27 January 08
The Story of Stuff
There was a front page post today on Daily Kos highly recommending a new video called The Story of Stuff. Annie Leonard, an activist who has been researching the flow and waste of materials through our consumer society, came up with the idea to present this tale in cartoon fashion overlaid with footage of her narrating. The 20-minute video is viewable at the link above.
In good simple living fashion we bicycled to Pica’s office this morning to watch the video (no broadband at home, it’s not worth it.) It is humorous and thoughtful, capable of entertaining five-year-olds and provoking those an order of magnitude older into thought and action.
We do pretty well here in avoiding accumulating and consuming stuff, though of course there are lots of little things to work on improving. One needn’t scratch very hard to find such critiques of consumerist society going back a long ways, but how will the values of simple living and frugality ever make it back into mainstream culture?
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I’ll check this out – sounds good.
One of the more intriguing blogs (in a wish-I’d-though-of-it-first sense) that I’ve found lately is called Proof of Purchase, and consists entirely of store receipts with notes scribbled on them.
http://proofpurchase.com/
Dave, that’s a great link. I wish I’d thought of it first too.
Very clever. Very informative. Very depressing.
I saw this clip before the holidays and loved it – both for it’s message and it’s simplicity. Now with the proposed “rebates” of $300 – 600 in order to promote our spending and spur the economy, it makes even more sense. We are made to believe that our society’s economic health depends on us for buying the stuff we don’t need and will throw away within 6 months. To push against this grain takes courage and determination.