We all eat food
March 7th, 2008 | by Paul |Since starting this site and thinking more about these issues, I have noticed a change in my personal life.
I’ve been called bougie, a hypocrite, pretentious, pompous and all sorts of other crap.
And it really pisses me off. Here’s why:
Would you call someone on a diet a hypocrite if the person doesn’t have full-blown anorexia nervosa?
Yes, I buy things. Yes, I buy more than I need. I’m just trying to cut down on my purchases by reminding myself of all the horrible things it entails. The sweatshop clothing, the sky-high landfills, the nation’s ballooning credit debt.
I’m on a damn product diet here and I’m sick of being told it’s futile. What? Do I think I’m going to bring down the halls of capitalism by the fact my last major purchase was a download of Premiere Elements I needed for class? Hell, no. I don’t even want to bring down the halls of capitalism. I like capitalism. I just don’t think we need so much crap.
But that makes my beliefs futile, doesn’t it, David Gross of Slate.com?
“The cultural anti-retail moment will likely pass. Thoreau lasted only 26 months in his cabin by Walden Pond. The elevation of frugality into a virtue seems likely to last about as long as modern recessions do — about eight months.”
Better tell the Catholic church, all the Buddhists and certain acetic sects of Hinduism - some dude who posted to Slate said that what they have considered a virtue for millennia is just a fad. Hey nuns, don’t you that vows of poverty are so eight months ago.
By the way, Gross, sources? Facts? Figures? Anything to back up that very loud claim?
Oh, but then the commentary on the commentary starts (of course, now I’m commenting on the commentary to the commentary).
Listen to blogger Rob Horning of Popmatters.com:
“The problem is that anticonsumerism becomes an identity pose that is either manifestly hypocritical or deeply reliant on the same individualistic values that support consumerism in the first place —one advertises oneself as an anti-consumer, making that one’s brand on the marketplace of social approval. Not to get all poststructuralist, but when you found your self-concept on not shopping, you are in effect deeply invested in shopping.”
First of all, use the diet analogy. There is nothing, I repeat, nothing hypocritical about trying to improve yourself.
The second point I disagree with in Horning’s comments is about people making not shopping their identity. I agree, it can get pretty annoying, but Horning seems to betray himself later in the post.
He later writes:
“We are already inside consumerism, and it’s virtually impossible to construct an identity outside of it — it’s the only viable language of identity that we learn in the West.”
So, at first he takes self-identified anticonsumerists to task for constructing their identities based on consumerism, then says its virtually impossible not to. I’m sorry, but that’s like yelling at someone for inhabiting space.
Yes, it’s hard to maintain a low-consumption lifestyle - who can count themselves as a success in it? No one reading this on their own computers, that’s for damn sure.
So knock anticonsumerist individuals’ arguments, knock the means they think will achieve their goals, knock me. But until someone can - without relying on Gross’ loud but unsubstantiated claims or Horning’s questionable syllogisms - tell me what’s wrong with the ideal, then I’m just going to try to find my own way toward it.