Enough

As many of you know--well, ok, all of you, plus a few hundred others besides--I am not down with the popularity contests. And you're sick of hearing about it, so I'll zip my mouth shut.

But I was really pleased to get this little token:

from Jen over at One plus Two, for my Big Theory of Everything.

Because social justice issues are so important to me, and being recognized for that makes me happy. And because they're bending over backwards to make sure this has nothing to do with popularity.

It also makes me happy to send one over to Andrea at the Fishbowl for her Unshopping post.

Not even for only the reasons she stated (environmental destruction, waste disposal, waste of resources). But also because it provides a mechanism for examining our thought processes about needs, wants, and what constitutes enough. This is more important than it sounds. For as long as the wealthiest twenty per cent continue to believe that they need or deserve to consume eighty per cent of the world's resources, or that cutting back to sixty per cent is as much as they can manage without destroying their chances at earthly happiness and/or reverting to a brutish neolithic existence, nothing will change. Not the small things, not the big things--in order for the economic and social systems that keep us locked in this cycle to shift, our political and business leaders need to have a solid base of public support for those changes. As long as we spend money on 50%-off two-year-old perfume boxed sets for a hypothetical gift for next Christmas, or buy pyjamas for someone who never wears pyjamas just because we have to give them something, or continue to act as if we believe that love for a child should be primarily expressed in marketplace transactions, we are not demonstrating a strong base of public support for those difficult choices.

It has nothing to do with these small, individual choices, in and of themselves, being sufficient to save the world. It has to do with realizing that we're not living within our means financially, socially or environmentally. It has to do with seeing that we truly can't afford this. It has to do with using our daily actions and typical behaviours to examine our beliefs and priorities.

An excellent place to start is to see how vastly outnumbered our necessary purchases are by our unnecessary ones. Yes, it's too late for you to jump on this particular bandwagon. So why not take February instead, and spend a month asking yourself what you need? Defined as "what keeps you alive," because our loopy culture has somehow defined "something to fill the empty spot on the fireplace" or "new drapes to match the new carpet" as needs.

You don't even have to worry, yet, about what you're going to do about the things you buy that you don't need. Just take a month to notice how you talk to yourself about the things you buy or want.

~~~~~

I wrote in my other post that I would come up with a list of things I routinely buy that make me feel like shit. Here it is:

1. Consumer magazines. (I pay people money to tell me that I'm inadequate but, with the correct purchases, I can buy my way to acceptability. I never enjoy reading them and as soon as they're done they go in the blue box--a waste of paper, a waste of ink, a waste of my time.) These include fashion, women's, craft, fitness and food titles. I'm not going to buy them. When I look at them and feel myself being seduced by the pretty pictures and glossy paper and the lack of reading materials in my house, I'll remind myself how crappy they always make me feel and buy a book instead. Or a non-consumer magazine. (Speaking of which, I found Good the other day. Good is good. A positive magazine about serious social justice issues that focuses on solutions and problem-solvers and, for charter subscriptions, will donate the entire subscription cost to one of a number of American nonprofits working on those issues.)

2. Junk food. (Processed corn derivatives fried in trans fats that make me feel ill and do bad things to my blood sugar.) I already restrict myself to one purchase a month, but let's see if I can give up my February trans-fats fix and make it to March without any.

3. Regular chocolate. (Dependent on child slave labour and produced by unethical companies; also does bad things to my blood sugar. And there are alternatives which might be pricier, but I can afford them.) I'm going to see if I can halve my non-fair-trade chocolate purchases, to $4 a week from $8 in the next month.

4. DIET COKE. Damn me.

5. Scrapbooking and craft supplies when they are for no project in particular. (It doesn't bother me when I use them, especially as most of it ends up being gifts; but when I don't, it's another waste of resources and fuels that ends up collecting dust in my oversized house.) This one is simple: I will only go to the craft store or the scrapbook store if there is a particular project I am working on and I am missing a particular supply. Otherwise, it is off-limits.

And to discourage let's-piss-our-money-away spending in general, I'll aim to put an extra $200 in my savings account between now and the end of February.

My hope is that if I can do this in February and it's not too hard, I'll just keep doing it. Then, instead of a one-month fast with a binge at the end, I've done something more permanent.

Posted by Andrea at January 10, 2007 6:54 AM under The Green Family

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