I happened to be sitting down in front of the TV with my bowl of thousand-year-egg jook tonight when this documentary, Diamond Roads, aired on the Discovery channel, and before I knew it, I sat there for 3 hours and watched the whole thing.
As you can imagine, it's another attempt to raise awareness about the greed and exploitation behind the diamond trade. It's a well-made documentary that delves into lives of people, from the mega-rich at the De Beers cartel to the slave labor in Sierra Lione, whose entire lives hinge on these stones in vastly different ways. As with other efforts in the past to expose the ugliness of the trade (like Leonardo DiCaprio's Blood Diamond, and the book Diamond: the History of a Cold-Blooded Love Affair), it makes you look at your ring finger and feel little goose bumps all over. Even though we were assured that the diamond we bought was not a conflict diamond, how do you really know? Why are we willing to pay what we pay for them, and why do we- otherwise intelligent people- believe De Beers' "A diamond is forever" slogan? Since when has a little stone represent undying love?
In fact, the program tonight suggests "alternatives"- not your department-store variety cubic zirconia, but synthetic, or "cultured" diamonds (like this one on the right). Yeap, diamonds are being "grown" in factories for years now, and have recently made the leap from industrial use to the gemstone market. They're chemically exactly the same as the real stuff, but at a fraction of the cost. But my question is, why spend the money on these home-grown diamonds, when a 3-carat CZ ring at Macy's cost $38 ($28 during their 4th of July sale)? You'd know the purchase of that CZ ring isn't funding any warlord in some suppressed corner of Africa, it looks just like the real thing (at least to most peoples' eyes), and you wouldn't fret over it even if you accidentally left in some public restroom's sink after a night's hard partying.
But the hard fact is, nothing will ever replace natural diamonds, however real, or inexpensive, or conflict-free the alternative is, at least as long as De Beers and its marketing machine are still around.
In the mean time, I'll make my $15 monthly donation to Greenpeace so I can sleep tonight.
