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Consumer society
By Julie Bray
If we only bought things we needed, there would be enough for everybody. What do we need? What you need depends on how old you are and your way of life. If we don’t need to buy so much, we don’t need to work so much. We can take part-time jobs or reduce our working day from 8 hours to 6 hours. Some people are leaving very well paid jobs to live a healthier life in the countryside or a more exciting life abroad. This is called ‘downshifting’. Parents can spend more time with their children and the unemployed are given more opportunities to work.
If we start to respect saving the earth more than spending money, we will become ‘conservers’. When we are conservers, we try to choose environmentally-friendly products which are durable and last a long time. We may find growing our own vegetables or making our own clothes more rewarding than buying them. What was the best thing you bought last week?
Could you choose from lots of different types? We like having a choice of what to buy. People who buy things are called consumers. Consumers have choices. We usually choose the colour, taste, smell or size of what we buy, but there are other choices we can make.
The following questions will help you to consider these choices.
Where was it made?
If you don’t like the place it was made, you might decide not to buy that particular product. A lot of people don’t buy products from certain countries when they don’t like the way the country is run. Was it made in a factory or on a local farm? If the product was unbelievably cheap, the people who made it might not have been paid much.
Who made it?
Do you know? If a friend made it, you probably like it more and you will want to keep it for a long time. If it was made by somebody who enjoyed making it, the quality and the design are probably better. Or does it look like it might have been assembled in a large factory? There are children in Asia who make Santa Claus dolls for European children to play with. The children who make the toys don’t celebrate Christmas because they are not Christian; they think of the dolls as work. Would it be better if the children in Europe made their own Christmas dolls?
What is it made from?
One of the places where we want to buy expensive luxuries is at the airport’s duty-free shop. Next to the chocolate and cigarettes, there are beautifully-shaped bottles and compact boxes full of perfumes and creams which promise to make you look and feel more beautiful. If you look at the ingredients you will find that the perfumes are mainly alcohol and the creams are mainly made of petroleum!
Almost all products are sold in packaging. Some products have too much packaging, creating more rubbish and using up resources. Some use recycled packaging, which is better for the environment.
Next time you go shopping, think about what you really need to buy. Don’t deprive yourself of things you like, but decide what you should buy before you go out, so that you won’t be influenced by advertisements or promotions. If it is more expensive to buy goods which don’t have much packaging and things which are more durable, buy less. If you can choose to work less, decide which things you would like to make, do or grow yourself. Even though you have less money, your life will become richer!
(To be continued ...)
Freedom
is, in some ways, the ultimate lyrical realist novel. This is not
necessarily a bad thing, of course. You can quickly tell that you are in
safe hands; every sentence will go down smoothly, and there will never
be an ugly locution or an egregious cliché unless the author wants there
to be one. Such moments as pull the reader up short occur when the plot
demands we be pulled up short, as when there is an unexpected phone
call or email and we have to wait for a while to find out what happened
about it. (The structure of this novel made me think of someone pulling
up a pair of skiing trousers, first on one side, then on the other,
until it all fits snugly.) The opening lines seem a little
throat-clearing – we hear about someone called Walter Berglund, who used
to live in Minnesota but then moved to Washington, and who has since in
some controversial way made the front page of the New York Times. The
rest of the book is a long, leisurely stroll, with quite a few
diversions, that will take us to that New York Times story, explain it,
and then reveal its aftermath.
