I encounter the LIFE IS GOOD mantra across hundreds of leisure products carried by boutique retailers. While the enjoy-life ethic would seem highly likeable, it does seem particularly ghoulish to be asking Americans to stop and smell the roses over the mass graves of our current third world horrors. I think it’s as perverse has handing everybody lemons so you can smell the lemonade.
I’d like to solicit readers to submit any photos of westerners wearing LIFE IS GOOD gear in the vicinity of global or environmental injustice; perhaps a grinning American traveling through a refugee camp in Darfur, Indonesia or Pakistan?
Meanwhile I may have to doctor such a photo, as Americans aren’t really looking at refugees, are they? Submissions will be published here.
I feel the people who purchase and wear the aforementioned corporate logos are either trying to convince themselves “everything is going to BE good” or they are being sarcastic. In a worst case scenario, their life is good and they do not have empathy with the sufferings of the third world victims. Either way, they are walking thru life with blinders and their karma sucks.
As to your above comments…The people that purchase and promote the “Life Is Good” brand clothing are far from being blind. We know that life isn’t always great and there are many many people that have it badly. We simply are just saying that it’s good to look at the positive in our lives as much as we can rather then the depressing nature of this society. One of the main reasons that Life Is Good is so successful is that we pride ourselves in giving hope to people who are down on life and need a boost. You would not believe the amount of letters we get from people with cancer or other health related problems that wear our product during there time of need. It helps them be positive and get through the rough patch in their life. We also donate a lot of our profits to our children’s fund that helps kids with unfair challenges. So maybe next time when you decide to speak poorly about the company, you will now be better informed.
Dear Katie- I’m sorry if I was insufficiently explicit. It’s not that the LIFE IS GOOD folks have a bad product per se, it’s that their timing is unfortunate. Sure it’s always good to look to the positive, but that can be insensitive in the face of someone else’s tragedy. Particularly if the LIFE IS GOOD wearers are perpetrating the tragedy.
In the face of the BADNESS we are visiting upon the world, such uncaring homicidal greed we are condoning or at best to which we keeping oursleves oblivious, now is not the time to console ourselves that LIFE IS GOOD. We’ve been dealt a worse hand than those who are suffering, we’ve been dealt the guilt. Our GOOD LIFE has been usurped, no doubt, but that is no reason to shy away from confronting the challenge of bringing it back. It’s not a matter of wearing positive-thinking garb. We have to own up to the WE’VE MADE LIFE TERRIBLE and make it stop.
Your benevolent employers should shelve their wonderful product until such time as they aren’t serving to sooth the consciences of accomplices to murder and profiteering. Sorry dudes.