The Story of Stuff
By Annie Leonard
Step Away from The Stuff! – Advice from Annie Leonard:
Red Flag Magazine: You describe the pernicious cycle of working really hard, spending time watching TV and getting told to buy things by advertisers. Even for people who generally avoid TV, advertising messages are everywhere: they’re part of the environment, they’re online, they’re in our reading material, and in fact they’re very critical to industries like journalism or publishing. Is it realistic to tune these messages out altogether? Can you give five steps to escape the relentlessness of the “Buy stuff!” message that feels like it’s coming at us from every direction?
Annie Leonard: Yes, they are everywhere, bombarding us with messages designed to make us feel inadequate – really, they even call this “inadequacy marketing.” What kind of society allows hundreds of signs and commercial messages telling its people they are inadequate? Some people tell me that desiring all this stuff is basic human nature. Not so. Imagine if we were bombarded with hundreds of messages a day telling us to be kind, remind us to stop and smell the flowers, sharing information about the state of the planet and reaffirming our basic beings. Now, five steps to escape the relentlessness of the “Buy Stuff” message. Different things work for different people. Here’s some that work for me:
1. Get rid of the TV. You can watch 30 Rock and whatever else you really need to on Hulu. The less commercial messages beaming into our homes, the happier and more engaged we are. Instead of TV, we go for walks, read books, play board games, do projects. I know it sounds corny, but it works. Related to this: get commercials out of schools and public spaces. We need to reclaim our mental and physical landscapes from the constant barrage of commercial messages.
2. When you’re getting a rush of consumer desire, name it. When you’re at the effect of a dysfunctional pattern, if often helps to diffuse the power of the familiar pattern just by naming it. Juliet Schor, the fabulous economist who explored why Americans shop so much in The Overspent American, explains how important reference groups are in determining our level of satisfaction with the stuff we have. In general, we compare our clothes and house and couch and car with the neighbors, and if ours are better, we feel satisfied. That’s what the term “keeping up with the Jones’” refers to. But now, with our celebrity-focused commercial media, where I see TV shows and internet advertisements showing me Oprah’s closet or Brad Pitt’s car, I am experiencing what Schor called the “vertical expansive of my reference group.” Instead of comparing myself to my neighbors, the fictional Jones, with whom I likely share roughly the same level of education and income, I compare myself to millionaire celebrities. Just knowing that this has a name, and naming it, can help liberate us from it.
3. Develop a culture and systems for sharing. Make friends. Build community. The stronger communities we have, the more we can turn to each other – rather than the marketplace – to meet our needs. There’s no reason every house needs a lawnmower, power drill, cupcake pan, rake, etc. If we know each other, we can share which is good for the planet, good for our household budgets and fun.
4. Make a commitment not to buy anything new for a month or a year or whatever you’re ready for and watch what happens. I did that and my relationship with my physical environment changed. It was so cool. I hadn’t even realized that some tiny part of my brain was saying “should I buy that?” as I walked by store windows. It was like a constant background noise. I didn’t notice it until I shut it off and all of a sudden had my full brain available for me again – more day dreaming, strategizing, thinking of loved ones, thinking about what movie to make next.
5. Get involved in making the world better. Our consumer selves have gotten so big and active that our citizen selves have atrophied. We are so over identified with being a consumer that it is the primary way we relate to each other and our society, so much that the word “consumer” and “human being” are often used interchangeably in the media. If we step out of our consumer self and engage as citizens, actively working to make the world better, we’ll find so much more satisfaction and joy and new friends than one could ever get trolling the mall.
6. One more, a short one: Decommodify our fun!