Not Buying Body Odour Products

We each have our own unique, natural scents, and someone will sell you
 a product for masking or eliminating every one of them.

Our fingerprints are not the only things that are different for each and every one of us. We also each have our own unique scent.

Nobel Prize winning physicist Richard Feynman, while testing whether he could detect smells as effectively as his dog, found that, "A book that's been standing a while has a dry, uninteresting kind of smell. But when a hand has touched it, there's a dampness and a smell that's very distinct."

Although Feynman found that he couldn't track footprints on his floor as effectively as a dog, he eventually trained his nose well enough that he could entertain guests at parties by telling which person in the room touched which book on a shelf. He recognized the importance of the human scent.

The human body emits a wide variety of chemical messengers to communicate all kinds of vital information. Normal body odour is not offensive, and can even be perceived as pleasant.

However, an odour phobia has been nurtured in the general population by businesses that make money selling a wide variety of 'odour control' products. Most people, in order to calm their fears, douse themselves in enough deodorants, antiperspirants, body sprays and other scents to staunch even the most feisty of pheromones.

Human body odour, is 100% natural. Among other things, it signals sexiness and allows measures of compatibility with potential mates. Our noses can also help us distinguish family from those to whom we are unrelated, and we can tell a person's age from how they smell. Babies and the elderly have been found to have the lightest scents.

Olfactory researchers have also found that exercise sweat and anxiety sweat trigger different parts of the brain in the person smelling them. Anxiety sweat, unlike exercise sweat, triggered areas of the brain in test subjects that were associated with empathy.

Why would we want to cover up all that odouriferous information? In most cases odour control products are in no way medically necessary. Dermatologists actually advise against using such products since they have a tendency to dry the skin.

So what can we do about our natural body odours?

First of all, we can replace our negative automatic thoughts associated with BO with more rational ones. Marketers have long nurtured an unnatural fear of body odours, then exploited those fears to sell their versions of what we should smell like.

Second, we can make sure we have:

• a semi-regular routine of basic hygiene
• a low stress lifestyle, and
• a healthy whole food diet

The funky fact is that as long as a person does not have an extenuating medical condition, there is no need for expensive and potentially cancer-causing odour control products. For the past ten years we have not been buying any of them, and it smells like freedom to us.

Tired of The Consumer Life? Get Awestruck!

Many of my moments of awe have been in nature
photo: Ryan McGinley

Most of us have had experiences that have taken our breath away. Moments that have altered our perception of time, and changed how we think about the world and ourselves forever.

Such moments have been identified by individuals across history, and go by different names. People have used phrases such as 'in the moment', 'being present', 'in the zone', 'on a roll', 'centered', 'in the groove', 'being one with things', and others. It is not surprising that we have devoted so much of our language toward the attempt to describe this ethereal experience. It feels great.

Mihály Csíkszentmihályi called such moments 'flow', which is a positive mental state that occurs when a person is fully engaged in an activity that requires focus, and involvement. During these encounters, the individual will lose track of time and place, and may feel spontaneous joy.

Flow, and the feeling of success it brings, is shut down by depression and anxiety, and has nothing to do with money. Therefore, it is difficult to attain flow in a constantly busy, cash-consumed world. In Csíkszentmihályi's opinion, moments of flow are "the secret to happiness".

American psychologist Abraham Maslow described a similar phenomenon that he called 'peak experiences'. He believed that these moments have lasting effects that help us to become better individuals.

According to Maslow, peak experiences are:

"feelings of limitless horizons opening up to the vision, the feeling of being simultaneously more powerful and also more helpless than one ever was before, the feeling of great ecstasy and wonder and awe, and the loss of placing in time and space." 

Recent studies have looked at the feeling of awe, which was induced in the laboratory. They found that flow, peak experiences, and other awe-inducing moments made test subjects report feeling that they:

• had more time 
• were more patient
• were less materialistic, and
• were more willing to volunteer to help others

The researchers gave credit for the changes in decision-making and well-being to awe's ability to change our subjective experience of time by slowing it down.

A slower pace, they thought, allows us to enter the present, adjust our perception of time, make better decisions, and thus experience life as more satisfying. So if you are tired of competitive, conspicuous consumption, there is hope.

Help someone. Get lost in a project or activity that you enjoy, and that challenges your skills. Stop and look around. Spend time in nature. Play with your kids. Smell a flower. Sing. Dance. Watch a meteor shower. Have tea with a friend. Do nothing for a while, then do more nothing. These things can take time.

Keep on doing such activities and you will experience awe more often. Not only is this what life is about, but it is also the antidote to consumerism.

The best thing is that anyone can do it anywhere, anytime, without any special stuff. And no need to to buy anything - it's free.

Simply Hairy

In a recent survey, 33% of women said that shaving their legs is the first grooming activity to be cut from their routine when they are feeling overwhelmed. 

The simplicity movement is getting attention, and not all of it is good. Business interests are trying to cash in on the fact that a growing number of people are feeling tapped out mentally and financially by busy consumer-oriented lives.

You can tell when a social movement is gaining momentum when it gets co-opted by the corporate world. Enough people are now simplifying, or desiring to simplify, that advertisers are targeting the 'simplicity market'.

Now they want to try to sell stuff to 'help' people simplify, which doesn't seem to make much sense to me. It looks like simplification-washing is the new greenwashing.

A case in point is the 2012 Simplicity Survey sponsored by a large personal care product manufacturer that sells, among other things, women's hair removal products.

Here is a bit of what they found out after talking to 1000 women in the US:


SIMPLICITY SURVEY RESULTS

   -- 71% of women say they have girlfriends that need to simplify their lives, but can't or won't
  
   -- 32% of women think that reducing social and family obligations would help simplify their life

   -- 40% of women say simplifying to them is removing things that cause stress in their life

   -- 25% of women say simplifying means focusing on what is really important

   -- 56% of women find themselves wishing for a simpler life more than 4 days a week 

   -- 42% of  women have beauty products they never use
 

The company said the survey revealed that "women need to simplify their lives", and then they offer their simplicity expertise.

They propose 'solutions', but what they fail to mention is that they are the ones that created the problem in the first place.

This problem, manufactured mostly in N. America in the 20th century using shame as a motivator, is the social obligation of maintaining a hairless body.

So what is their solution for the modern woman yearning for more time and less hassle and stress? A more convenient shaving product to simplify the process of becoming less hairy, and therefore less offensive to a culture they have trained to see body hair as dirty, unnatural, and 'objectionable'.

I have a different take on their survey and their solution, starting with questioning the assumption that we have to be hairless.

I think what the feedback says is that there is a large group of women willing to give up shaving altogether, or at least cut it back to a simple minimum amount.

Saying no to frequent, expensive, and time-consuming hair removal saves money, and frees up valuable time to do more enjoyable things. No one needs a better shaver, but they might benefit from being freed from arbitrary social obligations manufactured solely for profit.

After all, not all women, or men, in the world are as hair-phobic as in western countries. Maybe, like them, we can keep it simple by saying "no" to artificial problems and their unnecessary solutions, and embrace our natural hairiness.

How hairy are you willing to get in the name of simplifying life?

Don't worry, there is nothing to be ashamed of here. You are among nice, hairy, understanding people.

Does Living Simply Keep The World's Poor Down?

Does doing without keep others in poverty?

Was Gandhi wrong when he said, "Live simply so that others may simply live"? That is what hard core consumer capitalists think. At the height of the last global economic crash, business types were not pulling punches, and many of those blows were aimed at the simple living movement.

In a classic "keep shopping" moment, Arthur C. Brooks, business professor and consumerism apologist, accused simple living types of sabotage in a bit of preposterous propaganda:

"If we all truly lived simply, we would help countries around the world regress to the economic levels of Japan in 1950, China in 1990 or sub-Saharan Africa today. If we piously refused to purchase new clothes and televisions, we would create truly lethal unintended consequences for the world's most vulnerable people." - source

Mr. Brooks is a business shill, and his article was posted in 2008, 4 days after the anniversary of 9/11 (the original 'keep shopping' moment). The global economy was beginning to unravel, so he might be forgiven for telling us that we have a moral obligation to shop. He was probably experiencing a moment of temporary insanity, or panic perhaps.

Business as usual has already "created truly lethal unintended consequences" for the most vulnerable people as well as the ecosystem as a whole. The unintended consequences the professor is referring to, are those that might ensure at least some humans remain free of the tyranny of consumerism. They may also limit the spread of corporate power and influence, and that in Brooks' book is bad.

Brooks and his friends want the world's most vulnerable to gain some material wealth, but they do not mention how the formerly poor will surely suffer new forms of poverty - the mental, moral, and spiritual poverty which occur after wealth and material possessions take over as the new bottom line.

If we still believe that we can shop our way to a better world, we have to snap out of it before it is too late for not only the poor, but everyone. Since its beginning, consumerism has created more problems than it has solved.

Producing a bunch of useless stuff for us to sell to each other has trashed the planet, destroyed our communities, and converted a large part of the world's population into wage slaves. This has led to unprecedented levels of depression and ill health.


Brooks and company tell us to embrace consumerism or be held responsible for keeping the world's poor in poverty. What a load of bull. These people are obviously desperate. Taking Brooks' advice will lead to unintended consequences far more serious than not having a wide screen television, or 50 flavours of ice cream.

I will not be deterred by consumerist business-as-usual propaganda. If working a job I don't like, so I can buy stuff I don't need, while my actions devastate the environment, is the only way to help the poor, then obviously our system is broken and doomed to fail.

Mr. Brooks is sadly, dinosaurily delusional, and soon his type will be extinct. Gandhi was not wrong - living simply on our planet is the only way we are going to make it. 

I am 'piously' refusing to go along with such business buffoonery, and firmly believe my simple living actions help, not hinder, my brothers and sisters across the globe.

Contentment

"True contentment depends not upon what we have; a tub was large enough for Diogenes, but the world was too little for Alexander."     Charles Caleb Colton

For about the past 10 years I have been quite content to not buy anything, or hardly anything. Living a small footprint lifestyle, and trying to approach sustainability has been rewarding and satisfying. Ultimately, it has made my life better, because I am just not into the whole buying and selling thing.

In the movie Say Anything the character Lloyd Dobbler (played by John Cusack) said, "I don't want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don't want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed. You know, as a career, I don't want to do that." I can relate.

One of my favourite things about living simply is that it has largely taken me out of the marketplace, except for basic things we all need. When I get money I put it in the bank - I can't think of anything else to do with it, as far as 'shopping' is concerned. I don't like shopping, and besides, I have what I need.

I have warm, dry shelter in a location I love. I eat fresh, tasty, whole foods. I have supportive friends and family in my community. I have time for creative activities like playing guitar, reading, and writing. I spend lots of time in nature.

My education has given me the desire to ask questions, seek answers, and apply what I know to make the world a better place. I feel safe and secure (as much as you can living in an earthquake/tsunami zone, or worse, under the increasingly right-wing Harper regime). I have a great partner that is my best friend. I have a healthy mind and body, although the 'healthy mind' might be a bit of an exaggeration.

To me, that all seems like enough. Would making my life faster and more complex make me happier? Could earning and spending more money increase my freedom and joy? I don't think so.

I feel like Richard Feynman when he said, "I am completely free, and there are no levers that can be used to influence me." I am the system's worst nightmare - I am content.

Colouring Outside The Lines

"Conformity is the jailer of freedom, 

and the enemy of growth." 

- J.F. Kennedy

The best way to foster freedom in the world is to attain freedom yourself. Gandhi suggested that we must be the change we wish to see in the world. The method I have chosen to emancipate myself and foster change is through living a small footprint, simple lifestyle. It has not been easy.

Simple living is a tough sell in a system that promises liberation through the acquisition of larger piles of loot, and the things and services it can buy. As long as consumption is the yard stick of our success, as well as the answer to all that ails the economy, living on less won't garner much attention.

However, the lack of attention paid to simple living as a solution to many of our problems is, perhaps, a measure of its effectiveness. Because it is an effective agent of change, it is seen as a threat to all we are trained to hold dear.

We are encourage, or even demanded, to service the system in work and in play. Because of this it is difficult to imagine life being any other way - we are soaking in it. Our cultural conditioning limits our imaginations. We cannot become free if we are unaware that our potential is being restricted. It is difficult to make the step toward simple living, even if it will liberate us.

Philosopher Herbert Marcuse, in Counterrevolution and Revolt, wrote that, "while it is true that people must liberate themselves from their servitude, it is also true that they must first free themselves from what has been made of them in the society in which they live. This primary liberation cannot be 'spontaneous' because such spontaneity would only express the values and goals derived from the established system. Self-liberation is self-education..."

Marcuse thought that people were not free because they function within systems such as the economy. If we were free, we would be able to free ourselves from these systems. But extricating yourself from the mainstream is difficult, as anyone who has tried can attest to.

There is intense pressure to conform to the regular high-consumption, complicated, full time lifestyle. Anyone that chooses not to is seen as radically and dangerously different. It is this pressure, and the difficulty overcoming it, that can keep us in chains and living lies.

We can overcome our cultural assumptions through self-education. Here in the Age of Information it has never been easier to access the knowledge that will help us to answer our questions and attain liberation.

Why not work as little as possible to provide for your needs, rather than an established amount of time that is convenient only for employers? How can we know what we really need or want with advertiser's all-pervasive propaganda tainting our decisions? Billions of dollars are spent each year to create "false needs". These misdirections fuel desire and end up enslaving us in their pursuit.

Simple living helps us break free and gives us the time to seek the truth. We can refuse limits on our free time that render us too tired to fight for what we really want and need. We can demand real choice that doesn't just reinforce social norms that are part of the problem. We can think for ourselves, colour outside of the lines, and create the lives we really want to live.

 "The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion."
- Albert Camus

No Mischief Monday

What worries some people about consumption is that the affluent, technologically advanced West seems more and more focused not on consuming to live but living to consume. The problem with consumption, and the consumer capitalism that has pushed it to feverish historical extremes, is that it has become so all-consuming.

-Rodney Clapp

Venturing Into The Habitat Of The Consumasaurus

"Shopping is serious business." (so is extinction)

The last time I was in a large mall was in Istanbul almost 10 years ago. But today, I ventured into one again. I was on my way to the Government of Canada passport office which happens to be in a massive monument to shopping.

The Bay Centre in downtown Victoria, B.C. is four floors of glitzy enticements spread over 2 whole city blocks. How would I react after all these years of being deprived of status-conferring shiny new Stuff?

As I walked through happy crowds of shoppers I noticed a distinct smell - the smell of new stuff. It was just as I remembered it, except now I know that that alluring odour is the smell of off-gassing industrial products. I looked around me and wondered what the attraction was that kept so many people spellbound on a such a beautiful day.

Everything was clean - it didn't look like a battle ground. People were sitting and resting everywhere. How many were here because they were lonely, or because there was nothing better to do?

There weren't any entertaining touts, like in the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul (quality shopping since 1461). There they honestly asked if I, "needed any help spending my money". However, the intent of our malls is exactly the same. We just have more subtle and subversive ways of separating people from their money.

Large, brightly lit advertisements vied for my attention. Piles of things tottered on tables promising terrific prices. "Let us help you spend your money", they cooed, "you'll be happy you did".

What I quickly found, though, was that I was feeling impervious to their game. I felt no yearnings to purchase, no desire for anything except to conduct my business, and get out alive with all my money. Am I evolving into a simple living human? Or is that devolving?

I felt like an intrepid explorer that had thrown himself back in time to experience the death throws of the once mighty species known as Consumasaurus. Here they were, foraging in their natural habitat, while the comet of debt, greed, inequality and environmental destruction hurtled toward them. I quickened my step - I wanted to get out before the comet hit.

After walking the length of the mall, taking an elevator to the fourth floor, then traversing the entire food court, I found the passport office. Looking through the glass doors I could see that the large waiting area was packed with hot, bedraggled passport applicants. I didn't even go in.

I had a sudden urge to be outside in the sunshine, to smell the ocean breeze and see the green and blue hills. I turned around and fled. Was I disoriented, or do they make it easier to get into malls than out of them? Help - I have entered a mall and can't get out! I found an elevator, and hit the button. One floor up the elevator doors opened and disgorged me directly onto the street.

I was disoriented, but victorious. I escaped before the comet struck. I had all the money I walked in with. I had been thrust back out into the real world - spit out by a machine that I was no longer a cog within. I was free of the desire to shop.

I felt the sun on my face, and a breeze rustled my hair. I half expected that if I turned around and looked the elevator doors would be gone and a blank brick wall would be there instead. It felt like a slightly disturbing dream. I checked to make sure I had clothes on.

I didn't push my luck and look back. Instead, I looked toward the hills, laughed, and ran.

Put The Brakes On And Stop

In my past rushed life I enjoyed how productive I was... to a point. Sure I got a lot done, and perhaps was paid well for doing it, but it was quickly sucking the life out of my life. I had less and less time to do the things I wanted to do. Since then life has slowed down rather dramatically. But even the slow life is too fast at times. Occasionally, we need to stop.

North America, so driven to prove something to the rest of the world, has no culture of stopping (or even slowing down). No siesta, no mid-day cafe conversations stretching into evening, no joyous lolly-gagging. Loafing is generally seen as a sin, regardless of how regenerating its benefits may be.

The over-used phrase about time being money trains us to be active at all times. To burn the candle at both ends. If you get tired, well, there is a pill for that. Or wait a few months till your next vacation. Do NOT slow down. And if you stop you may get run over. But we do need to stop.

I remember a camping trip to an October Fest celebration during which I and my friends were all going hard. After lots of beer, sausage, and dancing, we returned to our camp site and continued partying. Early in the morning a woman emerged from the tent next door in her housecoat. As she approached our campfire she screamed, "When do you people stop?" The poor woman was near hysterical, and we couldn't really blame her.

We all paused quietly, looking at each other and shrugging our shoulders. Finally, one of our group looked at the sleepy, angry woman and said, "I am afraid, ma'am, that we don't stop". Now when I think of that I chuckle and figure it is pretty accurate for our whole culture.

When do we stop? I am afraid that we don't. And we pay the price. But this is not the natural state of being human. This is far from the ebb and flow of life that all humans experienced until industrialization and money came to rule our days.

We should take lessons from other cultures that still enjoy a reasonable pace of life. We have something to learn from those who stop for the siesta. We have something to learn from our pets. Why not take a chapter from simpler living, slower living, people and creatures? Wouldn't you like to curl up in a sunbeam and nap for a few hours?

Buddhists believe that there are three doors of liberation: Emptiness, Signlessness and Aimlessness.

"Aimlessness basically means that there is nothing to attain, nothing to strive for, nothing that we are compelled to do. This enables us to be happy in the present moment, to live, to do the experiencing of life." - Source

This is what freedom is. This is what slowing down, and yes, stopping does for us - it liberates us from the destructive ways our pro-activity culture cajoles us into. Aimlessness allows us to be spontaneous and truly engaged in life now. It unleashes creativity and positive energy. It gives us time to just be.

Take some time this week to slow down, and to stop. Take a moment to do nothing. Or to stop and really experience something, like a thousand tide pool creatures in a pool on the rocks. Or stop and practice active listening when someone speaks to you. Nap in a sunbeam. Swing in a hammock. Look at clouds.

Take up Slackerism for a moment and say, "No" to The Man... or Woman. Stop and be free.

The Perilometer

I invented my Perilometer in the dark days of winter 2007 in response to a general sense of peril that I was experiencing. I had been the watching mainstream media for a few weeks and was surprised that no warnings were forthcoming, no headlines of impending doom, or suggestions for how to be prepared for what I felt was coming our way - a radical change in the way we see ourselves and our relation to stuff and the planet that supports it all.


Then 2008 limped into view, and complete with it a generous amount of good old-fashioned peril. Serious and immediate danger seemed everywhere for everyone. You know things are bad when for a short period of time the rich don't get richer. Things were crumbling, and lies were being exposed, and the biggest lie was that an economy and lifestyle based on MORE was sustainable.


Those who profit from stroking our desires have been telling us for almost 100 years that our consuming 35 times the resources of the average global citizen was NOT having a negative effect on other people or the environment. 2008 marked the beginning of the end of this excessive party, and at the time my Perilometer needle was registering somewhere between "Muscle Twitches" and "Strong Desire To Flee".


Naturally, our inclination is to keep the instrument needle as close to "No Peril" as possible. Having said that, peril has always been a fact of life on earth. Whether sabre tooth tigers, floods, or Og from the cave next door running after you wielding a large club, peril has always been around to some degree.


Modern life protects us, mostly, from one set of perilous situations (nature), and trades it for another even more perilous set (affluent, busy, technological lifestyles). It is highly unlikely you will be eaten by a bear or wolf, but you might get eaten by the potentially perilous demands of modern life. Now we deal with the perils of heart attacks, diabetes, trillions of dollars of cash vanishing into thin air, housing markets crashing, and people losing jobs at the highest rate since the Great Depression. Perilous times, indeed.


We can minimize the effects of a constant sense of peril, and we must because an ongoing sense of danger is highly stressful and can lead to disease and unhappiness. I figure somewhere between "No Peril" and "Mild Peril" is sufficient to keep us awake and relatively stress-free.


When I feel my Peril Rating climb to the point of "Adrenaline Rush" these are a few things I do:

• Review my personal preparation plan to be able to take care of myself and my family in the event of an emergency (end of globalism, earthquake, power outage, global climate change, fall of capitalism...)
• stay away from TV and online news
• go for a walk or hike or bike ride (leave the earbuds at home and listen to nature and the pounding of your own heart)
• stretch, deep breathe, meditate
  
• play guitar, sing, dance, shake and be silly
• take action to implement positive change in my life
• talk to friends and family and work on building a strong community network
  

The coming decades promise to be quite different than the ones we passed in relative luxury while everything crumbled behind the scenes. Now many dangers can no longer be hidden or ignored, and our eyes have been opened. We should be aware of serious and immediate dangers, and have plans for dealing with them. Then we need to implement the best plans to the best of our ability. Having done that we can relax, knowing that we are doing what we can, where we are at, with what we have. What else can we do?


Hope you are having a Low Peril day, and if not, that my suggestions to mitigate it are useful.

More And More People Got Them Ol' Blues

Do we have the blues? Well, so many people are peeing Prozac that it is in water supplies now in trace quantities. Yes, more and more so-called regular people are learning what Old Man Blues is all about. Once the music of the cotton fields on the Mississippi Delta, the blues haunting tunes, and that old gitchy feeling that goes with them, seem to be on the move.

Alan Lomax, folk historian extraordinaire, in his book The Land Where The Blues Began describes this feeling as a "melancholy dissatisfaction" resulting from "the sense of being a commodity rather than a person". If you doubt this applies to all of us today, remember - you ceased being a citizen a long time ago.

You are a consumer now, and your function is obvious. "Resistance is Futile", Borg-like capitalists and the governments that support them tell us. No wonder we are increasingly bummed out. We are promised everything, but end up with nothing.

In the age of MicroSerfs and falling wages, unemployment and unregulated greed, things are feeling more and more like a small southern county with a Big Daddy sheriff making sure all his marshmallowy "boys" are getting what they think they deserve. The other 90% of us don't say anything... until the good ol' boys drive away, that is. Not only are we getting bummed out, we are getting pissed off, too.

Lomax goes on in his preface:

Our times today are similarly out of joint, similarly terrorized. Technology has made the species rich and resourceful as never before, but the wealth and the resources rest with a few individuals, corporations, and favored nations. Most earthlings, most nations, are distanced from technological luxury, and that imbalance is presided over by armed forces capable of destroying the planet itself. Rage and anxiety pervade the emotions and the actions of both the haves and the have nots. And the sound of the worried blues of the old Delta is heard in back alleys and palaces, alike.

Alan Lomax spent years touring the south recording music and meeting the people. He knew of their hardships. Any yet, while touring around a bustling, vibrant black business district one day, he came to an important realization:

We had grabbed off everything, I thought, we owned it all - money, land, factories, shiny cars, nice houses - yet these people, confined to their shacks and their slums, really possessed America; they alone, of the pioneers who cleared the land, had learned how to enjoy themselves in this big, lonesome continent - they were the only full-blown Americans.

Blues music was born among the people, simple folks that dug the earth and worked under the sun. People that often lived with less than enough under difficult conditions. But what beauty came from the Delta experience. An enduring beauty that caught on and was widely imitated by white performers.

But they only imitated the music, and not so much the lifestyle. But it was the lifestyle, the simple, basic things like community and being grateful for what you've got that inspired a totally unique way of dealing with the constant difficulties of oppression. The people played and sang and tranced out on porches up and down the dusty roads of cotton country. This music could never have been born in the suburbs of mainstream America.

Alan Lomax was right, it is the simple folks that can truly learn what the unencumbered life is all about. More and more of us are beginning to understand this, some by choice. The blues moans and wails and sweats and shakes, but it is also an antidote to our ills.

We will learn the benefits of our new reality while changing things in the process, and who knows what will come of it. Rest assured that Son House, Robert Johnson, Willy Dixon, Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters and others will be there to help console and inspire us along the way.

Are Conspicuous Consumers The Next Smokers?

At one time an individual's choice to smoke in public was based on purely personal considerations. Either you felt like having a smoke or not. Not so much any more. Taking into consideration the greater effects of public smoking, many jurisdictions have created laws restricting it. Attitudes are changing, and it is considered socially unacceptable to light up indiscriminately in public. Is conspicuous consumption next on the list?

The unintended effects of one billion people consuming 35 times more everything than the rest of the planet are monumental. We are living in the second hand smoke of our smoldering scorched earth lifestyles. We are destroying everything the enemy can use, and the enemy seems to be the very planet itself.

Not only do we see that there ARE limits to what nature can provide us, but we are nearing some of those limits. We are witnessing the limits of atmosphere and ocean, forest and farmland, flora and fauna. On a finite planet with an ever-increasing population, I can only see this going one way, and it is not a vision of excess.

There are current examples of consumption laws. Some are health related such as restrictions on consuming cigarettes in public, while others deal with resource depletion such as rationing water in a drought. My own community has water rationing every summer during the dry season and it is the main limiting factor in the development of this area.

Fines are associated with breaking consumption laws, and when we opt to hit people in the pocketbook you know we mean business. Society reminds us in this way that our decisions are no longer bound by purely personal whims, and the greater good will be preserved. Such "extreme measures" become ingrained in our lives and before long we adapt, and perhaps even wonder how things could have been the way they were previously. It is what happens when you choose to live with less - you wonder what all that stuff you used to have was for. You don't miss it. You welcome the empty space it has left behind.

According to the law of diminishing utility increasing consumption does not translate into increased happiness past a certain critical point. It is possible that the less we consume, the happier we will become. Will we need further laws to help us overcome the initial fear as we move toward a sustainable existence?

Our current high-consumption lifestyle is leading to obesity, chronic stress, climate change, and a widening gap between rich and poor. Are we going to limit our own self-destructive behaviour, or will we need to be dragged kicking and screaming to do the right thing? It's not just personal anymore. We all share the same planet.

10 Steps Toward Mindful Consumption

"Aware of the suffering caused by unmindful consumption, I vow to cultivate good health, both physical and mental, for myself, my family, and my society by practicing mindful eating, drinking, and consuming." - Thich Nhat Hanh, Zen Buddhist monk

Unmindful consumption has created many problems. Even if I don't consume a lot, I am still consuming. All of my purchases have repercussions throughout the supply chain. Are my hands clean? How can I become a more mindful consumer?

We are questioning our purchasing habits. As we become aware of the externalities involved in the things we buy, we can choose products and companies that cultivate personal, environmental and social well-being.

The following are 10 tips I use to become more mindful in my consumption habits:

1. Don't panic. Many purchases are unplanned and based on emotions. Pause. Think. Then buy, or not. Often by the end of a waiting period we have ceased to desire the item altogether.
2. Beware of emotional foreplay. Don't be seduced by consumer culture advertising/programming that appeals to lower brain functions and promotes reflexive behaviours. Beware of PPD (premature purchase disorder).
3. Do research to increase awareness. Consumers can increasingly access information that will assist in making ethical purchasing decisions. Webs sites such as GoodGuide, SkinDeep, and EnvironmentalHealthNews offer a wealth of information for the concerned consumer. Also, check labels on products to find information such as point of origin, potentially dangerous ingredients such as unhealthy fats, high fructose corn syrup, MSG, diacetyl, suspected carcinogens etc.
4. Support Fair Trade and Organic Certified products. Fair trade products promote equity and well-being throughout the system by helping consumers make ethical choices. Entire cities are designating themselves fair trade zones.
5. Be aware of the lifespan of products. 90% of a laptop computer's impact is when it is made and disposed of. Vinyl shower curtains off-gas in landfills for decades. Plan for the entire life cycle of things you buy.
   
6. Choose non-toxic alternatives. If there are aren't any, ask why.
7. Buy local. If there is a local, healthy alternative, support your community.
8. Plan ahead and make a list. Know what you need and limit yourself to those things.
9. Buy quality and make things last. With proper use and maintenance quality products can be made to last, reducing the overall price per use while saving resources.
   
10. Question your desires and promote good health when desires are met. Being aware of what motivates your consumption habits will make you more mindful when making purchases. You will be doing the least amount of harm possible, and that in itself promotes personal health.
    

What Will The Post-Consumer Future Look Like?

A recent thought-provoking comment from a reader provided the opportunity for the following post in which I would like to tap into the wisdom of all those who pass by this humble blog. The comment was in response to my recent post on desires, consumer culture, and advertising. What will happen if many of us decide to not buy anything? What if it becomes a way of life, not just a temporary setback before resuming borrowing and spending? What will a post-consumer culture look like?

During the last two decades, the percentage of the U.S. economy devoted to consumer spending went up and up and up - from 67% of GDP to 72%, a huge increase.
http://www.dailyreckoning.com.au/us-economy-devoted-to-consumer-spending/2008/07/31/

We can't all not buy anything and expect our world to remain the same. But you know the trend has begun when economists like David Rosenberg are talking about a "new frugality" cutting into consumer spending.

Now, with credit tight, wages flat-lining and unemployment steadily ticking higher, consumers are strapped. Personal spending in the second quarter was $195 billion below the figure for the same period last year. That 1.9% drop is significant — over the 20 years that ended in 2006, consumer spending reliably increased at an annual 3.3% rate.
http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/2009-10-11-consumer-spending_N.htm?csp=34

We are cutting back and thinking twice about our discretionary spending. Many of us are deciding not to buy anything, or at least not as much as before. We are re-evaluating our role as consumers. The Jones' have left the neighborhood, and we ain't lookin' over the fence any more.

And now, to the comment:

This has been on my mind for some time now as well. My current financial situation has created a huge obstacle in my old habits of consumerism. My families survival needs are met, and we have found contentment within our purchasing restraints.

I find myself wondering what it is that I would actually want, if I had extra money to go around? At the same time, however, I wonder what would happen to all the billions of people on this planet if even just 5% decided that they no longer desired material objects.

How many jobs would be lost? What would people do to earn an income if they weren't needed in jobs that support consumerism? How would science advance? What would drive our economy so that we could still share resources and knowledge if the motivation of earning an income was extinguished?

I believe that there are major philosophical and political issues/implications that would arise as a result of millions of people changing thier outlook on capitalism. I am personally not a fan, but I wonder if some people would even know what to do with themselves if they didn't want to work to buy stuff, or go to the bar afterwards. And finally, how could this effect you or I in the long term?

Thank you to Pzeffan for his comment. I would like to do a bit of future visioning of my own.

The murky view in my crystal ball reveals that cooperatives will be a larger part of the solution in the future. The cooperative movement began in Europe in the 19th century in response to rapid industrialization. There are thriving housing cooperatives around the world. I lived in one quite contentedly for a decade. There are also retail cooperatives like MEC in Canada, and REI in the U.S. Worker cooperatives in developing nations are realizing great success. In these endeavours all members benefit, not just a small elite at the top. The membership shares in control of the venture, and in the benefits that flow from it.

I see a frugal future where we humbly come together in communities in order to help support one another, and realize the benefits of our cooperative efforts. It is already happening, with about 800 million members globally participating in the cooperative movement.

The current crisis of greed yields an opportunity to try a different model, and a better way of life. My vision sees the dark, polluted fumes of excess and luxury clearing, and a brighter, more cooperative future for all just over the horizon.

What do you see in the post-consumer future? How will we overcome the challenges inherent in the continuing shift toward a less individual, competitive, materialistic culture?

Your Things Own You

Do you remember the wall posters that were around a while back saying, "He who dies with the most toys wins"? Some one forgot to tell Gandhi. The above photo shows his total worldly possessions at the time of his death. No toys. In March of 2009 these same simple items were bought by an Indian airline and liquor baron, Vijay Mallya, for 1.8 million U.S. dollars. Vijay Mallya would be on the "Toys" poster if it were printed today.

I don't see those posters around so much anymore. We have gone so overboard since then that we are finally starting to feel guilty about it. We just keep quiet now, and wonder why we still feel so unfulfilled. It would be much healthier to "pull a Gandhi" and see who can pass on with the fewest toys. If you can't fit it all in a small box you are disqualified.

The times that we feel the most free are the times we have the least stuff, generally. Childhood. The student life. Backpacking and camping. Traveling light overseas. Freed of encumbrances and responsibilities we are light and joyous. Unburdened and unfettered by the clutter and curses of consumer culture we become ourselves again. We have the space to remember who we are and what it is that is really important to us. What we want, not what others tell us we should want.

Confucius, Jesus, Gandhi, Buddha and others have taught the principles of a simple life with few possessions. Beyond what we need to survive, they have shown us, everything else is a distraction that prevents us from doing the important work. “And what's the work?" asks Allan Ginsberg, "To ease the pain of living. Everything else, drunken dumbshow.”

Our consumer culture is most certainly a drunken dumbshow. We are caught in its grip, mesmerized by shiny things and damn the consequences, the externalites. It is adding to the pain of living, and we are sacrificing our lives and the planet to purchase this pain. We have known for decades, perhaps centuries, that our progress currently is not sustainable, but we just can't seem to stop.

If humanity can not stop its over consumption, something will do it for us. Climate change, Peak Oil, aging boomers, flu epidemics, overpopulation, ecosystem collapse, drought, crop failure, and a number of other threats ensure that Mother Earth will get the final move in the return to a more balanced system. One that may or may not include us. Or developed countries can willingly adopt a way of life that only recent generations are not familiar with. That is, one with very few possessions.

Since 2000 Linda and I have been making an effort to not buy anything that we do not need. We wanted to adopt measures to reduce our consumption willingly, before being forced to later for what ever reasons. We have found that it is possible to be "rich" with less, and as we go along our quality of life is increasing despite our spending decreasing.

We know how difficult it is to cut back while surrounded by a culture of cut in line to get more. When I think about how I might reduce my consumption further I am reminded of the 1979 movie "The Jerk". Steve Martin in the lead role contemplates what he needs in the following scene:

"Well I'm gonna to go then. And I don't need any of this. I don't need this stuff, and I don't need you. I don't need anything except this. [picks up an ashtray]

And that's it and that's the only thing I need, is this. I don't need this or this. Just this ashtray.

And this paddle game, the ashtray and the paddle game and that's all I need. And this remote control. The ashtray, the paddle game, and the remote control, and that's all I need.

And these matches. The ashtray, and these matches, and the remote control and the paddle ball. And this lamp. The ashtray, this paddle game and the remote control and the lamp and that's all I need.

I don't need one other thing, not one - I need this. The paddle game, and the chair, and the remote control, and the matches, for sure."

At first it is hard to let go of our things, but as time goes on we do not miss them. As we settle into a new life of experiences rather than work and things we are released from consumer bondage. Life becomes lighter, more real. The more you live without the extra baggage, the easier it gets. Soon a rich simple life flows quite naturally, and cognitive dissonance, that deadly stress producer, is reduced.

Our behaviour becomes more aligned with what we believe to be true. And what we know is that beyond a certain amount of possessions we fall prey to the law of diminishing returns. More stuff does not make our lives better. In fact, once past the point of "enough", the more stuff we get, the poorer the quality of life becomes. Ultimately, all your stuff has to be maintained, not to mention guarded, stored and paid for. The stuff begins to take over. It possesses you.

It is easy to accumulate stuff these days with lines of credit and such. It is much more challenging to see how little one can live on, and do the planet a much needed favour at the same time.When Gandhi passed away his possessions could fit into a small cardboard box. If I can get my possessions down to filling the box of my truck I will be happy for now. But I am aiming for the freedom of that small cardboard box.

The End of The Big Lie

The biggest lie of all: Consumption will make us happy

We have been lied to, and all the misspeaking and misdirection has created fear and confusion, as it is intended to do. Our basic human weaknesses have been exploited in order to benefit those that perpetrated, and continue to perpetrate the lies. And of course we have to look at our own individual responsibility, too. But the lies and propaganda are pretty persuasive.

Some classic fibs in my near 50 years?

• Cigarettes do not cause cancer.
• You need meat in your diet.
• Burning fossil fuels can't have an effect on the vastness of the atmosphere.
• We can never cut all the trees or catch all the fish because our forests and oceans are just too vast. 
• Plastic is a benign substance.
• A family can't live on a single income.
• Animals have no feelings and feel no pain.
• You can only marry someone of the opposite gender.
• Everyone has to work full time.
• People that don't have kids are weird.
• Vegetarians are weak.
• Life is getting better as we get more stuff.
• Real estate always goes up.
• Climate change is not happening.
• Corporate rule will benefit us all, and government works for the betterment of society.

I am not buying any of it anymore. I'm not buying the lies or the stuff.

I am taking charge of my life. It is time to go back to how humans have lived across the ages. The emphasis going forward will once again be on a life light on possessions, and heavy on community-minded thinking. The days of "ME" and "MY STUFF" are coming to an end, and just in time. Our future survival will depend on doing things differently.

I am voluntarily conducting my life differently. I am cutting the number of hours I work. I am fleeing from the smog and bustle of the city. I am changing where I go, and how I get there. I am looking at my diet, my leisure activities, and my self.

Along with a reduced income comes a reduced level of consumption. And with reduced consumption comes a slower paced, more local, freer life style unencumbered with the superfluities of modern life.

I vow to do the least amount of harm to my self, others, and the environment. My wish is that others will be inspired by my example and undertake a similar quest to see how they might live more gently on this planet.