tiedyebannerbest
tiedyebanner-blue
tiedyebanner-green
tiedyebanner-orange
tiedyebanner-pinks
tiedyebanner-purpleflannel
tiedyebanner-redwhiteblue
tiedyebanner-smallpinks
tiedyebanner-turqpurple

Consumerism

Dear Aunt Acid,
I have been thinking about consumerism and how it relates to the accelerating spiral of fad and fashion cycles. For instance, 200 years ago, fashion experienced gradual shifts over the course of decades. Clothing was relatively costly and unimaginably durable by today’s standards. A young person of modest means during the 18th century would have expected to retain and use a coat throughout a lifetime. In fact, at that time, a garment in presentable condition was often included among the goods distributed in the execution of a will! I don’t mean a garment on the order of a Haute Couture gown trimmed in mink by Balenciaga: I mean an ordinary garment.

Starting around the time of the Industrial Revolution, clothing became less expensive, fashion cycles gradually became shorter, and shifts in style became more closely aligned with the passage of decades as punctuated by momentous events such as wars or economic disaster. In FDR’s day, they came up with the idea of planned obsolescence as a way to get people to spend and put money back into the economy. Unfortunately, it worked so well that it has established a constantly diminishing rate of time between item purchase and replacement. Today, we are replacing items on a regular basis that formerly would have lasted for many years if not a good part of an owner’s lifetime! For example, my late 1930s refrigerator was given away a few years ago because I needed the space. I think it is still working in its “new” home. On the other hand, the spiffy new side-by-side refrigerator I bought just 7 years ago is not cooling properly anymore. The coffee maker I bought last year will probably be ready for replacement just around the time that the new color comes out in an otherwise identical but significantly more expensive unit.

Fashion has followed this path to accelerated change as well. Today, clothing is just about disposable. Rather than polish a leather shoe (for instance), people I know will replace shoes as soon as the toes get scuffed or the heels wear down. Furthermore, this increasing volume of discarded waste fills up our landfills and pollutes our environment. The only economy that is stimulated by this rapidly increasing cycle of buying, is China’s! Why aren’t “we” concerned about the fact that we don’t make anything anymore in this country? We just buy stuff (crap), and throw it away when it breaks. We discard a garment because it has a tiny tear. Nobody mends clothing anymore. Today, nobody repairs electric appliances, furniture, or anything else. Furthermore, we buy stuff we never use and throw it away when we’re tired of looking at it. Our intelligence and productive future has been outsourced. It comes down to this: everything we buy today is crap, and its taking over. At least, that’s the way I see it. What do you think?

BTW: you’re not related to Stanley Owlsley (the 1960’s hallucinogenic chemist), are you?

Ann
Backwoods Beadery

Dear Ann,
Oh toots, you make some excellent points! Although I don’t agree that Frank D. Roosevelt is responsible for our society’s wasteful ways now. You are more on target with the Industrial Revolution’s effect on consumerism. Its much easier to buy lots of things when there are lots of things to be bought, and when one has an extra dollar or two for buying them. (and I know this even without a degree in economics.) The hidden cost that does not show on the retail price tag is that when a labor force changes drastically to another form of labor, new skills and ways are gained but old skills are lost. Up until 200 years ago, over 85 percent of our population was involved directly in growing and processing food….now its less than 5 percent. Every household had at least one person and often several involved in food preparation, from the kitchen garden to the table.  Now, we’ve got folks that don’t know tomatoes grow on plants and start as little flowers there.

We have a great many more foods grown in other countries and transported to consumers who have no idea how that food came into being, or foods that come from giant agro-businesses; places where the chicken never sees the light of day before going to become a fried Nugget.  Convenient food, hot and available in many neighborhoods 24 hours a day—but not necessarily nearly as healthy for you in spite of rigorous standards of cleanliness and inspection at every industrialized and latex gloved step. And now, its being noted that many people no longer know HOW to recognize or prepare food. The skills are becoming lost from the traditional repetoire—along with spinning and weaving, mending and darning and other needle and sewing skills. Food can be bought faster and with less effort than actually preparing it takes, and yet the nutritional value of boxed foods is such that you might as well eat the box too. Far better to prepare real food yourself if you know how and are not exhausted from the outside job that is required to afford the luxuries of consumerism. Up until the 1900’s, having skilled employees in the home (servants) to do cooking, cleaning, clothing care, child care, and household management was very common in all but the very poorest households, where the family women and children did that work without outside help. And then, many servants found jobs in factories instead. Many women who formerly stayed at home and cooked and sewed and cared for children now relegate those tasks to hirelings outside the home, in industrialized formats. Grandparents no longer customarily live with family members, and so their skills are no longer utilized in the same ways or passed on to younger generations with the same ease.

There are still many people in the United States and around the world who follow the more traditional ways into which you and I were trained : “Use It Up, Wear It Out–Make It Do, Or Do Without.”

But there are far more who have been raised up without benefit of two core things; appreciation of worth rather than price, and access to adults who pass on worthy skills. A person who has never been without shoes and socks has less appreciation of their value than someone who has walked miles barefoot. And, if you have ever knitted a sock, you know that it is an endeavor that is of more worth than the $1.99 price tag on a factory made pair of socks might  indicate. Spending an hour to mend a pair of knitted socks rather than knitting another is practical, but not if you can get them for less than your hour of work is worth, and brand new! And not if you don’t know how to do it in the first place.

More than political leaders, our Advertising Professionals and Salesmen have a lot to answer for when it comes to promoting conspicuous consumption as a lifestyle. Wealthy individuals throughout time have surrounded themselves with more than is actually needed for survival–this is nothing new at all. What IS new is the number of individuals who are not moneyed who have a great wealth of stuff that is not needed for survival, because we are told that it is “New and Improved” or that “Everybody Has One”. Far too often these things are bought on credit, not through the earnings of the individuals at the moment. When told by advertising that what is available outside the home is so outstandingly far better, whether it be clothing, food, healthcare or childcare, many people believed this as truth. Home sewing became passe in the 1900’s, no matter that a well constructed garment from a home machine is better to have than some flimsy garment stitched  on an island somewhere by a ten year old child paid pennies a week. And yet, while a pair of factory socks or a shirt may be smoother and thinner, they also wear out faster. It is inexpensive to buy only because a subservient class of low paid  labor is used. Labor is not paid equitably in many places (including here) with wages that we ourselves would insist on earning. When those workers learn about the options available in the world, then they want some too, and prices must go up when the labor is better paid. But only when labor is valued at the rate of “What would YOU charge to do this?” do we start to see a discrepancy in how we evaluate worth and price. Without appreciation of the work involved, we are ignorant of value. If all we want is “cheap” then that’s all we are likely to get.

It is natural for many to have great disdain for any skill that they do not possess within themselves. Lack of understanding of labor leads to lack of appreciation. While I don’t advocate moving back to a time when individual human effort was required for everything from plowing the fields with a pointed stick to scrubbing the laundry on rocks, it would be a vast improvement if there were more appreciation for work that we now do and the leisure that we have as a result of labor-saving devices and chemicals. It is a sad reality that we have come to worship the ownership of the devices and things more than the potential of what we can do with the hours not spent on drudgery. Many allow themselves to be released into the freedom of hours spent instead watching television commercials and shopping for items we do not need. The hope there is that some will watch educational programming and learn to cook or sew. The reality is that Gavel, Gun, Gurney and Game TV  continues to be the entertainment of the masses. We aspire to having a doctor or lawyer or weapon wielder save us, or that we might win a million dollars and thus be better able to buy things.

There IS something that can do to help curb this trend of unappreciative consumerism. Make something with your own two hands. Enjoy and appreciate it. And then, show somebody else how to do it. That’ll be one less skill lost to ennui and apathetic indifference. Ignorance can be a deadly thing, and not just in bad times. Even in good times, what we truly have is within ourselves, and what we share. Everything  else is just stuff.

Love,
Aunt Acid

PS, no formal relation to the Owlsley family other than friendship and shared insights! (here’s a brief wave towards Kentucky; hi there and sure was fun last time!!!!)