Consumer Christmas Not Sustainable

Christmas Day

The Day After Christmas

2023 is a great time to rethink the holiday season.

Historically its focus was never tons of gift giving until Big Business got involved. They recruited St. Nick, gave him cola and other crap to push, and never looked back.

Today we might think about the real reasons we celebrate at this time of year.

What is it all about?

Certainly not stress, debt and waste. 

Consider giving sustainable gifts this year, and every year after.

I would suggest perennial favourites such as 

love, 

friendship, 

cooperation, 

conviviality, 

support, 

social connection,

help, 

kindness, 

understanding, and 

compassion.

Nothing is more important than these timeless gifts. The world needs more of them all.

They are waste-free, resource-free, and without limit. 

Best of all, you don't need money to give these cherished presents. Anyone can give them.

Every one of them will be universally appreciated. 

Or you could go shopping.

Call me a Scrooge, but that is how I roll. 

Personally, I am thrilled that the light and longer days will be delivered to the northern hemisphere starting at 10:27 pm 3 days from now.

That is something to celebrate. It is the only gift I want. And also a few from the list above.

Happy Winter Solstice. 

... and Summer Solstice for our readers down south.

Transcending Consumerism (And Everything Else)

A fundamental Zen message says that an awakened state can be achieved. We can go beyond our perceived limitations. 

This awakening can be achieved by transcending all aspects of the material, transitory world. 

We will have to transcend consumerism first, if we are to transcend anything else.

Not just consumerism, although that would be a positive step toward that ultimate goal. 

Muso Soseki (1275 - 1351), a Zen Buddhist monk, teacher, calligraphist, poet and garden designer said,

I don’t go out to wander around

I stay at home here in Miura
While time flows on through
The unbounded world
In the awakened eye
Mountains and rivers completely
Disappear.
The eye of delusion looks out upon

Deep fog and clouds. 

What is consumerism if not a deep fog hanging over captured shoppers stuck in a dead end cycle? 

When individuals aspire to attain spiritual enlightenment, regardless of what method they follow to get there, they don't go to the mall.

The act of simplifying one's life helps to transcend consumerism, and stimulates the awakened eye.

When we see that we can overcome our programming as consumers, we are emboldened to overcome anything and everything.

First we gain ourselves, then we gain the world.

Anti-Consumer Artivism: Street Artist Kurar

Artivism is what you get when you cross art with activism. As regular readers of this blog know, I enjoy posting anti-consumer and anti-establishment art that is subversive, satirical, and thought-provoking.

I recently came across another artivist that fits the bill and belongs in the Not Buying Anything Gallery.

French street artist Kurar "fearlessly tackles sensitive issues that the world deals with today, and he does it with a pinch of humour and in the manner of an effective wake-up call to our culture and society".

Consumerism is only one issue this artivist depicts in his art, and he does so powerfully. His use of children in his works makes his work even more powerful, and appropriately disturbing.

"Liberty"

Consumerism Explained Part I

In a consumer society you can buy anything you want. 

Any time you want it.

Mostly you can buy happiness. 

It's fleeting, and fake, but by making repeat purchases forever, everything will be fine.

Isn't that marvellous?

Satirical Subversive Santas

Consumerism has taken a perfectly good winter celebration and turned it into a stressful frenzy of shopping excess. 

Satirical subversive Santas show us the truth behind it all.

Winter celebrations have been monitized and commodified beyond recognition. Instead of being about peace, joy, and harmony, celebrations are more commonly recognized as the most lucrative shopping event of the year. 

Subversive Santas have done very well, and have been spotted making off in luxury limo sleighs filled with large red velvet bags overflowing with cash.

We can regain the spirit of winter celebrations by refusing to conform to consumer Christmas expectations, and celebrate this time of year without an emphasis on buying.

Throwing a Buy Nothing Christmas is a good way to recover the meaning of winter celebrations and return the focus to peace, harmony, and helping each other make it through the darkest days of the year. 

We could all use a deep joy and connection this time of year, and especially so during this particularly challenging year.

Happy Winter Solstice, Yule, Saturnalia, and Christmas. 

Save 100%

Just food.

Month after month we look at our banking information and see the same thing. Over the previous 30 days all we bought was food.

And we have had to buy less of that with this year's harvest put away in our pantry and our unheated garage/cold room. 

We are storing carrots (and beets, too, this year) in forest moss again. I will do a post on that soon. See last year's posts on that topic here and here.

Just food doesn't happen every month, but the fact is, once one has the basics of living, not much more needs to be purchased. 

If you buy quality items to start with, they may never need to be replaced.

The 66% of consumers that plan on going out and spending money this weekend, will hunt far and wide looking for the best sales.

The absolute best, unbeatable sale of all time is when you decide to not buy anything. 

"Truth in advertising" is an oxymoron. If it wasn't, you wouldn't want to buy much at all, except what you truly need.

The Not Buying Anything Sale is as true as it gets.

You save 100% every time. 

Guaranteed.

Consumer Christmas On Backorder

Consumer Christmas 2021 is on permanent backorder.

"Sorry for the inconvenience - your consumer lifestyle is out of stock."

Also, Santa's elves, reindeer, and wife are all on strike for a living wage and better working conditions.

How about a little box of freedom this holiday season? 

Nope, sorry. 

Also out of stock.

It is shaping up to be our first ever global Buy Nothing Christmas. 

It probably won't be our last, so we are going to have to figure out how to do it without excessive shopping being the focus.

A good time to give the simple and free gifts of love, compassion, and forgiveness. 

They are all still well stocked, but so far are not flying off the shelves.

2022 is shaping up to be very naughty indeed when we find out that we are out of everything. 

Including patience.

The Crack Cocaine of Consumerism

Most addictive drugs flood the brain with dopamine. Shopping does the same thing, but online shopping does it more, making it more addictive.

Online shopping can stimulate as much or more dopamine production in our brains as in-store shopping. If shopping at the store is heroin, online shopping is heroin laced with fentanyl. 

In some cases digital consumerism can cause twice as much neurotransmitter as shopping bricks and mortar, making it twice as dangerous.

Researchers are finding that attaining a reward is not the main thing that boosts the brain chemical that regulates our impulse to seek out pleasure. 

Anticipation of reward also releases a rush of feel good chemical.

Ordering and waiting for a package builds anticipation. Anticipation causes dopamine release. Dopamine makes us feel good.

But it is not all good. 

A dopamine rush can negatively affect our ability to control our impulses. This can be dangerous while spending money. 

The report entitled "Digital Dopamine," presented results from interviews and surveys of 1,680 shoppers from the US, UK, Brazil, and China in 2014. 
From the report: 

 

"Seventy-six percent of people in the US, 72 percent in the UK, 73 percent in Brazil, and 82 percent in China say they are more excited when their online purchases arrive in the mail than when they buy things in store.”

The bottom line is that online shopping is the crack cocaine of consumerism. That's the real reason they have been relentlessly pushing us toward it for decades.

What isn't acknowledged enough is that consumerism on steroids comes with dangerous side effects for consumers, communities, and the entire planet. 

If we don't break free of the advertising/marketing-consumerism complex we'll get stuck seeking selfish pleasures instead of helping others and developing our own creative gifts and moral character. 

Only you can set yourself free.

Once you know more, 

you'll say, 

"No more!"

We Are Born Free, But Everywhere Are Found In Shopping Malls

One thing every single human shares is that when we are born all we desire is to live a free and unrestricted life. For some, that desire is a life-long pursuit, but for a large number of unfortunate souls, the yearning to be free is extinguished and replaced with a zombie-like need to shop.

Consumers must be trained, for they are surely not born. Our greed-based system takes tiny, naked blank slates birthed into an Earthly paradise, puts them through a mental meat grinder, then abandons them in the middle of a shopping mall of things we must be forced to want.

We are schooled, trained, propagandaed, drilled, and cajoled until the nugget of that desire for freedom and the natural world remains only as a vestigial shrivelled memory, and is replaced with the desire to shop till we drop.

This is not for our benefit. Consumerism is not good for anything, except the profits of the uber greedy wealthy elite. They have to keep us shopping... forever, or their reign will end.

"Never count the consumer out", they say, "for they will always find ways to spend more, even if they have to go further into debt." 

They know that shoppers have been trained so well that they will spend their whole pay check every month, then borrow and spend more. 

If they get a tax refund, they will go to the bank and save it. Jokes. You know what they will do - that's right - go shopping. 

Get a credit card? Max it out. Inheritance, government stimulus check, cash gift from granny? Straight to the shopping mall in a futile attempt at buying happiness. We must learn that if some crap is bad, then more crap isn't any better.

Shopping as the reason for living is a reflex that we have learned since we were young and wild and free. By early childhood, our role as consumers already feels natural, but it isn't. It is the end of all things natural.

The gift the pandemic has given the world is the pause from shopping and spending money. May this be the beginning of the end of this destructive force that does nothing but put us in chains. 

Now is the time to shake off the chains, escape the mall, and unlearn our consumer brainwashing. Surely by now we know deep down in that zombie shopper heart, that there is more to life than a never ending quest for more everything. 

We are born free, but everywhere are found in shopping malls carrying around the baggage of our nature deficit disorder, to name only one negative effect of making buying stuff our number one concern.

Marketing, the propaganda branch of consumerism, spends over 1 trillion dollars a year to make sure that at least some of us will protest in the streets shouting for a return to the shopping malls where we can worship and tithe our billionaire masters. 

That is known as Stockholm syndrome - coming to love those who have turned existence into a cheap, hollow and restricted version of what life can be when lived wild in our natural state. 

Now is the time to choose freedom. Real, wild freedom, not just the freedom to have a "job" so we can shop till we drop.

That freedom can be found anywhere, in any setting, when one adopts simple living as an alternative to spending the rest of your life caught in the work/spend/borrow trap. 

What does your ideal free, unrestricted simple life look like? If it can be imagined, it can be realized. Make simple your goal, work steadfastly toward it, and you can not help but achieve it.

We Shopped And Travelled When It Was Easy - Will We When It's Hard?

Recreational shopping has been a pastime for decades. Similarly, leisure, or non-essential, travel has also been popular. That just changed. We will not be going back to the way it was before the year 2020.

Shopping and traveling were fun and entertaining for many in pre-pandemic times. When it was easy. We will not have the same zeal for spending when it is hard. 

If shoppers have to wear masks, get their temperature checked at the door, sanitize their hands, and social distance once they get in to the business, consumption won't be what it was in the spend freely days of pre-pandemic times. 

And if they continue to get infected, in-person shopping will remain a shadow of the peak consumerism days of the recent past, and likely will never come back in the same way.

Evidence for this is the largest increase in the American savings rate ever, that happened recently. When spending money becomes less attractive, savings rates increase. 

What is good for your bank account, though, is bad for the overflowing vaults of the 1%ers.

This is the capitalist nightmare - people deciding to do other more enjoyable things instead of spending their meagre funds to buy goods and services they don't need. But that is what is happening. 

All over the world humans are waking up every day and finding healthier, less expensive, and more meaningful, ways to occupy their time. Things that aren't shopping or traveling. Or traveling to go shopping.

This could be the end of many familiar things and arrangements. Will it be the end of consumerism, and would that take down capitalism, too? That would be welcome, because either we take it down, or it will take us down. That decision will be ours to make.

We have the power, that much is perfectly clear. If we won't work for them, and won't shop for their junk, what can they do? They need us more than we need them and their wasteful ways.

Our predatory psychopathic-lead system is getting morphed into who knows exactly what as the people rediscover their power to make change. Some of those changes are that we will become savers rather than spenders, and will choose the familiar home range over frivolous foreign sojourns. 

After more than a decade of watching consumer behaviour closely, I am getting the feeling that many newly re-minted community participants are tiring of spending money on non-essential things, and going in debt to do so. 

We are moving on to more important, more beautiful, more balanced concerns, and say to our former rulers and their soulless system, "Thank you for your service - we will take it from here".

Nothing Has Changed Except Everything

It is tempting to think that not much has changed for Linda and I over the last few weeks, because from the comfort of our own home, that is how it feels. 

While mostly true, it does not tell the whole story.

Pre-corona Linda and I were already adjusting to a big change in the way we live, having chosen to give up our wheelchair accessible van and try carlessness. 

Since we have been living very locally for a very long time, we were only using our vehicle to buy groceries, and it was getting to be a very expensive grocery-getter. We had to let it go, and have no plans to replace it with another fume spewing money pit.

As soon as we let it be known that we were wheel-less, the helpers came forward, as they always do. We are so grateful to live in an area where community still means something.

Even before the lockdown started, I was hitching a ride a couple of times a month with neighbours when they were going to town (they usually go in every day or two, so there is plenty of opportunity). 

They would always ask where I needed to go, and my answer was always the same - "just the grocery store". 

Most of the time, food is all we need. We are simple that way.

Now, because Linda is considered "immunocompromised", as her caregiver I have to be extra cautious about exposing myself to The Virus. As such, I have not been to the grocery store in person for over a month.

Other helpers (you can't have too many) had already offered to pick up grocery orders for us if we ever ordered on line. At the time we didn't think we would need to go that way, but, everything, it seems, is changing. 

Our last grocery order was placed on line (our first time ever) for pick up. They needed about 3 days notice, and called us when it was ready. 

We called our neighbours, they went down to the store, parked in the designated spot, and called customer service. Helpful front line worker/heroes then brought our order outside, and put it in the open trunk of the car. 

Our friends parked in front of our place when they got home, and left the trunk open. I went out, emptied our order into our home, then texted them to let them know I was done.

Wow. That felt weird. 

But it did get groceries into the house without me being exposed to something that could possibly harm my best friend, and for that I am grateful.

I leaned on the car and felt a hankering for the good old days (a few days ago it seems) when I could see my neighbours. Or bike to the grocery store to bring home small orders. Or touch the bank door handle without thinking it could kill me, or Linda.

I don't need to get out much, but I like to enjoy the times that I do.

As I closed the trunk of the car the neighbour's 5 year old son came out of his house and approached. 

He was getting closer to me. I didn't know what to do. 

Do I need to protect both of us? 

Should I run? 

I didn't. 

He came to within a metre of me and stopped. Looking up with sad inside eyes, he said, "I can't wait until I can help you water your garden this summer".

Now a garden is a food acquisition method I can get behind. And no, I did not hug that sweet little helper. I had to hold myself back... 2 metres back. 

"I can't wait either", I said to him from a seemingly safe distance. Then it was back into lockdown for both of us.

See you in the summer garden, my little helper friend.

That won't change. 

On another note, something else that has changed, is that lots of people are dying of COVID-related illness. That includes one of my favourite singer/songwriters, John Prine. 

To him I say, "It was a wonderful 50 years of beautiful memorable songs, and I thank you."

"Plant a little garden", he sang.

Great advice.

The Real Price Gougers

When corporate bigwigs raise the prices of things for no reason other than greed, they are doing their jobs. That is the system we live in, and no one says much about it since it increases the GDP, and makes billionaires like clouds make raindrops.

A common business adage is that a good capitalist will charge as much for a product as the consumer will bear. 

However, when one of the little people feels like being enterprising and taking advantage of the "freedom of the marketplace" and "supply and demand economics", all hell breaks loose.

$400.00 dollar hand sanitizer is likely to get a small business person scathing judgements and death threats, even though customers may still be buying at that price. 

Price gouging is considered unethical, and for good reasons. But only when the little people do it.

Drug companies are only one area notorious for unethical practices. Reading the following list it is obvious that price gouging is taking place, and people are paying with their lives.

• The cost of Bavencio, a new cancer drug approved in March, is about $156,000 a year per patient.

• A new muscular dystrophy drug came on the market late last year for an eye-popping price of $300,000 annually.

• In 2016, the FDA appproved Tecentriq, a new bladder cancer treatment that costs $12,500 a month, or $150,000 a year. 

• Even older drugs that have long been on the market are not immune: The cost of insulin tripled between 2002 and 2013, despite no notable changes in the formulation or manufacturing process. 

• The four-decade-old EpiPen, a lifesaving allergy medication, has seen a price hike of 500 percent since 2007.                               - AARP Bulletin 

If Handwash Guy can't get away with earning a few thousand reselling his product, how does Big Drug get away with it?

“The simple answer is because there’s nothing stopping them,” said Leigh Purvis, a health services researcher.

So what other price gouging is taking place, since in the land of extreme capitalism there is nothing, legislation or morals, to stop them? 

Gas? Housing? Food? Internet access? Health care? 

Everything?

And isn't capitalism itself about to price gouge all of us to the tune of several trillion dollars over the next few days?

It is obvious who the real price gougers are. 

Get ready to be gouged again.

The 10 Commandments of Consumerism

These are the unspoken, unwritten, yet clearly understood, 10 Commandments of Consumerism:



1. Thou shalt never rent things, or buy previously used/desecrated goods. 

2. Thou shalt never fix or repair anything.

3. Thou shalt increase thy pace of shopping indefinitely, until death.

4. Thou shalt never consider the social, ethical, and environmental responsibilities of the actors in the system.

5. Thou shalt covet the Jones's stuff, and try to out-buy them.

6. Thou shalt shop endlessly even when thee doth not need a thing.

7. Thou shalt never be content with just enough as long as too much is available.

8. Thou shalt deny any and all negative effects of basing life on rank materialism.

9. Thou shalt work as much as possible to make as much money as possible, then spend it all as fast as possible. Thou deservith it.

10. Thou shalt borrow as much money as credit limits allow, at any interest rate, to buy more stuff and keep up the appearance of success. 



What about the 10 Commandments of Simple Living? They don't exist, because unlike the conformity of consumerism, approaches to simplicity are as beautiful and varied as the people who take it up as a guiding principle in their lives.

Besides, I can only think of one Commandment of Simplicity. 

That would be:

1. Never use more of anything when less would suffice.




Warning: The 10 Commandments of Consumerism are largely unaffected by the particular brand of buying. 

Green Consumerism, New Consumerism, Conscious Consumerism and other lame lies like these are all variations on a broken, irredeemable theme.

Extinction Events

Will the plastic straw go extinct in 2020?

It's more than plastic straws. All kinds of things made a disappearing act in 2019. This trend is likely to continue at a rapid rate in 2020 as the battles of capitalism vs environmental limits, and the 99% vs the 1%, rages on.

A few things that have gone the way of the Dodo, or continue to go that way, or have begun to go that way in 2019 include:



- Plastic straws. It is largely symbolic, but will give a boost to the end of not only single use plastic, but single use anything. The beginning of the end of the throw away society.

- Single use plastic bags. See above. Many cities are banning single use plastic bags. Next to disappear will be all the blighted garbage bag trees. After a few decades, trees will just have leaves on them.

- Jobs in extractive industries. Automation, efficiencies, and reduced demand will ensure that these jobs continue to go 'poof'. Change can be harsh when it is your job that is vanishing in the haze.

- Physical retail outlets. On line shopping is taking over (overall spending was up 3.4 %, while online spending was up 19% this shopping season). Consumers are voting with their computers and devices. It is the "Retail Apocalypse", and it is changing the landscape of shopping and communities.

- Meat based diets. Even meat eaters are eating less meat. Health, ethical, and environmental issues are all contributing to the rise of plant based diets. Remember "Revenge of the Nerds"? This is "Revenge of the Vegans".

- Car ownership. Globally car sales are down. Millennials and Get Zers prefer car sharing services to the hassle of ownership, and what these two generations want will change things for decades to come. 

- Truth. First the thrill was gone. Now the truth is gone, too. They say we are living in a post-truth world. Doesn't that mean we are post-lie as well? 

- Bunker fuel in ships, fossil fuels generally. The new year promises a cleaner atmosphere. As of January 1st, oceangoing vessels will no longer be able to use the cheapest, dirtiest fuel available. The switch to low-sulphur fuels (0.5% instead of 3.5%) will be the biggest maritime transportation energy shift since moving from dirty coal to dirty bunker fuel in the early 1900s.

- Anywhere from 10,000 to 100,000 species go extinct every year. The loss is so vast that it is hard to keep track. It happened this year, and it will happen again in 2020.

- Vinyl. Just kidding. Far from disappearing, as the nerds predicted when recordings went digital, low tech vinyl recordings are making a comeback. People in the know say the quality of vinyl can not be beat. 


I wonder what other ideas will make a comeback next year? We have tossed many good ones down the memory hole in our rush toward a techno utopia, and no doubt some of them will return. 

I also wonder what else will disappear as things continue to change in new and unexpected ways. 

My hope is for war and violence to vanish from the face of the Earth. And lying. Imagine how that would change things, since they seem to go together.

Consumerism From The Point of View of Artist Tony Futura

"We have the entire world at our fingertips and have no idea what to do with it."

Tony Futura is a German multimedia digital artist based in Berlin. He creates art that pushes the viewer to see materialism and the pop-culture obsession of modern Western life differently.

I can't get enough of that kind of thing, so will let Futura, and his art, do the talking.

"My work has a strong focus on visual ideas that combine objects and play with known images to create a new perspective on things we know from pop-culture, art, consumerism and everyday life."

"I like to work with points of view on things, so i am quite interested in what people think about certain images or other people like celebrities for example."

"I would rather spent money on high quality clothes then buying new stuff every couple of weeks."

"I always have the feeling that i need more time to enjoy life and work more on my personal projects."

"The search for new ways to see things is quite fun and there is not a single day where I can't stop thinking about what I can do next."

Black Friday - The Great Shopocalypse

Warning. Do not venture into the marketplace. Lock your doors. Stay inside. Freeze your credit card in a container of water in the deep freeze. Check your infinite desires at the door. The biggest shopocalypse of the year is upon us.

Yes, tomorrow is that consumiest of consumer days, Black Friday. Shopping zombies will be everywhere, tearing each other limb from limb to grab the latest consumer item from the grasping hands of competing "shombies".

Good thing they are dead inside already, as such a scene is surely fatal to one's soul.

Today, however, is a nicer day in America. Thanksgiving is a holiday that is not political, nor is it religious. You don't have to buy anything, except good food to share. It is a day of being grateful for what we already have.

So happy day of thanks to all our wonderful American readers.

That isn't tomorrow's story. What a difference 24 hours can make.

Stay tuned for the alternative - Buy Nothing Day.