Words Matter — Moore Good

I recently took up Saori weaving in a tiny studio. You select a few colors from the wall and wind your little bobbins of thread and you just keep going, line by line, creatively and with no rules or judgment. It’s deeply meditative- no urgency, no deliberation, no examination. Just quiet weaving and a little cuckoo clock to occasionally remind you of the passing time. The textile arbitrarily ends either whenever you decide it’s over, or when the cuckoo clock bird tells you so- whichever comes first.

Reaching the end of something isn’t necessarily a bad or good thing, nor is it necessarily remarkable. ‘End’ is a word that we insert strategically into beautiful songs and poetry. Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end. I’m convinced that Neverending Story is a classic partly because of its title. Words matter.

In the context of diaper need, if we say ‘end’, we mean we’ve successfully reverse-engineered our broken corporate and philanthropic tools to outpace the Gap. If you reach the end of diaper need, does it necessarily mean you have secured a solution to the problem? What does ‘ending’ diaper need even look like? Is it getting to the point where we have enough successful diaper banks, wealthy patrons who promise to never stop giving, and successful galas that the philanthropic supply of once-made-for-profit diapers will one day outpace demand? Does it mean we convinced a political candidate to stick their neck out just far enough to grant funding or pass a bill that will stick around long enough to nudge them through the next popular voting cycle? Is this the ‘end’ that we are striving for?

Even if we DO arrive at ‘the end’, we’ll find ourselves in a temporary, tenuous position of success at best: won’t families still ultimately need diapers from diaper banks, even if the diaper banks could find a way to keep up? I feel like I’m the only one pointing this out: ‘ending’ diaper need in the way I’ve described above won’t really end anything at all. Control and security will remain out of reach for families relying on the favorability of ever-shifting corporate, pork-barreling, and philanthropic winds.

Finally: by pure logic, it stands to reason that the growth of diaper banks and corporate giving must be marching us towards our desired goal, but the gap is only getting wider despite continued growth of support structures and increasing spotlight on pushing for federal, state allowances. NDBN updated their stats from 1-in-3 to 1-in-2 families experiencing diaper need this year. With our current methods, the end only slips further out of reach with passing time.

Let’s set aside the 'End’ of ‘end diaper need’ momentarily and plug in ‘Solve’.

‘Solve’ is the fluorescent lighting in your 8th-grade algebra class that makes your eye twitch with urgent, nervous energy.

’Solve’ offers up an immediate indication of a problem at hand that requires active deliberation.

It calls for isolating, examining variables - holding each one up to the light.

One such variable for examination: Corporate posturing. Because gosh, no one is quite as cozied up to ‘diaper need’ as Huggies is! I’ll give them that. If anyone can tell someone how to get involved in diaper need, it would be Huggies. Imagine being so successful in your career that you’ve found a way to make millions of dollars each quarter and you still haven’t found a way to reach half the people who urgently need what you’re selling. That’s an achievement in its own category. How can they place a line item touting their generosity so painfully close to another line item identifying the worrying, ever-growing scope of need in the US and publish the page with a smile as though they’ve really got it all figured out- all it takes is you, dear site visitor, to follow their seasoned guidance? All while they rake in millions in profits each quarter? Are we afraid to call them and others like them out because we’d be biting the philanthropic hand that feeds our diaper banks? Or have we accepted this unacceptable reality because “America”?

Insert puzzled monocle emoji here.

Another variable is poverty. We can’t talk about passing federal programs as though it will solve anything when the next leader could just reverse it, pull funding. Federal aid packages are a band-aid on the ugly monster of poverty; maybe it would end diaper need the way a Netflix show ‘ends’ before you roll into the next one, but it won’t solve the problem. The fact that people work multiple jobs and still can’t afford to buy diapers that cost a few dollars a day isn’t a ‘diapers are too expensive’ problem. It’s a poverty problem. We can’t solve that today, but we can point it out in the equation.

A third variable is processing. We’ve let independence and self-reliance slip through our fingers, allowing corporate manufacturing to outpace our ability to create something of similar quality and convenience. Today, if you want to make yourself a warm, sturdy sweater, you can do that. Because maybe you don’t want to buy a $23 sweater made of microplastics from a child labor factory shipped from across the planet. Nor do you feel like paying $319 for a sweater whose marketing team live streams helicopter rides over their pristine sheep fields so that you can feel organically, spiritually connected to your investment. You just want to make it yourself, okay? You can still get your hands on some basic yarn, and there are thriving sewing communities to help you. No corporation has found a way to take that from you yet. If you want to grow some carrots that taste like real carrots — because the waterlogged, bagged, multicolored nubs called ‘carrots’ in your grocery store that were shipped from a thousand miles away just don’t do it for you- you can start a garden. If you’d like to 3D print a human prosthetic eyeball or a potholder or a bottle opener, why, you can do that, too. If you want to make a disposable hygiene product, you are out of luck, my friend. That situation is locked up with miles of patents and requires tens of millions of dollars in startup capital.

I understand that manufacturing has allowed for mass production and we can’t just launch ourselves back to the dark ages of sewing pads and diapers by hand. I also understand that production at scale, like big diaper companies, allows for lower costs than small-batch artisanal efforts. But if we lose the ability to do something ourselves, I have to insist that something critical has gone missing - I am telling you, this variable belongs in the conversation. It deserves a spot.

Back to Saori weaving. There’s this brilliant rainbow display of yarn on the wall. You select a few and then you sit down at your loom. Those threads are the conversation. Right now, the national conversation on diaper need is fixed on 4-5 talking points. We’re sitting there with the same bobbins of yarn, passing the shuttle back and forth, back and forth.

We need to get up out of our seats and stand at the wall and pull more colors. Ones we haven’t used yet. Like the variables I identified above. And more.

Since this is a post about words, I’ll point out that the word ‘solve’ is adjacent in look and sound to ‘salve’. Salve applies to the healing of wounds- physical ones, but also the culturally embedded, shameful wounds of neglect, mismanagement, and a failure to see. May it serve as a phonologic reminder whenever we use it.

If we merely try to end diaper need with the current methods of fortifying diaper banks, we are employing methodology and a mindset that doesn’t achieve true security or equity. If we work to solve diaper need, we’re throwing open the shutters and opening the windows to let in the fresh air and the light in careful observation and unflinching commitment to fix whatever we find. What I’ve found (as I’ve described in other blog posts) are that (1) materials are not being creatively or sustainably sourced, (2) the wrong folks are in charge (3) we’re throwing philanthropic and corporate band-aids at the whole thing and hoping it all sticks. Ending something doesn’t guarantee eradication of the possibility of another beginning. Solving something, by contrast, is wholly complete in that you’ve committed to understanding the root.

#solvediaperneed