the everyday that we ignore

Reading "Undercover in a Chicken Factory" brought to mind an aspect of the everyday that most people don't want to think about, including me. The everyday isn't just pleasantries, or even chores that may be boring but that ultimately serve a more pleasant purpose. The everyday is also that thing that most people try actively not to think about, that thing that once we remember it, reminds us that our lives are founded largely on the dirty work of others. The "seedy underbelly," if you will, that the vast majority likes to pretend doesn't exist. Janitors, sewage workers, food processors, maids . . . these are people who deal with refuse and waste on a daily basis. These are people who probably find it impossible to forget about their daily input/output because cleaning up after the rest of us is their daily life. 

When we shop at the grocery store or when we're out at restaurant and we're eating chicken, we imagine that it comes to us fully formed. And even if we cook it ourselves, that slab of pink, slimy meat is not connected in our minds to the once breathing and shitting chicken that it came from. It isn't connected to the overworked/underpaid laborers in the chicken factory. And it certainly isn't connected to the horrifying process described in Striffler's essay. We separate ourselves from the dirty business of everyday life, and from those who take care of our dirty business. In some ways, this is mostly a survival technique. The facts and logistics of the way we live our lives aren't going to change any time soon, so we shove it all under the rug and pretend it never happened. We don't want to think about the billions of tons of garbage that we pour into landfills on a weekly basis. On the other hand, this culture-wide cover up also hides the problem in plain sight; we forget that it even exists. It's people like Striffler who are willing to look their dirty business right in the face that keep us honest. 

-Ashley