilemma for consumers: we must consume to survive, but our consumption routinely violates our own ethics. This is the biggest psychological and philosophical problem for today's consumers. To keep the originofcommodities inmind would be to consciously violate our own moral principles and, furthermoreundermine our mental images of ourselves as moral beings. The disgust we would feel would not only be directed externally, but internally as well. In order to avoid this anxiety and self-disgust we opt for the far easy, convenient task of erasing or suppressing the troublesome information. And thus we "forget" where paper towel comes from because we don't approve of the truth nor do we approve of ourselves. A tremendous obstacle in solving this ethical dilemma lies in a key enabler of our motivated forgetting: the physical and consequently psychical distance between us and the process of production. We aren't actually seeing the stuff we're consuming, only the end product. Today our gaze hardly extends beyond the reach of our fork; McDonald's hamburgers seem to sprout from the ground fully formed. To subvert this ideology of eating by suggesting that hamburgers are in fact cooked cow flesh is considered vulgar or, as Mom would say, "inappropriate dinner conversation." For her, as for many people, thinking about a chicken (the bird that clucks) while we're eating chicken (thewhite meatthattastesgood with gravy) ruins her appetite. Avoiding the former reality becomes so much. easier because we don't raise our own chickens or slaughter our own cows. "Forgetting" the disgusting reality of our consumption is imperative for allowing us to enjoy it. My hope is that by exposing these ugly truths we will be forced to confront them and I won't have to retain my current view that, "Morals are like sausages - it's better not to see them being made." I'd rather we not erase or suppress troublesome information. Instead, we should adopt the far more difficult and inconvenient task of individual as well as societal reform and/or revolution. Overall the challenging solution is that we must learn to allow ourselves to enjoy less. So long as we continue to physically and psychologically cover up, flush away or otherwise "get rid of" these disgusting realities, we will continue to violate our own morals - not to mention destroy our planet and its inhabitants. But, if we're willing to critique our own consumerist habits and sacrifice a bit of ignorant bliss, then we can align our actions with our higher ecological ethics. Maybe then we can live cleanly on Earth for a little bit longer. - Zak Witus can be reached at zakwitus@umich.edu. By NOAH COHEN Daily Arts Writer "The Fault in Our Stars" was first a book written by John Green, who, building on a huge and growing edifice of progres- sive teen fiction, is right now winning the proverbial lottery in the Young Adult literature world. The success of "The Fault in Our Stars" and the strange apotheosis of John Green is the culmination of a large international group of savvy young adults expressing their admiration for a writer/ video-blogger who treats young adults as real people, whose inner truths resist the sugary simplic- ity of the genre that names them. "The Fault in Our Stars" is about a girl named Hazel Grace Lancaster (Shailene Woodley, "Divergent") who, apart from being a fairly normal teenager, an avid reader and an introvert, happens to have a case of Stage 4 thyroid cancer that will almost definitely kill her in the not-so- distant future. Her mom, (Laura Dern, "Jurassic Park"), forces her to go to a support group for kids with cancer, where she meets Augustus Waters (Ansel Elgort, "Divergent"), an endearingly pompous boy who immediately starts hitting on Hazel; so begins the central courtship, between two teenagers living on borrowed time. The cancer movie minigenre is treacherous territory for up-and- coming directors like Josh Boone. Boone had to depend utterly on his cancer-ridden characters to cradle the emotional grenade of imminent death beside the casual reality of the everyday. In this respect, this movie knocks it out of the park. The pacing is simple but effective, and the leads are on-point when it most matters. Unexpectedly, against all prec- edent, the parents are important characters whose inclusion cre- ate an atmosphere that is believ- able and intimate. Recall that when kids get romantic arcs in fiction, there's usually some dis- tance keeping their interactions at times feels affected, and the away from the romance-killing dumbing-down of some dialogue gaze of their parents, but for kids between Hazel and Gus was with cancer, this simply isn't an bothersome, though perhaps less option. The movie (following so if you haven't read the book. the book's example) compassion- The beginning feels too heavy, ately addresses the inner lives of partly because of Woodley's over- its secondary characters, fore- dub, but in general, this movie is shadowing a life for Hazel's par- a rollercoaster that only goes up. ents after she passes, and giving The sonic background is Isaac (Nat Wolff, "Peace, Love, & beautiful, incorporating Charli Misunderstanding"), a friend of XCX, STRFKR and Ed Sheeran, Gus's, ample screen-time for his the lyrics of each song bleeding own personal struggles. Wolff into the narrative. The movie plays up the goofy, injecting some makes an especially bold sonic much-needed comic relief. gesture when the couple visit The romantic aspect of "The Anne Frank's house, overdub- bing Anne Frank's mature words onto a Hazel laboriously climbing the house stairs with her crappy Ing e ral lungs. The boldness of the over- dub is a fierce directorial state- this movie is a ment, rebuffing cynicism about rollrcoater hat young thinkers (NB: Anne Frank) rollercoaster that and exalting in the private hero- ism of personal struggle. only goes up. It is not necessary to have read the book before seeing the movie. Nor is it necessary to watch the video-blog of John Green and Fault in Our Stars," jump-start- his brother, Hank Green. But to ed by the shameless bravado of be in-the-know provides several Elgort's character, takes off with treats when watching the movie; an easy chemistry enhanced by for instance, in one episode of his the young actors' time together video-blog, Green filmed himself on the set of "Divergent." Wood- on a bridge in the Netherlands ley seems normal, intelligent, that would be in the movie. In hesitant, and faithful to her another entry, he hilariously mis- character's circumstances, but pronounces some of the Dutch Elgort? Elgort is extraordinary. food his characters eat, and tells Elgort brings Gus to life with a movie-relevant stories about bright, mock-pretentious swag- math, water and tulips. If you ger that even the book, with many like this movie, it's strongly rec- more lines, struggled to produce. ommended that you look up the One scene in particular, the scene Vlogbrothers. where Gus declares that he is in It's jarring to recognize book love with Hazel, shines in mem- quotes thrown into the movie, ory as a perfect translation of and perhaps the movie experi- a book scene to a movie scene, ence is smoother if you haven't thanks in large part to Elgort's read the book. My friend hadn't charming and complete grasp of read it, so I asked him on the Augustus Waters. drive home what it was like for Some faults include the unnec- him, seeing the movie without essary FX with which the movie my background. He said, quote: portrays the texting episodes; "I fucking definitely have to read the later dramatic FX are equally that fucking book," and advised unnecessary and make the scene me to give the movie an "A" in of Hazel's hospitalization less this review. relatable. Woodley's overdub Eliminating the personal property tax will help attract businesses to Michigan. The personal -property tax ensures businessesmust paytaxes on any business or office supplies. This ranges from computers to desks toland. Sincebusinessesalready pay the six percent Michigan sales tax on items when they're originally purchased, businesses are essentially being double-taxed for items. Businesses will oftentimes take this cost into consideration when deciding where to start a company. Because Michigan is the only Midwest state using the property tax, startups may be deterred from coming to Michigan. Therefore, eliminating the tax effectively boosts our economy. Though revenue is unstable, the personal property tax makes up large amounts of the tax revenue in industrial cities. To ensure municipalities still have access to revenue after the personal property tax on businesses is phased out, the initiative proposes using funds from the state use tax that will total about $600 million in 10 years. The state will allow for $600 million in business tax credits to expire during the same time period to make- up for the new cost to use tax revenues. While incentivizing businesses is a persuasive reason to vote yes for Prop. 1, the property tax is inefficient for other reasons. Not only does it double-tax - an improper and unfair method of gaining revenue - but the property tax is also unreliable. Since the prices of goods fluctuate given the year, region and idiosyncratic sales, the money received from the tax is dependent on avariety of uncontrollable factors. The state cannot effectively predict the generated revenue. Michigan needs a system that allows for predictable taxes. This helps the state create a more reliable budget, and helps businesses better predict and plan for costs. Prop. 1 includes an effective method to regain tax money. Allowing arbitrary and outdated business tax to expire is a commendable initiative. However, voters and the legislation must ensure that effective business tax credits that incentivize green energy and small business growth aren't cut during the tax credit expiration period. Follow @Michigan Daily SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL MICHIGAN BUSINESSES!