A couple of years ago I received a video that is a gem to understand how we are ending the planet many times driven by an inexplicable need for consumption. This video is titled The Story of Stuff (The Story of Stuff) and deals with the production process of the goods we consume and how this process works as if you had no limits destroying natural resources, polluting the environment and making the planet an increasingly inhospitable place.
The video explains the five parts of the production process: extraction, production, distribution, consumption and waste disposal. Its author assures that this model, extracted from the theories of the economy of materials, is wrong for having a linear arrangement and for not taking into account its interaction with the real world. That is: people, natural resources and the impact of final waste on both.
What is really interesting to me about this wonderful material is the motivation that leads us to this self-destructive race: consumption.
The economy of capital is based on consumption, it was thus designed by modern economists to keep the means of production active and thus keep the economy moving.
In this video I got to know two concepts totally unknown to me until now: planned obsolescence and perceived obsolescence, two concepts created in the US after the Second World War to reactivate the economy. It is the moment when consumption becomes the new religion.
These are the definitions of both concepts according to Wikipedia:
Perceived obsolescence: when they create a product with a certain appearance, and later on, the exact same product is sold by changing only the design of the same. This is very evident in clothing, when light colors are in fashion one year and dark ones the next, so that the buyer feels moved to change their perfectly useful clothes and thus earn more money.
Planned obsolescence: when, when creating a product, the optimal time is studied for the product to stop working correctly and need repairs or replacement without the consumer losing confidence in the brand, and said obsolescence is implemented in the manufacture of the same so that it takes place and thus earns more money.
Wikipedia adds a third party that is not included in the video:
Speculation obsolescence: when the latter sells incomplete or low-performance products at a low price in order to gain a foothold in the market by subsequently offering the improved product that it may well have marketed from the beginning, with the added advantage that the consumer gets the false dynamic and innovative company image.
In all three cases, the objective is that we throw things away, even though they are still useful, so that we can buy other "improved" in their appearance or functionality and in this way produce more money, without taking into account the indiscriminate consumption of natural resources at a speed in which is almost impossible its self-regeneration.
This practice also multiplies exponentially the amount of waste (garbage) that is dumped into the environment, especially from tectology that becomes useless from one period to another and that, due to little or no recycling culture, ends up accumulating and polluting the environment. ambient.
We can conclude then that consumer culture produces at least two products that are harmful to life on the planet: the accelerated and dangerous reduction of a large part of natural resources and the partial or total pollution of the rest. In other words, the goods that we find on the planet and that keep life in balance (forests, rivers, air, etc.) are gradually eliminated or rendered useless due to practices whose sole objective is to produce money.
This is a great contradiction that we have transferred the value of natural resources, human labor and the products that result from it to money to the point that its search destroys the goods it represents.
In the last part of the video "history of things" there is a very simple but impressive explanation of how we enter without realizing it in this " murderous cycle of consumption " that uses our affective deficiencies and the media as weapons against us.
When we arrive from a job that exploits us, makes us sick and exhausts us, we sit to get fat in front of the television that makes us feel bad about how we look, what we use or eat. This depresses us and leads us to fill this void with things we buy and then throw away when we feel bad again according to TV.
But the message is not just a complaint, it also raises alternatives and invites us to support proposals that promote a different style of life and even governments (state) that are of the people and for the people. It invites us to unite in the achievement of a society free of pollution and balanced with the environment.
I would only add one thing: change begins with ourselves as individuals, in our homes, in our jobs, in our neighborhoods, we must stop worshiping the god of consumption and value life more with new practices and attitudes that we must teach to the little ones so that they learn to value what is really valuable. Let's not leave it for later, let's start right now by changing our consumption habits and our waste management practices to protect the planet and thus ensure it for ourselves and future generations.
