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Today in the United States, and tomorrow elsewhere in the world, is the official launch of the annual holiday shopping season, This season more than ever, retailers are counting on all of us to spend money most of us don't really have to buy gifts, tchotchkes and other things...as predictions are that holiday shopping will decline this year due to the worldwide economic crisis.
Some, however, have a different view of this occasion: as a day to stop and consider the real cost of mindless consumerism—on workers in developing nations who slave in sweatshops for pennies a day; on the rapidly diminishing wilderness, overflowing landfills and polluted air and water being made ever more so by encroaching development and industrialization; on our own ad-bombarded, stuff-encumbered emotional and mental states. Which is why every year at this time, Canada's Adbusters Media Foundation (publishers of the quarterly hard-left magazine Adbusters) declares what retailers call "Black Friday"—so named because it is the time of year when their books finally are "in the black," that is, when as much as half their annual profits are made—to be Buy Nothing Day.
On this day, AMF urges people to avoid the sales, skip the stampede and keep their money in their wallets, purses and pocketbooks, save for essentials such as food, medicine and truly necessary transport. They urge you to give nothing that can't be made with your own hands, or recycled in some way from things already bought. It's intended not as an empty ritual to be abandoned the next day, but as an opportunity to see what life might be like without the satiation of that endless, artificially-induced "urge to buy"...and to consider making a lifestyle of it. And for those more activism-inclined (unlike Your Humble Correspondent), they offer suggestions for public demonstrations or speaking out about it.
Today, even if you've already gone shopping for non-essentials, read their manifesto and at least think about how each of us contributes to the destruction wrought by corporate giants on the environment, on workers, on society and on the economy. And about what the holiday season is really supposed to mean...whether your holiday is Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanzaa, Ramadan, Solstice or none at all. It's worth thinking about...for our descendants' sake if not our own.
ADDENDUM, 7:21p: For an example (sadly, not the first such) of what happens when the consumer frenzy whipped up by megacorps reaches its logical extreme, see this story (courtesy of a couple of folks on my f-list): Wal-Mart Employee Trampled to Death by Shoppers.
Some, however, have a different view of this occasion: as a day to stop and consider the real cost of mindless consumerism—on workers in developing nations who slave in sweatshops for pennies a day; on the rapidly diminishing wilderness, overflowing landfills and polluted air and water being made ever more so by encroaching development and industrialization; on our own ad-bombarded, stuff-encumbered emotional and mental states. Which is why every year at this time, Canada's Adbusters Media Foundation (publishers of the quarterly hard-left magazine Adbusters) declares what retailers call "Black Friday"—so named because it is the time of year when their books finally are "in the black," that is, when as much as half their annual profits are made—to be Buy Nothing Day.
On this day, AMF urges people to avoid the sales, skip the stampede and keep their money in their wallets, purses and pocketbooks, save for essentials such as food, medicine and truly necessary transport. They urge you to give nothing that can't be made with your own hands, or recycled in some way from things already bought. It's intended not as an empty ritual to be abandoned the next day, but as an opportunity to see what life might be like without the satiation of that endless, artificially-induced "urge to buy"...and to consider making a lifestyle of it. And for those more activism-inclined (unlike Your Humble Correspondent), they offer suggestions for public demonstrations or speaking out about it.
Today, even if you've already gone shopping for non-essentials, read their manifesto and at least think about how each of us contributes to the destruction wrought by corporate giants on the environment, on workers, on society and on the economy. And about what the holiday season is really supposed to mean...whether your holiday is Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanzaa, Ramadan, Solstice or none at all. It's worth thinking about...for our descendants' sake if not our own.
ADDENDUM, 7:21p: For an example (sadly, not the first such) of what happens when the consumer frenzy whipped up by megacorps reaches its logical extreme, see this story (courtesy of a couple of folks on my f-list): Wal-Mart Employee Trampled to Death by Shoppers.
