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Human beings will be happier - not when they cure cancer or get to Mars or eliminate racial prejudice or flush Lake Erie but when they find ways to inhabit primitive communities again. That's my utopia.
~Kurt Vonnegut
Friday, November 25, 2005

Constructive Consumption

Reminders that we needn't feed into a social disease and that if you read Frugal for Life you may even reduce some personal stress in your attempts to procure what is necessary.

Consumerism As A Social Disease
In his Instinct of Workmanship (1914), Veblen argued we have both constructive and destructive "instincts," but that capitalism brings out -- must bring out -- the worst in us.

...) As our celebrated "individualism" becomes concentrated on borrowing, buying, and making out, we have allowed our always inadequate social policies concerning our education, health, housing, pensions, and public transportation to dwindle or disappear.

...) The politics of the U.S. must become those meeting the basic needs and values of the overwhelming majority of our people, those whose lives are in every respect damaged or ruined by what is now "normal." We must build a movement, moving away from capitalism, find that path by ourselves; we must lead.


From the Church of Stop Shopping Rev Billy offers us the following: The Revolution of Exalted Embarrassment for Buy Nothing Day

LET US PRAY. We ask for the blessing of the Fabulous Unknown. LET US DRIVE THE MONEY-CHANGERS OUT OF OUR BODY! We can handle the complexity! Yes we can be trusted to forego the mediation of a celebrity or graphic schtick selling us something that presumes to give us PERMISSION TO ASK OUR OWN BODY FOR A DANCE. I’m so ready for the Revolution of Exalted Embarrassment. PUT THE ODD BACK IN GOD! Let us become so strange that we become normal, normal being defined as the ability to sense that we should not buy something whose purchase would start a Blackhawk’s ignition beyond the sandy horizon. Let us see into our own pleasure enough to sense when a product might kill. Peace-a-lujah!
posted by Cyndy | link | | |
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