Consumerism will wipe us out before we've made the planet entirely uninhabitable for humans. We now live in a permanent
state of Black Friday.
I've
railed against this on a global level and on a local level (here in Edinburgh, like a lot of cities, cutting down trees and hedges seems to be an addiction). I have written about it on this blog as well as in my fiction Casey & the Surfmen and Zero One Zero Two
But there is a dark race going on as a
background to the more obvious self-harm of Brexit and societal conflict.
Consumerism – the very comfortable bed-fellow of rampant Capitalism.
Consumerism is killing us directly at a startling rate,
exponentially, efficiently and globally far faster even than climate
devastation.
Right on your very doorstep there are people killing
themselves by consuming shit for the financial gain of other human beings and
we don’t seem to be able to get enough of it.
Car use is one of our favourite cancers – the one we
hug to our bosom while chanting and fist waving about beating bodily cancers.
As recently as the 1970s it was not the norm for most families to own a car (or
two). We know car usage contributes both to obesity
and poisons the air we breathe in a
very immediate way and that is if you exclude the carnage that happens on our
roads daily. We even seem to have gone soft on the more recent scourge of phone use
during driving which is – as I pointed out to one driver when I knocked on his
car window yesterday ‘dangerous, selfish and illegal’ (Yes, I’m one of THOSE
women…)
Yet car over-usage has ceased to be a regular topic
of conversation because we’ve collectively given up on the idea of
reducing it, falsely mollifying ourselves with the dummy idea that electric
cars are going to solve the problems. We are obsessed with the idea that we can
carry on as normal and science will dig us out of this mess. Presumably we also
think there is no environmental impact to producing new cars? Will they magically not
run people over or keep them from exercise... Ditto air travel. We know it is a
significant polluter and the tourist traffic it dumps on now- tourist-dependent
poorer countries is an abomination, disenfranchising and reducing the local
populous to tourist slaves. But you only have to spout about the ‘opportunity’
for everyone to have cheaper holidays and any environmental or social argument evaporates. Ditto the vile and ocean-polluting cruises ships. Because it all
makes money – for someone.
Drugs – legal or illegal are wiping out thousands of
us every single year and the figure is growing. But drugs are making money for
someone somewhere and the ones that aren’t cooked up in factories are grown on
land that could be used to grow food.
The stress of non-essential spending-related debt is
taking its toll on people’s health. The scourge of of gambling has eaten it’s
away into the epicentre of many families like a new form of heart disease.
Try
challenging rampant capitalism or destructive consumerism and the ready mantra
of CHOICE is screamed in your face. Choice is party of the holy trinity of this
death cult.
Fast/processed/unhealthy food! How many, many ways
is that killing us? Directly of course as the exponential rise in obesity
continues – heart attacks – cancers related to poor diet but also because land
clearance to grow meat and grain to feed cattle is devastating huge swathes of
land leading to more floods and soil erosion. It is routine to pump cattle with
antibiotics and this is helping medicine resistant strains of truly
devastating diseases develop at a rate we cannot possibly keep up with in our
disjointed fractured world.
Plastic surgery has become ‘normal’ for ordinary
people where it used to be the preserve of aging Hollywood actors. Every few
days another story hits the media (I won’t say headlines as it’s too regular
for that) of a young woman being butchered at her own expense to have larger
breasts or a larger bottom or a smaller waste or a different shaped nose or
mouth. It's body consumerism. No, plastic surgery is not killing humans at as significant rate as other things but its increase is another symptom of the unspoken acceptance of
any harm if it is lucrative. We have completely lost the plot on this one.
Every moment of every day someone somewhere is
making a decision that money is more important than human life (Grenfell Tower?) The two Western
democracies that could and should be leading the way on these vital issues are
in socio-political meltdown.
Environmentalists
I applaud you. As a non-car owning, non-smartphone owning – non dishwasher/microwave
(etc) owning, non-tourist wierdo, I consider myself one. However, another human self-destruct
mechanism is beating a path to Armageddon and I think it will get there first.
