Tag Archives: consumerism

WILL OUR LIFE VALUES EVER TURN TOPSY-TURVEY?

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            Can a modern American achieve true, long-lasting happiness without using material goods like money and possessions to define success? As a friend of mine from Prague asked, “Why do Americans think they NEED 80 flavors of toothpaste?”

            Or are we all simply fat capitalist pigs as Marx seemed to indicate?

            Not I. I discovered quite by accident that I’m a minimalist. A friend was asking me if I planned to attend a massive jewelry sale sponsored by a group we both belonged to. I envisioned room after room, table after table, of glittering, shiny, baubles designed to spotlight my aging throat and mature figure with their wrinkles, spots and flab, and shuddered. Probably the last activity that attracted me would be tracking down pieces of useless jewelry. And to spend money and time on such a quest? Impossible.

            “No,” I answered. “I’m a minimalist. I don’t need any jewelry.”

            Why the term leaped to my mind, I have no idea. But somehow I must have been absorbing the expression through pop culture because it fit with my existing values and approach to life. Since then I’ve realized that I’m not alone in embracing the attitude. Minimalism has been around in art, music and decorating for decades, to indicate a stripped down, perhaps stark, approach to self-expression, but is more recent as a description of lifestyle. Before the trend, of course, many religions valued it, using “simple” as part of their definition. Simple food, simple clothing, simple belongings. Quakers, the Amish and Mennonites, Buddhists and others set their sights on values instead of money, consumerism, and material status.

            Minimalism as a way of life focuses on living with less. This includes less financial burdens for its practitioners, such as debt and unnecessary expenses. Minimalists, not than I know any except myself, support shedding excess stuff and valuing experiences rather than worldly possessions. It’s a method to rid yourself of life’s excess to focus on intangible valuable qualities to bring happiness, fulfillment, and freedom.

            In typical American fashion, people now are rushing to expand on, define, advocate and criticism minimalism. The Los Angeles Times reported the average American household has 300,000 items. (I wonder what they counted as an item? Was a package of toilet paper counted as one or eight? A set of dishes one or 16?) Then someone tossed out one-hundred objects as the ideal amount for a minimalist.

            Funny to me that many articles about minimalism stress how much money you’ll save. Seems contradictory—you want to care less about unessentials like money in order to concentrate on destressing, building relationships, working on your personal interests.

            In the final tally, these points are irrelevant to me. I have a handy reason to avoid wasting my time on shopping and a defensible strategy for cleaning out my closets and cupboards. Would you like some recycled books or one of the six bottles of cologne I received at the holidays?

My Neighborhood Is Obsessed with Pumpkins, and the Great Pumpkin’s Delighted

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For reasons unknown, a fad in my neighborhood during fall and culminating on Halloween is pumpkins. Multiple pumpkins. Large, small, lumpy, smooth, often orange, punctuated with white, green, sage, multi-colored. On my walks I started counting numbers of pumpkins on porches. Very few have only one (I myself have two), and the winner so far is 16.

I don’t know why. Granted I’m in a family-heavy neighborhood where children are cherished and indulged as if they were tiny royals. Also an area with no poverty, whose residents can choose to dispose of their disposable income as they wish. I shouldn’t quibble, indeed, I’m not even sure what “quibbling” is, because I adore seeing the variety and the panache with which the home owners place their harvest bounty. Some stack several orbs on top of one another, some group colors and textures with care. Many set off large pumpkins with several miniature ones. Others combine real produce with the man-made variety. One home with front stairs positioned a pumpkin at the end of each step all the way up to the top. Another, with a short brick retaining wall, marched the produce all along the top, as if presenting the front entry to the world.

Squirrels treat outdoor decorative pumpkins as their personal grocery store. In my old neighborhood, which seemed to have ten squirrels for every resident, a pumpkin was fortunate if it survived overnight on the porch without a gnaw. My new neighborhood has fewer critters. Still last year only a few days passed before the golden fruit (yes, pumpkins are technically fruit) was attacked.

I’ve collected suggestions on squirrel repellents. The silliest one was to place several pumpkins together, as if propitiating the squirrel god by providing one sacrificial sphere. This only drives the critters into an eating frenzy. The defense that seems to succeed is to combine two techniques. I sprayed the pumpkins with hairspray, then sprinkled them with liberal doses of cayenne pepper.

I wonder if the proliferation of decorative pumpkins is another indication of our surfeit of consumerism. Surely no one other than pie makers NEEDS sixteen pumpkins. Still this is one glut I don’t object to. I tell myself we’re helping out the pumpkin farmers as well as delighting children and passersby, then give myself permission to simply enjoy the symbol of harvest bounty. Maybe I’ll dig out the seeds to roast and nibble on. That will justify my permissive attitude.

 

Feet of Clay, Example #1: Did Bob Dylan Sell Out in His Super Bowl Ad? Or What Is “True Cool?”

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“You can’t fake true cool,” said the Super Bowl ad starring Bob Dylan. No, but you can fake sincerity.

When I strolled by the television on Super Bowl Sunday, my biggest surprise was not the winning team. I was floored when I spotted Dylan extolling the virtues of the American auto industry. Here was a hero of my youth, hard-core counter-culture leader, patron saint of individualism and liberal politics, shilling for the business poster-child of America’s hyper-consumerism and waste.

I had heard his music as audio for ads, but I figured he didn’t have much control over that in the welter of copyrights and legalities. This was different. His music wasn’t featured. He appeared on camera praising Chrysler as a product worthy of purchase, superior to other cars because it’s American-made.

Discussions about his spot cover the gamut of opinion. Some people feel artists don’t have many options nowadays to make a living unless they include advertising. Or they think performing artists expand their audiences and fan bases in this manner. Others are puzzled and confused by this decision apparently in contradiction to his long-standing persona. The one says Dylan is just changing as he matures. Another that “Dylan stands as an image of integrity, independence, and authenticity,” so it’s good business sense to relate him to a produce.

Sorry. Not to me. Seems to me to be part and parcel of the traditional American attitude—make as much money as you can by any means possible so you can consume excessive amounts of everything. The ad also asks. “Is there anything more American than America?” and continues to eulogize our supposed virtues. An appeal to an unfortunate human value run rampant in many nations—xenophobic and parochial jingoism. Thinking your country is always the best and eternally right.

What’s the importance of “cool” anyhow, touted in the ad. The judgment about attitude, behavior, and style is a knee-jerk opinion important only to advertising copywriters and adolescents up to the age of thirty. “Cool” has no relationship to essential worth of a person or even a product or service, when compared to honest, intelligent, humorous, caring, beautiful, courteous, any number of qualities.

Also interesting, Chrysler isn’t even an American company any more. It is a consolidated subsidiary of Italian multinational automaker  I have no problem with that. I do have a problem with hypocrisy in advertising.

It looks like my high school social studies teacher came closer to predicting the future than others, including Bob Dylan or Chrysler. Mr. Balliat’s evidently revolutionary theory was that eventually all arguments pro and con about trade and manufacturing and business will shake themselves out, and those countries and groups of people who WANT to work in a particular industry and who are BEST SUITED for the responsibility will do so.

As for me, I own a Toyota.