11.23.2011

Can We, the Greedy, the Lazy, the Fearful, Want Less?

Wanting less is the central message of Buy Nothing Day. Wanting less is empathy in action. There is still a chance humans could change from the greedy, lazy, fearful mob we mostly are now into empathetic members of the living earth. The Vagas odds are real long, but not zero.

Symbolic actions this Black Friday like the Zombie Walk and Whirl-Mart are great mall theatre. They open a channel to a new way of thinking about the holidays, about our own consumption habits. Pogo like, we must acknowledge that we have seen the enemy and it's us.

Adbusters update today extolls us all to use Buy Nothing Day as a springboard to #OCCUPYCHRISTMAS. There is only one earth, we cannot continue to consume its limited resources to satisfy our unlimited demands. The sooner we each confront our inner consumer the sooner the flora, fauna, microbes, minerals, forces and fairies we share this life with will step back from the precipice of disaster we're all looking over.

Can we, the greedy, lazy, fearful primates, overcome our own worldview of entitlement? Can we want less? The real 99%, the non-human part, sure hope so.