Buy Nothing Day (If Only I Could!)

I have to say I admire anyone who can actually go through with this day. Buy nothing? Seriously? It would be like the world imploding on my head. Which, in and of itself, is a sad fact. I wish that I could do this, and maybe I'll give it a try (my bank account will probably appreciate it), and see how it goes. But if you break it down, how realistic is it that you won't buy anything in a single day? So we can all abstain from hitting the mall and buying shoes (sometimes), but what about food? And I don't mean that tiger brownie from Williams', I mean real groceries. If you drive a car, what happens if you run out of gas, or pop a tire? If you take transit, do you just not pay your fare? As ideal as this day is, I'm sensing some flaws.

But maybe I'm just being overly skeptical, because the thought behind this day is really admirable and intriguing. Saying no to consumerism, something we have been raised on? It's almost unthinkable. We're so prone to buying things. Just, accumulating 'stuff', without any regard for what we're spending our money on. When are we going to be satisfied with our 'stuff'?

This reminds me of a point Ian made when he was discussing 'The Real World of Technology' by Ursula Franklin. He was talking about prescriptive versus holistic technologies. In a prescriptive technology, the working resembles an assembly line. Each person makes a piece, and someone else puts it together to make the whole. Whereas in holistic technologies one person makes the whole using their skills. To me, this relates directly to the idea of consumerism.

We constantly buy, buy, buy, and we're never done - never satisfied. And just as you can't be satisfied by just building a part, and not having anything to do with the whole, in the same way you can't be satisfied with buying parts that are supposed to contribute to making your life "whole". The idea of consumerism is a prescriptive technology unto itself, because it is constantly giving us pieces, but never the whole.

So I encourage everyone to participate in Buy Nothing Day, at least as much as you can. I know I'm going to try, as hard as it might be.

(My bank account will be thanking me later though.)