Consumer Gluttons Beware
The World Depends on You
John has to buy one T-shirt with a goofy saying or a pretty photo on it every time he goes to the Dollar Store and he brings home the T-shirt and puts it in his closet and if not for his mother, John would have several hundred T-shirts, which he never wears. To save the room and the money, after John comes home and puts the newest shirt in his closet, his mother later quietly removes the shirt and returns it the next day to the Dollar Store and John is none the wiser while he remains ready and compelled to buy yet another Dollar Store T-shirt.
Gloria was rummaging through the Dollar Store today and she came upon an LED candle which she bought because she’d never seen one before and she brought it home and put it in the drawer and every time she tried to open the drawer, it got stuck on the LED candle, which she never opened. But she explains, you never know when you might need an LED candle.
Why the compulsion to buy, buy, buy, whether it is something that is needed or is this side of totally worthless, especially at this time of the year but really throughout the year?
Ralph Kramden once thought he could make a fortune selling a kitchen gadget so he made a commercial with him starring as the Chef of the Future, hawking the gizmo that could do everything including “it could core a apple.” If Ralph hadn’t had a melt down and couldn’t finish the commercial and he was able to complete the ad he just might have made a fortune because people like Gloria, of whom there are millions, would realize they needed something that could core a apple. It’s right behind all of those gimmicky gadgets, from pet rocks to flavored underwear, that have made their creators millions, while providing nothing of value to anyone.
Garage sales and attics are the prime receptors of all this worthless flotsam. People buy a picture frame, though they have no pictures, and they sell it at their garage sale to someone else who has no pictures and he or she sells it at his or her garage sale and so the picture frame makes its way around the world, of no use to anybody.
It’s no secret why people feel compelled to consume, just consider that 70 percent of the gross national product (GNP) comes from retail sales. It’s poking you in the eye every time you read the paper and see how retail sales are up, a great indication of the nation’s economic health, they tell you. That economic health requires people to buy many, many useless picture frames, kitchen gadgets that core apples and every other item that companies can market and money or plastic can buy. The politicians want to point at booming retail sales as a sign that their political message is working so they tacitly encourage Americans to buy whatever Madison Avenue promotes and advertising is a potent weapon to bring the consumer to his knees. They will convince you that of course you can’t eat just one, that Coke is the real thing, smoke because the Marlboro man says so, drink Dos Equis because the most interesting man in the world does or get a Chevrolet so you can see the USA.
And consumers are barraged by a steady avalanche of psychologically challenging and powerful advertisements everywhere, on TV, on line, in the papers, to get ready for Black Friday, when hoards of hungry consumers with money or plastic to burn are hypnotized to stay up to 3 a.m. to get the best sales ever at their neighborhood Wal Marts, Kohls, Home Depot and every other store. And sometimes consumers overwhelm the stores and sometimes they get violent when they are told there are no more Cabbage Patch dolls available and they don’t know what they will tell their children who have been equally brainwashed about the necessity to own the latest piece of jetsam.
And then there came Amazon and the world was never the same. No more 3 a.m. bleary-eyed visits, no more battling lines of shoppers who seem as if they would stop at nothing to get the sale. Now, wasting hard earned cash or piling up obscene levels of credit is as easy as logging on and cramming the little shopping cart icon until it explodes and on top of it, the very next day, those utterly unnecessary items are waiting at your doorstep, freshly delivered by the Amazon man or woman. Talk about immediate gratification.
Consumerism may make for contented consumers but it has a very, very dark side and it is destroying the environment. As the demand for goods increases, the need to produce goods increases and it leads to more pollutant emissions, increased land-use and deforestation, and accelerated climate change.
Theworldcounts.com reported that if everyone on the planet lived like western consumers, we would need five planets to support us. And the number of consumers will grow exponentially,from 3.5 billion in 2017 to 5.6 billion by 2030. Most new consumers will come from Asia with China and India being the main drivers of the growth. A “consumer” is defined as someone able to buy goods and services beyond the satisfaction of basic needs. And we have been rather ridding the world of its natural resources. If Earth’s history is compared to a calendar year, modern human life has existed for 37 minutes and we have used one third of Earth’s natural resources in the last 0.2 seconds.
The 5.6 billion consumers in the world by 2030 will result in a massive increase in the demand for energy, food, electronics, clothing, transportation, housing, furniture and so on. Theworldcounts.com noted some of the likely consequences:
- No more rainforests as NASA has found that if the current rate of deforestation continues, the world’s rain forests will be gone by the end of the century.
- No more water, the consumer society requires massive amounts of water and there will be no water by 2040 if present consumerism continues, according to Professor Benjamin Sovacool of Aarhus University, Denmark. It takes 24,000 liters of water to produce 1 kilo of chocolate; 21,000 liters to produce one kilo of coffee beans and 15,500 liter for 1 kilo of beef.
- No more fish in the ocean because a growing consumer class means an increased demand for fish and seafood putting pressure on oceans that are already being overfished. If overfishing does not stop, the world will virtually run out of seafood in 2048, according to a four-year study of 7,800 marine species.
- Palm oil is used in many foods, cleaning products, cosmetics and fuel. Palm oil is also a major cause of deforestation and climate change.
- Most of the world’s clothes are made in sweatshops where people sometimes work more than 100 hours a week for extremely low wages while others are not paid at all.
“Right now, 27 million slaves are producing everyday products such as coffee, chocolate, cotton, sugar, toys, footwear, electronics,” the website reported.
And then there is that ubiquitous symbol of unaltered waste, the plastic bag. One single plastic bag can turn into 2 million microscopic plastic fragments and consumers use 160,000 plastic bags a second.
There is a cure for the consumer plague, and it is simply called living simply, and it can provide enormous improvements in emotional as well as physical health. There has been a growing movement toward simplified living, including minimalism and having fewer things, and only what is needed; old fashioned living, rejecting modernity and living like it’s the past; frugal living below your means and saving as much money as possible; self-sufficiency by creating everything you need and buying as little as possible.
Zenhabits.net has some suggestions about living a simple life and “finding joys in the simple things, and being content with solitude, quiet, contemplation and savoring the moment.”
“Become mindful of attachments that lead to clutter and complexity. If you are attached to living a certain way, you will not be able to let go of a lot of stuff. If you are attached to doing a lot of activities and messaging everyone, your life will be complex.”
And “get clear about what you want, and say no to more things” and try to find joy in a few simple things.
“The best kind of simplicity is that which exposes the raw beauty, joy and heartbreak of life as it is,” Zenhabits.net notes.
But if all of that is just too distasteful, continue believing WalMart and shop till you drop because if it’s good for WalMart, it’s good for the old U.S.A.