the source of our debt

Almost 2 months ago, shortly after it was released, I posted a link to Annie Leonard's video, The Story Of Stuff. I've been thinking about Annie's message and about the evolution of my own thoughts on materialism a lot since that day, with varying degrees of anger and upset, determination, drive, and despair.
*Note: it probably makes sense for you to watch the video before reading any further.*

Annie spent a decade researching the Materials Economy: how the stuff that we use in our lives - rubber bands, textbooks, clothes, cars, electronics, all of it combined together into one giant compilation of stuff - is produced from raw material, marketed and sold to people, then consumed and disposed of. What she learned isn't all that earth-shattering when you consider it in the context of common sense: we take materials from somewhere (growing, cutting, mining, chemically synthesizing, etc), add energy in order to turn the materials into usable substances, then ship the finished products to stores and mail-order companies who arrange for large advertising budgets to convince people that a particular product is the best thing for us. Once a person purchases something, we take it out of the store and make it our own for however long it serve its purpose, then throw it into a trash can and pay someone to haul it to a landfill or incinerator. The actions that are left out of the traditional Materials Economy diagram aren't tremendously surprising for anyone who went to public school in the 80s and 90s, either: pollution is a problem at every stage of the system, and the system doesn't work without human labor expended at every stage. Thus we have barren landscapes and strip miners, dirty air and factory workers, inefficient mass gathering places and retail clerks, waste in private homes filled with the average American family, and contaminated waterways and garbage haulers. On top of that, anyone who pays attention to mainstream media knows that we've poached the wealth of other nations to make our stuff (hard woods from Rain Forests and diamonds from Africa come quickly to mind), abused and exploited children for cheap labor (sweatshops in India and Central America, anyone?), and have recently taken to shipping our "disposed items" overseas, where they can be burned cheaply instead of force recycled at greater monetary cost.

The fact that we Americans -- complicit in the system of our society and thus personally accountable for the actions of our government and fellow citizens -- have been ethically and morally irresponsible with the wealth, health, and lives of other people of the world in order to live better and more cheaply, was no surprise to me, nor should it be a surprise to anyone reading this blog. And yet, it took a while for me to understand what pissed me off so much about the nature of our capitalist, consumerist-focused society as Annie presented it.

What got to me was Annie's golden arrow of consumption, and the story behind it. The part of the process that I had been missing when I considered it on my own.

In the last few years, I've become markedly less materialistic -- intentionally sorting through my unused possessions and giving them away, purchasing needed things second-hand rather than brand-new, ignoring the "you must buy this" advertising frenzy surrounding every aspect of American life. And while I've been doing that, I've idly wondered why so many other people, people whom I like and respect and whose judgment I trust, aren't similarly aware of their materialism, their drive for stuff. I was never able to answer that question.

Annie is far smarter than I am, because she was.

"Americans are only valuable as consumers." That statement is what angers me to the point of red-tinged rage -- because every critical-thinking skill I possess tells me again and again that it's true.

The wealthiest people in our society depend on everyone else spending money on things. Paying for services, and paying for products, all of it dependent on cash-valued property changing hands. Shopping has become the most valuable thing the American citizen can do: after 9/11/01, the President held a national address and told people to shop. In a time of war, when one of every two Federal Tax Dollars is given to the military, we are urged to spend -- not to make sacrifices, as every war-surviving generation before us has done, but spend, indulge, savor. The most important day of the Christmas season is Black Friday -- every advertisement, every magazine article, half of the news stories, everything generated in November and December is geared toward telling us what we need to do: what we need to buy, how much we need to spend, and who we need to show it all off for. We're urged to spend outrageous amounts of money for unaffordable luxuries, "because we're worth it." And while the ads are ever glossier, the models more glamorous, the sales pitches more conniving, the products become shoddier and shabbier, intended to be enjoyed momentarily - or not at all - and discarded so they can be replaced with something even shoddier and more expensive. The people doing the buying, taking home the stuff, building reputations of "generosity" -- the shoppers aren't the winners in this situation.

I don't know about anyone else reading this -- I don't live in your heads and I can't speak for you -- but I am not a consumer. I am a human being, first and foremost. I'm a friend and a daughter. I'm a neighbor, and an employee (to use ACS' nomenclature, I'm not merely an employee, I'm a valuable Talent Investment). I'm a cook and a singer and a gardener and sister and a terrible dancer, and the odd girl in my townhouse complex who marches around her kitchen every evening in the winter for exercise. Those are a few of the many, many roles that I fill. Consumer doesn't fit anywhere in that list.

Don't get me wrong, I shop. For instance, at Christmas-time, I shopped for safe, local, good-quality, natural foods, to make special meals and treats that my friends and family would enjoy. I shopped for meaningful gifts -- theater tickets for enjoying and creating memories, natural fabrics to make toys and bags that would provide use and joy, well-made volumes of excellent writing. Every month I pay my bills to keep a roof over my head and the heat and lights on, and to provide a bit of entertainment via the internet. Every week I buy food. I buy clothes and shoes seasonally when required. There are a half-dozen little indulgences I adore - chai from Starbucks in a reusable mug being one of them. But I think about the impact of every purchase -- not merely on my bank account, but on what the vote of my dollar says to the world.

"Consumer" isn't part of my job as a human being. My identity doesn't depend on shopping. I would still be a much-loved person capable of sharing joy with the people I love (and dancing badly to make them laugh) even if I built a hut-house from scratch that I owned outright, produced all of my own energy, provided my own entertainment, raised and bartered for my food, and never accepted an on-the-books paycheck. My life would have value -- to me, to my family, *and* to my society.

My fatal flaw, perhaps my most defining negative attribute, is my utter hatred of being misjudged. It's the personality trait that keeps me arguing with people I don't give a damn about -- not to get them to acknowledge that I'm right, but to convince myself, absolutely and completely, that they know what my position is and why, so that if I'm hated and reviled it's for the right reasons, the truth and not some stupid misinterpretation. And so it fills me with rage to know that I am viewed as just a cog in the wheel, just another consumer, and not as a person by all of the people making decisions and value-judgments based on what Americans consider important.

More importantly, it fills me with infinite, unbearable sadness.

What have we become? What is America? Where is our promise, our undeniable, indefatigable hope? Where is our pioneer spirit, our "we'll handle it ourselves because no one else gives a damn about us" attitude? Clearly, we've buried it underneath piles of stuff. Under mountains of fear and doubt and anxiety, about not being good enough. Under a weight of debt so all-encompassing that for all our material wealth, middle class people are just a couple of paychecks from homeless poverty. Heck, I'm one of them. Educational debt, Consumer debt, the continuous, never-ending "debt" of renting my home and paying someone else's mortgage -- my wonderfully middle class salary and benefits package is all the protection I have, and everything I can do to stretch it into a cushion against uncertainty isn't enough, yet.

The economy is on a "slow down." The Canadian dollar is valued more highly than a George Washington greenback. In 2006, Americans as a whole did not save even 1% of what they earned; I haven't seen 2007 numbers, but I can't imagine they're better. The real estate market is on the precipice of collapse, with the number of foreclosures nationwide rising daily. In the last eight years, wealthy Americans have grown wealthier, and the margins of poverty have narrowed, drawing more and more people into a land far from the golden-paved roads of opportunity, an oubliette where the ends never meet.

And our government leaders talk of a $150 billion economic stimulus package designed to keep money in the hands of the people who earn it -- just long enough for them to go out and buy more stuff, in order to feed the golden arrow of consumption. It's the 9/11 "go to New York and shop!" speech all over again.

I'm angry, and sad, and wracked with guilt. And so, I grit my teeth and do what I can.

I go to work, and I take care with my money, and I pay down my debt, and I don't buy what I don't need (and I avoid advertising designed to make me feel valueless for doing so). I spend time with the people I love, being all of the valuable things that I know I am. I learn about personal sustainability so that I don't have to agonize over a societal model of consumerism that provides ready-made trash in exchange for one-hundred-dollar bills.

I wonder, though, about the real source of our debt. We work terribly hard and earn oodles of money and spend it all -- it can't all be because of the multi-headed monster named Advertising. There must be another example that our people follow.

And oh, is there. Government -- of the people, by the people, for the people -- with a gross national debt so large and rising so quickly that I don't actually know the dollar figure anymore. There's no longer public discourse about "paying down our debt." Everyone knows it exists, but no one acknowledges it with a plan to pay it. A common refrain during the government budget season is "if the average citizen tried to run a household on a deficit like the government, they'd be homeless in a heartbeat." That's exactly what we have done, though, increasing our consumer debt, paying the interest and living in the margin between solvency and foreclosure, not considering the consequences if the collector comes to knock on the door. Governmentally, we've outsourced the money we owe to the world, paying a fraction of our global burden in interest to China, and Japan, and India, and not considering the rest. Is the American government following the example of the citizenry, or is it working the other way around? It makes me wonder -- do our national leaders, even the best-intentioned among them, have any intention of actually paying it back? Will anyone step up and call for payment, or are we banking on the notion of being an economic and military powerhouse eternally, answerable to no one?

Is our stuff so important as all that?

Originally posted to Ecogeekery.