Be a Citizen. Don’t Be a Consumer.
Posted January 4th, 2008 by RobDietz 4 comments
In the movie “Say Anything” (apologies to those who haven’t seen this film, one of the funniest from the lost decade of the 1980s), there is a telling exchange between Lloyd Dobler and his closest friends, D.C. and Corey. Lloyd is talking to his friends about trying to win back his former girlfriend and how he’s called her for the last time. It goes like this:
D.C.: Lloyd, why do you have to be like this?
Lloyd: ‘Cause I’m a guy. I have pride.
Corey: You’re not a guy.
Lloyd: I am.
Corey: No. The world is full of guys. Be a man. Don’t be a guy.
I feel like a similar dialog applies to the population of the United States at this point in history. If Corey were offering advice to us, she might say, “No. The world is full of consumers. Be a citizen. Don’t be a consumer.”
Somewhere along the line, what and how much we purchase became more important than how we behave in civic life. It can be attributed to any number of causes. For example, marketers have been working for years to make us equate our self identity with our purchases. They have effectively influenced us to believe that we are what we buy. We have come to accept that we are defined by our clothing, car, handbag, square footage, etc.
The very word itself, “consumer,” has a pejorative connotation. It is reminiscent of a bacterium that does nothing but eat away at its host. There’s a reason that tuberculosis used to be called consumption.
As our lives as consumers have ramped up, our lives as citizens have fallen away. Citizenship has devolved into consuming, paying taxes, obeying laws, and voting (at least occasionally). It’s time to throw off the label of “consumers” and get back to being a society of citizens.
Here are 5 positive ways to take Corey’s advice and be a citizen – spending time on any or all of them might also reduce the urge to consume. Also note that these are just ideas. They are not meant to be preachy and they certainly don’t apply to everyone.
1. Stay informed. It can be difficult with today’s media to stay informed about critical issues (and no, the quirks of Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears don’t count), but what could be more important than a stable economy that functions within the limits given by the Earth? Sustainability in society requires knowledge of practices that are and are not sustainable.
2. Get involved in community life. Each of us has our own communities and our own possibilities for participating in them. As be build and maintain communities (whether they are neighborhoods, church groups, musical ensembles, volunteer organizations, book clubs, etc.), we tend to care about the quality and sustainability of those communities.
3. Take responsibility for your actions. It’s not hard to find any number of quotes about how responsibility needs to accompany freedom of choice. We can all find ways to lighten our ecological footprints and support sustainability in our communities.
4. Spend time on things that matter. It’s so easy to get caught up in the rat race, along with the material trappings that our wages can buy. Whether playing with family members, volunteering in your community, or simply taking a break, society and individuals alike will benefit from a slowdown.
5. Get involved in political discussions. These discussions can range from simple conversations with friends to negotiations with members of Congress. If we don’t talk about sensible economic policies, who will?
4 Responses to 'Be a Citizen. Don’t Be a Consumer.'
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It feels nice to read this thought in particular.
:0)
Krishnaraj Rao
17 Jan 08 at 12:45 am
Here’s my list of how to be a Citizen, and to Promote a Citizen-Friendly Economy:
1) Individual consumers need to consciously consume less of whatever it is that they consume. The government or NGOs should incentivate families to benchmark their current levels of consumption on various fronts, then reduce them. Consuming fewer air-miles each successive year should be high on our list of priorities, considering their huge addition to our individual carbon footprint. (As a cheap and effective alternative to flying, we may consider video-conferencing.)
2) Advertising aimed at making people buy more should be tapered off by legislative measures. Only adverts giving information should be allowed.
3) Roadside advertising hoardings should be reduced by 50%, and they should not be illuminated, as they use up precious energy for a relatively non-productive purpose.
4) Stop adding power generation capacities, whether thermal or otherwise. Freeze them at existing capacities and merely replace thermal capacities with wind-energy and solar generation capacities.
5) Stop registering new private vehicles. NGOs or government should incentivate people to give up private transport (for instance by giving them free passes on public transport with 10-year validity.)
6) Each year, taper off the numbers of private transport wheels by 10% or more, and enhance the capacity of public transport by 20%. This will result in a net improvement in the quality of transportation and reduced congestion each year. Also encourage biking and hiking by improving the quality of roadsides, and including rest facilities (lounges) every kilometre or two.
7) Enforce a one-child policy with both carrot and stick. This means that within the span of 60-70 years, population would go down by about 50%.
9) Civic and governmental efforts to improve quality of life are crucial to wean off people from the rat-race.
This is not saying that we shall have no more problems, and shall live happily ever after. Every situation and every lifestyle inevitably has its own set of problems… and we shall have to be alert and aware to deal with them as they arise.
Warmly,
Krish
http://friendlyghost.rediffiland.com
http://globalwarming.rediffiland.com
Krishnaraj Rao
17 Jan 08 at 12:48 am
Hey Rob,
Here’s another thought… another direction for action as CITIZENS. It requires us to act very contrarily to our current habits as CONSUMERS.:
LET US STOP CREDITCARDS & CONSUMER CREDIT
Today, we have an affluent economy, with only a small fraction of our economies’ output devoted to basic needs. Environmentalists say that we are reaching the limits of growth due to ecological constraints. Here in our cities, we have not only reached the limits of human needs but overshot them many times over. What we currently have in our metros is largely overconsumption or unnecessarily luxurious consumption which has many adverse consequences on us, on our economies and on our planet.
Economic growth is no longer improving our well-being. The extra time and energy that we must spend on healthcare, children’s education, commuting and just keeping pace of changes are on the rise. The quality of our surroundings — our neighbourhood, roads, civic infrastructure etc. are deteriorating even as more and more goods flood the supermarkets.
We have reached a point of counterproductive growth; additional growth now brings diminishing benefits while causing increased social and environmental costs.
As we urban Indians have become prosperous, we have moved from consuming necessities to consuming conveniences to consuming luxuries. We are now driving to work one-per-car and spending many hours per week in bumper-to-bumper traffic.
This has severe environmental consequences. Here in India, our India’s phenomenal economic growth of 9.5% per annum comes at the cost of farmers being deprived of electricity, of countless creatures of all shapes and sizes being deprived of their natural habitats and their food, of countless rivers and groundwater resources being both overexploited and polluted. Due to the continuous expansion of factories for manufacturing everything from cement to SUVs to cream-biscuits expand to meet the burgeoning demand, we overdraw on planetary resources and disrupt the fine web of life by cutting its strands.
But how can we stop? How to stop so many billion people from doing all the things they do in daily life?
In my mind, I keep searching for key points that are causing our present situation. I keep trying to identify places where the cancerous tumour, so to speak, can be clearly isolated from human flesh. Because these are the places where we can start cutting away surgically, methodically, without hurting too many people.
1) Consumer credit — loans extended by banks for purchase of new vehicles and consumer appliances — is one of the major arteries of this cancerous tumour. Easy loans affect our purchasing decisions. How?
Two calls from an aggressive marketer of car loans is all I need to make me feel that I NEED to step up from my family car to an SUV. I start believing that it is high time I bought a bigger car. “You can afford it, Sir,” says the loan agent, sleazily massaging my ego into a full-blown erection.
I think about my employee who drives the same brand of car that I drive, thanks to the same loan agent’s persuasion. Then I think about my neighbour’s shining new Scorpio and think about how insignificant my own vehicle (read phallic symbol) looks standing next to it.
Some advice from my friendly chartered accountant reinforces this feeling: New SUV = more tax-deductible depreciation. Also, interest on loan installments is tax-deductible.
I reason: if I trade in my present vehicle, it brings down the price of the new one a lakh or so. Then I only need to afford the reduced EMIs (Equated Monthly Instalments) on the load. Can’t I afford an EMI of Rs 12,000? Of course I can; what kind of man am I if I can’t afford to pay a small installment like that?!
Besides, business is looking up; that new client who I have been pursuing for six months is almost in the bag. So what if he hasn’t actually signed on the dotted line? His word is as good as gold.
That decides it: I just WANT a brand-new fuel-guzzler, and I want it NOW! Never mind the price, I can afford the EMI. Of course I can… Case closed!
2) Credit cards: Visa Power — you’ve got it! If you have a credit card or two, you know what it means to be a really wealthy person, because you are able to securely carry large amounts equivalent to many months’ earnings in your wallet.
And when you do that, you are potentially able to do all those wonderful, beautiful, generous things that you see in TV commercials — things that can make your wife’s heart go flutter-flutter, and that will make her give you that million-dollar smile. How about buying her that diamond solitaire? Or taking her out to dinner at the Taj Princess? Or booking the Presidential suite for your wedding anniversary? Or, better still, surprising her with a couple of air-tickets to Paris
Wow, that would be such a PRICELESS moment… just like they show in Visa commercials!
Credit-card bills? What’s that? Oh, just a minor detail, that’s all. Stuff that happens in the background, inconspicuously, as part of routine life. Life goes on, bills get paid… they always do. So let’s not waste time talking about bills. Those airline tickets are one phone-call or one mouse-click away.
The point that I’m making here is: Consumer credit and credit-cards are the hot air causing the great big Economic Growth balloon to go up… and up… and up at the current rate of 9.5% per annum. Thanks to this banking ‘reform’, all of us are learning to increasingly live in perpetual debt, just like the Americans whom we all adore so much that they can do no wrong, not even in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Thanks to easy consumer credit, we are all borrowing from the future. We aren’t only borrowing economically, we are borrowing ecologically. As the previous article points out, “Globally, we are demanding 1.3 planets to support our lifestyles this year, and yet we only have one planet earth. Each year, we as a global community place demands on cropland, pasture, forests and fisheries that goes beyond their capacity to generate resources and absorb wastes. We are using more far more than the planet can regenerate in a year.”
Conclusion: At an individual level, we should stop buying things with credit, and stop using our credit cards. It is worth cutting up our credit cards. Let us stop borrowing for the future.
And as a community of concerned citizens, let us LOBBY FOR A CLAMPDOWN ON CONSUMER CREDIT. Let us write to the government, to Reserve Bank and to individual banks and bankers.
LET EACH PERSON IN THE BANKING INDUSTRY BE TARGETTED WITH THIS MESSAGE: Cap and roll back. Let us ask for a freeze of consumer credit at current levels this year, and a 50% reduction in the amounts of credit given each year.
This would give the economy about three years to adjust to the changing scenario. (Three years is 36 months — far more time than the economy and its stakeholders get for adjustment when the stock-markets crash or a bank collapse which happens within a few weeks time.)
Warmly,
Krish
http://friendlyghost.rediffiland.com
http://globalwarming.rediffiland.com
Krishnaraj Rao
21 Jan 08 at 8:59 pm
Krish,
This credit card menace is too much. Even my husband says the same thing about credit cards, its like slow poisoing. according to a survive done by some college students here, that people are buying things, which, even though they know they are not going to use them often. its really disturbing to know, that ppl are wasting money. good for nothing.
couple of months ago my cousin has to pay penalty bcoz of some miscalcuations in ICICI credit card, she immedietrly called the authority and complained and she demanded that she wants to terminate it. after some explanations they said they dont charge the miscalculated money, and said sorry to her for the incident.
i asked why she needs credit card, she is having a debit card with suffeint balance, she says she travels to UK, so sometimes she needs credit cards and master cards.
yes, you are right, in an individual level, we should stop buying things with credit, and stop using our credit cards. I agree!
Warm Regards,
Meena.
Meena Sundar
22 Jan 08 at 11:01 pm