Damian blowing out the candles on his birthday cake.
(We were so sick of cake by his birthday because
of Lily’s ginormous cake a few days earlier, that Damian
got a little cake so that there would be absolutely
no leftover cake afterwards.)
08 January 2009

I watched this 20 minute video, The Story of Stuff, and then read Your Money or Your Life (it was on the recommended reading list on The Story of Stuff website, and I happened to have it on my bookshelf, so I dusted it off and read it). After watching and reading these two things, I’ve been depressed because the framework of my reality has been torn down.

Considering that I’m a modern suburban hippy (or at least I thought I was), you wouldn’t have thought that the environmentalist ideas presented would have thrown me for such a loop. You see, I was so used to blaming big business, advertising and the government — and waiting for them to fix the problem — that  I never really examined my role in the process. The movie and the book covered two ideas that, though they may not be novel, are still presented in a very personal, cogent and immediate manner:

1) We — you and me — drive consumerism. Without our willing participation, the system will not work. In all fairness, we were raised from our cradle by society to be consumers, but now we are being shown that we don’t have to live within the paradigm with which we were raised.

2) Here, I am going to quote Mr P.J. Ruane who left this comment on Amazon regarding Your Money or Your Life: “Your income depends on the number of hours you work, so if you spend frivolously, you are not spending your money, you are spending your lifetime. e.g. You earn $10 per hour tax paid? then if you spend $400 on something (that is probably really of no benefit to you, that you didn’t really need), you are really spending 40 hours of your lifetime for that useless item. To most people that is a working week. Multiply that a few times and most of our working lives are spent for NOTHING.”

There was another comment on Amazon that I liked very much from Eric Scarbro: “As with all revelations, the reader needs to be ready to hear the message.”

So where does this leave me? I’m free-falling now. I don’t have an answer. More than just a habit has been changed, the framework of how my reality works has been changed. I have no reference now, and so feel very lost.

But that’s not neccessarily a bad thing. However it is a very uncomfortable thing. Where is the line between enough and mindless consumption? I don’t know. But at least I know there is one now.

This is a really good spot for a Mary Poppins quote. 🙂

Enough is as good as a feast.