Do you ever feel like giving up?
For the Americans, do you ever think of fleeing the country as a sort of consumerist refugee? Where would you go? What would you do? Is it possible to reconstruct a non-consumerist America? Or, is it better just to leave?
The future of Freedom is in creation — not destructive consuming for consumption’s sake. The future of Freedom does not have an interest rate. The future of Freedom is in having the discipline to reject and punish while retaining the ability to nurture.
{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
From your previous post: “Opponents say compelling utilities to pay for emitting carbon dioxide would force them to pass along those costs to consumers in the form of higher prices (from the WSJ).”
The ‘government’, ‘leadership’ (corporations and religions) and schools are the dog, and the ‘tail’ wagging them all is consumption. The grand delusion is that people actually make conscious evaluation of the choices they are making at the store. There is a powerful system of marketing, which tells its clients that it can get people to buy anything at the right price (true) while it tells the consumers that they are “choosing”(lie) Coke vs. Pepsi, etc. There is no ‘there’ there. When the consuming system is in control, and the actual ‘hurt’ (price) is not available to the consumer, this destructive system will continue to grow until it consumes all available resources or it cannot maintain the artifically low prices.
The assertion that consumers won’t pay the cost of consumption tells us everything we need to know about what our future is going to be.
Where is there to go? I can only repeat what I’ve said before: You should live where the people are accustomed to being ‘poor’. They don’t have as far to fall during the collapse. The decision about which country you live in may be based on where you think authority will turn when the going gets tough. The U.S. gov’t seems to be heading toward confused authoritarianism:
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/7/19/top_secret_america__washington_post
…but it won’t afford to keep it when the oil gets tight.
The ‘cost’ of consumption is always paid by someone. When both the consumer and the producer refuse to pay directly (the consumer through higher prices, the producer through reduced profits) then the cost is ‘externalized’. That’s business lingo for “tricking or forcing someone who had no direct role in the production of the cost and may have had no direct role in the consumption of the cost pay for it.”
An example would be the dumping of chemical waste into a river, or onto one’s own land but in a place where the chemicals will cause more damage to the neighbor’s land.
“Regular” people do this sometimes as well in their own neighborhoods.
Tommy, I often dream of running away to someplace else…but where on earth can we go where consumerism isn’t rampant these days? Shall we join Joe Bageant in Mexico? How about it Joe, if you are reading this…
And consumerism…it’s evil to direct this toward children (as in the video), but parents have got to take control and model the behaviors they want their children to emulate. Good parental models go a LONG way toward helping children to develop healthy views towards consumption.
This video makes me sick.
I often touch my lapel, look up, and say “beam me up Scotty”… I am still here, so sadly it appears I am not Captain Kirk and am unable to make such an easy exit… but at times I would really like to.
I have considered the ‘where to go’ question from a Libertarian perspective, and the best answer I can come up with – is to stay home and fight the good fight.
The entire ‘Western’ world is in the same boat. I think there are only a few places left on this planet (the savage reserves anyone?, oh brave new world) where you could go and truly escape the vertically integrated world of 360 degree immersive marketing super consuming bullshit. Many of those places are (perhaps by interesting coincidence) on the ‘axis of evil’, and we Western renegades and exiles may not find ourselves particularly welcome!
There is a growing movement in this Nation and around the world, of “intentional community” – starting with a plan, and with a vision – and those plans and visions encompass peace, prosperity, and sustainability for all, and leave absolutely no fucking room whatsoever for mindless consumption.
See more here: http://www.ic.org/
So I say stay home, engage your community, create social capital, ‘add value’ and together – fight and destroy the idea that the status quo is valid, desirable, or sustainable. It is not any of these and we must have the courage to imagine and implement a better way of being.
Live long, and prosper.
Kate,
I think about the hacienda in Mexico all the time, but always conclude that my community is here. I really don’t want to live in another country and be another wage-arbitrage American, but won’t rule it out in the end.
AF Walking,
Nice comment. I like that attitude.
Tommy:
I really liked today’s post about choosing to leave or stay. Makes me think about it more. It’s not a matter of ‘where’ for me, so much as how to shed the ‘what I have now’ and minimize without it being such a hassle. I think it’s easier to sell out and move than to sell out and try to stay, because many of the local relationships are based on what we have. Starting somewhere else without anything puts me in a better position to be whatever part that that particular community needs to be filled.
Russ: You wrote, “That’s business lingo for “tricking or forcing someone who had no direct role in the production of the cost and may have had no direct role in the consumption of the cost pay for it.”..”
The worst part of this is that the current paradigm is to shove those externalities off into the Future; secretly dumping the results of ‘buy now, pay later’(obesity, mind-numbing education protocols, debts, deficit spending, herbicide-resistant weeds, drug-resistant bacteria, centralized food processing, rising oceans, falling groundwater levels, radioactive wastes…etc.) onto the backs of those kids who aren’t being told what the cost of all that shiny, noisy crap really is.
It’s one thing to dump waste on a neighbor’s land who might shoot you; entirely different to dump it on someone in the future that you haven’t ever met and won’t have the chance to force you to pay.
I’m w/AF Walking,
There are lots of places I would like to go and live; not because I want to escape, but just because I love travel and different cultures. I like being the polite, respectful visitor in lands where the locals say, “Wow – he’s American?!”
Having said that, I’m w/AF Walking – I want to stay and stick it to them for ripping my mind and soul out of my infant body and turning me into a buying, consuming F’ing robot.
I’ve been unplugged. It feels good to write that. Unfortunately, my baby fat still wants to suckle the nipple of consumerism because it’s been so ingrained in me for so many decades… but that milk is starting to sour… and I’m going to be one pissed off baby!
I want to learn more about making a focused, intentful, purposeful, sustaining, community so that I can live in peace with my neighbors and my environment -fair trade for all-, and fly that proverbial bird to corporate America and their propoganda (marketing).
I just got a chance to watch the video. My heart aches; I feel sick; I want to destroy it; I want to cry, frustrated, sad at our society.
This is so beyond Fucked up that I don’t even know where to start to shut it down.
I asked my wife how she felt about it. She said it was sad – I told her, “Well you should be pissed!” ‘Why’ she asked. I said because ‘sad’ won’t move you to action, anger will and so will the pursuit for what is right, just, and fair. It’s like kids don’t even have a chance. It makes me feel gross like when a child is harmed by a perp.
It is hard to wake up, unplug, and then learn enough to begin the deconstruction of what is built around you.
How do you fight a beast this large, this integrated? It’s like trying to UNwet water.
Like trying to unwet water. That does sort of sum it up.
We do have somewhat of an ability to unplug or at least promote the good shit out there. However, it’s getting pretty tough to avoid.
It is getting tough to avoid.
I had an idea though…
AARP is one of the most powerful lobbyists (so I’m told – I’ll be 40 soon so I’m not a member) and it is comprised of PEOPLE.
What if we started an organization comprised of PEOPLE (like minded of course). Sure, most might think we’re nutcakes… but I think there are more folks out there like us than we think?
I don’t know, just a thought. I bought a “manual” from the 70s called “Roots To Power – A Grass Roots Manual.” Just arrived in the mail, so it’s on the reading list.
Sumo: You should also check out “The Greening of America” by Charles Reich.
If everyone used their sick days at the same time…..
I will check that book out, thanks.