Pathological Consumption..."All along the way we are bumping up against limits."

On Saturday, I attended a full-day professional writing seminar hosted by the The OpEd Project and held at the newly named Simmons University in Boston (formerly Simmons College).  The course was entitled, "Writing to Change the World."  So, here goes.

This past week, a Facebook survey hit my feed asking whether the social media giant's service was of benefit to the world (which first appeared at least two years ago but has been seen regularly by users since January this year).  I responded "disagree," because my immediate consideration was its role in being an easy platform for hateful and divisive people to exploit their First Amendment rights.  Yes, it's also a way for caring and mindful people to share the insights of superb movers and shakers, such as Annie Leonard, the founder of The Story of Stuff Project, whose varied informational videos are thorough and detailed and worth every minute, and George Monbiot, the prolific journalist whose deep reads on the environment and natural world should be mandatory in every developed nation's schools.  The ramifications, though, of the hatemongers slipping through the cracks will forever undermine all that good stuff.  Lack of prevention of the very thing that landed Mr. Zuckerberg in the hot seat last summer--bots and fake accounts--has cost us greatly as a nation.  Even with their six-part, 23-subsection 'Community Standards', I think we all sense Facebook's failure in being as beneficial as Zuckerberg thinks it is.  Check out their statement pertaining to false news; have you ever observed "promotion of news literacy" in your feed?

Speaking of Monbiot and Leonard, today I re-read an oldie but goodie by Monbiot that a couple of friends happened to share on Facebook recently: his 2012 piece called 'The Gift of Death' in which he succinctly frames how we are trashing the living world at rates crazier than ever and all for nothing but stuff...junk.  "Pathological consumption has become so normalized that we scarcely notice it."  Our consumerism is rendered so normal by advertising and the media that we scarcely notice what has happened to us and our planet.

I also watched Leonard's Story of Stuff video for the fourth or fifth time since having first seen it in my Systems Thinking course at UNH in early 2008.  It, too, surfaced in my Facebook feed today.  (Too bad Facebook's survey didn't land in my feed today.)  Leonard's storytelling is clear and concise, and I can't recommend enough her 21-minute video on how our system of consumerism is a system in crisis, and one in which we "are bumping up against limits at every turn."

As we approach the holiday season and the pressure of gift-giving, please consider Leonard's Story of Stuff and Monbiot's insight (both of whom had originally shed their insight in the month of December of their respective years).  Instead of buying even more stuff for your friends and loved ones, "bake them a cake, write them a poem, give them a kiss, or tell them a joke, but for god’s sake stop trashing the planet to tell someone you care. All it shows is that you don’t."

Earth Day 2011 only one week away!

A great resource to rely on for learning how to diminish, if not eliminate, your trash footprint is Colin Beavan's 'No Impact Man' blog.  From a blog entry in 2009, great tips were suggested for eliminating waste from your life.  I'm proud to report that we have only a couple areas to check off: soft paper goods (tissues and paper towels, both of which we buy from unbleached, 100% p-c sources), and certain plastics (specifically, those ratty little plastic "safety" strips found on most bottles, jars and other food containers, as well as, #5/7 plastic tub containers that sour cream, ricotta cheese and certain nuts/seeds come in).  I really appreciate his 'Waste not, want not' category.

From his 2009 blog post:

20 ways to keep the landfill empty

Organic material--food and paper, for example--rot and release methane, a potent greenhouse gas, when sent to the landfill. When the liners meant to seal landfills eventually crack, toxic substances can leach into the water table, causing hard to trace illnesses in faraway communities.
But perhaps the worse thing is, when we throw something in the landfill to be buried in the ground (or worse, in an incinerator to be burned into our air), it represents a waste of resources that we took from the earth in the first place.
Here's the good news: I think it actually feels good not to waste. That is to say, I've found that not making trash, actually makes me feel better about myself.
For these reasons, I've put together this list of 25 ways to avoid making trash suggest by readers of the No Impact Man blog:

1. Keep your own cutlery with you so you don't have to use the plastic versions
2. Cut up your old clothes for use as rags and avoid paper towels
3. Use mason jars to carry everything from drinking water to a packed lunch
4. Use a handkerchief instead of tissue
5. Make notepaper from the blank side of junk mail
6. Give your old eyeglasses to the local Lions Club for distribution to those in need
7. Make cardboard egg cartons into biodegradable seed starters
8. Cut yogurt containers into strips and use them to label garden plants
9. Use cloth bags for the bulk bins at the grocery store
10. Empty out vacuum cleaner bags and reuse
11. Use cloth napkins instead of paper towel
12. Cook from scratch to avoid food packaging
13. Use shaving soap bars to avoid throwaway bottles
14. Make your own yogurt so there are no plastic tubs
15. Wash and reuse ziplock bags
16. Use the waxy liners of cereal boxes to wrap sandwiches
17. Use scrap office paper for kids coloring books
18. Carry a cloth for drying your hands and wrapping things in
19. Pack a lunch in a reusable container instead of buying lunch in plastic packaging
20. Use rechargeable batteries

58 Seconds With Lester - Worth Your Time

What is wrong with bottled water?

NY City tap water vs. leading brands of bottled water

Are you being fooled?

What's "2,000,000" and "every five minutes" got in common?

Book I Can't Stop Looking At

Here's one guy who knows how to deliver. Look closely; you won't believe your eyes.

From his website:

"Exploring around our country’s shipping ports and industrial yards, where the accumulated detritus of our consumption is exposed to view like eroded layers in the Grand Canyon, I find evidence of a slow-motion apocalypse in progress. I am appalled by these scenes, and yet also drawn into them with awe and fascination. The immense scale of our consumption can appear desolate, macabre, oddly comical and ironic, and even darkly beautiful; for me its consistent feature is a staggering complexity.

The pervasiveness of our consumerism holds a seductive kind of mob mentality. Collectively we are committing a vast and unsustainable act of taking, but we each are anonymous and no one is in charge or accountable for the consequences. I fear that in this process we are doing irreparable harm to our planet and to our individual spirits.

As an American consumer myself, I am in no position to finger wag; but I do know that when we reflect on a difficult question in the absence of an answer, our attention can turn inward, and in that space may exist the possibility of some evolution of thought or action. So my hope is that these photographs can serve as portals to a kind of cultural self-inquiry. It may not be the most comfortable terrain, but I have heard it said that in risking self-awareness, at least we know that we are awake."