The Duty to Question Authority in Markets

Sor Juana's most dangerous quality was her willingness to question authority—religious, intellectual, and social. Ethical consumption requires applying this same critical stance to market authorities: brands, advertising, influencers, and the normalized practices of consumer culture. We're taught to trust labels, accept price points, and believe marketing claims. Yet corporations have financial incentives to obscure truth. Sor Juana would recognize this as another form of epistemic injustice. Ethical consumption means developing intellectual immunity to manipulation: examining whose interests are served by certain narratives, asking what information is being hidden, testing claims against evidence. This isn't paranoia but intellectual hygiene. It means questioning why fast fashion is normalized, why planned obsolescence is accepted, why convenience consistently trumps justice in product design. This concept empowers consumers to think like Sor Juana herself—as rigorous skeptics unwilling to accept inherited assumptions simply because they're convenient or widely promoted.