Stuff and nonsense

Last week I came across this website, and have been mulling over The Story of Stuff ever since. It's about a twenty-minute video, and well worth watching, although I don't appreciate the political potshots which the narrator takes toward the beginning.

(I don't necessarily agree with her assumptions about the limited amount of resources or 'our fair share' of the planetary pie. I guess it comes down to a fundamental difference in worldview - an atheist/evolutionist will see things in the light of chance and survival of the fittest, in which we'd better play the best with the cards we've been dealt, while I believe that God gave us this earth to take dominion over, and provided the resources needed to sustain life in His image. So I'm a little irritated by her trite statistics about the percentage of polluted waterways and the square miles of Amazon rainforest chopped down every day. Treating the water supply and the forests as a finite resource, the draining of which is exacerbated by a growing world population, instead of as a renewable resource that simply needs to be managed better, is a typical alarmist cliche. I am sure that there is irresponsible logging going on out there, but coming from Oregon, where the logging industry is a mainstay and the loggers, realising and respecting this fact - and not wanting to work themselves out of a job - consistently replant at or above replacement level, I tend to resent the all-too-common assumption that cutting down trees is synonymous with trashing the planet.)

Back to The Story of Stuff. Once I got past her alarmist propaganda, I found the rest of the video gripping and enlightening. I am astounded by the notion that our current economic model of rampant consumerism was a deliberate scheme, concocted and constructed according to plan. Apparently the economic advisers of the Eisenhower administration, in drawing up a blueprint for the American economy coming out of the post-war boom, envisioned a long-term model of ever-growing prosperity and expansion, industrialisation and consumption. They developed a shift in the consumer mentality by the precise implementation of planned obsolescence and perceived obsolescence.

Planned obsolescence is when things are designed to be thrown away, so the consumer always has to keep coming back for more. You can see this principle at work with the obvious disposables such as paper goods, diapers, and the like. (Prior to WWII, disposables were almost unheard-of; cloth diapers, personal care and linens were the norm.) Nowadays, we've moved so far away from that notion that we even have such ridiculous 'convenience' items as disposable mops, toilet scrubbers, and, apparently, BBQ grills. (?!?)

More subtle is the planned obsolescence of poor quality goods purporting to be reusable but so cheaply made that they will break often enough to keep the consumer buying and buying again. It's all a cleverly orchestrated balance between having the goods break quickly enough to ensure a steady demand while lasting just long enough to ensure that the consumers will not lose faith in the product. Our expectations have been re-programmed, and we no longer hope for the durability and quality from long-term goods that were the norm a generation or so ago. Hence the very true expression, 'They just don't make them like they used to.' No, and it's no accident.

Perceived obsolescence is simply the cultural pressure to buy a new one, even if the old one isn't broken or dysfunctional. This is the driving force behind fashion, sleek newer cars, bigger houses, and the like. Surely some scientific improvements come with time, but for the most part, the need to buy new stuff is merely imaginary.

The whole thing is very, very annoying to me.