TV Turn Off
Once upon a time in the not-too-distant future:
FYI-from www.adbusters.org : Just a reminder that TV Turnoff Week 2007 begun this week. If you have not yet pulled the plug on you TV, it is definitely not too late. In fact, go ahead and do it right now -- this can wait!
More info:
The idea is simple: take your TV, your DVD player, your video iPod, your XBOX 360, your laptop, your PSP, and say goodbye to them all for seven days. Simple, but not at all easy. Like millions of others before you, you’ll be shocked at just how difficult – yet also how life-changing – a week spent unplugged can really be.
But there’s a lot more to TV Turnoff Week than shaking up your relationship with passive entertainment. It’s all about saying no to being bombarded with unwelcome and unhealthy commercial messages. It's about saying no to unfettered corporate media concentration and to the democratic deficit that results. And it's about challenging the heavily distorted reflection of the world that we see on the screen, a reflection that is keeping us ill-informed and unaware of the very real political and environmental crises that we all currently face.
This year, we’re returning to the kind of stunt that spawned the Adbusters Media Foundation and our ongoing Media Carta Legal Battle against the corporate gatekeepers that control access to the public airwaves. There are loads of ways you can get involved, whether it’s spreading the word with a poster campaign, posting our spots on your video blog, or making a donation to help us air the uncommercials on broadcast TV.
Or, you can just go ahead and brace yourself for the challenges and joys of seven days spent liberated from the commercial information grid.
I learned about this a wee bit too late, having watched 24* and the last bit of Highlander Season 2 at the beginning of the week. My TV watching habits have changes since my younger and/or college days when the idiot’s lantern would be on all the time. I watch about a half hour of news and an hour or TV or DVD every day and about four hours on Saturday and Sunday (more if Holly and I are marathoning a show). Which is what- fifteen and a half hours of television? Yeah, I am a couch potato.
I also am a bit of a Luddite- I do not have an ipod (or any MP3 player) or a video game system and I do not have any sort of pay TV. The DVD viewing is a bit of an obsession but I can hold off for at least until after Saturday, right? I have several books I need to catch up on anyway. Being safe from commercials for a week though? Too bad you cannot skip them when you are driving home, listening to the radio or especially going online.
*By the way, Mr. Silver Spoons, there are no power lines just off the Tampa Exit on the 118. There is a Whole Foods and a Greek restaurant, but no power lines.
Bad news that make you ashamed of being human: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/04/070423-leopard-picture.html
An extremely rare leopard was found killed- it was apparently beaten to death. Not from poaching or loss of habitat, although both are reasons why the cat is endangered, but this particular cat was found beaten to death. This just sucks.
Trying to get that off my mind, I return to www.adbusters.org where I found the following article. When I started bloggity blogging, I would post entire articles instead of where they can be found. I like what the Compact are doing and would love to try it as well. The Chronic Overwork to Spend More- that is such an evil cycle. As Thoreau said it best, simplify, simplify, simplify. And as the Buddha also said it best, ridding your attachment to those earthly things is one step towards enlightenment.
Breaking the Consumer Habit: Living the Buy Nothing Life
San Francisco, 1951.
A living room fills with warm laughter and the aroma of fresh-baked goodies. Suburban housewives walk around the room exchanging smiles, telling stories. It’s like any other casual gathering, except for one twist: this is a Tupperware party, everyone is here to shop.
Painting over gray decades of war and depression with bright pastels, products like Tupperware ushered in a new era of prosperity, renewal and superabundance. Consumer goods like the television set and the Cadillac became more than just necessities for life: for millions of consumers, they were the essence of life itself.
Fast forward to 2005. A group of friends in the San Francisco Bay Area are meeting over a potluck dinner. Disillusioned by the endless consumer rat race, they are here to discuss how to not shop, to put an end to needless consumption. Taking the concept of Buy Nothing Day to the extreme, they have decided to attempt a full year without buying new products. Dubbing themselves “The Compact” after the Mayflower pledge at Plymouth Rock, the group vowed to limit their shopping to food, medicine and basic hygiene products, buying used wherever they could. Since the local news began covering them, their story has exploded, appearing everywhere from the Today Show to The Times of London. Today, with 8,000 new members and 55 subgroups worldwide - from regions as varied as Singapore and Iceland - the Compact are finding themselves at the forefront of the turning tide against consumer culture.
What the Compacters are doing is neither radical nor revolutionary; millions of people around the world live this way, and have lived this way for generations. Yet the Compact threatens and challenges everything that people have come to believe about “the good life” in the industrialized world. Reactions to the movement have been passionate, ranging from applause to outrage. Compact members have been accused of being “self-congratulatory braggarts” who are “destroying America’s economy.” One Compacter in Chilliwack, Canada, recalls friends reacting as if she had joined a Satanic cult. Love it or hate it, the Compact has made people question and the real motives behind their daily purchases.
“I used to shop to entertain myself,” confesses Lori Wyndham Jolly, an American expat and Compacter living in Berkshire, UK. “I’d go into a record store and buy a whole load of discount CDs, or into a chemist and get a lot of cheap cosmetics . . . I didn’t do this because I needed any of that stuff, but just to fill the emptiness. I read a throwaway line in paperback once, but it’s stuck with me: People shop because they’re lonely.”
“We’re constantly on the drive to consume more stuff,” says Rachel Kesel, a Bay Area Compacter who keeps a closely followed blog about her experiences. “It becomes a habit and not necessity.”
The reasons why people join the Compact are varied. Some join to cut back on spending, others to reduce waste, still others to escape materialism and focus on spiritual values. One thing they all recognize is that shopping is not the solution to their problems - in fact, it may very well be the cause to many of them.
“Money and debts seem to be ruling our life,” observes Rúna Björg Gartharsdóttir, a Compacter in Iceland. She explains to Adbusters that she joined the Compact to escape what she calls the “vicious cycle” of consumerism - the chronic overwork to be able to spend more; the social disintegration resulting from overwork; the environmental damage caused by consumer waste; conflict over resources to supply consumer demand. In other words, a myriad of problems loosely bound by the innocent desire for an iPod or a luxury car collection.
It is no coincidence that the emergence of the Compact coincides with the rising popularity of the down-shifting and environmental movements. People throughout the developed world have realized that, unlike our psychological desires - which are infinite - our physiology and environmental resources have limits. Our body can’t handle 80-hour workweeks on a 6,000-calorie-per-day diet, no more than our earth can handle cities like New York producing 12,000 tons of solid waste every single day, or the hundreds of millions of discarded cell phones that release cancer-causing toxins into the air. Something, someday, will have to give.
For now, most Compacters defensively state that their choice is a strictly “personal” one and that they have no political agenda. Yet they continue to stir up discontent by turning their back on a sacred ideal, the belief shared by billions around the world that “more” is better than “just enough.” Marketers are hoping this is a fringe movement. The signs point elsewhere. According to recent surveys by sociologist Juliet Schor, 81 percent of Americans believe their country is too focused on shopping, while nearly 90 percent believe it is too materialistic. Newspapers such as USA Today received record reader responses when columnist Craig Wilson swore off shopping for a full year. Radical anti-consumers such as the Freegans (people who survive on discarded food and products) are proving that people can survive off the waste of affluent consumers.
Gartharsdóttir, for her part, speaks with some pride when people tell her that her refusal to shop will shake her country’s economy. “It shows clearly the strong influence the marketing forces currently have on the nation,” she says. “We should rule our lives and decide what comes first.”
_Jenny Uechi
And I also have to agree with the following comment on the article. Balance is perfection. Plus, I love obtaining art that inspires me.
COMMENTS:
I'm a graphic designer and an artist. There are things i just have to spend money on: materials, software, props, etc. Otherwise i wouldn't be able to do a lot of the things that i do. I wouldn't have a job that i like and i wouldn't have a passion. I shop for clothes and shoes and makeup because i use them to express myself; i shop for music because it inspires me, and i have an ipod because it allows me to carry it wherever i go; i spend a lot of money on books and movies because they inspire me too. i acquire camera equipment to improve my work. i need my sunglasses so i don't have to squint when i walk out into the sun, and i buy banana boat sunblock to protect my skin. i don't want to deteriorate my eyesight or get skin cancer. as much as i spend, i also understand the importance of waste management. as an artist, i like to reuse many things, so i hardly throw anything away unless i'm absolutely sure i cannot use it for anything else. i recycle. i give my clothes and shoes to several organizations so that other people with fewer resources can make use of them when i don't anymore. i'm saving up for my master's degree. and i strive to use my design work to serve a good cause instead of mindless/senseless advertising, like most people expect graphic designers to do. i'm not criticising what these people have done or what is reported here; it was an interesting read, but clearly a lot of people myself included possibly would not relate to it. for me it's not about abandoning the habit of shopping completely; it's about investing in things that truly matter. it's about finding a balance in life.
Vanessa
________________________________________________________________________
Where else I can be found:
http://www.myspace.com/catterpillarboy
See all my amazing friends! Beware of inside jokes that no one, even my friends will get!
http://catterpillarboy.blogspot.com/
Possibly maybe stories and projects that I am working on
http://catterpillarboy.livejournal.com
This will probably be the most updated one with all of my thoughts, feelings, book and movie reviews and other random stuff.
FYI-from www.adbusters.org : Just a reminder that TV Turnoff Week 2007 begun this week. If you have not yet pulled the plug on you TV, it is definitely not too late. In fact, go ahead and do it right now -- this can wait!
More info:
The idea is simple: take your TV, your DVD player, your video iPod, your XBOX 360, your laptop, your PSP, and say goodbye to them all for seven days. Simple, but not at all easy. Like millions of others before you, you’ll be shocked at just how difficult – yet also how life-changing – a week spent unplugged can really be.
But there’s a lot more to TV Turnoff Week than shaking up your relationship with passive entertainment. It’s all about saying no to being bombarded with unwelcome and unhealthy commercial messages. It's about saying no to unfettered corporate media concentration and to the democratic deficit that results. And it's about challenging the heavily distorted reflection of the world that we see on the screen, a reflection that is keeping us ill-informed and unaware of the very real political and environmental crises that we all currently face.
This year, we’re returning to the kind of stunt that spawned the Adbusters Media Foundation and our ongoing Media Carta Legal Battle against the corporate gatekeepers that control access to the public airwaves. There are loads of ways you can get involved, whether it’s spreading the word with a poster campaign, posting our spots on your video blog, or making a donation to help us air the uncommercials on broadcast TV.
Or, you can just go ahead and brace yourself for the challenges and joys of seven days spent liberated from the commercial information grid.
I learned about this a wee bit too late, having watched 24* and the last bit of Highlander Season 2 at the beginning of the week. My TV watching habits have changes since my younger and/or college days when the idiot’s lantern would be on all the time. I watch about a half hour of news and an hour or TV or DVD every day and about four hours on Saturday and Sunday (more if Holly and I are marathoning a show). Which is what- fifteen and a half hours of television? Yeah, I am a couch potato.
I also am a bit of a Luddite- I do not have an ipod (or any MP3 player) or a video game system and I do not have any sort of pay TV. The DVD viewing is a bit of an obsession but I can hold off for at least until after Saturday, right? I have several books I need to catch up on anyway. Being safe from commercials for a week though? Too bad you cannot skip them when you are driving home, listening to the radio or especially going online.
*By the way, Mr. Silver Spoons, there are no power lines just off the Tampa Exit on the 118. There is a Whole Foods and a Greek restaurant, but no power lines.
Bad news that make you ashamed of being human: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/04/070423-leopard-picture.html
An extremely rare leopard was found killed- it was apparently beaten to death. Not from poaching or loss of habitat, although both are reasons why the cat is endangered, but this particular cat was found beaten to death. This just sucks.
Trying to get that off my mind, I return to www.adbusters.org where I found the following article. When I started bloggity blogging, I would post entire articles instead of where they can be found. I like what the Compact are doing and would love to try it as well. The Chronic Overwork to Spend More- that is such an evil cycle. As Thoreau said it best, simplify, simplify, simplify. And as the Buddha also said it best, ridding your attachment to those earthly things is one step towards enlightenment.
Breaking the Consumer Habit: Living the Buy Nothing Life
San Francisco, 1951.
A living room fills with warm laughter and the aroma of fresh-baked goodies. Suburban housewives walk around the room exchanging smiles, telling stories. It’s like any other casual gathering, except for one twist: this is a Tupperware party, everyone is here to shop.
Painting over gray decades of war and depression with bright pastels, products like Tupperware ushered in a new era of prosperity, renewal and superabundance. Consumer goods like the television set and the Cadillac became more than just necessities for life: for millions of consumers, they were the essence of life itself.
Fast forward to 2005. A group of friends in the San Francisco Bay Area are meeting over a potluck dinner. Disillusioned by the endless consumer rat race, they are here to discuss how to not shop, to put an end to needless consumption. Taking the concept of Buy Nothing Day to the extreme, they have decided to attempt a full year without buying new products. Dubbing themselves “The Compact” after the Mayflower pledge at Plymouth Rock, the group vowed to limit their shopping to food, medicine and basic hygiene products, buying used wherever they could. Since the local news began covering them, their story has exploded, appearing everywhere from the Today Show to The Times of London. Today, with 8,000 new members and 55 subgroups worldwide - from regions as varied as Singapore and Iceland - the Compact are finding themselves at the forefront of the turning tide against consumer culture.
What the Compacters are doing is neither radical nor revolutionary; millions of people around the world live this way, and have lived this way for generations. Yet the Compact threatens and challenges everything that people have come to believe about “the good life” in the industrialized world. Reactions to the movement have been passionate, ranging from applause to outrage. Compact members have been accused of being “self-congratulatory braggarts” who are “destroying America’s economy.” One Compacter in Chilliwack, Canada, recalls friends reacting as if she had joined a Satanic cult. Love it or hate it, the Compact has made people question and the real motives behind their daily purchases.
“I used to shop to entertain myself,” confesses Lori Wyndham Jolly, an American expat and Compacter living in Berkshire, UK. “I’d go into a record store and buy a whole load of discount CDs, or into a chemist and get a lot of cheap cosmetics . . . I didn’t do this because I needed any of that stuff, but just to fill the emptiness. I read a throwaway line in paperback once, but it’s stuck with me: People shop because they’re lonely.”
“We’re constantly on the drive to consume more stuff,” says Rachel Kesel, a Bay Area Compacter who keeps a closely followed blog about her experiences. “It becomes a habit and not necessity.”
The reasons why people join the Compact are varied. Some join to cut back on spending, others to reduce waste, still others to escape materialism and focus on spiritual values. One thing they all recognize is that shopping is not the solution to their problems - in fact, it may very well be the cause to many of them.
“Money and debts seem to be ruling our life,” observes Rúna Björg Gartharsdóttir, a Compacter in Iceland. She explains to Adbusters that she joined the Compact to escape what she calls the “vicious cycle” of consumerism - the chronic overwork to be able to spend more; the social disintegration resulting from overwork; the environmental damage caused by consumer waste; conflict over resources to supply consumer demand. In other words, a myriad of problems loosely bound by the innocent desire for an iPod or a luxury car collection.
It is no coincidence that the emergence of the Compact coincides with the rising popularity of the down-shifting and environmental movements. People throughout the developed world have realized that, unlike our psychological desires - which are infinite - our physiology and environmental resources have limits. Our body can’t handle 80-hour workweeks on a 6,000-calorie-per-day diet, no more than our earth can handle cities like New York producing 12,000 tons of solid waste every single day, or the hundreds of millions of discarded cell phones that release cancer-causing toxins into the air. Something, someday, will have to give.
For now, most Compacters defensively state that their choice is a strictly “personal” one and that they have no political agenda. Yet they continue to stir up discontent by turning their back on a sacred ideal, the belief shared by billions around the world that “more” is better than “just enough.” Marketers are hoping this is a fringe movement. The signs point elsewhere. According to recent surveys by sociologist Juliet Schor, 81 percent of Americans believe their country is too focused on shopping, while nearly 90 percent believe it is too materialistic. Newspapers such as USA Today received record reader responses when columnist Craig Wilson swore off shopping for a full year. Radical anti-consumers such as the Freegans (people who survive on discarded food and products) are proving that people can survive off the waste of affluent consumers.
Gartharsdóttir, for her part, speaks with some pride when people tell her that her refusal to shop will shake her country’s economy. “It shows clearly the strong influence the marketing forces currently have on the nation,” she says. “We should rule our lives and decide what comes first.”
_Jenny Uechi
And I also have to agree with the following comment on the article. Balance is perfection. Plus, I love obtaining art that inspires me.
COMMENTS:
I'm a graphic designer and an artist. There are things i just have to spend money on: materials, software, props, etc. Otherwise i wouldn't be able to do a lot of the things that i do. I wouldn't have a job that i like and i wouldn't have a passion. I shop for clothes and shoes and makeup because i use them to express myself; i shop for music because it inspires me, and i have an ipod because it allows me to carry it wherever i go; i spend a lot of money on books and movies because they inspire me too. i acquire camera equipment to improve my work. i need my sunglasses so i don't have to squint when i walk out into the sun, and i buy banana boat sunblock to protect my skin. i don't want to deteriorate my eyesight or get skin cancer. as much as i spend, i also understand the importance of waste management. as an artist, i like to reuse many things, so i hardly throw anything away unless i'm absolutely sure i cannot use it for anything else. i recycle. i give my clothes and shoes to several organizations so that other people with fewer resources can make use of them when i don't anymore. i'm saving up for my master's degree. and i strive to use my design work to serve a good cause instead of mindless/senseless advertising, like most people expect graphic designers to do. i'm not criticising what these people have done or what is reported here; it was an interesting read, but clearly a lot of people myself included possibly would not relate to it. for me it's not about abandoning the habit of shopping completely; it's about investing in things that truly matter. it's about finding a balance in life.
Vanessa
________________________________________________________________________
Where else I can be found:
http://www.myspace.com/catterpillarboy
See all my amazing friends! Beware of inside jokes that no one, even my friends will get!
http://catterpillarboy.blogspot.com/
Possibly maybe stories and projects that I am working on
http://catterpillarboy.livejournal.com
This will probably be the most updated one with all of my thoughts, feelings, book and movie reviews and other random stuff.
posted by Catterpillarboy at 3:37 AM
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