Or, How our consumerism is killing America, which in turn is doing its best to kill the Earth.
[Warning, this will be a somewhat rambling post. My brain is in a state of shut down due to studying for semester finals this week.]
Humans, myself included, generally gravitate toward self-indulgence. For a while this was held in check for various reasons - possibly due to income, and personal upbringing, sometimes perhaps through religion, also because of difficulty in transportation, resulting in smaller markets more focused more on necessities and local products. But in America today, self-indulgence is promoted everywhere you turn. And Self-Indulgence walks hand-in-hand with a Lack of Self-Control, giving birth to the "Instant Gratification" syndrome.
Modern marketing uses our self-indulgence against us, bombards us with images and sound, to convince us we need things we don't really need, all the while telling us we "deserve" this or that. And instant gratification plays right into that - we don't give ourselves time to go home and realize that we don't really need whatever it is they're trying to sell us.
I believe this plays a part in the current "epidemic" of obesity. Have you ever realized how much advertising is about food? Due to that lack of self-control, many people no longer eat when they are hungry, but when they want a certain taste. And with a craving for an instant gratification, it's easy to for people with busy lifestyles (and who isn't busy these days!) to tend toward eating processed, or fast food, or pre-made meals, that contain unhealthy additives, and/or have lost their nutritional value through processing. With this easy access to food, we also have a tendency of buying more than we can use before it spoils. Did you know that Americans waste 40% of their food? Forty percent. That is a HUGE amount of food.
These trends of self-indulgence, instant gratification, and lack of self control have also contributed to widespread personal debt. So many no longer live within their means, but use credit to live a financially unsustainable lifestyle. Again, I speak from experience. I'm learning the hard way how many things I really don't need, and that it's better to live with older things - possibly less aesthetic things - but ones that still function, and fore-go the "fluff" I thought I needed, than to live with thousands of dollars in credit card debt hanging over my head.
The reason I'm harping on all of this, is that these trends are a huge contribution to America's negative environmental impact. We don't care that we drive our car when we could just as easily take the bus, because we don't want to give up that bit of independence/convenience. We don't care that our current lifestyles are carelessly using up the planetary resources, as long as we have the best food, plenty of beef, and the latest gaming console. The fact that the production of these things is destroying ecosystems, supporting unsustainable manufacturing or agriculture, using our water unsustainably, and contributing to greenhouse gas emmissions doesn't even cross our minds.
One problem we face as a nation, is that we won't take personal responsibility for our own actions, but would rather make it the Government's problem. But by default, it's sure as hell going to become our problem anyway, because when the government steps in, stupidity tends to result. For example, the FDA is trying to class sugar as a drug, because we don't have the self control to limit our intake. And those laws passed restricting the size of a soda that you can purchase in certain cities. Come on, people, really? First off, people who want to drink soda and eat sugar are still going to do it. Some law isn't going to stop them, just make them pay a little more to do it. Secondly, when did it become the government's job to do our menu-planning?!
As a nation, as well as a resident of Earth, it is critical that we re-learn self-control. And secondly, we need to wake up to the ecological damage our decadent habits have inflicted, and start working to reverse them.
[Warning, this will be a somewhat rambling post. My brain is in a state of shut down due to studying for semester finals this week.]
Humans, myself included, generally gravitate toward self-indulgence. For a while this was held in check for various reasons - possibly due to income, and personal upbringing, sometimes perhaps through religion, also because of difficulty in transportation, resulting in smaller markets more focused more on necessities and local products. But in America today, self-indulgence is promoted everywhere you turn. And Self-Indulgence walks hand-in-hand with a Lack of Self-Control, giving birth to the "Instant Gratification" syndrome.
Modern marketing uses our self-indulgence against us, bombards us with images and sound, to convince us we need things we don't really need, all the while telling us we "deserve" this or that. And instant gratification plays right into that - we don't give ourselves time to go home and realize that we don't really need whatever it is they're trying to sell us.
I believe this plays a part in the current "epidemic" of obesity. Have you ever realized how much advertising is about food? Due to that lack of self-control, many people no longer eat when they are hungry, but when they want a certain taste. And with a craving for an instant gratification, it's easy to for people with busy lifestyles (and who isn't busy these days!) to tend toward eating processed, or fast food, or pre-made meals, that contain unhealthy additives, and/or have lost their nutritional value through processing. With this easy access to food, we also have a tendency of buying more than we can use before it spoils. Did you know that Americans waste 40% of their food? Forty percent. That is a HUGE amount of food.
These trends of self-indulgence, instant gratification, and lack of self control have also contributed to widespread personal debt. So many no longer live within their means, but use credit to live a financially unsustainable lifestyle. Again, I speak from experience. I'm learning the hard way how many things I really don't need, and that it's better to live with older things - possibly less aesthetic things - but ones that still function, and fore-go the "fluff" I thought I needed, than to live with thousands of dollars in credit card debt hanging over my head.
The reason I'm harping on all of this, is that these trends are a huge contribution to America's negative environmental impact. We don't care that we drive our car when we could just as easily take the bus, because we don't want to give up that bit of independence/convenience. We don't care that our current lifestyles are carelessly using up the planetary resources, as long as we have the best food, plenty of beef, and the latest gaming console. The fact that the production of these things is destroying ecosystems, supporting unsustainable manufacturing or agriculture, using our water unsustainably, and contributing to greenhouse gas emmissions doesn't even cross our minds.
One problem we face as a nation, is that we won't take personal responsibility for our own actions, but would rather make it the Government's problem. But by default, it's sure as hell going to become our problem anyway, because when the government steps in, stupidity tends to result. For example, the FDA is trying to class sugar as a drug, because we don't have the self control to limit our intake. And those laws passed restricting the size of a soda that you can purchase in certain cities. Come on, people, really? First off, people who want to drink soda and eat sugar are still going to do it. Some law isn't going to stop them, just make them pay a little more to do it. Secondly, when did it become the government's job to do our menu-planning?!
As a nation, as well as a resident of Earth, it is critical that we re-learn self-control. And secondly, we need to wake up to the ecological damage our decadent habits have inflicted, and start working to reverse them.
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