Postcard from the Edge
Somewhere in the second half of the last century, we reached a sort of saturation point for physical stuff. The force that drove the Industrial Revolution ran out of steam. Because we didn’t need more stuff, but we did need an economy that kept growing, two main things resulted: firstly, we were convinced that the stuff we had wasn’t good enough and to throw it away so we could buy new, better stuff. Secondly, we were convinced that “stuff” was so last year and that what we needed now was services from, first, other people and then technology to do for us what we could do perfectly well ourselves if we wished.
Wetiko is a cannibalizing force driven by insatiable greed, appetite without satisfaction, consumption as an end in itself, and war for its own sake, against other tribes, species, and nature, and even against the individual’s own humanity.
Wetiko in a Nutshell. Paul Levy.
We entered a Wetiko Economy, one that would grow forever because our appetite for more grew in direct proportion to what we consume. Saturation was no longer possible, and our society became an everlasting sponge with infinite capacity.
Getting other people, and increasingly technology, to do things for us so that we can consume more instead of creating things that matter, that add beauty to our lives, whether physical artefacts or ideas that illuminate, is not a path to doing work that makes for the vibrant lives that create thriving human communities.
We are saturated with stuff.
It’s beyond time to wring ourselves out and make space for something better.
I believe that what you describe coincides with the shift from an analog world to a digital one. In the analog, we defined ourselves by material objects. The type of car we drove for example. The mechanical difference between a Ford and Chevy was not significant to the average buyer. But the status difference did matter. In the Southern US, where I grew up, the manufacturer of the car you bought often had to do with which NASCAR racer you followed. The shift to the digital was one from the material to the immaterial. Status is now derived from the ideology of products. So that driving an Electric Vehicle acquires a new more global status of importance because it confirms to our Social Media contacts a status of believing in the social ideologies of climate change. The end result is that it has made it easier to be manipulated. No longer am I comparing myself to my next door neighbor but to some image of a person on social media. It is tyrannical because as Max Fisher has shown in his book The Chaos Machine, the digital world is ordered for our control. https://youtube.com/shorts/1QrYZqXrZ_s?si=IRI5MhrNy_eL5F93 And, to begin to resist being confirmed to an ideology, requires a strength of individual character that few people have ever been taught how to acquire.
I've never understood why you should get rid of something, just because something newer came out.
I kept my first bag-phone until smart-phones came out. I kept my first computer until it could no longer keep up with the newest OS's. I kept my car until it could no longer drive. I kept my kitchen appliances until the gave up the ghost. In fact, the only things that I bought every time a new one came out, were books.
Maybe I'm just an aberration.