Teach Children to Consume

Lee, did you know that about 70% of jobs in the world are not needed. Most are in the industry of producing futilities, service's based, etc. The number are even bigger if we talk about basic necessities.
So, if we keep only the needed jobs for our Real needs, not the ones that are imposed at us, and share them, we would all have a lot more time for ourselves and our families, and we still have all we need!
It's on the day to day life that choises are placed appon us... to suppor an old decaing society that has produced a lot of sad faces or to create a new one, based on conscience.

I was just saying yesterday that lowering our consumption to reasonable levels has to be come a religious tenant before we will truly change directions in the world. Like another of the Commandments. Then applied to the whole world round. If it did, then we would give it the fervor that we give other beliefs and tenents. I even went so far as to note that maybe that is what is emerging right now... a new religion, one which believes in less consumption and more quality life in balance with mother earth. Thanks for posting this necessary topic.

Being in Freedom

Isn't that what our culture has been reduced to since we managed to remove all spiritual reverence and connection for/with being alive? What an incredible post! A few weeks ago Chris and I decided to get rid of 90% of my four year olds' toys to address her increasing materialism. The only toys we let her keep were a few stuffed animals with sentimental value, toys that promoted creativity and artistic exploration and toys that promoted athleticism. I have to admit that it was a particularly hard day for me, though I knew it was necessary. What I hadn't considered beyond dealing with the materialistic values all these toys were promoting was 1) the amount of chemicals and pollution involved with the creation and existence of these toys, and 2) the consumer-programming these toys promoted that you mentioned above.

Thanks for this post, what an eye-opener. Its true, so much of our 'ability' to generate income and therefore meet our basic needs based on the current structure are so incredibly useless and destructive. On the flip, however, sometimes we/I feel and are so stuck it seems. For instance, Chris and I found an apartment in downtown Sacramento that has enough of a backyard for us to grow a substantial food and herb garden. We moved in, constructed planters, and had to stop the project because we couldn't afford to buy soil. We also don't know enough about what actually grows indigenously here to just start growing food in the ground. Amazingly, there is very little info on the web about native foods and herbs here. BUt I gotta say, I'd rather make a trip out to one of the local farms and pick a farmer's brain for a bit than not do it, especially after reading this post. Perhaps it might mean more time spent outside rather than at work, but it would also mean less money spent on packaged, planet-wrecking foods too!

Man am I glad we asked our family to stop buying this kid so many toys and donated the ones she had. Awesome post. Just awesome. Thanks again!

Namaste,
Ginnie Jester

It is certainly refreshing to hear someone be honest about the discomforting nature of the modern workplace, and that there are so few visible escapes from it. It feels rotten to have to maintain something you cannot console yourself to.

A few of my thoughts on this subject, the causes and the consequences;

'Many of the products and pointless objects that litter our lives exist because of the inevitable acquisitiveness and hierarchical nature of the prime-ape Homo Sapiens Sapiens, for we use such objects as indicators that define our place and position in the social matrix, that we are so frustratingly indentured to. We are rewarded for our passive collective observances and acquiescences with shiny baubles and fancy candies. Compare a Papua New-Guinean cargo-cultist wearing a piece of a torn Cornflake box in his head-dress to a bland branded fool walking down your typical high-street. I make a gross point there, but one that needs reinforcing occasionally.

Similarly I feel the need to speak of the notion of negative value. Many of the objects beholden of this temporal, abstract value system have been made (or their substrates sourced) by peoples of limited means and of typically brutal circumstance. It is seldom acknowledged that this is the case, or more likely comfortably ignored and forgotten, even though the situation has been often and capably articulated by thems that are keen to look, or rather unkeen to look away. The concept of worth in these circumstances, exists at a strange crossroads, for example; a well respected designer might find their obscenely expensive, perhaps even beautiful, product, being made my sweatshop children (the literal value being horrendously detached from the market value as defined by this globalist opportunism). This random example is limited but can be considered to embody what I consider to be the debasement of worth and the distortion of value.

We live in a time that cults growth (and cargo), and simultaneously glorifies ignorance, in that we are effectively discouraged to learn. In this culture, marketeers and advertisers have had to find ways to negate an existing product or service, or either meta-attach some startling novel feature, to pimp the value of the Nu. Our jaded palates constantly need to be effected into a renewed salivation. The converse of this continual reinvention and repackaging of the already extant, is that if you don’t keep up, in the product owning and replacement race, you get left behind for cultural death. Mass-manufacturing economies rely on the existence of a permanently docile and labile consumer and depend on the relative disposability of their products and of their consumer’s insouciance to the concept of that waste.'

extract from http://www.evolver.net/user/moontrap/blog/elusive_quality

'These emergent problems, he mused, were a result of the deeper self-satisfactory pathologies and status issues that lurk in all humanity, yet also reflected a growing reaction to the constant and expectant promise of growth, and reiteration of the Nu. The next fantastic gum flavour, cleansing-wrinkle-stuffing-miracle-cream, or infinitely-animated-portable-monolith were ceasing to hold their desired effect. The insidious, interminable whisperings that come through the media from the corporatocracy, were no longer quite able to slay the anxiousness and frustration of a unrecognised unfulfilment, even though these same engines were feeding on such weaknesses. Product aquisitionalism had been found wanting, and no expensive watch or imaginative pizza topping was going to salve that. The engine of product creation had reached an apotheosis, tripping over it self, with availability of the Nu in opposition to the ever-increasing expectation for it; Non-art chewing on its own bloated tail like a lip-sticked Ouroboros '

extract from http://www.evolver.net/user/moontrap/blog/ballardolution

'We can trace this recklessness back into the past, to when the world was vast, environmental consequences were slight and fevered dieties reigned over matter anyway. With the advent of agriculture came domesticity, and ironically that which had bound man to the land was also to drive a wedge between them. Cities separated people from the soil, both physically and psychologically, even though these cities relied on agriculture to sustain them. A limen of perception manifested in the urban dwellers, nature became increasingly exteriorised and distant, this division catalysed by anthropocentric religions and philosophies. More and more the veil became opaque, the plasticised limen thickened; light pollution blotted out stars, shrinking context; food appeared by magick in plastic packets, convenient wrappings which also conveniently disconnected us from its origin; ugly sanitised social planning forced us into lawned toy realms and gated yards, or worse still concretised monoliths devoid of any kind of sympathy to environment or empathy to the needs of the spirit. Reality increasingly became a life vicarious, lived through screens and devices, the biosphere now an abstract, its direct 'experience' becoming another novel product, or a desirous holiday destination. Meanwhile, all of the cities' waste was carried away by new, uncomplaining, technological minions.'

extract from http://www.evolver.net/user/moontrap/blog/flush_it_all_away

http://www.decontaminated-continuum.blogspot.com/