We've done a story on living in an RV where the owner talks about how living small cuts down on energy consumption: http://faircompanies.com/videos/view/living-small-when-home-...
I've never been much of a consumer, to be honest. Far too cheap for that! But I'm still waiting for someone to explain to me just why consumption is such a problem.
I didn't understand kirstendirksen was actually blaming consumption as is. Overconsumption, owning "stuff", more is better, bigger is better, double is better, etc., is a relatively new social push. Difficult to be really concise and short here. We all are here in a conversation that needs "information", "facts", "decisions", etc.
My advice is don't be opinionated before the fact, avoid being defensive when possible, don't stay with asumptions. Asumptions are not facts. "Consumption" is not good or bad. Then, if you relate owning or buying or collecting stuff with things such as happiness, well.
Here's the thing, though. While it may be relatively new at the "everyday person" level, I think it's normal human behavior to consume more at least until a certain level of happiness is reached. In the past that level of consumption was only affordable to the wealthy, but it's now trickling down to everyone. There's a reason that WalMart is as popular as it is, and that's related to the reasons that most cloth is made in mills and not woven by hand anymore, and why I'm paid to write software and not to shape red hot iron on an anvil.
What that means is that it's pretty much going to be a force that you can't train or educate people out of. They simply want to live better, for their self-defined values of "better."
IOW: the solution won't be found in consuming less, it will be found in making it easier & cheaper to extract resources from the environment. I suspect a lot of the "anti-overconsumption" people realize this, but don't want to admit it.
As far as being defensive: I'm not. I enjoy having a large house, more vehicles than I really need and luxuries that would make a 19th century king envious. I wouldn't have all that if I wasn't producing more value than I was consuming, and in the end that's what matters.
First of all, I want to make clear I use more space than the proposals of Tumbleweed Tiny House, but I respect the concept and I think it makes us all think about our behaviors and the consequences of them.
I live in an old apartment in a pedestrian street, at the center of Barcelona. I'm occupying an apartment that has had people on it for centuries, and use resources in a pretty frugal way, just because my "pursuit of happiness" happened to evolve in a dense Mediterranean city, where public transportation are a matter of convenience, not class. The apartment is fairly big, yes, and it does have a terrasse. I also have 2 kids. The rest of the apartments of the building are being used by young students and similar. Several people in every apartment.
I wanted to make clear that I think dense cities are the response to some of the main issues of the world that affect all of us. Your attittude affects me, and mine has an impact in you.
I also believe, like Sterwart Brand, that slums are not necessarily bad for humanity (http://www.ted.com/talks/stewart_brand_proclaims_4_environme...). And we are late for a bucolic return to nature the Thoreau way.
Owning more stuff and being able to acquire it are both a consequence related to the industrial revolution (via the Illustration, blah blah) and we all agree "progress" permitted human societies to increase all conditions, including living expectancy.
I don't want to theorize about how the idea of "public opinion" (via Adam Smith and the like) was created, or how the School of Frankfurt related mass media and modern press to "opinion leaders" and how these models "influenced" in all of us.
I would disagree with your last point, when you relate owning stuff with success. It's the same point of view an emerging new world is having, by relating happiness with their will to imitate America and Europe after World War 2.
Sadly, there's not enough "stuff" (in terms of "World", and there's nothing else yet to live in as mortal human beings) for 2 more billion of "new rich" people, if they happen to follow the western way. These people are buying their cars and increasing their footprint (and "foodprint") just right now.
The thing is that relating "happiness" and "success", "American dream" and "Pursuit of Happiness" to modern consumption was greatly influenced by certain campaigns. There's no signs in anthropology that relate owning more "stuff" to being "better" or being "happier".
I recommend to dig in:
- GDP: on how the concept of GDP and GDP per person are flawed and do not equal to "wealth". A recent post in HN was saying that Mississipi is richer than Europe (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=811365). Relating wealth and happiness to GDP (gross consumption, in general terms) is a big mistake, explained by a lot of people. I just don't have the time to look for the referrals just now (I'd do it upon request).
- Documentaries "The century of the self" (You'll find them in the Internet). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self
- The paragraphs on the relationship about the vision of America as a car country with houses and no public transportation, in the book "Fast Food Nation".
- I could go on and on, but It's not a matter of creating an opinion, but making my point.
And I also think frugality and small are the new "coolness" (which is also created-influenced artificially). You'll (we all) be soon influenced by that, and you won't know why, but it will happen, because the consumption push will bring other ways of more responsible consumption.
And there's no necessity to make bad products for the earth.
See, for instance:
- Cradle to Cradle concept.
- Embodied energy concept.
That should tell us something. I wish I had more time to elaborate. Having a big house, a personal trainer, 5 sports cars, etc., is becoming a sign of cheesiness.
Hear the drums?
Hear the drums?
Yes, but I simply don't care. I don't live my life the way I do because it's "cool" or trendy. I do it because it makes me happy. I live on a small farm miles away from the nearest urban center and if anything, my lifestyle is going in the opposite direction from most people with options. They're moving away from small towns and rural areas, I'm moving deeper into it. Telling a city dweller you live in the country is more likely to invite derision than envy.
My opinion is that a person's take on all this is significantly influenced by their current living conditions. If I were living in the middle of a dense city (and I spent my teenage years living in NYC) I would worry about overcrowding, lack of resources, how expensive life was, etc. But living out in the country, I see vast amounts of resources (I mentioned in a recent HN thread that I could farm all my own food in a fraction of the land we own if I felt like it), the ability to have as tiny or as large a house as you want and a general feeling of independence and self-sufficiency that city dwellers don't have. The problems you allude to I see as a resource distribution problem, not a resource availability problem.
It's an interesting subject to be sure, but probably OT for Hacker News :-(
Thanks for sharing that anyway.
The whole environmental angle is relatively minor to this, in my view. In fact, much of the "Green" stuff like Prius and Whole Foods are just this generation's status symbols, like the caviar and BMWs of the 80s.