Recently I stumbled upon a tweet of some random follower:
“Did anyone already placed a big sign near those protesters saying: “Go and work.”“
It shocks me day in day out to be confronted with people that agree. But I do not. Totally Not. Here’s why:
1. Our whole global economy is based on waste
Apple recently launched a new iPhone and it holds this new brilliant feature called Siri (a sort of assistant, here’s more), which would perfectly work on the macs, iphones, ipads you already own. But hey, they decided to launch it ONLY on their new device, why? They want you to buy a NEW phone. So we make everybody buy a new one. We throw away the old one, because we need it better and faster.
As Barbara Putman Cramer stated in her latest presentation about sustainable product design:
“The product that is the most sustainable is the product you already have.”
But sure, you wanted to have the newest. Then take the quote of Frederick Keonig (Inventor of the high speed printing press, 1774-1833) in consideration:
“We tend to forget that happiness doesn’t come as a result of getting something we don’t have, but rather of recognizing and appreciating what we do have.”
For once, when you’re considering buying a new product, just please wait one more month and then decide. Write down all things you have in life that you enjoy. You will realize you don’t need that thing or maybe in the end you really do.
Don’t let you feel down by all your facebook and twitter friends pointing out what sleek new device they have, enjoy what you already have.
2. Today it’s bad for us and our economy when we consume less
Yes and another weird example it’s also bad for our economy when we build less jails. That’s exactly how our GDP is measured. It’s purely based on profit: making people buy more stuff. And what if people don’t want to buy more, well find what they want. There’s this great quote of Steve Jobs who said in February 1996 in an interview with Wired magazine the following:
When you’re young, you look at television and think, There’s a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realize that’s not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want. That’s a far more depressing thought. Conspiracy is optimistic! You can shoot the bastards! We can have a revolution! But the networks are really in business to give people what they want. It’s the truth.
The sad fact is that his own company is doing mainly the same thing. Even worse: it finds something we did not know we wanted and then we want to have it. We just buy, watch, read, blog about things you should have.
When I go from Brooklyn to Manhattan in the subway I realize that the only people laughing in the subway are the ones on the advertorials above their heads that are stuffed with earbuds to escape from the life they live.
It may sound weird but just stop consuming and start creating.
3. We only buy our products when they are cheap
As a consumer, we always look for the cheapest product. Why? Because that’s good for our wallet. So we buy burgers of cows being fed in cut down rainforests. We want cheap gadgets which make chinese workers work like slaves. They build it together with thousands of others in factories that have nets to catch them when they want to commit suicide.
We forget that your smartphones contain coltan that’s being found in the mines of the Congo (DR) under terrible situations led by armies of rebels you don’t want to meet in real life. And nobody knows, nobody really cares.
How we said that again? Oh yeah: “It’s the economy, stupid.”.
4. Populists ru(i)n the world
So how can you solve this. It’s damn easy! Yes? Yeah it is, but very utopic. Just subsidize companies that repair products (so we use our old devices longer, give subsidies free software foundations, etc. and tax the hell out of oil companies, entertainment companies, car companies etc. Invest in education.
But our peoples are scared, they won’t blame themselves for the terrible state of our planet, environments, social circumstances. That’s purely logical. It’s human! They blame - yes of course - others: minorities, intellectuals, elitist culture,… Or they make us believe they’re the change, but in the end, nothing really happened.
We vote for exactly those parties that point to others. It’s only going to make it worse. Since we don’t want to believe in climate change, even our good friend Al Gore forgets to tell his own inconvenient truth: meat production. In the end we read gossip magazines, watch porn, our heads are filled up with one thing: How can we make more money. We forget to enjoy the wonderful small little moments in life.
And our media helps in this process. The moment we rise up and protest against this whole thing, they tell our fellow citizens not really clear why we are protesting. They only broadcast the dumbhead agressivily smacking down cars and windows. Sure, we don’t give a damn, we’re looking forward to read our latest tweets and we tell the protesters: “Go and work!”.
5. Nobody promotes consuming less
It’s the best there is. Not to consume. Get rid of stuff, your debt, etc. Want to know more? Read my personal hero’s blog. He has plenty of readers, but it could be much more. Would it be the whole planet reading his blog it would be terribly bad for our shareholders, but better for you and your life.
But today we don’t want that, we want more, not less. Unless we change.
6. We don’t care if our goverment wastes our money
Oh man, I remember that day. When Obama was chosen for president. You don’t know how happy I was. You see, he had very intellectual backers like Cornel West that are now joining the occupy protests against him. Something is changing here. I mean really changing.
This President expanded Bush’s Iraq war enormously, spent about 3 trillion dollars on ONLY on the Iraq war. Hold on? How much?
3,000,000,000,000 that’s right. Just to give you an idea:
- That’s feeding every child on this planet for 55 years;
- That’s ten times more the Bush administration’s costs of ‘his’ Iraq war;
- That’s 5,8 times shifting the whole planet per year to total alternative energy (wind, solar, etc).
And you call that change? Wasting 3T dollars on a war you claimed you wanted to end in 16 months. Here’s your president back in the days.
Sorry if it may sound very depressive. But there’s truly something happening now. We shall overcome. And please don’t criticize, first check your sources, because real change is needed.
And don’t forget to breathe and be happy with what you already have.
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lilgo posted this
