[lit-ideas] Re: Paper, Plastic, the Vacuum

  • From: Andy <mimi.erva@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2012 05:07:55 -0800 (PST)

The 'old' razor is as good as the 'new' one.  However, if they didn't bring out 
a 'new' one, many people wouldn't have jobs (tweaking the thing, designing the 
packaging, etc.).  In essence that's the underlying reason why capitalism was 
predicted (since forever) to contain within it the seeds of its own 
destruction, because it's based in infinite growth on a finite planet ("Limits 
to Growth", 1972).  Really our economic system is corporatism; like any 'ism' 
capitalism is a construct that works on paper but mutates in reality, in this 
case into corporatism.  It can be argued capitalism is about amenities and a 
better moral life; corporatism is about consumption as an end in itself.  Some 
say that our current economic malaise is a product of the fact that we've 
hit limits to growth.  In an ironic yin/yang, the creative destruction of Marx 
became the capitalist virtue of Schumpeter.  In the end though, it's nature who 
bats last.  We've been
 growing a tree to the sky and it just won't grow anymore.
 
There's an interesting book called The Story of Stuff by Annie Leonard.  Below 
is a link to a 21-minute video.  The book is a much more detailed account of 
*why* we live in a consumer society.  Believe it or not, we Americans did not 
always exist to consume.  That behavior was deliberately orchestrated at the 
beginning of the 20th century and has become such a part of the air and water 
that it's become life itself.  Only one of myriad inducements, the song Second 
Hand Rose (Ziegfeld Follies, 1921) is about inspiring consumption; planned 
obsolescence.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCtrcAp3TEY  ;("Even the piano in 
the parlor, daddy bought for ten cents on the dollar."  How old fashioned, we 
need a *new* piano (along with everything else, leaving her feeling abused no 
less), and of course it would need to be financed; conspicuous consumption.)  
Ironically the figurative expression 'part of the air and water' in this case 
is literal from
 creating and disposing of stuff.  It's been said we have dizzying change but 
no progress.  One wonders if we didn't have shopping and consuming to do all 
day long, and working to get this symbolic thing called money to trade for 
shopping and consuming, what would humans do to pass the time?  Seriously.   A 
nonconsumption-based way of life is literally unimaginable.  
 
(An ecological rant, for lack of a better word, follows.)  The word consumption 
used to be the term for tuberculosis, it consumed the body.  From a Gaia 
perspective we are consuming the planet.  Among other things, there's a garbage 
patch in the Pacific Ocean the size of Texas with something like 47,000 pieces 
of garbage per square mile of this floating garbage island.  It's said that 
when the sea turtles can no longer swim through it, we're in trouble.  There's 
another forming in the Atlantic.  The point is, when we throw something away, 
there is no away.  It goes somewhere, only to come back as the weather extremes 
of climate change or antibiotic resistance or some other way.  (End of rant.) 
 
At any rate, this is the link to the video.  The link beneath that one is about 
bottled water, also from Annie Leonard.  
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLBE5QAYXp8
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Se12y9hSOM0&feature=related
 
Andy
 
 


________________________________
From: Eric Yost <mr.eric.yost@xxxxxxxxx>
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 
Sent: Tuesday, February 14, 2012 4:34 PM
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Paper, Plastic, the Vacuum

Gillette made Ad History by creating a commercial where a "public
figure," i.e., Tiger Wood, destroys one of their earlier products.
He tees up (I think) an old Track-two razor and blasts it down the
fairway. Instead one should use the Track-7,000 or whatever, which
is safely in his locker at the clubhouse.

Imagining this as a universal strategy of product launches,
especially in the arms industry,
Eric
always clean-shaven

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