“Contaminated” – Aren’t We All?

August 18, 1993

“My views, like yours, are contaminated by my origins.” So wrote Robert Evans, a Canadian health economist. (HEALTH OF NATIONS, p. 3)

The purpose of this brief essay is not to discuss the particular issue of the Canadian vis-à-vis the United States approaches to the health of its citizens, but rather to emphasize to myself (and to you), that there are few, if any debatable issues where any of us can be completely objective. According to George Will, hotel executive Conrad Hilton, when asked in a TV interview if he had one vital message for Americans, said, “Please – place the curtain on the inside of the tub.” Mr. Hilton was “contaminated” (or to use a less pungent word, influenced) by the problems of the hotel business, and understandably so.

I had to recognize my own “contamination” the other day in the check-out line at the super-market. Just ahead of me was a woman with three small children. I could not avoid seeing her purchases on the moving belt: a twelve-can case of carbonated cola, a jug of fruit punch, NOT fruit juice, two large boxes of famous brand sugared cereals. She paid with food stamps.

I was irritated and hope I kept a poker-face. I had to recognize that I was “contaminated” by the personal experience and belief that oatmeal at 1/4th the cost is much to be preferred to the highly-advertised sugared cereals. I eat oatmeal every morning. It costs 4.4 cents an ounce. The sugared cereals with the colorful logos cost 18 to 20 cents an ounce. But I like oatmeal; not everybody does. How can I justify promoting my taste over that of others?

I see no reason why carbonated drinks are allowable purchases with food stamps. Such are not nutritional foods. How many kids get a hyper “sugar-high” from over-consumption of such drinks?

Of course I am aware that if carbonated drinks and high-cost cereals were disallowed as food stamp purchases, there would be at least two quick and loud reactions. The purchaser would claim this was discrimination against poor people and a violation of her freedom of choice. The executives of the cola and soft-drink companies along with the large cereal company executives and their lobbyists would make the halls of Congress ring like Big Ben with their protests. They would condemn any regulation which would prevent or deter their selling their products at a profit. But the fact that food stamps are considered a necessary benefit, paid with our taxes, raises the question: Should our taxes be higher because of the corporate profits made from non-nutritional drinks and overpriced cereals?

If I am honest, I must recognize that I am “contaminated” by early experiences, particularly the difficult 1930s when so many of us were radicalized in varying degrees. I have enough understanding of Who I Am to recognize many of my faults, so what right have I to judge others? In ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL (Act IV, sc. iii) Shakespeare has the 1st Lord say, “The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together: our virtues would be proud if our faults whipped them not; and our crimes would despair if they were not cherished by our virtues.”

Yet if we are to be responsible persons, we must make judgments and promote our views even when we concede that we are “contaminated” by our personal history and evolving convictions. It would be great folly to become immobilized on such grounds. As Henri Amiel, the French essayist observed, “The man (sic) who insists upon seeing with perfect clearness before he decides, never decides.”