The Elitism of Waste, or Measuring Our Success with Garbage

Here we are: the third day and the third post. I’m trying to figure out how often I’ll post and am not sure if I’m up for daily. I’m taking weekends off and probably every other Thursday and possibly the first Monday of every month if it falls on an an even-numbered date, oh geez, I just need to stop wasting time, space, (yes, I'm a fan of the terminal comma) and little electronic letters on when I’ll write and just write.

This is something that’s been rolling around in my head for a while. As a society do we value someone’s ability to waste? I mean, is the amount someone buys, throws away, etc a determination of their societal stature? I’m thinking yes.

It’s pretty much a given that we’re a consumer society. Since the Great Depression, there’s been a drive (yikes, a conspiracy even?) to encourage people to spend money. Spending money keeps the economy going, which keeps employment up, etc, etc, etc (queue Yul Brynner from the King and I). But along with that consumption comes waste (not to mention debt, but that’s someone else’s blog). Do you think people (in some circles) don’t want to reuse or reduce (and maybe even recycle) because they’re concerned that they might look cheap or financially unworthy?

I keep hearing how the standard of living has decreased, but I look around at my house and those of my friends and compare it to what I grew up with (no offense mom, this is just big-picture social commentary). Growing up, our house, like most others, was smaller than what I live in now, we didn’t have the gadgets (or the freaking clutter) that my home and family does now, so where’s the decrease in the standard of living? I’m not saying poverty doesn’t exist, I’m just asking if we’ve gotten so attached to buying what we want, when we want, that any reduction, be it for financial reasons or other reason, hurts our pride or self-esteem. Even though we tell our kids not to give in to peer pressure, are those highfalutin, illusory Jones’s making us feel like we need to keep up?

There’s been a push with sites like The Story of Stuff that invite watchers to think about how their consumerism impacts the planet. This has spurred individuals and groups to challenge themselves to not buy anything—or at least talk about not buying things—on YouTube videos like this.

Personally, sometimes I find myself having to justify why I’m not out shopping (besides the fact that we’re “on a budget”). And since I think I’m pretty bourgeois and ordinary, I’m wondering if others feel the same way too. So, what do you think, have we become spoiled? Will a reduction in consumerism kill the economy? What drives you to shop or not?

I’m thinking that a case of wine or a keg of beer between us and we could fix the world, but that might mean we’d have to stop by the liquor store…