Common Ground: The Happy Deprivationist

September 2007 | From the Editor

The Happy Deprivationist

I’ll admit: I like stuff. And from time to time, when I’m anxious, bummed or bored, I have been known to self-medicate with a little retail therapy. There’s no shame in it — I’m an American after all, and shopping is in our blood. It’s how we celebrate, how we say “I love you,” and how we show the terrorists they haven’t won. Personally, I like to remind those evildoers about once a week, by picking up something totally cute on sale at Anthropologie. Double points if it’s, like, organic cotton.

The trouble is, lately, I’ve started to suspect my little consumption habit isn’t as innocent as I’d like to think. And when I look around, I see my concerns reflected in the larger culture. Granted, out there in mall country there are still plenty of women attacking sales racks with that same pained look of hunger and hunter in their eyes. But murmurs of dissent are beginning to rise up from the parking lots. Insurgence is starting to sprout among the storage units.

The theme of this cultural rebellion seems to be The Year Without. Consider the rash of recent memoirs cataloguing the adventures of brave souls who publicly pledge to abstain from purchasing [insert non-necessity here] for a full 365 days. There’s enough of this stuff on Amazon.com to safely call it a genre — If you like The 100 Mile Diet, you might also like Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle or Alisa Smith and J.B. Mackinnon’s Plenty; if you like A Year Without “Made in China,” might we suggest graduating to Judith Levine’s Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping. The Compact, a movement (homegrown right here in SF) of folks who’ve sworn off buying anything new for a full planetary turn around the sun, now boasts over 8,000 subscribers to its email list and active chapters from Seattle to New York.

As the editor of this magazine, my logical mind knows woefully well (and my self-indulgent heart is slowly starting to accept) the cold, hard truth: American consumer addiction, of which I am an active, card-carrying participant, is poisoning the planet — and edging in on our day to day individual mental health and wellness, too. The only solution is to radically reduce one’s consumption of goods and resources — for a day, for a year, for the rest of your life. Welcome to the green movement. We hooked you with luxury hybrid SUVs, fancy bamboo yogawear and designer organic denim. But now that you’ve bought in, it’s time to up the ante by going without.

The stories in this month’s Common Ground are circling the same set of issues. Reflecting on Leonardo DiCaprio’s The 11th Hour, contributor Greg Dicum writes, “We already have the technology to reconfigure our civilization and exist in harmony with the earth. What’s lacking is the evolved consciousness it will take to choose to use the tools we have in a way that sustains both people and planet.” And in “The Good(s) Life,” John de Graaf, of Affluenza fame, speculates on an alternative economy that would exist for the health, wealth and wellness of all members of society.

As this month’s crop of contributors so deftly point out, if the clock truly is ticking down on our chance to preserve the safe and assured future of our species, then the choice to act is ours alone. So here’s my consumer withdrawal pledge of the day: next time I get the buy-something bug, I’ll see you on Craigslist.

— Eliza Thomas, Editor in Chief

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