Forget Magazine. Remember, Remember, Remember.

In 1923 the German-Jewish philosopher Martin Buber published a short book called I and Thou. It's a book about dialogue and relation, about how human beings relate with the world, whether the natural world of rocks, plants and animals, our fellow human beings, or God, whom Buber understood in the broadest, most ecumenical terms.

One key sentence in the book has stayed with me my whole life: "Everything is meeting."

Buber submitted that our relations with the world could be categorized in two ways: as reflecting an I-It relation, or an I-Thou relation. Each relation is not just a posture or attitude, but a mode of existence.

The I-Thou relation is the greater relation. In its fullest embodiment, Buber imagined it as the relation a person would have with God, something experienced with the fullness of one's being. A great love or a deep friendship would be more usual examples of an I-Thou relation. Such a relation is characterized by engagement, intensity, mutuality, presentness, trust, totality. It is an encounter that is truly significant, that is touched by grace.

The I-It relation involves a lesser or more partial involvement, in which only a part of oneself is given to the other. The It in question is not an object necessarily. In human terms, it is most often a role played. The relations between teachers and students, doctors and patients, priests and parishioners, salespeople and customers, bosses and employees would all be I-It relations. The I-It relation is characterized by utility, design, purpose, calculation.

The I-It relation is not bad. In fact, it is essential to the smooth functioning of any society. Every time we act as cashier, customer, doctor, or writer-in-residence, we enter a set-up that plays upon I-It relations. And this is useful. I would not want to open myself up completely, enter a soul communion, with every apprentice writer who comes to see me. A cashier would want to do so with customers in a supermarket even less so. It would simply be too exhausting.

I-It relations are also essential to many spheres of intellectual activity. The social and physical sciences demand a certain detachment, as does the writing of novels.

An I-It relation is fine so long as we realize the limitations of It-ness. No I-It relation can encompass the whole person or plumb the deeper meaning of life. To stay too long at the level of I-It relations diminishes our humanity, the humanity of both participants. For the nature of the I changes depending on the relation entered. In the I-It relation, the I, however benignly or momentarily, is measuring, calculating, using. Not so in the I-Thou relation, in which the I opens up, trusts, lets go, affirms.

A relation, any relation, affects both participants.

Behind every It, we must not forget the Thou that exists. In every person who is playing a role that is useful to us, we must not be blind to the full human being who is playing that role.

Buber called for an I-Thou relationship whenever possible, and an I-It relationship whenever necessary.

I can think of no application of this philosophy that is more urgent, more necessary, than now in our economic relations with developing countries. Economic iniquity breeds not only material poverty, but whole-person poverty. And not only over there, in the Third World, but within us, here.

The I-Thou, I-It distinction is the reason I believe in fair trade; that is, trade that is characterized by a concern for social and economic justice. Fair trade coffee, the flagship fair trade item, is produced in cooperatives characterized by fair wages, decent working conditions, democratic involvement of the workers, and concern for the environment. Fair trade coffee approaches an I-Thou relation with those who supply us with our morning jolt.

In buying fair trade products, each one of us buys into an act of respect towards the men and women who have made that product.

We live in a world that is at present dominated by It-ness, where profit and convenience often seem to matter more than quality of life, than simple happiness and harmony. Our relations with developing countries have been especially marked by egregious It-ness.

The Thou-ness of fair trade is a way of reclaiming our humanity and that of those who are less fortunate than us. The I-Thou relation is not a matter of a rhapsodic encounter with God. Buber did not believe in elites, whether economic, hereditary or mystical. Giving oneself, much like withholding oneself, is not a luxury affordable only to a few. It is available to all. We must only make the effort of reaching out.

Yann Martel lives in Saskatoon.