mousme: A view of a woman's legs from behind, wearing knee-high rainbow socks. The rest of the picture is black and white. (Recycle!)
mousme ([personal profile] mousme) wrote2007-02-04 11:02 pm
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A nifty quote

"A big transformation for me was from consumer to citizen. Once you take out the consumer role in your life, you start to have a lot more time and passion and money to contribute as a citizen."
~Judith Levine

Yes. That.

Taken from this article. It's a tempting idea. I don't know if I could go for a year without buying books, though. I might be able to go an entire year without going to the movies. Lord knows, I think I can count on the fingers of one hand the movies I went out to see.

It makes me wonder if I could do it...
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[identity profile] urban-homestead.livejournal.com 2007-02-05 05:53 pm (UTC)(link)
I think - and I'm going to post more about this in my own journal, concidentally - that there's more to it than responsible consumption. It's our societal inability to say, "I have enough, I don't need anything more" that I find alarming, not just because of the environmental damage created by excess production, but because people in this society are so rich and have so much stuff and are so unhappy. And I don't mean you, but the average thirtysomething and up, it probably is true for. People work horrifically long hours to pay for the McMansions they have no time to spend in, and they are still depressed because the people on TV seem to have so much more than they do. No matter how rich people are, no matter how much they have, they still hunger after more. And that's not because they're greedy, it's because as a society we have all but forgotten the difference between liking something and needing it. A shopping "fast" seems to me like as good a way as any to break this habit and learn all over again the difference between "want" and "need"

[identity profile] mousme.livejournal.com 2007-02-05 06:02 pm (UTC)(link)
A shopping "fast" seems to me like as good a way as any to break this habit and learn all over again the difference between "want" and "need."

Quite. For me this will essentially be a processes of thinking more about what I'm buying and what my reasons for buying it are.

I have long been convinced that society has its priorities seriously screwed up. So far, nothing has been done to prove me wrong.
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