Since when did critical consumption make one an iconoclast?

iconoclast –

one who is characterized by attacking established beliefs or institutions

I guess that trying to live a life with a point of difference is the thing for me.

Everyone can, and does it seems, buy into the crap of the old cliché of working in a job you don’t enjoy, to earn a level of income you don’t really need except to buy stuff you don’t want, to impress people you don’t like or oft times even know. It is supporting the economic and environmental ponzi scheme of this society that just makes no sense. A few people do it differently, they slow down, get their consciousness back, become critical thinkers and more importantly, conscious consumers, and the rest of us either love them or hate/fear/ridicule them for being different.

I have found when doing things differently and being a visibly conscious consumer so many people are really so highly offended by it, as it challenges them on a primal/societal level in this country. They know deep down that the whole system is crap, but by being confronted with someone who is deliberately baulking it they react defensively to shore up their own choices. It’s like the old joke that the only difference between people with tattoos and without tattoos, is that people who have tattoos aren’t offended by people who don’t. By example, if I am not drinking alcohol on a given day for whatever reason, I really don’t care if other people do, it is just that I think they are doing it out of habit, rather than a conscious decision. People get quickly offended by it, as if I am suggesting by not drinking that I am better than them and they are hopeless alcoholics, but I don’t think that. I just make a conscious choice that’s all. Like a vegan, or a vegetarian, or a married person in a monogamous relationship. It is interesting that a random stranger can be offended by my choices, rather than having enough confidence in their own that they don’t have to justify themselves by attacking me.

Same with people who pursue financial gain as an end in itself.

I really couldn’t be bothered, as it will all be to nought anyway and we all end up in the ground in the end. It is so hard though, because the socially acceptable sense of self worth comes from consumption.

It’s nothing new, “keeping up with the Joneses” has been a saying over the ages, but it is only so in industrialized nations. Don’t get me wrong. No-one wants to go back to the dark ages, oh no, so don’t get me wrong, I like air conditioning on a stinking hot Queensland day, and being able to open my fridge and get a cold drink (alcoholic or otherwise), or microwave some leftovers for a quick meal. What I don’t like is that the power I use comes from 1^st generation coal fired power stations, and unless I pay a big premium, the left over chicken I am re-heating was factory farmed. It just seems so basic that most people, given a choice (or maybe, not given a choice) would surely accept a different paradigm.

We all know the system is unsustainable, we all know we need to use renewable power, we all know factory farming of living animals is abhorrent (not to mention potentially dangerous to our health), and we all know it is better for everyone if we source our foodstuffs locally where possible, and yet to do all this requires an effort that most people couldn’t be bothered with because it takes time, a bit more money, and most importantly to my mind, a conscious decision.

And that, my friends, is what it really comes down to. Making a conscious decision. About something that actually matters. Not merely deciding what size burger, drink and fries to shove in, but stopping and thinking about whether you actually want to shove it in in the first place! Taking the time to think about the real cost of that cheap “food” (or as Michael Pollan would call it “food like substance”) you are about to subject your internal organs to.

Are people really so time poor that bad food is the only option, or is it just plain laziness? I believe that if people actually knew what goes into putting fast food on their plate or to have it poked through the drive through window, would that knowledge make them stop and think? It isn’t hard to work it out, just visit any pro-vegetarian website and it will list the environmental and social costs of producing the amount of meat that is consumed by the average non-thinker in this or any country, or of the food miles and associated carbon footprint it takes to bring “fast” food to your door. This isn’t a rant about the evils or otherwise of fast food, or alcohol or anything else. Nor is it a rant about the benefits or otherwise of a particular eating choice, but it is most definitely a rant about the general apathy that allows the big business interests that control these industries to control people’s spending patterns and ongoing health. The apathetic, lazy, uneducated, who gives a toss, it tastes good brigade are so addicted to their own ridiculously manipulated consumption patterns that it would take a dictatorship devoted to health and wellbeing to break the mould.  Bit of an irony there.

So what would it take to help people think again? Is it even possible?

With the mantra of let the market decide is too firmly entrenched, no government in its right mind would risk the wrath of voters by suggesting that the system they govern is flawed in the long term (or short term if you believe the worst case scenario) or that things need to radically change.

The arguments are all too obvious – I want to put cheap food on my plate, I have a right to make choices regarding what I or my children eat/do/watch on TV, etc, and I couldn’t agree more, but the issue here is not the right to make a choice but the knowledge and skills to make sure it is a truly informed one. Big business will defend its patch and argue jobs and taxes and contribution to GDP, governments argue freedom of choice and think jobs, taxes and GDP, people will argue jobs and price and freedom of choice. Great, but let’s at least give people the skills and education to critically assess whether what they are doing actually coincides with how they want to live their lives, how they want their children to live their lives and what sort of world they want their grandchildren and great grandchildren to live in.

Of course, that is never going to wash, because that would mean actually stopping and, shock horror, thinking! There is no way that is going to happen while people are obsessed with consumption and so insecure that they base who they are and how they feel on how they consume and what they perceive others think of them. Easier not to think, do what you’ve always done and get what you have always got (that is, debt, long term illness, an environment that will not be able to keep providing the means for the “growth” our governments crave).

So, despair like me when you walk down the street and see the grossly obese (let’s be honest here, and call them fat) person of whatever nationality, age or gender drinking soft drink and eating junk food. I am guessing they don’t like being fat. I am guessing they want to be healthy and feel good about themselves, but the cycle just perpetuates because to baulk and fight and rally against the vested interests is just too hard to contemplate for someone without the skills to take it on.

I’m guessing there is a general consensus out there that everyone has a right to be healthy and happy, to love and be loved, to have something good to look forward to, to feel worthy, have friends and live a long life, but no-one is teaching the masses the skills to think critically and be strong enough to resist and fight off the bullshit factor. Letting the market decide is fine it seems as long as the market (that is, you and me) keeps deciding to consume, but woe betide a market that decides to pull its collective head in and get serious about adopting a critical thinking spending pattern. That is a market that leads to headlines trumpeting falls in consumer confidence, poor quarterly performance of big business, the adverse effect on that holiest of fiscal Holy Grails the GDP. What a load of hypercritical tripe that it is OK to let the market decide, but whatever you do, just don’t educate the end user to make real decisions based on forethought, the facts and long term issues like health and wellbeing (physical, mental, financial, environmental I’m for them all!).

God help us if that ever happened!!