Most people in the world love the idea of money. It's the thing that gets them the thing that they want. Want to go on a long vacation....money. Want to have an amazing camera to take pics on that vacation....money. You get the point. It a sad bit of reality that we all need in some way a bit of money. But that's the current state of the world and it's best not to drink ourselves to sleep every night worrying about when this might change...oh yeah that drink requires money...
But where is the line? What is that point in time where being too focused on making money hurts the causes that we believe in. I'm only pointing to the new pop up restaurant by Pam Anderson as an example of what I believe is putting profits before integrity. Her restaurant La Table du Marche is opening on July 4 in France and famed Chef Christophe Leroy is developing the menu. No doubt the food will be fantastic and I can't come up with a country more in need of more vegan options then France. So on the surface it all sounds great. But for the me the problem comes more with the point of the restaurant. Let's be clear, a restaurant can just be a restaurant. One where the goal is to make money (harder then it sounds) and that's all. And if you eat before 19:30 (7:30pm) you are just paying 50 Euro per person for the food. Okay, still this doesn't bother me so much. A great vegan meal by a fantastic Chef great! No problem. Disguise your pop up restaurant as something other then a for profit restaurant that's menu is being created by a Chef that also serves foie gras (liver of a duck or goose, super traditional French and strangely enough there is even a law in France protecting it), this is more of the point.
This isn't really about Pam Anderson, it's more about all of us. Especially those of us who have a cause and how to we go forward with that cause and our own lives. There is no doubt that Pam Anderson is passionate about animal rights, vegan rights and I know that her opening up this restaurant in France won't effect the majority of the people in the world, let alone the people in France. Most of whom find the concept of vegan, strange. (I lived in the south of France trust me, more then one French waiter gave me a dumb look when I asked if something was vegan) We all do some dance, to make some profit while at the same time doing something for a cause and in this I still don't have a problem. The problem I have is honesty. Transparency, the question of why? Why is Pam Anderson opening up the restaurant, Why I am rambling on a website, Why do people spend 500 Euro+ on a purse? The why questions are so critical. As consumers and as people that have passions we must ask ourselves why someone is doing something but more importantly we must ask ourselves why we are doing something. And when we have it figured out, we should be completely honest about it.