Imagine you turn on your TV and hear a news man say: “Congratulations, fellow Americans: the era of rampant consumption has come to an end!” The comments would probably be diverse: “No way, we are getting back in the game!”, “I didn’t expect it to be today…”, “Somebody finally said it straight!” But if I were you, I’d stop watching TV altogether.
So, is the game over? Yes, it is. Why is the truth always so daunting? Why is it so difficult for us to acknowledge something that has been staring us in the face for a while now? We may be legally blind, but even they can see elephants.
The World Wildlife Fund scientists, who work with governments, businesses and communities around the world, based on their practical experience, knowledge and credibility, claim that today humans are consuming over 25% more natural resources on a global scale than the earth can support and that this rampant consumption is stretching ecological boundaries, leading to unsustainable living.
WWF-UK’s Head of Research, Stuart Bond, said humanity has been living off its “ecological credit card” and “liquidating the planet’s natural resources. While this can be done for a short while, ecological debt ultimately leads to the depletion of resources, such as forests, oceans and agricultural land, upon which our economy depends.”
The economy is in crisis and is worsening as I type. The media is making a desperate attempt to convince us that everything is under control and things are getting better. While they are carrying out their orders, we faithfully “eat” their feed and remain loyal to our so-called life styles. We browse the malls, dine in fine restaurants, pay high bucks to watch a new movie, lease luxury cars, sweat in spas and casinos, and look forward to the gilded age that they tell us is coming soon.
The “relentless search for novelty and status locks us into an iron cage of consumerism,” writes Tim Jackson, the author of Prosperity without Growth. Consumerism is a game we can’t seem to stop playing: TiVo says buy, and we happily comply! Wide-eyed, we run to the store and start a chain reaction that swallows us in the end. So we are building a heap that will eventually bury us under.
For thousands of years humanity has developed grounded on the basic necessities. The majority always has and continues to live without luxuries. Even clothes used to be passed down from generation to generation, as they still are. But just a century old feast of highly evolved “cockroaches”—the phenomenon of the modern era— has practically ruined the planet. Like it or not, we will have to put an end to it.
Kalle Lasn, the co-founder of Adbusters Media Foundation, agrees: “Our headlong plunge into ecological collapse requires a profound shift in the way we see things. Driving hybrid cars and limiting industrial emissions is great, but they are band-aid solutions if we don’t address the core problem: we have to consume less.”
Industry was previously based on the “money-commodity-money” paradigm. But today, this model has lost the commodity element: we sell and buy money. That is what our “trade” has become: we exchange paper. The two remaining valuable commodities lie in the area of basic necessity. We need shelter and sustenance, and a certainty that they won’t be taken from us today or tomorrow. But one thing we need to understand is that luxuries are being cancelled.
Modern manufacturing hardly produces anything valuable anymore while still continuing to drain natural resources. We buy and exchange meaningless things that are passing from hands to hands until they reach their ultimate destination – the omnivorous trashcan, and the wastelands are ever expanding. Except for a few staples that we all need, everything else is merely toys. Are we willing to ruin the Earth for them?
The money-printing machine never sleeps, since the owners do not wish consumption to stop. Yet, reality follows its own, specific agenda, and it could care less for what we think we want. Once it hits, it does so with absolute clarity – to get the point across. Remarkably, when we see the hammer raised over our head, we don’t try to catch it – instead, we think how to bribe it and avoid the pain. As if it is something to bargain with.
In fact, we are practicing an “ostrich strategy” – when in fear, stick your head in the sand. It won’t work this time. The problem is not going away, no matter how “ostrich” we get.
We know that most of the existing industry and all legislative and financial institutions are driven by the illusion of ultimate prosperity. These parasites sustain themselves by sucking the consumer’s income and claiming ownership to natural resources that are being rapidly drained. And we readily offer our wallets, because we have been trained to believe that wealth equals happiness and material things bring satisfaction. We are addicted to new products, services, brands – more and more stuff.
The planet is on the edge, and it’s is time to ask ourselves – what on earth are we thinking?
Tomas L. Friedman, of the New York Times, agrees: “You really do have to wonder whether a few years from now we’ll look back at the first decade of the 21st century — when food prices spiked, energy prices soared, world population surged, tornadoes plowed through cities, floods and droughts set records, populations were displaced and governments were threatened by the confluence of it all — and ask ourselves: What were we thinking? How is it that we did we not panic when the evidence was so obvious that we had crossed some growth, climate, natural resource, population redlines all at once?”
The economic-ecological crisis we are living in today is here to demonstrate that we cannot keep taking more than we actually need. We may not wish to accept this truth, but Nature is forcing us to, and we will, whether we like it or not. “What is certain is that, as a species, we have reached a point at which we no longer have a choice between being radical and being realistic; the two attributes have become one and the same.” (Victor Wallis, Economic/Ecological Crisis and Conversion)
No matter how difficult it is, it’s time to change our view of life. We are destroying vital reserves, consuming our own future. We exploit natural resources and pollute the earth with our waste to an extent that exceeds the planet’s capacity for self-restoration.
Since we are unable to change ourselves at will and growth of awareness takes time, we will most likely be reformed by the crisis – quickly and radically. Over the course of the next few decades, we will have completely reformed economy, power and transportation industries. The vital difference in how we are going to accomplish it lies in whether we’ll do it by conscious choice or forced into consciousness by Nature.
To avoid the latter, we should use all our mental power to make an effort to realize that the “happiness” paradigm aimed at consumption is corrupted and will never fulfill our desires, and that it is time to move on to the paradigm aimed at true happiness, where people will spend less time working and striving for accumulation of things and instead, use that time for something really meaningful—the fulfillment of their inner capacities.
We are facing a choice that the crisis dictates: we will either end in a total collapse or create a new, stable model of economy. And we will definitely choose the second, for we may be slow starters, but we are not idiots.