The pathological consumption of the majority

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

The pathological consumption of the majority, for I do know that not all participate in it, has become so normalized that we scarcely notice it.

The way the majority buys things that is, aside from the essentials, with which we are not concerned really when it comes to consumption for we all have to eat, have at least some clothes to wear, need toilet paper and other things.

What I do mean here with pathological consumption is buying the things that really they don't need and only buy because the latest version is on the market or whatever. It is killing our Planet, other people and ourselves in the end.

There is nothing really that they need, nothing that they don't own already, and still they keep on buying. The new smartphone that has more bells and whistles than the one they only got six months ago and which they still have not used to its full potential, and so on and so forth. And then there are all those things that really are of little use, such those unitaskers for kitchen and elsewhere that will never, actually, be used but be just white elephants. And yes, alas, I have also managed to buy one or two proverbial white elephants for the kitchen at times. Some people work just so they can afford the next new gadget, etc..

Researching her film The Story of Stuff, Annie Leonard discovered that of the materials flowing through the consumer economy, only 1% remain in use six months after sale. Even the goods we might have expected to hold onto are soon condemned to destruction through either planned obsolescence, meaning that they are designed to break or fail quickly and cannot be fixed or perceived obsolescence, that is to say by becoming “unfashionable”. When the new iPhone comes out it is obvious that an old one is unfashionable; or at least so we seem to have been programed.

Grown men and women devote their lives to manufacturing and marketing often a load of rubbish, and dissing the idea of living without it. “I always knit my gifts”, says a woman in a television ad for an electronics outlet. “Well you shouldn’t,” replies the narrator. An advertisement for Google’s latest tablet shows a father and son camping in the woods. Their enjoyment depends on the Nexus 7’s special features. The best things in life are free, but we’ve found a way of selling them to you, and we, the majority at least, have been brainwashed enough to believe that we need those things for our enjoyment of life. Things have gone so far that people go for hikes in the woods, along trails, etc., either glued to the screens of their smartphones and/or having earphones on or in and listening to some music, or podcast, or whatever. Pray, what's the point?

The growth of inequality that has accompanied the consumer boom ensures that the rising economic tide no longer lifts all boats, not that it ever really did. In the US in 2010 a remarkable 93% of the growth in incomes accrued to the top 1% of the population. The old excuse, that we must trash the planet to help the poor, simply does not wash and the trickle down economy does not work and it is a load of hogwash.

So effectively have governments, the media and advertisers associated consumption with prosperity and happiness that to say these things is to expose yourself to opprobrium and ridicule. When the world goes mad, those who resist are denounced as lunatics. Well, let's be lunatics then and swim, like living fish, against the current of this madness.

The problem is that the system is not broken but that it was designed in this way. So, what are we to do? May I suggest we break the system and make a new one, one that benefits all of the Planet; people, animals, and the biosphere as a whole.

To some extent some of us are already doing it by moving away from the consumer culture and -society, by reusing, upcycling and by making do and mending. By growing some of our own food and by making things that we want and need ourselves, even, as I love to do, from items that others regard as waste.

However, those that are doing this not only encounter ridicule at times, as said above, but are even seen and proclaimed – by governments even – as a threat to the economy and the nation. Thriftiness was declared by some politicians (in the UK) not so long ago as akin to domestic terrorism.

© 2017

We need less of more and more of less

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

I need less of more and more of less if I am to be free…at last. ~ K.B. Brown

The prevailing attitude is, however, and that even in the green movement, it would appear, that more is still king and it is being suggested to us that we need more of this and more of that, but it has to be green and ethically produced.

We need, we are told, this green gadget and that in order to live a green life on this Earth. The truth is that we don't. This is just exchanging one kind of consumption for another, the latter which I have termed “greensumption”.

We do not need more. We need less and we need to learn to make do with what we have and with what we can make for ourselves, and here as much as possible out of the waste that is produced by us and by others.

There is a saying that says and which some have attributed to the old Romani philosophy and that goes: “Possessions possess the possessor” and this can be very true indeed. And envy and greed is another contributing factor. Because the neighbors have a new car or a new TV we must get an even better car or better TV. We have forgotten how to make do with what we have and how to make things for ourselves as and where possible. All the majority can think of, and that includes all too many greenies is going to the store and buying. We are swapping one form of consumption for another and the latter just is as unsustainable as the former, regardless of whether the products are made from recycled materials or ethically produced. Consumption remains consumption and leads to problems.

When I buy pickles in g lass jars, or jam or what-have-you, I get a ready storage jar with it. All it takes it to wash this jar out and retain it for future use. No need to go to the stores and buy recycled glass storage jars. I already got them, thanks.

The same goes for tin cans that become, as and when needed, a pencil bin or other container. And other glass jars can be used as drinking vessels for water, whiskey, or whatever, and the same goes for bottles of the Snapple kind that are ready-made reusable water bottles. But, all to many, even among those in the green movement, cannot think that way anymore, if ever they could.

Our parents and grand-parents and their parents reused almost everything and glass jars and such like where always reused, including for drinking glasses for every day use. If there were real glasses in the house they were for special occasions, especially if there were visitors. Otherwise the drinking glasses were jars; period.

Every scrap of paper and envelope was reused and newspapers were used as wrapping paper, and so forth. I remember many a home where the walls were papered with the pages old newspapers that were then painted over. The walls of the old farmhouses and cottages needed, generally an underlay paper of sorts in order for the interior walls to be painted and instead of buying the special stuff many people simply used old news sheets.

While this may be seen as serious scrimping it is and was a way of saving resources and money. However, our governments nowadays equate thriftiness and such ways as – wait for it – “acts of terrorism” as one is not helping the economy to grow by not going out spending like it is gling out of fashion.

You cannot spend yourself out of a recession and the constant growth economy is not sustainable. The very attempt of continuing with the economy as it is and trying to grow it more and more is an act of terrorism, on all of humanity, on the Planet and all on all living things.

We need less of more and more of less and we need a new system, economic as well as political.

© 2013