Life

A Tyee Series

All Together Now

Why sharing stuff is the way to fend off environmental catastrophe -- and eco-narcissists need not apply. First in a reader-funded series.

By Chris Cannon, 20 Apr 2010, TheTyee.ca

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What if we approached environmentalism and consumerism as a community, first?

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Also in this series:
Share Tactics: Why Going It Alone Doesn't Work Anymore

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For most of the past decade, the sky has been falling. Too long it was propped up by faith in endless natural resources and our belief in the sustainability of infinite debt, until, almost two years ago, it finally stopped struggling and succumbed to the gravity of our myopic lifestyles. The market's response to this crash was remarkably short-sighted, but not entirely unpredictable: spend more, conserve less.

The global economic meltdown of 2009 should have been -- and still can be -- a turning point in how we view our relationship to our natural world and our fellow beings. While consumer confidence may be the underpinning of a healthy economy, it is social confidence that binds us as a community, and shouldn't we care more for our neighbors than we do for the condo walls that stand between us? Those invested in their communities and relatively property-free were well-shielded from the crash, and their lifestyle choices offer an object lesson to the rest of us.

In the following series, I look at the societal and environmental benefits of sharing resources, focusing on three of the most socially divisive and ecologically destructive industries on the planet: housing, transportation, and clothing.

The recent meltdown has given us pause to re-imagine ourselves in relation to our environmental and economic debt. What if we saw ourselves as custodians rather than consumers? How much better off would we find our world if we approached both environmentalism and consumerism as a community rather than a collection of competing individuals? If we learned to think in terms of "ours" rather than "mine," how much richer would we all actually be?

Buy me a river

In 1899, a radical University of Chicago professor by the name of Thorstein Veblen published The Theory of the Leisure Class, in which he lamented the spending habits of the nouveau riche. A passionate criticism of the cycle of splurge and waste, Veblen's book coined the phrase "conspicuous consumption" to highlight the use of resources for status rather than practical means. The purpose of being wealthy, it seemed, was to remind others that they were less so.

In 1955, a successful businessman named Victor Lebow articulated the future of Western consumerism. The United States was moving from a war economy to a peace economy, and needed a way to continue the remarkable growth the war had engendered. In a passage titled "The Real Meaning of Consumer Demand," Lebow writes: "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 satisfactions, our ego satisfactions, in consumption. The measure of social status, of social acceptance, of prestige, is now to be found in our consumptive patterns. The very meaning and significance of our lives today expressed in consumptive terms."

Lebow is often misrepresented as being a champion of this self-feeding orgy of consumer desire, but it is much more likely that he was trying to warn us. Two decades later, he added: "Capitalism is already showing signs that it can no longer generate the social morale so essential to continued existence. It is true that it has freed probably more than half the American people from scarcity and want. But at the heart of this business civilization is a 'hollowness' -- everything is evaluated in money terms."

In the fall of 2001, U.S. president George W. Bush leaned against a podium and spoke to the American people. Puppy-eyed, addressing a nation in shock from the World Trade Center attack, he confirmed Lebow's prediction by telling us the best way to deal with our grief is to go shopping. And then, just for good measure, he added a plug for Disneyland.

We are a planet of locusts, and North America -- which makes up about five percent of the world's population but consumes 30 per cent of its resources -- is the heart of the swarm. According to Paul Hawken's 1999 book Natural Capitalism, so much material is wasted in the processing of goods, that within six months of an item's purchase, only one percent of the materials involved in its manufacture are still in use.

"In other words," says Annie Leonard in her internet video The Story of Stuff, "99 percent of the stuff we harvest, mine, process, transport -- 99 per cent of the stuff we run through this system is trashed within six months."

The 20-ton wedding ring

To bring the point home, take a look at the gold ring on your finger. Now imagine it weighs twenty tons. That, according to Leonard, is how much mining waste was produced for that lone circle of pinky insulation, whose only contribution to society is the generation of envy.

Leonard blames our out-of-control consumerism on the twin strategies of planned obsolescence (the reason Christmas lights break after 11 months) and perceived obsolescence (the reason your shoes go out of style after 11 minutes). Our value as human beings has become tied to how much we contribute to this cycle of consumption and waste -- whether we've got the sleekest car, the coolest shades, the flippiest cell phone. Sometimes change is pushed so fast that they just seem to run out of good ideas (parachute pants anyone?).

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, each person in North America generates more than four pounds of garbage a day. For each of those four pounds, 280 pounds of additional waste are created in manufacturing those products. What rabid environmentalists we would all become if we had to carry twice our body weight in trash to the curb each morning.

Many of the efforts by our governments, businesses, and media are aimed at combating the waste inherent in planned obsolescence -- cleaner energy, recycling initiatives, and caps on corporate pollution.

But the larger problem is perceived obsolescence, which has not only engendered an endless, species-wide sprint to next month's fashion craze or Whatever 2.0, but has divided us as a community, causing us to value each other based on how much we contribute to the cycle of consumerism.

Envying the wasteful

To put it another way, the more someone demonstrates their commitment to being wasteful, the more we envy them. The simplest, most immediate, and most rewarding solution to perceived obsolescence is not found in technology or regulation; it is found in a reassessment of how we value each other as fellow beings.

The very notion of "owning" resources vastly reduces the potential of those resources. Token changes to simply appear greener in the public eye is not a solution to our hunger for status, it is an extension of it, a phenomenon that has come to be known as "eco-narcissism" (such as spending $100,000 on a Lexus hybrid, when a used, diesel-powered Yaris gets twice the mileage for a tenth the price, without the extraordinary materials cost of a new car). If our environmental choices are to have any real effect, we must get past the idea that consuming responsibly does not necessitate a reduction in overall consumption.

In other words, it doesn’t matter that our consumer choices are "green" if we don't significantly reduce the consumption itself through community-based sharing of resources. The following series will examine specific ways we can move toward a shared-resource system, and, more generally, investigate the social aspect of community-based environmental solutions.

The lesson here? Mom was right. You should share your stuff.

Tomorrow: Communal bicycles: Montreal does it, why can't we in B.C? And other ways, beyond the bus, to share transport. [Tyee]

Chris Cannon is a writer in Vancouver. With a Tyee Fellowship for Solutions-oriented Journalism, he wrote his series "Share Tactics: Why Going It Alone Doesn't Work Anymore."

23 Comments:

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  • Takuan

    2 years ago

    seen this work:

    http://www.elc.uvic.ca/press/car-stops.html

  • freebear

    2 years ago

    Sesame Street lessons

    long forgotten by adults after being lured into the consumption system!

  • SharingIsGood

    2 years ago

    After my own heart

    Thank you, Chris Cannon, and thank you, Tyee, for starting this series. I hope that we can have a great dialogue ensue.

    T believe if we work to dialogue rather than argue/debate, then we can all walk away from this series having felt we contributed positively and that we may learn something useful.

    Certainly, our living on a planet, with limited resources, requires that we curtail "growth" and competition. Competition requires that there be losers. I grow weary of our collective insanity as a species. We must become better at collaborating.

    Long time readers of these comments know what I always say: - "Sharing Is Good".

  • Fiat lux

    2 years ago

    There are thousands of

    There are thousands of examples in history that all past and present manmade, human and ecological disasters have been licenced and caused by faith based, religious and ideological theories.

    If humanity wants to survive it'll have to get rid of all ideology based economic theories and the present, artificially promoted monetary values, designed to benefit ruling sectors, and turn to physical values based economic and accounting systems.

    All economic activities are physical, based on physical laws that can not be overturned with the forced application of imaginary values.

    The presently used form of monetary efficiency, including the phony GDP figures, demanding the biggest monetary returns for the smallest monetary inputs, are outright fraud. The promoters of this insanity should be in jail with the rest of the common criminals.

    There's only one form of efficiency, the physical, which means the most work done with the smallest resource/energy inputs. Even if it reduces the GDP
    nonsense.

    Unless we realize and accept this simple fact we'll be going downhill in an ever increasing pace, until the final crash.

    To start with, get rid of and scrap 90% of airliners and militaries and enjoy the benefits of less pollution and propaganda madness.

    Ed Deak.

  • Takuan

    2 years ago

    how about a church-tax?

    we could put the money towards establishing "community centers" at a far denser level than present. Should be lots of cheap buildings coming on the market as people desert traditional organized religions. It would give people a basic level to organize at, a need that was (badly) filled before by the gods-botherer's establishments.

  • Takuan

    2 years ago

    and speaking of organizing to share:

    we should be actively pushing for this in Canada:

    http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10374831-2.html

    The feds and their owners ,the film and record industries, are fighting to make access to web communication something they can cut off at will, to keep the people on their knees. If we want to help each other at a grassroots cooperative level, a free web is essential for talking to each other.

  • barney

    2 years ago

    virtual hoarding just as insidious

    The Internet medium is as much worthy of inclusion in this analysis, if rabid consumers of the next must-have gadget or wireless device are any indication. The quest for virtual stuff (FB friends, games, music downloads, freeware, payware, Twitter followers, blog hits or other online things that we are hoarding to no end) is just as insidious a pursuit as the tangible material stuff we hoard via Wal-Mart or Best Buy. The fact Madison Avenue has picked up on this, while most of us haven't, is just another example of how Bernays-style focus group research is always just enough ahead of consumers to keep the riches rolling in, no questions asked.

    The biggest hoodwink at play here is the false idea that once we plug into the Internet, we are immune from and above the acts of consumerism that are ruining our environment and spelling an end to our species. We think by sending a virtual Xmas or birthday card, we've beat the system! Ha! Right.

    The idea of sharing truly is a cornerstone of our human nature, which is necessarily a social. However, the act of sharing is something that must be done with all five senses and real, lived interaction for us to truly realize our potential as communities.

  • morechatter

    2 years ago

    All For One And One For All

    Share the misery that is the only thing the Feds are good for. It is what community is all about and despite Governments and Big Coporation retoric about keeping it All to Yourself as members in communities rot away creating an environment of dispare. It all comes back count on it as if you create a cold and unfeeling enivornment that is what you will get to share with your neighbors. Try one of those upscale neigborhoods nobody trusts anybody I wonder why that is? And counting on the greedy to share well that only get you into a recession as one scheme after another turns up and is still turning up. You don't have to have heart but the latest cabinet and sofa at Ikea or so many are led to believe as marketing companies go in for the kill..

  • Fiat lux

    2 years ago

    Having been in the custom

    Having been in the custom furniture mfg business for 35 years, I can assure you that the cabinet and sofa from Ikea could be made for just about the same price by some independent cabinetmaker.

    But they have all been wiped out by big business encouraged by governments, because their miseducated economists are feeding them false figures.

    Nothing can be made "cheaper" than the lowest resource/energy inputs and that's why and where locally based small businesses are the most efficient and sustainable.

    But economists and politicians have yet to figure out the difference between real costs and their own asses.

    Ed Deak.

  • Bailey

    2 years ago

    And don't forget their elbows

    Mr. Deak; Very good points, you make. Based on sound thinking.

    The article above makes a couple of points that should be emphasized, which strengthen your own physical economies argument.

    First, there's the historical point. After the second war manufacturers demanded a way to continue the process of creating "growth" that had brought them such riches during the destruction, and the military authorities agreed. The process of actual war was obviously unsustainable, not to mention likely to result in universal revolt.

    They came up with what we got. Consumption based value systems that deny and denigrate the true nature of the world, and not just the human part of it. Planned obsolescence is the manufacturer's equivalent of war, without all the explosions.

    Second, we are social monkeys. We live in groups and always have, and that means we need a way to achieve status in those terms. All our family and spiritual values, what's left of them anyway, demonstrate this fact one way or another.

    The native people on the coast had a very nice way of gaining status by sharing. The Potlatch system. As I understand it, significant events were marked in the collective memories of the people by huge parties during which enormous amounts of the personal products of the hosts were distributed to the neighbours, who were both honoured by it and also obligated by it to continue the distribution by giving their own Potlatches to mark their own events.

    It also tended to strengthen other bonds, as young folks could meet and court at these celebrations, and intermarriages often resulted.

    The idea of interrelationships lies at the heart of your own arguments and that, I think, is the thing that consumerism fails to see. We just can't live like this for long.

    All the shortcomings you point out are obviously coming home to roost, We need a plan.

    We absolutely must find and substitute real human values for the deluded ones we have been using for the past century and more. We need real, palpable ways to honour people and confer status on people that are based on something more real than money.

    If we also at the same time design this new way of thinking to reward permanent values, like sharing and actual physical efficiency, as you point out is so essential, so much the better for us all.

    Especially the children, and the children's children.

  • John Greg

    2 years ago

    Excellent Article

    Thanks Chris for an excellent article, and what I anticipate is going to be a thought provoking, interesting, and comment-laden series.

  • Takuan

    2 years ago

    re-post, but fits the above:

    http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/apr/08/ill-fares-the-land/

  • skarpes

    2 years ago

    One idea

    How many of us could SHARE a lawnmower a chipper, or a utility-trailer (and/or other tools) with our neighbours? (There's also an opportuntity to build community within that.)

  • Takuan

    2 years ago

    neighbourhood garden clubs

    are a natural start

  • davidex

    2 years ago

    Skarpes, Is your question

    Skarpes,
    Is your question (How many of us could SHARE a lawnmower..) rhetorical or real?
    If it's real, the answer is, not many. Our society now lacks the common courtesy to make it happen. Every handyman knows the rule: "Never share your tools", because most people don't know that when you borrow something, you are honour-bound to return it promptly and in better shape than you received it and to treat it with more respect than if it was your new-store-bought thing.
    Also, most common items manufactured today have an inner design that makes them self-destruct when shared around because of flimsy moving parts, little accessory pieces that are easy to lose (cords, instruction manuals, etc.) and custom finishes that easily scratch and tarnish.
    Our urban society seems to equate anything shared with "worthless", as if to say, "if they're willing to loan it out, it musn't be worth anything to them..", so when we've tried shared bicycles, people just ride them and then throw them into the Creek rather than return them in consideration of the valuable resource that they actually are.
    Big change in attitudes required all the way from the manufacturers to the users... oh, yeah.. and our politicians too.

  • Takuan

    2 years ago

    I post this around the neighbourhood from time to time

    http://www.simpleliving.net/shop/item.aspx?itemid=759

  • Takuan

    2 years ago

    and davidex

    you have to take risks to build trust, and community and civil society is based on trust. Regard for the stranger. So what if your mower gets returned dirty or broken a few times? What's a lawn mower worth? Or, what is a community worth? If you can learn, give others the benefit of the doubt too.

  • Chris Cannon

    2 years ago

    beyond ownership

    Takuan and Davidex -

    Valid comments -- it is hard, and often impractical, to share your stuff -- but the point of the series is to look beyond ownership and think of property that is shared with the community as community property. Instead of someone sharing their lawnmower, the whole block owns it. Maybe somebody has an extra shed, and five or six neighbours who know each other contribute to it -- a lawnmower here, an edger there, a shelf of painting supplies. Everyone has a key, everyone maintains the gear.

    There are a hundred scenarios like this that would work, but the big speed bump is getting over the mentality of "this is mine, and you may borrow it for now" to "this is ours, and we are all responsible for it." Read my piece next wednesday on shared housing, and see how the co-op (and many like it) shares food and such. Trust is easier because they all share the house. But how hard is it to extend this concept to the block? And how utopian if it were possible to extend this concept to a whole city? Probably impractical, but still something to shoot for.

  • Takuan

    2 years ago

    three days hunger makes enemies

    six days makes a village

  • Takuan

    2 years ago

    damn

    doesn't translate. Never mind, you get the idea.

  • carfreecity

    2 years ago

    rugged individulism

    which is why we have SUVs, big fat pickup trucks and other armoured vehicles
    libraries were/are a way to share
    but it's still a "don't touch my car" mind think
    cluster housing, the commons... better way to arrange our habitats

  • Takuan

    2 years ago

    was talking with a Venezuelan friend the other day

    and came across this gem:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuaXcRtgPzE

  • Takuan

    2 years ago

    bleedin' 'ippies!

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sAKRpjmZj0

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