Unconcsious consumer rant
I assume that you've seen “The Story of Stuff” but, if you haven't, youtube it.
It's kinda' scary how all the nice little things we have we don't pay for most of, but someone else does, and yet most people still have huge personal debts that could be avoided by using something like a psp for more than eight months until the next upgrade comes along.
Our society's sick! But if you're starting to hate your neighbors for driving from one end of the drive to the other, take a trip to Phionix Arizona. Just drive across town on each of the expressways and look at your surroundings. Everyone down there drives a NEW car, like 2003 or newer, and a lot of them are pimped out with unnecessary crap like big rims. Secondly look at the road its self, HUGE! All mile long merge lanes and twelve lane freeways, you never have to slow down even to get from one freeway to another. looking at this makes it no mystery how BP makes a measly $50'000... EVERY MINUTE! Oh, and the side of the road is landscaped (the whole state of AZ is a desert wasteland but the rocks are perfectly arranged on the side of the highway, it's really creepy).
Then look beyond the road, the houses... They're all either huge identical suburban mansions in the white ghettos or extremely shabby 800 square foot shacks with the roof sagging and the windows boarded up, but they still have an air conditioner, you need one down there, even more than a proper home. And the nice houses have SUVs in front, shiny Cadillac Escalades, only drug dealers and pimps (real pimps, the ones who wouldn't blink an eye at making profit from forcing you to sell your body on the street to filthy johns, men so low they can't even get it from their wives) drive Escalades up here, down there it almost comes with the house if you live in a rich area, a white ghetto.
The not so nice houses, in the poor ghettos, sometimes black neighbourhoods, usually Hispanic, they have cars in front of them too. But they're beat up pickup trucks and old chevys with rust on the fender and one tripped out rim. These people can't possibly have their priorities straight. You see them in the supermarket putting back instant noodle soups one at a time until their bill comes to $49 and change because the have a fifty dollar bill and no bank account or credit card to charge it to, but they still can afford to buy one 22 inch rim for their beater car? (/smacks self on forehead)
And then you go to a mall... a "nice one" in one of the white ghettos. At first you walk through it and you're like, "wow, this place is huge, they've got some pretty neat stuff." But then you walk around the rest of the mall and you realize that it would suffice to be about a fifth the size because most of the stores are selling the same "cool" stuff as all the other stores. then you finish looking around, walking into stores and just looking, admiring. After you've looked through every store and not bought anything you leave. The the next day you come back (either to the same mall or another one, it really doesn't matter, all malls everywhere in North America are the same) and you take the same tour. And at some point you realize that most of the people there are dressed similarly, then you walk around a little more and you realize that everybody is dressed really similarly, and that they all seem to be wearing clothes that are sold at all the different stores that all sell the same clothes.
Then you realize that all that stuff you were admiring the day before isn't really that nice and that all the designs are pretty much the same but with some that say "Hollister" across the front while others say "west 49" or "American Eagle." So you look at the label of some of the stuff from all the different brands and each label says, "Made in China (Taiwan or Philippines)." And then you think "well maybe I should by a hoody with no logo on it." And you look at the tag inside and it's the same as all the others, and you realize that not only do you not need to buy it, but nobody in the entire state of AZ needs to own a hoody, it's February and the overnight lows are 65, but everybody buys them, just to look good, but then you remember that none of this crap is even that nice and that they actually just buy it to look the same.
And you start to despise their ignorant little hearts and you want to scream at them and rag doll them until they understand. But then you realize that there are millions of them and that you can't possibly find the time to shake and shout at all of them until they understand. I don't know where to go from there, I guess you rant at your friends who are already converted.
We over consume like it's our job, and in short, it is. At least in the eyes of the powers that be, but you can always make a difference just by thinking about what you're doing and what you're buying, and about who wants you to buy it, in other words you cast a vote with each dollar you spend (or don't spend).
Sadly it's true that we vote with money at least as meaningfully as we vote politically but even conscious consuming has a limited and indirect impact. Sometimes buying the better, or less horrible option, is like voting for the Liberals over the Torys. you're still voting for government to be big money's big lobbying bitch. Take oil, you have to buy it or your car won't ever get anywhere. Maybe you have a particular cripe with Shell because they're trying to sue the government for banning one of their fuel additives so you buy one of the other 11 figure quarterly profit earning, anti environmental policy, non competitive pricing, puppet political - social and environmental stewardship organization running campaign contributers to all political parties, multi national corporate, world powers.
If you don't like that idea either you can ride a bike that gets an amazing zero Miles to the Gallon. Although that bike was most likely manufactured (or at least the parts were) in another city or even on another continent which means that it was shipped by train, plane, ship or truck. All of which run on petroleum. So you're still contributing to the buying of oil just as you are with most of the food, clothing, music, movies, soap etc... that you buy.
Yes you can make a difference by thinking about what you buy just like you can make a difference by voting for the political party that, although is still staunchly in favor of "Ragenomics" and is very friendly to the corporate agenda is at least not pushing homophobia and closed mindedly hell bent on the "war on drugs."
Feeling demoralized yet?
There's still a couple things that you can do that not only make your voice heard in our pseudo democratic consumer and political systems.
Direct action lobbying, community organizing and simple civil disobedience have a long tradition of bringing about meaningful change one issue at a time. Agitate, organize and campaign by word of mouth and you can achieve a lot.
Governments' power to govern is only granted and limited by the people's consent to be governed. And when enough people prohibit the powers that be from ruling a certain way they will change.
It's kinda' scary how all the nice little things we have we don't pay for most of, but someone else does, and yet most people still have huge personal debts that could be avoided by using something like a psp for more than eight months until the next upgrade comes along.
Our society's sick! But if you're starting to hate your neighbors for driving from one end of the drive to the other, take a trip to Phionix Arizona. Just drive across town on each of the expressways and look at your surroundings. Everyone down there drives a NEW car, like 2003 or newer, and a lot of them are pimped out with unnecessary crap like big rims. Secondly look at the road its self, HUGE! All mile long merge lanes and twelve lane freeways, you never have to slow down even to get from one freeway to another. looking at this makes it no mystery how BP makes a measly $50'000... EVERY MINUTE! Oh, and the side of the road is landscaped (the whole state of AZ is a desert wasteland but the rocks are perfectly arranged on the side of the highway, it's really creepy).
Then look beyond the road, the houses... They're all either huge identical suburban mansions in the white ghettos or extremely shabby 800 square foot shacks with the roof sagging and the windows boarded up, but they still have an air conditioner, you need one down there, even more than a proper home. And the nice houses have SUVs in front, shiny Cadillac Escalades, only drug dealers and pimps (real pimps, the ones who wouldn't blink an eye at making profit from forcing you to sell your body on the street to filthy johns, men so low they can't even get it from their wives) drive Escalades up here, down there it almost comes with the house if you live in a rich area, a white ghetto.
The not so nice houses, in the poor ghettos, sometimes black neighbourhoods, usually Hispanic, they have cars in front of them too. But they're beat up pickup trucks and old chevys with rust on the fender and one tripped out rim. These people can't possibly have their priorities straight. You see them in the supermarket putting back instant noodle soups one at a time until their bill comes to $49 and change because the have a fifty dollar bill and no bank account or credit card to charge it to, but they still can afford to buy one 22 inch rim for their beater car? (/smacks self on forehead)
And then you go to a mall... a "nice one" in one of the white ghettos. At first you walk through it and you're like, "wow, this place is huge, they've got some pretty neat stuff." But then you walk around the rest of the mall and you realize that it would suffice to be about a fifth the size because most of the stores are selling the same "cool" stuff as all the other stores. then you finish looking around, walking into stores and just looking, admiring. After you've looked through every store and not bought anything you leave. The the next day you come back (either to the same mall or another one, it really doesn't matter, all malls everywhere in North America are the same) and you take the same tour. And at some point you realize that most of the people there are dressed similarly, then you walk around a little more and you realize that everybody is dressed really similarly, and that they all seem to be wearing clothes that are sold at all the different stores that all sell the same clothes.
Then you realize that all that stuff you were admiring the day before isn't really that nice and that all the designs are pretty much the same but with some that say "Hollister" across the front while others say "west 49" or "American Eagle." So you look at the label of some of the stuff from all the different brands and each label says, "Made in China (Taiwan or Philippines)." And then you think "well maybe I should by a hoody with no logo on it." And you look at the tag inside and it's the same as all the others, and you realize that not only do you not need to buy it, but nobody in the entire state of AZ needs to own a hoody, it's February and the overnight lows are 65, but everybody buys them, just to look good, but then you remember that none of this crap is even that nice and that they actually just buy it to look the same.
And you start to despise their ignorant little hearts and you want to scream at them and rag doll them until they understand. But then you realize that there are millions of them and that you can't possibly find the time to shake and shout at all of them until they understand. I don't know where to go from there, I guess you rant at your friends who are already converted.
We over consume like it's our job, and in short, it is. At least in the eyes of the powers that be, but you can always make a difference just by thinking about what you're doing and what you're buying, and about who wants you to buy it, in other words you cast a vote with each dollar you spend (or don't spend).
Sadly it's true that we vote with money at least as meaningfully as we vote politically but even conscious consuming has a limited and indirect impact. Sometimes buying the better, or less horrible option, is like voting for the Liberals over the Torys. you're still voting for government to be big money's big lobbying bitch. Take oil, you have to buy it or your car won't ever get anywhere. Maybe you have a particular cripe with Shell because they're trying to sue the government for banning one of their fuel additives so you buy one of the other 11 figure quarterly profit earning, anti environmental policy, non competitive pricing, puppet political - social and environmental stewardship organization running campaign contributers to all political parties, multi national corporate, world powers.
If you don't like that idea either you can ride a bike that gets an amazing zero Miles to the Gallon. Although that bike was most likely manufactured (or at least the parts were) in another city or even on another continent which means that it was shipped by train, plane, ship or truck. All of which run on petroleum. So you're still contributing to the buying of oil just as you are with most of the food, clothing, music, movies, soap etc... that you buy.
Yes you can make a difference by thinking about what you buy just like you can make a difference by voting for the political party that, although is still staunchly in favor of "Ragenomics" and is very friendly to the corporate agenda is at least not pushing homophobia and closed mindedly hell bent on the "war on drugs."
Feeling demoralized yet?
There's still a couple things that you can do that not only make your voice heard in our pseudo democratic consumer and political systems.
Direct action lobbying, community organizing and simple civil disobedience have a long tradition of bringing about meaningful change one issue at a time. Agitate, organize and campaign by word of mouth and you can achieve a lot.
Governments' power to govern is only granted and limited by the people's consent to be governed. And when enough people prohibit the powers that be from ruling a certain way they will change.