by Tracy of The Zen Housewife 


I wrote a blog post at EcoStreet recently about Buy Nothing Day 2007. If you aren't familiar with BND, it's a 24-hour detox from consumption, but it's also more importantly an opportunity to connect with your consumer conscience, for some perhaps even a life changing experience.



When the blog post was submitted to Digg it attracted a fair bit of attention, much of which was negative. What came as a real surprise to me was the anger sparked by the idea.

 

  • "Has the genius who created this given any thought as to the effect that such a day, were it to be actually carried out, would have on the economy?"
  • "Sounds like a Communist Plot.... Lets all hurt the economy together... all @ once now...."
  • "This is such a bad idea. And very selfish. How is punishing proprietors who build companies and strive for the American dream while taking advantage of a free market society a good thing? Consumerism isn't all bad. If someone works for it or invests for it, why should they be ashamed to spending it? The money spent into our economy in America pays for far more things then the creator of the stupid day thinks it does."
 
Others just didn't seem to get it at all:
 
  • "good god, i am so sick of mindless fix-it-all activities geared to keep us distracted from actual problems. instead of buying nothing, why not buy items that help you consume less! and what happens when i need to purchase the morning after pill on november 24th? if i don't, it will lead to an entire lifetime of unnecessary consumption"
  • "For every product you don't buy, I'm going to buy three."
  • "If Buy Nothing Day means I gotta go an entire 24hrs without my White Chocolate Mocha Frappuccino from Starbucks; they can KISS MY ASS."
  • "huh. that seems to go against my reasons for choosing to live in a capitalistic nation. i don't get it."
 
Diggers can be an opinionated bunch. But in their honesty they've given me food for thought. It is unlikely that we will ever give up being consumers, in fact, it's probably impossible for most not to be consumers in one way or another. So perhaps we can apply the same mindfulness to our consumerism that Buddhists apply to eating and other aspects of their lives. In choosing to buy a product, we could make the choice to be acutely aware and conscious of what we are consuming, considering the resources and energy required to make the product, and the people who worked to bring it to us.
 
 
Instead of thinking that taking time out from shopping may harm the economy, let's review what our needs are, and consider how our purchases may harm those who are making the cheap goods that we so readily consume. This train of thought reminds me of a blog post I recently read at Fat Knowledge discussing Buddhist Economics. This great comparison is presented:
 
  • The aim of Western economics is to maximize "standard of living" by the amount of annual consumption, with more being better.
  • The aim of Buddhist economics is to maximize well-being while minimizing consumption. 
Doesn't that comparison speak volumes? Which seems to be the higher form of economics to you? In his beautifully presented post, Fat Knowledge goes on to explain why we should be consuming less, and how we can consume less. He also explores how work and investment can be included in a mindful economy and concludes that:
 
The key reasons for decreasing resource use are: leaving more for others, reducing pollution and environmental damage, leaving more room for nature and reducing corruption and violence. The point of the economy is more than just maximizing output or productivity, it is to create meaningful jobs that create the goods and services that allow us to maximize well-being.
 
So we don't have to be anti-consumerist in order to create a society that values the environment and human well-being above money-making to the exclusion of all else. But we can aim for a more mindful consumerism with the possibility of loosening the chains that we tie ourselves up with in order to keep up with the Joneses, the sort of chains that Jack Kerouac illustrates so splendidly in The Dharma Bums:
 
... the general demand that they consume production and therefore have to work for the privilege of consuming, all that crap they didn't really want anyway such as refrigerators, TV sets, cars, at least new fancy cars, certain hair oils and deodorants and general junk you finally always see a week later in the garbage anyway, all of them imprisoned in a system of work, produce, consume, work, produce, consume...
 
 
This piece has been republished with permission from The Zen Housewife.  Thank you Tracy!