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Welcome
to Consumercide.com
| consumercide/
materialism/ affluenza This is the beginning
of a collection on
"If you want to feel rich, just count all the |
What does peace mean in a world in which the combined wealth of the world's 587 billionaires exceeds the combined gross domestic product of the world's 135 poorest countries? ...you
know isn't it interesting with a lot of these corporate people, money
does to them what crack does to other people? Where after a while all
they can think about-since they've already made more money than they
can ever figure out how to spend-is how to make "I gotta make more, I
gotta make more,I gotta make more, I don't care who I hurt, I gotta
make more" and instead of robbing a liquor store they rob EVERYBODY... --Jello Biafra, from the spoken word album "Machine Gun in the Clown's Hands" Disk Three, "The Rolling blackout Revue" DKs link beautificial " The Curse of The Beautiful" Australia's Sunday Telegraph, Spetember 9th 2001 p47 LOS
ANGELES: We envy the beautiful people but, according to research, those
with the most striking looks are doomed to end up miserable and alone
and we ought to be sympathetic.
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(includes a link to about consumercide.com) by Alan Thein Durning Why Americans want so much more than they need: Juliet Schor Probably one of the foremost academic figures in this field of study. Goodbye Joneses, Hello, Bill Gates By Eric Brown (discusses Schor)
Wolfgang Sachs
Sean Sheehan A nice litle piece on non/conformity It is unfortunate that this essay had to be accompanied by all of the psychotic terrorism stuff, but if we can put that aside, it presents some interesting analyses that are quite relevant to current condition of consumer culture. Consumercide.com does not particularly endorse the luddite position, but let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater... Whilst on the topic of Luddites it would be amiss to not address the misunderstanding and misrepresentation that has accompanied the term. (Excerpt from Partial Progress 1982.) Excerpt from Chapter One, James B. Twitchell This is an essay which is very much against the grain of consumercide's theme. As an apologism for consumercide, it leaves much to be desired. However the work is quite useful, as it attempts to define a different perspective, a kind of devil's advocacy of consumer culture. Along the way it actually (inadvertently?) demonstrates the need to more deeply question our current consumer culture, by highlighting our unhealthy obsessions and the lesser parts of our nature that are easily motivated towards consumerism so strongly. Some of the arguments presented are so shallow that it is hard to not get the impression that it was written in a somewhat tongue-in-cheek manner...
"Why is the idea of working less such a heresy to Americans?" Sally Power
Thom Hartmann
all desire is futile
also see Mothering mag's section on consumerism
By David Crowe An essay from the HIV section of this site, that ties in medicine and consumercide quite well... "Just as medieval religion made unthinking loyalty holy, and questioning authority into a sin, the late 20th Century made the Worship of Money into a new religion. The creation of new medicines, particularly for long-term chronic conditions, became one of the ways to achieve the highest levels of holiness in this sect." Excerpt from a Yahoo chat. An
"ethical story" from the email rounds...
(thanks to Spukmary for the email).
Consumercide relevant links below
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You can't have everything.
Where would you put it?
--Steven
Wright
Forthcoming Works
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Consumerism: An attempt to modify the most outrageous excesses of commodity capitalism by guarding the consumer against fraud, shoddy products, poisonous or otherwise dangerous foods, toys, medicines and tools. Led by such admirable people as Ralph Nader, consumerism has two flaws: (1) it is merely a reform of capitalism rather than an end to it and (2) it implicitly assumes that private consumption is the central reason for human existence.
The Epidemic of Affluenza How
to Diagnose It.
There's an epidemic sweeping
the country. It's not your typical virus, but rather a highly contagious
disease of epidemic overconsumption, and the symptoms include compulsive
shopping, high debt, overwork, inability to delay gratification, a sense
of entitlement, obsession with externals and "having it all," wastefulness,
and stress. The disease is called affluenza, which is derived from the
word "affluence," meaning: "a : an abundant flow or supply: PROFUSION b
: abundance of property : WEALTH." (~Merriam Webster Dictionary)
1. The bloated, sluggish and unfulfilled feeling that results from efforts to keep up with the Joneses. 2. An epidemic of stress, overwork, waste and indebtedness caused by dogged pursuit of the American Dream. 3. An unsustainable addiction to economic growth." The affluenza.org Web site has this to say about it: "Advertisers who promote and shape our consumer culture seek to condition us to the idea that by trading our life energy for the money needed to buy their product, we will fulfill our hopes for power, happiness, security, acceptance, success, fulfillment, achievement, and personal worth."(~www.affluenza.org) Are You Suffering From Affluenza? The affluenza.org site warns that those of us who buy into the advertisers' messages find our time so consumed by jobs we don't even like, in order to have the money to buy products that we get little real satisfaction from, that we have little time left for enjoying family and friends, participating in our community, or nurturing ourselves intellectually, culturally, or spiritually. The result is alienation, emptiness, debt, and failed marriages and family relationships. Consider this: The average adult spends more time
shopping each week than s/he spends with his or her children.
What Is the Treatment for Affluenza? How do we battle this insidious disease? The answer is simple: Live more simply.
A couple of additions, focussing upon minutiae of consumercide/affluenza; Brand loyalty and preconceptions about quality or superiority in a product are often mindlessly jingoistic non-cognitive thought patternings. This patterning is started by someone in a marketing department, or through collective "wisdom" that doesn't really have much of a relationship to the actual product in question. Evaluate a product by considering your own requirements and the product itself, rather than allowing assertions of the collective to dominate your choices. Equating products and brands with superiority and social status is using external props to attempt to gratify internal psychological weaknesses. If you feel that you need the approval of others via this mechanism, your self-esteem is in a bad way, not to mention your prioritisation of the important things in life. (See the right hand column of this webpage for an anecdote re. alternatives). Fake / 'ripoff' products, if done well, are totally deconstructive of pretentious industries that sell fake power and fake status to consumers. They discourage the purchase of the 'real' item, because potential consumers with tendencies and pretenses to elitism find it more difficult to psychologically differentiate themselves from others with the copied product. In this context, which item is more "real" -the original or the "knock-off"? Don't think you should upgrade your car every two or three years. If you do this then you are part of a problem; that of the immense burden of resource depletion and pollution being served upon an already ailing planet. So what if the tax system makes it suitable? Government legislations to industrial polluters often 'legitimate' that pollution too. The immoral actions that systemically condone pollution and waste do not necessarily grant those acts absolution in real terms, i.e., change pollution's status in terms of planetary poisoning. Buy second hand if you have to, save heaps, and avoid the toxic outgassing of a new vehicle. (See work by Sharon Beder and Ted Trainer for more.) Maybe even start a website or two on older second hand vehicles, to encourage others to think the same way. Don't be sucked in by fashion trends and amoral marketing geeks... both would extol the 'need' to update goods regularly, when it is really entirely unnecessary (this applies to a broad, myriad range of consumer industries). Watch the movie "Fight Club". Though one interpretation might see that this movie does established hierarchies of power a service by trying to equate dissent with insanity, if you can get past this Fox approved tarnish, the movie presents a useful deconstruction of the "IKEA man" mentality. This is an useful reflexivity upon the issue of consumercide. Restore stuff. It usually has more character than new items anyway. Checkout links below such as Reduce Reuse Recycle for many more tips. Chill
out. Read Bob Black's Abolition of work
and this.
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Editorial;
Sydney Morning Herald, November 30 2002
Age of the great Aussie whinger
Pity the little Aussie "battler". He is, says a new study, the one with the big house, the wall-to-wall furnishings and latest appliances, the giant gourmet barbie and the three-car garage to match. He's been so busy keeping up with the Joneses that he's missed the sharp upswing in the national wealth curve since the 1950s. Australians have never been richer. Baby boomers are three times better off than their parents and five times better off than their grandparents, at the same age. Yet, almost two-thirds of Australians believe they "cannot afford to buy everything they really need". A new Aussie has emerged; one clinging to that gnawing sense of deprivation of the "battler" myth, but wealthy by any historical or international standard. The study, Overconsumption in Australia, exposes some worrying social and economic trends. Perceptions of what constitute the basic necessities of life have been so distorted that what were once luxuries are now seen as essential parts of daily life, and which, if not attained, leave a sense of deprivation. Because material aspirations have risen faster than wages, much of the middle class genuinely feels it is "doing it hard". This means the very real deprivation of the poorest 5 to 10 per cent of Australians is trivialised, or ignored, in the stampede to emulate the "average" lifestyle portrayed on TV home improvement and travel shows. In a democracy, politicians pander to the majority, now these middle-class "battlers". The wooing of the aspirational voter means that, in policy formulation, the interests of the mortgage belt take precedence over the needs of the very poor. In a wider economic sense, voracious consumption is not necessarily good news. True, consumer demand helps to keep an economy ticking over. It is only necessary to look at the building boom - fuelled by demand for larger, more luxurious houses and facilitated by low interest rates - for evidence of the link between spending and national economic growth. But this is only part of the picture. Australians have become alarmingly indebted. Total household debt has soared to $590.5 billion and is outstripping cash savings and financial assets, such as shares and insurance policies. A collapse in housing prices or a slowdown in the economy would overturn the common assumption that inflation inevitably erodes the real value, and the burden, of household debt. Millions of Australians may be left very vulnerable indeed. Previous studies have found
that while money does buy happiness for the very poor - who cannot meet
their basic needs for food, shelter and health care - its power to enhance
the enjoyment of life diminishes incrementally once a modest standard of
living is reached. This is an important point, particularly as the middle-class
"battlers" locked in patterns of over-consumption also believe Australia
has become too materialistic. It is in this admission that hope for a more
rational, and ultimately fulfilling, readjustment lies. But that shift
will require in every case an honest, and personal, reassessment of the
crucial distinction between needs and wants.
also see these sydney herald links This
piece could have been accompanied by sanctimonious excursions into the
poor prioritisations of the western psyche, but there will be enough on
this within the consciousness section of this site. I could also talk about
this 'left wing' work being picked up by the government as a propaganda
piece to surreptitiously condone the heavy skewing of policy towards making
the rich even richer whilst slugging the vast majority of working Australians...
but such themes will often appear throughout the site. The author of the
report, Clive Hamilton, has something useful to say about the political-rhetorical
background to this issue in a brief essay, mirrored below for convenience.
The Politics of Affluence Date: November 30 2002 source; 
We have never been richer but the self-gratifying middle classes have successfully recast themselves as battlers who must be placated, writes Clive Hamilton. Baby boomers today are three times better off than their parents at the same age. But pick up any newspaper or listen to any politician and you would conclude that average Australians cannot make ends meet. The commentators are reflecting back the sense of material deprivation felt by the great majority of Australians, including the richest. Despite the fact that we live in an era of unprecedented abundance, the broad mass of middle-class Australians believe their incomes are insufficient to provide for their needs. But the problem is not inadequate incomes, rather inflated needs. This new "middle-class battler" syndrome has transformed Australia's political culture. Politicians tell us ad nauseam that "people are doing it tough out there" and "families are struggling", validating the self-pity of people who are well-off by any standard. John Howard has been more adept than others at fanning the embers of complaint. The manufactured privations of "Howard's battlers" gave the Coalition victory in the 2001 election. All of this is bad news for the 10 per cent or so of Australians who are genuinely struggling. Political parties can see more advantage in pandering to the imagined woes of the middle classes than the real distress of the poor. So they cut taxes on the well-off and increase middle-class welfare, and use the complaints of the wealthy as an excuse to shift resources from public schools and hospitals to private ones. The emphasis on the tribulations of the middle classes not only trivialises the concerns of those facing real hardship but reinforces their obsession with their own financial circumstances. The rise of the middle-class battler over the past 10 to 15 years has coincided with the outbreak of "luxury fever". While ordinary citizens have always watched and envied the rich, a qualitative change has occurred in the relationship over the past two decades. In the 1980s attitudes to consumption and material acquisition underwent a transformation, reflected in booming sales of luxury travel, expensive cars, cosmetic surgery, holiday homes and professional-standard home appliances. Above all, houses have become bigger and more opulent. People have been building bigger houses at the same time as the average size of families has been shrinking. The average new house is more than 220 square metres, double that of the 1950s, and it must be filled with furniture, carpets, appliances and ensuites, with retail sales of these goods booming. Australian households are accumulating so much "stuff" that even bigger houses and garages can't cope, and a burgeoning self-storage industry has grown to accommodate it. There are now nearly 1000 self-storage facilities around the country. Although incomes have never been higher, the desired standard of living of the average household is now so far above the level actual incomes can provide that people feel a gnawing sense of deprivation. Television is the main culprit, not so much through advertising as through the presentation of opulence as normal and attainable. The proliferation of lifestyle, home improvement and travel programs, and soaps in which the consumption patterns of the very rich are portrayed as normal, both contribute to a false view of the world. The social and political implications of the incessant scaling up of lifestyle goals are far-reaching. The expansion of "needs" often outpaces the growth of incomes with the result that many people who are wealthy by any historical or international standard actually feel poor. The Australia Institute's survey shows that an extraordinarily high proportion of Australians, including those in the wealthiest households, believe that they cannot afford to buy everything they really need and that they spend nearly all of their incomes on "the basic necessities of life". The average East Timorese might demur. This imagined deprivation explains why, after decades of sustained economic growth that have seen average incomes increase several times over, the "Aussie battler" has not disappeared from public discourse but has become more ubiquitous than ever. The self-indulgent hearts of the suffering rich are the holy grail of modern politics. Abandoning the noble goals of nationhood and commitment to building a better society, political parties now actively foment dissatisfaction among the middle classes to perpetuate the myth of the Aussie battler, for they can then claim to understand their pain and offer solutions. The little Aussie battler has turned into the great Australian whinger. Yet when asked to reflect on the state of our society, a large proportion of Australians believe that we place too much emphasis on money and material goods and neglect the things that really matter. Prompted by a thousand personal epiphanies, a growing number of Australians are realising that their preoccupation with money and consumption is making them miserable, and are opting to change their lives to bring back some balance. These subversives are the forerunners of the politics of the future. Dr Clive Hamilton is executive
director of the Australia Institute.
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Some Philosophy A philosophy
professor stood before his class and had some items in front of him. When
the class began, wordlessly he picked up a very large and empty
He then asked the students if the jar was full? They agreed that it was. So the professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles, of course, rolled into the open areas between the rocks. He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed it was. The professor picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else. He then asked once more if the jar was full. The students responded with an unanimous-yes. The professor then produced two cans of beer from under the table and proceeded to pour their entire contents into the jar -- effectively filling the empty space between the sand. The students laughed. "Now,"
said the professor, as the laughter subsided, "I want you to recognize
that this jar represents your life. The rocks are the important things
- your family, your partner, your health, your children-things that
if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would
still
"If you put the sand into the jar first," he continued "there is no room for the pebbles or the rocks. The same goes for your life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff, you will never have room for the things that are important to you. Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Play with your children. Take time to get medical checkups. Take your partner out dancing. There will always be time to go to work, clean the house, give a dinner party and fix the disposal. "Take care of the rocks first-the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand." One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the beer represented. The
professor smiled. "I'm glad you asked. It just goes to show you that no
matter how full your life may seem, there's always room for a couple of
beers."
A TOURIST
FOCUSES in on a most idyllic picture: a man in simple clothes dozing in
a fishing boat that has been pulled out of the waves which come rolling
up the sandy beach. The camera clicks, the fisherman awakens. The tourist
offers him a cigarette and launches into a conversation: “The weather is
great, there is plenty of fish, why are you lying around instead of going
out and catching more?”
The
fisherman replies: “Because I caught enough this morning.”
“But
just imagine,” the tourist says, “you would go out there three or four
times a day, bringing home three or four times as much fish! You know what
could happen?” The fisherman shakes his head. “After about a year you could
buy yourself a motor-boat,” says the tourist. “After two years you could
buy a second one, and after three years you could have a cutter or two.
And just think! One day you might be able to build a freezing plant or
a smoke house, you might eventually even get your own helicopter for tracing
shoals of fish and guiding your fleet of cutters, or you could acquire
your own trucks to ship your fish to the capital, and then . . .”
“And
then?” asks the fisherman.
“And then”, the tourist continues triumphantly, “you could be calmly sitting at the beachside, dozing in the sun and looking at the beautiful ocean!” The fisherman looks at the tourist: “But that is exactly what I was doing before you came along!” -Heinrich
Böll
more
Dumb-ass consumercidal assertion of the year goes to that blond guy in the "fab five" on the Queer Eye show, for exhorting others to throw away all clothes over a year old, stating "clothes have an expiry date too". So does the planet, you consumercidal maniac...
"If only people could see
each other as agents of each others' happiness, they could occupy the
earth, their common habitation, in peace, and move forward confidently
together to their common goal. The prospect changes when they regard
each other as obstacles; soon they have no choice left but to flee or
be forever fighting. Humankind then seems nothing but a gigantic error
of nature." -Abbe Sieyes , Prelude to the Constitution, 1789 France |
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for
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This is a very basic website graphically, but don't underestimate it. Ted Trainer is a supercharged one-man-band, fighting to save the planet: and his arguments regarding sustainability issues and environmental destruction should be heeded by anyone who wants to see a decent future for the human race.
Going about the business of cultural revolution
"Fifty-one of the world's biggest 100 economies are corporations, not countries. As the most powerful institution of our time, the multinational corporation dominates not only global economics, but politics and culture as well. But the mechanisms of corporate control and the details of corporate abuses have remained largely hidden from public perception -- until now. In this compelling collection of columns, investigative journalists Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman critique corporate power from a relentlessly human perspective. While mainstream media cheerfully laud big business's record profits, Mokhiber and Weissman ask the real questions. Where is profit coming from? When working Americans' incomes have dropped dramatically since 1980, while salaries of corporate CEOs have risen 500 percent in the same period, is the economy really booming? Whose economy is this, anyway? From union-busting to food irradiation, from lethal air bags left on the market to judges who take bribes, from the IMF to oil companies -- wherever corporate crime strikes, Mokhiber and Weissman are there, covering an amazing range of issues, to sound the alarm and call people to action. " "If major corporations don't like a law, they can invest millions in campaign contributions, lobbyists, and political advertisements. If those efforts don't result in a change in the law, the corporations can just ignore it..." -- Mokhiber and Weissman on the Citicorp-Travelers Group merger "
Though maybe a bit optimistic, Lovins (et al) portrays a picture of the future which encapsulates both capitalism and ecosensitivity. Read their whole book online at this link... Also see Ted Trainer's essay above for an alternative viewpoint. Reporting on overproduction crises worldwide. Worldwide initiative to provide a pause for reflection from the rigors of the consumption economy by observing this event in late November. Philosophical background, organizing resources, and links to national BND sites. An environmental site that details simple actions we can do at home in order to save the environment. Adbusters magazine provides the media and motivation for future "Culture Jammers," anticonsumers. Short page featuring 13 tips on how to reduce personal environmental impact. Also links to other sites. Environmental tips on how to reduce, reuse and recycle common household items. Plans for this anti-consumerism event in late November: local activist news, flyers and network tools, Zenta Claus Campaign, links to related sites. Article with many links about culture jamming directed at the consumer/consumee Australian graffiti artist with qtvrs, interactive shockwaves, and quicktime movies, all with the theme of world hunger. Organizers of the UK Buy Nothing Day, exposing the environmental consequences of consumerism.
And last but not least, a few great blogs...
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Think
your life is meaningless? Think it needs improvement? Feel as if you haven’t
quite made it? Many of us do. Size of income bears little relationship
to the psychological needs experienced. Why is this emptiness so prevalent?
It’s due to an activity called need creation, and we are surrounded by it. Thousands of cynical, selfish, greedy and manipulative marketers and their criminal sponsors want you to feel the need. If you don’t, the sponsors’ useless businesses will perish. The marketers themselves wouldn't have clients. That wouldn't be a tolerable situation at all now, would it? For the perpetrators of need creation also have (mostly irrelevant) "needs" of their own that "desperately" require fulfilment.
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"a tutti i circatori"
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Only one measure need be applied to ratify that title: according to the Worldwatch Institute, more goods and services have been consumed by the generation alive between 1950 and 1990, measured in constant dollars and on a global scale, than by all the generations in all of human history before." |
