There is an important lesson to be learned here:
February 23rd, 2009http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/22/business/worldbusiness/22japan.html?_r=1
But it is not the one immediately obvious on the surface.
“I’m not interested in big spending,” says Risa Masaki, 20, a college student in Tokyo and a neighbor of the Takigasakis. “I just want a humble life.”
These workers, who came of age during a tough job market, tend to shun conspicuous consumption.
People don’t trust that the capitalist mantra is going to keep them warm during the day and safe at night. Rather, in small knots here and there about the globe, there are people who are starting to remember and discover anew that ancient truth: you can’t buy happiness, you can’t buy security. As far as how you can attain those wispy emotitional states, I’ll refer you to the historical Buddha.
With the current state of the global economy, it is an excellent time for all people to reevaluate exactly what this civilization that we’ve crafted is doing with itself. What is the purpose? What is the end goal? Do we exist merely to consume raw material and expel waste? Are we simply cogs in an elaborate factory, with the greedy rich operating the levers?
Certainly, even a child could answer the question “if you fill this box with toys, can you now fit these additional toys in the box”? Yet somehow adults manage to pretend that you can have endless growth, that you can simply pile purchases upon purchases endlessly, and call that progress. We pretend that our economy will always grow, that there is always more room, more consumers, more raw materials.
Allow me to remove that small blinder: this is simply not the case. I’m sorry.
I will not disagree that a number of these purchases, these inventions, vastly increase the leisure time that the majority of us in the industrialized world take for granted, but as the young in Japan are showing, it is very possible for the people of this world to realize that capitalism is not a god to be worshipped blindly. As the tired phrase goes “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”, and in this case you can rest assured, the last thing any global media conglomerate would want to whisper in your ear is that there is something fundamentally wrong with the expectations they have of you, their faithful purchasing servant. If you watch closely, you can pick the threads of this greater tapestry out for yourself, but why would you want to understand the truth when is so contrary to the shared dream/delusion that you’ve been forced to grow up within?
Who would want to be the person to declare “not simply the emperor, but everyone has no clothes”? Everything we’ve predicated existence upon is simply a carefully crafted sham?
A contraction of the economy seems not undesirable, but absolutely necessary. Not only a contraction of the economy, but a retooling of how we go about utilizing raw materials. An honest evaluation of what is sustainable over the long term. A re-imagining of what we want for and out of our global civilization.
Do we want to endlessly allow the rich to lead our lives, dangling the latest shiny carrot as they ride us into the ground? Or can we imaging a better way to be?
