CONSUME YOUR ETHICS

“ There are professions more harmful than industrial design, but only a very few of them. And probably only one profession is phonier. Advertising design, to persuade people to buy things they don’t need, with money they don’t have in order to impress people that don’t care”
Victor Papanek




So how did we become a world dependent on material goods for happiness?
Well…I looked into this and came across some interesting facts on how we have made consumerism a way of life.
Consumption is at the heart of the economy. Without it, it would crumble.
So in order to keep the economy afloat there has been designed strategies to do just that.

Consumption as a way of life…didn’t just happen. It was no natural progression that we now consume twice as much as we did 50 yrs ago. It was designed.
This designed strategy can be traced back to after the end of the Second World War.
Victor Lebow, a retail analyst, designed a strategy to ramp up the US economy after the war. He said, “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, replaced and discarded at an ever-accelerating rate.” *
This has become the norm for most economies today.

So how was this solution designed into our everyday lives?
I am aware that we have discussed this in a previous lecture, but I feel it of great importance to reiterate on these points.
The strategies implemented are “planned obsolescence” and “perceived obsolescence”. “Planned obsolescence” being that of goods being designed with a specific lifespan and “perceived obsolescence” is down to the media and advertising, which advertises the new look of a product, making your perfectly good product loose value.*

When it comes to recycling and being more of a conscientious consumer, I often ask myself why it is that you never see adverts to simply consume less. That by doing this, you will have more money to enjoy other things and possibly be able to work less and enjoy life on the whole a lot more.
Are we not just jumping onto another wagon that makes us again, feel better with ourselves by consuming more fair trade, recycled, eco-friendly products? We already have all the products we need…why buy another just because it’s under the eco-friendly label?

Even if we do recycle, that only amounts to a small portion of the waste produced worldwide. One rubbish bin that we put out equals 70 rubbish bins of waste produced to manufacture that bin you just put out!!*
The solution is not recycling. It’s simply consuming less.
But how do we consume less when we are targeted with an average of 3000 adverts a day *, telling us that we are not good enough, not good looking enough and that we need the cheap clothes from Primark to make ourselves feel good and happy?

Another interesting fact or coincidence is that we own double the amount of things than we did in the 1950’s, but polls show that our national happiness is actually declining and that it’s peek was sometime in the 1950s -the same time consumption started to boom and to become a way of life.*


What we need is fewer adverts on recycling, more on less consumption and more information on how to have a better and fuller life. I also understand that this is a Utopian vision…but a vision I would like to believe in for now.


* www.storyofstuff.com
Design for the Real World, Victor Papanek

Image: www.celsias.com