Anti Consumaterialism
I got an anti consumer streak in me
I am against the distribution of social status based on the consumerist ethos
When I write Materialism below I mean consumerist type of Materialism NOT Marxist materialism which I support
I echo these views on consumerism by these Marxists/Marxian Socdems.
Our globalized consumerist society is a clown world
Socialism (and my socialistic views in this blog) is about the abolishment of private ownership of the means of production, it is not about making everything equal or making ‘everyone poor and/or equally poor’; that would be materialism .
Class is based on your relationship with the means of production, not how much material wealth you have, and we should strive for a world of such prosperity that everyone can live like a "billionaire". If that happens, then it wouldn't have gone over so badly in some corners. But I still condemn wide variations in personal wealth
I am against consumer culture and materialism. I feel people and their individualism are snard by materialism i.e their property.
It is wrong that people are obsessed with their property. It is pathetic that many people wear the same types of clothes, follow fashion trends, have big flat screen TVs, wear Nikes sneakers ,high top sneakers and similar unneeded nonsense. People can never have enough and that is wrong.
We have to break people free of this bondage to consumerism and materialism. This in part because of corporate monopolies. See my lifestyle blog post for more
Consumerism and Materialism are by products of the evils of Capitalism where people are just objects by Capitalists and corporations to make a buck and get ahead (basically as stepping stones). Consumerism and materialism are at the heart of the soullessness of Capitalism
Capitalism a lot of the time destroys or hampers countries and the structures within them. We must subvert consumerism, materialism and commercialism
I am against consumer culture. I am an anti Consumerist. Consumerism fuels inequality and unequal social structures that create unequal hierarchies.
Owning a flat screen TV is not a human need or essential
Consumerism is bad because people consume to increase their social position and to keep up with others. There is no good reason people should continuously buy new and new material possessions. It is against humanity to do so. We are given what we need, not more and more garbage. Instead of gaining material wealth people should gain knowledge, life philosophy and other non material gains
Corporations push consumerism to make a buck at the expense of public welfare (due to things like social stratification, governing ethics etc). I also feel consumerism is bad because it is part of globalization in that corporations try to destroy other countries with their consumerism as they've done in the West.
Consumers are treated like guinea pigs that corporations try new and new tricks on to get them to obedient to their demands and that is wrong
Consumerism dehumanizes people and causes people to live immorally. Consumerism is shallow, hollow and makes people think they need things that they DON'T NEED. It also causes pollution and hurts the environment etc. Consumerism is basically corporations making us their robots and that needs to end
People are compelled to use brand names since their identities are tied to brand names to compensate for other misgivings.
To quote Victor Lebow "Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction and our ego satisfaction in consumption. We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced, and discarded at an ever-increasing rate"
Consumerism via advertisers intrude on peoples lives telling them what they 'need' and what is 'acceptable' when in fact them doing those things is unneeded and unacceptable. It is basically ad creep and unwanted.
They try to force social standards. They make it seem their goods are the keys to happiness and that is disgusting, wrong and crude. Advertisers try to trick people into tying social and material together through their ads to make this happen.
They contribute to materialism and that needs to end. What is worse, these advertisers don't want consumers to be truly happy, otherwise their products would not be needed. It's basically a sick game for them
Advertisers objectify the consumers and take their power (and freedom) away while making the consumer think they have the power (when that isn't the case).
The short term nature of the gratifcation of commodities take away from a truly lasting happy society. Advertising creates a false mirage of the world which furthers my angst for consumerism and its tenants.
To quote New scientist magazine "subconsciously still driven by an impulse for survival, domination and expansion... an impulse which now finds expression in the idea that inexorable economic growth is the answer to everything, and, given time, will redress all the world's existing inequalities" While also writing "that consumerism is making these tendencies worse by encouraging consumption without limit." The best way to counter bourgeois boredom is through being politically active, non consumerism or materialism. I feel that authoritarian socialist commodity production might be a way to fix this snd fight against materialism and consumerism
I support promoting a transition from a materialistic to a convivial and participatory society.
Consumerism and Materialism are bad because they use up resources to satisfy ever consuming lifestyles ie energy which produces greater waste at the expense of third world countries.
Consumerism are Materialism are also unsustainable and we need degrowth to lessen the ecological footprint of things that materialism and consumerism causes by lowering our standards of living. Consumerism and materialism cause climate change and must be combated
It is wrong to worship corporate brands and to buy tons of their pointless products.Consumerism is wrong also because it is hyper capitalism
We must fight against corporations manipulating people to buy things through advertising
I will NEVER mindlessly consume products. It is wrong, irrational and cult like for people to mindlessly consume products
This means we should stand against productivism and sustainable development. Sustainable development is a oxymoron; any development that is based on finite growth in a finite and environmentally stressed world is not sustainable .
We need to be self sufficient and have material responsibility to fix our growth issues, especially in the southern hemisphere. They in particular need to end their consumption and exploitation of northern resources. This would lead to preserving eco systems from humans in a communal way where humans and nature are as one
I echo Degrowth’s ideas of a shift to no longer promote lifestyles thay take up high levels of consumption. I support Degrowth
Degrowth is good because it promotes self-sufficiency and material responsibility
Degrowth teaches us to be skeptical of decoupling because that absolute decoupling is only possible for short periods, specific locations or with small mitigation rates and is thus unlikely to happen in the future.
Furthermore, there is no empirical evidence that decoupling would happen fast enough and on a global scale
Moreover, reported cases of successful decoupling either depicted relative decoupling and/or are observed only temporarily and/or only on a local scale.
Being reliant on decoupling as the main or only strategy to combine economic growth and the reduction of environmental pressures would equal taking a big risk to our future well being. So with degrowth we would find alternatives.
Degrowth calls for decreasing demand to permanently close the demand gap
That would mean bringing down the demand and production of renewable resources to levels that prevent depletion and that are also environmentally healthy. In a Degrowth society we would not be dependent on oil to avoid the societal collapse that would happen when non-renewable resources are depleted.
Degrowth demands that rich countries reduce their standard of living to create world economic equality with the resources that would available in this future final system which would be one of the aims of this degrowth. This constraint on resources would eventually lead to a forced reduction in consumption. Controlled consumption reduction would reduce the trauma of this change.
With Degrowth , there would be opposition to all productivism forms due to the belief that economic productivity and growth are the purpose of human organization using the Degrowth model. This Degrowth model opposes modern forms of sustainable development
This is because sustainable development is rooted in the mainstream development ideas that shoot to increase capitalist growth and consumption. So with Degrowth, sustainable development is seen as an oxymoron (since any development that is based on growth in a finite and environmentally stressed world is inherently unsustainable)
In a Degrowth society, the government would advocate for the complete abandonment of the current (growth) economic model, and would suggest relocalizing and abandoning the Global South’s global economy which would allow people of the Global South to become more self-sufficient which in turn would end the overconsumption and exploitation of Southern resources by the Global North.
This would be a possible path to preserve our ecosystems from human pressures. In Degrowth ,the environment would communally be cared for, integrating humans and nature;
This is due to ecosystems being inherently valuable, for more than just resources. Ideas such as a maximum wage and open borders were discussed
Using a Degrowth model, we can cause a deontological shift so that lifestyles which involve a high level of resource consumption are no longer seen as attractive to people , the US would repair past injustices from their centuries of colonization and exploitation along with redistributing wealth, and a concept of the appropriate scale of action
Some researchers note that the world may have to pass through Great Transformation, "by design or by disaster", so ecological economics like Degrowth might have to incorporate Postdevelopment theories if we want to really change something in that Degrowth model
So Degrowth would discourage technologies that are designed to reduce resource use and improve efficiency i.e sustainable green solutions due to the rebound effect (the rebound effect are based off of observations that when a less resource exhaustive technology is introduced, the behavior that is surrounding the use of that technology may change and that consumption of that technology could increase or even offset any potential resource savings)
The only effective "sustainable" solutions using degrowth would involve a complete rejection of the growth paradigm and would move to a degrowth paradigm.
Degrowth is good because it builds on Feminist economics that have criticized measures of economic growth (like the GDP)
This criticism is good because it criticizes such economic growth (like the GDP) due to that type of economic growth (like the GDP) wrongly excluding work that is mainly done by women such as unpaid care work, work performed to fulfill people's needs, reproductive work, work sustaining life etc.
Further degrowth is good because it would draw on the critique of socialist feminists who claim that capitalist growth builds on the exploitation of women’s work.
Instead of devaluing womens work, Degrowth centers the economy around care, proposing that care work should be organized as a commons.
So this would include centering care with changing society’s time regimes including a working time reduction in line with this equally along with the redistribution of care work to lead to gender justice
One model within Degrowth would be a 4-in-1-perspective which proposes 4 hours of wage work a day, freeing time for 4 hours of care work, 4 hours of political activities in a direct democracy all within Degrowth in addition to 4 hours of personal development through learning.
Degrowth draws on materialist ecofeminisms which claim a parallel of the exploitation of women and nature in growth-based societies and would propose a subsistence perspective conceptualized by Maria Mies and Ariel Salleh.
This would further include identifying synergies and opportunities for cross-fertilization between degrowth and feminism as advanced in the future, with these two discoures being connected through networks that would include the Feminisms and Degrowth Alliance (FaDA)
A relevant concept within this Degrowth is decolonialism which refers to putting an end to the perpetuation of political, social, economic, religious, racial, gender, and epistemological relations of power, domination, and hierarchy of the global north over the global south.
The foundation of this relationship would lie in understanding that the imminent socio-ecological collapse was caused by capitalism, which due to economic growth is sustained
This economic growth can only be maintained under the eaves of colonialism and extractivism, which perpetuate asymmetric power relationships between territories. Colonialism in this system is understood as the appropriation of common goods, resources and labor, which do not align with degrowth principles.
Through colonial domination, capital depresses prices of the inputs and then colonial cheapening occurs to the detriment of the oppressed countries.
The Degrowth approach criticizes these appropriation mechanisms and enclosure of one territory over another and would propose a human needs provision through disaccumulation, de-enclosure, and decommodification.
It would also reconcile with social movements and it would seek to recognize the ecological debt to achieve the catch-up, which is seen as impossible without decolonization.
I am against spring cleaning. Spring cleaning is a ritualistic, outdated and archaic concept. People are cultists for focusing on super cleaning their homes at a specific time a year.
People should clean their homes each day of the year as much as possible instead of spring cleaning. The majority of Americans don’t spring clean ever and the vast majority of Europeans don’t spring clean ever. I have never spring cleaned and I will never spring clean ever. I instead clean my home each day as much as possible
future series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downshifting_(lifestyle)
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