“There is enough on earth for everybody’s need, but not for everyone’s greed.”
Gandhi
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Read the article and then do comprehension exercise (1) and comprehension exercise (2). Finally, do some writing yourself and read texts written by other readers.
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. Rearrange the list of things you can buy and put the things you think we most need at the top of the list.
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| A coat |
A pair of trainers |
| Levi’s jeans |
Water |
| A CD player |
A pair of jeans |
| A dental check up |
Paper |
| A restaurant meal |
A telephone |
| Jewellery |
Gold-coloured laces in your trainers |
| Food |
An appointment at the hair salon |
| Paracetamol |
Shampoo |
| An iPod |
Beer |
| Toothpaste |
A packet of M&Ms |
| Cushion covers |
Table mats which match the curtains |
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.
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.
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.
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?
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!
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Do you agree with the content of this article? Send us your opinion.
Robert Eifert writes “I agree with you article, especially with the last sentence "Even though you have less money, your life will become richer!" Firstly, I want to say that all these things that are mentioned in this article are the result of capitalism. The result of capitalism is a big difference between rich and poor, which leads to the exploitation of little children in Asia. The problem is that satisfaction is very rare in our society because every time we need more and more and we don’t get it. We don’t care about the origin of a product, who made it or how was it made. We are influenced by the media and if the product is cheap we don’t think about such things.
But if we could manage to go back to our roots and cut down our needs, I think we could really become richer. I don’t mean the richness of money but the richness of the improvement of our personal life quality. This includes, for example, having good moral sense for the environment and also enjoying the little things in life because many have forgotten what the really essential things in their life are. Even though we aren’t as rich or as successful as our fellow men, we can be proud of saving the environment or helping the labours of developing countries who are also victims of capitalism.
Thanks, Julie, for writing such a great article.”
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Marchenkova Viktoria writes “The idea of downshifting is not bad. Society should be tolerant to people who make this choice. Probably it is a comfortable way of living for unambitious persons. But I prefer the best, so I need money and it isn't my choice.”
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Yoni writes “I agree. If I want to buy cookies, they sell me them in about 3 bags, which costs me more money and damages the environment. We really do waste our money on junk/garbage that we don’t really need, and doesn’t last long enough. We should save our money for more important things.”
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Eric Ramirez Rodriguez writes “No way do I agree with the content of this article. If we bought less things or services, the companies would sell less things and services, and would have to dismiss workers. Unemployment would increase.”
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Tatiana writes “Maybe people haven't got enough free time for themselves because they have to spend too much time not at work, but getting to work? And maybe they are so tied down not because of working hard, but because they have to do boring jobs? If you are a worker at a factory or a clerk in an office it is not a very interesting job, is it? I think that if you like your job you can work a lot and be happy. But most people have to do boring and not well paid jobs to live, to bring up children and to have their home. Downshifting is for a small percentage of people. But if you earn too much you always have the choice between buying more diamonds or helping somebody, for example. I think that consumer society is not our choice, but a natural process. On the other hand everybody has a choice how to live his own life.”
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Ojong Gerrald writes “Simply put: To be forewarned is to be forearmed; this is the way that I see the consumer society.”
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Christina Stegemann writes “All in all, we think that this is a very good article, because the consumer-society is an important topic. We agree with a lot of parts of the article, for example that we should look for good products: that they are healthy and to look where they are made. Also, sometimes products are made using child labour and of course we agree that these points are important. But we always choose between the quality and the price ... In the whole article there aren’t any stupid things, everything that is said is right! We think we are consumers because of the ads and we always want to have the best and cheapest things! We aren’t prepared to downshift! And we like the sentence: ‘The next time you go shopping, think about what you really need to buy’.”
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F. Rehms writes “Your article was interesting, and sometimes I could agree with what you wrote, but when everybody buys only what he needs, jobs get lost, and there are too much things we don't really need, like games etc. But if we only produce what we need, we would still be a low-tech world. There are many technical things we don't really need. But without them, we wouldn't live as well. For example we don't need machines, but without them we would have to do dangerous work ourselves. We also agree with you that it's important who made the things you buy and whether they were paid well or not.”
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Jensen writes “I agree with this some parts of this article, such as having less money but a richer life. I believe that people can be happy by doing certain things, it depends on what you would like to do outside your job. The idea in this article that people should work less is pretty interesting since too much working has been making people tired and stressed. Is the article claiming that who gets less will own more? In my opinion, getting less is a good way of reducing pressures, and even makes you more productive. If people work less, and want less, society will get more balanced, people will have easier lives too. I suggest people work less if it is possible.”
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Dar'ya Makarenko writes “There are so many debates nowadays around the definition of “consumer society”. There are notions that we don’t need to buy too much and, correspondingly, to work so much.
It must be the ideal picture of how the thing should be done: protected environment, conserved resources, balanced life and so on. But, under the present conditions, the desperate appeal “Back to the future” sounds the most ridiculous, the strictest ways of downshifting followers of this trend propose. “Spending less money, growing your vegetables, making your clothes yourself” and so on are quite laudable but, to my regret, these catchphrases have little to do with reality.
This scheme is viable if everybody does like this. Otherwise it must be decided who exactly has to spend less and, in such a way, becomes a more reasonable consumer. Humanity has faced plenty of examples of successful achievement of these ideas, but as always occurs with people, in a rather perverse manner. Can we say with all certainty that the feudal era or the time of intensive transatlantic slave trade or the time of “developed socialism” in the Soviet Union were the best patterns of downshifting?
You can’t forbid people to buy something that they consider to be important for them. And, in my opinion, the sense of human life doesn’t consist only in maintaining our physical existence, on a biological level. We consume and buy not only food and clothes, but also things that enhance our prestige, such as computer products, and tourism products. All this fundamental truth of what to consume presupposes our free choice and realization of the rights declared by the UNO.
Maybe the appeals can be “Less drugs, less tobacco, less alcohol, no more nuclear weapons”? “Economic way of garbage recycling”, “New alternative ways of power production”, “Elimination of metallurgical plants and their replacement by social and health services”, “New types of vehicles, that do not produce harmful polluting substances” – don’t theses mottos sound optimistic from the point of view of a staunch supporter of anti-consumerism?
Consumerism doesn’t deal with well-off people and big money, but with the exact way that money is spent. If you have less money it doesn’t make you richer in a spiritual sense and neither does it doesn’t increase your importance for society. It depends on the person – to buy the fifth villa with four swimming pools or give this money to charity.
It must be clearly understood that the age-old human urge towards development and the creation of more consumable society has spurred rises and evolutions of whole civilizations. So now, the main ideal is not return to rural life, but to an ecologically sustainable way of resource usage.”
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Wikipedia: consumerism
Adbusters: anti-consumerism magazine dedicated to a world in which the economy and ecology resonate in balance.
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