Sometimes if we try to change something — like hopeless, unsustainable societal patterns, limiting norms and assumptions, or unfortunate personal behavioural repetitions — the way we talk about things or the vocabulary we use can have great impact. In relation to unsustainable consumption patterns, a good question to ask is:
What if we stopped using the word consumption altogether, and started saying usage instead? What would that imply?
If you consume goods you are automatically implying that you go through them; that they will be obsolete or outdated sooner rather than later and you will be done with them.
Synonyms for consumption are, besides eating and drinking: using up, ruining, misusing, wasting, and damaging. Antonyms, on the other hand, are as follows: growth, creation, building, constructing, and improving.
In other words, the term consumption is destructive, whereas its antonym contains invention and progression.
If you focus on the usage of things rather than the consumption you might be more inclined to buy something because you intend to use it and value it for a long time, not because you anticipate consuming it before discarding it.
Consumption is static, in the sense that a product designed to be consumed is not created to develop, whereas usage is dynamic and involves development. Perhaps more accurately put, consumption is linear; it has a starting point and an endpoint, while usage can be circular, encompassing the acts of mending, repairing, and sharing.
Our current capitalist system and societal norms generally don’t encourage long-term usage of things though. There are so many seemingly reliable ways to get rid of your stuff that make it feel acceptable and legitimate to continue to consume: buy things, “extract all the nutrients out of them,” and then get rid of them again by off-loading them at charity shops or a recycling centres — exchanging them for vouchers to allow for more consumption or selling them on through secondhand apps or online platforms. It seems so harmless and innocent, because we are not throwing our discarded things away — only some of them — we are merely passing them on.
With the increase in “minimalism” and “tidy-up” books and TV programs we are learning that it is important for our well-being to thin out our belongings. Reducing belongings is almost a form of therapy now.
So, what is the problem? Well, the majority of recycling and reusing arrangements seem a bit like treating a disease instead of seeking a cure for it, or at least trying to prevent it.
First, at the speed people are consuming, there are no recycle-systems in the world that would ever be able to keep up with it. Second, even though it might make us feel better to donate things to charity or resell them on online platforms, it doesn’t change the fact that we are buying way too many short-lived products. And third, the charity shops receive so many discarded things that they don’t know what to do with them. I had a firsthand experience of this some years back when I was cleaning out my children’s cabinets and drawers before us moving to Bali.
The children’s charity shop to which I went with all the items my children had forgotten about long ago, or had outgrown, didn’t have the capacity to accept my many bags of stuff. Their back office was already filled to the brim with discarded toys and clothes. I had no other choice but to throw away the majority of the things in my bags. None of my friends were interested in any of our surplus things at that point. What a strange and nauseating experience it was, and a bit of a wake-up call. Suddenly it struck me that excusing our consumer habits by offering obsolete items to charity or by reselling them through one of the many online secondhand channels is merely a patch on the bleeding wound of over-consumption. And it is sadly not even close to being enough goodwill for real change to happen.
Reducing consumption radically is the only civil way of truly changing the unfortunate societal consumption patterns from which our planet is currently suffering, not recycling or reusing. Refusing is of course also a way—but it seems a little too much like a nihilistic turn away from the world. Refusing isn’t necessary or realistic. Radically reducing how much we consume is, however, both realistic and necessary.
In order to radically reduce how much we buy, we must keep and sustain our physical belongings for much, much longer than what we have grown accustomed to doing, and we must be mindful of what we buy. We must focus on the usage and the value of things rather than on the momentary newness fix. Long-term usage involves mending, improving, repairing, and caring. It involves focusing on purpose and usability.
We don’t need to totally withdraw from society and live our lives in an off-grid hut on the top of a mountain in order to live authentically, sustainably, and ethically. I sometimes feel like doing so, when the current immense environmental problems and the injustice and oppression become too much to stand.
But withdrawal and nihilistically refusing to be engaged in anything or anyone is not the only way to cope with current world problems. It is the “ostrich-way” — so to speak — and it doesn’t solve anything; unless you build a community of likeminded individuals to start a movement of downshifting and degrowth with.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit: Markus Spiske on Unsplash
