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Page added on March 3, 2017
Have we reached ‘peak stuff’?
A disapproval of excess and excessive behaviour has been around since classical times. The ancients knew that too much of anything wasn’t good for us. You cannot live your life with the dial permanently turned up to eleven. The Greek goddess Sophrosyne embodied the spirit of moderation, temperance and restraint, and those who ignored her risked madness and ruin. The temple of Apollo at Delphi bore the inscription Meden Agan (nothing in excess). A sense of balance is all.
These days sometimes we don’t appear to know how much is too much. For those who worry about excess consumption and its more virtuous alternative – sustainable living – there are two competing buzzwords which explore the problems: Peak Stuff and The Paradox of Choice. Both are about excess, the consequences of over-doing it, either on the supply or the demand side. In intriguing ways, however, they appear to contradict each other.
The concept of Peak Stuff was introduced to us earlier this year in a slightly comical, almost Gerald Ratner-esque, admission by IKEA when the Swedish giant suggested that the hunger of western consumers for home furnishings had ‘reached its peak.’
‘If we look on a global basis, in the west we have probably hit peak stuff. We talk about peak oil. I’d say we’ve hit peak red meat, peak sugar, peak stuff … peak home furnishings,’ Steve Howard IKEA’s head of sustainability said at a Guardian conference. He noted further – in a rare display of mirth from the Scandie giant – that the new state of affairs could be referred to as ‘peak curtains’. (Despite this admission, IKEA still has a target of doubling global sales by 2020.)
If you Google ‘Peak Stuff’, consistently at the top of the ranking list comes Goldman Sachs and its thoughts on the subject. How apt that the legendary ‘Vampire squid wrapped round the face of humanity’ which did more to encourage a culture of pushing it to the limit in the world of finance is now an authority on a step too far. (Well, according to Google’s algorithm, anyway.)
But Goldman’s analysis is correct. (As it often is.) Goldman says the Peak Stuff phenomenon is down to two factors. Firstly, access over ownership. People are willing to share or co-own material goods and are no longer so hung up about acquisition and ownership. Cars would be a good example. Car clubs in cities are growing and when autonomous versions finally arrive, minus sexy steering wheels and accelerators, people may well have even less desire to own rather than share/hire them. People even share pets these days. Secondly, it’s experiences over possessions. So you’d rather attend a piano concerto at the Wigmore Hall or attend a performance by the ginger troubadour Ed Sheeran than own another IKEA pair of blackout curtains called Gunni. Live and in the moment has a high premium placed on it these days.
Nowhere do you get a better vision of Peak Stuff than TK Maxx. Looking down from her pedestal on the clothing rails from which hang hundreds of metres of unwanted clobber Sophrosyne would not be amused. Maxx’s business is ‘distressed merchandise’: the football shirts, girls’ party dresses, sweat pants, dodgy cheap suits, ties, rudimentary bike locks, socks, belts and so on that TK Maxx has acquired from suppliers that failed to shift them.
When I were a lad
We have many more material possessions than the previous generation did. Middle-class kids in the 1960s like me had one pair of shoes for each half of the year – often the same Clarks brand as there were not many suitable makers to choose from – probably two or three T-shirts and a British-made M&S anorak or duffle coat. I’ve just looked into the wardrobe containing the threads of my nine and seven year-old and stopped when I went past 30 T-shirts, not one of them made here. And this isn’t just the case for a comfortably off bourgeois.
We continue to be voracious consumers. Research conducted at Cambridge University found that, as clothing prices have come down in the UK, the number of garments bought has soared fourfold. The study found that the average British woman buys half her bodyweight – 28kg (62lb) – in clothing every year. However, the average British family spends about 45% less on clothes today than 40 years ago. Clothes are now super-cheap: in 1969 we spent almost 9% of our money on clothes, compared with about 5% in 2012. It’s easy to chose some more.
It’s not just clothes. In 1969, Which? magazine’s best buy Hoover Automatic 3221h washing machine cost £88, a sum equivalent to £1,044 today. A typical 22-inch colour television set would have cost about £300 then (£3,500 today). A TV cost more than a month’s work for an average earner in 1969, but costs less than two days’ work today. The costs have gone down and the number to choose from way up.
Too much choice?
But how easy is it to choose the one you want? If you look at TVs on the John Lewis website there are 111 from which to take your pick. The prospect of looking for the perfect needle in that digital haystack sends some people into a complete funk. The book The Paradox of Choice – Why More Is Less was written in 2004 by the American psychologist Barry Schwartz and caused a big stir.
His argument is that reducing or even eliminating consumer choices can greatly reduce anxiety for shoppers. As he writes, ‘Autonomy and freedom of choice are critical to our well being, and choice is critical to freedom and autonomy. Nonetheless, though modern Americans have more choice than any group of people ever has before, and thus, presumably, more freedom and autonomy, we don’t seem to be benefiting from it psychologically.’ We’re not just spoiled for choice but damaged by it.
The classic experiment Schwartz cites to prove his theory concerns not 4K enabled Ultra HDs by Panasonic but designer jam. Way back in 1995 in a California gourmet market, Professor Sheena Iyengar, one of the world’s experts on choice, set up a booth of samples of Wilkin & Sons jams from Tiptree in Essex. Every few hours, they swapped from offering a selection of 24 jams to a group of six jams. On average, customers tasted two jams, regardless of the size of the assortment, and each one received a coupon for a dollar off one jar.
But here is where it all got interesting. With eyes bigger than their tummies, sixty percent of customers were drawn to the large assortment, while only 40% stopped by the small one. However – and here’s the kicker – 30% of the people who had sampled from the small assortment decided to buy jam, while only 3% of those confronted with the two dozen jams purchased a jar. For Tesco, Asda and Sainsbury’s this was nightmarish news. One doubts whether Wilkin & Sons whose range runs into the hundreds of preserves, jams and marmalades were too thrilled, either.
That study ‘raised the hypothesis that the presence of choice might be appealing as a theory,’ said Professor Iyengar who, by the way is completely blind so would be choosing by taste and smell, ‘but in reality, people might find more and more choice to actually be debilitating.’
There are two elements that concern Schwartz: worrying about the choice and then being unhappy once the choice has been made. That you made a mistake and got the wrong one. This you might term fret followed by regret. Or in the language of behavioural economics – ‘there is diminishing marginal utility in having alternatives; each new option subtracts a little from the feeling of well-being, until the marginal benefits of added choice level off.’
In the years since, different versions of the jam study have been conducted using all sorts of subjects, from chocolate to speed dating. Those who use the dating app Tinder will be highly familiar with this phenomenon. One of the most extreme examples of Tinder choice madness is recounted by Aziz Ansari, the comedian, in his book Modern Romance.
In it, a woman recalls meeting a man on the dating app Tinder, then spending the journey to their first date swiping through other contenders to see if anyone more promising was available. This is buyer’s unease or even (when she arrived at the date) remorse. It’s hugely frequent – many people spend hours studying brochures and websites for products way after they’ve bought one. It’s as if they are trying to convince themselves after the event that they made the correct decision. There are doubtless some Tinder users who would like to date everyone apparently ‘available’ before being sure they’ve come to the correct decision. But the world doesn’t work quite like that.
The same applies to those who face the nightly dilemma of bewildering choice as you scroll down through the Sky or Netflix channels, the same. Bruce Springsteen had a song for this ‘57 Channels (And Nothing On) (The Boss is so incensed by the madness of choice he shoots the TV with a .44 Magnum).
Or too much information?
But Benjamin Scheibehenne, a research scientist at the University of Basel in Switzerland, has said it might be too simple to conclude that too many choices are bad, just as it is wrong to assume that more choices are always better. He says that it depends on what information we’re being given to assist us in making those choices, the type of expertise we have to rely on – from ourselves and our own knowledge or outside authority – and how much importance we ascribe to each choice. He hits the nail on the head when he suggest that it’s critical to separate the concept of choice overload from information overload.
In other words, he said, how much are people affected by the number of choices and ‘how much from the lack of information or any prior understanding of the options?’ The purchase of a TV on the John Lewis website shows this. It’s beautifully designed, showing screen sizes (22″-75″), brands, different resolutions, features.
For someone who is actively interested and confident with the technology this is all helpful – as are the reviews from other customers which carry very great weight. (Peer opinion has become hugely powerful in the digital age.) But for TV tech ignoramuses who do not understand the meaning and function and value of what’s on offer this can bring on panic. Such individuals are far more likely to attend a store and seek advice from an old fashioned shop assistant. It’s all down to confidence and feeling on top of things.
Schwartz accepts that people are very different when shopping and applies the commonly used psychological distinction between maximizing and satisficing. A maximizer is someone who ‘can’t be certain that she has found the best sweater unless she’s looked at all the sweaters,’ Schwartz writes. ‘She can’t know that she is getting the best price until she’s checked out all the prices.’ Instead, he advocates, one should become a satisficer, ‘content with the merely excellent as opposed to the absolute best.’ This is making the best of it.
He offers encouraging practical measures to alleviate the agony such as time-limiting your search and sticking to simple stuff that you know you like already, which seems sensible. But it’s not obvious that you can simply decide to convert from maximizing to satisficing. These behavioural traits are very deep seated in many people. Glass-half-empties and glass-half-fulls don’t change their personalities overnight.
There is a strongly political element to the problem of choice as Christopher Caldwell wrote in the New Yorker when reviewing Schwartz’s book. ‘If choice is as painful as social scientists claim (Schwartz says it “tyrannizes” us) — and if miswanting is as prevalent — then a root-and-branch means of liberating us from it will always tempt policymakers and political thinkers.
Oh you just decide for me
Some will advocate having others, perhaps the state, choose for people; for these advocates, behavioral economics provides a rationale for paternalism. The economist George Loewenstein, of Carnegie Mellon, has said that anyone studying happiness was bound to end up leaning left. Indeed, miswanting can be seen as a version of Marxism’s “false consciousness,” only in a more alluring guise — no longer just an oratorical ruse to sidestep the expressed wishes of the working class but a hard datum of social science.’
This is political dynamite and goes to the heart of what capitalism promises: choice, freedom and abundance. It’s one thing living back in the world of Henry Ford when he was supplying the Model T and colour choice famously was not something he favoured offering consumers. However the Communist way of doing things is a complete reduction of decadent capitalist choice and that you get what you are given – what the state decides not what its citizens want but what they need. This is the supply-side led world of the five-year plan and, ultimately, often the bread queue. It has very few serious advocates left anywhere – especially not in Cuba or Venezuela.
Rifling by hand through a rack of shirts at TK Maxx is one way to make a choice from a wide variety of options. But these days we are far likelier to be choosing from a vertical list on a screen, on Amazon, Google or ebay. The web has made the business of buying far easier and if people can buy something easily they will.
Being at the top of that list when the search engine has revved and done its work is the critical thing. Huge proportions of buyers don’t even scroll down to the bottom of the first page, never mind going beyond the fold to page 2 or 232. How many times on Amazon when buying a used book, for example, does anyone do so on anything other than price with the cheapest at the top? (Unless it is declared to be totally dog-eared and covered with notations in biro.) The choice has already been made. The choice was being on Amazon rather than in Waterstones.
Maybe we just don’t know how easy the digital world is at pre-making choices for us. As Eric Schmidt, the chairman of Alphabet, Google’s holding company, has said in quite sinister fashion, ‘We know where you are. We know where you’ve been. We can more or less know what you’re thinking about.’ And, he may as well, add – ‘We know how to choose for you.’
Professional data miners working for companies can build highly detailed pictures about what people have chosen in the past – ‘history-sniffing’ – and how they have gone about that process – ‘behaviour-sniffing’. You may think you have freedom of choice but it’s highly unlikely. You get to chose from what is selected for you. Freedom is rarely free – we’ll all in thrall to the laws of the algorithm.
The problem with the Paradox of Choice theory is that it is rarely borne out by reality and the facts. Surely if we were all crippled by indecision when it comes to choosing stuff we wouldn’t buy anything. We’d put the plastic back into our wallets and leave the store (or more likely the website) empty handed or with nothing in the basket.
The generational divide
There could even be an age divide here. The young are perfectly accustomed to the modern world. They don’t fret and regret. They just get on with it, often multi-tasking and making decisions on the hoof at pace. Our kids would think it very odd, and themselves hard done by, to only have two T shirts and two pairs of shoes each year. There is an element of the slightly neurotic old fogey in the Paradox of Choice argument. A combination of the delaying, self-doubting Hamlet who cannot make up his mind to be or not to be and the angsting Woody Allen.
It’s all a bit joyless – there are many who actually like shopping, especially for higher value, non-everyday items, otherwise they wouldn’t do it with such alacrity. The pleasure of yearning to buy something you desire, thinking about all the alternatives, making your decision, saving for or sacrificing something else to purchase it, the actual act of acquiring it, receiving it by courier, unwrapping it and then enjoying owning and using it cannot be argued with.
But the market is aware things may have gone too far. Take Tesco for example. Last year its boss Dave Lewis, in an effort to stem the losses suffered after the deathly wars with his low cost rivals Aldi and Lidl, decided to scrap 30,000 of the 90,000 products from his supermarkets shelves. Did Tesco customers require 28 different tomato ketchups, he wondered. It might help his bottom line if he offered fewer while easing the ketchup buying agony suffered by those walking up and down his aisles.
He is not alone among grocers. The overall number of product varieties — known as stock-keeping units — in British supermarkets has fallen 7% over the past two years, according to IRI, the retail consultancy. As her spirit walks the aisles of whichever Mount Olympus supermarket she favours, Sophrosyne – for whom equilibrium, balance and, doubtless, bargain prices are all – may well approve of this.
33 Comments on "Have we reached ‘peak stuff’?"
Hello on Fri, 3rd Mar 2017 8:39 am
Got points made.
With too much choice you have to spend an ever increasing amount of time researching and deciding.
onlooker on Fri, 3rd Mar 2017 8:54 am
We surely have reached peak useless stuff
Hawkcreek on Fri, 3rd Mar 2017 9:46 am
I know I have enough tee-shirts, socks, underwear, and jeans to last the rest of my life.
May be short on a few tools, but I can usually find a work-a-round.
But I really need a few more guns.
forbin on Fri, 3rd Mar 2017 9:58 am
well it’s true I now have 80 TV channels – all broadcasting the same stuff I ‘ve been watching for the past 40 years
there’s no money in making something new? – just re-hashed stories ? how many Batman movies do I need?
as for other choice of jams and tomketch – lots of choice but little choice in flavors – all shades of tomatoes , or strawberries or other concoctions slapped together , passed by some panel of IQ 80 mums from a shopping mall , that all taste , well , vile?
is it just me though as well , that when I do find something different I like , shortly afterwards it disappears from the shelves ?
yup certainly cut down on my choices , much easier now , and also stopping buying stuff I don’t like with money I don’t have to impress people I don’t care less about – that’s helped too
I guess I’m not doing my bit for the “economy” …. heh
Forbin
Antius on Fri, 3rd Mar 2017 10:06 am
‘A maximizer is someone who ‘can’t be certain that she has found the best sweater unless she’s looked at all the sweaters,’ Schwartz writes. ‘She can’t know that she is getting the best price until she’s checked out all the prices.’’
Ever noticed how weirdo far-left politics is creeping into language? In English, an undefined person should always be described in the male tense. It sounds strange when this isn’t the case, like the person writing is making some sort of oddball political statement.
Sissyfuss on Fri, 3rd Mar 2017 10:16 am
Toffler described the concept of overchoice in his book,” Future Shock” years ago. As devolution gathers momentum, overchoice will be replaced by no choice.
Yorchichan on Fri, 3rd Mar 2017 10:16 am
Antius
Maybe it’s simply tacit acknowledgement that women like shopping more than men.
Apneaman on Fri, 3rd Mar 2017 10:21 am
Same with porn. Back when I was a kid all we had to jerk off to was jungle titties in National Geographic magazine or the bra & panty section of the Sears catalogue – today there is more stroke material online than you can shake a dick at.
Midnight Oil on Fri, 3rd Mar 2017 10:29 am
Got to keep those 2 billion hands busy in China! It’s hard being a busy consumer, but someone has to do it!
Man, driving to far flung malls and shopping centers, countless hours with the Old Lady making difficult choices. Than a week later, returning it back with the Old Lady, she always changes her mind.
But as Chairman Mao once wrote,
“Many hands do light work”!
Ghung on Fri, 3rd Mar 2017 10:38 am
Peak delusion. All the rest is just artifacts of that.
John on Fri, 3rd Mar 2017 1:59 pm
F’in bored reading when got to the bit where the author thinks everyone can buy a TV in 2 days…if the author hadn’t peaked themselves with too much money and had less money like a lot of us…different article.!!!
DerHundistlos on Fri, 3rd Mar 2017 4:00 pm
@ Antius
False. Usage problems arise with the application of a masculine pronoun to infer a gender-neutral meaning. For this reason, use of a generic he for both sexes is considered outmoded, although I appreciate your natural inclination to blame, “weirdo far left politics”.
Antius on Fri, 3rd Mar 2017 5:46 pm
‘False. Usage problems arise with the application of a masculine pronoun to infer a gender-neutral meaning. For this reason, use of a generic he for both sexes is considered outmoded, although I appreciate your natural inclination to blame, “weirdo far left politics”.’
It is weirdo far-left politics. Marxism, Feminism, Green extremism and all the other ugly manifestations of the so called Left, have plagued the western world for too long. It is a disease of the mind that has ruined western society. Every trace of it must be expunged.
makati1 on Fri, 3rd Mar 2017 6:25 pm
Take away the unnecessary “stuff” and most mall would be empty. All the necessary stuff would fit in one medium sized store, like in the early 1800s. Those days are going to return. Be patient.
BTW: Real freedom comes when you get rid of all that stuff that clutters your house and your mind. If you are not willing/able to just leave it all behind, you are it’s slave. Not its owner. It owns you.
onlooker on Fri, 3rd Mar 2017 6:31 pm
Yes, the consumer paradigm is reflective of and similar to the other addictive pathological behavior so evident in the US as well as other areas
DerHundistlos on Fri, 3rd Mar 2017 6:45 pm
@ Antius
How refreshing to know that my tax dollars are being used to support your “weirdo” extremist thinking.
My favorite of yours is, “green extremism”. Obviously you have not been on this site long otherwise you would know that we are living in the midst of an anthropomorphic caused mass extinction emergency.
Sissyfuss on Fri, 3rd Mar 2017 7:47 pm
Antass wants to go back to the 50s with Trumpenstein, Derhund. He gets scared of all the new developments brought on by overpop and all the rest. Let him dream, it’s all he has.
Antius on Fri, 3rd Mar 2017 8:00 pm
‘How refreshing to know that my tax dollars are being used to support your “weirdo” extremist thinking.
My favorite of yours is, “green extremism”. Obviously you have not been on this site long otherwise you would know that we are living in the midst of an anthropomorphic caused mass extinction emergency.’
I take tax dollars from no one, least of all you. And I am well aware of the nature of our predicament. I do not know what your own opinion is. But I have watched the green movement phase out nuclear power and ramp up the production of coal. These people are never interested in practical solutions, for them it is more like a religious movement in which anything practical is unclean. I have watched the far left destroy traditional society and fill my country with aliens. They hate everything that does not bow down to their grey, one world, coffee coloured future.
Marxism and the New Left are no part of the solution to our problem. They are a big part of the problem that got us where we are.
GregT on Fri, 3rd Mar 2017 8:39 pm
‘I have watched the far left destroy traditional society and fill my country with aliens.”
If you have solid proof that aliens are visiting the Earth, please pass it along. If indeed true, maybe they can help us solve all of the predicaments that the white race have created, through our insatiable appetites for lust, greed, and consumption.
makati1 on Fri, 3rd Mar 2017 9:36 pm
There is not one person in the Western world that does not TAKE tax dollars, Antius. Not one. you are subsidized up the ass with tax money from birth to death.
If you use the roads and bridges, you are spending tax money. If you use any pubic park, railroad, oily product, etc., you are taking tax money. If you rely on the police, fire department or ambulance service, you are using tax money. Claiming otherwise only shows how little you know about your government’s use of your tax money.
DerHundistlos on Sat, 4th Mar 2017 2:35 am
Antius, you previously stated that you work for the US Navy. Please enlighten me how military expenditures are funded if not by tax receipts.
Cloggie on Sat, 4th Mar 2017 4:10 am
‘I have watched the far left destroy traditional society and fill my country with aliens.”
Far Left? Make that the US deep state, the very club this Churchill f*ker helped to victory by destroying Europe and is now busy trying to wipe out the white race:
https://twitter.com/TRobinsonNewEra/status/837599693693677568
The new rulers parading through the streets of Britain.
http://www.informationliberation.com/files/london_fallen_khan.png
Antius, I hate your plutonium economy, but I have to admit that it is a relief to finally meet a smart Brit who actually is honest about his despair with the way his country develops.
How about jumping over your own shadow and define yourself as a white European rather than an Anglo-Zionist, whose destiny it is to bring the race-mixed world into the hands of the Self-Chosen. How about NOT seeing continental Europe as your enemy for a change, that needs to be defeated if necessary by teaming up with Soviet criminals. How about abandoning 500 years of Splendid Isolation? That doesn’t need to be as an EU member, but at least openly recognize that the fate of Britain and the fate of continental Europe go hand in hand? In 2017 We all have the same enemy and that is the third world and Islam. And (until November 2016) the US, that has long been hijacked by the Zionists and are using the resources of America to get a border-less world realized. They are going to fail.
Cloggie on Sat, 4th Mar 2017 4:15 am
If you have solid proof that aliens are visiting the Earth, please pass it along. If indeed true, maybe they can help us solve all of the predicaments that the white race have created, through our insatiable appetites for lust, greed, and consumption.
Greg, you can be such spineless prick. Here is mr 1%, who will not lift a finger to defend his country, who until recently flew a private plane and is now playing the green-left refugee-tourist in his own land and lecturing the rest of the world about how every colored is our “fellow man”, while ensuring that he himself is as fare away as possible from the Vancouver coloreds, that like every larger Anglo city will explode, within three days after the financial system implodes and the EBT-system will go tits up. Think New Orleans writ large.
GregT on Sat, 4th Mar 2017 4:41 am
“Greg, you can be such spineless prick.”
Choose your battles wisely Arthur.
Davy on Sat, 4th Mar 2017 6:07 am
“green extremism”, “green hypocrisy”, “(excessive) green techno optimism”
Extremism is almost always bad and I am trying to think where it is OK. Even with love, something we all love, is destroyed by extremes. Greens today are overreacting to the planetary emergency we are in the midst of. They are only making it worse through delusional thinking of more of the same but low carbon. They consider all else secondary and they consider their positions correct even when they are not always correct. The worst I saw was a rational people, as most greens are, being pro Hillary. I understand voting for her if you are green because the alternative is horrible environmentally. My point is nothing was acknowledged to be horrible about Hillary. What is worse with Hillary she just gave green lip service. She was not really green and could care less about green. She was about power first.
If the green and green techno optimist want to win the day then they should turn away from extremism because the characteristics of extremism are untenable positions and failed agendas. We are in more than a planetary emergency we are also in a civilization in decline. This decline is an emergency. This makes our emergencies multidimensional and interrelated. There is no room for extremism in that kind of situation. There must be holistic solutions in the humility of failure. We learn from failure if we are humble. There is only give and take of cost and benefit of solutions that are not traditional solutions of progressive accomplishments. We are talking solutions to adapting and mitigating a world coming apart not growing. It is about walking through a minefield of dangers.
I am a green that lives green. I left the high paying job and affluent urban life to live permaculture simplicity. I use the status quo to leave it so I still remain part of it. It is my focus of leaving it that is important. You can’t just leave it you have to work at it. I practice relative sacrifice and I am downsizing with dignity. My spiritual home is natural based. This does not make me righteous and in some ways it makes me more responsible for my actions. I say this because I have been blessed with opportunity others were not given. My life is not for everyone and not everyone can do what I am doing. I am doing this because I am living a message that we need less affluence. We need to simplify and get closer to nature. We need to do this for nature and for ourselves. We know why lowering our footprint is good for nature. It is good for us because it is preparation for what our future is. Our future is perpetually less materially. It is more pain and suffering. It can be more spiritually which is a higher human reality.
The best things greens could do now is sober up. They should acknowledge the destructive change ahead cannot be solved with technology alone. Our very behavior and lifestyles must change. We must change the software before the hardware is effective. Some of the most affluent are green. They try to mask it with fancy green toys that are a hypocritical joke little different than the ultra-religious who criminally practice depravity in private. Real green means embracing a technological poverty like a monk. It means turning away from false progress. We need to embrace alternative energies but not in the extreme. The extreme is more of the same with alternatives just adding to the mix. Until lifestyles and attitudes change we cannot lower carbon by alternatives. In the status quo alternative energy technologies are just extenders.
It is apparent the status quo is likely not going to change until it stops so alternatives are a great extender to buy us time. If the reality of alternatives and other green promotions are extenders then extremely embracing them is clouding the real green mission. Green ploys in the extreme are dubious. Green’s efforts should be embracing sobriety and modesty not the extremism of a green more of the same. More of the same in any form green or brown is a dead end. It is all likely a dead end anyway. Nothing humans can do may succeed at this point. Were trapped and too far over the thresholds of failure it is just the failures have not sprung yet. The most important thing “real” greens can do at this point is influence “wisdom” for when the status quo is shattered and we are in a descent. We will need to embrace “real” green living at that point because it will be enforced by nature. At some point technology will fail and be of limited use in a salvage of decay. We are going to have to turn towards nature and embrace low carbon lifestyles not techno green progress. At that point real environmentalism will be realized.
TheNationalist on Sat, 4th Mar 2017 7:19 am
The social marxists are trying to control language and free thought now aswell, Antius is right. Because of this behaviour the ‘right’ and all the religious hang ons are not trusting the ‘greens’. The ‘greens’ and leftists want the Europeans to pay the masses of the 3rd world compensation for not polluting!. Haha, thinly disguised wealth redistribution and globalist propoganda all round. Sad really isn’t it, almost like a Jevons paradox.
Cloggie on Sat, 4th Mar 2017 7:38 am
Choose your battles wisely Arthur.
I love battles with incurable leftists. The more the better:
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=128473
“9/11-investigator”
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=178524
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=148049
These battles were in 2008-2009. There I learned the value of participating in forums. Because these experiences motivate to study deeper. Today I know the correct arguments much better than in 2008.
As you will understand by now Greg, I am not looking for buddies. But instead for smart enemies.
GregT on Sat, 4th Mar 2017 11:33 am
“As you will understand by now Greg, I am not looking for buddies. But instead for smart enemies.”
I get what you’re doing Cloggie, but that wasn’t what I was talking about.
DerHundistlos on Sat, 4th Mar 2017 2:45 pm
Greg T- very funny comment about aliens. Smart humor is comfort for the soul.
DerHundistlos on Sat, 4th Mar 2017 3:04 pm
@ Davy
I have no idea to whom you are preaching. What aspect of environmentalism are you addressing? I don’t know a single “greenie” who is convinced technology alone will solve our predicament. The lifestyle you have adopted is central to finding a solution, and I know of no “greenie” who believes otherwise. I choose to work within the confines of the prevailing socio-economic order to find solutions. Further, I don’t know of a single person who was “pro-Hillary”. She was a terrible choice, but better than the alternative.
dooma on Sat, 4th Mar 2017 10:07 pm
This is a very western response to this article.
I wounder if most of the people in the developing world have reached peak stuff yet?
makati1 on Sat, 4th Mar 2017 10:54 pm
dooma, you made me laugh. Thanks! I have yet to see a two car garage used for storing their peak stuff. I have yet to see a two car garage. Or a house big enough to have a two car garage. Our farm neighbors didn’t even have electric until last year. Running water is the spring outside. Air conditioning is open windows. Necessities are the priority, not extras.
Oh, I am sure some of the wealthier city folks may have a lot of stuff, but peak? I don’t know. I only know that I have gotten rid of most of my stuff and feel a new freedom without it. When I left after my divorce, 15 years ago, I had a medium box truck full. Each move, I shed more stuff. I moved to the Ps with three suitcases nine years ago. Nuff said.
Davy on Sun, 5th Mar 2017 5:39 am
You make me laugh makati. How big is the Asian middle class? How big is the Philippines middle class? There are 20MIL bellow your condo how many of them are using the stuff you complain about. I am sure you have running water and air conditioning in the condo. You are never at the primitive fantasy farm to live that life. You eat steak once a week and drink your San Miguel daily. What a joke. Asia is giving the world peak stuff with almost 4BIL of the 7BIL ravenous humans. Your per capita BS does not mean shit in aggregate.