Re: [pf] Un-requested gifts (completed); also: over-consuming

At 10:17 11/10/99 +1300, David sent (but wasn't received):
**  We also have a shopping-list, and _only_ the things on it are bought,
plus a handful of necessities (bread, milk, cabbage, carrots,
toilet-paper). This puts the responsibility of purchase onto the person who
will be using the item (e.g. hair shampoo).

**  The upshot of all this is that we _buy_very_little_; the person only
goes shopping when there is something _needed_; that person doesn't say to
themself: "they might enjoy having such-and-such" whether they would or
wouldn't, since the decision to purchase is made by the person who actually
wants it, rather than by guess-work.

**  We're all happy with this (old-fashioned, in my view) way of buying
things; our 26yo son says it was an eye-opener to him, that it _is_
possible to live on so little, and it's one of the reasons he's still
living with us.

**  This doesn't rule out gifts - you just ask first, to see whether they
would really appreciate being given something; and if not the actual thing
suggested, what would be better. In my case the process went like this: my
first pair of hemp jeans (open-weave, not denim) were nearly worn out 18
months ago, and I complained that they weren't lasting as long as I'd
hoped. A month or two later, my wife heard about a newly-opened hemp store
(not just clothes) down-town, and asked me whether I would like a pair of
proper hemp jeans. Of course, I said yes, so knowing my waist measurement
(the same as it's been since my 20s) she bought and gave me a pair; which
I'm still enjoying wearing (and which our son sometimes wears when going to
a friend's place - his jeans are too ripped for that, recently). As I say,
much appreciated; but at least partly because I was _asked_first_ what I'd
like.

**  I'm sure probably more than half of what is bought these days is bought
without any real need, and a big fraction of that is with the idea that it
would please someone else, but without a prior indication from them that
this _is_ so. Or even any thought that perhaps they should be asked first.
>


**  In 1990 (when there were only 5.3 billion people!), I wrote this:

http://www.emucities.com.au/member/davd/partialsuicide.html
  is:

(1 Aug., 1990: letter to be sent to The Editor, The NZ Herald:
http://www.herald.co.nz/nzherald99/index.cfm                  ) 

              Reducing The Number of People in The World,
          or: How to Commit Suicide, Without Actually Dying.

In terms of their impact on the world's resources, we can define the number
of (standard) people in the world as 15,151,515,151.51 .  This is done by
defining the Standard Person as the one whose impact on the earth is
sufficiently small that 5.3 billion of him and her would be sustainable:
perhaps an average Thailander outside of Bankok. 

We're going rapidly downhill: in 1950, with only 2.5 billion people and a
much smaller amount of chemicals and fossil fuels used, the Standard Person
was probably equivalent to an average New Zealander. 

I'm saying that everyone in the world's middle class and richer is using at
least 3 times the Standard person's resource use, and is therefore a
monster made of 3 or more Standard People walking around on his own two 
legs. 

Even as late as 1990, a somewhat modified version of the world's current
civilization and economy could be sustainable, provided most of these Ugly
Consumers killed off all their excrescences and committed at least
2/3-suicide. The essential person would still be there, interacting with
family and friends, doing the part of their job that only they can do
really well, travelling by fossil-fuelled vehicle as little as possible,
and living a much less stressful life. 

In an ideal world a really high proportion of Ugly Consumers would do this,
so that the number of people in the world would drop from the 15.1 billion
to below 5.3 billion, allowing some of the millions of fractional people to
increase their standard of living far enough to become full people. 

           - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

 [ This letter was prevented from being sent (in 1990), by David's family
objecting to the consequences to them of any publicity of such ideas. ]

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
sent (in late 1999) by David.
(David MacClement) d1v9d @ bigfoot.com (remove spaces)
http://www.emucities.com.au/member/davd/index.html#top
******************************************************