Discuss: The Gospel of Consumption

I always tell people that the most embarrassing thing in my life is that I have a degree in business administration.  I say that for two reasons.  First, the marketing courses are courses in psychological warfare.  It is know how to get people to buy things they don’t want or need.  The second is tied to the first.  The economic courses taught a false “linear system”, which didn’t value the resource until it was mined, milled, manufactured and sold.  There was then no accountability for the waste.  They now call these “externalities”, the cost that can be passed on to others.

This history of consumerism should be required reading in 6th grade, and again in 10th! This sums up nicely (though sadly) what underlies our worship of growth everlasting. Today’s economic headlines trumpet the hope that a stimulus package will convince consumers to spend and jump-start the economy. And too few realize that creates more problems than it solves.

We are on the hamster-wheel and we cannot get off. Have you noticed they don’t even call us “citizens” anymore? We are referred to as “consumers.” That is our role in the collective.

Dave Gardner
Producer/Director
Hooked on Growth: Our Misguided Quest for Prosperity
[url=http://www.growthbusters.com]http://www.growthbusters.com[/url]

This is an article to share with others. Remember to watch the http://www.storyofstuff.com too. This is a continuing groundswell of wake up that we need in order to ensure the protection of our wild areas, including those in our heart.Talk with your neighbours, walk, plant a garden, smile with children and older folkes. I may be simple...but I have to get back to work.

This is an outstanding piece of writing, and I am going to incorporate it into my freshman English classes. It is a side of the story that needs to be told, if nothing else to counter this fashionable libertarian ideology that is breeding more rats for the rat race. I appreciate the fact that Orion Magazine continues to beat this drum with articles from visionary thinkers like James Howard Kuntsler and this article by Kaplan.

I’ve been trying to figure out a way to appeal to the locals who don’t turn out to support activities for the Bear River Narrows near Preston, Idaho, where a canal company is proposing construction of a shallow, ruinous dam. I think Kaplan addresses the main problem in the community: People no longer have time to talk with each other in an empathetic manner. They don’t share a concern for the landscape because they don’t get out to enjoy it with each other. They collapse in front of the TV, where they hear only about the economy, as if it were something that will sustain us. In the mean time, the people who profit from dam-building (in the name of “energy” and “jobs") lull the locals into complacency. How do we help when we face such despair?

It is a strange experience to realize (again and again and again) that our society’s misfortunes can be attributed to the greed of a few and how far-reaching a handful of events, conversations, meetings, etc. can be in establishing a widespread, mostly-unquestioned paradigm. Kudos to the author for presenting this information in an approachable manner that will hopefully encourage a few of us hamsters to question the wheel and, perhaps, begin devising a way to step outside of the cage.

This article aptly describes the seemingly inextricable trap into which we Americans, have fallen.  But the trap is not inextricable.  Conscious decisions, on a personal level, regarding saving and spending, working and time off, can free each one of us, individually. One glaring omission in the article is the now-commonplace fact of the two-earner household.  This phenomenon alone has contributed to much of what the article bemoans, and much of what it omitted, such as the problem of latchkey kids and the rise of juvenile crime.  Once again, this can be remedied by personal choice on a family by family basis. Note that the woman in the article who celebrated her husband’s shortened workweek by claiming it was important for him to spend time with his 4 boys, was probably already at home with them.

We can buck the system or we can work the system.  Here’s a new way of organizing the power of our consumer culture, such that it is: http://www.chesapeakeclimate.org/blog/?p=374