Archive for November, 2008
Buy Nothing Day: 2008 Celebration
This week, myself and several friends will be observing Buy Nothing Day, as well as protesting needless consumerism at malls. Below, my brother Wesley and I explain the motivation behind this, which we’ve printed on the back of the flyers we’ll be passing out.
SPEND LESS.
GIVE MORE!
In the context of a world in which people are starving to death, how much more do we need? This year, we’d like to encourage you to join us in evading the lure of sales that feed the addiction of purchasing more heaps of excess stuff.
Of course, we’ve had it ingrained in us for years that if we don’t purchase gifts for our relatives during Christmas season, we’re uncaring people. But what if we already have enough? What if there are others who don’t have enough?
We urge you to make a statement not by the clothes you wear or items you purchase, but by refusing to fall in line with the habits of over-consumption that serve to reinforce material dependency and transiently fashionable goods.
As an alternative, we’d recommend helping end poverty and hunger for our neighbors around the world by making a donation to Action Against Hunger:
Other great ways to give gifts– Amnesty International: www.amnesty.org | Red Cross: www.icrc.org
A Brief Note on Capitalism
The beauty or detriment of capitalism is its unmitigated approval of any popular idea. One can quite literally capitalize on just about anything. As long as you can turn a profit, you’ll come out a winner. You can capitalize on violence, sex, drugs, green energy, tele-tubbies, religion, indoctrination, abortion, slavery, absolutely anything that births more money than it loses.
Morality has only backseat input into such a system. The system’s bottom line is money, so morals can be entirely neglected or capitalized upon for money. Either scenario is devastating to human life. The first excuses any type of treatment of people so long as the money adds up. The second reduces morality to a commodity, serving as a means to the same end––cash. A system left to operate on those conditions will, over time, reduce the value of human life to just another disposable resource––its value being based solely on its ability to enhance the economic status of the relatively small number of elite corporations.
Of course, this is not the case with all corporations, but in the majority of cases where the end goal is money, the product being sold is open to corruption in order to attain that goal. Say, for instance, (a familiar example) you can make more money manufacturing “WWJD” t-shirts by exporting your labor to a factory in another country where children are treated and paid poorly. Well, the perceived positive message comes first, and ethically producing the vehicle for that message comes second. The end justifies the means.
Breaking it down even further, are the things that Jesus taught really being best spread by breaking them down into a cheap slogan, a trademarked logo, or a shiny trinket, especially considering the man himself was likely too poor to have purchased something like this? Again, profit comes first and consideration about the quality and morality of the product comes further down the list. If you can sell someone on a stupid product, why not capitalize on their idiotic lust for such objects and put the money someplace better? Because doing that only perpetuates the root of the problem: The seemingly endless cycle of transiently-fashionable goods sold for profit and the addicted herd who are bent on habitually consuming them.
Obviously this wouldn’t be as much of a problem were it not occurring within the context of a world where people are starving to death on the other side of the globe. Putting this habit in perspective makes it clear that there is no room for such rampant consumerism when the money could be much better spent saving human lives. While money will never be the sole solution to the problem, it is part of it, and what little we can do with our dollars for their cause surely trumps whatever momentary joy comes from buying whatever shiny new fashions are available on your local shelf.
