The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
How prescient Wordsworth's words are to our economic crisis. "Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers." Does that not describe what has happened to the United States over the past couple decades, as we devolved from the great post-WWII industrial power to one whose primary worldwide role is to buy the "stuff" that every other nation manufactures?
The third and fourth lines of the poem continue:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
Wordsworth spoke collectively about his society, and ours, in saying "Little we see in Nature that is ours." In modern phraseology, we might say that as a society, we don't identify with Nature. "We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!" As a society, instead of recognizing that our own human existence depends on Nature, i.e. that it is at the heart of our existence, we instead exploit Nature carelessly and thoughtlessly, with the expansion of materialism well described as a "sordid boon." A boon" is defined as "a thing that is helpful or beneficial."
Any one who doubts that Nature makes human existence possible has failed to think about it. From the trees that convert carbon dioxide to create the oxygen we breathe, and the wood with which we build, to the fuels derived from ancient forests, from the rains and snows that create provide water, to the bacteria and worms that are constantly at work to create soil that grows our food, to the bees and insects that pollinate to grow the food we eat, everything that sustains us physically comes from Nature.
Indigenous cultures recognize their interdependence with Nature, but Western cultures, to the extent they have done so, have only recognized it in the past 200 years, beginning with the transcendental and environmental movements that create a voice for Nature. Can we attribute our Western, and now worldwide materialism to the belief expressed in Genesis Chapter 1, Verse 28 (King James version):
And God blessed them, and God said unto them Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth, upon the earth.
Or perhaps it's the Cartesian legacy, "I think, therefore I am." But without a body, do I exist? And can the body exist without the support of Nature? Many of us now have our heads in cyberspace, but not yet being angelic, our feet are still rooted in Earth.
And so now it's become a vicious circle. How many of us grow our own food? How many of us weave our own cloth and make our own clothing? How many of us create our own warmth from firewood or peat? No one I know.
But we have begun the creation of an economic system that is less destructive to the environment and evolves past gross consumption. There are now the organic and "slow food" movements, more and more useful and attractive products made from recycled and renewable materials and the development of renewable energy is now exploding. And each of us has the opportunity to be more conscious in the way we live our day-to-day lives. We can take our cloth bags to the grocery store, bring our own cup for coffee, buy at thrift stores, recycle EVERYTHING we possibly can and buy recycled whenever possible. This can even have economic benefits for us as individuals, especially as we plant a garden, weatherize our homes to reduce energy consumption, walk, ride a bike or take a bus, save and plan to buy a hybrid car or solar panels. And I'll bet that many of you already have other things you do that also are designed to save energy and help create a better world than the one we find ourselves in today.
Many things are within our power as individual consumers, and in doing these, we reinforce existing trends that can, in time, redefine our country's overall role on the planet from thoughtless to thoughtful consumerism. Our marketplace determines what everyone else in the world makes. Let us then collectively demand, recycled, efficient, organic low-impact products. Are they more expensive? Not if you calculate in saving the planet, and a new version of the American economy, for your children.
7 comments:
I really enjoyed watching the video for a Sociology class that I'm taking. It blew my mmind the things that I didn't think about the system of use and thow away. Thank you for taking the time to put together the video, "The Story of Stuff" and researching the system of mine, use, throw away. I hope we can learn to get out of the linear system, and into a more cyclical one. I try my best to help change this system, but I can't do it alone. Thank you, and I hope this finds you well,
Daniel Strones
The “Story on Stuff” (http://blip.tv/file/635316) does a good job of connecting the dots in the consumer philosophy. The manipulation of the masses by advertisement and the government for the sole purpose of shortsighted profits to the detriment of humankind is well displayed in this video. I think a key message of this video is to share this with as many people as you individually can. Knowledge is power and seeing the destructive course we are being led on should start to change things. I wonder if anyone has tried to get this on PBS for a bigger audience?
I agree with Janet Bridger’s assessment that we as individuals can make a difference lowering our eco-print but equally important to the solution is community involvement, whether local, state or federal government. The environmental problems we are facing are societal problems and need to be addressed as such. To make a lasting difference we need to address our addiction to a consumption philosophy. More involvement in our recent general election showed we as a nation have a desire for change in this country and it’s going to take the same sort of movement to impose our will on the current corporate profit focused corruption prevalent in our government.
As an individual I need to become more involved with groups that are active in these issues, since with numbers comes clout. Also as an individual I need to examine my current waste and future purchases with a more critical eye. I need to shop with companies that are showing an honest effort to address environmental issues with their products, such as byproduct wastes and planned obsolescence to name a few. With our urging (pressure) local and state governments must insist that any companies they deal with address these concerns as well, again with numbers comes the clout for change.
Our current President seems to be on the right course thus far. We can support his initiatives to assist business growth in “green” industries, by contacting him and our representatives to urge them on. The one of the articles I read “Greenliness is next to jobliness” on the site (http://www.grist.org/feature/2008/12/23/index.html) shows a movement for changing the devastating consume-oriented philosophy is starting to take shape in our government and our nation.
It’s up to us to keep the pressure on our representatives to move forward in this change; without this stepped up individual activism/participation we will not see change in the status quo of being a consume oriented society.
Without any questions I feel that problems in our environment are definitely a social issue. These problems are created, exacerbated and continued by us, the people.
I think that we have to take everything in life for what it is worth. By that I mean, in the video “story of stuff” I think we have to wonder, what message is this person trying to get across? I think that there were many points in that video that were extremely eye opening however, I also believe there were plenty of points that were taken out of context, dramatized, or exaggerated to “sell” her message. I know there are plenty of toxins used in manufacturing but this does not mean everything manufactured has toxins, what the message wants you to believe. Also, when President Bush told Americans to go shopping, he did not do this to get over grieving for September 11th as the author suggests. He did this to help revive an economy that was on a huge downward spiral and the faith Americans had in this economy was gloom. He was trying to tell the American people that he is not worried about the economy so they should not either. Another statement made from the narrator of this video was when referring to the corporation she says “I thought they were looking out for us?”. I think she is trying to establish an “us against them” mentality with her viewers. I never thought the corporations were looking out for us, I always thought they were looking out for their profits.
I think that this was a well done video and it is certainly eye opening. I also feel that when you make a video like this, it should not be biased, you should state facts. They seemed to have a lot of facts with referenced sources that were mentioned, but there was way to much rhetoric, in my opinion, to make you want to hate the whole process. I do not think that it is fair to say that we, as an American, go to work, home to watch television, then go to a shopping mall to buy things. I do not do this! I rarely go shopping and I rarely watch television. In my opinion, I think when a video has this much opinion or “loose statements” it cheapens the message more then if it was all factual.
As far as the article “It must be something we ‘08”, most of the stories mentioned have to do with either the government or the corporation. We have already established the importance of the role of these two entities. So it does not surprise me that in 2008, this article was basically saying that these were the two areas in which are causing the most grief in a “greener earth”. I definitely agree, that the government and the corporation MUST help in making changes to better this planet. Americans as a collective can do very little to change this planet but we can do a lot in persuading the government or corporations to make changes.
With all this said, I believe the problems this planet is facing are unequivocally devastating. We must all stand up and do her part in saving what we have, and helping to restore what we have had. I know a lot of these issues are way beyond the scope of “the average American”, however we can make changes if we all fight for them.
Story of Stuff
When I first started watching this I thought; here we go again, someone is going to make me feel bad for having when others don’t. Wow, she blew my mind. The first thing that came to mind is the DTV transition that is happening. So everyone I know that has the means is rushing out to their local neighborhood Wal-Mart to buy a new flat screen. The funny thing about it, is I bought a 42’ last year for around $1,100 with the warranty and my sister went to buy the same TV (model number and all) and its running her around $1400. I’m still not exactly sure why as a country we have to make the conversation anyway. Then she got to the part about our individual spending and I let my boyfriend watch with me. So we have a family budget and for each month we try and set aside at least $200-$400 a piece. We told each other that whatever we spend at the mall, Best Buy or the BX on base we will match in our savings. It’s absolutely ridiculous the stuff we buy, and for the first time in life I am saving. After watching the 20min clip, I walking in my closet and realized that I had about 4 different winter sweaters that I didn’t even take the tags off and now wont have a change to be worn. When pulling out summer clothes out of the guest room, I still had skirts from last summer I hadn’t worn (and probably cant fit now). Lastly, I bought my first home when I was 22, which I now still live in. My grandfather laughed at me when we did the final walk through. I had a three bedroom, 2-½ bath, 2-car garage, 2-story home and I was the only occupant. He said great, with the 2-car garage now you have more space to store your junk and he was right, its half full with stuff now. I want to be better with the spending and have promised myself that until my guest room closet is at least empty, I wont be buying any non-necessity clothes.
It Must Be Something (Who You Calling Chicken)
I had an Environmental Science class a few years ago and the teacher was vegetarian. She had us watch a clip from goveg.com that showed how animals were treated at slaughterhouses. Even though it was very disgusting, I will be honest and say it didn’t deter me from eating meat, but it did change the types of meat I purchased. The big thing was chicken for me personally. I know only eat free-range chicken and it may cost a few cents more and the meat is a little gamier, but it’s worth every penny. I guess that I can’t believe that being able to turn around and lie down in your cage is considered humane.
This has to deal with the Mega farms in our country. The farms are trying to house as many livestock as possible in the amount of space they have, they are making the pins hardly large enough for the animal to fit in. that’s before they inject them with hormones of course. When the United States has such a high demand for meat, and since so many people that make the laws aren’t vegetarian this is the type of stuff we end up with. View this link for a person look at a slaughterhouse (http://www.petatv.com/tvpopup/video.asp?video=pilgrims_web&Player=wm). If you eat chicken, eat free-range chicken or kosher beef.
Environmental problems are social because it affects us all. We only get one planet and this is where I children and grandchildren have to live. If we make bad decisions today, they are the ones that will have to deal with the extreme heat from global warming and the loss of the natural beauty that plants and animals provide us. Movies like Bambi will be a distant memory, since we wont have animals to show them at the zoo.
Eco-footprint Score was 33 and my Food quiz Score was 57% I only answered 4 out of 7 correctly. I thought that is was interesting that I didn’t know a lot of details of what regulations there were on organic foods but on the other hand I found out that I was doing better than I assumed with being eco-friendly.
There are things that everyone including myself can do it improve our eco-footprint. When I purchased my home all the appliances that I purchased were Energy-Star and with the rising cost of energy to heat in cool my home I can go one step further. Maybe by replacing the windows in my house, there are already double-pained upstairs and the sliding glass doors, but the windows downstairs aren’t doubled-pained. Also, we would need to invest in new weather stripping on the doors. Lastly, I have pondered the idea of installing solar panels, but I am not sure of the tax benefits or how cost affective it would really be. I think that if more people would start recycling from their homes that would be a start. I know that the reason that I didn’t sign up for it when I moved into my home was because of the additional monthly cost. I think that the city should gift the recycle bins to homeowners and then we would be more incline to recycle. I know that there are bins at Wal-Mart for example, but honestly I am not going to but a leaking bag of recyclables in my trunk.
The government can do what always encourages people, Tax Breaks. If I were to spend $6,000 installing solar panels and upgrading my home to be more energy efficient and I received a tax break of $3000-$4000, that would make the buy worth while for my long run energy cost.
The responsibility of solving environmental issues lies in the hands of EVERYONE. The problem affects us all and we all contribute to it. We as American’s have to learn to live an examined life and ask ourselves basic questions. Simple questions like, “do I really need this?” We think we are so independent and make our own choices but we fall into the trap of thinking we need things (perceived obsolescence) and we live a snookered life, rather than an examined life.
One of the best places to start living an examined life is getting rid of the trendy bottle of water!!! Thanks to the Environmental Working Group (http://www.grist.org/feature/2008/12/23/index.html) who revealed that the water in these bottles isn’t that much better for you anyway, we now have more of a reason to chuck the plastic bottle of water. Several years ago we invested in a whole house water purifying system, the money was better spent there than to buy water that we already had and could have tested for safety on our own! Not only is the water that we drink cleaner, the water we wash ourselves with is clean, too. People often forget that our skin drinks up toxins, too. I often wondered in the past as I would scrub my tub or look at the fixtures all caked with junk, what my body does with all that stuff? Yuck.
I think it would be great for our government to begin a similar campaign to Think Outside The Bottle and encourage all of America to ditch the plastic!!! There is so much power in letting people know the process of things, once they are made aware of the issues, they are more motivated to do what they can to be a part of the solution. If our government tapped into this power and educated Americans about all the different environmental issues, change would be more of a possibility on all levels.
Environmental problems are social problems because they affect everyone in a society. Whatever each of us does that hurts our environment whether intentional or not, will affect everyone around us. For example, I may ride my bike everywhere but I am still affected by the changes in weather patterns or temperature due to the effects of greenhouse gases many of which are caused by gas-guzzling vehicles.
Each of us can do something to help with environmental problems because every little bit helps. The most important thing that all of us can do is to acknowledge that there is a problem to begin with and then educate ourselves on everything that helps. The more of us that are aware, the more impact we can make on the problem. We can choose to recycle; avoid gas-guzzling vehicles by either getting more fuel-efficient cars, riding mass-transit or biking; we can make better choices as consumers by knowing what is in the products we buy; we can choose a vegetarian diet; we can choose to use different sources of energy. I learned from taking the eco-footprint quiz and a food quiz regarding organic labels that I am on board and taking steps to help the environment but there is still a lot of information I still need to do an even better job! (Score: 54="eco-ally" on the eco-footprint and only 57% on the organic food quiz :( !)
It would be even more helpful if governments got on board and decided to tackle the issue head-on and pushing us all, as well, into action. The more research they propose and legislation they mandate, the more all of us can do. One important step that they could take at the state or city level is to dictate mandatory recycling for everyone by providing the necessary tools to do so. That would be one step in the right direction. Another important federal step would be to change what is allowed in the products that we buy instead of allowing harmful ingredients that not only hurt our environment but our families as well.
In "The Story of Stuff" video, the author presents two points that I found relevant: 1-Here in the US, we have become a nation of consumers. In the 1950s, we were at our happiest being consumers but lately that happiness has declined. Some people say that consumerism is just the American way and that people are just trying to live the "American Dream." On-the-other-hand, we, as a nation need to realize that we are buying just for buying's sake and change our lifestyle. We are being mindless consumers buying things we don't really need because someone told us we needed it. This has caused us to become a very wasteful nation and the quality of the things we buy has gone completely down. 2-The state of garbage disposal in the US is startling. Each person creates about 4.5 pounds of garbage per day! There is nowhere good to dispose of all of this stuff. Every standard way of disposal is harming all of us: think about dioxin--"the most toxic man-made substance ever made," coming from our trash? The video states that recycling is "not enough," so what should we do? I think whatever it takes to find a solution to this problem! Right now we are poisoning ourselves and our families with our own trash! I know that some people don't want to worry about this stuff. To them, someone else takes our refuse away and that's all they want to know. Ignorance is bliss, after all.
From the article, "It Must be Something we '08," I felt that the environmental problem they were suggesting is how the government allows some pretty horrendous practices to take place in regards to the products we buy, including our food. If they don't help to stop this it will be hard on all of our citizens. This is probably one of the biggest problems we have regarding the environment: what our governments allow to go on all around us and what they allow in the items we buy
I believe environmental problems have become social because it has just become a way of life for people to not care about how we treat our planet. Our habits, cultures, and traditions have made it difficult for people (especially American people) to accept that the way we use our resources needs to change for the sake of saving our environment.
When I took the Eco-footprint and food quizzes online, I realized that I am still one of these people. I do not do enough, nor was I aware enough of what can be done individually to help conserve what resources we have left. The “Story of Stuff” video also helped me understand that my frame of mind is not where it should be when I think of my consumption habits. The video emphasizes how the environmental problems become social because, as Annie Leonard points out, our collective idea of happiness has become directly related to what we have. I say idea because that is exactly what it is. We believe that in order to be happy we have to have stuff, but the overall happiness of the country continues to decline since the 1950’s. I know that personally, my habits can change in big ways to be more Eco-Friendly, but in order for there to be a more significant and more timely impact there should also be some government intervention.
Lately, there has been a lot of talk about the use of “green” products and alternative ways to produce energy that are less harmful to the environment. This is a good place to begin, but when we follow the model shown on the “Story of Stuff” video, we see that the next step is the production. Once we obtain resources in the “greenest” ways possible, there should be stricter guidelines and regulations set for the productions of the goods we consume. There needs to be a longer useful life associated with the things we buy so that we don’t have to buy again after only a short while. With all of the advances in technology, we should be able to guarantee products for longer periods of time. There also could be a set time frame in which a company must wait before it can upgrade their products so that we, as consumers, don’t feel like we need the new version two weeks after we buy something. Regulations like these must come from the federal government, but there are things that can be done locally that can reduce our Eco-footprints.
One thing that has been done in my neighborhood is every house was given a recycle bin pickups are on the same day for those bins as for trash bins. This has made recycling as convenient as possible for the people who live near me, and I can see the difference. The people in my neighborhood, including myself, have increased our recycling habits because of this step taken by our local government. If we all continue to take small steps like this one, we will eventually make a big difference in the way we effect our planet.
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