Just watched The Story of Stuff -- definitely worth the 20 minutes to watch the whole thing. If it wasn't already pretty clear, the short film proves the point that our current way of life is unsustainable. (I'm still reading through its list of suggestions for what we can do about.)
One of the (many) things I found startling was that our consumer-driven economy didn't just happen; it was explicitly designed. Check out this fun call to action from 1955 by (widely quoted) retailing analyst Victor Lebow:
Our enormously productive economy... demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption... We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced, and discarded at an ever increasing rate.
Sigh. I want to blame Victor for the consumer-driven bastardization of Christmas, but that's the easy way out. Despite this post's title, the blame is probably a bit more distributed than that. As long as I don't need to blame myself ... I mean, I bought only like 10 things for Christmas gifts. Ok, more like 20. Ok ok, 30 max.
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