A new book by Andrew Szasz that looks at 'conscious consumerism'. From Amazon:
Many Americans today rightly fear that they are constantly exposed to dangerous toxins in their immediate environment: tap water is contaminated with chemicals; foods contain pesticide residues, hormones, and antibiotics; even the air we breathe, outside and indoors, carries invisible poisons. Yet we have responded not by pushing for governmental regulation, but instead by shopping. What accounts for this swift and dramatic response? And what are its unintended consequences?
Andrew Szasz examines this phenomenon in Shopping Our Way to Safety. Within a couple of decades, he reveals, bottled water and water filters, organic food, “green” household cleaners and personal hygiene products, and “natural” bedding and clothing have gone from being marginal, niche commodities to becoming mass consumer items. Szasz sees these fatalistic, individual responses to collective environmental threats as an inverted form of quarantine, aiming to shut the healthy individual in and the threatening world out.
Sharply critiquing these products’ effectiveness as well as the unforeseen political consequences of relying on them to keep us safe from harm, Szasz argues that when consumers believe that they are indeed buying a defense from environmental hazards, they feel less urgency to actually do something to fix them. To achieve real protection, real security, he concludes, we must give up the illusion of individual solutions and together seek substantive reform.
I have been thinking along the same lines for awhile, as well. Filling our overly consumerist troughs with 'eco-friendly' products will ultimately not amount to much (except for more stuff). It seems to me like a methadone treatment for a heroin addiction. It can be useful, but it's not a viable long-term solution. I still think that we are utilizing a collective, unspoken strategy of 'solving the problem at the level of intelligence that the problem was created' and really need to look to innovators, artists, philosophers, entrepreneurs who are able to effectively dissect our addiction to 'stuff' and show it to us in a way that can help us understand how deeply embedded we are to consumerist culture. In terms of tangible and viable solutions, I feel that this is where the younger generation is crucial in aiding to the development of a more sophisticated way of being that recognizes the depth of the ecological problems we face and commits to creating an infrastructure that supports human development during this very tenuous phase of the evolution of our species. Teens and twenty's have less exposure and habit in the consumerist trenches and frankly more to lose long term especially when it comes to the 'quality of life' category.
Andrew Szasz examines this phenomenon in Shopping Our Way to Safety. Within a couple of decades, he reveals, bottled water and water filters, organic food, “green” household cleaners and personal hygiene products, and “natural” bedding and clothing have gone from being marginal, niche commodities to becoming mass consumer items. Szasz sees these fatalistic, individual responses to collective environmental threats as an inverted form of quarantine, aiming to shut the healthy individual in and the threatening world out.
Sharply critiquing these products’ effectiveness as well as the unforeseen political consequences of relying on them to keep us safe from harm, Szasz argues that when consumers believe that they are indeed buying a defense from environmental hazards, they feel less urgency to actually do something to fix them. To achieve real protection, real security, he concludes, we must give up the illusion of individual solutions and together seek substantive reform.
I have been thinking along the same lines for awhile, as well. Filling our overly consumerist troughs with 'eco-friendly' products will ultimately not amount to much (except for more stuff). It seems to me like a methadone treatment for a heroin addiction. It can be useful, but it's not a viable long-term solution. I still think that we are utilizing a collective, unspoken strategy of 'solving the problem at the level of intelligence that the problem was created' and really need to look to innovators, artists, philosophers, entrepreneurs who are able to effectively dissect our addiction to 'stuff' and show it to us in a way that can help us understand how deeply embedded we are to consumerist culture. In terms of tangible and viable solutions, I feel that this is where the younger generation is crucial in aiding to the development of a more sophisticated way of being that recognizes the depth of the ecological problems we face and commits to creating an infrastructure that supports human development during this very tenuous phase of the evolution of our species. Teens and twenty's have less exposure and habit in the consumerist trenches and frankly more to lose long term especially when it comes to the 'quality of life' category.
It's a daunting thought, yet completely exhilarating especially when you consider the opportunity at hand to re-create the human existence on the planet...
1 comment:
Thank you Rob for highlighting this important book. With it appears that the word "consumer" is used more often than "citizen" or "person" then I welcome fresh insights as to the situation.
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