What's with all our stuff?

As the Christmas season is upon us, I have been thinking about, and have been reminded by words of wisdom from others, that our consumptive ways are damaging to us personally and interpersonally, and to the earth. NFC has shared with the congregation this year, a vision of a less-commercialized Christmas. It is very similar to messages I've heard in the past. My version of this is "buy less stuff for people who don't really need it, and give more to those who truly have the need." It's the right thing to do. And, as Dr. Laura would say, You can tell it's the right thing to do because it's the difficult thing to do.

Thinking about less commercialization naturally leads me to think about less consumption. We all know about the stuff we have around the house that we really could do without. How did we get all this stuff and why? And why do we keep needing to buy stuff to replace stuff that is still working? Well, it's called the Economy, and it's creating a nasty dissonance in my head. I've heard about and understand this idea called "planned obsolescence," where certain components and devices (things) are made to break after a certain time so that I have to go get a new one, or updates to software on our computers makes it impossible to work with older things so we have to buy a new thing. Now I hear about "perceived obsolescence" and I get irritated. That's really what is driving our 1st world economies today: being made to think that we need to go buy a new thing because the first version of the thing looks different or doesn't have some new feature.

I was introduced to website today called The Story of Stuff.

It has brought a lot of what I already know about into sharper focus. I was floored by some of the things I learned. As with anything, however, there are extremes in this video which can be debated, but the core of the storyline remains true. It's almost depressing to listen and understand the truths being told there.

Of course, there are people trying to change the way things work, and some of these may be a way for us to get out of the cycle of consumption that we're in. I firmly believe in our call to be good stewards of the earth, which must be balanced with our going forth an multiplying. We need to use our God-given talents to find ways to continue to live on our planet without actually destroying it.

I've done a lot of thinking about this. What will it take to move me to action? How about you?