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TechnoratiDedicated to the Pursuit of 'Stuff'
Any day now my mailman, Bob, will be delivering a hefty check to my mailbox courtesy of the U.S. Treasury. With two kids worth $300 a pop, my wife and I are looking at close to $2,000 of something called "economic stimulus."
Seems the economy is in trouble. Bear Stearns, now that it doesn't exist, has become a household name. Adjustable mortgage rates are now accepted for what they are -- the mortgage industry's version of a fixed game of roulette. And fear of a possible recession is talk-show fodder for agenda-pushing politicos.
Apparently, the U.S. Treasury's gift is supposed to send my wife and me off to the nearest big box store for a flat screen TV. Or perhaps we'll celebrate the bonus with dinner at a restaurant littered with black-and-white photos of yesteryear. Inspired by the Lassie-era pictures, we'll toast to new beginnings, to economic stimulation -- and to stuff!
Yes, to stuff. After all, isn't that why we are being told we are now on the brink of a recession? Our growing need to house an ever-expanding albatross of stuff: more bedrooms, more baths, bigger basements, larger lawns? We now suffer from missed mortgage payments on a house we couldn't afford to begin with, let alone furnish, maintain or mow.
We've been duped and deceived by the culture of capitalism. Through sheer greed and an arrogant sense of entitlement, we think we should have as much stuff as we want. Not only do we feel entitled to it, but even sadder, we feel it is essential to our happiness.
It's about time we reevaluated the handwriting of our forefathers. The Declaration of Independence rightly espoused the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Nowhere does it say we have a right to oodles and oodles of stuff. ("Oodles" just wouldn't look right in fancy calligraphic penmanship.) Besides, I believe George, John, Jeff, and the rest had a better handle on happiness than we do. Now might be a good time to reevaluate happiness.
According to environmental writer Bill McKibben, an annual study of the level of happiness in America showed a peak happiness level in 1956. More than 50 years of advancements in medicine, technology and efficiency have passed, and we're none the happier for it. Yet we won't do anything to evaluate our priorities or change our lifestyles to up the happiness quotient in our lives.
Why is that? Greed? Perhaps a bit, but only in that our greed is unconsciously fed by an addiction to stuff.
It's not unlike an addict struggling with a chemical addiction. Once hooked, there simply is no other way to live. Even in the face of high credit card balances, we'll still swipe away. Even when we know the mortgage payment is a stretch, we'll sign 30 years of our lives away. Like the addict, we'll always want more. We seek the ultimate high, yet we live the ultimate low. The addiction holds us powerless until we hit rock bottom and an outside force helps us reevaluate our lives.
Perhaps our economy is nearing rock bottom -- a possible recession at hand. And perhaps that is just what we need to free us of our addiction. Strange as it may sound, we just might be happier for it.
That stimulus check from the Treasury is like the dime glued into the mailer from a charity organization trying to guilt us into sending them some money right back. Here's a grand or two; do your patriotic duty and install that home theater system.
Sitting in our finished basement, wide screen plasma TV hung on the wall and surround-sound speakers circling us, we'll be able to watch Extreme Home Makeover in high-def. On the screen, families down on their luck will find happiness in an extravaganza of materialism wrapped in the veil of charity.
So much for the recession. The addiction continues.
Michael T. Dolan, author of the novel "Walden," writes from West Chester, Pa.
Copyright © 2008, The Baltimore Sun
26 Comments so far
Show All"When a person's god is some object that has no legitimate claim to ultimacy, her whole being is frozen at the level of maturity where that god IS appropriate."
No wonder we are in such a mess.
America is such a "Gotta Have It" society.
All these not so humble do gooders anxious to tell you all about their politically correct life styles. That is not what I want to know. I want to know who they sold down the river, wives, children, mom and dad, girlfriends. You know the human cost that they don't tell you about. And that doesn't include their inability to even begin to control their finances etc.
I worked with a guy who rode an electric motor driven bicycle to work. I was the lead person. We made fake antique shit like wood watermelon slices, painted and distressed. He talked a big b.s. story about global warming and the cost of gas in 1980. But I knew about it in 1972. He was always late and his craftmanship sucked. What I read here is a duplicate.
Just more B.S. and never any real action.
To my perpetual amazement, I am apparently the founder of the donation services industry - which brings a socially positive and economically promising spin to consumerism.
My company is DoughNation Services LLC, and people who benefit from tax deductions hire us (today, we earned $700 from one client who donated a van-load of clothing and household goods) to pick up those things, document their tax deduction value, and then deliver those things to local nonprofits and schools.
Ultimately, we hope our business model will help reset the business world's view on the 'bottom line'. DoughNation's has a 'benefit bottom line' in addition to the usual financial bottom line. Everyone benefits in our business model, and our motto is 'do well by doing good!' - which is originally attributed to our American Founder Ben Franklin.
I believe it's time for America to wake up, and remember that 'doing well by doing good' IS the American way.
Consumer electronics such as the flat screen TV represent the most depreciable of anything you could buy.
You should dedicate a certain amount of your money to *assets* that might appreciate in value or provide an income or both.
Seriously, it's so bad, I've carved a niche as a "de-stuffer." With a dose of tough love, I help the afflicted purge themselves of their crap - I mean, stuff - while "teaching" them the pleasures of an efficient, minimalist lifestyle.
Sadly, like most addicts, few are able to "recover" and usually start re-accumulating worthless crap - I mean, stuff - within weeks of my departure.
Haven't you heard? What you own makes you who you are. There was another of those polls not too long ago. It was restricted to wealthy people. They were asked what is the important thing in life. They responded overwhelmingly that money was the most important thing. Happiness finished far back.
Consumer delirium madness
http://coldwarproductions.blogspot.com/2008/04/indoctri-nation-fait-accompli.html
I don't get a check because I didn't have an income last year. I live in a studio apartment. I don't own a tv. I don't owe nobody nuthin'.
I spend as much time as possible with friends and loved ones.
Material possessions are just excess baggage on the journey through life.
You better spend it on a survival kit.
The "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" bit in the Declaration of Independence is a substitute for the phrase "life, liberty, and property" stated in the constitution of the Virginia colony. For the founding fathers, as for today's Americans, property and the pursuit of happiness are identical. Jefferson's substitution made it clear in the world of diplomacy that the Declaration of Independence was not a mandate for socialist revolution in the colonies.
Legalizing "the pursuit of happiness" in its natural, botanical form would be the best antidote for the surfeit of "stuff."
Mr. Dolan writes, "perhaps our economy is nearing rock bottom". Whooooooooeeeeeee! We just went over the cliff and are in free fall. Yes we are nearing rock bottom but it isn't the fall that kills you it is landing at the bottom. And we may not be so close to the bottom as Mr. Dolan thinks.
Couple of thoughts.
Many herbicides do their job by tricking the target plant into "growing itself to death" - surging forth with new mass at a rate that far outstrips the available resources. These plants, like a tapped out (bankrupt?) consumer, don't look starved - at least not up until the moment they collapse and shut down.
China has a trillion bucks stashed away. A good chunk of this, I've even heard that it's more than 50%, was acquired as interest payments on money China loaned in the past - particularily back in the '80s when interest rates were beefy.
Take these two thoughts, along with your current understanding of consumer/economic madness, and do a bit of reading about "The Art of War". Talk about knowing thy enemy...
I put mine into municipal bonds along with my `07 tax refund because we must repay all this borrowed 'largess' (AKA Bribe) some time.
greencellgrey June 3rd, 2008 12:27 pm
I'd like to point out also there wasn't nearly as much "stuff" you could get in 1956. TV's even then were only shpowing up in many housholds, etc. No computer's, DVD's, etc. GM, Ford or Chrysler, that was about iot.
Oil = Stuff
Every time I go online to order something I want I think of the Paul Simon song "The Boy in the Bubble":
These are the days of miracle and wonder
This is the long distance call
The way the camera follows us in slo-mo
The way we look to us all
The way we look to a distant constellation
That's dying in the corner of the sky
These are the days of miracle and wonder
In just a few short years, probably during the course of my now fairly long lifetime, all this "stuff" will come crashing in on us and we will be living like Somalian refugees, if that well. This will seem, in retrospect, like such a magical time. James Howard Kunstler's novel "A World Made By Hand" gives a hint at what it might be like for survivors of the next phase to remember what life is like now. It will be hard to believe that we were able to live like this.
Personally, I'm just going to live like I have been living. I do what I can; our city not only has recycling but now has compost collecting, and I'm glad to comply. I don't own a car and haven't for more than thirty years, so I feel like I've done my "carbon footprint" duty (I'm lucky to have been able to chose a place to live where one can be that way).
I don't think people can be blamed for not giving up the "non-negotiable" American way of life, or living "green" enough (the word "green" has now replaced the word "free" as the biggest advertising b.s. word of all time).
The only thing we can do is stay aware, try to resist the urge to be in denial about how bad things are going to get very soon, and hope that somehow we manage to survive without too much suffering and pain.
In 1956 there were fewer than 200 million Americans. Do you think there's any correlation to the fact that now 300 million Americans are fighting for ever diminishing resources? No wonder we think getting more "stuff" is the way to happiness. It's our culture of instant gratification, gratification that lasts an instant. Most of our social ills can be explained by overpopulation. Why are we rewarding people for having children? More souls for Jesus? More consumers for Madison Avenue? More workers to pay taxes?
And here I was going to donate a third of my stimulus check to Amnesty.
Americans will never give up their "stuff" until the economy totally crashes. It is really hard to carry a 42" LCD TV while in the soup line.
one thing to note about 1956 - society was just as materialistic as it is today. however, it was a transitional period, where many knew what it meant to live through scarcity, and technology seemed to provide the answers to all material need.
fifty years later, we have lost that perspective and increasingly cannot be in denial of the costs of our externalities - in terms of the planet and people's spirits - which are coming due.
the attitude conveyed here represents hope - that we can direct our energies to love and fellowship, of community and family. to teach our children to respect and honor the bounty afforded them, not build sprawling suburbs to keep them away from "bad" people, escort them in SUV's, drive teeming masses of labor to produce cheap toys and clothing as illusory signs of status.
hopefully it is not too late. there are other cultures that follow our example, whose appetites may prove larger than the Western world (i.e. China, South Asia), and whose adoption of a consumer lifestyle will guarantee a path to destruction.
let us take heed of this, and live by example.
Love Carlin's bit.
George Carlin's bit on "stuff" said it many decades ago.
Count my sister as one who'll spend hers on a flat screen TV, nevermind she's already maxed out her credit cards. Why? Because she "deserves" it.
Read "House Lust" by Daniel McGinn. It reads like an owners manual of overspending on homes and stuff to put in them.
This really sums it up -
"Sitting in our finished basement, wide screen plasma TV hung on the wall and surround-sound speakers circling us, we'll be able to watch Extreme Home Makeover in high-def. On the screen, families down on their luck will find happiness in an extravaganza of materialism wrapped in the veil of charity.
So much for the recession. The addiction continues."
GOD BLESS CVS, FORD, GM, GE and all the rest!!!!!
If you haven't watched this short animated film yet,
DO IT NOW!!
www.storyofstuff.com