Consuming passionsEverything that can be done to bring the age of heroic consumption to its close should be done
Jeremy Seabrook guardian.co.uk, Tuesday June 10 2008
The age of heroic consumption is surely drawing to a close. The inspiration of those whose principal virtue is the money that permits them to lay claim to a disproportionate share of the earth's resources is being by-passed in a world where a population of 9 billion must be accommodated by 2050.
The price tag on the possessions of the wealthy - their £10m mansions, £5m yachts, extravagant couture and priceless jewels, their private jets and lives apart from the great majority of humankind - are rapidly losing their power to enchant the rest of us. In an age when scientists, humanitarians and moral leaders are exhorting human beings to look to our impact upon the earth - and not solely in relation to the carbon footprint - it has become obsolete to gaze with breathless admiration upon individuals dedicated to the proposition that a whole world should be dying of consumption, and not just the 1.6m who perish from tuberculosis each year.
The greatest threat to global stability comes not from the poor but from the rich. This startling proposition runs directly into another received idea, which is that the risk of disorder is a result of excessive materialism. What we suffer from is not a surfeit of materialism, but a deficiency of it; for if we truly valued the material basis upon which all human systems depend, we would exhibit a far greater reverence for the physical world we inhabit. If materialism means respect for the elements that sustain life, then we are gravely wanting in it. What is sometimes referred to as "materialism" is actually something else: perhaps a distorted kind of mysticism which believes we can use up the earth and still avoid the consequences of our omnivorous appetites.
This is why the gross consumers of the age will be scorned as the pitiable destroyers of the sustenance, not only of the poor of today, but of everyone's tomorrow. It is natural for people to want to do the best for their children, but this is generally interpreted as leaving them a private monetary inheritance; but if the other side of this legacy is a befouled world, the enjoyment of today's privilege may become the curse of the future. In any case, there is a great deal of humbug in pious concern expressed for our children's children, since this rarely prevents those who give voice to such tender sentiments from living as though there were no tomorrow. "Live the dream" has become the cliche of the hour; although it requires no great wisdom to understand that dreams realised soon turn to ashes.
Everything that can be done to bring the age of heroic consumption to its close should be done. This means the promotion of a different understanding of wealth. The myriad aspects of a truly rich and fulfilled life should be rescued from the tyranny of money. Perhaps we have not entirely forgotten that the most joyful and exhilarating of human occupations derive from self-reliance, self-provisioning, not only in the basic goods that sustain life, but also in satisfactions that arise from the cost-free resourcefulness of ourselves and others. ......(more)
The complete piece is at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jun/10/consumeraffairs.consumerandethicalliving
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