The Serpent's Wisdom

So, yes, i've seen it mentioned: "recession chic." It's stylish now to talk about how you're doing without some modern luxury that people had gotten used to. Cheaper clothing, cheaper vacations, keeping the car a year or so longer. More and more talking heads on TV telling us how morally satisfying it is when you save instead of consuming quite so conspicuously.

And while yes, Americans have badly needed to buy less crap than they can honestly afford, it feels like the mass media has decided now to sell the recession, just as when we had money and credit they sold us more crap than we could afford. They needed us then to be happy quiet content little consumer bots, and now they need us to be happy quiet content not-making-runs-on-the-bank bots.

It is interesting, though, how easy it is for the spell of marketing to unravel. It's like people are waking up to the realization, "Oh, hey, i don't need to have a new 4-in-one PDA/phone/GPS/MP3 player, the items i already have work just fine. Or, you know, i'll even go without, because somehow that's how i existed 10 years ago and i was just fine back then." It's like the echoes in the echo chamber are starting to die down and you can hear your own thoughts for once.

Once upon a time it was practically unpatriotic to suggest that people save a bit more and buy a bit less. Now we're hearing about the virtues of saving more and buying less, from the same people, pretty much. It's not that they can't make up their minds; it's that they care less about meaning than about what we need to hear to stay in line.

So, along comes "recession chic;" marketers selling us what we already have, which is a sudden decrease of abundance. It's to float us along until they get the echo chamber started again. We're roughing it! It's fun! It's an adventure! And doesn't it feel good to put money into savings instead of buying a piece of worthless crap? But soon the adventure will be over and we can go back to buying tons of useless crap on our credit cards again.

But if this goes on long enough, maybe the edifice will start to crack a bit. What do i mean? I mean this strange world order in which somehow many of us have jobs that do not relate even remotely to the core functions of survival: growing food, distributing food, making clothing, gathering resources, making tools, making shelters, maintaining shelters, curing illness, child care, teaching. Wait, what is all this other stuff we're doing? Well, some of it makes sense: research, development, energy, waste management; a lot of it doesn't.

If it goes on long enough, maybe more people won't be so eager to fall for low "introductory rates" on credit cards next time around. Maybe they won't so easily succumb to the allure of new gadgets.

Now is the perfect time to get the word out about how poisonous the flowers in this phony paradise really are. To make people aware, for example, that the sudden spike in demand for tantalum, which is used to make numerous electronic devices like the Playstation 2, incited a war in the Congo. People were dying and children were being enslaved in mines half a world away so that we can have a game machine, and most of us never even knew about it.

This started as a response to cullent's post about Buy Nothing Day, but I realized it was a good enough rant to go in my journal.

For me, "Buy Nothing Day" has nothing to do with being "überhip." I'm one of the most terminally unhip people you will ever encounter. I'm so unhip, anything I touch instantly turns 'so fifteen minutes ago.'

The reason I espouse this has little to do with third-world sweatshops, although that is never far from my mind. That is an issue that will require far more work than simple boycotting, since it is now endemic in our standard of living. Some of the Democratic presidential candidates are talking about adding international labor standards to trade pacts. I think this is a step in the right direction.

No, for me "Buy Nothing Day" is about refusing to play compulsory conspicuous consumption games.

If you look at the numbers (which numbers are hard to even find because there's been a deliberate campaign to discourage you from adding this up), even the "boom years" of the late 90's were artificially inflated by the amounts of money credit consumers spent during November and December. Towards the end of the 90's this season literally made the difference between "expansion" and "recession."

Conspicuous consumption has a downward pull on the quality of goods and services. Companies are encouraged to make cheaper, more disposable products. Going down this road has made America insanely overworked -- we work longer hours to make cheaper products, so that we can buy more, not just because we are programmed to want more, but also because we have to buy more to replace things more often.

The average American spends between $800 and $2000 on this season alone. This is not cash being spent, but credit, which adds up and never seems to be completely paid off. There's a good reason why our forebears thought of debt as a vice. When the economy was buzzing along, and people had no trouble meeting their minimum credit card payments, this was like a big happy party. Look at the bankruptcy figures now. A lot of this is credit card debt, and a lot of that in turn is Christmas shopping.

Furthermore, credit card companies are evil incarnate, almost as bad as the pharmaceutical companies. Many states have laws defining interest over 10% as usury. (Look it up, I dare you.) Somehow the credit card companies have managed to get around this. Even with the prime lending rate feeding from the bottom as it is now, people still feel privileged to have a credit card that charges less than 10% annually.

In the movies, whenever you see slaves in a ship galley being forced to row, they have this big shirtless guy beating a drum, to set the rhythm the slaves are supposed to row to. The Christmas season has an equivalent, and you'll start to see it in a couple of days. Every other day, there will be some item in the news about how much consumers are spending compared to last year. This is ALWAYS a negative appraisal, accompanied by the words "retailers are worried that people are not spending as much this year." If anyone can remember these appraisals EVER being positive, please let me know. The message of these reports is obvious as hell -- if you're not doing your part to fuel the economy, then you are being a bad citizen!

In closing... I hope no one buys me anything for Christmas. I hope no one expects to receive anything from me for Christmas. I hereby give you permission to spend some money on yourself instead. Buy something you really want for yourselves. Encourage everyone around you to do the same.

Reading Brave New World. Man! Compulsory consumption. Mindnumbing corporate mass entertainment completely devoid of intellectual content. Widespread use or encouragment of sex and drugs to dull the mind and spirit. Job specialization and a rigid class-caste system.

I'm sure glad I don't live in THAT world. In THIS world I can freely talk about how much I despise Christmas, especially the compulsory consumerism involved with the whole season, and not feel like a freak or outcast.

Moving around and sorting through my material possessions this weekend has me aware of the fact that I really don't own very much. To an extent this has been lack of money to buy electronic toys -- but at the same time, I haven't really had the interest. I'm just kind of curious to see what people's realities are on this.

[Poll #134080]