Consumerism & Relationships

 A couple thoughts on consumerism, relationships, and the important role that every single one of us plays in improving or contributing to the many destructive practices that are wreaking havoc across the globe.

One of the fundamental issues creating the chaos of our current world is our inability to see the relationships that form our reality. Cultures that were known to live sustainably harmoniously with nature shared at least one common trait: their ability to see not just what was in front of them, but the relationships that connected their experience to the rest of the world.

This is problematic because reality IS a relationship. Studies in quantum physics have proved this time and again. Most people know this through the double-slit experiment where it was revealed, through repeated experiments, that objective reality doesn't exist in the way that we think it does. An observer is necessary to 'collapse' reality into a definite state. Prior to that, reality exists as a series of indeterminate probabilities. Researchers cannot determine the state of a wave or particle until there is actually someone or something present to observe it. Until then, the 'quantum soup' as it's called, contains all possibilities and no objective reality.

Researchers have also revealed that the fundamental component of reality isn't actually a particle, nor does it have any mass whatsoever. Instead, we have what are called 'probability waves' that only become apparent when you examine their relationship to other probabilities.

Without the subject-object duality, reality as we know it simply ceases to exist. Without a subjective observer there can't be an objective reality. In other words, the relationship between subject and object is what defines reality.

So why does any of this matter?

Because the relationships that we ignore in our everyday lives, while they might be less profound, have a huge impact on the way that we approach the world. We tend to focus only on what's in front of us and ignore the complex series of relationships that allowed for that thing to reach us in the first place.

For example, when someone goes to buy a chicken for dinner, they usually just see the chicken on their plate. At best, they might consider their immediate relationship with it: the effort involved in purchasing it at the store, the time spent cooking and plating it, etc. Those relationships flavour the overall experience of having a chicken, but people tend to stop considering relationships beyond what's immediately apparent to them.

In reality, however, there are an infinite number of relationships that allowed for that chicken to reach our table. First, it had to be born. The conditions in which it were born and raised are vital. Most chickens are born in factory farms which themselves draw massive amounts of natural resources. The chickens are often fed mass-produced food - again, a large-scale resource draw that often involves unethical treatment practices. The relationship between the chicken and the factory farm is usually one that involves great pain and suffering. Then, the slaughter of the chicken itself, the fuel and ecological damage involved in transporting it to your local store and the investment that your finances provide for factory farming are among the final relationships that we ignore before we actually pick the chicken up from the store. Only at this point do we start to think about how the chicken relates to us.

We tend not to think of these relationships because it's easier not to. If, every time we picked up a chicken, we were conscious of the tremendous pain, suffering, and environmental damage wrought just to bring that chicken to us, we probably wouldn't buy it. And this is why our society has fallen into such chaos: we prefer to tell ourselves 'beautiful lies' and refuse to acknowledge the relationships that link our consumer goods to the Big Picture.

Simply put, it's easier to take things at face value. If we didn't, then we would recognize that our everyday activities - buying food, cell phones, beauty products, and fuel for our cars - directly support ecological destruction, slave labor, animal torture and warfare, respectively.

Cultures that focus on relationships rather than things tend not to have these problems. If an indigenous community agrees to cut down a tree, for example, it is only after the ramifications are considered. They will take the time to look at the relationships shared between that tree, their people, and the environment prior to cutting it down. Then, they will take steps to compensate for those damaged relationships.

The same is true of nomadic tribes. Livestock is not slaughtered relentlessly on the off-chance that someone might become hungry in the coming weeks. The many animals and their relationships to each other and the tribe are carefully considered before choosing which one to kill and eat.

When we ignore the relationships between our environment, ourselves, and the world at large, we end up with a broken and unsustainable system like the one we're living in. Everything is built upon relationships, and sadly, when one considers the relationships that give rise to our capitalistic society, few of them are positive.

When you pull your cell phone out of your pocket, you're most likely thinking about the relationship between yourself and whoever you're calling. Very few people choose to think about the coltan mining necessary to produce the battery in that phone and how it's destroying the Congo jungle, nor the young children who are exploited and die young in order to mine for it. Nobody thinks about the massive cost of resources involved in shipping those raw materials to China or the brutal slave labor practices that are employed in order to build the actual batteries so that you can drunk dial your ex at 3 in the morning.

Quite frankly, if we thought about this sort of shit all the time we'd probably go insane. But this is important, because if we don't take it on ourselves, the result is a fundamentally insane society. When we refuse to look truthfully at the foundation of our current world, and the pain that it causes, we are instead contributing to it. There is always, ALWAYS, someone footing the bill for our luxuries. Just because those people are swept under the rug, just because they live on the other side of the world, and just because you can see pictures of sweatshop factories and feel a pang of sympathy before turning the page doesn't mean that these problems aren't real.

They are real, and they are HUGE problems. And the responsibility that most people are refusing to take is that we are directly contributing to these problems due to our own ignorance and refusal to see the truth. By ignoring the direct relationships between our day-to-day consumerism and the world's wars, slavery, and destruction, we only perpetuate these problems.

People question why our society doesn't change, and this is one of the biggest reasons. It is an issue of refusing to acknowledge our own role in it. We say "society is evil" and then go to the store to buy food canned in aluminum that was mined for pennies in toxic Chinese or Indonesian mines. We curse the crimes of politicians by making angry posts on Facebook using our phone that was pieced together by a starving 8-year old Chinese boy with broken fingers.

We go out and buy eco-friendly light bulbs and pretend that this balances out the carbon footprint produced by mining, fracking, and fossil fuel burning required to bring that light bulb to us. We pay top-dollar for 'green' products and forget that these products are usually manufactured by the same companies who produce all the other toxicity that's destroying the world and that we're still investing in them.

In other words, we want to shirk our responsibility. Spend a few extra bucks in hopes that this justifies our decision not to think about how we're contributing to the degradation of the planet.

The world's not going to change just because we want it to. It's going to change when all of us, collectively, recognize that we're each an important cog in this all-consuming capitalist machine. The first step is to straighten up and acknowledge the damage that we're doing, as individuals, on a daily basis. Once we've taken on that responsibility, we can start moving towards positive change.

We will always be an important part of some sort of global economy in the same sense that a bumblebee is an important part of a massive forest ecology. However, the machine that we're a part of doesn't have to be destructive. Once we all fully accept and understand our relationships to each other and to the world at large, we will start to shape a system built upon symbiotic relationships that can sustain itself, rather than consume itself.