The historical consumer split
This is an extract from The Ends book. It is often useful to look back at history to see the deeper context of todays issues around consumerism and how we got here.
Historically, the consumer lifecycle in the workplace and home was clear and simple to the people of the pre-industrial world. They recognised the resources in what we would consider waste - scraps from the kitchen were given to the animals, the waste from the animals was spread on the land fertilising the plants that produced the food they harvested. They were in control of the system, manually managing every aspect of it, knowing when they could intervene and change its course. It was actionable, visible, and understandable to them. But over the following centuries this relationship would be distanced. We would no longer see it so clearly. We would change our role from that of being an active cog in the lifecycle, to a passive consumer of it. From dealing with waste, to creating waste over which we had no control.
This change happened in two directions.
The Distancing and the Fading
In one vital way our world view of waste, its role and its impact would change. The old world, where the waste of one item could clearly signal the birth of another, changed as a result of discoveries in science and technology that challenged our grasp of scale, revealing a new world of invisible, un-actionable waste. Our perception of waste went from the visible products of farmyard and home to invisibly small germs, radioactive matter and bacterial diseases, the infinitely big issues of deadly smog, climate change, ‘too big to fail’ banks, and online personal data which is impossible to fully erase. The sheer breadth and volume of waste fast became incomprehensible to the average consumer. With this we lost the capability to define waste easily. We lost the ability to touch or control it, and in many respects lost responsibility for any part of it. The concept of waste, in whatever form, was becoming distant and fading fast. We relinquished our traditional responsibilities to local and national government, organisations and representatives, who make decisions about waste and remove it.
The Quickening and the Tethering
In addition to the loss of responsibility for disposing of waste, the basic role of the consumer has changed. Instead of being the active creator and controller of the lifestyle of products, the individual became but a cog in an infinite economic machine. The creation of more efficient sales systems, greater variety of choice and the ease of access to money have driven us to consume well beyond our needs. Such pressures have created the concept of consumption as a given, as an integral part of modern identity and obligatory commitment. Many historic events contributed to changing this perception in us as consumers. In the next few pages we’ll look at a few of these events and the impact they had on us.
