The Story of Stuff - Annie Leonard [123]
“It is not that Americans do not accept the Constitution, indeed they love it,” write law professor Eric Lane and journalist Michael Oreskes in their 2007 book The Genius of America—How the Constitution Saved Our Country and Why It Can Again, “but... they no longer have any idea of its contents or its context. For them, Government has become a place to seek a product and they grow angry at government when it does not deliver.”83 Some see the government solely as a service provider; others see it as an obstacle to individual success. Either way, the fundamental sense is of government being external to or separate from us. What happened to the idea that government, and governance more generally, is something we can, indeed must participate in? Remember “government of the people, by the people, for the people”? That’s us—the people! But we’re letting all that drift away because we’re busy watching TV or shopping at the mall.
The result: two-year-olds can articulate brand preferences and teenagers spend more time in shopping malls than reading or exercising, while about half of adults don’t bother to vote regularly in public elections84 and fewer than 15 percent have ever been to a public meeting.85
Of all the worrisome trends and data on the state of the planet—and there are many—the one that I am most worried and sad about is the withering away of this community/citizen self because that is what we most need right now. Given how constantly we’re bombarded with messages that reinforce us as consumers, it’s understandable that we get stuck there. It’s familiar, and that’s comforting. We know what is expected of us, we know the rules, and we know the system.
A Buddhist teacher I know named Dr. Rita Lustgarten cautioned me about the lure of familiarity. She explained that repeated experiences bring with them a reassuring sensation, which we can easily mistake as being a good thing, when it is just the familiarity that feels attractive. Familiarity can feel like an old friend. That is why we repeat all kinds of patterns in our lives that aren’t always good for us. In other words, as my friend Peter Fox says, “Sometimes we’re in a rut so deep, we think it’s a groove.” A familiar dead end is often more appealing than an unknown open road.
Conscious Consuming
Trying to consume our way out of the mess we’re in is a familiar dead end. Many people believe or hope that if we just buy greener, if we buy this instead of that, everything will be OK. Sorry to be a buzzkill here, but we need way more than that. This is why I am uninspired by all the hype about the latest “green” product line or the “green shopping guides” that seem to be springing up all over the place.
Skeptics call this concept “greensumption,” while advocates call it “conscious consuming.” It’s about bringing a new level of awareness to your consumption. In practice, it means giving preference to products that are the least toxic, least exploitative, and least polluting—and steering clear of products linked to environmental, health, or social injustices.
Don’t get me wrong: of course when we do shop, we should buy the least toxic, least exploitative, least harmful product available—and thanks to the GoodGuide we can better and more quickly assess which products those are. But conscious consumption is not the same thing as citizen engagement. Being an informed and engaged consumer is not a substitute for being an informed and engaged citizen. The “what should I buy differently” response to the critically serious environmental and social mess we’re facing now worries me because it shows how much our citizen or community self has become dormant. What we really need is