Buy Less, Share More

Wouldn't it be wonderful if people would buy less and share more?

Already, much of what humans do for each other is done for free. The paid economy could not survive without the support of the unpaid one at the base. 

Parents raise their kids for free. When you help your friend move you don't expect to be paid at the end. 

The volunteer movement is huge, with people doing free things for other people every day.

People give each other things all the time. For free. Because people are generous and cooperative by nature, regardless of what consumer capitalism teaches us. 

Some people and organizations think we should have more of that, and I agree.  

Two such organizations are The Freecycle Network, and The Buy Nothing group.

The gift economy keeps things out of the dump, and strengthens community bonds. That is what is facilitated in these groups.

The Freecycle Network - Changing The World One Gift At A Time

Welcome to The Freecycle Network™! We are a grassroots & entirely nonprofit movement of people who are giving and getting stuff for free in their own Towns. It's all about reuse and keeping good stuff out of landfills. Membership is free. Sign up now.

Buy Nothing Project - Buy Nothing, Share Everything

BuyNothing offers people a way to give and receive, share, lend, and express gratitude through a worldwide gift economy network in which the true wealth is the web of connections formed between people. We believe that communities are more resilient, sustainable, equitable, and joyful when they have functional gift economies.

When money enters the picture, the energy flow of the Universe gets gummed up when we succumb to greed and hoarding behaviour.

This scarcity mindset jams up the free flow of the vital life force, and pits us against one another. 

But this energy is limitless, and there is enough for everyone. In the end, one will find that when you give, you also receive. 

It is a much more abundant and joyful experience than acquisition in the marketplace of selfishness that capitalism is based upon.

Do you have any experience with either of these groups, or something like them? How has it worked out for you? 

2001: A Simple Living Odyssey

The Boat = Simple Living
The Giant = Capitalism
The Rock = Consumerism

Today we mark the two thousand and first published post here on Not Buying Anything. This is that post.

Blogging here has been both an "extended adventurous trip" (since 2008), and an "intellectual/spiritual quest", so it fits the billing as an odyssey.

But we have not done this quest alone. Indeed, many have dropped in on our adventure, aided it, and added to it.

Fellow travellers have come, and some have gone. A few have left a indelible mark.

The comments left here have been helpful and supportive, and we appreciate each and every one like the precious nuggets of wisdom and knowledge that they are.

Only once while navigating these rolling seas have we encountered the dreaded troll, and even that challenge did not linger long. We rode out the storm and moved on to calmer waters.

Not only is this the 2001st published post here, I have many more in the pipes.

On this platform you can save draft posts. I currently have 855 of those, a silly amount. However, any one of those may end up being published some day.

And now that Rhonda Jean over at the Down To Earth blog is no longer publishing, I figure it is up to the rest of us simple living bloggers to pick up the slack, even if she does represent an irreplaceable personality and resource. 

Here's to the next 15 years of Not Buying Anything, and the next 2000 posts in our simple living odyssey.

Thank you so much for joining us in this adventure. 

Onward we go, for our mission on this journey has not yet been completed.

Besides, we are having an immense amount of fun. 

Dave: We want a system that works for everyone.

 

HAL: I'm sorry Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that.

The Influencer

If Jesus walked the Earth today would he be a social media star? An influencer? 

Would he be on Tik Tok, Twitter, and Facebook?

"Hi. I am the Saviour. Like my take on life? Follow me." 

If you like my miracles hit that like button and share my posts with others. 

I live-stream new miracles on Mondays and Fridays, and have Zoom get-togethers every Sunday. 

Hit the bell symbol to set an alert and you will be notified when I have the water and fish ready, and the sick and lame lined up.

PM me 24/7 and we can connect for a higher purpose."

Note: In case you doubt my cred, please see who my dad is. Check him out at:

oldguywithabeardonacloud.blogspot.com.

The fact checkers would say, "Beware! That influencer isn't Jesus returned, nor is that God's website. It's Russian disinformation".

Consumerism Explained Part III

After only 100 years of material excess, workers in consumer nations are witnessing the beginning of life with less stuff. 

It was unofficially over when they announced that in the near future "you won't own anything". 

The training and pressure to consume has been intense since the 1800s, but especially since the 1920s. 

Since then virtuous workers citizens consumers have done what they were told, for the good of everyone. Shopping was sold as a patriotic act in a classic mind control operation. 

Work, shop, repeat. We were drawn into a fake new world.

And now, the matrix is closing in.

"You should feel lucky to have food!" is the new, "You should feel lucky to have a job!"

Post-consumerism is a state that was destined to come from the beginning, and this had to always be known. 

But there were minds to infect, and profits to be made.

Consumer propaganda went so deep that our fears and negative attitudes have been internalized. We don't realize they are not our beliefs at all. 

We assume they are simply "the way life is".

Now it is becoming more apparent that a life based on endless consumption, waste, and disconnection from nature and each other, is neither possible nor desirable.

This is not the way life is, or ever was, or ever will be again.

They lied, and now they are in a panic.

Motivation

“People who died of starvation are not nearly as pitiful
as those who died of overeating.” 
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

There is a reason it's called simple living, not easy living. That is because living simply is often not easy.

It may be hard, but it is also beautiful. Still, one may need motivation to continue on the path.

I don't need much more motivation than pondering the state of the planet.

The most motivating for me concerns something we strangely don't hear much about - starvation. 

I wonder why that is, considering our current focus on "saving lives."

Starvation Facts

- almost 800 million people lack adequate access to food resources

- every year about 10 million people die of starvation. 3 million are children. 

- after declining 5% from 2004 to 2019, the number of undernourished  has increased by more than 165 million since then, a crisis driven by the Four C's of the Apocalypse: Conflict, Consumerism, Climate, and COVID.

 

- the world has always had enough food to feed everyone, and still does. 

 

World leaders agreed waaaaaay back in 2000 to commit to eight Millennium Development Goals by 2015.

The first of those goals was "to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger."

Epic fail, if you ask me. 

But no one is asking, because we don't talk about these deaths, or our failure to stop them. They get little attention from the people that can do the most to help.

Since the system managers won't do something about this sad state of affairs (and they won't if it's not profitable to do so), I am motivated to do something myself. 

Living as simply as possible is an action I can take to create more balance in this wildly wobbling world.

Whenever my simple life gets hard and I need some motivation to carry on, I think about all those hungry people dying by the millions year after year because decision-makers fail to act. 

We don't just need a solution for hunger, but more desperately need a solution for curing our sick system, and the sickos running it.

Living simply helps, but unless we get together to kick this rotten door down, we will be doomed to some day join our undernourished and dying brothers and sisters.

Note: Another big motivator for me and Linda are the readers of our blog. We are motivated and inspired by you. Thank you. 

Once We Were Workers

Workers vs bosses. More of us than of them.

No one says, "Consumers of the world unite". 

However, most of us know who should be coming together in a show of strength. You know, the people that make all that money for the gazillionaires.

The workers.

Economist Richard Wolf has added to my ideas about how we all became "consumers" over everything else, and it makes a lot of sense.

The label of consumer did not just replace the idea of the people as citizens, as I previously thought.

More importantly, Wolf says, it replaced the identity of the "worker". 

This is how pre-consumerist era people thought of themselves, in contrast to the others - the bosses.

"If you think of yourself as a "worker" you right away understand that you're a worker and somebody else is a boss. 

It's an identity that explains and contains in it the differences amongst us. 

"Consumer" doesn't work like that, because the boss consumes and the employee consumes. And this is an attempt to say we're all in it together... 

So "worker" is an identity in our society that leads you right to understanding our differences. 

"Consumer" tries to erase all of that." 

- Richard D. Wolff

The worker designation lets us know about our capacity as important producers. It shows that we are the most important part of the capitalist enterprise. 

No workers - no profit. 

But we are all consumers. Or, we are all citizens. We are all the same, in other words.

Wrong.

Once we were workers, which is very different from being a boss. An owner.

We are not all the same, and we are not all on the same side.

Labelling us consumers, or even citizens, hides all of that.

Cutting The Crap

Crap defines our modern crapitalist age, but I have never specifically defined it for myself, or NBA readers. 

So I took a crack at defining it in a way that made sense for me and the focus of this blog.

Crap

(n) 1. a pile of shit (literally and figuratively) 2. worthless junk and/or pointless things and activities 3. the technical term for anything that doesn't have survival value.

Example: "The stuff in most people's garages is crap - real piles of waste."

 

(adj) (crappy) worthless, terrible, shoddy, pointless, etc... 

Example: "Our crappy system is going to kill all life on this planet."

See decrapping (v). making something simple and beautiful again.

Example: "Wow. Your house looks great after your major decrapping project." 

We are going to need to cut the crap, and change the crapitalist system that spews it endlessly, if we are to save ourselves.

No one needs more waste. 

No one.

None.

World Cancer Day

These foods are naturally good medicine.

Although cancer is an ancient disease, its incidence and mortality have skyrocketed in the 20th Century.

Every February 4th we observe World Cancer Day. 

The slogan this year is: 

"Create a future without cancer. The time to act is now."

The IARC, the research arm at the WHO that looks at cancer and its causes, released a list of 116 things that have been proved to cause the disease.

The items on the following list are considered by the IARC to definitely cause cancer. To create a future without cancer, we are going to have to get rid of these.

1. Tobacco smoking
2. Sunlamps and sunbeds
3. Aluminium production
4. Arsenic in drinking water
5. Auramine production
6. Boot and shoe manufacture and repair
7. Chimney sweeping
8. Coal gasification
9. Coal tar distillation
10. Coke (fuel) production
11. Furniture and cabinet making
12. Haematite mining (underground) with exposure to radon
13. Secondhand smoke
14. Iron and steel founding
15. Isopropanol manufacture (strong-acid process)
16. Magenta dye manufacturing
17. Occupational exposure as a painter
18. Paving and roofing with coal-tar pitch
19. Rubber industry
20. Occupational exposure of strong inorganic acid mists containing sulphuric acid
21. Naturally occurring mixtures of aflatoxins (produced by funghi)
22. Alcoholic beverages
23. Areca nut – often chewed with betel leaf
24. Betel quid without tobacco
25. Betel quid with tobacco
26. Coal tar pitches
27. Coal tars
28. Indoor emissions from household combustion of coal
29. Diesel exhaust
30. Mineral oils, untreated and mildly treated
31. Phenacetin, a pain and fever reducing drug
32. Plants containing aristolochic acid (used in Chinese herbal medicine)
33. Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) – widely used in electrical equipment in the past, banned in many countries in the 1970s
34. Chinese-style salted fish
35. Shale oils
36. Soots
37. Smokeless tobacco products
38. Wood dust
39. Processed meat
40. Acetaldehyde
41. 4-Aminobiphenyl
42. Aristolochic acids and plants containing them
43. Asbestos
44. Arsenic and arsenic compounds
45. Azathioprine
46. Benzene
47. Benzidine
48. Benzo[a]pyrene
49. Beryllium and beryllium compounds
50. Chlornapazine (N,N-Bis(2-chloroethyl)-2-naphthylamine)
51. Bis(chloromethyl)ether
52. Chloromethyl methyl ether
53. 1,3-Butadiene
54. 1,4-Butanediol dimethanesulfonate (Busulphan, Myleran)
55. Cadmium and cadmium compounds
56. Chlorambucil
57. Methyl-CCNU (1-(2-Chloroethyl)-3-(4-methylcyclohexyl)-1-nitrosourea; Semustine)
58. Chromium(VI) compounds
59. Ciclosporin
60. Contraceptives, hormonal, combined forms (those containing both oestrogen and a progestogen)
61. Contraceptives, oral, sequential forms of hormonal contraception (a period of oestrogen-only followed by a period of both oestrogen and a progestogen)
62. Cyclophosphamide
63. Diethylstilboestrol
64. Dyes metabolized to benzidine
65. Epstein-Barr virus
66. Oestrogens, nonsteroidal
67. Oestrogens, steroidal
68. Oestrogen therapy, postmenopausal
69. Ethanol in alcoholic beverages
70. Erionite
71. Ethylene oxide
72. Etoposide alone and in combination with cisplatin and bleomycin
73. Formaldehyde
74. Gallium arsenide
75. Helicobacter pylori (infection with)
76. Hepatitis B virus (chronic infection with)
77. Hepatitis C virus (chronic infection with)
78. Herbal remedies containing plant species of the genus Aristolochia
79. Human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (infection with)
80. Human papillomavirus type 16, 18, 31, 33, 35, 39, 45, 51, 52, 56, 58, 59 and 66
81. Human T-cell lymphotropic virus type-I
82. Melphalan
83. Methoxsalen (8-Methoxypsoralen) plus ultraviolet A-radiation
84. 4,4′-methylene-bis(2-chloroaniline) (MOCA)
85. MOPP and other combined chemotherapy including alkylating agents
86. Mustard gas (sulphur mustard)
87. 2-Naphthylamine
88. Neutron radiation
89. Nickel compounds
90. 4-(N-Nitrosomethylamino)-1-(3-pyridyl)-1-butanone (NNK)
91. N-Nitrosonornicotine (NNN)
92. Opisthorchis viverrini (infection with)
93. Outdoor air pollution
94. Particulate matter in outdoor air pollution
95. Phosphorus-32, as phosphate
96. Plutonium-239 and its decay products (may contain plutonium-240 and other isotopes), as aerosols
97. Radioiodines, short-lived isotopes, including iodine-131, from atomic reactor accidents and nuclear weapons detonation (exposure during childhood)
98. Radionuclides, α-particle-emitting, internally deposited
99. Radionuclides, β-particle-emitting, internally deposited
100. Radium-224 and its decay products
101. Radium-226 and its decay products
102. Radium-228 and its decay products
103. Radon-222 and its decay products
104. Schistosoma haematobium (infection with)
105. Silica, crystalline (inhaled in the form of quartz or cristobalite from occupational sources)
106. Solar radiation
107. Talc containing asbestiform fibres
108. Tamoxifen
109. 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-para-dioxin
110. Thiotepa (1,1′,1″-phosphinothioylidynetrisaziridine)
111. Thorium-232 and its decay products, administered intravenously as a colloidal dispersion of thorium-232 dioxide
112. Treosulfan
113. Ortho-toluidine
114. Vinyl chloride
115. Ultraviolet radiation
116. X-radiation and gamma radiation

Wow! Congratulations if you made it all the way down here.

Things like red meat that only "probably cause cancer", are not included in this list. If they were, it would have taken you many more minutes to get through.

A cancer-free future will not be attained until we also get rid of probable cancer causing agents. 

And we will not be able to invent and manufacture new cancer causing agents ever again.

We will need a whole new way of doing things if we are going to get cancer numbers down, because our entire system is cancer causing.

That is why they are focusing on treatment - because we can't really avoid the cancer in the world we presently live in. 

Plus, the profit is in treatment, not prevention. And profit is more important than a bunch of people dying. 

All you have to do to keep the profits pouring in is steer responsibility away from the sick system by blaming people for their "poor lifestyle choices".

But really, shouldn't "capitalism" be on that list of 116 Things That Definitely Cause Cancer?

Garden Kale vs Imported Oranges

Kale - good in smoothies, great on pizza.

Now that Linda and I are ordering groceries online we have more information available to us about the products we buy. We are information junkies, so have been enjoying the additional data at our fingertips.

When researching where the local grocery store sourced their oranges, this is what we found:

COUNTRY OF ORIGIN (Oranges)

Due to the nature of this product, the country of origin can vary in order to maintain availability. 

Your product will be sourced from one of the following countries: 

Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Chile, China, Cyprus, Spain, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Republic of Korea, Morocco, Mexico, Peru, Saudi Arabia, United States, Uruguay, Vietnam or South Africa.

What? That is quite the list, which happens to include a few countries that we are not buying anything from. And the rest are really far away. Do we need oranges that bad?

We decided that we did not want to give our money to oppressive regimes, or to a wasteful, ecocidal system that throws out all common sense and efficiency in favour of profit. 

So, no oranges from far away or corrupted lands. 

It is not that big of a deal for us, because the kale we are growing just outside our door has more vitamin C than oranges, plus a whole bunch of other very good stuff. Just look at this writeup from a health promotion website:

In addition to twice your recommended daily intake of vitamin A and seven times the recommended amount of vitamin K, a one-cup serving of kale provides 80.4 mg of vitamin C. The nutrition powerhouse also delivers a sizeable dose of minerals and fatty acids.

And our kale is free and organic. 

Plus, no shipping required. No lending our support to nasty regimes. No middlemen siphoning off profits and adding nothing. No participating in an insanely wasteful global trade situation.

Conclusion?

Kale wins!

Not On The Ballot

The ballot I would like to see.

The Canadian political gangs are throwing another election today. The ballot, as usual, will give voters a choice between different gangs that all basically stand for the same thing - business as usual.

Our choice is between do-nothing business as usual, and do-something-but-not-the-best-thing green tinged variety of business as usual.

Nowhere in our "democracy" is anyone presenting any alternative to the system that has brought us poverty, endless war and environmental collapse. All of them will tell you that there is no alternative. 

Isn't that like running an election with only one candidate? 


'Yes, you can vote. The Capitalist Party is your only choice. Please indicate what colour you would like it wrapped in.'


The ballot I cast today became an exercise in trying to limit the damage by trying to decide which gang will be the least harmful to the health of the nation. 

Hardly inspiring. 

I would like to see a global vote on the system itself. 

But that is not on the ballot.

Rise Up!

I have long wondered how long it would take for disgruntled, mistreated Americans (and Canadians) to revolt and take back their democracy, and their country. Doing so would not only benefit them, but the whole world. 

Perhaps we are close now.

The following wake up/warning call is from Micah White, one of the founders of Occupy Wall Street. It sums up a lot of what this blog is about, and what I have been rebelling against my whole life.

Come on, America - you could be the model that the rest of us can draw on to overthrow our own evil rulers and their self-serving systems. Any takers?


JULY 4, 2018

This is a sincere call for an American Revolution against the decadent, vile kleptocrats that are driving our nation into the ground. Compromised demagogues, sinister bankers, perverted analyticos... A cabal of compulsive liars has turned America, the pioneer of modern democracy, into a decaying state whose President is a puppet of a foreign regime. 

Meanwhile, the opulent 1% are sucking the 99% dry even as they push us, debt-ridden and screen-addicted, over the precipice. Only an insurrection against their cruel misrule can save us now.  

Making the case for the overthrow of the American kleptocracy is a serious matter. From the perspective of the apparatchiks in power, it is a criminal, seditious, treasonous act punishable by a lengthy prison sentence. Therefore, we must be absolutely certain that ours is a righteous rebellion. We must be confident that although our revolution may be illegal from their perspective, it is supremely legitimate, commendable and obligatory from the perspective of universal, natural law.  

And so that we may guard against recklessness, we must be judicious and put the actions of the current American government on trial before deciding if the sentence of execution by popular revolution is necessary and just.

Our case for a forceful disbanding rests on the charge that the American regime is illegitimate and anti-democratic because it is a danger to ourselves as individual citizens, collectively as a nation and globally as a species. Acknowledging that insurrection is only warranted when there is no other avenue to fully removing the corrupt from power, we will contend that all other tactics have already been tried unsuccessfully.  

Every politician in office today, democrat and republican alike, accepts corporate bribes and is therefore corrupt. Some are worse than others—he goes so far as to flout the Emoluments Clause of the U.S. Constitution—but all are guilty of the same indiscretion. 

Their presence in office is perverse evidence that they groveled before wealthy lords and do not serve the aspirations of the people. We know this because on January 21, 2010 the U.S. Supreme court told us who runs America by granting corporations and unions the freedom to donate unlimited amounts of money to political candidates. 

As it is already an established statistical, historical fact that the candidate who spends the most money wins in 9 out of 10 races, it is undeniable that we live in an era were anyone genuinely opposed to the decline of America, and unwilling to compromise, will never be elected. 

We will not be fooled by billionaires who slither into office by pretending to care about America’s collapse while selling their souls, and our democracy, to autocrats abroad. Detached from the reality of everyday people, this government is a dangerous enterprise that is hazardous to the liberty of its citizenry.

Not content with stripping us as citizens of our sovereignty, the dishonest rulers have instituted a foreign policy that delights in permanent war, xenophobic misanthropy and international instability. From cynically squandering billions of dollars of taxpayer money each year on secret wars in distant nations or the military support given to keep undemocratic regimes in power, everything about America's foreign policy is wrong, pro-war, anti-freedom and unjust. 

A nefarious, deep state military-industrial complex sows discord abroad, confusion at home and guarantees that our nation will never live in peace.

And then there is the deepest charge of all: America's kleptocracy is committing a crime against humanity. Nature is dying, sentient species are disappearing, catastrophic climate change threatens us all. 

And yet, the ideology of rampant consumerism and isolationist denialism reigns supreme in America. Ecocide is the official policy of these mammon worshipers who use their military might to keep the oil flowing and industrial pollutants pumping. Glaciers are melting, oceans are acidifying, climate refugees flood across borders. 

If America is not overthrown, the cancerous growth of capitalism will not end until all life on earth is extinct.

Everywhere we look there are signs of moral decay, political corruption and fascistic tendencies. However, activists have not been passive. 

For decades, since the end of democracy in America first became undeniable, we have tried every tactic to avert catastrophe. We have voted, written letters, donated money, held signs, protested in marches, clicked links, signed petitions, tweeted hashtags, knitted sweaters, learned to farm, turned off the television, programmed apps, engaged in direct action, committed petty vandalism, disrupted pipelines, occupied wall street and sparked antifa riots... All this has been for naught. 

Protest has been co-opted by frontgroups designed to fail. Popular revolution remains the only reasonably viable tactic remaining.

In the 18th century, America's forefathers were in a similar situation as we are today. They also sought justification to wage a rebellion against a despotic empire that claimed to be their rightful government. 

They knew that what they intended to do was illegal from the King's perspective, but they found solace in a higher law, a universal law that takes priority over temporal authority. 

The thirteen colonies made the case for insurrection in the Declaration of Independence of the United States on July 4, 1776 and thereby permanently enshrined as unalienable "the right of the people to alter or to abolish" the government. 

The precedent of our own history grants us the right to revolt. Further, the seriousness of America's threat to the world obligates us to act.

Now we will sweep the parasites out of power and reinstate the rule of the people.

Source: http://micahmwhite.com/american-revolution

Mother Earth - #MeToo

“Changing sexist, misogynist attitudes is not a simple endeavor. Replacing a violent, extractivist mindset with one of respect and stewardship is a non-trivial undertaking, particularly in view of fact that the forces that profit from continued strife, exploitation, greed and conflict are very wealthy, very powerful and highly motivated to preserve the enormous riches they have accumulated.  

As long as this paradigm of violence, destruction, and exploitation continue on the global scale, it will continue to reverberate into vulnerable individuals, creating pain, suffering, exploitation, and degradation on the human scale.”

- Christopher Majka

You Can't Buy Love... But You Can Sell With It

It makes the world go round. Newborns fail to thrive without it. And you can't buy it. But you can sell with it. It is love.

In the brave new world of marketing manipulation, advertisers are pushing their crap with sex, as usual, but now they are also exploiting love. Perhaps consumers have caught on to "sex sells" advertising, and aren't consummating as many purchases as when the act was still novel.

Love is the final frontier for getting you to buy more everything.

One of the worst advertisements I have heard recently states that what makes a particular manufacturer's car, is love.

"Really? Love?" I think, "not steel, glass, rubber, lots of plastic, and the energy of thousands of workers along the supply chain?" It makes me want to throw up, or at least throw my hands up, every time I hear it.

Where is the love? In the glove box? Are the tires filled with love? Does it run on love? Are more expensive models made with more love than cheaper models (or are the cheaper ones made with "like").

If there is any love involved in capitalism and marketing, it is the love of money and profit above all else. But they don't say that. It is all about the loving relationship that they manipulate us into through propaganda, lies, deceit, and all that brain chemistry poking and prodding.

What if ads could only give factual information about products, instead of hacking into our emotional treasure chests and subconscious?

The problem advertisers would have with that is their teams of sell-out psychologists, neurologists and brain researchers know that just giving people the facts doesn't work well enough to satisfy the big brands. They know they have to manipulate their victims emotionally in order to maximize profit.

A Canadian brain researcher says, “The essential difference between emotion and reason is that emotion leads to action while reason leads to conclusions.”

The heart is impulsive, while the brain is analytical. Sellers want us to be impulsive. They don't want us using our brains, because they fear that the conclusions we would arrive at are:

1) I don't need that, or
2) I can't afford that, or
3) That product causes great harm to the environment, or
4) so many other conclusions that would lead us to reduce our consumption.

Wrap your brain around that as the consumer frenzy reaches its peak over the next few weeks. Defy the advertisers - use your heart AND your brain when making purchase decisions.

"To buy, or not to buy", is the question they never want us to ask ourselves.

Open Your Eyes To Simplicity

"There is nothing you need to achieve.

Just open your eyes."

 - Siddhartha Gautama

We look, but we don't see. We hear, but don't listen. We eat, but don't taste. Touch, but don't feel. We survive, but don't live. Everyone is too busy striving.

Striving to achieve, but achieve what?

A more sincere existence? A better world? Peace? No.

Not in a capitalist consumer culture in which we are trained to strive for other, less honourable manufactured, profitable and ultimately soul destroying desires.

• Material Success
• Physical Perfection
• Power
• Money
• Prestige

And of course, More, More, More.

No level of achievement is ever enough, because there is ALWAYS more to buy, consume, and hoard. The thing about the School of Consumerism is that you never graduate. You are never done. You always need to achieve more.

It sounds more like a prison.

We already have everything we need. If you can't be happy with a simple life, you won't be happy with the more complicated consumeristic alternatives either. Quit striving to achieve the things you are told to want, and you break free to live in a more natural, satisfying way.

Open your eyes to the joys of simplicity.

Simple Living, High Thinking, Non-Violence

Gandhi's home. He was influenced by the writings of Henry David Thoreau,
and the two men lived in similar simple surroundings, undistracted by unnecessary stuff.

Today, the 148th anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi's birth is being celebrated around the world. It should be - he was an amazing man, as close to a true hero as one can get.

Gandhi emphasized simple living, high thinking, and non-violent resistance, all things that we desperately need in today's world if we are to slow our slide into dark decades of dystopia.

Call it utopian if you want, I don't think of that as an insult, but Gandhi's philosophy on non-violence went far beyond simply the absence of violence. He also advocated radical democracy and self-rule, and extended participation to all segments of society.

Inequality and hierarchical structures (political and religious), are institutionalized violence. Authority over others always ends badly. Just ask the Catalonians, or any of us that suffer the violence of the state in its capitalist corporate economic prison.

I celebrate Gandhi's birth today - he was a model human of the most gentle kind. He lived what he proposed, and had solutions. Right now, we badly need solutions, and soon.

Simple living, rational thinking, and non-violent resistance are tried and true, proven solutions, and I thank this amazing man for bravely bringing them forward. The sooner they are adopted, the better off we will be in the end.

We can break the bars that hem us in to narrow lives of drudgery and perpetual shopping. We can all be heroes. To this, I think, Gandhi would agree.

Getting Off Mechanical Time

Grandma had a Cronos clock on her mantelpiece - tick-tick, tick-tick... Time passed more slowly there.

The clock is one of the oldest human inventions. It is also one of my least favourite.

I have always dreaded the tiny tick of gears and whirring mechanisms, as well as the glow of digital time lords. One of my earliest memories is of sitting in my grandmother's neat and orderly living room. The only sound was the tick-tick of the clock on the mantelpiece. Wanting to be playing outside, a second passed in that living room much slower than a second running around out in the cool air of the yard.

For as long as I remember I have been trying to rip the hands off the time tyrant's mechanized time-bots. I am not built to live according to mechanically measured minutes. I am not a machine - I am an animal. I would rather rely on the internal biological clock, and the cues that nature constantly gives us.

"The mechanical clock dates from the 14th Century... The machine that mechanized time did more than regulate the activities of the day: it synchronized human reactions, not with the rising and setting sun but with the indicated movements of the clock's hands: so it brought exact measurement and temporal control into every activity, by setting an independent standard whereby the whole day could be laid out and subdivided. 

"The measurement of space and time became an integral part of the system of control that Western civilization spread over the planet.

- Lewis Mumford

Culturally, there are many, many different ways that humans experience time. Most are very different from our artificial and imposed time structure. My own belief is that things will happen when they need to happen. You can't organize a modern, capitalist organization with this particular view of time? Oh well.

Nature operates off the clock, the movement of celestial bodies probably being the closest thing to a mechanized, dependable schedule. Otherwise, things happen when they happen, without measured time. And it all seems to turn out fine.

What a joy to sleep when tired, and eat when hungry. We have dropped the usual designations for meals, because what do you really call it when you eat breakfast at 4:30 pm?

Now we just call them all "meals", or if we need to distinguish one from the other, "meal one", "meal two", and (if necessary), "meal three".

I like not knowing what day of the week it is (that's right, I have a problem with calendars, too). Sometimes it gets so good that I lose track of the month, while being lost in just being. Amazingly, things continue to happen in a somewhat orderly, if unpredictable, manner.

"If victory over nature has been achieved in this age, then the nature over which modern humans reign is a very different nature from that in which humans lived before the science revolution. Indeed, the trick that humans turned and that enabled the rise of modern science was nothing less than the transformation of nature and of their perception of reality. 

The paramount change that took place in the mental life of people, beginning during roughly the 14th Century, was in our perception of time and consequently of space."

- Joseph Weizenbaum

It is good to discover the joys of living an unmeasured life free from the endless sweep of Cronos' influence. Off the clock, time is no longer a destructive, all-devouring force. Rather than moving through fragmented time segments, like an endless staircase that only goes in one direction (toward death), one moves as if through a river.

Life flows effortlessly from one moment to the next. And the next...

To get off mechanical time is to free yourself to fully experience yourself as an integral part of the natural world. Beat the clock. Be free. Whenever possible.

Victor Lebow On Consumer Capitalism

Victor Lebow was an American economist that is oft-quoted by those of us that have the gall to question the value of consumer capitalism to humankind. I bring him up as NBA reader Saffron commented recently, "Victor Lebow wrote an article Price Competition in 1955. I highly recommend it, and maybe you will publish it in the future."

I was already familiar with Lebow, and with the most published quote from his work, which I now see comes from the section of the paper called, "The Real Meaning of Consumer Demand".

“Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfactions, our ego satisfactions, in consumption.”

But I had never read "Price Competition" in its entirety. The paper is full of quotable passages beyond the one that comes up most often in discussions of Lebow. Information like this lets us confirm that we have been trained to want, trained to desire, and trained to buy everything, or at least as much as we possibly can.

"To use a military analogy, marketing involves the over-all strategy of distribution, while merchandising, advertising, promotion, and selling comprise the tactics. The costs of distribution actually represent the pressure needed to maintain the high level of consumption. Our economy demands a constantly expanding capacity to produce."

Why do we want so much stuff? Because of the enormous amount of pressure brought to bear upon us. Under the constant assault of marketers, backed by hundreds of billions of dollars per year globally, you can hardly blame people for wanting to buy things.

What is more surprising is that anyone is able to resist the military style campaign, dare to value non-conformity, and refuse to participate in the materialist feeding frenzy. When the average human is subjected to something like thousands of pleas to buy stuff every day, it can be hard to say no to the drug of buying things that we don't need. The advent of television made it even harder.

"Television achieves three results to an extent no other advertising medium has ever approached. First, it creates a captive audience. Second, it submits that audience to the most intensive indoctrination. Third, it operates on the entire family."

Wow. If that doesn't make you want to throw out your TV, install an ad blocker on your computer, and monkey wrench a few billboards, nothing will. There are more such eye opening passages in Lebow's paper, and I recommend anyone interested in knowing how we got here read it in its entirety.

Apparently there is some confusion as to whether the author was advocating consumerism in order to stimulate the post WW2 economy, or was warning us of the perils of moving in that direction.  Regardless, it does explain why our consumer capitalist-based society is the way it is.

Thank you to NBA reader Saffron for the idea/inspiration for this post. And to another NBA'er, Terri, for doing some of the research I used to whip this up.


Read Victor Lebow's Price Competition in 1955 here.

"What becomes clear is that from the larger viewpoint of our economy, the total effect of all the advertising and promotion and selling is to create and maintain the multiplicity and intensity of wants that are the spur to the standard of living in the United States."

- Victor Lebow 

Beauty Abounds

I think every carrot from the garden is a gift of beauty from the Earth. Every carrot, large, small and differently shaped.

There is a lot of pain in the world right now. It is real, and it is not necessarily your fault. Brace yourself, after today there is likely to be a lot more.

Joe Brewer thinks that what you are feeling is a symptom of capitalism dying.

It is that, and more. It is just about everything we know that is dying. Systems that we have relied on for decades are ceasing to deliver the goods. Diminishing returns are everywhere. No one seems to know what to do, although times like these do spawn slick sales people that appear to have all the answers.

The death knell of change even tolls for The Circus, which is closing after 146 years. The billionaire owner said something to the tune of "more has change in the last 10 years than the last 40". A lot of that change has been ugly, and not just for the circus.

In spite of this, beauty remains.

Yes, there is a lot of ugliness out there. But there is always more beauty. Ugliness and pain have limits. Beauty is infinite.

But only if we have the time and calm state of mind necessary to perceive it.

Now, more than ever before, it is important to find the beauty in every moment. Because there is always something beautiful regardless of where you are at. Open yourself to it, and it will appear. Enjoy it. Revel in it. Share it around.

As the rate of change continues to accelerate, and as yucky stuff rises to the surface, we need something to get us through. That something is the beauty that exists in every moment. It is a salve for the mind.

Then, refreshed and reassured, we can do what needs to be done.