Discuss: The Gospel of Consumption

As I read all the other comments
on this subject.
Being a black male and seeing the
self destruction and self hate
and destruction of inner city
communities all across this country
that are related to this overall
mass CON-sumerism problem.
Poor black people continue to be
the main one caught up in this
excessive materialistic non-sense.
It seem’s like to me that the so-called black middle class that
made it during the 60’s 70’s
civil right’s movement have gotten
so caught up in chasing after this
madness.
Then people wonder why prison
rates are so high for black males
and why so much dope is being
sold and bought within the hood
of some of these areas.
Peace

I trust I am mistaken about the concern that besets me this morning: One day our children will look back in anger at those in my generation who had the chance at least to try and mitigate the fully expected damages of climate change but abjectly failed because we “played around the edges” and refused to take demonstrably responsible action.  Sacrifices of ‘sacred cows’ often associated with making necessary changes were too damn hard for so soft, satisfied and selfish a generation of leading elders, I suppose.

Dear Friends,

Perhaps you can assist me. There must be something wrong with the “picture” I am about to draw, but no one with wealth, power, status, and privileges to conspicuously consume and endlessly hoard has said anything. Their bought-and-paid-for politicians and absurdly enriched minions in the mass media are also silent.

Picture this:

A remarkably tiny group of conniving, deceitful, ostentatiously greedy, patently fraudulent financial schemers on what is left of Wall Street in the remaining investment houses and the major {stress-tested} banks that are described as “too big to fail” are at one and the same time being given hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer money, racking up billions of dollars in profits, and paying themselves millions of dollars in bonuses. All the while, millions of people are losing their livelihoods, homes, pensions, etc. The children of these less fortunate people are going hungry.

What is wrong with this picture?

Sincerely,

Steve

This whole scene is out of control
and I wonder will people snap
out of it and wake up from destroying the planet with all
this excessive materialism
and consumerism.

One day our children will look back in anger at those in my generation who had the chance at least to try and mitigate the fully expected damages of climate change but abjectly failed because we “played around the edges” and refused to take demonstrably responsible action.
Many of us already are.  The so called “me” generation is aptly named in for their egregious navel gazing and self absorption.  Your generation (as a whole, exceptions exist) has single-handedly brought about the decline of the nuclear family, the decline of financial stability, the decline of the environment and the decline of America’s power through your endless pursuit of material wealth and opulent lifestyles that could only be afforded through cheap credit.  As a young man, I have little expectation of a quality of life of anything approaching yours.  I am college educated, hard working and smarter than the average bear, yet your generation’s mismanagement of your own finances means I can never expect you to pass the torch in the work world (who’s going to retire now?).  Consequently I look forward to a life in which a home is unattainable, a family could only be raised in impoverished conditions, and education and health care costs have inflated so astronomically that I only hope my commitment to healthy diet and exercise will preempt my need for medical care and I’d never be able to pay for college for kids, should I have them without some dramatic change in personal income.  American jobs today have no future.  You can’t expect to be loyal and climb the ladder, as corporations will cut your legs out from under you and the first sign of a decline in earnings.  Our culture has become one of celebrating celebrity and superficial beauty and there is no longer any place for male utility.  I boycott marriage and reproduction in a society in which the only means to do so is to commit to a life of indentured servitude to corporate masters.  What happened to your values and ideals?  In your youth, there was hope for real change as you rejected the establishment that eventually consumed you.  What a dismal failure of principle.  The way we’ve been living we deserve to disintegrate as a culture.  It is unsustainable to pass enormous debt to your children and who would want such a heritage.  For shame.  You still collectively hold the reins of this leviathan and it is up to you, who have the money and influence to finally sacrifice and right the wrongs if you would hope to have any chance at a respectable eulogy when you pass on.  Start by willingly paying your taxes, paying off your debt, and holding the politicians accountable.  Demand transparency in lobbying, take back the power of the megalithic corporate monstrosities that are “too big to fail.”  Our real power to change the picture is to stop enriching our elite paymasters and to cease giving our production away for the same paltry sum we did when I was born in the seventies despite increases in productivity of about 50% in that time frame, and inflation absurdly understated.  Make no mistake, the ostensible 3% inflation excludes the costly increases in necessities like food and energy, and the hopeless expansion of our debt and money supply.  If this were not the case, a single blue-collar salary would still afford us our own home, car, appliances, education, health care and leisure time.  These are now luxuries for most of the population even in two income families.  This is the real situation our politicians would have you ignore.  It’s time to shed the fat and open our eyes before it’s too late (I sincerely hope it is not already, but the cancer of individual gain at all cost has rooted deeply in America).

If the family of humanity chooses to keep doing the very things we are doing now by maximally growing the global economy in the noticeably finite world we inhabit, something horrendous will occur eventually. What concerns me most is that current gigantic scale and anticipated growth rate of the global economy will precipitate, sooner rather than later, an unimaginable wreckage of human civilization and/or the catastrophic collapse of the ecology of the planetary home we are blessed to inhabit.

Ten years ago, I worried about my grandchildren facing such an awful set of circumstances. Then a few years ago, it appeared our children would be put at risk after my generation had completed a fool’s errand in which a few million fortunate individuals took so many resources for themselves and left billions of unfortunate children with a ravaged Earth. Such a possibility troubled me because self-proclaimed Masters of the Universe leading my not-so-great, avaricious and arrogant generation—a single generation on a mission—have adamantly advocated that we commandeer, consume and hoard a “lion’s share” of Earth limited resources and, in that process, have perversely condoned the relentless degradation of Earth’s environs and the reckless dissipation of the planet’s scarce resources….come what may for the children, coming generations, biodiversity, Earth’s body and its environs.

Real hope is connected to doing things differently from the way we are doing things now by making ecology primary and economy secondary.

False hope is associated with keeping the global economy primary and Earth’s ecology secondary; with doing things just the way they have always been done while fully expecting things to turn out differently from the way they have uniformly occurred in past experience.

The Gospel of consumption and the issue of over work in America and the world is a serious and growing problem.  There are many things that people have tried and are trying to do: shorter workdays, more time off, less work days, so that people can spend more time with their families and doing the liesurely activities that they enjoy doing.  But to me it seems like this is a problem that we have been fighting about for over 100 years and almost as if we have taken a step back in our progress.  i am currently reading A Peoples HIstory Of the U.S. by Howard Zinn and he describes in great detail the AFL and the IWW which were worker organizations and unions that fought for shorter work days and better working conditions in the early 1900’s.  they were temporaraly successful having shorter workdays and better conditions for a short period of time but were not able to maintain that level of intense protest and finally the dominant corporations prevailed; as they often do.  it seems to me like we have taken a step backward over the years as we are continually growing more unhappy with our jobs and with the lack of leisure time we have.  Lately i have been thinking though that it might also be a problem of attitude about the job.  I am 17 years old and over the summer for four months i work forty hours a week and then during the school year i work about 20-25 hours a week while also attending school.  i have no problem with working 40 hours a week because i enjoy my job. i work at a golf course and i am an avid golfer. i cant envision myself doing anything else.  I enjoy my job greatly and because of that my attitude is fantastic which makes working 40 hour weeks an enjoyable situation.  If everybody enjoyed their job was doing what they in their heart knew what they enjoyed then working so much wouldn’t be at all a problem.  This leads me to the issue of prioritizing ones life and their endeveours.  I work forty hours a week and still get to play golf everyday. i am an avid golfer so that is a top priority for me.  I think people involve themselves in way to many different activities and that is why they feel they have no time for liesure because they are trying to do so many things instead of picking the activities that they know they love doing; for me it is golf, and i get to play golf everyday and still have time to spend time with friends and family and since my attitude is good about my work i dont feel as if i am wasting my time and as if i have a shortage of time.  If we can prioritize our lives into the things that make us happy, try and have a job that you dont mind going to and having a good attitude about what you are doing than working so much wont seem as bad, not saying that working less is bad, i think working less would benefit everybody greatly but i do not think that we as a country and as a society will ever reach a point where every party is satisfied with the hours of work and the hours of liesure.  Prioritizing activities and having a good attitude about these activities: work, liesure, relaxation, is key to enjoying life Because attitude can be the difference.

I am not an economist. But the economists I hear about in the news keep telling us we need to consume more goods, especially new cars, to get the economy back on its feet. Surely there is another way for our country, our world to survive and thrive. What is the other model? What if we all conserved and used only what we needed? We were fine before we became totally focused on consumerism. What is wrong with no growth? We could have stability as our mantra rather than growth, which is unsustainable. What would this world look like and how would it function?  I would love to have a discussion of this.