Overconsumption

Look around you, our economy is falling apart right in front of us. Were spending money we don’t have, buying things we don’t need and yet we can’t seem to stop. November 28th is a day to start change, it’s a day to say no to things you don’t need and a day to take a good hard look at your finances. It is time for everyone to come to the realization that money doesn’t grow on trees. Buy nothing Day is on November 28th and it is all about creating awareness about over consumption. It is pretty straight forward, all you have to do is to say that you will buy absolutely nothing on this day, it’s that simply. If it seems to easy for you why not make it a little harder, take a look at your finances and exactly everything you buy in a day. Then decide just how much of it you really needed, how much money would you have saved? I know there is probably a lot of stuff I buy that I don’t really need. For example, magazines, I don’t really need to waste my money on them so I have limited myself to buying only one a month. That’s a savings of 30 dollars a month depending on which ones I would have bought. Its amazing how one thing could save you so much money. It’s all about admitting that you haven’t been spending your money well and changing it; you can’t change something unless you accept and acknowledge it.

North America is one of the leading countries that have the most consumption. We strive to have the best of the best and for the attention of others. A lot of people sacrifice important things like shelter, healthy food and medication, in order to have the latest cool cell phone. We care so much on how we are presented in society that we are willing to lose everything. We need to have less consumption yet we seem to be consuming more. People who need food and shelter are those who consume the least, we can’t seem to get enough. In Ursula Franklin’s, The Real World of Technology she explains, “The mass production of consumer goods, even in highly automated facilities and low-wage and –overhead locations did not yield the boundless harvest of profit that some had expected. In part this is due to the fact that those who most need the mass produced goods- and this includes food, medicine, and clothing – do not have the means to purchase the very items they often make” (Franklin, 162). It should be a real eye opener when countries who need to consume more necessities, consume the least.

A lot people say well how is not buying anything on one day going to change anything? Well I agree with them in a way. I believe in the idea behind the action, I do believe that people should be more aware of over consumption but it obviously takes more than just one day. At the same time I also believe in the fact that people are just going to spend more the day before so that they don’t have to buy anything on the day of. I wonder if people will really even learn anything, will they take the time to reflect on the consumption, especially if everything they needed on Buy Nothing Day was bought the day before. McLuhan explains, “It is not an easy period in which to live, especially for the television-conditioned young who, unlike their literate elders, cannot take refuge in the zombie trance of Narcissus narcosis that numbs the state of psychic shock induced by the impact of the new media. From Tokyo to Paris to Columbia, youth mindlessly acts out its identity quest in the theatre of the streets, searching not for goals but for roles, striving for an identity that eludes them” (McLuhan). We see and then we want, McLuhan says it perfectly “we are in the zombie trance”; what will it take for us to wake up.

Works Cited

Playboy, "The Playboy Interview: Marshall McLuhan." Playboy Magazine March 1969. 10 Nov 2008. <http://heim.ifi.uio.no/~gisle/links/mcluhan/pb.html>.

Franklin, Ursula M. The Real World of Technology. Toronto: House of Anansi Press Inc., 1999.