Consuming is not a civic duty

This Guardian article is about two people who decided to cut off from the consumerist folly for a year. I am no stranger to impulse-buying or splurging, but I believe there's something in this story for everyone. There should be no internal or external compulsion to buy. And we need less than we think.

Some excerpts:

In New York, only a day after the towers fell, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani counselled his trembling constituents to "show you're not afraid. Go to restaurants. Go shopping." When the world's people asked how they could help, he responded, "Come here and spend money." Shopping became a patriotic duty. Buy that flat-screen TV, our leaders commanded, or the terrorists will have won."

This is freedom? I asked myself. This is democracy?"

But, I ask myself, can a person have a social, community or family life, a business, a connection to the culture, an identity, even a self, outside the realm of purchased things and experiences?"

Consumption is an exercise in hope - hope for more happiness, more beauty, more status, more fun."

Fashion depends as much on repulsion as attraction. At the turn of the 20th century, Veblen described the way in which "the best of our fashions strike us as grotesque" a few months past their prime. He called the phenomenon "aesthetic nausea"."

-Judith Levine, "Bye buy", The Guardian, Saturday July 8, 2006