The Wastefulness of the Human Psyche

It's been a while, but I'm finally writing in my first blog post.  Please feel free to comment below.  It's one of those bright, moonlight-filled nights that always seems to keep me up.  I've laid in bed with my iPod for an hour now, so I guess it's time to finally try my favorite and most cathartic pastime: writing.

I've been reading a book for school, one about America's garbage problem.  I've never really thought about it much before, but I guess it really is a problem.  Every week I set my garbage out on the curb, a waist-high pile of refuse that I certainly don't know what to do with, and every week it disappears into what the author calls the "waste stream."  This author seemed to think that it is mostly the waste management companies's fault, but it seems to me that the problem is more intrinsic and lays in our culture as Americans.  Silt, it probably has more to do with being human than it does with being American.

What is it about us that gives us a predeliction to waste?  I believe it lies in our inherent need to improve our lives.  Sure, we may know that it's bad to throw away our plasma TVs when we want LED ones, but deep down inside we're not thinking and knowing creatures.  We're all just animals trying to get by with the best life we can for ourselves, and that means buying cheap things from Wal-mart, using them until they break, and then throwing them away.  We waste the Earth's resources, raping it for useful materials, then throw away the spent husks.

Do we have the right to do this?  We deserve to make our lives better, right?  After all, that's what capitalism has taught us since we were very little.  I'm not an environmentalism zealot by any means, but as I look closer and closer at the world I live in I see more and more of its dirty little spots.  One of them is trash.  Take plastic bags, for instance.  In some countries they've become so prevalent that the manufacture of them has been outlawed completely.  They are cheap to produce, save us a ton of effort at the grocery store, and don't take up a lot of landfill space.  But they also never go away.  Unlike metal, ceramic, wood, or paper, plastic is an artificial material and will last for hundreds, if not thousands, of years before finally biodegrading.  So much of our society is plastic now, and it represents how our culture has become: cheap and disposable.

Do I advocate industry regulations and strict laws?  No, but I do think that Americans -- and the rest of the industrial world -- need to rethink consumerism.  Honestly, of all the things each of us has, how many do we really need?  A single laptop will cover most entertainment needs, a couple shelves of refrigerator space will cover most food needs (if one shops frequently, wisely, and does not waste), and a single room will shelter each of us.  Why should we throw so much of our hard-earned money into wasteful and unnecessary things?  Simplicity can be happiness in its own way.  After all, how many people can really justify the money and materials poured into an SUV?  Why not go to a really nice school and have a great education?  Why not a trip to Tahiti?  Why a mucking S-U-V, with all the gas economy and emissions and -- frankly unneeded -- safety features?

Because we have been trained to want.  Like monkeys in a zoo, we have been raised to work hard, to gather what money we can, then spend it all.  Who cares that waste is terribly inefficient?  Consumption turns the wheels of production.  I'm sick of it, but I don't think it's a cycle that's that easy to escape.  Fetch, I know I'm still following the brain-washed regime:  I'm going to school and getting a degree so I can land a good job and make lots of money.  Sure, it likely won't happen exactly  that way, but I'm sure as rain trying to make it.

I don't have the answers to how we can escape consumerism, as it's somewhat built into our psyches now, but It sure would be spiffy if I did.