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Imagine yourself living in the following world:
You live in a safe pleasant and unpolluted community where you actually know your neighbors and interact with them, be it a small town, a suburb or a city neighborhood. You can easily walk, bicycle or take effective mass transit to your nearby job, giving you time to think or read as you get there.
The work that you do improves our future, benefits your community and means something to you and those with whom you interact. You look forward to Monday. The longer that you are employed the more you learn and the more valuable you become to your employer with an increasing level of pay.
Your work schedule leaves you sufficient time to enjoy your friends, family and outside interests. Money isn't a controlling influence in your life because your needs are easily met. Your possessions are few, yet of high quality, thus allowing your home to be smaller and less expensive to own or rent.
You're connected to your surroundings, rather than just dwelling in them, your backyard, for example, provides most of the produce you might need plus a surplus that you can trade with neighbors. You have a stake in your community and participate in local decision making at the Town Council, P.T.A. and other grass roots organizations.. You buy what is necessary in nearby establishments whose owners are known to you and live in your community. If you have children, they walk to a nearby well-funded neighborhood school in safety and then learn authentic social skills as they interact with a community of honorably employed adults outside of school.
Occasionally you need to travel to a large store on the edge of town. You do this on a free shuttle bus or perhaps in a simple, older vehicle, the use and costs of which you might share with others or a car that you rent only when you need it, thus preserving for yourself the weeks or months that it takes to earn the thousands of after-tax Dollars that owning a new car would take away from you each year. Your interests, the things that you really like to do with your mind and your hands, all the possibilities of your life, are there to be explored because you have the time.
"But this is America, you say, all this is possible."
Not anymore it's not.
There are growing forces making this way of life almost impossible to attain or maintain, even for the wealthy. If you are among the lucky few who still have the kind of life outlined above, these same forces threaten you. Whether you live in an isolated small town or a big city and prefer your anonymity as well as the multiplicity of things available to you, these same forces will erode your security and ability to make choices for yourself.
Do you think what's outlined above can only occur in some mythic long-past small town? Before the hegemony of consumerism and bottom-line economics, you could do all of these things anywhere, including our cities. There is no reason that we cannot live like this again if sufficient people work to identify and disempower the forces that promote and profit from limiting our social and economic horizons.
These forces are manifested as consumerism: At first a growing number of pleasant conveniences for housewives in the 1950s, then a car for everyone with the gradual erosion of transit, then the ubiquitousness of things and chemical products technologically unimaginable a few decades earlier, then growing availability of consumer credit and debt, the over-dependence on labor-saving devices, total dependence on the car and absolute necessity of full time work, the two income household to pay for more and more, then the importation of cheaper and cheaper goods and the disappearance of manufacturing jobs and now the decline of service work with professionals next to be downsized.. The ongoing disenfranchisement of people from our own community, replaced by commercial transactions with distant strangers..where will it end? When America looks like some faded Third World fragment of the old British Empire? An overpopulated wasteland of pollution, eroded landscapes and hungry people digging into landfills for salvageables?
We shouldn't allow this or anything like this happen. Things may be starting to turn around in our favor. But it takes work and time and attention to details and a willingness to try new things for our own and our children's benefit. There are serious changes ahead. We can control some of these for our benefit or we can just react to them after they have happened.
Simply stated, there's a lot of money being made and a lot of power being gathered by the people that promote consumerism. You pay for it in gradually limited economic mobility, pollution, threats to your health and a declining standard of living, as measured by the things that really matter.
How consumerism affects society, the economy and the Environment.
Consumerism is economically manifested in the chronic purchasing of new goods and services, with little attention to their true need, durability, product origin or the environmental consequences of manufacture and disposal. Consumerism is driven by huge sums spent on advertising designed to create both a desire to follow trends, and the resultant personal self-reward system based on acquisition. Materialism is one of the end results of consumerism.
Consumerism interferes with the workings of society by replacing the normal common-sense desire for an adequate supply of life's necessities, community life, a stable family and healthy relationships with an artificial ongoing and insatiable quest for things and the money to buy them with little regard for the true utility of what is bought. An intended consequence of this, promoted by those who profit from consumerism, is to accelerate the discarding of the old, either because of lack of durability or a change in fashion.
Landfills fill with cheap discarded products that fail early and cannot be repaired. Products are made psychologically obsolete long before they actually wear out. A generation is growing up without knowing what quality goods are. Friendship, family ties and personal autonomy are only promoted as a vehicle for gift giving and the rationale for the selection of communication services and personal acquisition. Everything becomes mediated through the spending of money on goods and services.
It is an often stated catechism that the economy would improve if people just bought more things, bought more cars and spent more money. Financial resources better spent on Social Capital such as education, nutrition, housing etc. are spent on products of dubious value and little social return. In addition, the purchaser is robbed by the high price of new things, the cost of the credit to buy them, and the less obvious expenses such as, in the case of automobiles, increased registration, insurance, repair and maintenance costs.
Many consumers run out of room in their homes to store the things that they buy. A rapidly growing industry in America is that of self-storage. Thousands of acres of land good farm land are paved over every year to build these cities of orphaned and unwanted things so as to give people more room to house the new things that they are persuaded to buy. If these stored products were so essential in the first place, why do they need to be warehoused? An overabundance of things lessens the value of what people possess.
"You work in a job you hate, to buy stuff that you don't need, to impress people that you don't like."
- Unknown
Malls have replaced parks, churches and community gatherings for many who no longer even take the trouble to meet their neighbors or care to know their names. People move frequently as though neighborhoods and cities were products to be tried out like brands of deodorant.
Consumerism sets each person against them self in an endless quest for the attainment of material things or the imaginary world conjured up and made possible by things yet to be purchased. Weight training, diet centers, breast reduction, breast enhancement, cosmetic surgery, permanent eye make-up, liposuction, collagen injections, these are are some examples of people turning themselves into human consumer goods more suited for the "marketplace" than living in a healthy balanced society.
It is impossible to win a war against yourself or your uncontrolled desires. A good example of this is the simplistic materialist psychosis of the bumper sticker:
"He who dies with the most toys wins"
Is psychosis too strong a word to use here? Appreciate the following line of reasoning:
This is the artificial internal drive that the advertisers tap into. You "imagine it" because they bombard your consciousness with its image until you then move to step two, "I want it...etc. " This is one of the things that allows people to surrender to consumerism. As a society we have gone from self-sufficiency based on our internal common sense of reasonable limits to the ridiculous goal of Keeping up with the Jones then to stampeding for the Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, or at least as far as our credit limit allows us to go.
The New Road Map Foundation illustrates with cogent statistics the dichotomy between things, happiness and the health of the environment.
Happiness can't be purchased in the marketplace, no matter how much advertising tries to convince you of it. Market driven forces have ursurped the role once assumed by family, home and community. We have been programmed to believe that we should pursue more money to spend on more things offered in the marketplace, to be living mannequins for the material adornments of the hour, our worth determined by what we have or don't have, rather than what we are, what we do or what we know.
Consumerism, already having captured death as a consumer obligation whereby sadness and regret are quenched by spending lots of money, now turns major life events like weddings and births into consumer events with their own hierarchy of demands for the things which assume a life of their own. For example, the bride's dress and accessories assumes far more significance in the telling than the bride's state of mind. Baby shower gifts take precedence over helping with the baby.
Recreation has become commercialized. Special leisure clothing, sporting equipment and attendance at expensive sporting events rife with advertising and corporate sponsorship are the manifestation of consumerism in recreation. Oakland, California, a community with high levels of unemployment and poverty has banks that are now creating special loan categories so that people can get personal lines of credit to buy season tickets to the taxpayer-financed stadium.
"Sports is another crucial example of the indoctrination system . . . It offers people something to pay attention to that is of no importance . . . It keeps them from worrying about things that matter to their lives that they might have an idea of something about . . . People have the most exotic information and understanding about all sorts of arcane issues . . . It's a way of building up irrational attitudes of submission to authority, and group cohesion behind leadership elements, in fact its training in irrational jingoism . . . That's why energy is devoted to supporting them . . . and advertisers are willing to pay for them."
Food Additives You Should Avoid
The next time you shop for food in the supermarket, look out for … not food, but toxic Additives.
A recent CAP survey found that most supermarket foods are unnatural. They are highly processed and are made up of hydrogenated fat, bulking agents, processed starches, sugars and salt, mixed together with an array of chemical additives.
There are even “foods” that are made entirely from chemicals.
Chewing gums, for example, consist almost completely of artificial ingredients.
What really is the food we eat? The average supermarket has about 18,000- 30,000 different food products on its shelves, and most consumers have no idea what they are made of.
For decades now, the food industry has continually created new chemicals to manipulate and transform our food. Nearly 3,000 additives and preservatives are used in food today – to mimic natural flavours, colour foods to make them look more “natural” or ‘fresh’, preserve foods for longer and longer periods of time and create altered versions of breads, crackers, fruits, vegetables, meats, dairy products and many more commonly eaten foods.
Such manipulation of our food can have a profound effect on our body’s unique biochemical balance. In the short term, some of these chemicals may cause headaches; low-energy levels; or poor mental concentration, behaviour, or immune response.
Chemicals with long-term effects could increase your risk of cancer, cardiovascular disease and other degenerative conditions.
Avoiding toxins in your diet is thus an important first step toward enhancing your health and lowering your risk of disease.
Know what you are eating. But reading the label alone is no good if you don’t know what the chemicals are, and what they can do to you.
Utusan Konsumer exposes the dirty secrets of the food processing industry and examines the key additives that may undermine your health.
Preservatives are widely used in the food industry to extend the shelf life of food. With preservatives, food can last much longer without going mouldy or becoming infected with bugs and bacteria.
Unfortunately, the chemical characteristics that make preservatives effective in killing bacteria and other organisms in food can affect our health.
Sulphur dioxide and sulphites
This is a gas that is formed when sulphur burns. It also occurs naturally. It dissolves in water to form sulphurous acid. The acid forms a series of salts called sulphites and metabisulphites, which are used as food preservatives.
Sulphites prevent vegetables and fruit from going brown after they have been peeled, and keep vegetables looking fresh even when they are old and stale.
Dried fruit slices can be kept standing for hours in a sulphite solution until the sulphur dioxide has completely penetrated the slices.
Health effects
Sulphur dioxide – linked to mutations and cancer
Sulphites – severe asthma attacks, stomach problems, blurred vision, dizziness, irregular breathing, breathlessness and nervous irritability.
Nitrates
They can be found in virtually all cooked and cured meat, sausage, bacon, ham, frankfurters, hot dogs, corned beef, luncheon meat and pate. They give ham, hot dogs and bacon a pinkish colour. Without them, ham and other processed meats would be grey instead of pink.
Health Effects
Convert in the body to a highly toxic substance, nitrite, which affects the red blood cells, causing breathing difficulties, dizziness and headaches. When nitrites combine with other chemicals in the stomach, they can form chemicals called nitrosamines, one of the most potent causes of cancer scientists have ever identified.
Benzoates
Benzoic acid or its salts, the benzoates, are used to stop bacteria, fungi and yeast from growing in processed foods. They are used in fruit juices, pickles, sauces and toppings, margarine, jam, figs, coconut milk, concentrated tomato juice, preserves and carbonated drinks. They are also used as a preservative in other additives such as flavourings and colourings.
Health Effects
Provoke allergies, asthma, skin reactions, hyperactivity, gastric irritation and migraine; and affect the natural balance of bacteria in the intestines. Benzoic acid enhances the action of carcinogens in the body.
"Products are made in the factory, but brands are created in the mind."
-Walter Landor
Industrial Designer
"The most important assets are brands.
Buildings age and become dilapidated.
Machines wear out.
Cars rust.
People die.
But what lives on are the brands."
Hector Liang
Chairman, United Biscuits
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