BND2K2

[nfotxn]

Happy Buy Nothing Day It's interesting to see just how many people just can't seem to stop. I really feel passionate about this because our lifestyle in North America is really working against entropy towards extinction. We control a wholely unfair majority of the wealth and binge regularly in it. Quite literally the USA is in the thick of an Obesity Epidemic. I'd find it hard to believe lifestyle is a completely unrelated factor. Is it wrong to tell people how to live? Not when it has a direct result on the lives of others. Events like BND, Turn TV Off Week, Commercial-free schools, Corporate Crack down and Car free days are only introductory measures toward new ways of thinking about the world around us. Politicians talk about the economics of globaization, what about the sociology? War and peace in the global village...

Comments

[orgelcub.livejournal.com]

Very very scary stuff.

Would this have anything to do with the fact that the U.S. has the world's highest rates of clinical depression, despite being the most materially prosperous nation on the planet?

I just wonder.

[nfotxn.livejournal.com]

Would this have anything to do with the fact that the U.S. has the world's highest rates of clinical depression, despite being the most materially prosperous nation on the planet?

My thoughts percisely. People here are emotionally drowning in their own gluttony. It may manifest itself as obesity but the fundamental problems are definitely that of lifestyle and how we derive joy from the world around us. It's obvious having things, be it copious amounts of tastey (and unhealthy) food or vast seas on material items, doesn't cut it.

[interpaneer.livejournal.com]

While I fully intented to adhere to 'Buy Nothing Day,' I found that I had a few small automotive thingies to buy, so I did...
The point of this post is that the boy who sold them to me looked EXACTLY like you, which was kind of neat, which led me to want to make an independant film called "An American Brodie."

Jesse Malone

[(Anonymous)]

It's the perfect environment to sell things. Things that people don't need. A society where materials are paramount, and success is measured with dollar signs. People living lives that are empty being told that a new car will fill that void. Not just a car though, the biggest car they can buy. Forget whether they have use for such a car. After all, a bigger car can fit more happiness right? So they buy the car, and maybe its exciting for a while, and they stop looking at the void briefly, but the novelty wears off, and the void comes back into view. But the TV keeps telling them that something new will make them happy. So they go buy a new tv, the biggest they can find. And on and on it goes. And the money makes its way up the food chain to the happy corporations, as consumers keep coughing up cash to maintain the illusion of happiness.

[mathan.livejournal.com]

HEHEH.. you know, Scott and I walked around Yorkdale this evening. We did buy some stuff to eat - Sushi and such. As for materialistic items, we walked around, inquired about a few things, but didn't buy anything. It was actually quite nice, and not done on purpose.

You got me thinking, though. On days like today in the US - Black Friday, I swear if there is a sale on shit, people would buy it - and I'm not talking about good fertilizer either.

Spoke with Bruce tonight - they went to a Walmart near Philadelphia rather early this morning and the line ups were huge. In the Electronics department, there was a fist fight! I mean, come on... :)

It's amazing how something can be spun to say, "You need this! You want this! This will make your life better, more complete! " When really, it's just inane shit.

[danthered.livejournal.com]

We control a wholely unfair majority of the wealth

Define "unfair".

We control a gargantuan majority of the wealth, to be sure. But who is "We"? North Americans? I donno...there are plenty of North Americans who control no wealth at all, don't have enough to eat, or a proper place to sleep. Some North Americans? Yeah, no question, but there are plenty of non-North-Americans with equally excessive money. The entire pretend-country of Dubai, for instance, is a by-invitation-only shopping mall and playground for the hyperwealthy...and the untouchables who serve them are of course allowed to be there as long as they remember their place and don't make trouble.

There's a large confounding factor that often gets omitted in discussions wherein the finger is pointed at (North) America for being the Big Bad Wolf and Greedy Duck (all rolled into one) of the world. What's forgotten is that North America is physically enormous and hugely rich in bogglingly diverse resources, and we are a first-world continent. The implication here is that it's overly simplistic to point the finger at (North) America and say "Tsk, tsk" without putting it into some kind of context. It's easy to say "The average American uses XX times more energy and generates XX times the volume of waste per year than the average German/Japanese/Chinese/Whateverianese," but it overlooks relevant factors—tangible and intangible—on a wholesale scale.

None of this is meant to imply that the (North) American culture of consumption is noble and benign, for it clearly carries some serious issues that are only just beginning to make the barest of inroads into serious mainstream dialogue (stalled for the moment due to the pending war.) But in order to support the assertion that (North) America controls an "unfair" majority of the world's wealth, one must have a clear notion of what fairness would look like in this context.

So...what would be fair?

[danlmarmot.livejournal.com]

Hm. Don't you consider many of your positions as, well, elitist? Sure, you can disdain the masses for their love of country music, stuffed dolls, and Buffy... but when do you get to the point of telling them what to do, what to think? How far can you take TorontoContent laws? [hey, I'm just back from Vancouver, where everyone is *steamed* that CBC is showing a third-rate contest between Toronto and nearly-winless-Buffalo, and not Vancouver vs. Florida. But I digress.]

In some regards, this is an argument about taste, and how far one can legislate it. Sure, you can hate SUVs, but minivans can be just as fuel inefficient. Sure, you can roll your eyes at Justin Timberlake fans while listening to your more interesting avant-garde stuff. Sure, you can hate people for running out and watching Harry Potter II while you watch that interesting foreign language movie at the small art cinema.

Many of the arguments along this line smack of smugness: I know better, I'm more pure, the unwashed masses must be coerced from their evil ways! "Is it wrong to tell people how to live? Not when it has a direct result on the lives of others." Hm... that's the same approach that has endeared so many to the anti-abortion movement.

Frankly, it's their money, and they're going to do with it as they see fit. Does your position extend to stopping Japanese schoolgirls from buying the latest fashion that'll be out of date in six weeks, if not days? Do you go tell Samoans that they shouldn't eat potato chips and beer, since Samoans (and not the Americans) are the most obese people on earth? Try doing that, and you'll get your ass kicked by their entire family. Do you rip the mobile phones out of the hands of trendy Italian teenagers because they're just buying into consumerism? Yeah, right.

So I ask--where is the boundary line between necessity and excess? We could all live in a prefab 1960's Le Corbusier apartment block, above a metro stop. But many might consider that excessive as compared to a tin shack in an African shantytown.

Where is that line between necessity and excess? I argue that it’s subjective on a personal level-—and to tell people how to live their lives is intrusive, condescending, and ultimately disrespectful.

[jwall.livejournal.com]

Is it slavery if you're getting what you want?

[nfotxn.livejournal.com]

this is an argument about taste

It's not an subjective arguement of quality what people buy it's a scientific tally of resources that motivates us to encourage this sort of participation (or non-participation) in this case. It's a fact that if everyone on this world lived like a north american we'd need 11 more earths to sustain us. The dubious idiology that freedom expression is conveyed through consumption of resources is unsustainable. That has nothing to do with your first ammendment rights nor is the implication made that everyone has to conform. They only need to consider the facts. It's not the propagation of philistines throughout the nation that concerns me, that's not really news.

Ecological and political impact is not subjective.

Buy Nothing Day is meant to be a day of reflection upon your lifestyle and the impact it has on the rest of the world. I'm not asking that you to live how I say. I am asking you to ask yourself, within a global context, how you live. Ultimately it's to ask yourself how much respect that lifestyle deserves.

Re:

[danlmarmot.livejournal.com]

You're starting to veer close to the 'freedom of expression by the people should be curtailed' argument that really turns me off. It's rather fascist, don't you think?

Now, if we posit that every choice you make has ecological impact, then you get into gray areas where your basic needs can be met with minimal impact, but you don't consider this sufficient to live.

For example, Brodie, you could live on a bed in a homeless shelter, and have less ecological impact than you do now. Why don't you do it? Personal choice. You choose to live where you do and consume what you do.

You also have to admit that the North American lifestyle has also had hugely positive environmental and political impacts, particularly in the last thirty years. Water is cleaner, much more is known about ecosystems, farming techniques are less poisonous, forestry is less disruptive, mining sites are restored more often than not.

Even outside North America, advances in immunization, clean water and sanitation, and electrification have not only save human lives (ecological arguments generally ignore human mortality and health issues), but also reduce environmental stress. To me, advanced Western civilization has many more positive environmental effects than negative.

I think Buy Nothing Day would be more effective as "Buy Something" day--with the takehome assignment that you have to figure out where the item was made, how it was shipped, where its raw materials came from, and who produced it. We did this for a class in high school, and it was eye opening to see how connected you were to the rest of the world--and how little we knew about it.

That's the type of reflection that appeals to me--focus on something, see how it 'works'. Not some 'Buy Nothing, and if you do, you should feel guilty' day. Blech. Too heavy and no fun.

And I might add that a lot of ecological groups say "we're consuming resources too fast!!!" but I've never seen a single actual resource that is more scarce or more expensive today than it was twenty years ago. Not even oil or coal fall into this category.