Sorry for the lack of posts lately… I was busy last week launching another blog (don’t worry, I’m not ditching this one). If you’re interested in a cappella, check it out: www.onlyvoices.org So far, it’s doing quite well.
Teaser trailer for what I’m about to bring up:
So my friend showed me this video called “The story of stuff.” It’s twenty minutes long, but trust me, it’s DEFINITELY worth your time. I’ve watched it twice already. It addresses our problems with consumption, and how that affects EVERYTHING. To me, it seems like THIS is the giant elephant in the room. It’s directly related to our economic issues, our foreign policy dilemmas, and, you guessed it, the climate crisis. In other words, this underlies pretty much every big issue the United States is facing today. If you buy into “the story of stuff” I think you’ll agree with me.
Of course, you may not buy into it, and I’ll challenge all of you to explain to me why over-consumption isn’t the mother of all our problems. I can see some responses already: The global warming non-believer may argue that this is crap because A. We don’t whether global warming is caused by us, and B. We’ll invent some technology or colonize some other planet before this is a real problem. But the consumption issue isn’t just about global warming. It’s about consuming more resources than the world has to offer. It’s about how our country, and the world, depends on us to continually go shopping. Here are some facts that I can’t get out of my mind:
- The U.S. has 5% of the world’s population but consumes 30% of the world’s resources and creates 30% of the world’s waste.
- If everybody consumed at U.S. rates, we would need 3 to 5 planets.
- Each person in the United States makes 4 1/2 pounds of garbage a day. That is twice what we each made thirty years ago.
- The average U.S. person now consumes twice as much as they did 50 years ago.
- In the U.S. our national happiness peaked sometime in the 1950’s.
That last one is obviously a little sketchy–how do you measure a country’s happiness? But the point is, I’m pretty sure happiness isn’t directly related to how much we consume. People can be happy without an xbox and nintendo wii (although those things can help sometimes). That’s another debate though…
Anyway, I think we have to face the facts. We can’t keep consuming this way. The problem, of course, is that we have been consuming this way for a while, and we kind of like it. Not only that, but we’ve been telling other countries to join the party. And guess what, they are–in huge numbers (check out China and India). So what do we do now? Even if we change our lifestyles (unlikely any time soon, remember we love xbox and nintendo wii) the rest of the world will say: “You had your turn, now we get to have fun.” Perhaps it will take some godlike leadership (Obama, step up to the plate?). Although, I don’t know if we’re ready to embrace that kind of leadership (I don’t even know if I’m ready, again, love xbox). All joking aside, to me this looks like the mother of all problems, and we should probably start thinking realistically about what we’re facing.
Here are some things we can do.
Your thoughts?
5 Comments
December 7, 2008 at 11:09 pm
I think you’re absolutely right Phil.
The level of consumerism that we have achieved in this country is something that has aggravated me for a long time. Don’t get me wrong, I understand its necessity and the role its played in making the United States one of, if not the most powerful countries in the world. But when we as a people reach a point where we trample a store employee to death because we’re trying to be the first ones in the store on Black Friday, there must be a problem.
Along with being a major factor in the issues you mentioned Phil, I think perhaps the largest casualty is our humanity. We walk down the street, plugged into our Ipods, hiding our eyes behind sunglasses. We text message rather than call, and call rather than talk to someone in person. Hell, I learned a long time ago it’s much less awkward to break up with someone via AIM. Our country’s women speak scornfully of being objectified (and rightly so), but then read in Cosmopolitan how to walk, dress, flirt, and screw to best “please your man.” I mean come on!
I think The Story of Stuff really makes a good point about all this. The problem is that the system has been designed so well and society has come to rely on it so heavily, I really don’t know how to go about fixing it. I think it’s a long way away from being a mindset that can be organized into any sort of large protest, but what can be done is a shift of one’s own personal mindset. Maybe it can start simply with leaving the Ipod and sunglasses at home tomorrow? However it starts, we ultimately need to discover for ourselves what we can get out of life other than just things.
December 8, 2008 at 7:49 pm
Great article as always Philipp, and I agree with Brian’s reaction to the video, namely that our humanity is affected and our mindset must change.
I loved the diagram Annie used to depict the life-cycle of the stuff we buy. Though I might have been able to describe the role of marketing, advertising and overall customer-to-company interaction, the golden arrow she came up with says it best. We’re all brainwashed to think that we need to contribute to this golden arrow, which is manufactured by large corporations and now is promoted by our government. This country needs to learn again the value of spending time with friends and family, as well as general leisure time to enjoy other activities.
A point I’d make to all this has to do with economics in general. The United States has a GDP per capita among the highest of any countries in the world. GDP, and GDP per capita are reliable statistics that economists use to show us how well-off we are. However, it can be misleading at times. For example (Philipp back me up on this), I was told by an economics professor that in Germany, it’s common that mothers will make dinner for their families most nights of the week. I won’t argue that none of the mothers in the US do this, but I will argue that the tendency has strayed to ordering out or picking up food on the way home from work. So if we consider the German mothers, they go to the grocery store to get whatever they need, and in buying the ingredients, they build Germany’s GDP. However, most of the value is added when the Mother prepares and cooks the meal. This added value does not appear in Germany’s GDP! You can see the point I’m making. GDP, or GDP per capita isn’t always 100% correlated with welfare or happiness.
In recent times, I believe the US goverment has lost some of the values it used to promote. It’s main concern has now become about keeping our statistics afloat, not american families and individuals. Obviously, during times of economic prosperity, people are indeed better off than in times of recession, but it’s necessary for us to keep these two ideas separate from each other.
Basically, if we all woke up, grew our own food, built our own houses and made our own presents for people, economics statistics would suggest we’re 100% worse off than we are now. All of this specialization has brought us to the point that we can’t do anything for ourselves anymore. In a lot of ways, we ARE better off, but in the same ways, we’re losing our humanity.
December 10, 2008 at 3:51 am
Thanks Brian and Dave for some great comments!
I agree with both of you, our humanity is greatly affected in a consumer-driven world. First of all, Brian, that Wal-Mart story was ridiculous, and it seems there are more of them every year. Didn’t someone get shot while in line for a playstation 3?
Dave, you make a great point about how the world media has become obsessed with GDP. These stats can definitely be misleading–on many different levels. A countries GDP may define the national income, but it says nothing about where that money goes. In other words, you could have a “wealthy” country with a high GDP, where most of the people are actually poor because that wealth isn’t shared. There are many countries where the GDP is good but the government is corrupt and keeps most of the money. Not only that, but GDP says nothing about how peaceful a country is.
And, yes, even in a rich democracy like ours, the GDP doesn’t really tell us much about happiness. I don’t know about “mothers” making dinner–that part may have changed, but Germans do make a big deal about family dinners. For them, it is unusual to not have the whole family at the dinner table on most nights, and eating take out in front of the TV… well, we never did it. That’s not to say that a take-out-eating, TV-watching family can’t be as happy as a dinner-table family! But the point is, we can’t really tell how happy people are by simply watching how much money they spend.
Check out this article about a study that names Denmark as the happiest country in the world! Not only that, but it also lists colombia and puerto rico in the top ten! I looked up their GDP’s: Colombia ranks 32nd and Puerto Rico is somewhere around 70th in the world GDP rankings! So, while these national happiness studies are often controversial (again, how can we measure happiness), they obviously show a disconnect between national wealth and national happiness. The United States has the highest GDP in the world, we are the richest nation, yet we placed 16th in the happiness study–below colombia, puerto rico, and costa rica (maybe it’s the nice weather… although they get hurricanes)
December 15, 2008 at 4:23 pm
Great cartoon presentation.
Planned obsolescence is hardly new. I remember debating it in high school. Decades of trash have made the problem much worse. It’s also one of the roots of Detroit’s problem. Before Asian car makers disrupted their biz model, it certainly seemed that the big 2 1/2 produced crapmobiles, you’d have to replace every few years.
Except for goods such as used clothing, which is easy to give away, it’s surprisingly tough to find a home for yesterdays technology such as a computer, which works, but can only run Windows 98.
January 2, 2009 at 3:39 am
[...] You see the old way wasn’t working so it’s on us to do, what we gotta do to survive.” (story of stuff [...]