Counterfeit… Warning!

I was watching a program yesterday about the size & implications of the counterfeit manufacturing in China. A few facts first:-

• It accounts for around 8% of the economy in the biggest economy in the world!
• Workers over there are working 100 hours a week for around £15.
• The workforce includes children
• This goes beyond Louis Vuitton bags and Rolex knock-offs, and includes fake breast cancer medicine, condoms which have holes in destined for aids ridden Africa and unsafe baby milk
• These goods are so well copied that even experts find it hard to tell just by looking
• They are exporting this manufacturing, and using people trafficking to do so. They send people to the West, living on a pittance to make pirated dvd’s; they then have to send their meagre wages home to pay for their fare over here!

All appalling, dreadful and serious stuff, but why am I raising it with you? Well, it got me thinking about what is genuine? Counterfeiting isn’t new, and back in Roman times marble was still a luxury item. Unscrupulous traders used to fill in flaws in the grade 2 marble with wax to pass it off as top quality goods. Marble that wasn’t so filled was sold as sine cere (without wax), and this is where we get our word sincere.

So how do we tell if we are getting the real deal? Being more challenging, how are we sure we are being the real deal? So often we compromise what we say and how we say it because we don’t feel it is safe or appropriate, and yet we know that the most successful leaders and artists are the ones who follow their own light, speak their truth and people come to them.

So today, perhaps we can work a little harder to be sine cere, to be the authentic us, and not pass off counterfeit goods to others…

“The first virtue of all really great men is that they are sincere” Anatole France

“Is it not enough to know the evil to shun it? If not, we should be sincere enough to admit that we love evil too well to give it up.” Mahatma Ghandi

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 4th, 2008 at 07:56 and is filed under Leadership, Personal Change, Values & Philosophy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.