Orientations (2)

Recently we wrote: consumption and sustainability are opposites.  Here’s more.

The consumer orientation, to which most of us are deeply compliant, says: go ahead, use things up, you can always get another.  Or more.  Planet as cornucopia, a bottomless well.

I remember as a small child in the 1950’s thinking oil would run out someday.  I mentioned this to my mother, who told me not to worry, so I didn’t.  But I knew the logic was irrefutable, even if I couldn’t get a straight conversation going.  I shut up.  (No, I was not a precog child, just occasionally left alone too long.)

Now, of course, we all know oil will indeed run out, as will everything and anything else, if we’re not careful.  Consumption is the original slippery slope, is it not?

It’s okay to have, use, buy, and sell things.  Stuff.  We just have to make it all last.  Underscore “all”.   And forever.  I love to repeat Thomas Berry’s phrase, “The earth is a one-time endowment.” A literary way of saying this is all we’ve got, there ain’t no more, arguments for inter-planetary colonization notwithstanding.

So save something today.  Re-use something.  Continually develop new uses for all your “old” stuff.  Easier said than done.  When was the last time you found a new use for a worn-out, trash-bound sneaker?  Can you come up with one today?  A planter, perhaps?

I have this fantasy…  I have a road-side stand.  I sit there and people come by with their old stuff.  I come up with new uses for everything anybody shows me, and I charge each person a dollar for every new idea.   I am getting very, very rich.   I’m thinking of franchising.

But it’ll never work, because anybody can do this.  And it doesn’t have to be a future thing.  Now is good.

Ralph