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POPSWhy "trash the dress" pisses me off I'll be getting in touch with Jireh Women to find out how I can donate my wedding dress to them. I don't intend to ever wear it again, and I'd love to know that a woman who never thought she'd be a bride can look and feel more beautiful on her wedding day.
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POPSBarack Obama, College Admininstrator FTA: " The president tells the nation that his wonderful programs are met with distortion and right-wing lies,..". Hanson has it pegged. This is how it looks from *our side*.
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POPSLow Self-Esteem & Materialism Goes Hand in Hand In the book “Happiness: Lessons From a New Science”, Richard Layard exposes a paradox at the heart of our lives. Most of us want more income so we can consume more. Yet as societies become richer, they do not become happier. In fact, the First World has more depression, more alcoholism and more crime than fifty years ago. This paradox is true of Britain, the United States, continental Europe and Japan.
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POPSShallow Shouting from The Left "In a society that broke, on behalf of merit, the seemingly eternal chains of station by birth, they cry 'injustice.' In the names of fantasy worlds and mystical perfections, they have closed themselves to the Western, liberal miracle of individual rights, individual responsibility, merit, and human satisfaction. Like Marx, they put words like 'liberty' in quotation marks when these refer to the West…."
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POPSSanta Claus is a Psychoactive Mushroom ... The scholars of hominid history are uncovering a constantly larger past in which the earlier members of our species continually appear to be smarter, more accomplished, more adept, and more complex than we had previously believed ...
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POPSAre American's Spoiled? Part of what's so perverse -- yet perversely endearing -- about American consumerism is the way we don't allow luxury to preclude necessity. Just because we don't technically need something doesn't mean we can't convince ourselves that we'll die without it. There's a reason the statistic about more American households having TVs than indoor plumbing has been floating around for decades It's because we define luxuries as being in the eye of the beholder. and we hold as self-evident that some of them fall into a category all their own: necessary luxuries. That may be an oxymoron, not to mention evidence that we may be a nation of morons.
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POPS50 Tools Everyone Should Own Yeah right. The problem with a list like this is that several of these tools can be of multiple-use so the list shortens by about 8. I've been buying tools for years as I need them and have ended up with all but 3 on this list but ask me how often they get used. Most of them end up sitting around never to be needed again. I don’t know who the author is catering to, handyman wannabes or the tool industry, but by suggesting that ‘everyone’ should own these tools I suspect it’s the latter. I gotta tell you, if I were to start over I would buy a hammer and a power screwdriver with several tips and then go to the local tool rental supply for anything else I needed. This way you don’t have to deal with all that unused clutter. All this excessive consumerism is way overrated.
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POPSRecommendations for anti-consumerism books & documentaries
Also (click through to the source for the links on these): I Want That! How We All Became Shoppers No Logo: No Space, No Choice, No Jobs Weapons of the Weak a book called The Hidden Injuries of Class by Richard Sennett and Jonathan Cobb, and it's more about how capitalism defers and damages people's dreams definitely check out Cute, Quaint, Hungry and Romantic: The Aesthetics of Consumerism by Daniel Harris. The section on the grotesque lurking within cuteness is hilarious and right-on Heath & Potter's Rebel Sell (Also known as Nation of Rebels,) which makes the distinction between mass society (capitalism as monotonous efficiency, everyone buying the same thing) and consumerism (I am what I own, I must own something new and different in order to be young and unique.) I think it's a really important distinction that a lot of books…totally miss…beware anti-massification arguments masquerading as anti-consumerism arguments Can't Buy My Love by Jean Kilbourne
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POPSAmericans' Greedy Consumerism Behind Financial Crisis
While everyone is blaming the bankers they need to look in a mirror. Greed is not monopolized by Wall Street. Even those who make over $100k per year spend as much as they take in with little savings, paycheck to paycheck. This not a symptom of government of course, nor companies they work for, but spending according to wants instead of needs , or buying a house too early. But the impact of this during layoffs and tightening credit causes all of society to bear the weight of others' personal financial decisions, including banks. If people had bought within their means, instead spending only upon their wants, saved, thus paid their mortgage loans on time, there would be no collapse of the banks! People use to save a long time before buying a house, but recent generations live on the edge and want everything now, and jeapordize their housing. This is also what makes radio finance people like Dave Ramsay so rich for merely using common sense.
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POPSThe North American Way of Life: An unsustainable ponzi scheme? “You can get this burst of wealth that we have created from this rapacious behavior,” ... “But it has to collapse, unless adults stand up and say, ‘This is a Ponzi scheme. We have not generated real wealth, and we are destroying a livable climate ...’ Real wealth is something you can pass on in a way that others can enjoy.”
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POPSGreat Depression 2 But such is ignorance that even six months ago the idea of even a recession was being scorned by many. I'd have thought if people don't wake up now and take action they never will.
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POPSFrench "Invent" Novel Protest of Capitalism and Materialism It's in-house shop lifting and inviting shoppers to a free lunch - grin - which we all know capitalism does not offer - "there's no free lunch." But the current bailouts of banks and companies across the world seem like "free lunch" for those who say no free lunch to the rest of us.
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POPSA very French protest continues (more at source): "L'Appel et la Pioche" have struck four times so far and have no intention of stopping what they claim is a highly effective new way of protesting. "Everyone is bored of demonstrations. And handing out tracts at 6am at a market is neither effective nor fun," said Leïla Chaïbi, 26, the leader of the group. "This is fun, festive, non-threatening and attracts the media. It's the perfect way of getting our message across."
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POPSBoycott products by Jewish companies: PPIM While the intention may be noble, i.e. to send a strong message, the repercussions are going to affect Malaysians (not the US or Israel), of whom thousands are employed by these so-called "Jewish companies". A majority of which are Muslims. Incidentally, PPIM has also been consistently calling for the boycott of 3 entities specifically (although not mentioned by name in the article): Starbucks, McDonalds, and Colgate.
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POPSCONSUMER CULT AND MOB MENTALITY Whipped up into a frenzy, a crowd of consumers is very dangerous thing. Burning torches and the image of old black and white movies with crowds on a rampage through a village
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POPSEarth on course for Eco 'Crunch' Consumerism should be not just frowned upon or out of fashion, but seen as disgusting. This is something we as individuals are responsible for- and can do something about!
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