Comments on: Tim Kasser on Consumerism, Psychology, Transition and Resilience. Part Two

By: Cuba, exemplar for the post-petro world? « eats shoots 'n leaves

Cuba, exemplar for the post-petro world? « eats shoots 'n leaves — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 18:45:41 +0000

[...] Tim Kasser, who specializes in the impact of consumer culture on our Post Modern sense of identity, explains: I think that it’s quite possible that if things start to break down, if we have really good [...]

By: Caroline Walker

Caroline Walker — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 17:59:30 +0000

James this is a great piece of work and would have been useful resource material during Tim Kasser’s week at Schumacher. It underlines just how strong the ‘framing’ (in Lakoff’s sense of the word) of these issues is in the media and how difficult it is to shift the discussion; anyone challenging current consumerist-materialist norms is quickly marginalised, trivialised and reviled. Yet Tim Kasser’s work shows clearly that increasing materialism doesn’t meet our needs,and makes us less happy and less willing to contribute to creating a society that could potentially meet our needs. Not to mention trashing the planet with the prevalent take-make-dispose production models.
Hope your dissertation is widely read.

By: james piers taylor

james piers taylor — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 12:17:35 +0000

Readers interested in this topic might also find material of interest in analysis of how messages about austerity are communicated in the media of our consumer society:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/22084827/Mend-Make-Do-to-Save-Buying-New-Decoding-Messages-of-Austerity-in-a-Consumer-Culture

Any feedback appreciated.

Thanks,

James

By: Andrew Ramponi

Andrew Ramponi — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 10:10:19 +0000

To have or to be. An interesting discussion. Maybe as a starting point we could consider renaming consuming as devouring, which means much the same but doesn’t sound so palatable.

I don’t think though we are such victims of the capitalist system as I felt is implied, in the way say the 2 billion people elsewhere in the world who don’t have water, food, toilets are victims.

Surely we have plenty choices of what we do and don’t buy. Yes, there is social pressure, but that’s life and that is also why the difficulty in looking for any real and fundamental change in society is that 90% of it needs to take place inside our heads as individuals. We need to know the difference for ourselves between having and being, when to say no and yes. Though wasting less hydrocarbon energy is no doubt going to be a fact of life one way or another, and we might be more productive if we wasted less energy on blaming others for the way things are.

There is something extraordinarily ridiculous in the idea that I can pay a mortgage on a plot of land for 25 years and then own the right to pass it on to my chosen inheritors, not just for 100 or even 1000 years but forever…! Who though wants to give up their private property rights, the right to have things as theirs. I am what I have…. or what am I? We will fight to the death for that idea it seems.

It is great that TT gives a high priority to individual responsibility. Hopefully as the movement grows ever more influential it doesn’t lose this, which is where the only real revolution can come from.

There is a tendency for “the nail that stands up to get hammered down”. We shall see.

By: leigh alfred waltz

leigh alfred waltz — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 16:35:50 +0000

this is good stuff. i hope it gets discussed further in the US.

By: What Is Resilience | Tim Kasser on Consumerism, Psychology, Transition and Resilience …

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 05:09:45 +0000

[...] How would one measure individual’s ability to bounce back – individual resilience? Are there ways to measure so that you can come back to the community yearly to see if they are more or less resilient? Again, a very simple answer is not …Tags: What Is ResilienceRead MoreTim Kasser on Consumerism, Psychology, Transition and Resilience …. [...]