Side Effects Of Grecian 2000
No consumption, no capitalism
No consumption, no capitalism
Maria Gonzalez Interview magazine Píkara
Maria Gonzalez Reyes is the Consumer area coordinator for Ecologists in Action group member contrapublicista ConsumeHastaMorir. In this interview, he shelled the absurdities mechanisms of a capitalist system will collapse if left to grow, and using advertising as a lubricant to maintain "the illusion of endless consumption."
How has the crisis affected the population trends of consumption?
This crisis goes beyond the economic crisis is a whose social and environmental causes is totally linked to the capitalist economic system. The central problem is based on the essential incompatibility between a socioeconomic system based on the extraction of resources and increasing waste generation and a planet with limits. This system is expanding as a tumor around the globe and also at an alarming rate. One might wonder why we move in the opposite direction to that logic would draw, and we continue to consume more and more rapidly when the deterioration is undeniable. And the answer is linked to the economic system, based on maximizing individual benefit in the shortest time possible. A system that requires resource consumption and waste production can not stop growing.
Growth is not a possible consequence of this system is a prerequisite to work. If the capitalist economy stops growing, it collapses. Because of this, because consumption is what allows the system to continue operating machinery, so the government says that to solve the crisis should be an impact in precisely stubbornly continue to do the same thing has generated, consumed and consuming . And consumers and consumers are still trying to keep the ritual, feeling guilty for the economic crisis if we consume, and very supportive if we protest against social cuts that the government is doing. No longer a sad paradox.
What is the impact of consumption in rich countries over poor?
Precisely because the planet's resources are limited, there is a small part of the global population has created the game for the availability of these scarce resources at will. Discuss what is the speed of capitalism involves appointing those ejected and exploit this dynamic. We live in a world in which there are 100 blocks for 100 persons and 20 (which happens mostly men) are left with 86. The system not only accumulation but needs this accumulation. There is a problem of overspeed, but also of inequality.
environmentally A long time ago that the world also began to sound the alarm. If we look and we trust what we see, come to the conclusion that most of the really important things are getting worse: the river is not used to drink, the air is polluted, decreasing forest areas, fish stocks, the fossil energy, the time that people have to devote to caring for and interacting with others, biodiversity etc.
As for the impact of consumption on the cultural aspect, the expansion of the economic system generates the creation of global identity based on consumption. This homogenization is against diversity, and life is product diversity. As a monoculture, where a simple illness can end quickly with a whole crop, not cultural diversity, human, we reduce the range of our learning, our ability to adapt to changing conditions, our ability to reconstruct the damaged . The homogeneity of consumption that the system aims not point towards complementarity and the exercise of interdependence, conditions both for the creation and maintenance of life.
What is the role of advertising in this model?
is essential, is the tool and gear lubricating system, and makes the illusion of endless consumption is maintained. Is what allows the model and consumer values \u200b\u200bspread across the globe: the waste, lack of solidarity, homogenization, individualism, hedonism ... Values \u200b\u200bthat make everyone, even though the advertising promises us otherwise, we are more culture signs of boredom and unhappiness has shown.
advertising shows how women today?
The role of women in advertising, surprisingly, has not changed much since its inception. In any case, advertising knows no ideology: the same company is convinced feminist when it comes to selling a small utility car, and is capable of defending the patriarchal values \u200b\u200bmore rancid when you have to put in the car market is a family. Knows no ideology but is the channel of generation of consumer ideology as a source of solving problems.
What campaigns have you developed from grassroots movements to curb the impact of media consumption?
There are many social groups that, in recent times, are creating campaigns and working to create alternatives related to the topic of consumption. I highlight two. On the one hand, the Buy Nothing Day, celebrated in late November. It is an international campaign that seeks not so much not to eat one day, but to make a complaint of overproduction and overconsumption model in which we operate. On the other hand, advertising Shadow Awards, awarded at the end of May, coinciding with the Sol Awards granted in Donostia to the best advertising. It is a choice, following several categories, ads that promote consumerist values \u200b\u200brather unsympathetic, more macho, the more lie ... With the idea of \u200b\u200bexposing the ideological role that advertising complies, to work in the way of the transformation of production, distribution and consumption.
What advice would you give to critically consume and conscious?
invite reduce consumption levels and to reflect on consumer values, while proposing and experimenting with alternatives. It's about making a collective reflection on our model of consumption and promote the realization of a critical and responsible consumption as a political action to change things, following the path of decline. To begin this journey requires a change of heart, a review of our values: putting life in the center of reflection and experience, linked to the next territory, encourage diversity, knit community and community power, to garner knowledge approaching sustainability, expose and denounce the current development model and experimenting with alternatives. All three levels of resistance: an individual, voluntary simplicity. Another creation of collective alternatives, which allow up other forms of life to generalize. And a political level, the discussions and collective decisions fundamental to the definition of society. So we head to create other worlds more just, sustainable and at peace with the planet.
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