Tag: Consumption

Why Materialism Doesn’t Work

“The old fable continues to echo down the centuries. The waiting rooms of psychiatrists are filled with rich and successful patients who, in their forties or fifties, suddenly wake up to the fact that a plush suburban home, expensive cars, and even an Ivy League education are not enough to bring peace of mind. Yet …

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A Culture of Consumption: Living in a Material World

I’ll let you in on a secret. You know that shirt you received on Christmas? The one that you were thrilled to wear the first time around? Slightly amused by the second time? And all too soon, you realized the novelty was gone? In a couple of months, the same shirt will inevitably end up …

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Unsustainable Consumerism Part 4: Disposal

After three posts on the materials economy we’ve followed the story of our stuff through extraction, production, distribution, and consumption.  What’s left? Well, what do you think happens to our stuff after we’re done with it?  I mentioned in my last post that 99% of the stuff we purchase gets thrown away within 6 months.  Today …

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Información y consumo

Pocas veces tienes una idea clara de dónde viene el producto que nos obtenemos en el supermercado del vecindario. No sabemos lo que implica la cadena de producción o cómo el producto llegó hasta tus manos. La mayoría de nosotros somos consumidores extremadamente ignorantes, ciegos a lo que pasa en la cadena de producción. Como …

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King crops: The dangers of monocrops (part I)

The food market is a difficult one. Production depends on weather and soil, prices are very volatile (they fluctuate a lot) and products are easily perishable. In spite of these difficulties, a few crops have managed to dominate the agricultural market. They have become the “king crops“ (in reference to the great documentary King Corn), …

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The white man’s burden

Leer la versión en Español Scarcity or inequality? We live in a world with economic inequalities, divided between the “developed” and the “developing” countries, the North and the South. As citizens of the world, we deal with those economic inequalities in different ways. Developed nations and individuals feel the need to carry on with the …

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