I don't know if this "explains" anything, but some people, crows and magpies are fascinated by shiny things. Reason holds no sway with them, when presented with sparklies. Hence, the digging continues, when there are tons and tons of diamonds already cleaned, sorted, and sitting in stockpile. Furthermore, people are paid handsomely to guard said stockpile.

I know it flies in the face of rational market economics, but there you have it. Shiny is its own kind of crazy.

I actually like that answer. If we were on AskMe, I'd give you a bloody check mark for that.

To summarize this straightfaced explanation: eternity rings are bands with small gemstones (usually diamonds) set into them. There are ‘full’ and ‘half’ eternity rings, with the latter studded with stones only for half their circumferences. Half an eternity is still an eternity, though, mathematically speaking. They are supposed to symbolize everlesting love; they are not specifically linked to any occasion, but are often anniversary gifts; they are often worn on the same finger as the engagement and wedding ring, and sometimes serve as replacement (or upgrade) for one or the other.

misteraitch, now I get it. If you have £££££££, you embed child-slave-mined diamonds ALL THE WAY AROUND THE RING TO SYMBOLISE ETERNITY.

Even better.

I would like to point out that one can procure diamonds from the Jericho Mines in Canada. Of course, the only way to get your diamonds from the Jericho Mines is to get them from Tiffany. Still, not all diamonds are murdering African babies. Just most of them.

I think I might be a magpie. Or, you know, female.

Any ring might adequately symolize eternity, of course; the diamonds are additional ornamentation, or, if you like, ostentation.

Surely almost no purchasers or purchasees would insist that their jewels have been mined by child-slaves, with most, sadly, just not caring about the welfare of the miner any more than they care about the well-being of the factory-workers who make their clothes & shoes.

The diamond I wear was, I am told, mined in Russia, but for all I know the fellow that wrenched it from the ground might live & work in awful, exploitative conditions & irreversibly pollute the surrounding Siberian wilderness. My forebears were tin & coal miners, some of whom were likely crushed or blown-up in the course of their work, while others, I know for sure, slowly coughed their way to death from pneumoconiosis. The knowledge of this wouldn’t stop me from buying a sack of coal, if I needed one to keep warm.

My forebears were tin & coal miners, some of whom were likely crushed or blown-up in the course of their work, while others, I know for sure, slowly coughed their way to death from pneumoconiosis.

I'm with you here. My paternal grandfather died of black lung.

The knowledge of this wouldn’t stop me from buying a sack of coal, if I needed one to keep warm.

Diamonds serve no purpose, but I get your point.

If I liked diamonds or traditional gems, I could see the appeal of an channel-set band (which is what "eternity ring" conjures up in my head) instead of a big honking solitaire. It's more understated, uses smaller stones (and presumably clarity is less of an issue, since the stones are bezeled in), and the recessed setting means less knocking about of a softer stone like an emerald or an amethyst.

That said... Um. Diamonds make me squirm. Not in a good way. When my father was alive, I occasionally wore the diamond earrings he gave me, because I knew it would please him. I loved the sentiment they expressed. But I never liked them.

Still, not all diamonds are murdering African babies. Just most of them.

I think the real problem is that when looking at a given diamond, there's no way to tell for sure how it was mined. That is enough to put me off ever buying one.

Plus, the way that DeBeers has conned the entire Western world into thinking that diamond engagment rings are some kind of old tradition is disgusting. They themselves invented the 'tradition' in the 1950s.

ps To me, owning a diamond is basically like having "Fuck African Child Slaves, I've Got MAH BLING ON!" tattooed across your face

Don't assume. The diamond in my engagement ring came from Canada [flash + short musical intro]. If my fiance couldn't have found a non-African diamond, I had requested a manmade one, or a ring with no stone. I don't walk around advertising this fact, because I don't feel it's right to say "LOOK AT HOW ETHICAL I AM." However, in this case, I'm using my example to counter your assumption. There must be others like me, at least in North America, or there would not be a market for Canadian diamonds.

Of course, the only way to get your diamonds from the Jericho Mines is to get them from Tiffany.

Not true. I'm not sure whether my diamond came from the Jericho Mines, but I am sure that my fiance did not go through Tiffany, but through a small local jewelry maker.

I don't really want to argue with anybody, so, instead, here's an unattributed opinion: some people think that everyone who wears 'diamonds'--conflict, fair-trade, synthetic, fake or otherwise--is complicit in helping to create demand for the child-slavery ones. Yep, that's what some people think.

Diamonds are like big weddings; if you don't get why they exist and cost so much, they're probably not intended for your benefit (you may be involved, but it's not your ego they're stroking). There's a huge industry bent on inflating prices, downplaying costs, and above all, making the target demographic feel inadequate without and wonderful with one. It's a scam, to be sure, but if it makes someone feel pretty, it must be worth it.

I figure supporting cruelty-free diamonds still supports the diamond industry, but I'm not part of the target demographic anyway. On preview, I agree, box.

... aaand then there's the case of the mister and my mom. i'd have been happy and astonished with something out of a gumball machine, personally, and i don't wear jewelry at all as a rule.

however mom had some old knuckleduster of my ancestors' that had been sitting in a safe deposit box somewhere gathering dust. it's been in the family for several generations. last it was appraised sometime in my teens, the stones were thought to be cut and set somewhere around the early 19th century. yeppers, they (the stones at least) have been around for at least two hundred years.

they both conspired (without my knowledge, and in a twist of irony, he stalked my mom on the internet and also showed her how to use IM, heh) to use the centre stone from the old gaudy piece as a nice, artfully set modern solitaire.

now, feeling as i do about diamonds but faced with a rather traditional-feeling chap who, in all earnestness wanted me to wear it and pledge my bond to him, what was i to do?

damn right. i wear it. i love the dude, and if he feels the need to be alpha male territorial in that one aspect of our relationship, then so be it.

To me, owning a diamond is basically like having "Fuck African Child Slaves, I've Got MAH BLING ON!" tattooed across your face

You'd be surprised how many people simply don't know anything about the diamond trade. I sure as hell didn't back in the mid 90s when I got engaged.

Most people aren't mean. Just ignorant.

Most people aren't mean. Just ignorant.

Words to live by.

Yeah, I have my great grandmothers' diamond ring. I don't wear it often but I'm glad to have it and I think it's beautiful and yeah, okay, it was probably mined by child slaves in 1880 or thereabouts, but, well, just like my great aunt Claire's 1930s mink jacket, which I also own, don't wear, yet love - those minks and kids would be dead of natural causes by now anyway!

/evil
/yet sort of weirdly true

I love the idea of family jewelry- passing something down from generation to generation. That's one reason I hope to have beautiful jewelry, including diamonds. Of course, my great-great grandchildren will probably be drowning in diamonds by the time everything gets down to them.

Gack. If I ever get married, it should be to the kind of guy (or gal) who thinks rings are stupid and would rather get tattoos.

I hear what you're saying about the family jewellery bit, TPS, but with (new) diamonds, I can't help thinking that people just willfully ignore their history. Like, if they REALLY want them, it doesn't matter so much. It's the entitlement vibe that I get from that thinking that I hate. It's just a bit of rock, how hard is it to not buy them?

This of course presupposes that people know about the diamond industry and I completely agree with jrossi that a lot of people don't. But I have to admit that I would think less of a person that went and got a diamond, even if it wasn't an African one, in full knowledge of the shit that is the diamond trade.

Well, I know I would think less of myself, knowing my standards and priorities, if I decided that I needed a diamond engagement ring.

But other people, decent people, people of good conscience and intelligence, have different priorities than I have, and they make different choices.

Doubtless I make choices that have those people rolling their eyes at my self-indulgence, my lack of respect for social justice or the environment, my cluelessness about consumer culture.

Probably I don't even question my own least ethical behaviors; if I could see them head-on, I'd probably try to correct them. If they fall in a blind spot, they persist.

Oh yeah, I know that, elsa. We can sit here and talk about all the shitty things I do all day. That's why I was admitting it, not proclaiming it from on high.

Sorry, I didn't mean to sound all benevolently tolerant and high-minded. My point is: I'm a big selfish jerk.

Hi!

(Wait, I mean: I'm a big selfish jerk, but not about diamonds, 'cause I don't like 'em! Just about lots of other things!

Hi!)

gaspode, I reread my earlier remark about choices and standards, and I see that it sounds like a scantily veiled criticism of your comment.

It truly wasn't. It's a criticism of my feelings that were spurred by your (entirely reasonable) remark. I'm hoping that you will be as benevolent as my comment falsely paints me as being, and forgive me.

(And the big selfish jerk to whom I refer? Truly, I am she.)

I don't really want to argue with anybody, so, instead, here's an unattributed opinion: some people think that everyone who wears 'diamonds'--conflict, fair-trade, synthetic, fake or otherwise--is complicit in helping to create demand for the child-slavery ones. Yep, that's what some people think.

It's true. Some people do indeed think that. *cough*

My grandfather was a jeweller, and I wear one of the rings he made for my grandmother. But no woman in my family has ever worn a diamond (admittedly in their case probaby for financial reasons) but I wouldn't ever own a diamond for moral ones.

Pretty though. The way the light fractures. All prism-y.

Oh that's cool, elsa. I'm just often painfully aware of how badly I express myself sometimes, so I want to make sure I'm saying what I think I'm saying.

Actually, I was just eating lunch and thinking about this some more. And why this particular issue gets to me. (Because hey, there are a million and one issues that I could get my knickers in a bunch about, right?)

I think it's that this is an example that goes beyond benign indifference or whatever. Like, here we are, in the US and UK for the most part, not really spending a lot of our time worrying about [insert horrifying thing e.g. Darfur here]. And you know, we're human, we live our lives, we sometimes get upset about it and write a letter, or a cheque, or get into a discussion. And then life goes on. Human nature.

But with stuff like diamonds, to me it's a step further, because it's actively supporting a corrupt and (IMO) evil industry. I mean, I'm not campaigning against diamond mine abuses, sure, but I'm still not actively buying them.

So yeah actively against > not really doing much, but not supporting > actively for

Lordy I dunno. I guess for me it's like buying eggs from battery chickens if free range ones were there and the same price, just because you like that the shells are whiter.

Could I think of a weirder analogy?

My ex-husband bought me diamonds. They did not make me happy.

George bought me White Castles.

Funny, as I was in the shower just now "Just What I Always Wanted" (YouTubery) came on the radio, by Mari Wilson and the Wilsations. I loved that song at the time it was out (1983?), and I really like the sentiment in the lyric.

Added bonus - John Peel on the video.

Thanks for that, gaspode.

I, too, was wondering why this issue tweaks me so hard. I suspect it's partly because I'm thinking for the first time in my life about marriage, in a vague, hand-waving, "someday" kind of way. That means also thinking in a vague, hand-waving, "someday" kind of way about the trappings that surround marriage and how many of them I emphatically do not want. A diamond is only one of those.

Also, I've been feeling sad about the afore-mentioned diamond earings from my father. He collaborated on the design and ordered several pairs to give to his wife (my mother), his daughters, and his daughters-in-law to commemorate the turn of the millennium.

This thread has caused me to think carefully about them. I think I'll offer them to my newest sister-in-law, who lives with my brother overseas, who joined the family after the millennium, whom my father met only once before his death. I adore her, and she doesn't share my qualms about diamonds, so it seems a suitable gesture... and a solution that would have made my Dad happy.

Here's a recent Jonathan Yardley book review that follows a corollary to this discussion.

Probably no one will ever read this, but here goes....I am a magpie, and I love sparkly things. However, diamonds are beyond us in any practical sense (I did have a real diamond from my first marriage, and the shockingly low price I could get for it when I really needed the money - $200.00 in a pawn shop for what cost $1500.00 in a jewelry store - really turned me off diamonds.). So when we married, I chose a cubic zirconia stone. Actually, I have several, only two in real gold bands. But the newest one is unbelievably gorgeous, from Orleans Counterfeit Diamonds. So get a good quality cubic zirconia, if you like the sparkles. No one can tell the difference.

Thanks for the link to that book review, Hugh--I'm waiting for my library copy as we speak. I'm hoping for kind of a Jessica-Mitford-meets-Morgan-Spurlock thing.