Quote:
Originally posted by RougeUnderoos@Sep 29 2004, 11:02 PM
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You yourself (Cowperson) were talking just last week how you are a very "non-consuming consumer".
You quoted this line above: "sustainable societies freed from the myth that greed, competition, and mindless consumption are paths to individual and collective fulfillment" and said it sounded nice but ignores human nature. Does it? By the sounds of things, you actually do live that way. You are freed from the myths, correct? I like to think I am as well. Are we going against human nature? I don't think so.
I spend money on travel, experiences generally being more important to me than material aspects. Within that context, I'm willing to ratchet up the costs to enhance the experience - staying at a quality place across the street from Central Park in New York, as an example, versus some cheaper place off the beaten track.
I have a sizeable and fairly expensive acreage, which is an experience in itself given the different lifestyle from city life. I don't balk at the bills when Mrs. Cowperson fills it with all manner of consumer choices but I'm not much use in helping with the shopping of those articles since the project doesn't interest me much.
So . . . to answer your observation, I still need money or wealth to do the things I like to do. Those things just don't happen to be material but rather experience orientated and require a certain wealth in any event.
In that, I'm not particularly different than most.
A global cruise in the best cabin available is $150,000 per person. I looked it up . . . but, if I were nutty enough to do that, I'd probably wear a t-shirt and shorts the whole time.
Without getting into an entire philosophical debate about it... I don't really agree that it's human nature to want more more more. Maybe it's a "trait" of some people, but it's obviously not just inherent in all of us.
It's an issue of degrees.
Not everyone is going to spend their lives happily fishing and hunting from a log cabin on the Mackenzie River but neither would everyone be happy commuting an hour and a half every morning and working 14 hours a day on Wall Street, seeing the kids and wife on the weekends but earning a million a year.
Periodically in the National Geographics which cross my desk, there is the inevitable article of a South American tribal elder lamenting losing his young people to logging jobs or the big cities of Brazil.
How often do you see that theme played out in various indigenous culture's around the world?
The big sucking sound is the trickle-down of globalization gradually pulling a broadening spectrum of people into a monochrome world of apartments, cars and cell phones.
Is that a bad thing?
Cowperson