Rise Above Consumemas

Creating art from found natural objects can be a meaningful new Winter Solstice ritual that costs nothing.

Is there any Christmas left in Christmas? It is more like Consumemas now. It is all about the presents, the loot, the haul, the stuff. Shopping, wrapping, unwrapping, throwing away - same futile cycle with the same futile results. Within a few days all that remains is the debt and damage. 

It is no wonder many people find this madness to be depressing and demoralizing. But we can rise above Consumemas, and reclaim this special time of year for our own. It truly is an event worth celebrating, as humans have for millennia, before Christmas, or Consumemas, ever existed.

And while gift giving may be involved, it does not have to be all about the gifts. Indeed, gifts are not a required part of enjoying this time of year. While the social pressures are great, many are breaking free from the burden of mandatory (and often mindless) gift giving. 

Those with experience have found that involving a group of people in the discussion surrounding radically changing winter celebration traditions can be fruitful and liberating. Often they find that they aren't the only ones wondering how they can stop others from buying them things they don't want, or need. 

I got the following email reminder from Adbusters concerning #BuyNothingXmas:

"The malls are full of anxious sweat. The throngs are out and about for the final shopping "rush", hunting the aisles with a tense urgency that's inimical to the spirit of giving. But another Christmas is possible. Another way of being is possible. 

Reclaiming the ritual of this magical season – consciously and deliberately – is a radical, emancipatory choice. Since manufacturing and consumption are responsible for more than half of the global carbon dioxide emissions, choosing to buy nothing this Xmas may give Gaia some much needed relief. 

And if you still need to be convinced to consume less – consider that if we heat up just 4 degrees more, we will witness a total and irreversible collapse of human civilization. We're killing ourselves – but even as the denial about global warming is slowly breaking over us, we still choose – sheeplike – to join the madness in the malls. 

Consumerism is the opiate of the masses. Without significant rituals, we clamour to participate in the only ones we have, like the Christmas shopping binge, driven by our desire for meaning – of which our culture is devoid. 

#BuyNothingXmas gets to the heart of this matter. 

As the much awaited solstice arrives and Christmas nears, can you find the strength to break the addiction, to wake up from the nightmare ... will you be brave enough to plant the seed of a new way of being? Make your life a demonstration, a defiance, a piece of art, a heroic journey. 

Start this Christmas – dare to gather your friends and family together and vow to do it differently this year."

There are many meaningful ways to celebrate at this time of year. Conspicuous consumption does not have to be one of them.

“Creating a new tradition that brings more peace and heart to your holidays could also bring you closer to family and friends. 

Sharing a ritual founded on love of nature, on respect for the always renewing cycles of life, and on faith in the future has a way of bringing out the best in people.”

- Deena Wade

Buy Nothing?

In spite of the name of this blog, I have to ask, is it at all possible to buy nothing? Even for 24 hours, as many will be trying to do one week from today during Buy Nothing Day? Talk about a challenge.

Unless you are living in a totally self-sufficient setting (which is difficult, but possible), one pretty much is a slave to our "you-must-pay-for-everything" existence. They will find a way to monitize one of the last hold outs, the very air we breathe, one day.

I imagine in the near future a "Big Air" CEO will be stating publicly that he didn't think that breathing was a basic human right, and therefore the little people should be charged for consuming this valuable privately-owned resource.

In preparation for Buy Nothing Day, Linda and I were discussing if we could make it through that one 24 hour period without buying anything. It was a little frustrating.

In order to buy absolutely nothing on November 25 (shopping-oriented blogs call this day Black Friday) we could not buy any power from the utility. For us, like many people dependent on the grid, that would mean no electricity. That would also mean no heat, because our pellet stove requires electricity to work.

Then we thought about our vehicle, for which we pay insurance and registration. Each and every day of the year we are buying a few dollars of permission and protection for our van so we can drive it two or three times a month.

I would love to have a pure, unblemished by commerce Buy Nothing Life, but as we found out, that is difficult to achieve in the modern world, even for 24 hours. However, I can't think of a better goal to work toward, and that is what Buy Nothing Day reminds me of each year.

One more week and let's celebrate the non-commercial life, unbound and free, in any way we can. And no, I am not changing the name of this blog to "Not Buying Just About Anything That They Want Me To Buy", even though it may be more accurate.

Wishing you a simple weekend. Remember to breathe deep while it is still free.

Addblocking

The advertising industry is very worried about that 0.60% of users that think they can get away from them with adblocking programs on their computers.

Imagine having a remote control that you could use to blank out billboards and other advertising as you went about your day. That is kind of what internet ad blocking is like.

Ad blocking is the removing or altering advertising content in a web page. This intrusive, unwanted and uninvited garbage takes many forms including pictures, animations, embedded audio and video, text, blinking banners or pop-up windows. It can also employ one of my favourites, auto play, where audio and/or video plays without the user doing anything.

Intrusive advertising is a known problem with most web browsers, and most web users. Recently my internet provider changed from a flat rate to a usage rate. That means that now we pay for the bandwidth to run all the advertising that infects everything on the internet. And there is more of the stuff all the time.

Global ad spending is projected to reach $600 billion US by the end of next year, according to eMarketer. This staggering sum is projected to grow at an annual rate of about five per cent until the end of the decade. A lot of that growth is in digital advertising.

In my old age I am going to freak out young people and tell them that I am so old that I remember a time when the internet didn't have any ads. I would add that I also remember a time before there was such a thing as the internet, but that might be too much for them.

Now whiney advertisers are complaining that they are losing 22 Billion a year by adblocking programs that frustrated computer users are increasingly turning to for some relief. How many internet user's computers do they want to inject with their poisonous propaganda? All of them. 100%.

And they don't want you to have any way of protecting yourself with a propaganda prophylactic.

Amongst other initiatives to "fight back", the industry is asking web owners to only give access to their content if users first disable their adblocking program. "We have ways to subject you to our unwanted mind parasites, whether you want them or not."

Maybe they should have kept quiet - many commenters on an article I read about the issue reported getting adblocker specifically because of the news of advertisers gnashing their teeth at being denied the ability to jam consumerism down their throats at every turn.

People are sick and tired of pervasive advertising, and want it to stop. Therefore - adblocking. It is my computer. It is my bandwidth. I deserve to be my own gatekeeper.

Advertising? No thanks.



Note: Many Adblocking programs can be downloaded for free. Do a search for adblock, read some reviews, then see if such a thing might be for you.

The remote control that blanks out billboards and other visual advertising? Well, that is still under development in the Not Buying Anything research laboratory. It will be unveiled soon... unless Big Advertising gets to us first.

"Everything Is Fine" Culture Jam

The following is from one of my favourite magazines, Adbusters.


"Last week we challenged you to create widespread cognitive dissonance around the world by putting our Everything Is Fine, Keep Shopping poster up in malls everywhere.

Cognitive dissonance is a high tension state between two opposing beliefs. It works like a pie in the face, first inducing confusion, then anger, and finally an intense desire to correct the imbalance — to recover the consonance that has been lost.

It’s an incredibly transformative force . . . a way to get people to reconsider what they hold dear and what they take for granted . . . the jolt that gets people to rethink their life choices.

Cognitive dissonance feels like low level grass roots fun, but it could be a way to kickstart a world revolution: we ambush people, first in malls, then in gasoline stations, then in supermarkets and all over the physical and mental environments . . . we inject radical ideas into people’s heads and set the tone for a new world order to come.

Culture Jammers have always messed with consumer culture, and that’s what we are doing with this latest jam. Already posters have gone up in malls and schools around the world. Let’s keep the dissonance going for another week. Print the poster, put it up somewhere and share it with your friends. Check out some of our other spoofs... – or create your own. And send us pictures of your jams and let us know how it feels."


for the wild,

Team Adbusters

Read more at: Adbusters



Based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, Adbusters is a not-for-profit magazine fighting back against the hostile takeover of our psychological, physical and cultural environments by commercial forces.

Attention Shoppers: Rethink The Season

From Adbusters

ATTENTION SHOPPERS!

As we max out our credit cards, we hope we will become America's economic heroes – saving the nation from the fiscal cliff. But instead, we plummet further into a complicated recession, and as our spirits sink once again, the economists coo into our ears that there is a way out – consume more, they say! This is the paradox of our addiction – filling the void only to fall deeper into it.

We're in a state of “pathological consumption,” George Monbiot explains, “a world-consuming epidemic of collective madness, rendered so normal by advertising and the media that we scarcely notice what has happened to us.”

The call to consume less – where it is heard – is denounced as pedantic, naive, authoritarian, even insane.

Decide for yourself where the insanity lies.

Read the rest of our #BuyNothingChristmas statement (a.k.a our brief, vehement, timely rant on consumerism) here: https://www.adbusters.org/blogs/buy-nothing-christmas.html

Take A Break - Celebrate Buy Nothing Day

N. America - Nov. 25, International - Nov. 26

Spending money is pretty effortless. Many are finding that debt is easy to get into, but hard to get out of. In Canada a third of people over the age of 55 won't get out of debt until they are 71! Freedom 65 is the new Freedom 55.

If you don't want to be in a similar position, Buy Nothing Day is a great place to start taking control of your finances, and your life.

Buy Nothing Day is celebrated around the world. In North America the day to go cashless is November 25, and Internationally, November 26.

Started 20 years ago by Adbusters - Vancouver, BC's anti-consumer magazine and instigators of OWS - Buy Nothing Day is meant to provide a respite from the endless spending of money that dominates our lives. It is a pause, a time to stop and meditate on what all this spending of money is for. Is it really necessary? Is it making us happier, better people?

Not spending money is a challenge. When you step back from the microscopic focus on dollar signs you see how the majority of our interactions are ruled by money. It is so insidious that it is hard to avoid and still maintain a semblance of what would be considered a 'normal' life.

But when you step back from the focus on money you see a view of the world usually obscured by the black fumes of consumerism.

On November 25/26 spend a clear and glorious day of not buying anything. Do it alone, do it with friends. It is free, and quite liberating. Exercise control over your finances and your life.

It could be the start of your Freedom 40 dream.