The Facile Eclectic

When my wife left her job due to health reasons two years ago we made some major changes to our lifestyle. First we moved to the country on to a piece of land that my Father gave to me for the price of paying off the note, about a fifth of it's value. We cashed in our savings and payed off our mortgages and moved into a small cabin. We now live off a modest income from renting our old home and the small amounts my part time efforts bring in. We live on a fourth of what we used to. Our time these days is spent raising sheep, growing vegetables and working on our ongoing improvements to the property. We don't use credit cards, we don't go out to eat like we used to, we don't hire service folks much as I take care of most of the repairs, and we don't shop for things we don't need. We prepare and raise our own food. We get lots of exercise and full nights of sleep. We read more books. We get entertainment value watching new born animals play and watch a lot less TV. We're both thinner, healthier, and happier and we don't own an Ipod. In short we're gradually unplugging ourselves from the consumer culture. And the funny thing is, I don't miss it.

I notice the change in myself most at this time of year. When I go to the big box stores what used to be "must haves" look like superfluous junk and clutter. All the new electronics don't have any pull at all, I'll get a new TV when the old one dies, and I certainly don't need two. Why rush for that christmas DVD release and plunk down twenty dollars when next year I'll get it at a garage sale for $1. I can wait. I've become immune to the urgency that mass marketing instills in people. I've become immune to the advertisers siren song telling me I'm a failure as a human being if I don't have a new SUV like my neighbor.  The value of a vehicle drops by half in the first year, buying a new car is insane. I buy used trucks without power widows and gadgets(just more stuff to break down) and drive them into the ground. A car is something that performs a function but it shouldn't be part of your identity. But that is the only identity most people have. They have nothing in their lives that identifies them as a unique human being other than their spending profile stored in a merchants computer database. The counter argument of course is consumerism keeps the economy growing and keeps people employed. Well at the rate that automation is progressing those jobs won't be around for long. In the near future machines will take care of most material production and soon most information jobs as well. These days most telemarketing calls and customer service are automated. Online shopping is largely automated and soon the shipping warehouse will be too. Eventually we'll be giving people unnecessary jobs just to keep them busy and keep the system going( I would argue that to some extent this is already true). In addition our current system wastes huge amounts of energy, material, and time(rush hour comes to mind) and it is rapidly degrading our environment. It can't go on forever. It's instructive to remember that money and economies are a human invention, and an ancient one at that. How many 6000 year old techniques for civilization do we still use? Clay tablets? no. Hamurabbis code? no. God incarnated rulers? no. Slaves? no. God forbid if we still used ships with oars. It's time to start moving to new more mature idea of civilization or risk the collapse of the one we have. It's time put consumerism in the dust bin of history. We'll all live a lot longer.

Posted by Ben Wortham at 03:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Recently I got involved in an in-promptu discussion with my doctor about the current debate over health care. During the course of this my doctor asked where I had gotten the information I was using to support my argument. My facts did not agree with what he thought he knew about the issue. I responded that if I had known we were going to have a debate I would of prepared a bibliography. The sources I access are too numerous to recall off the top of ones head. I've found over the course of my life growing up in the information age that this has become a serious problem. It seems that what we think we know to be true is increasingly nothing but a fiction. The internet has given us access to huge volumes of information but as yet we do not have the tools to gauge the quality of that information. Previous generations where able to do this more easily when all information was in the form of the printed word. Even the traditional method of using reputable sources is becoming less effective in determining truth. As an example, if I want medical information I might go to a well established medical journal as a source to inform me on the best diet to eat. What I find is thousands of studies from molecular nutrient interactions on up to population studies showing various links between diet and disease, nutrients and disease, etc. Many of these make conclusions that may or may not be causal which means thousands more studies are required to understand the various mechanisms involved just to prove carrots are actually good for you. You could sift for a lifetime and not find a definitive answer to any question you pose.

Another disturbing phenomenon is how incorrect information spreads so quickly that it lodges in our group mind before any correction can hope to root it out. A recent example was the "Jena six" story which I started following a full week before it bubbled up to the national level. In early local reporting teachers and students said that students of both races had gathered under the what was later dubbed "the whites only tree" for many years before the noose incident. The nooses where probably not hung there because it was a "whites only" tree, they where more likely hung there because it was in fact the only tree on campus. This small fact does not signifacantly alter the overall story of the "Jena six" whatever your opinion of the situation. But it amazed me how quickly once the story broke how many times I saw "whites only tree" repeated in hundreds of reports and blogs. In all the reports I read from across the world it was repeated and no-one backtracked the story to correct it. It would be pointless now anyway. It is an established fact that Saddam Hussein had no part in the 9-11 attacks but to this day, like most americans, my wife thinks that fiction is true. The ancient Greeks discovered the earth is round but most continued to think it was flat for another 2000 years. The information was never lost, it just took that long to change the old point of view. How many flat earth fictions are we carrying around in our heads now that the internet makes disseminating them so easy and rapid? More importantly, how long will it take for us to root them out?

Posted by Ben Wortham at 10:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)