Change consumption - References and quotes
Philosophy
2021
REFERENCES AND QUOTES
THE EMPATHIC CIVILIZATION: THE RACE TO GLOBAL CONSCIOUSNESS IN A WORLD IN CRISISEnlightenment and the idea of progress, chasing immortality. Science and technology as saviors against death, doing what religion done before 163 “Through science and technology we will extend our control over the future, the forces of nature, and our bodily duration. We will live better, live longer, enjoy the good life and enter into an earthly Eden of our making where material abundance will provide a fortress against the ravages of time and the onslaught of death.” During the Enlightenment we started to believe that the more stuff the superman-like we would become.164 Religious and secular obsession with perfection, to transcend spatial and temporal limits imposed on human corporeality. Escaping death through efficiency 165 I ENERGY AND ECONOMIC MYTHS“we must cure ourselves of the morbid craving for extravagant gadgetry”, get rid of fashion 378 I A BLUEPRINT FOR SURVIVAL“In industry, as with agriculture, it will be important to maintain a vigorous feedback between supply and demand in order to avoid waste, overproduction, or production of goods which the community does not really want, thereby eliminating the needless expense of time, energy and money in attempts to persuade it that it does.” SeeARBETSSAMHÄLLET – HUR ARBETET ÖVERLEVDE TEKNOLOGIN on overproduction. 15 I PROSPERITY WITHOUT GROWTHDiminishing marginal utility, adaptation of satisfaction See WHY WE CONSUME: NEURAL DESIGN AND SUSTAINABILITY, ECOLOGICAL ECONOMICS – PRINCIPLES AND APPLICATIONS, “There is an even more important lesson emerging from all of this. The suspicion that the richest in the world are consuming more and more of the world’s resources in pursuit of less and less additional satisfaction contains a powerful humanitarian argument for redistribution. Should we not aim to optimise the overall satisfaction associated with our material throughputs rather than maximise the throughputs themselves? And if this is the case, should we not focus our efforts on increasing incomes (and material throughputs) in the regions where this will have the biggest impact on people’s quality of life?” 83 Meaning of things to humans. Instinctive acquisition. Dopamine kick. Cognitive efficiency. Adaptation, diminishing returns of satisfaction. 97 We imbue material things with social and psychological meaning. Things are terror management, a way ward of death. Things are a language of communication, they are means to participate in social life. ‘No one’s gonna spot you across a crowded room and say “Wow! Nice personality!”’. Consumer society going global. But things are transmitters of status and traps us in a damaging relative positional race, a zero-sum game. A more equal can ease environmental, social and psychological damage at the same time SeeTHE SPIRIT LEVEL: WHY MORE EQUAL SOCITIES ALMOST ALWAYS DO BETTER99 “In particular, it explores two interrelated features of economic life that are central to the growth dynamic. On the one hand, the profit motive stimulates newer, better or cheaper products and services through a continual process of innovation and ‘creative destruction’. At the same time, the market for these goods relies on an expanding consumer demand, driven by a complex social logic. These two factors combine to drive ‘the engine of growth’ on which modern economies depend and lock us in to an ‘iron cage’ of consumerism.3 It’s essential to get a better handle on this twin dynamic, not least so that we can identify the potential to escape from it. The starting point is to unravel some of the workings of modern capitalism.”126 "Quality is sacrificed relentlessly to volume throughput. The throwaway society is not so much a consequence of consumer greed as a structural prerequisite for survival. Novelty has become a conscript to and an agent for economic expansion." Social logic of goods. Cathexis, things being part of our extended self. Things being religion. SeeTHE EMPATHIC CIVILIZATION: THE RACE TO GLOBAL CONSCIOUSNESS IN A WORLD IN CRISIS 163-166 Things as religion. Things as storage of memories and feelings. Veblen and conspicuous consumption and novelty. Paying for social distinction. 134 Modern society has more than before embedded material things into social and psychological processes. New things as dreams and hopes. McCracken and things as a flawed bridge to our highest ideals. The empty self. Consumer society built on anxiety and leads not to social progression but undermines well-being and causes social recession. “The extended self is motivated in part by the anxiety of the empty self. Social comparison is driven by the desire to be situated favourably in society. Creative destruction is haunted by the fear of being left behind in the competition for consumer markets. Thrive or die is the maxim of the jungle. It’s equally true in the consumer society.” Serving a pathological system. 137 “The task of the economy is to deliver and to enable prosperity. But prosperity is not synonymous with material wealth and its requirements go beyond material sustenance. Rather,prosperity has to do with our ability to flourish: physically, psychologically and socially. Beyond sheer subsistence or survival, prosperity hangs on our ability to participate meaningfully in the life of society.” “But the appealing idea that after our material needs are satisfied we could do away with material things altogether flounders on a simple and powerful fact: material goods provide a vital language through which we communicate with each other about the things that really matter: family, identity, friendship, community, purpose in life. Stuff and story turn out to be intimately entangled with each other. There is clearly a paradox here. If participation is really what matters, and material goods provide a language to facilitate that, then richer societies ought to show more evidence of it. But the very opposite appears to be the case, and has been for some time.” Social recession in “wealthy” countries 142 Avoiding shame in consumer society makes humans and environment suffer. Consumer society, the underlying economic model, threatens prosperity. Soper and best before date of consumer society. “Some remarkable statistical evidence tends to support this view. Psychologist Tim Kasser has highlighted what he calls the high price of materialism. Materialistic values such as popularity, image and financial success are psychologically opposed to ‘intrinsic’ values like self-acceptance, affiliation, a sense of belonging in the community. Yet these latter are the things that represent our deepest source of wellbeing. They are the constituents of prosperity. Kasser’s findings are striking. People with higher intrinsic values are both happier and have higher levels of environmental responsibility than those with materialistic values. A less materialistic pursuit favours wellbeing. Dittmar, ‘a clear, consistent negative association between a broad array of types of personal well-being and people’s belief in, and prioritization of, materialistic pursuits in life’145 People resist sustainable change as it asks them to “give up key capabilities and freedoms as social beings” “Culture shapes and constrains our lives. When things are working well, social structures are properly aligned with collective values and provide a cultural framework within which people can flourish, allowing us to live meaningful, purposive lives. When things go badly, institutional structures wage war on human values, undermining prosperity and damaging society.” "And it draws support from a long succession of insights into the human condition from religion, from philosophers, from wisdom traditions, from poetry, from literature and from art: we are not and never were entirely the selfish hedonists that conventional economics expects and needs us to be. A simple and yet ferociously destructive misconception of human nature lies at the heart of modern capitalism." 151 "The idea of an economy whose task is to provide capabilities for flourishing within ecological limits offers the most credible vision to put in its place.The rewards from these changes are likely to be significant. A less materialistic society will be a happier one. A more equal society will be a less anxious one. Greater attention to community and to participation in the life of society will reduce the loneliness and anomie that has undermined wellbeing in the consumer economy.” 157 Consumer capitalism is eroding commitment devices. Consumer culture reinforced by government 206 Systematically dismantle consumerism and “dismantling these complex incentive structures requires a systematic attention to the myriad ways in which they were constructed, and are continually re-constructed.” 212 “We must nurture and support non-consumerist ways of understanding and being in the world. These ways can draw on a variety of traditions that have always opposed consumerism. They will in turn be strengthened by a retreat from market-driven growth, which inevitably inculcates values, beliefs and ways of being that favour success in the market environment." Offer alternatives to consumerism. "Progress depends on building the capabilities for people to flourish in less materialistic ways." 214 I WHY WE CONSUME: NEURAL DESIGN AND SUSTAINABILITY Pleasure/satisfaction circuit serves learning. Neural circuit of adapting. Creates addiction. Need more diversity. Limits of brain need for cooperation. Pleasure/satisfaction serves both practical and social learning. Solution go on vacation: more nature, exercise, sports, crafts, art, music, and sex—of the participatory (non-vicarious) sort. https://greattransition.org/publication/why-we-consume I THE SPIRIT LEVEL: WHY MORE EQUAL SOCITIES ALMOST ALWAYS DO BETTERGreater equality gives us a crucial key to reducing the cultural pressure to consume. 221 Equality precondition for steady-state economy. Status competition a driver of consumption, consumption for social distinction. Cost of dissatisfaction that rich impose on society, like smoke from on a chimney. 222 Increasing inequality makes harder for people to maintain standard relative to others, saving less and borrowing more. More unequal more advertising and more work. 223 “If an important an important part of consumerism is driven by emulation, status, competition, or simply having to runt to keep up with everyone else, and is basically about social appearances and position, this would explain why we continue to pursue economic growth despite its apparent lack of benefits. Each person’s desire to be richer does not add up to a societal desire for economic growth.” 224, 225 Experiment that show we value status. Relative that matter. Veblen and conspicuous consumption. Advertising made us aware of psychology of consumption. Veblen effect of goods, choosing goods for their social value. Consuming is a reflection of how social we are. 225 “Consumerism shows how powerfully we are affected by each other.” Impression of each other ideally would better depend on face-to-face interactions. 226 I ARBETSSAMHÄLLET – HUR ARBETET ÖVERLEVDE TEKNOLOGINNor the punishment of God nor necessity (the fortunate ones at least) is forcing human being to work but human beings themselves. Advertising and governmental stimulus helps to avoid the crises of overproduction 16 Consumer society just a solution for over production. Irrational consumptions reflects irrational production. 96 Consumption as way to endure work 97 The stimulating society. Consumerism supported by commercial interest joining hands with government defending power structures and the working society. Advertising making you unsure of yourself stimulating and the government handing you money to cover the insecurity with consumption 99 Lehman Brothers’ Paul Mazer "We must shift America from a needs, to a desires culture. People must be trained to desire, to want new things even before the old had been entirely consumed. We must shape a new mentality in America. Man's desires must overshadow his needs." Protestantism, Ebenezer Scrooge and capita 100 Alexander Wiley the cheese senator, "Our problem is not too much cheese produced, but rather too little cheese consumed." Solution to overproduction was to stimulate demand. The president of the National Sales Executives, "Capitalism is dead - consumerism is king!" King C. Gillette was seeing the trouble of overproduction, “We have the paradox of idle men, only too anxious for work, and idle plants inperfect conditions for production, at the samte time that people are starving and frozen. The reason is overproduction. It seems a bit absurd that when we have overproduced we should go without. One would think that overproduction wourld warrant a furious holiday and a riot of feasting and display of all the superfluous goods lying around. On the contrary, overproduction produces want” The double cynism: 1. People don’t know what they want. 2. They need help to know what they want. Marketing, public relations and Edward Bernays stepping in. 102 Bernays Machiavellian attitude towards society, a threat to democracy. Bernays Propaganda show the logic of power. 103 Bernays and the classic excuse for regimes of violence, people are irrational and need to be controlled. Tiresome symbios of PRindustry and its critics in inflating its impact. 104 Resistance against manipulation and overcoming this resistance requires resources. Resources that generates power. PRpeoples view of human being coincides and is reproduced by the organization of the working society 1. Irrational human being is insatiable 2. Human beings is a herd excepted to be subordinate to the superior in power. Keynes and saving the crises of overproduction. 105 Fromm and mental disorder of the western countries 121 Consumtion as an itch. Not 44, 133 Democratically deal with prioritizing and valuing needs 137 The need for a discussion of needs 138 I DOUGHNUT ECONOMICS: SEVEN WAYS TO THINK LIKE A 21ST-CENTURY ECONOMIST Bernays tapping into values in the value complex of Schwartz. 91 Recycling start doing it. 85 % of phones were not recycled. Look at Japan! Cyclical not circular! Nothing is 100 % recyclable. New idea of value, start seeing things as stored value, materials and energy! SeeTHE CIRCULAR BIOECONOMY AND DECOUPLING: IMPLICATIONS FOR SUSTAINABLE GROWTH on circular economy. 183 I 231 I MATERIALISTIC VALUES: THEIR CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCESconsumer culture compared to religion SeePROSPERITY WITHOUT GROWTH on sacred canopy. 12 exposure to materialist models and values 17 I SOME COSTS OF AMERICAN CORPORATE CAPITALISM: A PSYCHOLOGICAL EXPLORATION OF VALUE AND GOAL CONFLICTSCompeting capitalists, laborers and consumers. 4 “Many well-known psychological theories would seemingly agree that the individualistic and consumeristic desires often encouraged by ACC and by economic globalization oppose those for generosity and for caring about one’s community and the world at large.” 9To encouragement
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